New Delhi:
As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz - better known as the 'Memogate man'. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV's Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition.
Here's the full transcript of the interview: NDTV: Good evening and welcome to our special coverage of a developing story in Pakistan. It's been dubbed the Memogate controversy by the global media and in Pakistan it has triggered a storm, a public battle between the Pakistani military on one hand and the civilian government on the other. The civilian government, that is President Asif Ali Zardari's government, is already beleaguered as the Supreme Court asks it to reopen an old corruption case against the President, asking it to write a letter to Swiss authorities to reopen and re-investigate the case. The civilian government had the Prime Minister appearing in person in Court. It's got a two week reprieve. But in the meantime Mansoor Ijaz, an American based businessman who first went public with the memo, allegations which suggest that the civilian government, right after Osama bin Laden was killed, tried to reach out, covertly, to the administration in America to avert a military coup. The moment he went public with this, that's what started the entire crisis that led to a public battle between the army in Pakistan and the civilian government. Now questions are being asked by the global media, will Mansoor Ijaz testify at all? Why did he not keep his date with the Court on the 16th of this month and what will he say in his testimony? Well, joining us now, exclusively, from London, is Mansoor Ijaz himself. Mr Ijaz, thanks for speaking to us on this special programme on NDTV. I must first start by asking you what many Pakistanis have been asking in the media there. I have just come back from a week in Islamabad and much of the media said that you failed to keep your date with the Court. Why was that?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well, between the time that they set the first date and the time that they set the second date, there were a number of events that took place. What I would call the threat process became quite intense against me, against members of my family, and things like that. If it was only me making the decision I wouldn't care one damn. To be very frank with you, I am not afraid of any of these guys. They can make all the threats that they want to and it won't deter me from coming over there. But, unfortunately for this process, I run businesses, I have partners, I have shareholders. But most importantly I've got my family to consider, and I had to make sure that there was at least the level of comfort, that would ensure that my family felt secure, about the fact that I was taking what I would call a measured risk, a calculated risk, getting on the airplane and going over there to see the people of the Commission. So, it was just a matter of getting certain logistics issues sorted out that had to be done. And then some of my business partners and shareholders insisted on making sure that we have authorities in place that would trigger in case, God forbid, something did happen to me while I was there.
NDTV: Could you specify who you have received these threats from and who you believe is behind them? Because you have said consistently that you are being threatened. By whom?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well, they are random. The email addresses and so forth, I sort of stopped wasting time trying to track them down. We did give, just about every single one of them, we gave to both, the Pakistani authorities and certain authorities here in Europe, to make sure that they knew, because the Internet addresses could be tracked down and so forth. Several of them were very specific. One or two of them were more blunt and broad based. But the reality is that for me it just doesn't matter who's behind them. Who cares? They are not going to stop me from coming. They can do what they want. And I say very clearly to the government, to those in the government, to the Interior Minister, who has made a lot of different statements and, sort of, veiled threats, and things of that nature against me, against members of my family; trying to drag members of my family into this whole process and so forth. All this stuff is just hullabaloo, blah-blah. I wish I could use the words I want to on nice TV, but I can't. But none of that is going to deter me. I am coming. I am going to tell the truth. I am going to put the truth on the record forcefully, and I am going to make sure that the people of Pakistan, finally, are able to hold their government accountable for the actions that they take in their name.
NDTV: Now, the Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, said in an interview to me in Islamabad that there is every chance that you could be charged with treason; because he says that you have gone on record to say that you were instrumental in toppling former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government at one point in history. He said, and he said this in Pakistan's Senate and National Assembly as well, that how can one man be so powerful that he can topple a government?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well, first of all, Rehman Malik is someone I believe, who is prone to make statements of such exaggeration, that he doesn't even understand what the facts are. The facts are the following. In 1995, me, along with a large number of Pakistani Americans, helped Benazir Bhutto's government come close to the Clinton Administration and resurrect the relationship between the US and Pakistan. At the end of that year we, I, got certain reports in my hands, that demonstrated that there was the possibility that she and other members of her family were, shall we say, not acting in the best interests of the nation when it came to the way in which the national treasury resources were being spent. And so I wrote two op-ed pieces, one in The Wall Street Journal in June of 1996 in which I challenged the IMF's prescription for how they were giving money to Pakistan and not keeping track of how that money was being spent. And in the second one, that was written in October of 1996, I outlined and detailed what everybody now knows are these corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, against the former slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and other members of the large clan, if you will, that were part of their group. These are facts that are on the record. So he can say that I am responsible for that, all of that, all he wants to. But the reality is that I drew my conclusions as an op-ed writer directly from facts that were available to me at the time. And therefore these threats are just, it's a paper tiger that is trying to huff and puff and trying to blow the house down before I get there, because they think that they can intimidate me into not coming. And I can tell them straight to their face right now that I am coming. There is nothing you can do to stop me from coming to Pakistan.
NDTV: But here's the problem for you Mansoor Ijaz, do you not accept that since you came out with this alleged memo, there has been a credibility crisis for you as well? And I say that, because when we last interviewed you, you spoke about an intermediary who had ferried the memo for you. That intermediary was then named as the former National Security Advisor James Jones. But James Jones says Husain Haqqani, that's Pakistan's former Ambassador to America, had nothing to do with the memo and that you wrote this memo. So, doesn't this make your narrative less authentic and less credible?
Mansoor Ijaz: Yes, I mean, it's unfortunate that Jim dragged himself into all of this in that way. The reality is that on the first point, where he says that I contacted him a few days before, it's just a false statement. Now, Jim is an old friend of mine and I think he's a good guy and I think probably he felt that there were forces at work here that he needed to counter. I don't know. I don't know why he did what he did. But the records will show, very clearly, that there was no contact between me and General Jones until that morning. Look, let me give you guys a little assessment here so that you understand what I am talking about. Why, on the morning of May 9th, would I call the former National Security Advisor of the United States at his home telephone number, which was the only telephone number I had for him at that time? Why would I call him? And his wife picked up, it was 6:58 AM when I made that telephone call. Why would I do that if it wasn't concurrent with the BlackBerry message that I got from Ambassador Haqqani? If it wasn't exactly after the telephone call, which nobody can doubt. The telephone records are clear about all of that. So the reality is that all of this will now come out in the Court. I am going to put the record straight and then it will be up to the Courts to decide. Ultimately, it is up to the Commission to make its recommendations to the Supreme Court. It is for the Supreme Court to make the decision about whether or not there is a case here to try, or not, and what are the charges, and under which parts of the law does that work. And ultimately the results of that will be adjudicated by none other than the people of Pakistan. And that's exactly how democracy is supposed to work. So, for me, everything that is happening here is exactly within the democratic framework and the Constitution of Pakistan.
NDTV: So are you saying, Mansoor Ijaz, that James Jones is lying? Is that effectively what you are saying?
Mansoor Ijaz: On the first point, no, ands, ifs or buts about the fact that he perjured himself. But the question is whether he remembered correctly, because he says "He recalls". If you read the language carefully there is a lot of loosey-goosey language in all of that. And that loosey-goosey language is what allows him to then one day, when all the facts are on the table, to say "Oh yeah, well, I didn't quite remember that". We pointed out in some piece that was written right after he made the affidavit, that his memory had been demonstrated as being somewhat faulty on some of these facts. And the fact is that these are busy men. They have a lot going on in their lives and, for me, I am never going to press that issue. I'm just going to prove that the facts are what they are. And if Jim decides that he wants to stick to his facts then he has got to prove his side. He can't prove anything on the telephone call. That, I can tell you for sure. On the other stuff, it's all supposition on his part and it's his recollection versus my recollection. So, we will see then how the Commission comes out and how the people of Pakistan and the Supreme Court judge it. I am willing to put my credibility up against anybody in the world. All these gimmicks and nonsense that they have been doing for the better part of the last two and a half months, none of it has stuck. None of it has had any real impact on the course of the process. The only thing we had to do was to make sure that I got my security arrangements in proper form, so that my family and my business partners and shareholders would be satisfied, and that we made the security arrangements in such a way that it wasn't the whole world knowing where the target was. So that if there were some people out there who wanted to take a pot-shot at me, that they wouldn't get to do it for free.
NDTV: A lot of your substantiating, what you are saying, essentially boils down to a series of BlackBerry Messenger exchanges between you and Pakistan's former Ambassador Husain Haqqani. Now, BlackBerry itself has refused to provide this data in Court. Husain Haqqani has claimed the right to privacy. Without this data in Court how are you going to prove that what you are saying is true?
Mansoor Ijaz: Well, I am not going to get into all the details of that, because I don't want to pre-preview what we are going to do next week. But I can tell you that my records are absolutely clear. There has not been any alteration. There has not been any change. There has not been anything that has happened there that anybody can complain about. And those records will be put on the table in a factual form. The reality is that what we found out from BlackBerry was not that; literally the data didn't exist that we thought existed. Meaning, the chat, the actual lines of the chat exchanges is not stored by BlackBerry on their servers. What they store to some extent is, like a telephone log, here is the PIN number that communicated with another PIN number and here is the date and time at which they did that. Now, some of this data is probably going to be made available. I certainly waive; here's a very simple point. Let's look at the bookends of this thing. I waived my privacy rights. I gave every possibility for them to be able to collect the data and submit the data to the Supreme Court. And I am going to bring my BlackBerry devices and make them available to the Commission. And I've done all of that on my side. On the other side, Mr. Haqqani has not waived his privacy rights. He has ensured that obfuscation and misdirection and everything else is on the record about where his BlackBerry devices are. First he tells the President of Pakistan, "I can give them to you right here" when he arrives in Pakistan. I don't remember the exact phraseology, you guys can go and look all of that up, and then he tells everybody that, "Sorry, on second look and second thought, they're actually lost". Oh, isn't that convenient that they are lost. Now, the fact is that he is forgetting what the rules of evidence are in the Pakistani Constitution and under the judicial rules how the rules of evidence work. Unfortunately, they just have nowhere to run on this. They can just keep on trying, but the facts are the facts, are the facts. And I've always said that the facts are on my side. They can say what they like but the facts, in fact, are going to prove what it is that I said was correct.
NDTV: But Mansoor Ijaz, there are a number of commentators who have done their research, gone into history, looked at some of your previous commentaries on the ISI, for example, or the Pakistani military, and they are turning around and making the reasonable allegation, and the reasonable criticism, that you have not been consistent on the ISI and in your own views. Let me read out to you, something that you said in May 2011, wherein, and I am going to quote this, you described the ISI to be "Osama bin Laden's seditious babysitters" You then go on to say, Mansoor Ijaz, that every time the ISI has actually tried to prove that they are protecting their country's interest, they've just been caught with their pants down. This is May 2011. Fast forward to October and you are meeting with the DG ISI Shuja Pasha and many people think that you are in cahoots with the ISI. How do you explain your inconsistency?
Mansoor Ijaz: There is no inconsistency, at all. The fact that I met with General Shuja Pasha is because they made a request of me, to see whether it would be possible to come in and have a look at the data that I had, to determine whether or not there was really anything to; at that time, between October 10 and October 22, the rumour mills started, as they always do, in these Pakistani newspapers. And that rumour mill essentially suggested that there was a memorandum, that what was contained in the memorandum was quite, in the eyes of some in Pakistan, seditious, or treasonous or whatever word you want to put on it. And he simply wanted to see what was in the memo, because none of the memo contents at that point had been made public. So there is no inconsistency. I have not changed my position on the ISI, or its behaviour, or what it 's been doing in past years, or currently. I don't know what they're doing currently, of course, because I haven't written anything more about it. But the reality is that I have been pretty consistent about my views on the Army and the ISI's shenanigans and brinkmanship, I may put it that way, in, particularly, US-Pakistan relations, and how it relates to our efforts to try and wind up the war in Afghanistan. Now, the meeting with Pasha was designed to do only one thing. And that was to make sure that he had the opportunity to review the facts. When I agreed to take the meeting it was because I had the impression, from the briefing, the first call that was made by one of his assistants, I don't remember the name of the guy, that there was a deep concern that maybe laws had been violated here. And I didn't want to be a part of anything where those laws might have been violated. When I agreed to help Haqqani do all of this in May, I simply went to the very heart of our friendship and said here is a guy who is calling me. His voice is stressed. His demeanour is different than it has ever been before with me, and it sounds like he has got a real problem and let's see what we can do to help him. That's all we did. So, my responsibility as a citizen of the United States was to make sure that no laws had been violated on either the Pakistan side or the US side, based on what he was telling me. And that's why I agreed to sit down and talk to them at that time.
NDTV: But, if you stand by what you say are your consistent views on the shenanigans of the ISI and the military in Pakistan, then why are you provoking, as it were, a kind of civil war between Pakistan's military and its democratically elected civilian government? Many people feel that what is happening right now in Pakistan is a test case for democracy.
Mansoor Ijaz: I think that is a salacious charge that you've made. I reject the allegation that you are making. I am not the one that did any of that. The reality is that the civilian government, since the very initiation of its term in office, has had a strategy and a desire to try and create civilian supremacy over the Armed Forces and the ISI. Rather than doing that by honest governance, by having good governance, by demonstrating to the people that they were, in fact, capable of governing properly, and clearly the Zardari record does not show that; instead of doing that, what they did was resort to every dirty trick, game in the book. Now, this is not for me to decide. I simply passed a memorandum on what was dictated, conceived, edited, everything, by Haqqani, to my friend Jim Jones, to pass it on to Admiral Mullen. That's all we did. And those are the facts that I am going to bring to the table. What that means in the Pakistani system? That's for the Pakistani people, the Supreme Court, and the Commission to decide. In reverse order, I am sorry, I gave that in the wrong order. But the reality is that, that is for them to decide. That's not for me to decide. My job is to just simply come there, put the facts on the record, give them the evidence, and say "What else would you like me to, cross examine me all you want to. Ask me whatever questions you've got". And I'll give them answers to everything. They can bring any charge they want to on the table and I am ready for everything. Believe me, when I come, I am coming with sufficient data that they will understand that they cannot escape what they did in this case.
NDTV: Now, you have been saying that you will not give out the dates of your arrival in Pakistan for security reasons. But is it fair to assume that you will respond to the notice that has been issued to you by the Parliamentary Panel that's also looking into the Memogate, and that means that you will be in Pakistan before the 26th of this month?
Mansoor Ijaz: Yes. It's fair to assume that.
NDTV: Can I ask you, are you ready to face the possibility that there could be a treason case filed against you by the civilian government? That you could possibly even be arrested at a later stage?
Mansoor Ijaz: If the Pakistani Government is that, how shall I say it, ignorant about how they are going to look if they try to do something like that, or if they're going to do that so that they can provoke the clash of institutions; what would you like me to say? Do it? I welcome you to try and do it. Because the reality is that you have no case to do that on. You have no justification. I never claimed that I brought Benazir's government down in 1996. I never said that. What I said was that many people have blamed me for having a role in all of that. And that is very different than saying "I did it", because I did not. I wrote two op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal. Two op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal do not make the undoing of a government. Someone at the IMF decided to stop funding Benazir's government. All right? That's the bottom line. Someone in the Armed Forces decided that stopping of the funding was a very critical event in the history of Pakistan's governance at that time. That's a fact. Those are things that are material. I didn't do any of those things.
NDTV: Let me ask you a last question. To your critics in Pakistan who say that you are essentially acting at the behest of the ISI and the Pakistani military today; that you have been in regular contact with them since this scandal erupted, what would you say?
Mansoor Ijaz: All nonsense. I am not going to say anything more than that. It's just all nonsense. The trouble is that finally somebody comes to Pakistan and tells the truth about what people did. Finally somebody is willing to stand up to these gangsters and tell them that "You better behave because the people of Pakistan are the ones who elected you. The people of Pakistan are the ones who are responsible for making sure that your governance is for their benefit." And they just don't want to seem to get that message. So, the people of Pakistan are the ones who have to decide. A real democracy means that you have balance of power. You have a balance of power between the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Parliament.
NDTV: When we last interviewed you, you said you did not know whether President Zardari was in on this plan or not. And then you changed your statement on that very quickly. Are you saying that the Presidency knew or are you saying that the former Ambassador was acting on his own?
Mansoor Ijaz: No, there was no inconsistency. What I said was, these are the facts of what happened in May, and this is what I believe to be the case as I've now seen everything after it's all unfolded today. Those are two different answers and I will make all of that clear when I go to Pakistan next week.
NDTV: All right Mansoor Ijaz, we'll watch that space. You have told us you are definitely going and you will meet that date set for you by the Parliamentary Panel, as well as the Judicial Commission. Thank you for joining us from London.