Post Omits Hamid Gul’s 9/11 Doubts from Obituary

The former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), 78-year-old Hamid Gul, has died, and The Washington Post has given him a scathing obituary worthy of the one they gave anti-Zionist columnist Joseph Sobran. “Pakistan’s spy chief was ally of Islamist militants,” said the headline on the print edition on page B4. The headline of the online edition was slightly different, but just as uncomplimentary.

Even more than former German defense minister Andreas von Bülow, Gul was probably most famous for his doubts about the official story of 9/11, which he expressed very early and very often. We find nothing about those doubts in the obituary, however. Instead, the second and third paragraphs establish its insulting tone:

Gul’s tenure at the ISI and his outspoken backing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other extremists highlighted the murky loyalties at play years later when the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath tested the U.S.-Pakistani alliance.

Gul came to be seen as an increasingly out-of-touch braggart later in life, as he appeared on countless Pakistani television programs warning of conspiracies and demanding his country militarily confront its nuclear-armed neighbor India.

Quite a number of people have expressed suspicions about the authenticity of Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, and the following passage near the end of the obituary explains why:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Gul became an outspoken opponent to the U.S. while cheering the Taliban in public and media appearances. There were allegations, however, that Gul had a more hands-on approach. U.S. intelligence reports later released by WikiLeaks allege he dispatched three men in December 2006 to carry out attacks in Afghanistan’s capital.

“Reportedly Gul’s final comment to the three individuals was to make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame,” the report said.

Gul at the time described the documents as “fiction and nothing else.” Some of the reports, generated by junior intelligence officers, did include far-fetched claims, including an allegation in 2007 that militants teamed up with the ISI to kill Afghan and NATO forces with poisoned alcohol bought in Pakistan.

But what really stands out in the obituary to any halfway-informed person is that it leaves out the fact that Gul was very likely the leading critic in the world of the official story of 9/11. At least The Post is consistent. What follows, with updated links, is the article that I wrote on July 28, 2010:

Post Silent on Gul’s 9/11 Views

Today’s Washington Post has an article taking up most of two columns on page A8 about the former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Hamid Gul. It is not complimentary:

Current and former U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, variously described him as "very dirty" and a man with a "horrible reputation."

"There's no doubt where his sympathies lie," a U.S. official said, echoing the views of many Pakistani defense analysts. "Even though Gul may not be a card-carrying member of a terrorist group, he stays in touch with militants, offering his insights and advice on their activities."

The Post also speaks of Gul’s views about “vast American scheming” in the world. The single example it provides, though, is Gul’s opinion that the U.S. government is actually behind the recent huge leak of secret military documents, one of the purposes of which was to expose Pakistani double dealing.

It is truly amazing, though hardly surprising, that The Post could talk about Gul’s charges of vast American scheming and not manage to mention his most important charge, that is that 9/11 was an inside job involving American and Israeli Zionists. One can be sure that the folks at The Post know quite well what Gul has had to say about 9/11, and that that is the sort of thing that they would want to keep away from the tender eyes and ears of the American public. The unforgivable journalistic lapse, then, was thoroughly intentional, keeping The Post’s record intact of writing great long articles that still manage to leave out the most important things, particularly if they have anything to do with doubts about the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Fortunately, we no longer need rely on fading government propaganda organs like The Washington Post for our news. We may turn to a fresher, newer propaganda organ like CNN (whose biggest star is CIA pretty boy, Anderson Cooper). Even in its edited interview (dead link) of Gul, complete with gratuitous editorial comments at the end, it manages to impart a lot more essential truth about Gul’s views than one is ever going to see in The Post (Don’t hold your breath waiting for Lally Weymouth to give him one of her long, sympathetic interviews. For the dead link above, we are substituting a CNN YouTube interview. The interviewer, Fareed Zakaria, may not have the known direct ties to the CIA that Cooper does, but he is a member of the secret society Scroll and Key of Yale University, and the latter is a known CIA breeding ground. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau is also a member of Scroll and Key.).

Through the wonders of the Internet, one can also read the transcript of a much longer interview (dead link) of Gul in which he elaborates upon his views about 9/11. (Though clearly well informed, he shows that he needs some work on U.S. geography when he confuses Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, with the site of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, some 150 miles to the north as the crow flies. We have substituted this interview on 9/11. It makes no mention of Langley, so it is not the same as the one referred to in the original article.)

These two interviews represent only a mere beginning of the Internet research one might do. Try using the terms “Hamid Gul 9/11” and see what comes up. One interesting thing that emerges is that among the large number of hits, hits on “mainstream” press sites are virtually non-existent. The Post’s journalistic partners in crime obviously don’t want us to hear Gul’s message, either.

These hits may be contrasted with the ones you get when you search “Hamid Gul” alone. One of the most telling hits is one that never appeared in The Post’s print edition. Apparently for readers who need a stronger dose of propaganda, Jeff Stein really takes off the gloves in his SpyTalk column with “The Audacity of Hamid Gul.” In so doing, he manages inadvertently to give a great deal of credence to Gul’s allegations concerning the hidden purpose of the heavily publicized military leaks. It’s a hit job on the Pakistanis, and particularly on the dangerous Gul (end 2010 article).

We will hardly find a better illustration than The Washington Post’s reporting on Hamid Gul for why we should celebrate rather than lament the impending demise of America’s newspapers. It’s really a case of suicide.

David Martin

August 17, 2015

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