Backgrounder: a roundabout revanchist

Mansoor Ijaz is chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York. He negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1997 and coauthored the blueprint for the ceasefire in Kashmir between New Delhi and the Hizbul Mujahideen et al in 2000. Among other media outlets, he's worked closely as a foreign policy contributor to Fox News, where he's usually leaned a hard right of centre. He's rich and infamous. Now, he's Memogate's starring secret emissary/coup-maker/whistleblower/revanchist.

Suburban beginnings, nuclear genes

He was born in August 1961 as Musawer Mansoor Ijaz to Pakistani immigrants Mujaddid and Lubna Ijaz in Tallahassee, Florida. Sourcewatch confirms that Ijaz's father Mujjadid has been cited as an early pioneer in developing the intellectual infrastructure of Pakistan's nuclear programme, though it is unclear what his father's operational involvement in the nuke structure was. Ijaz claims his father was invited to Zuflikar Ali Bhutto's famous 1972 huddle with Pakistan's finest nuclear minds around the world where the plans to build Pakistan a bomb were hatched. In view of his expertise, Mujaddid has been assumed to have kept close links from the US with his old schoolmates and teachers who subsequently went on to occupy very high positions in the Pakistani nuclear establishment, and perhaps linked Ijaz in on that old boys network.

Growing up on a farm in Virginia, Ijaz conducted graduate studies in mechanical engineering from a joint programme at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in 1985. This was preceded by a bachelors in nuclear physics Magna Cum Laude from the University of Virginia in 1983. Recalled from post-graduate studies by his father, Ijaz was dispatched to Wall Street by the late '80s.

Beltway boy

The transition from New York to DC is unclear. By the mid-'90s, Ijaz was a feature in Democratic Party politicking. According to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette of 28 April 1997, a memo claiming that Mansoor is "very interested in using his background in nuclear physics" for being placed in the Clinton Administration was sent by Democrat fundraiser Ari Swiller to Maria Haley, a Clinton head-hunter for prospective Asians. The memo featured a biographical sketch listing Ijaz's background and contacts, stipulating Ijaz's father's "closest classmates and teachers in Pakistan are now in charge" of Pakistani nuclear facilities, including the directors of the Centre for Nuclear Studies and of PINSTECH, Pakistan's leading nuclear-research facility. relationship." Naturally enough, by 1995, Mansoor was hanging with Washingtonian elite, including the Clintons, but he was still a mid-level Beltway operator.

Breakdown with Benazir

Around the '95-'96 US election/fundraising campaign, Ijaz's relationship with Pakistan's rulers was also beginning to mature. There is a vaguely documented incident of a 'coup' (that never was) targeting Benazir Bhutto's premiership that he got involved in. The ADG cites Ijaz to have carved a role for himself during the wannabe overthrow, rallying concerns among the US government and informing Bhutto herself in a four-page letter (dated June 29, 1995) delivered via Zafar Hilaly. Ijaz claimed that a serving general of Military Intelligence (MI) and an 'old Karachi family' patriarch media mogul who was then US-based and owned a powerful daily publication in Pakistan were plotting to oust Benazir. According to the ADG, Mansoor said that he learned of the plot from sources Pakistan-based sources who were aware of his political connections in the US. Perhaps the information didn't check out in Islamabad, for Bhutto didn't bite and asked her people to back off from Ijaz.

Meanwhile, in the States, Ijaz did his bit to keep the real/imagined coup going, for as he remained in touch with the Gore Vice Presidency, even soliciting a warning from Clinton's number two during a fundraiser that the US would not appreciate a coup in Pakistan.

As the thank you note from Bilawal House never arrived, Ijaz soon became a leading critic of the Benazir government. Defending his turnaround, he was quoted subsequently in the ADG that, "We were saving democracy from the hands of military dictators, not Mrs Bhutto as a person...When I wrote the anti-corruption pieces, I was speaking out on behalf of the poor and disaffected people of Pakistan who had no other voice to protect them from the ravages of the Benazir regime's unforgivable conduct. There is no contradiction." But the end of the BB-Ijaz relationship was not a one off, love letter fiasco.

Face-off with the Foreign Office

Ijaz was soon going to upset other key players in Pakistan's foreign policy establishment with the passing of the Brown Amendment (which allowed Pakistan to reclaim stalled payments for F-16 fighters from Washington). His anti-Pakistan tirades in conservative publications like the Wall Street Journal would elicit responses from figures like Foreign Secretary Najmuddin Sheikh and Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi; both those offices counter claimed that Ijaz, basically, just wanted to derive financial benefits from Islamabad. While Dawn published Lodhi's comments ("it was illegal") about Ijaz's compensation demands for helping out with the passage of the Brown Amendment, Ijaz shot back and questioned Lodhi's intentions regarding the US legislation, claiming in the WSJ that her brother, Amir, would gain from a Mirage jet deal with the French, thus her interest. Thus, the Pakistani infighting on Washington's embassy row got ugly long before Memogate. Even the Israel card (Ijaz allegedly wanted Pakistan to formally recognise that country) was played.

Unofficially delivering Sudan

'96-'97 saw Ijaz make several trips to Khartoum meeting several times with Sudan's president, Lt Gen Omar Hassan Bashir, and the country's king maker, the militant Islamist Hassan Al Turabi, advising them on how to soften the Clinton administration's position on sanctions placed on that country.These unofficial negotiations concentrated on the extradition of Osama bin Laden. Ijaz argued the US should adopt a policy of "constructive engagement" with Sudan and, in return for providing intelligence data on the terrorist groups and deporting bin Laden to Saudi Arabia, ease the sanctions. Subsequently, and made further overtures via Ijaz, offering counter-terrorism assistance and access to intelligence data. At the time, Mansoor had not registered with the Justice Department as a lobbyist for Sudan and said he had received no compensation from the Khartoum regime.

A Kashmiri intermediary

In the meantime, Mansoor had managed to get on the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations in the US where he got involved in policy recommendations for South Asia. His background in Washington and his current position may have helped Mansoor in arranging a discreet visit to Indian Administered Jammu & Kashmir in May 2000 to work out a ceasefire between New Delhi and militant factions.

Indian reports said that he did not have to go through the usual security formalities at Srinagar airport, speculating this as natural as Ijaz's liaison throughout his visit in Kashmir were officials of the Indian intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Indian military.

Pearlgate, and a militant chaperone

Ijaz has verified to Vanity Fair that he connected the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to Khalid Khawaja, a former ISI agent whose militant credentials included ties with Osama bin Laden. With Ijaz's letter of reference in hand, Pearl would land in Pakistan to establish contact with Khawaja, a leading Pakistani editor, and another intel-militant operator in Pakistan, all contacts of Ijaz. According to Dawn, "Khawaja claimed that he introduced Mr Pearl to his contacts and arranged interviews with Taliban diplomats and other people." However, he was not involved in Pearl's abduction. According to Dawn, as the hunt for Pearl became an international crisis and Khawaja started feeling the heat, Ijaz helped his reference out by convincing Newsweek to take it easy on blaming Khawaja for the disappearance. This probably made sense for Ijaz: If his reference, Khawaja, was exposed to flak, it was only natural that some of the debris would land in the referee Ijaz's backyard. Perhaps Khawaja would strike back with his own revelations; for he had been a connecter for Ijaz and former CIA chief James Woolsey for an opaque track-two process with the Taliban through the pre-launch phase of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Questionable claims, solid donations

Regarding the Middle East, Ijaz joined the pre-Iraq buildup neocon banter wagon after 9/11, and was a leading claimant in his National Review and other pieces that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. He was wrong.

Following revelations in 2004 that Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had been selling nuclear technology to other countries, Ijaz urged Bush to make funding to Islamabad contingent on compliance with acceptable nuclear safeguards. But, interestingly, he defended Islamabad's rights to have the nukes: "Pakistan has a right to maintain its nuclear deterrent. It does not have the right to hide from the world how many nuclear monsters it created in our midst," he wrote in The Weekly Standard. Ijaz has also advocated the US increase military support for the Musharraf regime, especially the sale of F-16s.

Also, in 2006, in an interview with Gulf News, he made the world exclusive claim that Iran already had a nuclear bomb and that US think tanks were already formulating strategies to overthrow the Iranian government. Sounds ominous from a man who has a donate-to-winner ratio of over 90 percent, including thousands raised or contributed to the Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry campaigns. Ijaz for CIA chief, anyone?

Khan is a senior reporter for TFT. Tweet him @wajskhan or email him at wajahat_khan@hks.harvard.edu

Comments (2 comments)

Fantastic article based on research

Posted: Thursday, December 01, 2011 by Ahsan Shah from Birmingham

Astro-Vision the astrology people are men of a very high calibre bestowed and bless with fine excellent qualities. Idian Astrology is more accurate then Western System. I salute to all those people who are in Indian Astrology and all the Guru and Pandit. My husband is inclined towards Indian Astrology. Almighty Allah always showers His choicet on you and on your family and keep your family under His protection.

Posted: Friday, November 25, 2011 by QUDSIA ANWER from Karachi-Pakistan