RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Sept. 26 Ñ The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States were perpetrated by renegade U.S. Air Force elements working in conjunction with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, according to the retired Pakistani general who is closest to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

Gen. Hameed Gul, head of Inter Services Intelligence, the equivalent of a CIA-cum-FBI combination, during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, spent two weeks in the war-torn country immediately prior to Sept. 11. He has been acting as "strategic adviser" to Pakistan's extremist religious political parties. Four religious leaders left his house in the army's principal garrison town as this reporter arrived at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. The interview lasted 90 minutes.

Already countless millions of Muslims believe that the World Trade Center and Pentagon suicide attacks were part of a Mossad plot to force the United States into confrontation with the Muslim world. Now Gul has added a new disinformation wrinkle to the plot. And what Gul says or writes is taken at face value by religious leaders and is repeated in thousands of mosques at Friday prayers.

In an exclusive interview with United Press International, the fundamentalist general said it is now clear that there was also a plot by U.S. Air Force officers against the Pentagon.

"The twin towers were first attacked at 8:45 a.m.," he said, "and four flights were diverted from their assigned air space, and yet Air Force jets didn't scramble until 10 a.m. That smacks of a small-scale Air Force rebellion, a coup attempt against the Pentagon perhaps? Radars are jammed, transponders fail. No IFF Ñ friend or foe identification Ñ challenge ... This was clearly an inside job. (President) Bush was afraid and rushed to the shelter of a nuclear bunker.

"(Bush) clearly feared a nuclear situation. Who could that have been? Will that also be hushed up in the investigation, like the Warren report after the Kennedy assassination?"

Gul said that his friend bin Laden had sworn to him on the Koran that he was not involved. "From a cave inside a mountain or a peasant's hovel," Gul asked, how could bin Laden mount such a sophisticated operation? "Let's be serious," he said with a smile. "Mossad and its American associates are the obvious culprits," he added by asking, "Who benefits from the crime?"

Asked why Israel would benefit, Gul replied, "Israel knows it has a short shelf-life before it is overwhelmed by demographics (and it) has now handed the (Bush administration) the opportunity it has been waiting for to consolidate America's imperial grip on the Gulf and acquire control of the Caspian basin by extending its military presence in Central Asia."

Gul said the U.S. plan was "the destabilization of Pakistan because it is a Muslim nuclear state. The U.S. wants to isolate Pakistan from China as part of its containment policy. President Nixon's book 'The Real War' said China would be the superpower of the 21st century. The U.S. is also creating hostility between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two Muslim states, to reverse the perception that the Islamic world now has its own nuclear weapons. Bush 43 doesn't realize he is being manipulated by people who understand geopolitics. He is not leading but being led. All he can do is think in terms of the wanted-dead-or-alive culture which is how Hollywood conditions the masses to think and act."

"Bush 43" is actually Washington shorthand for distinguishing President George W. Bush from his father. President George W. Bush is the 43rd president: George Bush Sr. was the 41st.

Gul admitted that he turned against America when the United States walked away from Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

"We were all pro-American (during the war) but then America left us in the lurch and everything went to pieces, including Afghanistan."

Asked if the United States was now his enemy, Gul replied, "Is the U.S. national interest in contradiction with the Muslim world? The U.S. needs oil, as do its European allies. You have between 6 and 8 million American Muslims and their ranks are growing. About the same number in Europe. Israel aside, we are America's natural allies. Professor Sam Huntington in his (book) 'Clash of Civilizations' puts Confucius and Judeo-Christians in one corner, and us in the other. His prescription is wrong but is being adopted by Bush 43 who has now put 60 countries on his hit list. This is the diabolical school that wants to launch an anti-Muslim 'crusade.' Muslims understood what Bush meant when he used that word. We need a meeting, not a clash, of civilizations."

If Pakistan gives the U.S. base facilities, Gul warned, "we will have a national upheaval" and if the United States attacks Afghanistan, there will be "a general jihad (holy war) ... and Pakistan will be engulfed in the firestorm. So I can only hope that cooler heads will prevail in Washington."

Asked to consider the possibility that bin Laden Ñ or OBL as he is referred to in Pakistani conversations Ñ was lying to him and is indeed guilty as charged by the United States, Gul said, "If Taliban are given irrefutable evidence of his guilt, I am in favor of a fair trial. In America one is entitled to a jury of peers. But he has no American peers. The Taliban would not object, in the event of a prima face case, to an international Islamic court meeting in The Hague. They would extradite Osama to the Netherlands."

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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