Former US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has confirmed that he received a memo from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman who alleged in a column in the Financial Times last month that “a senior Pakistani diplomat” asked for assistance in getting a memo from President Asif Ali Zardari to Admiral Mullen.
Ijaz had alleged that Zardari feared a military takeover following the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May and brought unprecedented public scrutiny on Pakistani leaders.
Mullen initially said that he did not know the man who claimed to have delivered him a message from President Zardari, nor did he recall receiving any correspondence from him. However, when asked about the memo referred to in the Financial Times column, Captain John Kirby, who was Mullen’s spokesman until the admiral stepped down earlier this year, said Mullen initially had no recollection of such a memo but was later able to track it down.
“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 (Pakistani Chief of Army Staff) General (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani and the Pakistani government,” Kirby said. “He did not find it at all credible and took no note of it,” he added.
