Tehran, January 01: A senior US analyst believes Western media reports about Iran’s complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks are nothing more than “a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters.”
In an article posted on Truthout, Gareth Porter said the story first published by the Associated Press on December 22, about Iran having assisted al-Qaeda in the planning of 9/11 attacks suffers on the side of evidence and witnesses.
“The lawyers and the ‘expert witnesses’ behind the accusation of Iran in regard to 9/11 hoped to sell the press and public on recycled claims first made by Iranian defectors several years ago that they had personal knowledge of Iranian participation in the 9/11 plot,” he added.
Porter noted that the main body of evidence in the case has been provided by two allegedly defectors of Iran’s intelligence apparatus, later identified as Abolqasem Mesbahi and Hamid Reza Zakeri.
Both of them, he adds, had tried to contact the US intelligence officials through the right-wing journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman, who is a brazen supporter of White House’s neocon policies.
Mesbahi claimed to have inside information about Iranian involvement in the terrorist attacks and had tried to warn the US Embassy in Berlin but was “unsuccessful” in several attempts.
Later investigations, however, revealed that Mesbahi had no contact with high-level Iranian intelligence officials throughout the 1990s and later.
The FBI Hezbollah Office’s James Bernazzani later noted that the Bureau considered Mesbahi as “someone who was desperate for money and ready to provide testimony to any country on any case involving Iran.”
The second defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, claimed that he had been an officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and had provided security for a meeting at an airbase near Tehran on May 4, 2001, attended by high-ranking Iran and al-Qaeda officials, including Osama bin Laden’s son, Saad bin Laden.
He claimed that he had told the US Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, on July 26, 2001, about the alleged meeting and had warned its officials about a possible plan by Iranians and al-Qaeda to attack some US targets on September 11, 2001.
The CIA officials, however, categorically denied that Zakeri had given any such warning to the embassy and called Zakeri “a fabricator of monumental proportions.” He also failed an FBI polygraph test in 2003.
According to Porter, the second area of weakness which further discredits the story about Iran’s part in 9/11 attacks is composition of “expert witnesses” who were asked to judge the testimony of Iranian defectors.
They included Clare M. Lopez and Bruce Tefft, both former CIA covert operations case officers.
Both of them, Porter said, are also staunch advocates of neocon ideas who explicitly argue that there is a worldwide war against Islam.
“The most egregious allegations of Iranian complicity in 9/11 come from three former staff members of the 9/11 Commission – Daniel Byman, Dietrich Snell, and Janice Kephart,” he added.
They claimed that Iran has provided “material support” to al-Qaeda operatives by facilitating their passage through the country and failure to stamp their passports.
Contradicting their claims, Porter says, the 9/11 Commission report has noted on page 169 that the Iranian practice of not stamping visas directly into passports applied to everyone, not simply to al-Qaeda operatives.
The Commission report further acknowledged that there was no evidence of Iranian foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, the visa policy did not support the thesis that Iran provided “material support” for the al-Qaeda plot.
Refuting claims that Tehran provided a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda operatives, Porter said, Iran actually arrested 300 al-Qaeda operatives and gave a dossier with their names, passport pictures, and fingerprints to the United Nations while repatriating 200 of them to the new government in Afghanistan.
“One of the senior al-Qaeda detainees apparently detained by Iran during 2002-03 period, Saif al-Adel, later told a Jordanian journalist that Iran’s operations against al-Qaeda had ‘confused us and aborted 75 percent of our plans’” Porter added.
Wrapping up his analysis, Porter concluded that the only real effect of the case against Iran is to promote right-wing political myths about the country because in such cases, the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court and, therefore, indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them.
He noted that “the ostensible purpose” of the case brought by families of 9/11 terror attack victims against Iran is to win compensation for alleged damages as has happened in many other cases where “default judgments” have been made against Iran by US courts.
——Agencies