Something here stinks.
As the gate to the memo begins to creak open, wafts of lies are floating out and polluting the air around Pakistan. There is a faint rumbling of heavy engines gunning to life and the claptrap of shuffling feet as worried politicos with furrowed brows scurry around the corridors of power wondering if the unspeakable eventualities are about to materialise like a menacing storm.
And all this because someone, somewhere, is lying through his teeth. Mayday, Mayday, from that day in May, may have created mayhem but now what may or may not happen is all up for grabs — just like the ambassadorial job in Washington, DC.
This is the effect, but the cause remains elusive. Maddeningly so. Facts as we know them, just do not add up. There are just too many unknowables, which makes connecting the dots an exercise in frustration. Gaps are being filled by conjecture, hearsay and delicious conspiracy-mongering. Who does not like a good juicy political story?
By now we all know the facts, or at least the ones that have been selectively served up. What we do not know, we will not know till Mansoor Ijaz or Husain Haqqani decides so. Meantime though, some rational musings are in order. Here we go.
We now know former national security advisor (NSA) James Jones — who is a retired general — took the memo from Mansoor Ijaz and handed it over to Admiral Mike Mullen. Jones has admitted this himself so we can assume this to be the case. Now before Jones agreed to be the messenger, he must have satisfied himself that what he was about to do was worthy of his stature, and would not dent his credibility. A former general and NSA would not — by all standards of rationality — agree to deliver an anonymous letter to the highest military officer in the US, which means Mansoor Ijaz must have briefed him on the memo, its basic background, and where it was coming from. In other words, if the memo is actually backed by the Pakistani ambassador to the US, and by his boss, the president of Pakistan — General Jones would have agreed to do the needful.
Mansoor Ijaz admits he shared information about the memo with some key people before he sent it to Mullen. In his rejoinder, he wrote, “Neither did I offer to do anything until I asked senior current and former US officials whether there was receptivity to what the Pakistani official had authorised me to discuss with them.” Note the term “whether there was receptivity”. This means he was told — assuming he is telling the truth — that, yes, this memo is worthy of being sent to Mullen. Since Jones was retired by then, some ‘current’ US officials were also in the loop. Did they also ‘forget’ about it like Mullen pretended to?
Something stinks here.
Let’s move on, using the same logic. General (retd) James Jones would not just walk into the office of the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff and hand over the envelope to the receptionist. He would probably call and make an appointment with the chairman. The conversation may have gone something like this:
“Hi Mike, Jim here.”
“Hi Jim. Long time. All cool at your end?”
“Yep. Listen Mike, I need to come see you urgently. Need you to look at something personally. It is smokin’ hot. Real classified stuff. Gotta do with them Paks.”
“Sure Jim. Is tomorrow good for you? Come over to the office and we will take a look see at what you got. How does 14:00 hours work for you?”
“Done. Thanks Mike. See you then.”
Jones then goes over to Mullen’s office. He is ushered in. He hands the memo to Mullen and briefs him about the background told to him supposedly by Mansoor Ijaz. Since Jones has taken the memo seriously enough to bring it personally to Mullen, he would obviously want Mullen to take it seriously too, and not think that the former NSA has gone cuckoo. Once the deed is done, Jones departs, leaving Mullen alone to mull over the memo.
Meeting Jones with the memo is hardly something Mullen can forget, unless he has gone senile. Why did he then issue the first wishy-washy denial? What was he trying to hide? And why?
Something stinks.
Once he is in possession of the memo, what does Mullen do? Every office worth its name has certain standard operating procedures (SOPs). We can safely assume that the highest military office of the most powerful army on the planet has ironclad SOPs. By now we are assuming Mullen has been made to believe the piece of paper in his hand has come from the highest level of the government of a key but troubled ally. Does he then file it away and forget about it? As per the SOPs, he would intimate the concerned departments depending on how classified he wants to keep it. At minimum — probably — he would take the White House and the Secretary Defence in the loop, if for nothing else, at least to put the issue on record.
Saying he just forgot about it, somehow, just does not add up. Something stinks here.
But if he indeed took key ‘principals’ in the loop, then the US president and his national security team were in the know.
Again Mansoor Ijaz says so himself in his Financial Times op-ed: “The memo was delivered to Admiral Mullen at 14:00 hours on May 10. A meeting between him and Pakistani national security officials took place the next day at the White House.”
At the White House! Was the memo issue raised? Hinted at? Who else was present at the meeting? One assumes if the meeting was in the White House, then some White House officials were also in the meeting. Did Mullen hide the memo even from them, since he could not have forgotten about it within 24 hours? And if he, and the White House officials knew about the memo, why did they keep clammed up all this time?
This memo affair is clearly not about one ambassador alone. A lot of people in a lot of places are lying a whole lot.
The whole thing stinks.
The writer hosts a primetime show on a private TV channel. He can be reached at [email protected]