Barkha Dutt: The international community has been taken by storm, by what's been called Pakistan's Memogate. The controversy started after American-based businessman Mansoor Ijaz wrote an editorial claiming that he was part of an attempt by Pakistan's civilian administration to get an urgent message across to the American administration to try and stop and fend off apprehensions of a military takeover in Pakistan in the days after Osama bin Laden was killed in an American operation. Since then the controversy has grabbed international headlines after Mansoor Ijaz said that the person who asked him to deliver this memo to Mike Mullen was none other than Husain Haqqani, who has served as the Pakistan's Ambassador to the USA, but has since offered to resign. Husain Haqqani said that the memo was not one that was drafted or endorsed by him. He has called Mansoor Ijaz's claims a fabrication. Mr Ijaz has maintained Mr Haqqani is denying something that was discussed in detail in between the two of them.
To get a sense of what Memogate is all about we are joined, from London, by Mansoor Ijaz, himself. Mr Ijaz thanks for your time. Let me start with the basic question: You have seen the denials by Ambassador Husain Haqqani. Do you still stick to your claim that it was indeed him who asked you to draft and deliver this memo?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well Barkha, first of all, it's good to be with you after so many years. I will tell you very simply there is no matter here of claims or counter claims. Husain Haqqani is lying. It's just as simple as that. The data, the facts, the absolute hard evidence, if I may put it that way, the electronic evidence, the emails, the Blackberry messages, the telephone call records, all show very clearly that Ambassador Haqqani was the architect of this entire process. And I think that the international media has two very grave responsibilities in this matter, one is to ask what is the Pakistani government trying to cover up, why, and what are they hiding? Basically.
Barkha Dutt: Mansoor Ijaz, the question has been raised in Pakistan and in Pakistani media as to why someone, who is pretty well connected, like Husain Haqqani - he knew everybody on Capitol Hill - would need you to pass on a message to American administration?
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya, so you can imagine that these were the very tense days after Osama bin Laden had been killed on Pakistani soil in an American raid, a unilateral American raid. You can imagine that there were stresses in the system at that time that none of us outside could at least fathom. We don't know what conversations were taking place between General Kayani, General Pasha, President Asif Zardari, the Prime Minister, so on and so forth. And when Haqqani reached out to me, I had not spoken to him for months. In fact the last interaction that I and Haqqani had, was when he spoke at one of my charitable fundraisers in New York. And since that time we hadn't spoken at all. We have had one or two, what we would call, friendly-type Blackberry exchanges. And when he reached out to me on that day, he was here in London as well, and his first, shall we say, initial stanza in the conversation we had was: 'I'm coming to you because you are a plausibly deniable channel for us. I'm not talking about May 9th, 10th, 11th, prior to the meeting with Admiral Mullen taking place in the US. If, in these days, God forbid this information gets public, or gets known somehow or the other, that the civilian government is trying to go around the ISI and the Army to prevent their pressure from getting too high. If that happens then you are a plausibly denial channel because everybody knows you and President Zardari are not close, everybody knows you have anti-Army and anti-ISI publicly recorded statements. So there is no possibility anybody would believe that, they would in fact, that we would have come to you to ask you to do this. That was part one part. Two, was you are the only guy I know who can get the message to Mullen through the back channel'. And that's because Husain Haqqani knew very well who my friends in Washington are, and how well I know them, how much they trust me and how quickly I can deliver that message, in fact if it was necessary to do so.
Barkha Dutt: So let me get the drift of what you are arguing. You are saying that while at another time Husain Haqqani could have got the message across directly, he used you as a kind of fig leaf, as a kind of character, whom he could distance himself from later and that was the reason he used you as an interlocutor. Is that what you are saying?
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya, and I agreed. In fact we discussed this, for probably of our 20-minute conversation the first time, we discussed this for at least 5 minutes. And I told myself, okay if the stress is that bad and you know when Husain first got on the phone with me that day, there was a great deal of stress in his voice. I have to be very candid with your viewers in telling you that this was a man who you could tell was trying to defend his President, his government, from real or whatever was real or perceived threat I don't know. But he was certainly of the view that threat was real. So what you know I agreed to take that role on, and go further up the channel on the US side and see whether they would be willing to accept it, because I knew that if something went wrong there would be a need for plausible deniability. It would be necessary for Zardari and Haqqani to be able to say 'we didn't do this' because the ramifications of that would be huge. Today it's a different story. And frankly, I don't understand why they are lying about it and why they are trying to cover it up. I think there is something much darker and deeper that they are trying to hide. And I don't know why the international journalistic community isn't taking a harder look at that aspect of the story.
Barkha Dutt: If this was meant to be all about plausible deniability to use your phrase, the phrase you said Husain Haqqani used with you, why did you out what was clearly a confidential process?
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya, that's a fair question and it is important that the viewers understand. I write editorial pieces two or three times a year in some of the more important newspapers and journals around the world. When I do it, I usually try to create, what I would call an anecdotal entry to the op-ed piece. Something that indicates why what I'm about to write as a policy prescription is important. So with the
Financial Times which is probably, if not the most important newspaper, certainly one of the two most important newspapers in the world, when you write for that comment page you have to have certain authenticity with which you write. So my policy prescription was that the ISI has got out of control. We need to find a way to now help the Pakistani civilian government deal with that, and the US are to take the lead role. And in my piece I said that the Section S of the ISI - that's what we call the strategic section - deals with these kinds of problems in Afghanistan and you know other - Kashmir and things like that - they do. That Section S should be labelled as a terrorist organisation. That was the prescription in my op-ed piece. Now in order to get that right, in order to write in defence of Admiral Mullen's statements on September 22nd in his final Senate on Services Committee interview or testimony, I needed to give authenticity to the piece, and in fact it was in my hands because the memorandum, which was dictated to me by Ambassador Haqqani, had been passed through me to the Americans. So I used the memo as a mechanism of authenticity for the piece, so I could bring out that specific line - point number 5 in the six points that were offered - that the new national security team of Pakistan would ensure that Section S of the ISI got shut down.
Barkha Dutt: That's really a huge piece of news and I have the memo in front of me as reproduced by Foreign Policy on its website. But questions have been raised about the credibility and the authenticity of the memo, because it does not have a letterhead, it does not have a signature. If you are going to put something down in writing, which is pretty odd to begin with, because one would imagine that such sensitive stuff should be conveyed orally or on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which can't be encrypted. You put something down in writing but there is no signature, no letterhead. How do you explain that?
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya, so I have done these kinds of interventions on at least three previous occasions. You know very well because you helped to cover what I did in Kashmir. I did the same thing in the Sudan. When governments talk to each other in private channels, they never ever put those documents on letterheads or under signature. They are referred to in the diplomatic jargon, if I may put it that way, as non-papers. When the US government threatened the Sudan in 1995 or 1996, I'm forgetting exactly when it was that that happened. That threat was made on a non-paper. That was handed to the President of Sudan by the US Ambassador, who was residing in Khartoum at the time. It was on a white piece of paper, typed literally on a typewriter. It was typed out. It was actually issued by the CIA. I can tell you that, because I know in that particular case, because I know the document. It was issued by the CIA, it was sent by telex to the Embassy in Khartoum, printed on a white piece of paper and handed to the President of Sudan to say read this. And this is from my President and this is exactly how these things work. Now, Haqqani in this case, wanted me initially to deliver the message verbally to my big guys in America, who would then tell Admiral Mullen what was going on. But when I went to all three of the people, two of them put it, one of them was a current US government officer. The other one was, the second one was a very senior politician. And the third one was very senior military guy. And each of the three said to me, we had in our jargon if you read the BBM exchanges and all of that very carefully, you would see that we refer to the hard, the middle and the soft option. So the hard was the politician said, 'I will only take this up the flagpole if Zardari sends it to me himself in the form of a letter, signed on letterhead.' That was the hard option. Politicians always want to cover their backs. The soft option was Haqqani would make a telephone call to my interlocutor with me on the line. And without him stating his name, he would simply speak to my interlocutor to make sure that Admiral Mullen knew what needed to be, what he needed to have. And the middle option was the one we used in the end, which was Haqqani would tell me, but he would have to put it in writing. We would have to put it in writing. We would put it in writing and send it to my interlocutor. And my interlocutor insisted not just to have it in writing, but have my factual verification that Haqqani did, in fact, have the approval of the President of Pakistan before this memorandum went to Admiral Mullen.
Barkha Dutt: But can I ask you, if we take you completely at face value, how do you explain why Admiral Mike Mullen says, that when he got this memo and he confirms that he did receive such a memo, he didn't think it was credible so he didn't act on it.
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya, so the answer to that is very simple. I didn't think it was particularly credible. I asked Husain over and over and over again whether or not he really thought the American government could buy into these kinds of offers, because essentially it was redrafting the architecture of how Pakistan ran its entire framework of governance, and how it interacted with the US. I will tell you, go read the BBM messages very clearly I don't remember which one it is and where it occurs, but in one of them there is a statement that says something to the effect of 'my friend the US insists on having it in writing', because there have been many bad experiences with Pakistani verbal offers in the recent past, and he will not take it up the flagpole without that. And then later in the same BBM stream if you will, I think it was the 9th or the 10th of May, there was a point at which, after I had delivered the approved draft of this memorandum to my interlocutor in the US, his response to me was, 'you know nobody is going to believe that the Pakistanis can deliver on any of this'. So all of that doubt, if I may put it that way, was in our own writing, in our own communications on May 9th and 10th. But the Pakistani offer, what Haqqani told me, the way he explained it to me, was the Pakistani offers had to be of such a magnitude, that the Americans would then take immediate action to ensure that there would not be any military encroachment on the civilian government.
Barkha Dutt: But if you thought yourself that what you were writing out was not very credible, why did you agree to be part of this exercise?
Mansoor Ijaz: Credibility is in the eyes of the beholder. It was not for me to judge that. Here I had, I was like a messenger. I was like a typist that day. Again, you know, just so that your viewers get an understanding of what happened, you know, he calls me up. I was at my home in Monaco. And I took a pad and a paper from my hotel Park Hyatt in Zurich. I carry these pads around to make notes on. I took it out and when he first called me we had a 4-5 minute chat at the beginning about what this was all about, and then I started taking notes. And Husain, when he gets into one of his verbal, you know, dialogues, he can go into overdrive. And at one point he started speaking so fast that I just couldn't keep up with him anymore. So I put the pen down, I opened my computer and I started typing. I put my phone on speakerphone and started typing. Now it is not for me as a typist, as someone who is simply making use of my friendships and trusted relationships, to ensure that when the Pakistan Ambassador of the US, who is an old friend of mine, who has done favours for me by coming and speaking to my charities, you know we have been good friends for a long time, interacted in the media, in the whole nine yards. When he comes to me and says, I got a problem, and I go and make sure that that problem gets solved, it's not for me to decide whether that document is credible or not. May be Admiral Mullen would have said, 'Wow, this is important, let us act on it'. Here is what I would say to everybody watching this show today. Go read what the memo says, and then go look what has happened in the last four weeks between the US and Pakistan, and then see how many of those item with the exception of the nuclear programme issues and boots, American boots on the ground, with the exception of those two points, go look at everything else, and tell me whether or not those things have not been done. And then tell me that the memo was not credible.
Barkha Dutt: So you are saying that while Admiral Mullen did not take note of the memo because he didn't find it credible, you are actually saying that the American administration took the memo seriously and acted on it?
Mansoor Ijaz: I have, I have put it in writing to my interlocutor 10 minutes after Ambassador Haqqani, on the 11th after the meeting had taken place. And Haqqani was almost giddy when he called me. And we have records of the telephone calls, everything I mean. I feel sorry for him. Frankly this poor guy, he is under so much pressure. He is just... he decided the only way out of it was just lie about everything. But the reality is, when he called me on the 11th and told me what the outcome of the meeting was, he was almost giddy. He said that you know it went very well, Mullen has taken the ideas under consideration and a call would go out. This was all that he said to me. He said a call would go out from Washington to Islamabad to, actually I think he said to Pindi at that point, meaning referring to GHQ, tonight. That was the night of the 11th. That's what he told me and I passed that on in writing. I passed that on to my interlocutor, who then confirmed back to me the precise date and time at which the memorandum had been delivered to Admiral Mullen, that Admiral Mullen had called him back to confirm he got it, and that he didn't say anything about the rest of the conversation. But we know for a fact that Admiral Mullen had it on that day. We know for a fact that he had acknowledged that he had got it. We know for a fact that the Ambassador, I'm saying for a fact that the Ambassador called me and said a call would go out of Washington to Pindi tonight. That obviously means somebody paid attention to something in that memo and if they didn't, for the sake of argument, that's not my problem. I was simply the messenger to make sure that it went from point A to point B.
Barkha Dutt: But here is the question. There are obviously two narratives here, your narrative and Ambassador Husain Haqqani's narrative. The larger question is that many observers of this region see this as not so much about a memo, but about a meltdown, a potential meltdown between the military administration in Pakistan and the civilian government. People believe that that's what the real fight is about. There are those who also allege you have outed this particular memo and Ambassador Haqqani, assuming that what you are saying is true, because you are close to the ISI and you are in a sense strengthening the ISI and the military with this, with going public with this.
Mansoor Ijaz: Ya. Well my record is nothing short of Haqqani's record in being anti-military and anti-ISI in terms of governance structures in Pakistan. And I would beg to differ with anyone that says that what has happened here is a meltdown between the civilian government and the establishment, the ISI and the Army. I think it is slightly different. I think what this is, is that there is a meltdown between the personalities of Kayani and Pasha, the head of the ISI; Kayani, the head of the Army, and Zardari as you know. Let me put it to your viewers in other way. It is the most dangerous thing in the democratic society. When a democratically-elected government, as we saw in the Nixon administration, as we saw at times on counter-terrorism issues in the Clinton administration, where I was involved in some of those things. When a narrow cabal, well a cabal, I mean a narrow faction, people inside the government of those countries decide, they know what's better than everybody else, that ought to be taken, that ought to be on the cc list, if I may put it that way of knowing what it is, that's actually going on. So this is a situation, where once it became clear that there was a, shall we say, sidebar conversation between Zardari, Haqqani and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Once it became clear that they had tried to do something there was no issue about the facts. I really take difference with you on saying it's my narrative versus Haqqani's narrative. There is only one narrative, the facts. What the facts are and the facts are all out there in the open domain. Haqqani can lie about it all (if) he wants to. The records are absolutely clear. Now if you look at it from that perspective that they wanted to do this sidebar conversation, then the issue is no longer about whether or not Kayani and Pasha think Zardari is a good leader. The issue is, whether you are a good leader or a bad leader, you had a responsibility to keep us in the loop on what you guys were doing in Washington. Tell me one time when Husain Haqqani has ever acted under the auspices of Prime Minister's Office who is technically his boss today; or the Foreign Office, when the Foreign Minister was his boss. Not once since he became the Ambassador has he done that. He has always acted on the unilateral authority of the President because of his position close to Benazir Bhutto, and so forth at that time when they were all coming up through the political system.
Barkha Dutt: But Mansoor if I may interject that...
Mansoor Ijaz: But this is not about what you said but it is about the cabal in the government.
Barkha Dutt: So alright, you are saying that it is about a coterie within Pakistan's ruling establishment and that's what it's about and not Army versus civilian. But a counter to that would be, that it has to then mean, that Ambassador Husain Haqqani was not acting alone. Because why would he? He was obviously acting on somebody's orders. You are suggesting he was acting on President Zardari's orders. If that's the case then why should the whole argument be about Hussain Haqqani? Alone?
Mansoor Ijaz: Yeah, that's a very good question. Now you have asked the 64,000 thousand dollar question, and that is whether or not the Parliament, that whether or not the judicial enquiry, whoever it is that's coined, actually looked at all of this and looked at the records and see, you know what happened. Whether they would consider it sufficient evidence that the coded language, that the coded language Haqqani used with me genuinely indicated that in fact his boss was the, his boss meaning Zardari, was the progenitor, the architect of this whole thing. It is my view that Zardari does not have the mental capacity to be able to think or dream something like this up. I think probably what happened here, is that he made it clear to Haqqani that there were real problems and real pressures being applied by the military and ISI. And those pressures were real, not because something that had gone wrong between them but because of the embarrassment that the ISI and the Army was suffering in those days after bin Laden was killed. And he would have said to Haqqani, 'I got a problem. I need you to fix it', and Haqqani would have said, 'Leave it to me boss'. This is supposition on my part. 'Leave it to me boss. I'll handle it, don't worry about the operational details. I will show you the result'. Now, I ask all of your viewers to go into my Blackberry conversations, all the way down towards the end of the ones between the 9th of May and the 12th of May. And near the end of it you will see him, somewhere say, M refers to the Admiral right?' And then I said, 'In the messages that we are talking about?' And then I said, 'Yes'. And then I said, after that I said, 'Let me clarify', because I realised why was he asking me that question. Because he needed to show his Blackberry to somebody in Pakistan. He was leaving that night or the next night for Pakistan. So he needed to show Zardari, 'Hey listen pal, here it is. I did the whole thing. We got the job done.' And that's the way I think it actually came out. Now everything I've just said in the last segment is supposition, but I think that's the reality of what really happened here based on the facts we know.
Barkha Dutt: Let me ask you from an Indian perspective. Point 6 on the memo talks about cooperating fully on the new national securities team's guidance with the Indian government, on bringing all perpetrators of Pakistani origin to account for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, whether outside government or inside any part of government, including its intelligence agencies. This includes handing over those, against whom official evidence exists of guilt, to the Indian security forces. What was the importance according to you of putting this in the memo?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well you know, what I understood him to try and create here, was a set of offers that included something that had addressed the critical issues that America was worried about, that was other terrorists like Zawahiri and Haqqani and Mullah Omar, and so forth, on the ground safety and security of nuclear assets and so forth in Pakistan, and the way in which the governance process would work under the new administration, meaning under the new architecture of administration. But there also needed to be something that was carrot to the Afghanis and carrot to the Indians. The carrot to the Afghanis was shut down section S of the ISI, so that they can't foment all of that stuff that was going on the other side in Afghanistan. And point number 6 was to give something to the Indians of such import, that it would make the Indians understand, and now with all due respect forgive me for being blunt, but that's exactly what happened. Now there is cooperation on these terrorists of an unprecedented nature. I know it for a fact from the people that are involved. I know for a fact that the trade agreements they have just opened up, all the trade liberalisation that just took place, was a result of those private agreements. Just that the trade agreements came first, and that ISI or what I call the intelligence stuff comes later. It just didn't happen in the other order. That's all.
Barkha Dutt: Alright, India would still argue not enough cooperation. But let me ask, as we wind down, just a last question, do you believe that there will be any sort, that there are real dangers of a coup or a military takeover in Pakistan? And to those commentators in Pakistan, who are saying Mansoor Ijaz is a fantasist, he is a self-styled interlocutor, you would say what?
Mansoor Ijaz: No comment on the last one because that's a ridiculous statement. And I'm just not going to waste my time referring to that. You know everybody who needs to know who I am, knows who I am and that's why I have got the friends I have got. And I'm not even going to waste my time answering the second question. On the first one, I don't think there is any immediate danger of that type whatsoever. And I can tell you from private conversations with important people in Pakistan, that they are trying to find a way to deal with this, that is absolutely within the democratic structure that exists. There is no question that Haqqani is in trouble. There is no question that Zardari has a lot of answers to give. But I don't think that they have any desire to create, what I would call, a wholesale change of structure. What they going to do, is make sure that, like a civilian government should hold itself accountable to the standards by which the people of Pakistan have elected them to govern themselves.
Barkha Dutt: And very briefly, ten seconds, would you be willing to name the three interlocutors who delivered the message to Admiral Mullen if it comes down to that?
Mansoor Ijaz: No, in camera I've already agreed to do that with the Pakistani government in camera, meaning in private and in secret hearings they will.
Barkha Dutt: Alright Mansoor Ijaz. You have stirred a hornet's nest. Lots of questions, the World's debating what you have put out there. Thank you so much for your time on the programme tonight
Mansoor Ijaz: Good to be with you.
Barkha Dutt: Thanks Mansoor.