SECRET PAKISTANI AIRLIFT AIDED TALIBAN, AL QAEDA FIGHTERS

American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers say that Pakistani Army military and intelligence advisers who had been working with the Taliban in Afghanistan were flown to safety in Pakistan during the siege of Kunduz last November, in a series of nighttime airlifts by the Pakistani Air Force!

Controversial Seymour Hersh returns to the pages of the NEW YORKER, according to publishing sources, in the January 28, 2002 edition, hitting racks Monday.

The evacuation, which had been conceived of as a limited operation, "apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus."

One American defense adviser tells Hersh, "Everyone brought their friends with them. You're not going to leave them behind to get their throats cut."

Indian intelligence officials tell Hersh that they number the escaped officials and fighters at four or five thousand; American intelligence officials put the total far lower. But "the Bush Administration may have done more than simply acquiesce in the rescue effort," Hersh reports.

"At the height of the standoff, according to both a C.I.A. official and a military analyst who has worked with the Delta Force...the Administration ordered the United States Central Command to set up a special air corridor help insure the safety of Pakistani rescue flights from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan."

Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf won American support for the evacuation, Hersh reports, by warning that losing a large number of Pakistanis would jeopardize his political survival.

In India, a recently retired Indian diplomat tells Hersh, the feeling is that "Musharraf has two-timed you. What have you gained? Have you captured Osama bin Laden?"

A senior Indian intelligence official says, "Musharraf can't afford to keep the Taliban in Pakistan. They're dangerous to his own regime. Our reading is that the fighters can go only to Kashmir."

Kashmir remains the flashpoint. "The situation is bloody explosive," a senior Pakistani diplomat says, suggesting that Musharraf has not been given enough credit by the Indian government for the "sweeping changes" he's brought to Pakistan.

A retired C.I.A. officer who served as a station chief in South Asia tells Hersh he found it especially disturbing that each country had "imperfect intelligence" about the other. "Couple that with the fact that these guys have a propensity to believe the worst of each other, and have nuclear weapons, and you end up saying, 'My God, get me the hell out of here.'"

Do you really believe that George Bush is involved in a plot to hijack airliners full of people and crash them into buildings?

I believe it's more along the lines of the Bush Administration's committing to certain actions in Afghanistan -- out of a mixture of good faith, alliance-building and self-interest -- and other Interested Parties, former friends or ultimate betrayers of a sort seeing to it that we engaged on schedule.

Unfortunately, there always will be those who see Crisis as an Opportunity and we've certainly got our share of that sort running around. It's their actions which serve only to confuse the issue by drawing attention away from the actual perps in the process by spinning the wheel for those with an axe to grind.

If I come across garbage, I usually throw it out.

I can understand and do respect your prerogative to toss any source you don't wish to have sitting on your site. Where you've made clear that a Ruppert sort is not welcome, I think we're equal to the task of digging up the same information from more reputable sources who don't carry a lot of baggage in with them.

Because it's the house rules in this instance, maybe it's worthwhile to keep a "No Thanks, Not Here" thread open to which only you can post which alerts folks to any persona non grata ... with or without explanation, as you see fit. If folks felt compelled to dog you on a particular decision, they could do so privately and keep the wrangling over it off the forum. The last thing I want to see is your personal vigilance in protecting yourself and the integrity of your property being whipped up into censorship.

I still do hope, though, that where a person's made the proper caveats, certain "leftist" garbage can be posted. I think it's helpful to keep a pulse of sorts on the "garbage going in" that's certain to be the "garbage out" disinformation used both to confuse the truth with lies and keep the left and right polarized on certain key issues or events.

Where these writers or pieces don't end up on the Unwelcome Mat, we might cut down on all the static that is posting to a thread only to smear the source instead of address what's presented as the Pertinent Portions of the piece.

I'll grant you that a lot of the leftist garbage has a stench of deceit or hate so powerful, it's nothing but offensive. I just think that where a liberal or leftist actually makes a cogent argument or presents some good hard facts, it's nice not only to see it from their perspective but to realize there are some essential things on which even totally disparate parties -- but all still humans with consciences -- can agree.

We know what we're fighting against where they're concerned. Sometimes it's good know what, if anything, we've got to fight "with", so to speak.

All the best.

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