MEMOGATE

Who in the World is Mansoor Ijaz?

The startling allegations leveled by the Pakistani-American
businessman and citizen diplomat have already claimed their first
casualty. Meet the man who blew the whistle on Memogate.
By Fasih Ahmed | From the Dec. 2, 2011, issue.

Seamus Murphy for Newsweek Pakistan

Musawer Mansoor Ijaz has always been willful. It was a trait that
worried his late father, Mujaddid, a Virginia Tech physics professor.
So one summer afternoon in 1976 at their mountain-perched home in
rural Shawsville, Virginia, he organized a sort of intervention for the
oldest of his five children, with some hefty help. Abdus, can you
please explain to this young man that being so headstrong is not
good? The professors friend, Dr. Abdus Salam, sized up the young
Ijaz and smiled. Do you remember how headstrong we were at that
age? Thats how we got to where we are, Salam told his friend, so
let him be.

For 15-year-old Ijaz, Salam was not one of the worlds most
important scientists but simply the genial uncle who would bring
chocolates each time he visited. Salam would eventually become
Pakistans only Nobel laureate, but despite that achievement, he
would die an outsider, heartlessly disowned as a heretic by most
Pakistanis deeply suspicious of his Ahmadi beliefs. However, the trait
that worried Ijazs father has served the son wellas Salam knew, it
would.

Ijaz, the thrice-married 50-year-old Wall Street millionaire and father

of five, is based in New York City but clocks up hundreds of private-
jet hours a year traveling to his pieds--terre in Europe. And unlike
Salam, Ijaz is the ultimate Beltway insider, uninhibited by false
humility. He has all the gregarious, bounteous self-assurance of a self-
made man and a rolodex to envy. Ijazs BlackBerry has numbers for
former U.S. vice president Al Gore, Sen. John Kerry, former Obama
national security adviser James L. Jones, Husain Haqqani. But he
should probably delete that last contact.

On Nov. 22, Haqqani resigned or, according to Prime Minister Yousaf

Raza Gilanis office, was asked to resign his post as Pakistans
ambassador to the U.S. This in the wake of Ijazs allegation that
Haqqani, his former friend of over 10 years, was in fact the architect
of the sensational confidential memorandum he had delivered to
Adm. Mike Mullen, the then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, just days after Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces
in Abbottabad.

Pakistan erupted in propaganda wars after Ijaz first suggested

Haqqanis involvement in the alleged conspiracy in an Oct. 10 op-ed
for Londons Financial Times, Time to Take on Pakistans Jihadist
Spies. The end of Haqqanis diplomatic career was inevitable, and
Sherry Rehmana former journalist, Gilani cabinet member, and
rights activistwill now succeed him. But in a country rent by anti-
Army and anti-Zardari ardor, some hope while others fear that the
political blood of Husain may not be enough.

It is not congruent with the national interests of Pakistan to have a

clever-by-half ambassador and a deficient-by-full president, Ijaz told
Newsweek Pakistan. OK, not everybody has to be a fucking rocket
scientist in all of this but at least be honest to the people about what
youre doing and own up to your actions instead of covering them
up.

Noteworthy

The memo is a startling read. Playing up fears of a coup in Pakistan,

which Ijaz says he now knows to have been purposefully false, the
document delivered to Admiral Mullen through former Obama
administration official Jones on May 10 urges the Pentagon to convey
a strong, urgent and direct message to Pakistans Army chief Gen.
Ashfaq Kayani and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha to end
their brinkmanship aimed at bringing down the civilian apparatus.
The memo seeks U.S. assistance in forcing wholesale changes to
Pakistans notoriously tenuous civil-military relations. Alluding to the
civil war that led to East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh, the memo
describes the Armys emasculation by Abbottabad as a 1971
moment. It alleges the complicity of the military and the ISI in the
bin Laden matter and claims the presence and patronage on
Pakistani soil of several most-wanted terrorists, including Ayman al-
Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani.

The nonpaper seeks American pressure, and names, for setting up an

independent commission to investigate bin Ladens support structure
in Pakistan. The findings, the memo promises, will be of tangible
value to the U.S. government and the American people and will
identify with exacting detail those responsible and leadit is
certainto the immediate termination of active service officers.
The memo is written on behalf of a new national security team that
will be inducted by the President of Pakistan with your support and
staffed with people favorably viewed by Washington who would
provide the U.S. carte blanche to operate against terrorists within
Pakistan.

The memo also commits this new national-security dream team to

bringing Pakistans nuclear weapons program under an acceptable
framework of discipline and a more verifiable, transparent regime.
It promises cooperation with India over the 2008 Mumbai attacks
regardless of who may have been involved, and urges America
demand the disbandment of the ISIs Section S, which is charged
with maintaining relations to the Taliban, Haqqani network, etc.

If this memo was Haqqanis brainchild, as Ijaz alleges, it is self-

evident that these contents could never be relayed by him in his
official capacity without raising red flags in leak-prone U.S. decision-
making circles. In addition, what civilian government, no matter how
besieged or bumbling (or some of its officials, no matter how crafty or
clumsy), could resist the temptation of capitalizing on post-
Abbottabad tensions between Pakistan and the U.S. to finally put the
generals in their place? Except that the memo doesnt represent an
article-of-faith problem for its alleged ideological architects, but an
Article 6 problem. Thats the treason clause in Pakistans Constitution
which, despite the clamor, is unlikely to be invoked.

Ijaz finds it improbable that he was the only opinion leader to be

approached by Haqqani.

Far less radical but prescriptions similar to those in the Mullen memo
were made around the same time in an op-ed in The Washington Post.
This is a time for action, to finally push [Pakistan] toward
moderation and genuine democracy, wrote Fareed Zakaria in his
May 12 piece. One Pakistani scholar, who preferred not to be named
for fear of repercussions explained the crestfallen Pakistan Armys
violation-of-sovereignty outbursts to Zakaria thus: Its like a person,
caught in bed with another mans wife, who is indignant that someone
entered his house.

Some could say that Haqqani, who taught at Boston University and
authored a seminal critique of the military in his 2005 book, Pakistan:
Between Mosque and Military, fits the bill.

Zakaria also helps explain the frustration felt by democracy purists.

The military has also, once again, been able to cow the civilian
government. According to Pakistani sources, the speech that Prime
Minister Gilani gave at a recent news conference was drafted by the
military. President Zardari continues to appease the military rather
than confront the generals. Having come to power hoping to clip the
militarys wings, Pakistans democratically elected government has
been reduced to mouthing talking points written for it by the
intelligence services.

The piece implores Washington to push with urgency the constitution

in Pakistan of a national commission headed by a Supreme Court
justice and not an Army apparatchik to investigate Abbottabad and
the involvement of elements of the Pakistani state. It also asks the
U.S. to develop a plan to go after the major untouched terror
networks in Pakistan, such as the Haqqani faction, the Quetta Shura
and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and to either strictly implement the provisions
of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill (the Enhanced Partnership with
Pakistan Act 2009) which require Pakistans military being placed
under real civilian control or cut off aid.

Burden of Biography

Haqqani, 55, is no stranger to controversy. One year after making

ambassador, in 2009, he was accused of finagling and finessing the
allegedly anti-Army provisions in Kerry-Lugar. He responded to the
most strident accuser, The Nation, with a defamation notice. The
English-language daily had called him an American agentan
odious, potentially fatal label that has somehow stuck. This year,
during the Raymond Davis fiasco, he was falsely accused of doling
out visas in the hundreds to CIA operatives like the dubious Davis.
Never mind that the ISI, not Haqqani, cleared every single visa issued
from Pakistans Embassy in Washington. And never mind that it was
Haqqani, a former religious-right activist, who resolved the Davis
crisis by suggesting application of the Shariah concept of diyat or
blood money.

The accusations have taken their toll on Haqqani and his third wife,
Farahnaz Ispahani, a well-regarded lawmaker and herself a former
journalist. Ispahani is one of Zardaris spokespersons, and her
grandfather, who served as ambassador to the U.S., gifted Pakistan
the D.C. property that has become the official residence for its
envoys. On Nov. 18, Haqqani broke down on national television.
There is nothing more painful for a Pakistani than having people call
him a traitor, he told Geo News. My mother is buried in a military
graveyard, my father served in the Pakistan Army, my brother served
in the Pakistan Army. My political views may be different from
others but to accuse me of being a traitor because of thatthat hurts.

Biography is a burden for both Ijaz and Haqqani. Before his

ambassadorship and before his teaching career, Haqqani was in the
thick of politicsanother job he was good at. During the 1990s
Haqqani ran an election campaign for Nawaz Sharif, a former prime
minister who was once pro-Army, before defecting to the Pakistan
Peoples Party and winning the confidence of Zardari and his late wife,
Benazir Bhutto. When Sharif returned to power he jailed Haqqani on
made-up charges until Gen. Pervez Musharraf interceded. Haqqani
left the country soon after.

A universal dinner party favorite for his wit and propensity to speak
in sound bites, Haqqani has been accused of coming up with that
highly damaging description of first husband Zardaris alleged
corruption, Mr. 10 Percent, during his time as a Sharif adviser. But
the now center-right journalist Mujeeb-ur-Rehman Shami, who knows
Haqqani, disputes this as untrue. Shami says Haqqanis election
campaign for Sharif was in bad taste but impressed Bhutto. It was
Haqqani, he says, who trotted out the infamous 1990s letter forged to
look like it had gone from Bhutto to Peter W. Galbraith, another
Beltway insider and Bhuttos friend from Harvard, calling on the U.S.
to have India attack Pakistan in order to chasten the generals.
Whether he forged it or not is a matter of debate, but he was the one
to release it to the media, says Shami.

But allegations are cheap, especially in Pakistan where challenging

hearsay is heresy. The fact is that Bhutto, who was assassinated in
2007, trusted Haqqani. In her posthumously released Reconciliation:
Islam, Democracy, and the West, she appreciates Haqqani for his
vital role in providing guidance and criticism, especially invaluable
on the theocratic foundations of Islam and the history of Pakistana
loyal friend whose counsel will always be cherished.

The Prince and the Pasha

Ijaz received a call from the ISI just days after the publication of his
Financial Times piece. Would he be willing to corroborate his
allegations against the senior Pakistani diplomat behind the Mullen
memo to an official of the same intel agency he described in the piece
as a cancer on the Pakistani State and a threat to the world?
Although sympathetic to the Zardari-led government, Ijazs column
also called the civilian government incompetent and toothless.

On the evening of Oct. 22, Ijaz met the ISI chief in London for four
hours. The one-on-one meeting took place in General Pashas 715-a-
night one-bedroom suite at the InterContinental London Park Lane, a
hotel favored by Pakistani generals on official visits. A plainclothes
Pakistani stood guard outside. General Pasha, attired in a business
suit, was calm, asked a series of pointed questions and kept
scribbling as Ijaz backed up his claims against Haqqani.

Ijaz often swapped notes with Haqqani via BlackBerry Messenger. He

claims Haqqani communicated with him using two devicesone with
the PIN No. 2326A31D was used by Haqqani, he says, between May
9 and 12, and another, with the PIN No. 287EF1E9, later in June. Ijaz
has released portions of his alleged chats with Haqqani to the press.
Interior minister Rehman Malik only hurt Haqqanis cause when he
confirmed that Ijaz and Haqqani had been in contact, despite the
former envoys claims to the contrary. This is communication
through SMS by two individuals, said Malik. One is an American
national and the second is our ambassador.

There was no small talk between Ijaz and General Pasha that evening,
but in order to establish his credentials Ijaz did give the spy chief a
rundown of his lifehis weightlifting wins as a U-Va. student, his
academic honors at MIT and Harvard, his foray into the world of high
finance, his friendship and falling out with former U.S. president
Clinton, his one-time ambition to run for the U.S. Senate.

They sat facing each other across a table piled with printouts,
documents, and Ijazs laptop. As Ijaz walked him through the cache
of alleged evidence, General Pasha could no longer maintain his
sangfroid. He grimaced and looked shocked at times, but managed to
not give away how he intended to proceed with the information he
had been provided.

But he did proceed. His boss, General Kayani, met with Zardari twice
in two days to discuss Memogate. Facing pressure from his own
Corps Commanders, the Army chief is said to have asked Zardari to
act against Haqqani and at least two federal ministers who are
believed to have assisted Haqqani in his alleged efforts to slander
their institution, says a former official source whose accounts have
proven accurate in the past. These ministers are believed to be interior
minister Malik and petroleum minister Dr. Asim Hussain.

Turn of the Screw

In the days between Admiral Mullens testimony to the U.S. Senate

Armed Services Committee in Septemberin which he said the
[Jalaluddin] Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistans
Inter-Services Intelligence agencyand the publication of his
October op-ed, Ijaz says an exhausted Haqqani sounded him out on
another matter.
He was ready to call it quits, claims Ijaz, who urged the ambassador
to hang in there.

But what made Ijaz go rogue? Ijaz says he wrote the op-ed in reaction
to the harsh treatment of Admiral Mullen by Pakistans media after
his Senate testimony. I opened the piece with the brief anecdote of
what had been done in May to highlight the tangible actions that had
been taken to deal with the growing interference and threat posed by
extremist segments of the military and intelligence communities in
Pakistan, says Ijaz. Haqqani, he claims, wasnt happy about the piece
and texted Ijaz minutes after it was posted online: Your FT op-ed is a
disaster. Ijaz claims Haqqani followed up with a phone call seeking
to know if there was another senior Pakistani diplomat in Ijazs
orbit who could be used to throw off the scent. This angered Ijaz.

It didnt help when, on Oct. 28, Pakistans Foreign Office tried to put
out the ensuing media fires, dismissing Ijazs account as a total
fabrication. It said: The idea of employing a private individual to
convey a message to a foreign government, circumventing established
official channels of communication, defies belief. The insinuations
and assertions in the fictitious story are devoid of any credence and
are emphatically rejected.

The next day, the presidents spokesman Farhatullah Babar issued a

yet more vigorous denial, deriding Ijaz as a fantasist. Ijazs
allegation is nothing more than a desperate bid by an individual,
whom recognition and credibility have eluded, to seek media attention
through concocted stories. Why would the president of Pakistan
choose a private person of questionable credentials to carry a letter to
U.S. officials? It is rather surprising that responsible media outlets
gave so much attention to Mansoors allegation without questioning
the veracity of his claims.

Ijazs claims can seem a little O.T.T. Among other things, he takes
credit for Musharrafs Agra visit, for blowing the whistle on the A. Q.
Khan network, and for negotiating a ceasefire in Kashmir. But the
personal, political, and financial documents and data that Ijaz
provided exclusively to Newsweek Pakistan establish his involvement
in these and several other citizen-diplomatic initiatives as well as his
proximity to power.

Ijazs headstrong nature can rub some people the wrong way. In
2003s Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clintons Failures Unleashed
Global Terror, Richard Miniter writes: Some of Clintons national
security aides now revile Ijaz as a Walter Mitty living out a personal
fantasy; they cannot bring themselves to admit that he was good at
getting foreign leaders to offer new proposals. As a donor to the
Democratic Party, Ijaz had become a Friend of Bill. They fell out
after Ijaz went public with Clintons dropping the ball on bin Laden.

And not everyone in Pakistan agrees with the governments

uncharitable assessment of Ijaz and his utility. It is unfortunate and
unfair to question Mr. Ijazs credibility, says Sartaj Aziz, vice
chancellor of Beaconhouse University and a former minister in the
Sharif government. Being an American citizen of Pakistani origin, he
has been quite instrumental and useful in acting as an interlocutor
between Pakistani and American officials, he told Newsweek
Pakistan. Aziz credits Ijaz for the passage in the U.S. Congress of the
Brown Amendment, which allowed Pakistan to circumvent the earlier
Pressler Amendment and receive American military hardware.

For Islamabad, Memogate was a noneventuntil Admiral Mullen

stepped in, and Ijaz stepped up his campaign.

On Nov. 8, Mullens spokesman said the retired admiral had no

knowledge of the May memo. Ijaz believes this denial was
orchestrated by Haqqani in order to save his job and flat-line a story
that simply wouldnt go away. He responded by issuing a huffy,
lengthy press release defending his own credibility, and making
public the text of alleged BlackBerry and phone conversations he had
had with Haqqani on the memo and subsequent op-ed. Mullen, whom
Ijaz has never claimed to personally know, retracted his denial on
Nov. 16. Memogate was real.
After becoming aware of the press interest in this memo, [Mullen]
felt it incumbent upon himself to check his memory, Pentagon
spokesman Capt. John Kirby told Newsweek Pakistan on email,
explaining the revision of Mullens account. He reached out to others
who he believed might have had knowledge of such a memo, and one
of them was able to produce a copy of it.

For Ijaz, it had gotten personal. The day after Mullens memory-jog,
he went public with Haqqanis name in the Financial Times. Had the
Foreign Offices denial and the Presidencys denial and all these
orchestrations of denials not taken place, there would not have been a
need for me to come out and correct the record as forcefully as I did,
says Ijaz.

Sharing his account of Memogate as zealously as Ijaz has isnt a

simple matter of proving himself right or anyone else wrong. Theres
business to protect. Part of Ijazs impressive list of political contacts
has been built on the foundation of his financial success and in order
to preserve it. He has had former U.S. government officials on the
boards of his companies, some of which provide services and
technology to the U.S. military. He could not afford to have the
Pakistani caricature of him going unchallenged.

He also feels lied to. He now believes that post-Abbottabad there was
never any threat to Pakistans civilian government from the Army. If
I had known this before Ambassador Haqqani approached me I would
never have had the memo relayed, he says.

Punishing Pakistan

In Ijazs view, the memo further frayed U.S.-Pakistan relations and

deepened the Pentagon-Pindi divide. He alleges that Haqqani made a
victory call to him after an afternoon meeting on May 11 between
Pakistani and American officials. He was almost gleeful that
Admiral Mullen had agreed to take certain actions in line with what
was asked of him in the memo and that it would all remain within the
normal course of interagency dealings, claims Ijaz.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Kirby told Newsweek Pakistan that no

action flowed from memo: Neither the contents of the memo nor the
proof of its existence altered or affected in any way the manner in
which Admiral Mullen conducted himself in his relationship with
General Kayani and the Pakistani government.

By the time U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clintonwho had

celebrated her birthday in 1999 at Ijazs Manhattan homecame to
Pakistan in October, the kinks in AmPak had been ironed out after
months of tension. Clinton disowned the admirals Senate statement
and, quoting General Kayani, said both countries were now 90 to 95
percent on the same page.

Most outside observers view Pakistans Army and the ISI warily
because of their undeserved (and self-propagated) reputation as
omnipresent and omnipotent. The military and its agencies can
sometimes inspire irrational and overblown fear.

Take the recent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on Memogate. Like

many people who know Haqqani, writes Jeffrey Goldberg, I feared
that he would be met at the airport by a Benigno Aquino-type arrival
ceremony. Aquino, an opposition leader of the Philippines, was
gunned down on the Manila International Airport tarmac after he
returned from self-exile in 1983. Haqqani is an able and likeable man,
but he is no Aquino; and Pakistan can be a cruel and punishing life,
but it is not Marcoss Philippines. The report suggests an elaborate ISI
plot, of exactly the sort the lumbering agency is incapable of ever
executing, to get Haqqani, and Zardari. But, it states, Haqqani had no
intention to go quietly. Someones game plan was to scare me and
my president into submission without a fight.

Victory Lap
After everything that he now knows, does Ijaz still subscribe to the
prescriptions contained in the Mullen memo? Even if he is angered
and vexed by the alleged official cover-up, can he still appreciate the
ambition to recalibrate the often precarious civil-military balance in
Pakistan?

You have a civilian government with some very intelligent people

who may be attempting to achieve an objective that may not be
achievable, and that is to get the civilian institutions to control the
activities and the behavior of the ISI and the military, says Ijaz.
That all works if you have a Mandela-type figure at the top of your
government on the civilian side, but it all falls apart if you have a
Zardari-type figure.

Americas patience for the misdeeds and machinations of Pakistans

political leaders has run out, says Ijaz. We do not need the
aggravation of further manipulation at the hands of Islamabads
disingenuous rulersor disingenuous U.S. bureaucrats who hide the
sins of foreign diplomats so they can get any sliver of Americas
agenda executed.

Ijaz doesnt doubt Zardaris, or Haqqanis, patriotism. He maintains

that when he was asked to forward the memo, Haqqani allegedly
claimed to have the bosss approval to do so. Now, some six
months later, Ijaz says he doesnt know whether the presidentor
anyone else in Pakistan other than Haqqanihad any knowledge of
the memo before it was delivered to Mullen.

It is his impression that the alleged Memogate cover-up has cost

Islamabad credibility in Washington. The frustration on the
American side is fervid, he says. There is this acceptance now in
America that the ambition of the civilian government to get control of
the security establishment is never going to become a reality so they
might as well deal with the Army, especially to bring some semblance
of resolution to Afghanistan. Ijaz is also concerned about what he
calls a cabal operating within the Pakistani government which will
stop at nothing to misinform people in America.
Sharifs opposition party, PMLN, sees all incumbent civilian and
military leaders as one big cabal. True to form, it has filed a petition with
the Supreme Court demanding answers from everyone involved, including
Generals Kayani and Pasha, hoping that Memogate becomes Zardaris
Watergate and Kayanis Waterloo. Neither is likely.

Ijaz plans to arrive in Pakistan soon. But this is no victory lap. He

says hes coming only to establish that hes ready to face anyone and
cooperate with any inquiry. Does Ijaz have any political aspirations
for himself here? I have a comfortable life in the U.S. and zero
interest in Pakistans politics, he says. What I did, I did as a favor
for my friend, Mr. Haqqani.

Mujaddid Ijaz died of cancer in 1992 and left each of his five children
a separate message recorded on his deathbed. It took Mansoor Ijaz
nine months to bring himself to finally watch the videocassette. No
matter what pond we threw you in, you learned how to swim, Ijazs
dying father said. The brain God gifted you with will do no good to
this world if you do not learn compassion for the ones who cannot
help themselves. Go and help the people of Pakistan. Ijaz believes
his latest involvement with Pakistan does just that.