Talk:Center for Afghanistan Studies

Thomas E. Gouttierre, the director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies, is an old friend of Zalmay Khalilzad, President's Bush's nominee as ambassador to Afghanistan and a former paid adviser to Unocal. While working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analysis for Unocal for the proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. Gouttierre also coached Khalilzad's basketball team at Habibia high school in Afghanistan. That team, as well as teams from various Afghan colleges, helped to form the Afghan National Basketball Team in the early 1970s.

During the December 1997 Taliban visit to the United States, Khalilzad joined the group for its trip to Unocal's facilities in Texas. In 1997, Khalilzad, Gouttierre and Marty Miller, Unocal vice president, testified together before the Senate Foreign Relations Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee.

In July 1999, Gouttierre gathered with a dozen Afghan leaders for a confidential meeting, after which he submitted the first of eight classified reports to the State Department.

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HEADLINE: Final words, final hours before all changed The day before the attacks on the World Trade Center was like any other for most. BYLINE: By Stephen Buttry SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, was the morning speaker at the Loveland Golden K Kiwanis. He told the club of the threat of al-Qaida. Not that Gouttierre foresaw the next day's attack. But he had followed the group's activities as a U.N. senior political affairs officer in 1996 and 1997.

In Gouttierre's September 10 (2001) speech, Golden K Kiwanis members heard a preview of hundreds of interviews Gouttierre would grant in the weeks ahead. He told about the "unholy alliance" among Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, al-Qaida, Pakistan's intelligence service and Muslim extremists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Gouttierre also received disturbing news that day, that Ahmed Shah Massood, leader of the Northern Alliance forces that were fighting the Taliban, had been attacked. Gouttierre immediately saw the hand of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the attack. Initial news reports did not say whether Massood survived. Gouttierre assumed correctly that this meant he was dead.

Also that day, Gouttierre prepared for the weekly three-hour lecture in his Tuesday international studies class. His scheduled lecture topic for September 11 was international terrorism.

People spent money that Monday. The Omaha data center of First Data Resources processed 21,852,530 credit card transactions. Almost 700 people visited Borsheim's. First National Bank processed 2.1 million merchant transactions.

Fire Capt. Rick Klein spent September 10 making last-minute preparations for a class that members of Lincoln's urban search and rescue team would take the next day. Klein is logistics manager of the team, which specializes in working in the unstable debris of fallen buildings.

The team's class scheduled for the next day was the "Structural Collapse Technician Course." Before the end of the month, the Lincoln crew would be sifting the wreckage of the largest structural collapse ever.

On September 10 2001... UNO's Peter Tomsen met in Rome with the nation's exiled king, Mohammad Zaher Shah.

Tomsen, a retired ambassador and UNO's ambassador-in-residence, worked unofficially to bring together various Afghan exiles, hoping to lay the groundwork for a post-Taliban government.

While they were meeting, the king was stunned to receive word that Massood, the Northern Alliance leader whom Tomsen had met in June, had been attacked in Tajikistan.

Tomsen won the king's support for an office to promote a loya jirga, Afghanistan's traditional national assembly. That evening, Tomsen worked on winning similar support from royal relatives he thought were undermining the unity effort. He took six of them to dinner at an Italian seafood restaurant. The bill came to about $ 300.

LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2002 Copyright 2001 Gale Group, Inc. ASAP Copyright 2001 Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Ambassador Tomsen was American Ambassador to Armenia from 1995 to 1998. He was President G.W. Bush’s Special Envoy on Afghanistan with the rank of Ambassador, 1989-1992. In this capacity, he met many Afghan tribal leaders, commanders and ulema who remain active today. Ambassador Tomsen was one of the last foreign visitors to meet Ahmed Shah Masood on June 23-24, 2001. He has visited Zahir Shah, Afghanistan’s former king, in Rome in July and September of this year.

Peter Tomsen Ambassador in Residence University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) link