WAR CRIMES TRIAL FOR BUSH PAGE!
GUESS WHO'S THE OTHER CULPRIT OTHER THAN THIS GUY:
Osama Bin Laden Interactive Execution
(Courtesy of Jerome Thorel at at jt@freenix.fr)
STOP THE CENSORSHIP!
CENSOR DER FURHER BUSH!
PHOTOS COURTESY: DRAFT_DODGERS_FOR_TRUTH@YAHOO.COM
THE DEBATE LOSERS!:
Moon Unit - Makes a great desktop background
You won't get this if you haven't seen Lord of The Rings.
It's supposed to be the eye of Sauron. Sorry for the bad graphics.
THIS ASSHOLE-IN-CHIEF HAD HIS FBI STORMTROOPERS RAID THE INDYMEDIA SERVERS IN ENGLAND BECAUSE OF FUCKING HARMLESS PHOTOS TAKEN OF UNDERCOVER PIGS AT A SWISS PRO-PEACE RALLY!
WHAT DOES THIS FUCKING HAVE TO DO WITH NATIONAL SECURITY?
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BECAUSE OF THE ASSHOLE-IN-CHIEF'S ACTIONS, INDYMEDIA HAD TO REBUILD ALL OF IT'S SITES, INCLUDING THE ONE IN VANCOUVER, CANADA, WHERE "THE NEW PEARL HARBOR" BY DAVID RAY GRIFFIN WAS POSTED IN ITS ENTIRETY ONLINE!!! [IT'S BACK ONLINE, PLUS IT'S ON THE WEBSITE-SEE BELOW.]
BUSH MUST
NEVER
EVER
HOLD ANY OFFICE AFTER JANUARY 20, 2005, BUT BEST BE TRIED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!!!
DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN ANN CUNTNER?:
SUPPORT REAL LIBERALS, NOT NUMB NUTS LIKE ALAN COMBS:
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Bill Mitchell
My page was created as a resource page to educate all voters that George Benedict Arnold Bush and Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney are abysmal failures on the Planet Earth for conspiring with the Saudis to bomb the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol, and then use that as an excuse to invade Iraq.
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I also addressed questions to Josef Said, an Arab Pro-Bush Freeper Ass Troll, about Bush's responses to the September 11, 2001 attacks. You can use those questions in doing your research: "Mr. Said, 1. Why were we going to war in Iraq, when
Osama is in Afghanistan? BUSH WAS MORE INTERESTED IN GETTING THE OIL FOR
HIMSELF, CHENEY, HALLIBURTON, AND ALL OF THEIR OIL FRIENDS.
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MORE QUESTIONS:
1. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked jets? How could four hijacked planes cruise the American skies with impunity for nearly two hours without being intercepted by Air Force fighter jets, violating standard operating procedures? Why was nothing done to intercept Flight77, for example, which struck the Pentagon a full 47 minutes after officials knew it was hijacked?
2. Who made a small fortune “shorting” United and American airline stocks before Sept. 11? In the days just prior to 9-11, someone with advance information about the impending attacks purchased “put” options that exceeded by 25 times the average trade ratio for these airlines. Some of these options were purchased at AB Brown Trust, once headed by CIA Director Buzzy Krongard. $2.5 million of these stock winnings are still unclaimed. Who made these purchases? Why has this factor never been investigated?
3. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel their own commercial airline trips before Sept. 11? On July 26, 2001, CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a “threat assessment” by the FBI. CBS said, “Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.” Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, “a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.”
4. Where are the planes’ “black boxes”? Nothing is more critical to learning about air disasters than the “black boxes.” Yet the government has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on them. Why? Why not release the information to the public?
5. What was the role of Pakistan’s spy agency in the September 11 attacks? In October 2001, the Wall Street Journal reported that the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, was fi red after wiring $100,000 to alleged al Qaeda hijacker Mohamed Atta. Ahmad also happened to be in Washington meeting with top Bush Administration officials on the day of the attacks!
6. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade schoolers for nearly a half-hour after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and roughly 15 minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him that it was a terrorist attack? Why didn’t he take more decisive action, and why wasn’t he hustled to a secure area while the attacks were clearly still under way?
7. Why didn’t the CIA arrest Bin Laden when they met with him in an American hospital in Dubai seven weeks before 9-11?
8. Why did the Bush Administration allow members of the Bin Laden family to leave the US without questioning on private jets the day after 9-11 when no other civilian planes were allowed to fl y in American skies?
9. Why did the Bush Administration order the FBI to “back off” their investigations into Bin Laden prior to 9-11?
10. If 9-11 was such a complete surprise to the Bush Administration, how is it they provided newspapers worldwide with so many details of the hijackers and their plans, including photos, the very next day, Sept. 12th?
There are many other unanswered questions related to 9-11. For more information read the book, War on Freedom, by Nafeez Ahmed (available through Amazon.com) and visit www.911truth.org.
The Bush Administration and other government agencies are obstructing the Congressional 9-11 investigation. Here are just some examples:
1
. Both Bush and Cheney phoned Senator Daschle just after 9-11 asking him not to investigate the attacks.2. Bush redacted 28 pages of the Congressional 9-11 Investigation dealing with the Saudi government’s involvement in 9-11.
3. Bush is refusing to release the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs) to the Congressional Commission, which would expose what he knew about the pending attacks before they happened.
4. The FAA and Department of Defense are also refusing to turn over critical 9-11 documents. The Congressional commission has issued subpoenas.
Source: 9-11 Patriotic Flyer (you need to download the Adobe Reader to view this .pdf file).
MORE ANALYSIS FROM VOXFUK.COM:
Evidence of Complicity by the Bush Administration in 9/11 Terrorist AttacksThe following twenty-two separate and related points, citing evidence requiring further investigation, and include questions that demand answers, were formulated on the basis of the information from the several sources cited at the end, which should be consulted for verification and documentation. These sources contain extensive detailed information and analysis beyond what is provided in this summary. I hope that this information will incite public outrage leading to full accountability.
1) The entire United States intelligence community knew of the 9/11 attacks before hand, including the fact that commercial jets were to be used as bombs; they also knew the approximate dates and possible targets but were called off their investigations. Western intelligence had been aware of plans for such terrorist attacks on U.S. soil as early as 1995. The plan was known as "Project Bojinka." It was known to both the CIA and FBI and was described in court documents in the trial in New York of Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Murad for their participation in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC).
Seven to eight weeks prior to September 11th, all internal U.S. security agencies were warned of the impending Al-Qaeda attacks. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was warned of the attack but did nothing to beef up security. At least two weeks prior to September 11th the FBI agents again confirmed that an attack on lower Manhattan was imminent. However, the FBI agents were commanded to cut short their investigations into the attacks and those involved. Agents were threatened with prosecution under the National Security Act if they publicized information pertaining to their investigations. Some field agents predicted, almost precisely, what happened on September 11th.
As early as 1997, Russia, France, Israel, the Philippines and Egypt all warned the U.S. of the possibility of the attack. Warning also came from came from several others sources as well. Recently (May 25, 2002), CBS revealed that President Bush had been warned in an intelligence briefing on August 6, 2001that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial planes for a domestic attack in the U.S.
2) There is incontrovertible evidence that the US Air Force all across the country was comprehensively "stood down" on the morning of September 11th. Routine security measures, normally in place, which may well have been able to prevent the attacks, or reduce their impact, were suspended for one hour while the attacks were in progress, and re-instated once they were over. Sequence of events:
8:46 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston smashed into the north tower of the WTC. The tower collapses at 10:28 a.m.
9:03 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston smashed into the south tower. It completely collapses at 9:59am.
9:38 a.m.: AA Flight 77 from Dulles hits the Pentagon.
10:10 a.m.: United Flight 93 from Newark crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Andrews Air Force Base is a huge military installation about 10 miles from the Pentagon. On September 11th there were two entire squadrons of combat-ready fighter jets at Andrews. They failed to do their job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C. Despite over one hourÕs advance warning of a terrorist attack in progress, not a single Andrews fighter tried to protect the city. The FAA, NORAD and the military have cooperative procedures enabling fighter jets to automatically intercept commercial aircraft under emergency conditions. They do not need instructions from the White House to carry out these procedures, yet they were not followed.
American Airline Flight 11 departed from Boston Logan Airport at 7:45 a.m. Between 8:13 and 8:20 a.m. Flight 11 became unresponsive to ground control and radar indicated that the plane had deviated from its assigned path of flight. Two Flight 11 airline attendants had separately called American Airlines reporting a hijacking, the presence of weapons, and the infliction of injuries on passengers and crew. At this point an emergency was undeniably clear. Yet, according to NORAD's official timeline, NORAD was not contacted until 20 minutes later at 8:40 a.m. Tragically the fighter jets were not deployed until 8:52 a.m., a full 32 minutes after the loss of contact with Flight 11.
Flights 175, 77 and 93 all had this same pattern of delays in notification and delays in scrambling fighter jets. Delays that are difficult to imagine considering a plane had, by this time, already hit the WTC. The plane striking the pentagon is particularly spectacular. After it was known that the plane had a problem, it was nevertheless able to change course and fly towards Washington, for about 45 minutes, fly past the White House, and crash into the Pentagon, without any attempt at interception. All the while two squadrons of fighter aircraft were stationed just 10 miles from the eventual target. Unless one is prepared to allege collusion, such a scenario is not possible by any stretch of the imagination.
3) Neither the Joint Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Defense nor the President of the United States acted according to well established emergency protocols. Acting Joint Chief of Staff General Richard B. Myers stated that he saw a TV report about a plane hitting the WTC but thought it was a small plane. So he went ahead with his meeting. By the time he came out of the meeting the Pentagon had been hit. Whose responsibility was it to relay this emergency to the Joint Chief of Staff?
The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was at his desk when AA77 crashed into the Pentagon. How is it possible that the National Military Command Center, located in the Pentagon and in contact with law enforcement and air traffic controllers from 8:46 a.m., did not communicate to the Secretary of Defense, also at the Pentagon, about the other hijacked planes especially the one headed to Washington? After he was notified, why did he go to the war room?
The actions of the President, while the attacks were occurring, indicate that he deliberately avoided doing anything reasonably expected of a President wanting to protect American citizens and property. Why didn't the Secret Service inform him of this national emergency? When is a President supposed to be notified of everything the agencies know? Why was the President permitted by the Secret Service to remain in the Sarasota elementary school? At 9.05, nineteen minutes after the first attack and two minutes after the second attack on the WTC, Andrew Card, the presidential chief of staff, whispered something in President BushÕs ear. The president did not react as if he was interested in trying to do something about the situation. He did not leave the school, convene an emergency meeting, consult with anybody, or intervene in any way, to ensure that the Air Force completed itÕs job. He did not even mention the extraordinary events occurring in New York, but simply continued with the reading class. His own explanations of his actions that day contradict known facts.
In the case of a national emergency, seconds of indecision could cost thousands of lives; and it's precisely for this reason that the government has a whole network of adjuncts and
advisors to insure that these top officials are among the first to be informed, not the last. Where were these individuals who did not properly inform the top officials?
In short, the CIA, the DCI, the State Department, the President, and key figures around him in the White House, were ultimately responsible for doing nothing in the face of the mounting evidence of an impending threat to U.S. national security. Incompetence is a highly improbable explanation.
4) Prior to 9/11, the US intelligence agencies should have stopped the nineteen terrorists from entering this country for intelligence reasons, alone. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers' visas should have been unquestionably denied because their applications were incomplete and incorrect. Most of the 19 hijackers were young, unmarried, and un-employed males. They were, in short, the "classic over-stay candidates". A seasoned former Consular officer stated in the National Review magazine, "Single, idle young adults with no specific destination in the United States rarely get visas absent compelling circumstances."
There are several cases damaging to the credibility of the official accounts of 9/11. But the U.S. response to Mohamed Atta, the alleged lead hijacker, is most extraordinary. The FBI had been monitoring AttaÕs movements for several months in 2000. According to PBSÕ Frontlines, the Immigration and Naturalization Service failed to stop Atta from entering the U.S. three times on a tourist visa in 2001, even though officials knew the visa had expired in 2000, and that Atta had violated its terms by taking flight lessons. Furthermore, Atta had already been implicated in a terrorist bombing in Israel, with the information passed on to the United States before he was first issued his tourist visa.
5) How did many of the hijackers receive clearance for training at secure U.S. military and intelligence facilities, and for what purposes? Many of the terrorist pilots received their initial training in Venice, Florida at one of two flight schools of highly questionable credibility and with approval of US intelligence. Mohamed Atta had attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama; Abdulaziz Alomari had attended Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force base in Texas; Saeed Alghamdi had been to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. These are all names of identified hijackers, so why has the U.S. government attempted to deny the match? As early as three days after the 9/11 attacks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III claimed that these findings were new and had not been known by the FBI previously. This claim is a lie.
Zacarias Moussaouri was arrested after his flight trainers at the Minnesota flight school, Pan Am International Flight Academy, reported highly suspicious behavior. He was greatly unqualified; he wanted to learn to fly a 747 but wasnÕt interested in takeoffs or landings; he was traveling on a French passport, said he was from France, but could not speak French. When
contacted, the French said he was a suspected terrorist connected to Al-Qaeda. However, a special counter terrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed the case and dismissed it.
There are numerous glaring anomalies, illegalities and scandals connected with Wally Hilliard and Rudi DekkerÕs Huffman Aviation School at Venice, Florida where other hijackers trained. Dekkers had no aviation experience and was under indictment in his native country, The Netherlands, on financial charges. He purchased his aviation school at just about the time the terrorist pilots moved into town and began their lessons. He has yet to be investigated even though he initially trained most of the hijackers.
Britannia Aviation was awarded a five-year contract to run a large regional maintenance facility at Lynchburg at a time when the company virtually had no assets, employees, or corporate history and did not posses the necessary FAA license needed to perform the maintenance. Britannia was a company with known CIA connections. It was operating illegally out of Huffman Aviation, the flight school which trained Al-Qaeda hijackers and was given a "green light" from the Justice DepartmentÕs Drugs Enforcement Administration, and the local Venice Police Department was warned to "leave them alone." Why?
6) How were the hijackers able to get specifically contraband items such as box-cutters, pepper spray and, according to one FAA executive summary, a gun on those planes? On the morning of September 11th, when the 19 hijackers went to purchase their tickets and to receive their boarding passes, nine were singled out and questioned through a screening process. But they passed the screening process and were allowed to continue on with their mission.
7) At a time when the U.S. intelligence community was on alert for an imminent Al-Qaeda attack, the Bush Administration made it easier for Saudi visitors to come to the U.S. under a program called U.S. Visa Express, introduced four months before September 11th. Michael Springmann, former head of the Visa Bureau at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia said that he was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Departtment officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. His complaints to higher authorities at several agencies went unanswered. In a CBC interview, he indicated that the CIA was indeed complicit in the attacks.
8) Most of the hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama bin Laden, and the Saudi Arabian government is known to give financial support to terrorist organizations. Why is Iraq and not Saudi Arabia a target if the US government is concerned about terrorism? Saudi ArabiaÕs government cooperates with US oil and arms industries; Iraq did not. Iraq is forced to now, of course. At least fifteen of the far-flung network of terrorist pilots received their money from the same source. There is specific evidence that Osama bin Laden continues to receive extensive support, not only from members of his own family, but also from members of the Saudi establishment. A New Statesman report stated that "Bin Laden and his gang are just the tentacles; the head lies safely in Saudi Arabia, protected by U.S. forces." The hijackers responsible for 9/11 were not illiterate, bearded fanatics from Afghanistan. They were all educated, highly skilled, middle-class professionals. Of the 19 men involved, 13 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.
9) Why were the FBI called off its investigation of Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Royal Family prior to 9/11? Moreover, why were the FBI Agents ordered to curtail their investigation of these attacks on October 10, 2001? The FBI has repeatedly complained that it has been muzzled and restricted in its attempts to investigate matters connected to Bin Laden and Al Qeada. One law enforcement official was quoted as saying, "The investigative staff has to be made to understand that weÕre not trying to solve a crime now." FBI Agents are said to be in the process of filing a law suit agents the Agency for the right to go public.
10) Osama Bin Laden was unofficially convicted of the attacks within a time frame that could not possibly have allowed any intelligence to have been gathered which supported the accusation. That is, it would be impossible if they did not already have that information. How could they have had no warning of an operation, which must have been very difficult to keep under wraps, but then be able to name the culprit in less than a day? And if they had some forewarning of the attack, even if it was not specific, then it raises even more questions about government agenciesÕ complicity.
It is not logical that Bin Laden was involved, and actually impossible, unless he was involved in the capacity of collusion with US authorities, or at best, in the context of the US knowing all along what he was up to, and deliberately allowing him to do it. The point has already been made that if he was involved, then it cannot have been a surprise, which in turn, points to the President and others in his administration.
From day one, there has not been a shred of publicly available evidence against Bin Laden. Up until mid December, there was nothing but the continued repetition of his name. The official documents detailing allegations against Bin Laden provide no convincing evidence. Of the 69 points of "evidence" cited, ten relate to background information about the relationship between Bin Laden and the Taliban. Fifteen relate to background information regarding the general philosophies of Al Qeada, and it's relationship to Bin Laden. None give any facts concerning the events of 9/11. Most do not even attempt to directly relate anything mentioned to the events of that day. Twenty-six list allegations related to previous terrorist attacks. Even if they were convictions of previous terrorist attacks, everybody knows that this isn't worth the paper it's written on, in terms of evidence for involvement of September 11th.
Within less than four hours of the attacks taking place, the media were fed comments, which assumed Bin Laden's guilt, comments made on the basis of events, which could not possibly have occurred. The Pentagon and the Department of Defense used dialogue attributed to Bin Laden, in an effort to incriminate him, while refusing to release all of the dialogue, and refusing to issue a verbatim, literal translation. Why was it considered necessary to lie, in order to create a case against Bin Laden? The truth could well implicate the Bush administration.
11) PakistanÕs Intelligence Agency (ISI) was indirectly involved in September 11th. The links between Al Qaeda, PakistanÕs ISI and the CIA; and, between the ISI, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban Axis are a matter of public record. Pakistan has also long been a supporter of Al Qeada. The Pakistani ISI (secret service) has been a mechanism by which the CIA indirectly channeled support to Al Qeada and has been used by successive US administrations as a "go-between." Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus constitutes the core institutional support to both Osama's Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Without this institutional support, there would be no Taliban government in Kabul. In turn, without the unbending support of the US government, there would be no powerful military-intelligence apparatus in Pakistan.
It was reported that ISIÕs Director-General, General Mahmoud Ahmad, had funneled $100,000 to the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, shortly before September 11th. The U.S. government protected him, and itself, by asking him to resign quietly after the discovery, thus blocking a further inquiry and a potential scandal. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration consciously sought the "cooperation" of the ISI, which had been supporting and abetting Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. In other words, the Bush Administration's relations with Pakistan's ISI, including its "consultations" with General Mahmoud Ahmad in the week prior to September 11th, raise the issue of "cover-up" as well as "complicity". While Ahmad was talking to U.S. officials at the CIA and the Pentagon, the ISI allegedly had contacts with the 9/11 terrorists.
12) The USA and Bin Laden are not the enemies they pretend to be. It is established beyond doubt that senior members of the Bush administration have close links to the Bin Laden Family and this relationship is still going on behind the scenes. In fact, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to indicate that Bin Laden, may have had something to do with 9/11, but the problem is that it also implicates the Bush Administration, the CIA, George Bush Senior, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates.
It is well known that Bin LadenÕs close working relationship with the CIA began in the 1980Õs. The claim is that they have since fallen out, but this story is a lie. According to the mainstream media spin, this is OK, because the rest of the family has disowned Osama for his terrorist activities and anti-US views. This spin is also a lie.
The "blowback" thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the "Islamic Militant Network". Since the end of the Cold War these covert intelligence links have not only been maintained, they have become increasingly sophisticated.
13) How was it possible for the World Trade CenterÕs two towers to have completely collapsed as a result of two jet planes? The towers in fact stood for forty-five and ninety minutes after the crashes. The official story is that the burning jet fuel caused the steel girders supporting them to melt. However, there is simply no credibly scientific evidence to support this story. The WTC towers were designed to take the impact of a Boeing 707. It is highly unlikely that fire from the jet fuel could have melted the steel girders. This is especially true of the South tower since the plane did not hit it directly. Therefore most of the fuel did not fall inside the building. The South Tower was hit second and fell first. Both towers collapsed evenly and smoothly in a manner consistent with that caused by a planned demolition. Based upon scientific evidences, photos and videos of the event, and reports of scientists, the WTC architect and engineers, it is highly unlikely that the Towers collapsed because of burning jet fuel rather than demolition. There are also serious questions regarding the collapse of the building known as WTC7. It is also noteworthy that ownership of the WTC changed hands several months earlier because if the towers collapsed because of inside demolition, such accomplishment would require cooperation from the extensive WTC security forces.
14) Why was Bin Laden not captured before 9/11, and why has he not been captured since? There have been several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden, but no effort to do so was made. Two US allies, Saudi Arabia, and The United Arab Emirates, have colluded in deliberately allowing Bin Laden to stay free. Bin Laden was meeting with the CIA as late as July 2001. An examination of U.S. attempts to capture Osama bin Laden show they have in fact consistently blocked attempts to investigate and capture him. Eleven bin Laden family members were flown safely out of the same Boston airport where the highjacking took place a few days earlier. Why were they not detained for questioning?
15) The September 11th disaster has resulted in power and profit at home and abroad by both the Bin Laden and the Bush families. There are significant business ties between Bin Laden and senior members of the Bush administration. Reports have emerged that Carlyle Group, the giant U.S. defence contractor that employs former President George W. Bush Sr., has had long-standing financial ties to the bin Laden family. So while there is compelling evidence that Osama bin Laden has not broken away from his family, it is also a matter of record that the Bush administration is in turn very significantly tied to the same family. The Carlyle Group has profited immensely from the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq and from the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.
16) Revelations of profits made by insider trading relating to the 9/11 attacks, point to the top levels of US business and the CIA. The intelligence community regularly analyzes financial transactions for any suspicious activity. Only three trading days before September 11th, shares of American and United Airlines -- the companies whose planes were hijacked in the attacks on New York and Washington -- were massively "sold short" by investors. Executive CIA Director AB "Buzzy" Krongard was one of those who profited from the deal. The names of the other investors remain undisclosed and the $5 million in profit taking remains unclaimed in the Chicago Exchange account. No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the day immediately preceding Black Tuesday. There were also unusual trades on several companies occupying the World Trade Center, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., and Merrill Lynch & Co. These multiple, massive and unprecedented financial transactions point unequivocally to the fact that the investors behind these trades were speculating in anticipation of a mid-September 2001 catastrophe that would involve both United and American Airlines and offices in the Twin Towers. To date, both the Securities & Exchange Commission and the FBI have been tight-lipped about their investigations of trades. A probe could isolate the investors. Why has nothing been made public?
17) Selected persons were told not to fly that day. Newsweek reported that on September 10th, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns." Why was that same information not made available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft? A significant number of selected people were warned about flying or reporting for work at the WTC. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown received a phone call eight hours before the hijacking warning him not to travel by air. Salman Rushdie is under a 24-hour protection of UK Scotland yard; he was also prevented from flying that day. Ariel Sharon canceled his address to Israeli support groups in New York City just the day before his scheduled September 11th address. John Ashcroft stopped flying on public airplanes in July of 2001.
Other evidence exists indicating that government officials knew of the attacks beforehand. For example, Tom Kenny who was with a rescue squad from FEMA told Dan Rather of CBS News that, "We arrived on Monday night (September 10th) and went into action of Tuesday." How is it possible for high government officials to have been caught by surprise as some claimed?
18) There are reasonable grounds for suspicion that the U.S. attack on Afghanistan was already planned before September 11th. A pretext for war is always needed. From investigative journalist Patrick Martin, "[t]his examination has found that a specific war on Afghanistan . . . launched in October 2001 had been planned for at least a year, and in general terms related to regional strategic and economic interests, had actually been rooted in at least four years of strategic planning. This planning, in turn, is the culmination of a decade of regional strategizing. All that was required was a trigger for these war plans, which was amply provided by the tragic events of 11th September."
It is public knowledge that Unocal and others in the oil industry were negotiating with Afghan officials for a pipeline across their country as part of the "Silk Road" strategy. It was also reported that the talks had broken down. A specific threat made at a meeting: the Taliban can choose between a "carpets of bombs" - an invasion - or a "carpets of gold" Ð the oil and gas pipelines. Experts agree that Central Asia and the Caspian Basin are central to energy in the 21st century and that energy is central to political, economic and military power. James Dorian noted in the Oil & Gas Journal: "Those who control the oil routes out of Central Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the distribution of revenues from new production" (cited in Ahmed, 2002, p. 69).
The plans for global domination developed by those of Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank formed in the Spring of 1997, are also a matter of public record. These plans included specifics for taking military control of Central Asia, including regime change in Iraq. The primary architects of these plans include Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, all part of the first Bush Administration ousted by Bill Clinton and now back in power with George W. Bush.
19) The 9/11 attacks came at an extremely fortuitous time for the Bush administration, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the weapons industry, and the oil industry, all of which have benefited immensely from this tragedy. It is worth noting the acute observations of Canadian social philosopher John McMurtry: "To begin with, the forensic principle of Ôwho most benefits from the crime?Õ clearly points in the direction of the Bush administration. . . . The more you review the connections and the sweeping lapse of security across so many coordinates, the more the lines point backwards [to the White House]."
20) Both the U.S. and the USSR are responsible for the rise of religious extremism, terrorism and civil war within Afghanistan since the 1980s. The U.S., however, is directly responsible for the cultivation of a distorted ÔjihadiÕ ideology that fueled, along with U.S. arms and training, the ongoing war and acts of terrorism within the country after the withdrawal of Soviet forces.
21) The Bush Administration is clearly capable of creating or allowing such atrocities to occur. Hitler was able to play the anti-communist card to win over skeptical German industrialists. Certainly the Bush family are not newcomers to melding political and business interests, they got their start as key Hitler supporters. Prescott Bush, father of George Bush Sr., was HitlerÕs banker and propaganda manager in New York, until FDR confiscated his holdings. George Bush Sr. used Manuel Noriega as a scapegoat, killing thousands of innocent Panamanians in the process of re-establishing U.S. control over Panama. It is also widely believed that the current Bush Administration knowingly misled the people about the war in Iraq.
22) There are precedents for these kinds of acts of complicity and fabrications. Rejecting claim that the evidence for collusion is over-ruled by a belief that no country would do this to its own citizens, simply requires pointing out that the contemplation of terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens by the CIA is a matter of public record. The previously classified "Operation Northwoods" document reveals that in 1962, the CIA seriously considered the possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks against US citizens, in order to blame it on Cuba. The plans were never implemented, but were given approval signatures by all the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The plan included several options, including killing Cuban defectors or U.S. soldiers, sinking ships, and staging simulations of planes being shot down. All this was done to blame on Castro as a pretext for launching a war against Cuba.
Far from being an unprecedented shocker, suspected government complicity in 9/11 builds on an august and cynical tradition. "ItÕs the oldest trick in the book, dating back to Roman times." Examples of democracy being hoaxed include the sinking of the Maine, Pearl Harbor bombardment, which President Roosevelt is believed to have known about beforehand, and the hoax of the Gulf of Tonkin provocation.
ConclusionsThe evidence seems clear that if the many agencies of the U.S. government had done their jobs, the September 11th attack would likely have been prevented. If there had been an immediate investigation into the September 11th attacks, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq could not have been justified simply on the basis of terrorism. Surely questions must be asked about why there is yet no accountability of the Bush administration and why the journalists and others in mass media are not held responsible for the coverup, deception and lack of investigative reporting. From the evidence presented it would seem that much public whistle-blowing ought to be taking place. Why is it not yet evident?
I believe that it is important not to approach 9/11 as the possibility of some grand conspiracy, but a possible conspiracy of some sort nevertheless. One important insight is how hierarchical authoritarian social systems function. Top down directives and commands, especially if they carry the weight of threats of censorship and punishment serve to keep any dissent in check. There is a great deal of self-censorship operating in all institutions in the United States. It is also important to recognize the role of a shared ideology among the decision makers, or perhaps more specifically the role of what social psychologists, in studies of organizational behavior, call "groupthink." Groupthink is decision making characterized by uncritical acceptance of and conformity with the prevailing view. Thus, the will of a few key persons can be spread within and across government agencies.
Thus the possibility of complicity on the part of the Bush Administration is very real. At the very least, further and more honest investigations must take place and some accountability exacted from those responsible.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, Brighton, England, suggests,
The executive branch of the federal government has apparently enabled a lethal surprise attack with mass murder against two of the founding thirteen colonies, New York and Virginia. By such an act, the federal government would grossly violate and void its contract with the states, and abrogate its own constitutional rights and privileges. Even if you do not accept the complicity argument, it has failed to protect its largest city from the consequences of its overweening foreign policies.
Like a loose handgun, our Federal government has backfired on its owners, the States. The executive has gone to war in defiance of the Constitution, and Congress has abdicated its war-making authority on at least 200 occasions since 1945, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The federal government has proven utterly incapable and unwilling to remedy its chronic and world-threatening sickness (p. 376-377).
It seems apropos to conclude: "if you are part of the problem, then you are not part of the solution." The solution then lies with the people themselves and not with any US government agency, least of all the Executive Branch.
Sources
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq (2002). The war on freedom: How and why America was attacked September 11, 2001. Joshua Tree, CA: Tree of Life Publications. AThe War on Freedom rips apart the veil of silence surrounding 9/11, and lets readers look at the facts for themselves. This riveting and thoroughly documented study [718 citations] is a "must" resource for everyone seeking to understand the attack on the World Trade Center of New York on September 11, 2001 and "AmericaÕs New War."
Bamford, James (2001). Body of secrets : anatomy of the ultra-secret National Security Agency : from the Cold War through the dawn of a new century. New York: Doubleday, 2001. See for detailed information on Operation Northwood and other "secrets."
Burbach, Roger, & Clarke, Ben (Eds.) (2002). September 11 and the U.S. war: Beyond the curtain of smoke. San Francisco: City Light Books. This is an anthology of 41 short pieces by more than 30 authors who dissent from the bellicose actions of the U.S. government since 9-11-01. These essays provide the essential background and analysis needed to understand the origins and consequences of the attack of September 11th and the U.S. governmentÕs response.
Chossudovsky, Michel (2002). War and globalisation: The truth behind September 11. London: Zed Books. "In this timely study, Michel Chossudovsky blows away the smokescreen, put up by the mainstream media, that 9-11 was an Ôintelligence failureÕ. Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the coverup and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration."
Grey, Steve (2002). September 11 Attacks: Evidence of U.S. collusion.
stevegreyau@yahoo.co.uk.Hopsicker, Daniel:
http://www.madcowprod.com/archive.htm.Jones, Alex: http://.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/. See especially the testimony of Mindy Kleinberg, Stephen Push and others on the First Public Hearings Archives, p. 163.
Thompson, Paul:
http://cooperativeresearch.org. See "US preparing for a war with Afghanistan before 9/11, increasing control of Asia before & since" and several other articles.http://emperors-clothes.com. See several short articles by Jared Israel, John Flaherty, Illarion Bykov, Francisco Gil-White and George Szamuely.
. This site has numerous links to documented articles and other valuable resources.. This web site has extensive information and detailed analysis. It raises many serious questions about the official stories and reports. It has undergone recent revisions based upon new evidence.
http://www.UnansweredQuestions.org.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com.
Address correspondence to: Walter E. Davis. 263 MACC Annex, Kent State University Kent, OH 44242
wdavis@kent.edu|
The Index of Words
Not Contained in the 9/11 Commission Report
|
|
List updated July 25, 2004 18:00GMT, by M. Rectenwald put options Al-Fuqra Original list submitted to
CLG by Mary Titus, July 25, 2004 |
MISSING WITNESS:
The following list is a compilation of
search results (number= hits
at vivisimo) from the now updated
"Top 200
Subpoena list", also partly based on
9/11 Encyclopedia by ewing2001 (GFP, INN etc...).
The author is willing and ready to testify, that this list includes evidence on
active or passive connections and/or members of the real perpetrators of 9/11,
ignored by the Sep11th comission.
The list also includes ignored witnesses, which could help presenting an
unwashed 9/11 report, and clearly show, that 9/11 was NOT the result of
negligence or incompetence, but calculated complicity of U.S. Government members
and associated intelligence contacts here and oversea.
The author supports the
call from the U.S. Green Party for a new 9/11 Investigation and the
call from author
Webster Tarpley for an Independent International Truth Commission On 9-11
(See also
Searching the 9/11 Report-Pt.1.)
The Top 200 Subpoena list for the 911 Commission
(Update: August 1, 2004)
Abbott, Don
(simulated attack on Pentagon Model, late 2000)
Adams, Ron
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Deputy Director of ORHA)
Ahmad, General Mahmud
(former head of ISI)
2 Hits
“Deputy Secretary Armitage’s Meeting with General Mahmud: Actions and Support
Expected of Pakistan in Fight Against Terrorism,” Sept. 14, 2001.
"September 18, Powell had contacted 58 of his foreign counterparts and received
offers of general aid, search-and-rescue equipment and personnel, and medical
assistance teams.54 On the same day, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage was
called by Mahmud Ahmed regarding a two-day visit to Afghanistan during which the
Pakistani intelligence chief had met with Mullah Omar and conveyed the U.S.
demands."
Test results with Pakistan Bon Graham, -Marc Grossman, Porter Goss =0
Bob Graham =2 (not related to Pakistan)
Ahmed, Atif
(Described as a british mole of the MI5 within "Al-Quaeda")
Al-Amoudi, Mohammed Hussein
(Biz Partner of Khaled bin Mahfouz (->) and owner of
Corral Petroleum)
listed as "al Qaeda asso
Mohamed Hussein" without any further info
(more...)
Alibek, Dr. Ken
(ex-BIOPREPARAT, ex-USAMRIID, Director of Analex/Hadron)
0 (Biopreparat= 0)
Allbaugh, Joe
(ex-Director of FEMA until March 2003)
1 hit with Joseph Allbaugh
"...Following his speech, President Bush met again with his National Security
Council (NSC), expanded to include Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and
Joseph Allbaugh..."
FEMA: 5 Hits
...OEM Initial Response By 8:48...
In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was called and asked
to send at least five federal Urban Search and Rescue Teams (such teams are
located throughout the United States). At approximately 8:50, a senior
representative from the OEM arrived in the lobby of the North Tower and began to
act as the OEM field responder to the incident. He soon was joined by several
other OEM officials, including the OEM Director...
al-Bayoumi, Omar
(former Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with
extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation. During
2001-2002, the FBI was silently investigating possible ties between
Dallah AVCO and the "Al Qaeda network")
14 Hits
al-Hibri, Fuad
(co-Founder of BIOPORT)
0 (Bioport=0)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, financial coordinator for
ORHA, Goldman Sachs + Co.)
Anthony, John
FAA, Received Warning on Hani Hanjour. He "did observe
Hani's
limited knowledge of flying" and "did check his flight credentials. He
did tell Marilyn Ladner, a vice president for the Pan Am International
Flight Academy")
0 (Anthony FAA, Anthony Hanjour =0)
0 (Antini, Atta Antini =0)
(filled out Atta's visa application, ex Huffman Aviation)
(claimed in August 2001 to have insider knowledge about an
attack)
Armitage, Richard
15 Hits
(May 2001 meeting with General Pervez Musharraf)
(NORAD)
Arnold =9
(Naval Postgraduate School,wargamed "9/11" before Sep11th)
0 (NPS= 0)
Ashcroft, John
(received early warnings not to fly before 9/11)
Ashcroft =28
"...Norman Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin
Corporation, writes regarding power in the government,“As in business, cash is
king. If you are not in charge of your budget, you are not king.”
Aziz, Mohammad
(former Head of the ISI (->) during the mid 90s, helped creating the Taliban)
Baker III, James A.
(Baker + Botts, Senior Counselor of the Carlyle Group,
strategic alliance with Afridi & Angell)
5 Hits (Baker Botts =0)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, ROTC/MPRI, L-3 Communications)
(former Clinton National Advisor, warned of pending attack
in 2001)
5 Hits
...President Clinton was deeply concerned about Bin Ladin. He and his national
security advisor, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, ensured they had a special daily
pipeline of reports feeding them the latest updates on Bin Ladin’s reported
location.
(Rendon Group)
0 (Rendon Group= 0)
(at undisclosed location of CIA)
137 Hits
(sister of Khalid bin Mahfouz, married to Bin Laden)
0 (sp.)
(Amerada Hess/Tom Kean, described by James Woolsey as
"brother-in-law" of Bin Laden, one of the investors of President Bush's first
company Arbusto with the help of James R. Bath)
Mahfouz= 0
3 Hits (Blair= 6 hits)
(blocked John O' Neill investigation, former US ambassador
to Yemen, former Iraq administration)
4 hits
...Bodine and the leader of the FBI team, John O’Neill, clashed repeatedly—to
the point that after O’Neill had been rotated out of Yemen but wanted to return,
Bodine refused the request.
(PNAC, JINSA, Part of "letter in 1998")
Boren, David L.
(ex-CIA, Breakfast meeting with George Tenet on Sep11th,
Professor in Norman, OK- 2minutes away from Zacarias Moussaoui's home address)
(ex-Kissinger Associates, Post-War Reconstruction Iraq)
2
One of nine members of the Defense Policy Board, who have
ties to companies that do business with the Department of Defense.
1 hit ("...a presidential commission chaired first by former secretary of
defense Les Aspin and later by former secretary of defense Harold Brown examined
the intelligence community’s future..."
Bryant, Johnelle
(United States Department of Agriculture.
claimed, she was face to face with Mohammad Atta)
0 (agriculture=0)
(TC-Mitglied, Author of "The Grand Chessboard"
2
Buchanan, Lieutenant Colonel Brad O.
Commander of the 459th Aircraft Generation Squadron, Andrews AFB, 10 miles away from Washington DC
(driver for Takeout Taxi, accused for organising Virginia
driver licences for some of the hijackers, deported to Indonesia)
0 (Budiman, Takeout Taxi =0)
(Lear Jets, Offutt Meeting Sep11th)
0 (Offutt= 2)
Bush =132
(ex-Securacom/Stratesec, Inc., WTC)
(Defense Language Institute Monterey, accused Bush of "LIHOP", met some of the "hijackers")
(Douglas Feith's former deputy, now Joint Warfare
Simulation, Under Secretary of Defence for Intelligence)
Cambone= 5
...At 11:15, Secretary Rumsfeld spoke to the President and told him DOD was
working on refining the rules of engagement so pilots would have a better
understanding of the circumstances under which an aircraft could be shot down.
See, e.g., DOD notes, Stephen Cambone notes, Sept. 11, 2001. DOD did not
circulate written rules of engagement until sometime after 1:00 P.M. See DOD
memo, rules of engagement, Sept. 11, 2001 (faxed to Andrews Air Force Base at
1:45 P.M.)...
(ex-CIA, Former deputy station chief in Jeddah, former
Lockerbie
investigation, escorted ABC news analyst John Miller to his Bin Laden
Interview)
(informed Bush of 2nd attack, as seen on Booker Elementary
Tape, ex-General Motors' Vice President of Government Relations)
13 hits
(Carlyle Group, former secretary of defense, former Deputy
Director
of the CIA, Meeting with Bin Laden Group on Sep11th in Hotel
Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., co-chair of the RAND Center)
0 (Carlucci, Carlyle Group, Carlyle =0)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, possible ties with CIA
since 70s, former US Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti)
Carney= 13 hits
(advisor to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, former Shell Oil America and Fluor)
(Trooper 1st Class, who stopped Siad Jarrah for speeding
on
northbound Interstate 95 shortly after midnight on September 9. The CIA
claimed, that Jarrah (pilot of the jetliner that crashed in
Pennsylvania) was not on a terrorist watch list, but according to motel
records, a man by that name used a credit card to pay for a late August
2001 stay at the Pin Del motel in Laurel, Md., where Nawaq Alhamzi
stayed in September.
Alhamzi was on the CIA watch list.)
0 (Catalano, trooper jarrah =0)
(former director of "UNOCAL Pakistan Ltd")
(INC, AEI)
0 (sp)
Cheney =57 hits
(JetTech manager, who called the FAA on Hani Hanjour.
Jet Tech was closed in September 2001.
It was owned by the Pan Am International Flight Academy)
0 (Chevrette, Chevrette Hanjour =0)
pan am hanjour changed the Chevrette story into
"an instructor there found his work well below standard and discouraged him from
continuing.."
(former head of the FBIHQ, since July 2002 KPMG
Consulting.
KPMG is auditor of AMEC, one of the four companies, who cleaned the
rubble from both Pentagon and WTC. Also accountant of Tom Kean's
Aramark)
Since August 8th, 2001 (two days after Bush received a new
PDB with a clear warning on Bin Laden), Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) James R.
Clapper Jr. is the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA,
also known as "the 'eyes of America'", later renamed to NGA).
0 (Logicon Task, Trailblazer
(head of the CSG and Cyber Security Task Force, met daily
since Mid'2001, heard of pending attacks)
54 hits
(spokesman for the Pentagon, "saw first plane" attacking
the WTC live on TV at the Pentagon)
0 (Tori Clarke =0)
Former CIA Chief, Latin America
Main architect of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Clarridge= 1 (only mentioned in "Duane Clarridge interview (Sept. 16, 2003)")
Deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy.
Also expert member of the Middle East Forum (MEF), founded in
1990, led by Daniel Pipes.
Neocon Supporter of "WW4", Professor of Strategic Studies at John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies
(ex-FBI informant in Phoenix '96-2000, monitored Hani Hanjour, Author of "My Jihad", trained at Khalid Bin Whalid camp in 1993)
(Contact at ENRON's Taliban Broadband Project "TSI Communiactions". Her contact at Enron was Shelly Mansfield)
(co-founder of BIOPORT)
0 (Admiral Crowe, Crowe =0)
(Syrian-born executive in Germany, on watch list of BND
since
1998.Darkanzali visited with Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad
Jarrah, the same Hamburg mosque. Due to Chicago Tribune, the CIA was
seeking to turn Darkazanli into a spy)
0 (Thomas Volz/CIA =0)
(chief executive officer of ANSER, ex-CIA)
2 hits (no pre 9/11 Homeland Security infos)
(Hired Sakher "Rocky" Hammad for a sprinkler job at the
Twin Towers for Sep 5th, 2001)
o (Davidenko, Sakher Hammad, sprinkler job= 0)
Sprinkler: "...there were no assurances that sprinklers or standpipes were
working on upper floors..."
(ANSER, former founding director of DTRA, worked on thermobarics)
(Huffman Aviation. According to Yellow Cab driver Bob
Simpson and other witnesses, MadCowProd found out, that Mohammad Atta and Rudi
Dekkers had a good relationship to each other. Survived two aviation
accidents.Imprisoned since April 2003)
0 (Dekkers= 0, Huffman Aviation= 4)
President of AEI, "landlord" for PNAC
Head of NEADS, at around 8:30 AM on Sep11th, still mission crew chief for an ongoing exercise (Vigilant Guardian)
2 hits
"...NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander, channel 2, 9:38:02; Dawne Deskins
interview (Oct. 30, 2003)..."
(Top Adviser to Jay Garner, Post-War Reconstruction Iraq,
Heritage Foundation, US Navy)
First Air Force Commander, fanatical supporter of the
missile defense scheme and the militarization of space. Eberhardt was Commander
in Chief (CINC) of NORAD on Sep11th.
1 hit ("...For NORAD’s hypothesis of aircraft as weapons, see, e.g., Ralph
Eberhardt interview (Mar. 1, 2004)....") (NORAD =55 hits, NEADS= 61 hits, FAA=
200 hits)
NeoCon hardliner and Dick Cheney’s former senior
foreign-policy adviser
1 hit ("...For the Hadley call see NSC email, Clarke to Rice and
Edelman,Terrorism Alert, July 2, 2001..."
(Port Authority Chairman at the time of Sep11th attack)
(ex-AMR Securities Inc., involved in FBI-911 Insider
Trading Plot, together with ex-FBI agents Lynn Wingate and Jeffrey Royer)
0 (Wingate, Royer =0)
(Chairman of BAe, business deals with Bin Laden Family)
(PNAC, Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Feith + Zell
(represents Northrop Grumman,
Fandz International Law Group)
Feith =4
"... In a memo that appears to be from Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith
to Rumsfeld, dated September 20, the author expressed disappointment at the
limited options immediately available in Afghanistan and the lack of ground
options. The author suggested instead hitting terrorists outside the Middle
East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non–al Qaeda
target like Iraq..." (Memo= 200, august 6 2001=4)
Canadian Major General Eric Findley, based in AFB Vandenberg/Peterson (Colorado) and in charge of NORAD on Sep11th
(Vienna, VA. FinCen =Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
denied in May 2002 transfers of Mohammad Atta into his U.S. account)
0 (Fincen= 0)
Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office
during 2001
3 hits ("...Testimony of Patrick Fitzgerald before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, Oct. 21, 2003, pp. 3–4..."
One of nine members of the Defense Policy Board, who have ties to companies that do business with the Department of Defense
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq)
10
(Manager at FBI Headquarters, mentioned by Minneapolis FBI
Agent
and Legal Adviser Coleen Rowley in her 13-page letter to FBI Director
Robert Mueller)
0 (sp)
(FBI Director 1993-2001)
11 hits
(Chief NRO Strategic Gaming Division, CIA.
Responsible for a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency
response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a
building of the CIA. The exercise was planned for the morning of
Sep11th. )
0 (NRO=3 "...The appropriations for the CIA and the national intelligence
agencies— NSA, NGA, and NRO—are then given to the secretary of defense..."
(SY Coleman/L3, Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, JINSA)
0 (JINSA, PNAC, Neocon(s) =0)
(Described as a FBI informant. Contacted the staff of
Senator Bob
Graham and Representative Robert Wexler and warned them of a plan to
attack the WTC. Claimed, one Pakistani operative named R. G. Abbas made
three references to imminent plans to attack the WTC)
(FBI agent. In charge for observing the two "hijackers"
Al-Mihdhar and Nawaq Alhamzi)
1 ("...DOJ Inspector General interview of William Gore, Oct. 24, 2002..." (no
further infos)
(House Intelligence Committee chairman, who received a
copy of the
"CIA"-memo on August 6th, 2001. Met Head of Pakistan Secret Service in
week during Sep11th. A few weeks before Sep11th, Graham, Porter Goss
(R) and Senator John Kyl (R) traveled to Pakistan and met with
President Musharraf)
2 hits
(Senate Intelligence Panel during 2001, in Meeting with
Pakistan Secret Service during Sep11th week)
2 hits (no infos about ISI meeting)
(CFR, received a warning on an attack prior Sep11th, Counsel of Coudert
Brothers, commissioner of the National Security/21st Century-commission aka
Hart-Rudman Commission, worked together with BENS and ANSER)
2 hits
"...Congress created three commissions in 1998. One, chaired jointly by former
senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, examined national security challenges for
the twenty-first century.This commission included stark warnings about possible
domestic terrorist attacks and recommended a new institution devoted to
identifying and defending vulnerabilities in homeland security..."
(Anthrax-attack suspect. Former SAIC in 1999.)
0 (sp) (SAIC=0)
(Organised Kroll Associates Security Job for ex-FBI anti
terror
agent John O' Neill. Director of the Office of Public Health
Preparedness since May 2002.
Former OEM Director, NYC, constructed Bunker in Building 7.
Worked at SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis in 1999.
Former member of the Johns Hopkins Working Group on Civilian Bio
Defense. Participant in Bio Terror Drills "Dark Winter" ('01), "Silent
Vector" ('02) and "TOPOFF2" ('03).
On May 28, 1998, Stephen Hatfill and Hauer spoke together at the
same CFR meeting about "Building a 'Biobomb': Terrorist Challenge"
http://www.cfr.org/public/resource.cgi?meet!102Mirror
)
1 (TOPOFF= 1)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Vice President of SAIC,
ex-Senior
Fellow of CSIS, IRDC/Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council)
(secret Owner of Huffman Aviation, Ties with Jerry Falwell/National Religious Broadcasters)
Head of a U.S. special operation, originally located in
Tampa, Florida, one hour away from Huffman Aviation
0 (Tampa=1) (Compare
Tampa Florida/Laden flights)
(Whistleblower at the FAA, was fired after he told his
supervisors
that an airport security trainee might be linked to a Sept. 11
hijacker. Reassigned at the end of May 2002)
(Australians Minister John Howard.Howard was booked for AA77 -the Pentagon machine on September 11th, while he was in the United States. The flight was cancelled by an unknown person)
(Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies)
(Head of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, former Vice of Lockheed)
(Journalist, former Kroll Associates)
1 hit (...mentioned as "Hoover Institution Brian Jenkins"...)
(Defense Policy Board)
1 hits (...Weaknesses in all-source and strategic analysis were highlighted by a
panel, chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah, that critiqued the intelligence
community’s failure to foresee the nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan
in 1998, as well as by a 1999 panel, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, that discussed
the community’s limited ability to assess the ballistic missile threat to the
United States...)
PNAC book author ("Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy", 2000). In an introductory chapter, together with Elliott Abrams, on "Regime Change", co-author William Kristol and Kagan target Iraq, Iran, North Korea and China as needing to be confronted.
(ex-UNOCAL, RAND, Post-War Reconstruction Afghanistan,
Post-War Reconstruction Iraq)
5 hits
"...Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its
conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo
found no “compelling case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the
attacks..."
"...Rice, Hadley, and the NSC staff member for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad,
told us they opposed giving aid to the Northern Alliance alone.They argued that
the program needed to have a big part for Pashtun opponents of the Taliban..."
UNOCAL (2 Hits) :"...The former UNOCAL chief for the pipeline project, Marty Miller, denied working exclusively with the Taliban and told us that his company sought to work with all Afghan factions to bring about the necessary stability to proceed with the project..."
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, former IAEA inspector in Iraq, former Vice President of SAIC, probably CIA since 90s)
(Executive Director of Standard Chartered Bank.
Accounts of Standard Chartered had been used for wire transfers between Shaikh
Saeed and Mohammad Atta.
Standard Chartered had an office in B7, one floor above the CIA, INS and DoD)
0 (Standard Chartered= 0)
(Mohammad Attas former girlfriend)
0 (Atta girlfriend, Atta cocaine =0)
(FBI agent, who didn't prioritize the so called Phoenix-memo by Kenneth Williams)
(FEMA spokesman, who said in an interview with CBS Dan
Rather, the FEMA arrived already "on monday evening" in New York(Sep10th)
0 (Tom Kenney, Kennedy =0)
(strong ties with Pakistan Secret Service, Trip to Moscow
in June 2001, former political consultant
of UNOCAL, who was working on a pipeline in Afghanistan in 1997/8)
Kissinger =1 ("...Richard Nixon then concentrated policy planning and policy
coordination in a powerful National Security Council staff, overseen by Henry
Kissinger..."
(CEO of American Hospital in Dubai)
0 (Koval, hospital dubai, hospital bin laden =0)
(Executive Chairman of Kroll Associates, Security Company for ex-FBI John O' Neill and Jerome Hauer, who organised the Security Job for O'Neill at the Twin Towers. Kroll Monitoring Services. In June 2002, Kroll Inc. acquired Ontrack/Convar, who was responsible to recover the data from the WTC-computers)
(current Executive Director of the CIA, former Chairman of
the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust)
1 related hit ("...Charlie Allen told us that when these questions were
discussed at the CIA, he and the Agency’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy”
Krongard, had said that either one of them would be happy to pull the
trigger..."
(Huffmann Aviation)
Member of influential right-wing thinktank the American Enterprise Institute, which also houses the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
(Vice-President Dick Chenet's chief of staff, founding
member of PNAC, Rand Corp., DPB,
6 hits (libby =10)
"...Joshua Bolten meeting (Mar. 18, 2004); see also White House notes, Lewis
Libby notes, Sept. 11, 2001 (“10:15–18:Aircraft 60 miles out, confirmed as
hijack—engage?..."
"...At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice Pres ident and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft.218 His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, “in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.”
"...Among the sources that reflect other important events of that morning, there is no documentary evidence for this call, but the relevant sources are incomplete. Others nearby who were taking notes, such as the Vice President’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who sat next to him, and Mrs. Cheney, did not note a call between the President and Vice President immediately after the Vice President entered the conference room..."
(Landlord for "hijackers" Ziad Samir Jarrah, Al Haznawi
and first Anthrax victim Bob Stevens)
0 (landlord= 6)
President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies (IASPS)
One of seven authors of the 1996 paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for
Securing the Realm"
0 (Loewenberg, clean break, IASPS =0)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, USAID director)
(Office of Special Plans, Under Secretary of Defense)
Head of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA or
OSD)
One of Yoda's leading advocates have been future-PNAC members Morton Abramowitz
and Fred Ikle.
0 (Raytheon, BAE, ManTech =0)
(Chief Executive of AMEC, involved in renovation of the
wedge of the Pentagon, which was later hit. Hired for Controlled Clean-up of
both Pentagon and WTC. Among Clients: SAIC and Telcordia/Robert W. Lucky,
member of ANSER Institute for Homeland Security since 1999)
0 (AMEC, Tully, Controlled Demolition =0)
(Participated together with Air Force Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Paul K. Carlton, in the May 2001 "Tricare Exercise", which was a simulation exercise for the possibility crash of a Boeing 757 airliner into the U.S. military’s headquarters)
(ex-FBI. Classified the Passport by Satam M. A. Al Suqami
on Sep11th in front of Vesey Street, WTC 7.
Friend of ex-FBI John O'Neill)
0 (sp.) (passport= 63)
"....Passport photos of Rashid and three 9/11 hijackers—Nawaf al Hazmi, Mihdhar,
and Omari—were found together during a May 2002 raid in Karachi..."
"...Based on our review of their visa and travel histories, we believe it
possible that as many as eleven additional hijackers (Wail al Shehri, Waleed al
Shehri, Mohand al Shehri, Hani Hanjour, Majed Moqed, Nawaf al Hazmi, Hamza al
Ghamdi,Ahmed al Ghamdi, Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi)
held passports containing these same fraudulent features..."
Saqami (21 hits): "...Satam al Suqami, who was seated directly behind Lewin"
"...Another example of unusual travel was a trip by Suqami on July 10 from Fort
Lauderdale to Orlando; he stayed at a hotel in Lake Buena Vista with an
unidentified male through July 12.
"...Only the passports of Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari were recovered
after 9/11. Both had been doctored..." (Paragraph #3075)
One of the commanders of NORAD on Sep11th. Also involved
in planning of Amalgam Virgo 02, a drill which was planned right after June
2001. Kinley claimed, "the nation's radars were, in retrospect, turned the wrong
way"
1 hit (mentioned in list of FIRST PUBLIC HEARING March 31–April 1, 2003, no
further details)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Financial Coordinator for Iraq, former USAID, close friend of Dick Cheney)
Commander of 305th Air Mobility Wing, McGuire AFB New Jersey, 7 minutes away from WTC
(BENS, ex-CIA, ex-NSA/intelligence programs management,
ex-Daily
Briefings for George Bush, lives in Vienna, same city as some of the
Sep11th hijackers)
0 (Millis, BENS, vienna/virginia =0)
(High level CIA official. Was accused, he met Bin Laden in
June 2001 in American Hospital in Dubai)
0 (sp.)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Civil-Coordinator for ORHA and senior policy advisor of Douglas Feith)
(Co-ordinator of Northern Iraq, MPRI, PAE Government Services Inc.)
(FBI)
Mueller= 17 hits
Musharraf =29 hits
"...In January 2000, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and the State
Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, met with General
Musharraf in Islamabad, dangling before him the possibility of a presidential
visit in March as a reward for Pakistani cooperation..."
...In February 2001, President Bush wrote General
Musharraf on a number of matters. He emphasized that Bin Ladin and al Qaeda were
“a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed.”
"...On August 4, President Bush wrote President Musharraf to request his support
in dealing with terrorism and to urge Pakistan to engage actively against al
Qaeda..."
"...the United States kept the money Pakistan paid for the F-16s to fund storage
of the aircraft. Meanwhile, Pakistani pilots were crashing and dying.“Guess how
they [felt] about the United States of America,” Zinni said. Nevertheless, Zinni
told us that Musharraf was someone who would actually work with the United
States if he was given the chance to do so. Anthony Zinni interview (Jan. 29,
2004)..."
NORAD
Dod
18 hits
(former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, who was told by
senior
American officials in mid-July 2001, that military action against
Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October)
(arrested in November 2001. Former Employee of US Consulate in Jeddah)
(Vienna, VA. FinCen =Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, denied in May 2002 transfers of Mohammad Atta into his U.S. account)
(TRW, former Department of Defense)
0 (TRW, Grumman =0)
(changed the "cell phone" story on his wife, Barbara
Olsen)
3 hits
("...Shortly after the first call, Barbara Olson reached her husband again. She reported that the pilot had announced that the flight had been hijacked, and she asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do.Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses..."
"...The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four “connected calls to unknown numbers” represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband’s office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May’s parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, “American Airlines Airphone Usage,” Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; ..."
"...At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson
called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. She
reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and box
cutters. She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone
call, and that they had put all the passengers in the back of the plane.
..."
(chairman and CEO of Chevron/Texaco, Partner in Caspian Pipeline Consortium/CPC)
One of nine members of the Defense Policy Board, who have ties to companies that do business with the Department of Defense
(Blackstone Group/TRW, mortgage of Building 7 since October 2000)
(USAMRIID)
0 (Detrick, USAMRIID= 0, anthrax= 1
"...In 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he helped set up near the Kandahar airport...")
(PNAC, AEI, DPB, Hollinger/Daily Telegraph, Onset, JINSA,
Trireme, Autonomy Corp, Clean break)
0 (Perle, PNAC, Hollinger, JINSA, Trireme, Odigo, Kashoggi, MOSSAD =0)
(ex-FBI. Since 2002 Bristol Myers Squibb)
15 Hits
"...Attorney General Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA in May and by Pickard in early July about the danger. Pickard said he met with Ashcroft once a week in late June, through July, and twice in August. There is a dispute regarding Ashcroft’s interest in Pickard’s briefings about the terrorist threat situation. Pickard told us that after two such briefings Ashcroft told him that he did not want to hear about the threats anymore..."
(CampusWatch.org, Middle East Specialist, "Green Peril" analyst, NY POST Columnist)
(PNAC, scripted the original "world war 4" line, later cited by James Woolsey)
(Total Information Awareness, since May 2003 Terror Information Awareness)
Took the first call from Boston Center and notified NEADS
commander Col. Robert K. Marr, Jr., of a possible hijacked airliner, American
Airlines Flight 11
1 hit ("....For the order
from NEADS to Otis to place F-15s at battle stations, see NEADS audio
file,Weapons Director Technician position, channel 14, 8:37:15. See also
interviews with Otis and NEADS personnel: Jeremy Powell interview (Oct. 27,
2003);...")
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, CIA and USAID background,
ex-UNOCAL advisor, hold meetings with Taliban between 1996-1998)
1 hit (mentioned only as "Robin Raphel interview (Dec. 8, 2003)")
(Due to the FBI, official teacher of pentagon "hijacker"
pilot Hani Hanjour, but plead unguilty in 2002. A british court decided, both
never met each other)
2 hits
"...Another witness identified Hanjour as being with Salmi in the Phoenix area
during the summer of 2001. FBI letterhead memorandum, investigation of Lotfi
Raissi, Jan. 4, 2004, p. 18. Documentary evidence for Hanjour, however, shows
that he was in New Jersey for most of June, and no travel records have been
recovered showing that he returned to Arizona after leaving with Hazmi in March.
Nevertheless, the FBI’s Phoenix office believes it plausible that Hanjour
returned to Arizona for additional training. .."
"...Hanjour initially was nervous if not fearful in flight training. FBI letterhead memorandum, investigation of Lotfi Raissi, Jan. 4, 2004, p. 11. His instructor described him as a terrible pilot..."
(received 3 different individual warnings on an attack
before Sep11th)
Rice= 134 hits
(former CIA. Director of Asian affairs at the State
Department)
6 hits ("...Christina Rocca interview (Jan. 29, 2004)..."
"...DOS memo, Rocca to Grossman,“Your Participation in Deputies Committee Meeting, Friday, June 29, 2001,” June 28, 2001; see DOS memo,“Pakistan/Afghanistan DC-Covert Action Issue,” undated (appears to be mid-June 2001); Richard Armitage interview (Jan. 12, 2004)..."
"...For its part, Pakistan had done little. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca described the administration’s plan to break this logjam as a move from “half engagement” to “enhanced engagement.” (see "Musharraf")
(tried to warn US State Department of an attack, had an appointment on Sep 11th, 2 PM)
53 hits (Tool to taith= 0 hits)
(Experienced ISI "asset". Under his alias Mustafa Ahmed
al-Hawsawi, as mentioned in the indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, he wired
$100.000 to the official "ringleader" of the Sep11th attack, Mohammad Atta.
US officials also suggested that Atta and three other hijackers "sent more than
$ 25,000 (back) to alHawsawi in Dubai"
among 25 hits on "saeed" (most referring to Saeed Al Ghamdi) :
"...Al Qaeda’s chief financial manager, Sheikh Saeed, argued that al Qaeda should defer to the Taliban’s wishes. Another source says that Sheikh Saeed opposed the operation, both out of deference to Omar and because he feared the U.S. response to an attack..."
Al Hawsawi = 3 hits ("... the operatives transited through the UAE en route to the United States. In the Emirates they were assisted primarily by al Qaeda operatives Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al Hawsawi..."
"...KSM, Binalshibh, and another plot facilitator, Mustafa al Hawsawi, each received money, in some cases perhaps as much as $10,000, to perform their roles in the plot..."
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Agriculture)
(Chairman, Board of Trustees, The MITRE Corporation.
MITRE was one of the business partners of computer company Ptech
(->), when it came out in December 2002, that Ptech (Quincy,
Massachuseets) was secretly owned by terror finance suspect Qassin
al-Kadi (->), one of 12 Saudi businessmen accused of funneling
millions of dollars to terror organisations run by Bin Laden.
Also Senior Advisor, Lehman Brothers
Counselor and Trustee, CSIS,
Consultant, U. S. Department of Defense)
1 hit ("...2003 Leadership of U.S. Intelligence James R. Schlesinger..."
(MITRE= 0 hits)
(author of "Leo Strauss and the world of intelligence"
1999)
Scott was part of the drill Amalgam Virgo 01, in July
2001, also in charge of the 180th Fighter Wing - an Ohio Air National Guard unit
based at Toledo Express Airport.
Officially it was the first unit outside the East Coast to answer the Air
Force's plea for immediate help
2 hits ("...Former NORAD official Alan Scott testified that the time of impact
of United 175 was 9:02...
"...Alan Scott interview (Feb. 4, 2004), no further details)
(Defense Policy Board, connected with Bechtel)
0 (Bechtel =0)
(a “tested” undercover “asset” for the FBI. Landlord of
"hijacker" Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi)
0 (sp.)
(former DoD, involved in pre-planning of war against
Taliban. Replaced on October 1st, 2001)
Shelton =38 hits
(Director of "Special Plans Operation"), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee)
(Bechtel, Chairman of Int. Council of JP Morgan, Committee
for the Liberation of Iraq, AEI, Member of the Hoover Institute and CFR. A
few days before Sep11th, Shultz received a warning by the US State Department on
a pending attack on America)
3 hits
"...Shultz and Weinberger, united for once, opposed McFarlane and Poindexter..."
"...Reagan’s second secretary of state, George Shultz, advocated active U.S.
efforts to combat terrorism, often recommending the use of military force..."
(Gave final "stand down order" on Sep11th at the FAA.
Started working on Sep11th)
Sliney= 3 hits ("...At 9:42, the Command Center learned from news reports that a
plane had struck the Pentagon.The Command Center’s national operations manager,
Ben Sliney, ordered all FAA facilities to instruct all aircraft to land at the
nearest airport. This was an unprecedented order...)
(Post-War Reconstruction Iraq, Oversees Iraqi defense
industry,
former Under Secretary of Defense, former consultant to RAND, member
MIT Lincoln National Library, Los Alamos, served as director of DoD
SALT Task Force)
6 hits ("...DOD memo, Slocombe to Cohen, Aug. 27, 1998. 61. DOD memo, “Towards a
More Aggressive Counterterrorism Posture,” undated, pp. 1, 7. The principal
author of this paper was Thomas Kuster, a career civil servant and former
special forces officer. He told us that this paper was drafted in September
1998..."
Spokesperson for NORAD headquarters in Colorado, confirmed a "hijack" notification at around 8:35 AM
(Only videographer, who was allowed to film at Ground Zero in New York. Imprisoned since January 2002)
(former Employee in US consulate in Jeddah, who confirmed
their CIA-ties. Jeddah allowed 15 of the 19 "hijacker" visas)
0 (Springman Jeddah =0, visa jeddah= 2
"...Nami contacted KSM and received coded instructions to
go to Jeddah, call Waleed al Shehri, and obtain visas at the U.S. consulate..."
"...Officials would have learned that the visa had been issued at the same
place—Jeddah—and on almost the same day as the one given to Khalid al Mihdhar..."
(Chief Executive Officer of the Bovis Lend Lease Real
Estate
Solutions. Bovis Lend was involved in the controlled cleanup of the WTC
rubble and renovation of Hotel Millennium Hilton, NYC until May 2003.
On October 30, 2001 Bovis announced their division of Bovis Lend Lease
Pharmaceutical)
(CIA director, observed many of the Sep11th hijackers,
also: "U.S. had agents inside al-Qaeda"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/06/03/cia-attacks.htm
Tenet= 155 hits
(Tully Construction, subcontractor responsible for most
excavation and trucking operations at the WTC. Tully retained Controlled
Demolition Inc.,Phoenix, Md, who had been involved once in the demolition
of the bombed Murrah Building in Oklahoma in 1995.
Controlled Demolition is specialised in implosions of big towers, like i.e. the
Landmark Hotel Tower* in Las Vegas or the Columbus Homes Housing Projects in
Newark, New Jersey.)
(Former head of the Saudi Intelligence Service, who was
replaced 10 days prior to Sep11th.
Connected with Unocal through the Saudi Arabian Delta oil company. Mentioned in
one lawsuit by some 911Victims .Ties with Bin Laden's brother-in law Khaled bin
Mafhouz and Bin Laden’s cousin Sheikh Suhail
Ibn Mustahil Ibn Salim. It was reported, that Al-Faisal met Bin Laden in June
2001 in a hospital in Dubai, together with CIA agent Larry Mitchell)
Prince Turki= 4 hits
(...Prince Turki followed up in meetings during the summer with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders...
(former employee at Huffman Aviation)
0 (Voss Huffman =0)
(ex-FBIHQ, Booz, Allen & Hamilton since Aug '02)
Watson= 25 hits
"...The head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson,
said he had many discussions about possible attacks with Cofer Black at the CIA.
They had expected an attack on July 4. Watson said he felt deeply that something
was going to happen..."
"...There is no evidence that either FBI Acting Director Pickard or Assistant
Director for Counterterrorism Dale Watson was briefed on the Moussaoui case
prior to 9/11. Michael Rolince, the FBI assistant director heading the Bureau’s
International Terrorism Operations Section (ITOS), recalled being told about
Moussaoui in two passing hallway conversations..."
(Watson Coleen Rowley, Watson Rowley, Watson Kenneth Williams, Watson CIA cable,
Watson Frasca, Booz Allen Hamilton= 0)
(Honorary Chairman of BENS, worked on "Tail-Tooth Call to Action" in early 2001)
One of nine members of the Defense Policy Board, who have ties to companies that do business with the Department of Defense Williams was also Member of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
(Ex-ENRON, DynCorp)
0 (Winokur, DynCorp, ENRON =0)
(Former ENRON director, Board member of Kroll since 1997,
which is
co-owned by Maurice Greenbergs American International Group/AIG since
1993, possible CIA-ties, Wisner father was a founder of the CIA)
(PNAC, JINSA, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Post-War
Reconstruction Iraq)
20 hits
(ex-CIA, PNAC, JINSA, British Aerospace, Titan Corp., ex-Shea
+
Gardner, Vice-President of Booz Allen Hamiliton since June 2002,
committee for Liberation of Iraq, ex-director of DynCorp, Participant
of DARK WINTER)
0 (Woolsey, Dark Winter, Titan Corp, Shea Gardner, Trailblazer
("...Titan Systems Corp. is mentioned with an “Arlington County: After-Action
Report..."
(ex-FBI, warned of pending attack on america before Sep11th)
(Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies/IASPS,
blueprint for PNAC. Senior adviser to John Bolton, Under-Secretary for
Arms Control and International Security. Author of "Tyranny's Ally:
America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein." '99)
0 (Wurmser, JINSA, IASPS, John Bolton =0)
(One of the lawyers of Zacarias Moussaoui, but also of
Victor M.
Lopez-Flores, who was accused of organising Fake-ID's for the
hijackers. One of the witnesses was Katherine Smith (Virginia
Department of Motor Vehicles), who died in a car accident one day
before her testimony)
Former Pentagon comptroller, CEO of Systems Planning Corp., Ex-Department of Defense
US Trade Representative, part of the "Wolfowitz Cabal"
(CFR, Member of American Arab institute, at the American
Arab
Institute works Khaled Elgindy/US Commission in International Religious
Freedom, whose brother Amr Ibrahim Elgindy is No.1 suspect in a 911-FBI
insider trading case)
1 hit ("...see James Zogby, What Arabs Think:Values, Beliefs, and Concerns (Zogby
International, 2002)
*******
Furthermore all responsible representatives of the following flight schools,
which had been visited by the "hijackers" :
Air Force Base Lackland in San Antonio (Alpha Tango Flight School), Texas
Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Dayton/Ohio=0
Air War College in Montgomery, Ala=0
Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla. =4 hits
Alpha Tango Flying Services in San Antonio= 0 (San Antonio =0)
Advanced Aviation next to Briscoe Field, an Atlanta suburban airport (for
twin-engine planes for Atta) (Briscoe Field=0)
Coastal Aviation of New Bern, N.C.=0
Decatur=2 ("...For Atta and Shehhi staying in Norcross and Decatur, see FBI
report, “Hijackers Timeline,” Dec. 5, 2003...)
...After returning to Florida from their trips,Atta and Shehhi visited Georgia,
staying briefly in Norcross and Decatur, and renting a single-engine plane to
fly with an instructor in Lawrenceville..."
Ed Boardman Aviation School in Fort Worth=0
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach (al-Shewi, but studied
only there)=1
("...Ghassan al Sharbi, who was captured in March 2002 in Pakistan along with
Abu Zubaydah, studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in
Prescott,Arizona..."
Flight Safety Academy in Vero Beach (Simulator)=0
Huffman (Aviation)=6
International Officer's School at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base=0
(->) in Montgomery, Alabama (Col. Ken McClellan (=0) claimed, Mohammad
Atta trained there and later changed his own report)
Lackland Air Force Base (=0) in San Antonio (where Albadar Alhazmi worked in a
hospital only)
Marcel Bernard (=0) at Freeway Airport(=0), Maryland (Hani Hanjour)
Monterey Language (=0) Institute
Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. (=0)—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy
Aviation,”
Norfolk Naval (=0)Air Station
Opa-Locka (=0)Airport (where Atta damaged some minor parts of a plane)
Richmor Aviation (=0)of Schenectady, N.Y.
Sawyer School of Aviation's simulator club (Hanjour)
plus: Falls Church (3), San Antonio (0), San Diego (50)
Sources:
PNAC (=0)
http://www.sundayherald.com/33079
http://new.globalfreepress.com/index.pl?section=pnac
911Timeline
http://www.cooperativeresearch.net
http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
911Skeptics Unite -the encyclopedia
http://news.globalfreepress.com/ewing/911SkepticsUnite.html
Updates:
http://new.globalfreepress.com/index.pl?section=911
Post-War Reconstruction Iraq
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/OBE305A.html
*******
http://www.911pi.org
http://www.911citizenswatch.org
From L. A. Times:
Go to Original
Questions Persist Despite 9/11 Investigations
By Terry McDermott
Los Angeles Times
Monday 26 July 2004
Among them: Who financed the attacks? Were terrorist cells in the U.S. involved?
With countless police, intelligence and journalistic examinations and two special congressional inquiries, the Sept. 11 attacks have been among the most investigated criminal acts in history.
The release last week of the final report of the independent 9/11 commission offered the nation a comprehensive overview of the origin and execution of the attacks. What the nation does not have are answers to all the outstanding questions, some of them fundamental:
Who provided the nearly half a million dollars it cost to carry out the attacks? How could the man who is alleged to have recruited several of the hijack pilots have done this while under investigation by at least three intelligence services - those of the United States, Germany and Morocco? Who, if anyone, assisted the hijackers during their time in the United States?
Some unanswered questions fall more in the category of perplexing curiosities:
Why did Mohamed Atta and another hijacker drive from Boston to Portland, Me., the day before the attacks, then fly back to Boston the next morning, almost missing the flight they intended to hijack?
Still other questions have less to do with the plot itself than the ground from which it sprung:
How did it happen that a single family of Pakistani expatriates in Kuwait, by most accounts an ordinary, pious family devoted to good works, produce five men - the plot mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four of his nephews - who played roles in the attacks?
Many of the open questions might never be resolved. As commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean acknowledged, "There are still some unanswered questions because obviously the people who were at the heart of the plot are dead."
The independent 9/11 commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, performed best on the issues it investigated firsthand, which largely were the U.S. government's actions and inactions. Most of its 1,200 interviews dealt with this subject. For information on the plot itself, the commission dealt primarily with reports of investigations by others.
That other reporting by necessity relied on sources of varying credibility. The account of the origin and details of the hijack plot itself come almost entirely from hostile interrogations of two men - Mohammed and one of his deputies, Ramzi Binalshibh, both of whom are in U.S. custody, but neither of whom has shown much willingness to talk about matters that might implicate others.
Binalshibh, for example, has told his interrogators that two events in the plot were instigated by separate chance encounters on German trains. One of the events pertained to the decision of the Hamburg-based hijackers to travel to Afghanistan in 1999. Binalshibh said the decision was made after a chance meeting on a train with a man who told him to contact a third man who could tell him how to join the jihad. The man on the train approached him because he spoke Arabic and had a beard, Binalshibh said. Investigators, trained to distrust coincidence, wondered at the odds of that.
Also, according to footnotes in the commission report, much of the information on the personalities of the lead hijackers comes from a single German source, a Hamburg teenager who knew the hijackers but did not speak Arabic.
Here are some of the open questions and what, if anything, is known about their answers.
Who provided the nearly half a million dollars the attacks cost?
The money was passed from Mohammed to the hijackers by electronic transfer and courier through the United Arab Emirates. Where Mohammed got the money is unknown. He said it came from Osama bin Laden's personal fortune, but investigators have found that the Al Qaeda leader's wealth has been vastly overestimated and that almost all of the organization's estimated $30-million-a-year budget was funded by donations.
Who made the donations to Al Qaeda is unknown. Mohammed first came to the attention of American investigators for his fundraising activities in the Persian Gulf, leading some to suspect he might have raised much of the relatively modest 9/11 sum on his own.
How could Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a Syrian-born citizen of Germany, have safely recruited the Hamburg pilots when he was under investigation as a possible Al Qaeda operative?
Zammar was under surveillance that included having his telephones tapped at the very time he was to have been recruiting the pilots. At one point, American attempts to learn more about Zammar became so disruptive that German officials threatened to throw an American spy out of the country. The Germans nonetheless passed a steady stream of intelligence about Zammar to the Americans. The Islamist scene in Germany was so active throughout the 1990s that, in addition to the Germans and the Americans, intelligence operatives from Syria, Morocco and other Arab governments kept watch on it.
The question about Zammar raises a larger issue on the role of a network of Syrian expatriates across Europe, particularly in Germany and Spain, who had frequent contact with the Hamburg hijackers and with Al Qaeda over many years. Many of the Syrians had been members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has had great influence on the evolution of radical Islamist theory in the last half a century. Were they witting helpers of the hijackers or, as many of them claim, simply Muslims trying to serve the dictates of their religion by assisting their brothers?
Also in Hamburg, what role if any was played by an associate of the hijack pilots named Mohammed bin Nasser Belfas? Belfas, coincidentally or not, was on a trip to the United States in 2000 and applied for and received a Virginia driver's license at the same office and by the same fraudulent means employed by several of the hijackers.
What were the relationships, if any, of the hijackers to other Al Qaeda cells in the United States?
There is little evidence. There was a network of men in Southern California who assisted two hijackers who lived there, but no links between the men who provided the help and Al Qaeda. There are peculiarities, like Atta's trip to Maine, that could be explained by the need to meet contacts, but no known evidence to support such supposition.
The most readily accepted explanation of the Maine trip is that Atta thought he would reduce his exposure to security by going through a smaller airport, and Portland was the nearest airport with regular service to Boston. The opposite appears to have happened. Rather than reducing his security exposure, Atta doubled it, passing through security checkpoints in Maine and in Boston.
Different hijackers made numerous trips to Las Vegas. Again, there is no evidence that they met other parties there, but no compelling explanation of why they went or what they did there.
What was the role, if any, of Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman originally accused in U.S. courts of being the so-called 20th hijacker?
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said Moussaoui had no intended role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Others still think he might have been a potential pilot replacement. The title of 20th hijacker has subsequently been passed on to a series of men, including Binalshibh, who intended to become a pilot but could not receive a U.S. visa; Zakariya Essabar, a Hamburg associate who also applied unsuccessfully for visas; one of Mohammed's nephews who also was turned down for a visa; and a Saudi man turned away at immigration in Florida.
If Moussaoui was intended to be part of a second wave, what happened to it? Mohammed said he originally intended to plan more attacks, but became too busy. This conveniently eliminated the need to identify who would have carried them out.
When did the Germany-based pilots first go to Afghanistan? Did Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden really choose them for their roles in the attack based on a single meeting when the plot was already in motion in late 1999, as the 9/11 commission report maintains? There are implications that at least some of the Hamburg men traveled to Afghanistan to train in the Al Qaeda camps prior to this, but little evidence.
How did Marwan Al-Shehhi, one of the Germany-based pilots, meet the others? He lived in Bonn, hundreds of miles from Hamburg, then suddenly appeared in Hamburg as a close associate and housemate of Atta and Binalshibh. One possible explanation is that Shehhi met the others during earlier trips to Al Qaeda camps.
Why did Al-Shehhi fly to Morocco in January 2001, and to Egypt in April?
Were Binalshibh and hijacker Khalid Almihdhar involved in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen? Both were in Yemen when the attack occurred in October 2000.
Why do officials of the United Arab Emirates continue to insist that they questioned hijacker Ziad Samir Jarrah at U.S. request in January 2001, when he was en route from Pakistan to Germany immediately after meeting with Bin Laden? According to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the Americans have acknowledged to other intelligence services that the UAE informed them of the Jarrah interrogation but said that it was a routine check.
UAE officials said the interrogation was hardly routine, that it lasted several hours and Jarrah told them he was about to travel to America to learn to fly. The officials said they passed this information to the U.S., but would not say to whom specifically, and that the Americans told them not to hold Jarrah.
What were the roles of Essabar and fellow Hamburg resident Said Bahaji, both of whom fled Hamburg to Afghanistan in the days prior to Sept. 11 and are presumed alive and at large?
Why on the morning of Sept. 11 did the State Department watch list have 61,000 names on it and the Federal Aviation Administration's no-fly list have 12 names? The FAA maintains it could not economically employ a list as large as that maintained by the State Department.
One of the most closely examined aspects of the Sept. 11 plot was a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. American intelligence agencies had advance notice of the meeting and tracked at least two of its participants to Malaysia - Almihdhar and fellow hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi. Beyond saying they lost track of them afterward, the CIA has not given a satisfying explanation of how agents let them slip away. Neither has there been any explanation of how it came to pass that Almihdhar was met upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur by an Iraqi national employed as a greeter at the airport.
9/11 probe?
The joke’s on us
6.7 million Americans are in jail, but Kean panel refused to investigate the
crime; worse, alternative explanations fail to convince public that coverup
happened
By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net
In a country that spends billions of dollars on its prisons, babbles
incessantly about law and order, and now has 6.7 million of its citizens behind
bars, in the case of the greatest crime in its history — the 9/11 attacks in New
York and Washington — the official panel appointed by the president to
investigate this catastrophic caper decided that finding out who really did it
was unimportant, and devoted no time to pursuing the matter.
Hello?
Let me say it again. Every politician in America campaigns using rabid
law-and-order, anti-terror rhetoric, and applauds the pathetic fact that the
U.S. spends much more money on jails than it does on schools. Putting criminals
in jail is a top priority for all aspiring political candidates. Yet when it
came to conducting a competent investigation of the greatest crime in American
history, the panel, which was appointed by the very thugs who many consider to
be the real perpetrators of the entire tragedy, made no effort to find out who
the guilty parties actually were. Instead, a seedy group of compromised
political functionaries relied on baseless and unsubstantiated fictions by the
patrician powermongers who run the U.S., and conducted no real investigation at
all.
What is wrong with this picture?
OK, for you TV-ized dullards out there, I'm going to run through this wretched
riddle one more time.
Because of the profits now being exploited by conducting legitimate businesses
but using prison labor at 11 cents an hour, America's prison population is the
largest in the world. The central issue in the upcoming presidential election is
national security, and as a result, tens of thousands of innocent people are
incarcerated as a result of this consciously constructed paranoid phobia of
pre-emptive (and selective) justice.
And yet, the very men who preach these law and order mantras are the same
manipulators who ordered the Kean commission NOT to look for the real culprits
of 9/11. They were told to declare at the outset of their so-called
deliberations that Arabs in caves did it, that there was plenty of evidence, but
that this evidence couldn't be revealed because of national security issues.
This contemporary brand of unconstitutional vigilante justice, a result of this
very crime, had recently been legalized when the contrived passage of the
Patriot Act destroyed virtually all the Constitutional legal protections
Americans had previously enjoyed, including the presumption of innocence, the
right to a fair trial, the right to confront one's accusers, and the right to a
lawyer.
With the basic freedoms Americans have always counted on lying in tiny pieces in
a dumpster in Washington, it was easy — it followed naturally — for President
Bush and his snide accomplices to command the panel investigating the crime that
was used as a pretense to destroy America's legal system to ignore any pursuit
of those who might have been involved in the grand 9/11 deception and simply
declare, on the basis of so-called evidence that these crooks themselves
provided, that they knew who the guilty parties were. And the panel did just
that. You have seen its final report. No one is to blame for 9/11. It's no one's
fault. Muslims did it. And that’s that.
Tell it to the 6.7 million people in American jails.
Tell them that a majority of Americans accept the silly notion that 19 Arabs
took command of four airliners and killed more than 3,000 people, even though no
fewer than eight of these 19 alleged mass murders have been found to be alive —
content, breathing and happily living in various countries overseas, and yet the
FBI brazenly refuses to revise its list of perpetrators. People serving time for
identity theft ought to get a big kick of out that one.
Tell the convicted arsonists you find languishing in the American gulag that
jetliner fuel (kerosene) fires can completely demolish three steel-frame
skyscrapers in a single day, even though it had never happened before in history
to even one building. That ought to light up their day.
Especially tell the thousands of Muslims still incarcerated on bogus charges —
possibly some of whom have had relatives blown to bits in Iraq for no other
reason than profits for Halliburton and Bechtel — that devout Islamic hijackers
always go to strip clubs, snort cocaine, and consort with prostitutes shortly
before they kill themselves for Allah in a jihad against those whose freedom
they hate.
And for those thugs doing time for battery, tell them the story that five
desperadoes with boxcutters (BOXCUTTERS, you know, those little utility knives
you use to open UPS packages) paralyzed with fear all the passengers on an
airliner (on four different planes!) to the point where the timid travelers were
willing to give up their lives because of those little blades. Puh-leeze tell
them that!
All right. Enough of that. What an indictment of the American educational system
that a majority (apparently) has accepted the clumsy lies mouthed by the neocons
and now most people believe the hollow report dutifully churned out by the Kean
commission. But plenty of investigative analysts brighter than me have already
commented on that.
You know what’s turning out to be the real joke? The inept attempts of so-called
9/11 researchers like me to articulately and convincingly rebuke and disprove
propaganda that is so blatantly bogus. After almost three years, and despite the
profound clumsiness and transparency of the outright lies that have been told
about the reasons for war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the so-called 9/11 truth
movement has spectacularly failed to convince the American people their
government is lying to them about almost everything, especially everything
concerning 9/11.
Sure, most of the researchers are as broke as me, and have had to cobble
together their facts and refutations while trying to stay alive and support
families. And also for sure, too few people have even attempted to ask the right
questions, analyze the false stories, or question the obvious coverups like the
carting away of the evidence without proper forensic examination.
Absolutely for sure, no one with any serious money has made an attempt to join
the 9/11 truth movement, only tens of thousands of little people, who with ten
or a hundred bucks at a time have tried to support those trying to ferret out
the real story, the actual facts.
Considering the millions being squandered on that superficial and ultimately
meaningless Democratic National Convention this week, we could have predicted
the outcome — the coverup always wins, because the coverup always has the real
money on its side.
But beyond that traditional excuse, and despite dozens of superlative and heroic
efforts by mostly unfinanced individuals — and a few Jews willing to put the
spotlight on Israel figure valiantly in this group — the effort to convince the
public that 9/11 was an inside job has failed. The malignant media mindlock has
prevailed.
With the essentially unopposed publication of the Kean coverup report and those
who continue to protest the dishonest superficiality of the major parties locked
in cages far from the scenes of so-called democratic debate, the game appears to
be over with regard to 9/11, and the U.S. can continue on its path to endless
war accompanied by the cheers of just about the entire American population, or
so the TV wags would tell us.
The 9/11 truth movement must now be content with rented meeting halls in cheap
hotels, just down the hall from the JFK group, to discuss their theories and
vent their spleens, as truth and justice are left for dead by the side of the
road, just like they always have been throughout American history.
Among the things you might want to mention to those occupants of American
prisons — a group many of us are likely to join in the coming years if current
trends toward suppression of free speech continue — are certain events in the
attempt to expose the 9/11 coverup that were curious in the extreme
Convicted embezzlers from Danbury to San Quentin would chuckle at the story
about the most famous of 9/11 investigators, Mike Ruppert himself, who says that
we should stop looking for the real perpetrators of the greatest crime in
American history — the rich psychos who made millions off pre-9/11 stock trades
— because they can’t be pursued due to international banking laws which don’t
permit revealing their names, and there’s no sense beating our heads against the
wall.
Ironically, it was Ruppert’s story that got us started on this path of
suspicion, but now he’s saying don’t pursue it because it’s against the law, in
spite of the fact that the names of these despicable people — who knew what was
going to happen on 9/11 in advance — are most likely to lead us to the real
criminals who planned and executed this horror. It seems to me that laws like
this — laws that allow criminals to hide behind convenient screens in the name
of profit – are simply made to be broken, in the overriding interest of justice.
Screw the bankers. They’re the enemies of all humanity.
This isn’t the only flaw in Ruppert’s recent efforts, as he has effectively
hijacked a large segment of the 9/11 truth movement into a discussion of peak
oil concerns, and his message, often indistinguishable from oil company
propaganda, sounds more like an excuse for war than it does an indictment of
those waging these unjustifiable wars against innocent countries.
The remainder of the 9/11 truth movement — or at least that part of it that
aspires toward serious analysis as opposed to that segment opportunistically
trying to acquire political influence — has pretty much split down the middle —
between empirical and seemingly provable observations and fantastic analyses of
various videos of the tragedies.
Most recently Phil Jayhan’s letsroll911.org has issued some astounding
assertions about replacement planes with no windows firing missiles at the South
Tower just before it hit that has attracted a lot of attention. Jayhan’s
offerings are similar to the earlier hologram conclusions offered by The
Webfairy, and the topper in this category is Scott Loughrey’s recent
articulation of his no-planes theory that asserts 9/11 was all done with mirrors
(and explosives in the buildings; that part, nobody I know disagrees with).
It is not my intention to agree or disagree with these highly improbable
theories, because I will not pretend to possess the technical expertise in film
analysis that they claim to possess. In addition, each of them has made valuable
contributions in other aspects of the 9/11 myth debunking that has earned the
respect of many. That also goes for a number of people who support their
conclusions, particularly Gerard Holmgren and Leonard Spencer, and other very
reputable analysts of the collective body of evidence that has been gathered
refuting the government’s falsehood-riddled version of what happened on that
fateful day.
But it is my intention to say these fanciful speculations have destroyed the
9/11 truth movement, and ruined any opportunity for the public to unite behind a
consensus alternative version of what really happened, which is surely not what
the government said happened.
The higher goal of disproving the lies we have been told has been betrayed and
squandered by those who value the novel shock value of their own suspect pet
theories and questionable high-tech revelations.
The real purpose of researching 9/11 is to find out who really did it, and to
that end, what was needed was a coherent, consensus description that would
convince the public mind to effectively protest and overturn the government’s
false story.
With the publication of the Kean report, and its general acceptance by the
public, the best chance for discovering the truth about 9/11 has been lost. We
have all failed. And everyone loses. Everyone except those who made the big
money, the political parasites who profit from suffering and prosecute those
merely trying to discover the truth in a world made mad by money and made
completely dishonest by fear of telling the truth and standing together against
this senseless insanity.
What we have to look forward to because of all this I’d rather not think about
right now.
John Kaminski is the author of “America’s Autopsy Report,” a collection of his
Internet essays seen on hundreds of websites around the world, and also “The Day
America Died: Why You Shouldn’t Believe the Official Version of What Happened on
September 11, 2001,” a 48-booklet written for those who still believe what the
U.S. government says about 9/11. For more information about both, go to
http://www.johnkaminski.com/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm |
Butler's overall finding of a "group think" failure was pure charity. Absurdities like the 45-minute claim were adopted by high-level officials and ministers because those concerned recognised the substantial reason for war - oil. WMD provided only the bureaucratic argument: the real reason was that Iraq was swimming in oil.
Some may still believe the eve-of-war contention by Donald Rumsfeld that "We won't take forces and go around the world and try to take other people's oil ... That's not how democracies operate." Maybe others will go along with Blair's post-war contention: "There is no way whatsoever, if oil were the issue, that it would not have been infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam."
But senior civil servants are not so naive. On the eve of the Butler report, I attended the 40th anniversary of the Mandarins cricket club. I was taken aside by a knighted civil servant to discuss my contention in a Guardian article earlier this year that Sir Humphrey was no longer independent. I had then attacked the deceits in the WMD report, and this impressive official and I discussed the geopolitical issues of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and US unwillingness to build nuclear power stations and curb petrol consumption, rather than go to war.
Saddam controlled a country at the centre of the Gulf, a region with a quarter of world oil production in 2003, and containing more than 60% of the world's known reserves. With 115bn barrels of oil reserves, and perhaps as much again in the 90% of the country not yet explored, Iraq has capacity second only to Saudi Arabia. The US, in contrast, is the world's largest net importer of oil. Last year the US Department of Energy forecast that imports will cover 70% of domestic demand by 2025.
By invading Iraq, Bush has taken over the Iraqi oil fields, and persuaded the UN to lift production limits imposed after the Kuwait war. Production may rise to 3m barrels a day by year end, about double 2002 levels. More oil should bring down Opec-led prices, and if Iraqi oil production rose to 6m barrels a day, Bush could even attack the Opec oil-pricing cartel.
Control over Iraqi oil should improve security of supplies to the US, and possibly the UK, with the development and exploration contracts between Saddam and China, France, India, Indonesia and Russia being set aside in favour of US and possibly British companies. And a US military presence in Iraq is an insurance policy against any extremists in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Overseeing Iraqi oil supplies, and maybe soon supplies from other Gulf countries, would enable the US to use oil as power. In 1990, the then oil man, Dick Cheney, wrote that: "Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well."
In the 70s, the US agreed with Saudi Arabia that Opec oil should be traded in dollars. American governments have since been able to print dollars to cover huge trading deficits, with the further benefit of those dollars being placed in the US money markets. In return, the US allowed the Opec countries to operate a production and pricing cartel.
Over the past 15 years, the overall US deficit with the rest of the world has risen to $2,700bn - an abuse of its privileged currency position. Although about 80% of foreign exchange and half of world trade is in dollars, the euro provides a realistic alternative. Euro countries also have a bigger share of world trade, and of trade with Opec countries, than the US.
In 1999, Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, and in late 2000 Saddam made the switch for Iraqi oil. In early 2002 Bush placed Iran and Iraq in the axis of evil. If the other Opec countries had followed Saddam's move to euros, the consequences for Bush could have been huge. Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US.
Bush had many reasons to invade Iraq, but why did Blair join him? He might have squared his conscience by looking at UK oil prospects. In 1968, when North Sea oil was in its infancy, as private secretary to the minister of power I wrote a report on oil policy, advocating changes like the setting up of a British national oil company (as was done). My proposals found little favour with the BP/Shell-supporting officials, but Richard Marsh, the then minister, pressed them and the petroleum division was expanded into an operations division and a planning division.
Sadly, when I was promoted out of private office the free-trading petroleum officials conspired to block my posting to the planning division, where I would surely have advocated a prudent exploitation of North Sea resources to reduce our dependence on the likes of Iraq. UK North Sea oil output peaked in 1999, and has since fallen by one-sixth. Exports now barely cover imports, and we shall shortly be a net oil importer. Supporting Bush might have been justified on geo-strategic grounds.
Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?
If the latter, we should follow that up by adopting the pious aims of UN oversight of world oil exploitation within a world energy plan, and the replacement of the dollar with a new reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies.
· John Chapman is a former assistant secretary in the civil service, in which he served from 1963-96
|
Published on Friday, July 30, 2004 Moore Blasts Mainstream Media 'Fahrenheit 9/11' filmmaker labels Bush and his supporters 'hate-triots' Crimson Staff Writer Despite the combined appeal of former Vermont Gov. Howard B. Dean and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, controversial filmmaker Michael Moore—the director of the box-office hit Fahrenheit 9/11, which casts a sharply critical eye on President Bush and his policies—upstaged them as the main attraction at Tuesday’s “Take America Back” events, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future. Eagerly awaiting Moore’s arrival, the crowd at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge grew restless and began to cheer his name after the filmmaker did not appear at his scheduled time. Chants of “Michael! Michael!” erupted as event organizers, who first shuffled the order of several other speakers, were eventually reduced to stalling by listing the names of liberal websites while Moore used the rest room before his speech. When Moore finally arrived, well over an hour late, he wasted no time in berating the mass media. “The obvious bad guy in [Fahrenheit 9/11] is George W. Bush. But there’s the unstated villain in the film, which is the national media,” he said. “It outs them as people who are cheerleaders to this war. It outs them as journalists who fell asleep on the job, journalists who didn’t ask the tough questions.” Moore said members of the news media would have been patriotic to question the Bush administration, rather than succumb to pressure from the White House. “To the members of the press in the audience: We need you to do your jobs,” Moore said, prompting an ovation. “You do us no service by hopping on a bandwagon.” “You can ask any question you want and not get arrested,” Moore continued. “So what has prevented you from asking the questions?” Moore said that he heard this week from a prominent talk show host who was admonished by Vice President Dick Cheney’s office for using an unfavorable tone while discussing the Iraq invasion. Moore pledged to tell the TV host’s story by the end of the week on his website if that host did not come forward. Referring to the media’s war coverage, Moore added, “You haven’t just been embedded. You’ve been in bed with the wrong people.” After finishing up his assault on the media, Moore said he thought high voter turnout could lead to a presidential win for Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass. “I believe we will have the largest percentage of people voting in our lifetime on November 2,” Moore said. Moore—who said the country is not in fact evenly ideologically divided, but liberal—said the increased voter turnout would help Democrats. Moore even predicted that “good Republicans” might launch a Republicans for Kerry movement to protest Bush administration policies. “The good news is things are going to change soon,” Moore said. Moore said he did not blame Kerry for voting to go to war in Iraq because he said Kerry was misled by Bush to believe that Iraq posed an imminent threat. “One thing I do know about Kerry—he will not invade a country the way Bush did,” Moore said. Although Moore did not spend much time praising Kerry, he said he opposed the efforts of independent candidate Ralph Nader and those considering voting for him. Many political analysts believe that left-wing support for Nader contributed to the electoral defeat former Vice President Al Gore ’69 suffered in 2000 and could do the same to Kerry this year. Moore said Nader already accomplished his goal of pushing the Democratic Party to the left after 2000. This year, liberals should unite behind the goal of voting Bush out of the presidency, Moore said. “My appeal to the Nader voters is we have a different job to do this year,” Moore said. But Moore added, “We need to give those who are thinking of voting for Nader a reason to vote for John Kerry.” Moore urged the Democratic candidate to take tough and principled stands, lest he lose votes to Nader and cause apathy among the public. Throughout his speech, Moore also continued his trend of attacking the Bush presidency and its supporters, labeling them unpatriotic. “They’re not patriots—they’re hate-triots, and they believe in the politics of hate-triotism,” Moore said to a somewhat befuddled audience. Moore also attacked the war in Iraq. “The way you don’t support the troops is to send them into harm’s way when it isn’t necessary,” Moore said. Moore wrapped up his critiques by making fun of an incident in which Bush was hospitalized after choking on a pretzel. Moore said NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. advised all Americans on national television to watch Fahrenheit 9/11. “I said a little prayer for George W. Bush,” Moore said. “I hope he’s not watching this race right now and eating a pretzel.” —Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.
|
From: "Jon Presco" <montrose44@c...>
Date: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:15 am
Subject: Officer says Bush allowed 911
http://www.rense.com/general40/ecor.htm
Air Force Officer Delivers
Blistering Excoriation Of Bush
Says Bush is Responsible for September 11th Attacks
By Jerry Isaacs
8-11-3
A US Air Force officer in California recently accused President Bush
of deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks to take
place. The officer has been relieved of his command and faces
further discipline. The controversy surrounding Lt. Col. Steve
Butler's letter to the editor, in which he affirmed that Bush did
nothing to warn the American people because he "needed this war on
terrorism," received scant coverage in the media.
Universally ignored by the press, however, was that the officer was
not merely expressing a personal opinion. He was in a position to
have direct knowledge of contacts between the US military and some
of the hijackers in the period before the terrorist attacks that
destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
Lieutenant Colonel Butler, who wrote in a letter to the editor of
the Monterey County Herald charging that "Bush knew about the
impending attacks," was vice chancellor for student affairs at the
Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California " a US military
facility that one or more of the hijackers reportedly attended
during the 1990s. In his May 26 letter to the newspaper, Butler
responded to Bush supporters, who had written the paper opposing the
congressional investigation into the September 11 events. He wrote:
"Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on
America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he
needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed
Osama. His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn't elected by the
American people, but placed in the Oval Office by a conservative
supreme court. The economy was sliding into the usual Republican
pits and he needed something on which to hang his presidency....
This guy is a joke. What is sleazy and contemptible is the President
of the United States not telling the American people what he knows
for political gain."
The letter provoked immediate retaliation against the 24-year Air
Force veteran. Butler was transferred from the Monterey installation
and threatened with court martial under Article 88 of the military
code, which prohibits officers from publicly using "contemptuous
words" against the president and other officials.
Last week the Air Force announced it had concluded its investigation
of the case and suggested Butler would likely face "nonjudicial
punishment," such as a fine or a letter of reprimand, rather than a
stiffer sentence. If he refuses this punishment, however, Butler,
who is ready to retire, could still face a court martial.
The issue is a particularly sensitive one for the Pentagon and the
Bush administration. While many people believe that the Bush
administration viewed September 11 as a priceless opportunity to
implement an ultra-reactionary program of militarism and repression,
Butler is different. His military assignment brought him into
contact with at least one of the alleged hijackers.
Shortly after September 11, several US news outlets reported that
Saeed AlghamdiÑnamed as taking part in the hijacking of United
Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in western PennsylvaniaÑhad taken
courses at the Defense Language Institute, the US military's primary
foreign language facility, where Butler was a leading officer
overseeing students (essentially, dean of students).
Alghamdi, a 41-year-old Saudi national, was one of several alleged
hijackers, including accused ringleader Mohamed Atta, who reportedly
trained at US military facilities, according to a series of articles
published between September 15 and 17 in the Washington Post,
Newsweek magazine, the New York Times and several other newspapers.
On September 15, Newsweek reported: "U.S. military sources have
given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged
hijackers of the planes used in Tuesday's terror attacks received
training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s."
The magazine said that Saeed Alghamdi was among three who had taken
flight training at the Navy Air Station in Pensacola, FloridaÑknown
as the "cradle of US Navy aviation"Ñwhich also administers training
of foreign aviation students for the Navy. The magazine, citing "a
high-ranking Pentagon official" as its source, reported that two
othersÑboth former Saudi air force pilots who had come to the
USÑalso attended such facilities. One received tactical training at
the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama and the other language
training at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Over
the next few days, more detailed information appeared in several
other newspapers. A September 16 article in the New York Times
reported:
"Three of the men identified as the hijackers in the attacks on
Tuesday have the same names as alumni of American military schools,
the authorities said today. The men were identified as Mohamed Atta,
Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi.
"The Defense Department said Mr. Atta had gone to the International
Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama; Mr. al-Omari
to the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas;
and Mr. al-Ghamdi to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio
in Monterey, Calif."
The Knight Ridder news service also reported that Saeed Alghamdi had
been to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and the
Associated Press cited Air Force sources indicating that more than
one of the hijackers may have received language training at the
installation. The media dropped the story after the Air Force
officials issued a cursory statement aimed at preventing any further
inquiry into links between the US military and the terrorists. While
acknowledging that some of the suspected terrorists "had similar
names to foreign alumni of U.S. military courses," the statement
said discrepancies in biographical information, such as birth dates
and name spellings, "indicate we are probably not talking about the
same people." Without providing any substantiation, the statement
suggested the hijackers may have stolen the identities of foreign
military personnel who received training at the bases.
Following this less than convincing explanation, the Air Force
refused to release the ages, countries of origin or any other
information about the individuals whose names matched those of the
alleged hijackersÑmaking it virtually impossible to verify the claim
that these were not the same individuals.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI also refused to make
public any information. Asked by Florida Senator Bill Nelson whether
any of the hijackers were trained at the Pensacola base, the Justice
Department refused to give a definitive answer, and the FBI said it
could not respond until it could "sort through something complicated
and difficult," according to the senator's representative.
To receive such training, the hijackers would have had connections
to Arab governments that enjoyed close relations with the US
government. A former Navy pilot at the Pensacola air station told
Newsweek that during his years on the base, "We always, always,
always trained other countries' pilots. When I was there two decades
ago, it was Iranians. The Shah was in power. Whoever the country du
jour is, that's whose pilots we train."
Military officials acknowledged that the US has a longstanding
agreement with Saudi Arabia to train pilots for the kingdom's
national guard. Candidates receive air combat training and other
courses on several Army and Navy bases, in a program paid for by
Saudi Arabia. Significantly 15 of the 19 hijackers were believed to
be Saudi nationals.
According to its web site, the Defense Language Institute Foreign
Language Center in MontereyÑfounded in 1946 as the Military
Intelligence Service Language SchoolÑ"provides foreign language
services to Department of Defense, government agencies and foreign
governments" to support "national security interests and global
operational needs."
As vice chancellor for student affairs, Butler had extensive contact
with students, according to Pete Randazzo, a close associate of the
officer and president of the National Association of Government
Employees Local 1690, which represents civilian employees at the
language school.
"He would go and have lunch with the students, sit in their
classrooms. He was a very caring officer over there," Randazzo told
the Herald. Butler was also navigator of a B-52 bomber during the
Persian Gulf War, which made it likely he was familiar with Saudi
military operations, given the close relations between the US and
Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 war against Iraq.
In the 1990s, several officers were disciplined under Article 88 of
the military code for publicly denouncing Clinton, including an Air
Force general who went so far as to ridicule the president as a "gay-
loving, pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer" in front of 250 people
at an awards banquet.
With Butler's comments, however, the Pentagon faces a more delicate
problem. The Lieutenant Colonel may well know considerably more than
he is saying about US military-intelligence apparatus involvement in
the September 11 events, and, on the eve of his retirement, took the
opportunity to set the record straight.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mcherald/3406502.htm
LetsRoll911.org Article - Flight 93 Shot Down
LetsRoll911.org has discovered that Fight 93 was definitely shot down.
LetsRoll has discovered the name of the pilot as well as all other pertinent information regarding this incident;
"At precisely 0938 hours, an alarm was sounded at Langely Air Force Base, and those whom were on call, drinking coffee, were scrambled. Thus the 119th Fighter Wing was off for an intercept.
They, the Happy Hooligans, a unit of 3 F-16 aircraft, were ordered to head toward Pennsylvania. At 0957 they spotted their target; After confirmation orders were received, A one Major Rick Gibney fired two sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in mid flight at precisely 0958;
He was awarded a medal from the Governor one year later for his heroic actions. As well as Decorated by Congress on 9/13/2001. The Happy Hooligans were previously stationed in North Dakota, and moved to Langley Air Force base some months before 911 occured on a "Temporary assignment."
Rick Gibney - 119th Fighter Wing - Happy Hooligans
Rick Gibney, as identified on http://www.f16viper.org
His picture and unit is the last picture to load on the bottom right at this link, with their names in the caption, Rick Gibney being the 4th from the left. http://www.f16viper.org/pictures.htm
Major Rick Gibney did as he was ordered and did nothing criminal. He was merely following orders, of which he had no choice. Please do not harrass this man or bother him for doing what his CO & ultimately George Bush, ordered him to do. Major Rick Gibney has no reason to feel guilty nor regret following orders. The fault lies with his superiors, and a one, certain President George Bush who planned and engineered 911. Please do not heap any kind of abuse onto this man, a crack fighter pilot, one of the best in our nation, for doing what he was trained and ordered to do. He is a good man, honest and full of Integrity as well as unlimited discipline. He is a patriot, and was lied to and deceived.
He had no way to know that this plane wasn't a 'hostile.' Nor could he have. The fault lies with his superiors, and President George 'Dubya' Bush.
Flight 93 has now been forever solved by truth, and honest reporting and investigating, from letsroll911.org!
Major Rick Gibney, please do not read this as anything but the truth that the world deserves to know as true history. You played a part, but it was your superiors who deceived both you and everyone else regarding Flight 93. I didn't relish printing your name, as your innocent of any evil doing. yet it's history, and truth, and the world deserves to know.
And your safer now that this truth is out there, than if it was not.
But the world would appreciatte an honest reply and statement from you on this issue, but only when your able and ready.
The source of this information Mr. Gibney was very careful to point out your high quality of charachter and lack of malice or malfeasance in these issues. Your integrity is no way harmed by these revelations, as you were ignorant of the total picture of what was happening that day, and following orders as you were trained to do in an emergency.
I apologize for having to print your name, but felt it neccessary for both the truth to come forward, and your own safety.
Major Rick Gibney..."Lets Roll"
Time to let the truth out and the perps hang. If this means a coup then so be it. As long as the coup is meant to restore the constitution which was shredded like toilet paper on a bums ass by George W. Bush.
It is ironic that it was this website, "LetsRoll911.org" which brought this story to light and broke the news. After all we hijacked our name from those who stole it (Busch & Co), from those who were 'alleged' to have tried to regain the aircraft from the 'alleged hijackers, which didn't exist, and are not even listed on the Official flight manifests. Thus it is both fitting, and Ironic that it was "LetsRoll911.org" which broke this news of Flight 93's final moments, The Shoot Down of Flight 93. And all in order to awaken people on the Internet, not to endless questions and debate, and bickering over the finer details, but to action to take back our hijacked government, for the time is short, and the days are evil. Those who did such a thing on 911, have gotten away with it for almost 3 years now, and those who get away with such things, always do them again. So watch the 'Homeland Security' warning system for the masses, as after all, aren't they the ones who best know when 'they' are going to strike again? It certainly is no coincidence that Tom Ridge was Governor of the State of Pennslyvania, where flight 93 was shot down by the Happy Hooligans, and then immedietly made to be the "Czar of Homeland Security."
The 9/11 Report: A Dissent
August 29, 2004
By RICHARD A. POSNER
The idea was sound: a politically balanced, generously
financed committee of prominent, experienced people would
investigate the government's failure to anticipate and
prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Had the
investigation been left to the government, the current
administration would have concealed its own mistakes and
blamed its predecessors. This is not a criticism of the
Bush White House; any administration would have done the
same.
And the execution was in one vital respect superb: the 9/11
commission report is an uncommonly lucid, even riveting,
narrative of the attacks, their background and the response
to them. (Norton has published the authorized edition;
another edition, including reprinted news articles by
reporters from The New York Times, has been published by
St. Martin's, while PublicAffairs has published the staff
reports and some of the testimony.)
The prose is free from bureaucratese and, for a consensus
statement, the report is remarkably forthright. Though
there could not have been a single author, the style is
uniform. The document is an improbable literary triumph.
However, the commission's analysis and recommendations are
unimpressive. The delay in the commission's getting up to
speed was not its fault but that of the administration,
which dragged its heels in turning over documents; yet with
completion of its investigation deferred to the
presidential election campaign season, the commission
should have waited until after the election to release its
report. That would have given it time to hone its analysis
and advice.
The enormous public relations effort that the commission
orchestrated to win support for the report before it could
be digested also invites criticism -- though it was
effective: in a poll conducted just after publication, 61
percent of the respondents said the commission had done a
good job, though probably none of them had read the report.
The participation of the relatives of the terrorists'
victims (described in the report as the commission's
''partners'') lends an unserious note to the project (as
does the relentless self-promotion of several of the
members). One can feel for the families' loss, but being a
victim's relative doesn't qualify a person to advise on how
the disaster might have been prevented.
Much more troublesome are the inclusion in the report of
recommendations (rather than just investigative findings)
and the commissioners' misplaced, though successful, quest
for unanimity. Combining an investigation of the attacks
with proposals for preventing future attacks is the same
mistake as combining intelligence with policy. The way a
problem is described is bound to influence the choice of
how to solve it. The commission's contention that our
intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame
the structure for the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks,
whether it did or not. And pressure for unanimity
encourages just the kind of herd thinking now being blamed
for that other recent intelligence failure -- the belief
that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
At least the commission was consistent. It believes in
centralizing intelligence, and people who prefer
centralized, pyramidal governance structures to diversity
and competition deprecate dissent. But insistence on
unanimity, like central planning, deprives decision makers
of a full range of alternatives. For all one knows, the
price of unanimity was adopting recommendations that were
the second choice of many of the commission's members or
were consequences of horse trading. The premium placed on
unanimity undermines the commission's conclusion that
everybody in sight was to blame for the failure to prevent
the 9/11 attacks. Given its political composition (and it
is evident from the questioning of witnesses by the members
that they had not forgotten which political party they
belong to), the commission could not have achieved
unanimity without apportioning equal blame to the Clinton
and Bush administrations, whatever the members actually
believe.
The tale of how we were surprised by the 9/11 attacks is a
product of hindsight; it could not be otherwise. And with
the aid of hindsight it is easy to identify missed
opportunities (though fewer than had been suspected) to
have prevented the attacks, and tempting to leap from that
observation to the conclusion that the failure to prevent
them was the result not of bad luck, the enemy's skill and
ingenuity or the difficulty of defending against suicide
attacks or protecting an almost infinite array of potential
targets, but of systemic failures in the nation's
intelligence and security apparatus that can be corrected
by changing the apparatus.
That is the leap the commission makes, and it is not
sustained by the report's narrative. The narrative points
to something different, banal and deeply disturbing: that
it is almost impossible to take effective action to prevent
something that hasn't occurred previously. Once the 9/11
attacks did occur, measures were taken that have reduced
the likelihood of a recurrence. But before the attacks, it
was psychologically and politically impossible to take
those measures. The government knew that Al Qaeda had
attacked United States facilities and would do so again.
But the idea that it would do so by infiltrating operatives
into this country to learn to fly commercial aircraft and
then crash such aircraft into buildings was so grotesque
that anyone who had proposed that we take costly measures
to prevent such an event would have been considered a
candidate for commitment. No terrorist had hijacked an
American commercial aircraft anywhere in the world since
1986. Just months before the 9/11 attacks the director of
the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency
wrote: ''We have, in fact, solved a terrorist problem in
the last 25 years. We have solved it so successfully that
we have forgotten about it; and that is a treat. The
problem was aircraft hijacking and bombing. We solved the
problem. . . . The system is not perfect, but it is good
enough. . . . We have pretty much nailed this thing.'' In
such a climate of thought, efforts to beef up airline
security not only would have seemed gratuitous but would
have been greatly resented because of the cost and the
increased airport congestion.
The problem isn't just that people find it extraordinarily
difficult to take novel risks seriously; it is also that
there is no way the government can survey the entire range
of possible disasters and act to prevent each and every one
of them. As the commission observes, ''Historically,
decisive security action took place only after a disaster
had occurred or a specific plot had been discovered.'' It
has always been thus, and probably always will be. For
example, as the report explains, the 1993 truck bombing of
the World Trade Center led to extensive safety improvements
that markedly reduced the toll from the 9/11 attacks; in
other words, only to the slight extent that the 9/11
attacks had a precedent were significant defensive steps
taken in advance.
The commission's contention that ''the terrorists exploited
deep institutional failings within our government'' is
overblown. By the mid-1990's the government knew that Osama
bin Laden was a dangerous enemy of the United States.
President Clinton and his national security adviser, Samuel
Berger, were so concerned that Clinton, though ''warned in
the strongest terms'' by the Secret Service and the C.I.A.
that ''visiting Pakistan would risk the president's life,''
did visit that country (flying in on an unmarked plane,
using decoys and remaining only six hours) and tried
unsuccessfully to enlist its cooperation against bin Laden.
Clinton authorized the assassination of bin Laden, and a
variety of means were considered for achieving this goal,
but none seemed feasible. Invading Afghanistan to pre-empt
future attacks by Al Qaeda was considered but rejected for
diplomatic reasons, which President Bush accepted when he
took office and which look even more compelling after the
trouble we've gotten into with our pre-emptive invasion of
Iraq. The complaint that Clinton was merely ''swatting at
flies,'' and the claim that Bush from the start was
determined to destroy Al Qaeda root and branch, are belied
by the commission's report. The Clinton administration
envisaged a campaign of attrition that would last three to
five years, the Bush administration a similar campaign that
would last three years. With an invasion of Afghanistan
impracticable, nothing better was on offer. Almost four
years after Bush took office and almost three years after
we wrested control of Afghanistan from the Taliban, Al
Qaeda still has not been destroyed.
It seems that by the time Bush took office, ''bin Laden
fatigue'' had set in; no one had practical suggestions for
eliminating or even substantially weakening Al Qaeda. The
commission's statement that Clinton and Bush had been
offered only a ''narrow and unimaginative menu of options
for action'' is hindsight wisdom at its most fatuous. The
options considered were varied and imaginative; they
included enlisting the Afghan Northern Alliance or other
potential tribal allies of the United States to help kill
or capture bin Laden, an attack by our Special Operations
forces on his compound, assassinating him by means of a
Predator drone aircraft or coercing or bribing the Taliban
to extradite him. But for political or operational reasons,
none was feasible.
It thus is not surprising, perhaps not even a fair
criticism, that the new administration treaded water until
the 9/11 attacks. But that's what it did. Bush's national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, ''demoted'' Richard
Clarke, the government's leading bin Laden hawk and
foremost expert on Al Qaeda. It wasn't technically a
demotion, but merely a decision to exclude him from
meetings of the cabinet-level ''principals committee'' of
the National Security Council; he took it hard, however,
and requested a transfer from the bin Laden beat to
cyberterrorism. The committee did not discuss Al Qaeda
until a week before the 9/11 attacks. The new
administration showed little interest in exploring military
options for dealing with Al Qaeda, and Donald Rumsfeld had
not even gotten around to appointing a successor to the
Defense Department's chief counterterrorism official (who
had left the government in January) when the 9/11 attacks
occurred.
I suspect that one reason, not mentioned by the commission,
for the Bush administration's initially tepid response to
the threat posed by Al Qaeda is that a new administration
is predisposed to reject the priorities set by the one it's
succeeding. No doubt the same would have been true had
Clinton been succeeding Bush as president rather than vice
versa.
Before the commission's report was published, the
impression was widespread that the failure to prevent the
attacks had been due to a failure to collate bits of
information possessed by different people in our security
services, mainly the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. And, indeed, had all these
bits been collated, there would have been a chance of
preventing the attacks, though only a slight one; the best
bits were not obtained until late in August 2001, and it is
unrealistic to suppose they could have been integrated and
understood in time to detect the plot.
The narrative portion of the report ends at Page 338 and is
followed by 90 pages of analysis and recommendations. I
paused at Page 338 and asked myself what improvements in
our defenses against terrorist groups like Al Qaeda are
implied by the commission's investigative findings (as
distinct from recommendations that the commission goes on
to make in the last part of the report). The list is short:
(1) Major buildings should have detailed evacuation plans
and the plans should be communicated to the occupants.
(2) Customs officers should be alert for altered travel
documents of Muslims entering the United States; some of
the 9/11 hijackers might have been excluded by more careful
inspections of their papers. Biometric screening (such as
fingerprinting) should be instituted to facilitate the
creation of a comprehensive database of suspicious
characters. In short, our borders should be made less
porous.
(3) Airline passengers and baggage should be screened
carefully, cockpit doors secured and override mechanisms
installed in airliners to enable a hijacked plane to be
controlled from the ground.
(4) Any legal barriers to sharing information between the
C.I.A. and the F.B.I. should be eliminated.
(5) More Americans should be trained in Arabic, Farsi and
other languages in widespread use in the Muslim world. The
commission remarks that in 2002, only six students received
undergraduate degrees in Arabic from colleges in the United
States.
(6) The thousands of federal agents assigned to the ''war
on drugs,'' a war that is not only unwinnable but probably
not worth winning, should be reassigned to the war on
international terrorism.
(7) The F.B.I. appears from the report to be incompetent to
combat terrorism; this is the one area in which a
structural reform seems indicated (though not recommended
by the commission). The bureau, in excessive reaction to J.
Edgar Hoover's freewheeling ways, has become afflicted with
a legalistic mind-set that hinders its officials from
thinking in preventive rather than prosecutorial terms and
predisposes them to devote greater resources to drug and
other conventional criminal investigations than to
antiterrorist activities. The bureau is habituated to the
leisurely time scale of criminal investigations and
prosecutions. Information sharing within the F.B.I., let
alone with other agencies, is sluggish, in part because the
bureau's field offices have excessive autonomy and in part
because the agency is mysteriously unable to adopt a modern
communications system. The F.B.I. is an excellent police
department, but that is all it is. Of all the agencies
involved in intelligence and counterterrorism, the F.B.I.
comes out worst in the commission's report.
Progress has been made on a number of items on my list.
There have been significant improvements in border control
and aircraft safety. The information ''wall'' was removed
by the USA Patriot Act, passed shortly after 9/11, although
legislation may not have been necessary, since, as the
commission points out, before 9/11 the C.I.A. and the
F.B.I. exaggerated the degree to which they were forbidden
to share information. This was a managerial failure, not an
institutional one. Efforts are under way on (5) and (6),
though powerful political forces limit progress on (6).
Oddly, the simplest reform -- better building-evacuation
planning -- has lagged.
The only interesting item on my list is (7). The F.B.I.'s
counterterrorism performance before 9/11 was dismal indeed.
Urged by one of its field offices to seek a warrant to
search the laptop of Zacarias Moussaoui (a candidate
hijacker-pilot), F.B.I. headquarters refused because it
thought the special court that authorizes foreign
intelligence surveillance would decline to issue a warrant
-- a poor reason for not requesting one. A prescient report
from the Arizona field office on flight training by Muslims
was ignored by headquarters. There were only two analysts
on the bin Laden beat in the entire bureau. A notice by the
director, Louis J. Freeh, that the bureau focus its efforts
on counterterrorism was ignored.
So what to do? One possibility would be to appoint as
director a hard-nosed, thick-skinned manager with a clear
mandate for change -- someone of Donald Rumsfeld's caliber.
(His judgment on Iraq has been questioned, but no one
questions his capacity to reform a hidebound government
bureaucracy.) Another would be to acknowledge the F.B.I.'s
deep-rooted incapacity to deal effectively with terrorism,
and create a separate domestic intelligence agency on the
model of Britain's Security Service (M.I.5). The Security
Service has no power of arrest. That power is lodged in the
Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and if we had our own
domestic intelligence service, modeled on M.I.5, the power
of arrest would be lodged in a branch of the F.B.I. As far
as I know, M.I.5 and M.I.6 (Britain's counterpart to the
C.I.A.) work well together. They have a common culture, as
the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. do not. They are intelligence
agencies, operating by surveillance rather than by
prosecution. Critics who say that an American equivalent of
M.I.5 would be a Gestapo understand neither M.I.5 nor the
Gestapo.
Which brings me to another failing of the 9/11 commission:
American provinciality. Just as we are handicapped in
dealing with Islamist terrorism by our ignorance of the
languages, cultures and history of the Muslim world, so we
are handicapped in devising effective antiterrorist methods
by our reluctance to consider foreign models. We shouldn't
be embarrassed to borrow good ideas from nations with a
longer experience of terrorism than our own. The blows we
have struck against Al Qaeda's centralized organization may
deflect Islamist terrorists from spectacular attacks like
9/11 to retail forms like car and truck bombings,
assassinations and sabotage. If so, Islamist terrorism may
come to resemble the kinds of terrorism practiced by the
Irish Republican Army and Hamas, with which foreign nations
like Britain and Israel have extensive experience. The
United States remains readily penetrable by Islamist
terrorists who don't even look or sound Middle Eastern, and
there are Qaeda sleeper cells in this country. All this
underscores the need for a domestic intelligence agency
that, unlike the F.B.I., is effective.
Were all the steps that I have listed fully implemented,
the probability of another terrorist attack on the scale of
9/11 would be reduced -- slightly. The measures adopted
already, combined with our operation in Afghanistan, have
undoubtedly reduced that probability, and the room for
further reduction probably is small. We and other nations
have been victims of surprise attacks before; we will be
again.
They follow a pattern. Think of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and
the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968. It was known that the
Japanese might attack us. But that they would send their
carrier fleet thousands of miles to Hawaii, rather than
just attack the nearby Philippines or the British and Dutch
possessions in Southeast Asia, was too novel and audacious
a prospect to be taken seriously. In 1968 the Vietnamese
Communists were known to be capable of attacking South
Vietnam's cities. Indeed, such an assault was anticipated,
though not during Tet (the Communists had previously
observed a truce during the Tet festivities) and not on the
scale it attained. In both cases the strength and
determination of the enemy were underestimated, along with
the direction of his main effort. In 2001 an attack by Al
Qaeda was anticipated, but it was anticipated to occur
overseas, and the capability and audacity of the enemy were
underestimated. (Note in all three cases a tendency to
underestimate non-Western foes -- another aspect of
provinciality.)
Anyone who thinks this pattern can be changed should read
those 90 pages of analysis and recommendations that
conclude the commission's report; they come to very little.
Even the prose sags, as the reader is treated to a barrage
of bromides: ''the American people are entitled to expect
their government to do its very best,'' or ''we should
reach out, listen to and work with other countries that can
help'' and ''be generous and caring to our neighbors,'' or
we should supply the Middle East with ''programs to bridge
the digital divide and increase Internet access'' -- the
last an ironic suggestion, given that encrypted e-mail is
an effective medium of clandestine communication. The
''hearts and minds'' campaign urged by the commission is no
more likely to succeed in the vast Muslim world today than
its prototype was in South Vietnam in the 1960's.
The commission wants criteria to be developed for picking
out which American cities are at greatest risk of terrorist
attack, and defensive resources allocated accordingly --
this to prevent every city from claiming a proportional
share of those resources when it is apparent that New York
and Washington are most at risk. Not only do we lack the
information needed to establish such criteria, but to make
Washington and New York impregnable so that terrorists can
blow up Los Angeles or, for that matter, Kalamazoo with
impunity wouldn't do us any good.
The report states that the focus of our antiterrorist
strategy should not be ''just 'terrorism,' some generic
evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic
threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is
the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.'' Is it? Who knows?
The menace of bin Laden was not widely recognized until
just a few years before the 9/11 attacks. For all anyone
knows, a terrorist threat unrelated to Islam is brewing
somewhere (maybe right here at home -- remember the
Oklahoma City bombers and the Unabomber and the anthrax
attack of October 2001) that, given the breathtakingly
rapid advances in the technology of destruction, will a few
years hence pose a greater danger than Islamic extremism.
But if we listen to the 9/11 commission, we won't be
looking out for it because we've been told that Islamist
terrorism is the thing to concentrate on.
Illustrating the psychological and political difficulty of
taking novel threats seriously, the commission's
recommendations are implicitly concerned with preventing a
more or less exact replay of 9/11. Apart from a few
sentences on the possibility of nuclear terrorism, and of
threats to other modes of transportation besides airplanes,
the broader range of potential threats, notably those of
bioterrorism and cyberterrorism, is ignored.
Many of the commission's specific recommendations are
sensible, such as that American citizens should be required
to carry biometric passports. But most are in the nature of
more of the same -- more of the same measures that were
implemented in the wake of 9/11 and that are being refined,
albeit at the usual bureaucratic snail's pace. If the
report can put spurs to these efforts, all power to it. One
excellent recommendation is reducing the number of
Congressional committees, at present in the dozens, that
have oversight responsibilities with regard to
intelligence. The stated reason for the recommendation is
that the reduction will improve oversight. A better reason
is that with so many committees exercising oversight, our
senior intelligence and national security officials spend
too much of their time testifying.
The report's main proposal -- the one that has received the
most emphasis from the commissioners and has already been
endorsed in some version by both presidential candidates --
is for the appointment of a national intelligence director
who would knock heads together in an effort to overcome the
reluctance of the various intelligence agencies to share
information. Yet the report itself undermines this
proposal, in a section titled ''The Millennium Exception.''
''In the period between December 1999 and early January
2000,'' we read, ''information about terrorism flowed
widely and abundantly.'' Why? Mainly ''because everyone was
already on edge with the millennium and possible computer
programming glitches ('Y2K').'' Well, everyone is now on
edge because of 9/11. Indeed, the report suggests no
current impediments to the flow of information within and
among intelligence agencies concerning Islamist terrorism.
So sharing is not such a problem after all. And since the
tendency of a national intelligence director would be to
focus on the intelligence problem du jour, in this case
Islamist terrorism, centralization of the intelligence
function could well lead to overconcentration on a single
risk.
The commission thinks the reason the bits of information
that might have been assembled into a mosaic spelling 9/11
never came together in one place is that no one person was
in charge of intelligence. That is not the reason. The
reason or, rather, the reasons are, first, that the volume
of information is so vast that even with the continued
rapid advances in data processing it cannot be collected,
stored, retrieved and analyzed in a single database or even
network of linked databases. Second, legitimate security
concerns limit the degree to which confidential information
can safely be shared, especially given the ever-present
threat of moles like the infamous Aldrich Ames. And third,
the different intelligence services and the subunits of
each service tend, because information is power, to hoard
it. Efforts to centralize the intelligence function are
likely to lengthen the time it takes for intelligence
analyses to reach the president, reduce diversity and
competition in the gathering and analysis of intelligence
data, limit the number of threats given serious
consideration and deprive the president of a range of
alternative interpretations of ambiguous and incomplete
data -- and intelligence data will usually be ambiguous and
incomplete.
The proposal begins to seem almost absurd when one
considers the variety of our intelligence services. One of
them is concerned with designing and launching spy
satellites; another is the domestic intelligence branch of
the F.B.I.; others collect military intelligence for use in
our conflicts with state actors like North Korea. There are
15 in all. The national intelligence director would be in
continuous conflict with the attorney general, the
secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the secretary of homeland security and the
president's national security adviser. He would have no
time to supervise the organizational reforms that the
commission deems urgent.
The report bolsters its proposal with the claim that our
intelligence apparatus was designed for fighting the cold
war and so can't be expected to be adequate to fighting
Islamist terrorism. The cold war is depicted as a
conventional military face-off between the United States
and the Soviet Union and hence a 20th-century relic (the
21st century is to be different, as if the calendar drove
history). That is not an accurate description. The Soviet
Union operated against the United States and our allies
mainly through subversion and sponsored insurgency, and it
is not obvious why the apparatus developed to deal with
that conduct should be thought maladapted for dealing with
our new enemy.
The report notes the success of efforts to centralize
command of the armed forces, and to reduce the lethal
rivalries among the military services. But there is no
suggestion that the national intelligence director is to
have command authority.
The central-planning bent of the commission is nowhere
better illustrated than by its proposal to shift the
C.I.A.'s paramilitary operations, despite their striking
success in the Afghanistan campaign, to the Defense
Department. The report points out that ''the C.I.A. has a
reputation for agility in operations,'' whereas the
reputation of the military is ''for being methodical and
cumbersome.'' Rather than conclude that we are lucky to
have both types of fighting capacity, the report disparages
''redundant, overlapping capabilities'' and urges that
''the C.I.A.'s experts should be integrated into the
military's training, exercises and planning.'' The effect
of such integration is likely to be the loss of the
''agility in operations'' that is the C.I.A.'s hallmark.
The claim that we ''cannot afford to build two separate
capabilities for carrying out secret military operations''
makes no sense. It is not a question of building; we
already have multiple such capabilities -- Delta Force,
Marine reconnaissance teams, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, the
C.I.A.'s Special Activities Division. Diversity of methods,
personnel and organizational culture is a strength in a
system of national security; it reduces risk and enhances
flexibility.
What is true is that 15 agencies engaged in intelligence
activities require coordination, notably in budgetary
allocations, to make sure that all bases are covered. Since
the Defense Department accounts for more than 80 percent of
the nation's overall intelligence budget, the C.I.A., with
its relatively small budget (12 percent of the total),
cannot be expected to control the entire national
intelligence budget. But to layer another official on top
of the director of central intelligence, one who would be
in a constant turf war with the secretary of defense, is
not an appealing solution. Since all executive power
emanates from the White House, the national security
adviser and his or her staff should be able to do the
necessary coordinating of the intelligence agencies. That
is the traditional pattern, and it is unlikely to be
bettered by a radically new table of organization.
So the report ends on a flat note. But one can sympathize
with the commission's problem. To conclude after a
protracted, expensive and much ballyhooed investigation
that there is really rather little that can be done to
reduce the likelihood of future terrorist attacks beyond
what is being done already, at least if the focus is on the
sort of terrorist attacks that have occurred in the past
rather than on the newer threats of bioterrorism and
cyberterrorism, would be a real downer -- even a tad
un-American. Americans are not fatalists. When a person
dies at the age of 95, his family is apt to ascribe his
death to a medical failure. When the nation experiences a
surprise attack, our instinctive reaction is not that we
were surprised by a clever adversary but that we had the
wrong strategies or structure and let's change them and
then we'll be safe. Actually, the strategies and structure
weren't so bad; they've been improved; further improvements
are likely to have only a marginal effect; and greater
dangers may be gathering of which we are unaware and
haven't a clue as to how to prevent.
Richard A. Posner is a judge on the United States Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a senior lecturer at the
University of Chicago Law School and the author of the
forthcoming book ''Catastrophe: Risk and Response.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/books/review/29POSNERL.html
From nerdmann at Pravda:
|
25 Things We Now Know Three Years After 9/11
August 31, 2004
By Bernard Weiner, The
Crisis Papers
The Republican Party - in a shameless, all-too-obvious attempt to manipulate the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan ends - chose New York City for its nominating convention. Must have seemed like a great idea at the time.
Their coming to Manhattan not only infuriates New Yorkers, who were badly played by Bush&Co. after the attacks, but enables the rest of us in the country to use Ground Zero as the backdrop for examining the gross failures and crimes of the Bush Administration since that tragic day in September 2001.
So, here is an update* of things we've learned during the three years since 9/11 - documented mostly from government papers and respected journalistic accounts - about the Administration that rules in our names. If you find this compendium useful, you might want to make this list available to your friends and colleagues, especially to those still uncertain which presidential candidate they will vote for ten weeks from now.
THE 9/11 ATTACKS/COVERUP
1. Immediately after the destruction of the Twin Towers, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency tested the air in and around Ground Zero. Anxious Lower Manhattan residents, worried about possible airborne toxic particles affecting them and especially their children, were assured by the EPA on September 18 that the tests indicated it was safe for them to return to and live normal lives in their homes and apartments and businesses. It wasn't until two years later that the EPA admitted that they had lied to New Yorkers: The Bush Administration knew from their own test results that the toxicity revealed was way over the safe levels. Typical Bush&Co. pattern: secrecy, lies, denial, coverup.
2. There is no evidence that Bush&Co. ordered Osama bin Laden - who had been on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan when he and his forces were battling the Soviet occupiers - to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Resurgent radical Islam is a genuine phenomenon, with its own religious and political roots. There definitely are Bad Guys out there.
What is well-documented is that the highest circles around Bush were quite aware in the Summer of 2001 - as a result of fairly detailed intelligence frantically being passed on to them by other governments in the months and weeks before 9/11 - that a massive terrorist attack was in the works, which likely would involve hijacked airplanes aimed at icon American economic and political targets. (The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to strike the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc.) Bush went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial jets, etc. The attacks finally came on 9/11.
Bush could have assumed command immediately; instead, 27 minutes went by while he sat in a schoolroom and then posed for photos. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, somewhere on the Pentagon premises, was strangely missing from action, uninvolved in defending the country until after the horrific events had unfolded. Even though the protocols were clear, NORAD could not reach Rumsfeld and did not scramble jets until long after the horrific mass-murder attacks were over. When Bush did emerge from the school, he claims he could not reach Cheney or the White House by phone. (Passengers using cell phones on the final doomed jet had no problems reaching their loved ones and emergency centers all around the country.)
In short, the key Administration officials responsible for protecting America, and coordinating its responses to attacks, were not available, either out of incompetence and confusion or out of more nefarious motives. As Nina Moliver, a 9/11 sleuth puts it, "On 9/11, there was a grand stall. A stall for time. I learned this from a glance at the findings of the 9/11 commission. How could ANYBODY miss it? Bush and Rumsfeld didn't 'fail' on Sept 11. They succeeded masterfully." A bit far out, to be sure, but if the Bush circle knew something was coming that morning - and numerous others did, including the mayor of San Francisco - it's certainly a theory that can't be ruled out.
3. We know that the future neo-conservative architects of Bush foreign/military policy, members of The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), knew that their ideas were too extreme for most Americans to swallow. They noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Again, there is no proof of coordination by the Bush Administration with the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the terrorist attacks, but Bush/Cheney and their closest aides were aware on 9/11 that they now had the "Pearl Harbor" that would clear the way for their agenda to be realized.
4. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities of the Administration, because of "national security." The coverup was beginning.
5. The 9/11 Commission examined how the intelligence community screwed up the pre-9/11 intelligence - thus effectively laying the blame on lower-level agents and officials - but says it won't issue its report on how the Bush Administration used or misused that information until after the election. The coverup continues. Many victims' families are furious.
6. We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The USA PATRIOT Act - composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress - was presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11 attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerge periodically to manipulate the public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible" but unverified evidence; these announcements can be correlated almost exactly to when Bush seems to need a headline to distract the public from yet another scandal or significant drop in the polls.
THE ATTACK ON IRAQ
7. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and White House, and, to a lesser extent, State Department.
They were among the key founders of the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony" - or, in layman's English, a kind of neo-imperalism.
All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late-2002.
8. We know that the Bush Administration was planning to attack Iraq long before 9/11, and that, even though Rumsfeld was told by his intelligence analysts that 9/11 was an al-Qaida operation, he began dragging an attack on Iraq - which had no significant contacts with bin Laden's network - into the war planning. When the traditional intelligence agencies couldn't, or wouldn't, furnish the White House with made-up "facts" to back up an attack on Iraq, Rumsfeld set up his own "intelligence" unit inside his office, the Office of Special Plans, staffed it with political PNAC appointees, and, lo and behold, got the justifications he wanted - which cooked-"intelligence" turned out to be the lies and deceptions that took the U.S. into Iraq.
Note: Rumsfeld's secretive Office of Special Plans, with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and thus to shaping policy toward Iraq and Iran, is implicated in the current, serious scandal involving possible treason (passing classified material to foreign countries, in this case maybe Israel and Iran), with potential links to the slimy double-agent Ahmad Chalabi and others.
9. We know that the Bush Administration felt that it could not get Congressional and public support for its plan to attack Iraq if the true reasons were revealed - to control the massive Iraqi oil reserves, to obtain a military staging base in the region, and to use a U.S.-friendly "democratic" government as a lever to alter the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and beyond. So, according to Wolfowitz, it settled on the one justification they thought would work: accusing Saddam Hussein of preparing to attack his neighbors and the United States with supposed massive stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction." Senators were lied to by Administration briefers, who told them Iraqi drone planes could drop biochemical agents over American cities; Condoleezza Rice warned about "mushroom clouds" over New York and Washington.
Millions of citizens across the globe, and world leaders among our own allies, warned the Bush Administration that an attack on Iraq - a weak country, with no military power to speak of - was wrong, would backfire on the U.S. and world peace, would enrage the Islamic world and produce more terrorist recruits, and would lose America its reputation and its post-9/11 sympathy across the globe. But the Bush Administration had made the essential decision to go to war a year before the invasion ("Fuck Saddam," Bush told three U.S. Senators in March of 2002. "We're taking him out.") And, even though Saddam authorized the United Nations inspectors to return to Iraq to complete their weapons survey, Bush was determined to go to war. Secretary of State Powell was dispatched to the United Nations to outline the U.S. case and obtain authorization; his case was filled with laughably thin and phony intelligence, and the U.N. demurred. Bush launched his attack.
10. We know that no WMDs were discovered. No nuclear program. No missiles aimed at U.S. or British interests. No drone planes. No biochemical weaponry. Bush and his spokesmen then attempted to change the rationale for the war away from those scary WMDs to an implication that Saddam was part of the terrorist network that carried out the 9/11 attacks. There was no convincing proof offered, merely the constant repetition of the non-existent al-Qaida tie - so much so that the Big Lie technique worked early on as 70% of Americans thought there must have been some tie-in to 9/11. The 9/11 Commission verified that there was no such operative connection to al-Qaida. Bush publicly agreed, but Cheney and others even today continue to suggest otherwise. When the American public stopped believing in the al-Qaida/Iraq lie, the rationale for the war was switched again. Now the reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant - an assertion everybody could agree on - though why we toppled this guy and not a half dozen other equally as bad dictators (some of them our close allies) was left unanswered.
We also know that the predictions of our key allies, and those millions in the streets who protested, have come true. The U.S., having had no "post-war" plan, is bogged down in Iraq, facing a nationalist insurgency, and a rebellious religious faction of fighters, with no end in sight; it has lost the countryside and is losing the cities as well. The U.S. has engineered an American-friendly interim government that is locked into the reconstruction contracts that permit huge American corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton - who, quite by coincidence, of course, are huge financial backers of the Bush Administration - to make out like bandits in that country, often with no-bid contracts. The U.S. has at least 14 military bases in Iraq, which it intends to continue using as a military/political lever in reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East - regardless of the costs in lives and treasure, and not caring that its policies with regard to the Palestinian/Israeli problem fan the flames of terrorism in that area of the world, and beyond.
AUTHORITARIAN MANEUVERINGS
11. We know that CIA Director George Tenet fell on his sword, taking the thrust of the bad-intel blame away from Bush. Other elements inside the agency, outraged by Bush&Co. using them as whipping-boys, then began leaking all sorts of damaging information about White House skulduggery. Elements in the State Department, appalled at the neo-cons in control of U.S. military policy at the Pentagon, likewise leaked information damaging to the extremists.
12. We know that once Bush assumed power, he moved to obtain immunity for U.S. officials and troops from international war-crimes prosecutions, pulling America out of the relevant treaties. We didn't know why at the time, but later, after our covert and overt behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq and the tortures scandal erupted, we figured it out.
13. We know that Bush lawyers in the White House and Pentagon (State Department attorneys did not agree) issued memorada that outlined how Bush and other key officials could avoid criminal prospecution for their wartime policies and for advocating use of "harsh interrogation methods" (read: torture) of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan, Iraq and other U.S. facilities around the world. Ignoring the Founders' wise "separation of powers" - designed to keep any leader or branch of government from assuming total control of the levers of powers - the lawyers claimed that whenever Bush acts as "commander in chief" during "wartime," he is above the law. In common parlance, these are rationalizations for authoritarian rule, by dictatorial decrees.
14. We know that the Pentagon was well aware of the tortures at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere - key military reports had been submitted - but the issue was ignored until grisly photographs and videotapes surfaced in public media documenting the "harsh interrogation methods"; some of those methods resulted in a goodly number of deaths to prisoners under U.S. control. Several commissions reported that the rot came from the top at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, but, by and large, only lower-level troops and officers have been disciplined or charged. In the meantime, the humiliating and brutal treatment of Muslim men, women and children in U.S. custody has reverberated throughout the Islamic world, helping create more and more converts to terrorist organizations.
SCANDALS AT HOME
15. In two instances, the Bush Administration, for its own political reasons, compromised American national security by naming key intelligence operatives - one a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, with important contacts in the shadowy world of weapons of mass destruction (outed by two "senior Administration officials," apparently in retaliation for her husband's political comments); revealing the name of a CIA agent is a felony. The other, more recently (apparently to show off how successful they were in their anti-terrorism hunt), was a high-ranking mole close to bin Laden's inner circle, who could have kept the U.S. informed as ongoing and future plans of al-Qaida. That's our anti-terrorism government at work.
16. We know that Karl Rove - Bush's senior political advisor, who along with Dick Cheney, manipulates Bush's strings - has been instrumental in helping get the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" off the ground. Longtime GOP operatives and major Bush donors supplied the money and organizing skill, and then let them loose with their lies - with precious little skepticism displayed by the corporate-owned mass-media. Apparently, at least initially, the Big Lie technique worked once again - though now polls show the smears being doubted - forcing Kerry to stop his attacks on Bush domestic policies and concentrate on damage control. The Kerry campaign took a while to rev up its counter-campaign, bringing in all sorts of eyewitnesses that documented the truth of his heroism in winning his Vietnam medals. Even slimier charges are expected at any moment about Kerry's post-discharge opposition to that war.
PROTECTING THE VOTE
17. We know that even though several large states - among them, California and Ohio - have prohibited computer-voting machines from beng used in the November election, unless there is a voter-verified paper trail, most of the toss-up states will be using the touch-screen, unverified system. This would be suspicious if Democrats or Republicans were in charge of those machines, but in this election it's virtually all Republicans. The three largest makers of the machines are owned by far-right Republicans; those same companies tabulate the results. Republican-leaning companies also control the testing of those machines. In short, it smells rank - especially inasmuch as it's been demonstrated how easily the software can be manipulated, without anybody knowing - and definitely looks as if the fix is in. The CEO of one of the companies, a major "Pioneer" donor to the Bush campaign, promised Bush he would "deliver" his state to the GOP candidate, and Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida has quashed all attempts to stop or alter computer-voting in his state. (Note: The GOP has urged all its members in Florida to vote by absentee ballot, because the machines are "unreliable." Get the picture?)
18. We know that the GOP is trying, by hook or by crook, to lower the number of potential Democrat voters. Attempts have been made to remove thousands of African-American citizens from the rolls (reminiscent of Florida in 2000, where anywhere from 47,000 to 90,000 black voters where disenfranchised), police agents have visited numerous elderly black voters in their rural homes and warned them about possible violence at the polls, a GOP official in Michigan talked about the need to "discourage" the vote in largely-black Detroit, GOP "observers" will stand outside voting places in rural areas as possible intimidators of older black voters, GOP operatives registering new American citizens filled out the paperwork for them and signed them up as Republicans, and so on.
19. We know that Administration lawyers have issued memoranda making it possible for Bush to "postpone" the November election for "anti-terrorist" reasons - say, a major attack or "credible" threat of a major attack. (Note: There has never been a national election postponed, not even during the Civil War.)
20. We know that Administration attorneys have issued memoranda that would make it possible for Bush to be elected by partial voting. That is, he could be elected by voters supporting him, even if citizens in pro-Kerry states were prohibited from voting or having their votes counted. Again, the fig-leaf is "terrorism." If a "red alert" were to be issued for certain areas on November 2 - say, the West Coast and New England states - Bush could, under state-of-emergency declarations, "limit the movement" of citizens in those areas, while the election proceeded as normal elsewhere. A truncated election would be permitted, and, under this scheme, whoever had the most ballots would win.
STARVING THE GOVERNMENT
21. We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. This was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks was growing even larger from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan (other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the economy and creating jobs. In 2004, it's clear that whatever positive "trickle-down" effect the tax refunds may have provided, that impact is no more, and the (jobless) "recovery" is slowing and starting to look recessional again. People need good-paying employment.
22. We know that the hard-right conservatives who control Bush policy don't really care what kind of debt and deficits his policies cause; in some ways, the more the better. They want to decimate and eviscerate popular social programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors), aspects of public education. Since these programs are so well-approved by the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic words of "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going to the public and saying that they'd love to keep the programs intact but they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit, weak economy and "anti-terrorist" wars abroad.
23. We know that Bush environmental policy - dealing with air and water pollution, national park systems, and so on - is an unmitigated disaster, more or less giving free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest.
24. We know from "insider" memoirs and reports by former Bush Administration officials - Joseph DeIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, et al. - that the public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the Bush Administration. The motivating factors are greed and control and remaining in political power. Further, they say, there is little or no curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other opinions - in other words, don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up. Some of this non-curiosity may be based in fundamentalist religious, even Apocalyptic, beliefs.
25. Finally (although we could continue forever detailing the crimes and misdemeanors of this corrupt, incompetent Administration), we know that more and more, the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home - with the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens from a potential repressive government - are taking us into a kind of American fascism at home and an imperial foreign policy overseas.
As a result, we are beginning to see more alliances between liberal/left forces and libertarians traditional conservatives horrified that their party has been hijacked by extremei deologues. If Bush loses his bid for a second term, it will come less from what we progressives do and more from those moderate-to-conservative Republicans and Libertarians, who cannot abide what Bush&Co. have done to their party, their movement, and to this country.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D in government, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers. He is a contributing author to the recently-released Big Bush Lies book.
From: "Jon Presco" <braskewitz@y...>
Date: Wed Sep 1, 2004 9:14 am
Subject: Shocking Poll
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE: Monday, August 30, 2004
Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of
Impending 9-11 Attacks and "Consciously Failed" To Act; 66% Call For
New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York's Attorney
General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals
(Utica, NY) - On the eve of a Republican National Convention
invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New
York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that
some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or
around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act,"
according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of
New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through
Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling
error of +/-3.5.
The poll is the first of its kind conducted in America that surveys
attitudes regarding US government complicity in the 9/11 tragedy.
Despite the acute legal and political implications of this
accusation, nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over 38% of
those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the
claim.
The charge found very high support among adults under 30 (62.8%),
African-Americans (62.5%), Hispanics (60.1%), Asians (59.4%),
and "Born Again" Evangelical Christians (47.9%).
Less than two in five (36%) believe that the 9/11 Commission
had "answered all the important questions about what actually
happened on September 11th," and two in three (66%) New Yorkers (and
56.2% overall) called for another full investigation of the "still
unanswered questions" by Congress or Elliot Spitzer, New York's
Attorney General. Self-identified "very liberal" New Yorkers
supported a new inquiry by a margin of three to one, but so did half
(53%) of "very conservative" citizens across the state. The call for
a deeper probe was especially strong from Hispanics (75.6%), African-
Americans (75.3%) citizens with income from $15-25K (74.3%), women
(62%) and Evangelicals (59.9%).
W. David Kubiak, executive director of 911truth.org, the group that
commissioned the poll, expressed genuine surprise that New Yorkers'
belief in the administration's complicity is as high or higher than
that seen overseas. "We're familiar with high levels of 9/11
skepticism abroad where there has been open debate of the evidence
for US government complicity. On May 26th the Toronto Star reported
a national poll showing that 63% of Canadians are also convinced US
leaders had 'prior knowledge' of the attacks yet declined to act.
There was no US coverage of this startling poll or the facts
supporting the Canadians' conclusions, and there has been virtually
no debate on the victim families' scores of still unanswered
questions. I think these numbers show that most New Yorkers are now
fed up with the silence, and that politicians trying to exploit 9/11
do so at their peril. The 9/11 case is not closed and New York's
questions are not going away."
Nicholas Levis of NY911truth.org, an advisor on the poll,
agrees, "The 9/11 Commission gave us a plenty of 'recommendations',
but far more plentiful were the discrepancies, gaps and omissions in
their supposedly 'final' report. How can proposals based on such
deficient findings ever make us safe? We think these poll numbers
are basically saying, 'Wait just a minute. What about the scores of
still outstanding questions? What about the unexplained collapses of
WTC 7, our air defenses, official accountability, the chain of
command on 9/11, the anthrax, insider trading & FBI field probes?
There's so much more to this story that we need to know about.' When
such a huge majority of New Yorkers want a new investigation, it
will be interesting to see how quickly Attorney General Spitzer and
our legislators respond."
SCOPE: The poll covered five areas of related interest: 1) Iraq - do
New Yorkers think that our leaders "deliberately misled" us before
the war (51.2% do); 2) the 9/11 Commission - did it answer all
the "important questions" (only 36% said yes); 3) the inexplicable
and largely unreported collapse of the third WTC skyscraper on 9/11 -
what was its number (28% of NYC area residents knew); 4) the
question on complicity; and 5) how many wanted a new 9/11 probe. All
inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be
directed to Zogby International.
SPONSOR: 911truth.org is a coalition of researchers, journalists and
victim family members working to expose and resolve the hundreds of
critical questions still swirling around 9/11, especially the nearly
400 questions that the Family Steering Committee filed with the 9/11
Commission which they fought to create. Initially welcomed by the
commissioners as a "road map" for their inquiry, these queries cut
to the heart of 9/11 crimes and accountability. Specifically, they
raised the central issues of motive, means and cui bono (who
profited?). But the Commission ignored the majority of these
questions, opting only to explore system failures, miscommunications
and incompetence. The victim families' most incisive issues remain
unaddressed to this day. The Zogby International poll was also
cosponsored by Walden Three (walden3.org) and 9/11 Citizens Watch
(911citizenswatch.org), a watchdog group which has monitored the
Commission since its inception and will release its findings, "The
9/11 Omission Report," in several weeks.
On September 9th and 11th, 911Truth.org will cosponsor two large
successive inquiries in New York, a preliminary 9/11 Citizens
Commission hearing and "Confronting the Evidence: 9/11 and the
Search for Truth," a research-focused evidentiary forum. These
inquiries will examine many of the 9/11 Commission-shunned questions
and discuss preparation of a probable cause complaint demanding a
grand jury and criminal investigation from the New York Attorney
General. Possible charges range from criminal negligence and gross
dereliction of duty to foreknowledge, complicity and subsequent
obstruction of justice. For details and developments, see
www.911truth.org. For press info, contact Kyle Hence 212-243-7787
kylehence@e...
Zogby International conducted interviews of 808 adults chosen at
random in New York State. All calls were made from Zogby
International headquarters in Utica, N.Y., from 8/24/04 through
8/26/04. The margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points. Slight
weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, and gender
to more accurately reflect the population. Margins of error are
higher in sub-groups.
|
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August 28, 2004
By Katherine Yurica
[Editor's note: August 29, 2004. This article should be compared to the statements made by former Bush administration Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neil that the Bush administration began working on war with Iraq from day one of the administration, and with Neil McKay's article in the Sunday Herald, in which he stated Mr. Bush's cabinet voted to go to war with Iraq in April of 2001. For further details read Fraud Traced to the White House by Katherine Yurica.]
In the battle over the release of Dick Cheney’s secret “energy policy” papers, a Department of Commerce numbered document (DOC-013-0056—0074), has come to light. It may explain why Mr. Cheney has fought so hard to keep his energy group’s records from the public. The policy paper dated September 29, 2000 begins to reveal the war against Iraq was carefully developed and planned in increments, including even the detail of introducing the term “weapons of mass destruction.” The document takes the reader back to the campaign of 2000. At stake was the presidency of the United States. During Mr. Bush’s campaigning, he and his team prepared a nineteen page position paper titled, “Comprehensive National Energy Policy.”
So far, there’s nothing surprising in that. One would expect a candidate to address the nation’s energy policies. However, Mr. Bush set a different tone in the first paragraph of his executive summary: “Over the past seven and a half years, our international credibility has been diminished, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is now a major oil supplier to the U.S.”
Mr. Bush blamed the Clinton administration for allowing the country to grow dependent upon foreign oil. He lamented that imports had gone from thirty-six percent in 1973 to a jump to fifty-six percent, “the highest percentage ever.” But his own figures show that under Mr. Clinton’s watch, the rise was only from fifty percent to fifty-six percent.
The report keeps shaking the Saddam Hussein tree in an extremely familiar demonization dance. The document reflects a fixation on Iraq’s growing oil power, which in actual fact was really tiny in comparison to the established world markets. While many Americans would accept that dependence on foreign oil might not be in the best interests of the U.S., Mr. Bush blurred and smudged the statistics here and there, and only later in his report admitted that of all the oil imports only seven percent came from “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
Mr. Bush shows a real talent in his report to hang the necessity to tear up one of America’s most pristine wildlife refuge areas by attaching the whole project to an unrelated evil. He explained that he wanted to promote the development of U.S. oil and gas resources to meet the electricity needs of the new economy. In reaching his goal, Mr. Bush said that he would “open only eight percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” to exploitation, which he indicated was exactly the amount needed to “replace the oil that the U.S. now imports from Iraq.”
Candidate Bush lamented that the Clinton-Gore administration had “squandered U.S. credibility with oil-producing nations in the Persian Gulf” and lost the power to influence OPEC policies. Mr. Bush tied Mr. Clinton’s “failure” to the “increased Iraqi leverage over the U.S. and international economies.” Then once again Mr. Bush turned his attention upon Saddam Hussein, declaring:
“When the Clinton-Gore Administration took office in January of 1993, the Gulf War coalition was intact, economic sanctions were in place against Iraq, UN weapons inspectors were operating in Iraq, there was an active Iraqi opposition, and U.S. influence in the Gulf was at an all-time high. Almost eight years later, due to the failed leadership of the Administration:
“The international coalition assembled during the Gulf War has come apart.
“UN inspectors have not set foot in Iraq for almost two years, failing to monitor any attempts to produce weapons of mass destruction.
“The Administration has spent only a negligible amount of the $97 million appropriated by Congress under the Iraq Liberation Act to support the Iraqi resistance.
“U.S. credibility in the Gulf is so low that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—once critical members of the Gulf War coalition—recently restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
“As U.S. influence in the Gulf has waned, Iraq’s relative influence as an oil supplier to U.S. and world markets has increased:
“Iraq is now the fastest growing oil supplier to the United States, selling 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day to the United States...
“As spare production capacity becomes tighter, Iraq is moving into a position to become an important “swing producer,” with an ability to single handedly impact and manipulate global markets.
“Perhaps most ominously, Saddam Hussein is threatening to cut back production and is again claiming that Kuwait is stealing Iraq’s oil—the same claim Iraq made in 1990.”
In actual fact, Mr. Bush’s words will miraculously reappear in the Baker Institute Report delivered to Mr. Cheney in April of 2001 by James Baker, III (the former Secretary of State and Bush family friend). Mr. Baker’s energy report is discussed in detail in my article, “Fraud Traced to the White House,” which was published at the Yurica Report web site in April of 2003. As one reads Mr. Bush’s report and then compares it to Mr. Baker’s, one soon finds identical phrases appearing in both documents. For instance, notice this sentence from Mr. Bush’s policy paper:
“Iraq is moving into a position to become an important ‘swing producer,’ with an ability to single handedly impact and manipulate global markets.”
Now compare that to this sentence from the later Baker Report:
“Iraq has become a key ‘swing’ producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government.”
Or this sentence also from the Baker Report:
“Over the past year, Iraq has effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so.”
Both documents focus on “weapons of mass destruction.” The Baker Report puts it this way in one of its references:
“Sanctions that are not effective should be phased out and replaced with highly focused and enforced sanctions that target the regime’s ability to maintain and acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
And the Baker Report advises: “The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.”
I think it’s safe to conclude that Mr. Bush’s policy paper is undoubtedly the precursor to the Baker Institute Report.
There is another major discovery I noted from Mr. Bush’s energy policy paper. Here’s evidence that Governor Bush knew he was going to dump the Kyoto treaty while campaigning but managed to keep it a secret from American voters! In his policy paper he wrote:
“Excessive regulation is not the answer. A recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) determined that the combined effect of Administration policies and implementation of the Kyoto global climate treaty would reduce electricity derived from coal in the U.S. from over fifty percent today to less than ten percent by 2020. As a result, electricity prices would increase fifty percent in real terms and a massive investment in natural gas infrastructure would be required to replace the lost coal capacity. EPRI found that substantial emission reductions could be more readily achieved by scheduling emission reductions to coincide with technological advances, but the [Clinton] administration is instead insisting upon substantial reductions before these advances can be reasonably deployed.”
After a man has said that, why need we tend to anything else he should say ever again?
Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, the University of Southern California and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.
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Documents:
The Baker Institute Press Release on the Report
GAO Report to Congress On Energy Task Force
Copyright © 2004 Yurica Report. All rights reserved.
Now, the Precursor:
Fraud Traced to the White House
How California’s
energy scam was inextricably
linked to a war for oil scheme
______________________
By Katherine Yurica
This story begins with the California energy crisis, which started in 2000 and continued through the early months of 2001, when electricity prices spiked to their highest levels. Prices went from $12 per megawatt hour in 1998 to $200 in December 2000 to $250 in January 2001, and at times a megawatt cost $1,000.
One event occurred earlier. On July 13, 1998, employees of one of the two power-marketing centers in California watched incredulously as the wholesale price of $1 a megawatt hour spiked to $9,999, stayed at that price for four hours, then dropped to a penny. Someone was testing the system to find the limits of market exploitation. This incident was the earliest indication that the people and the state could become victims of fraud. The Sacramento Bee broke the story three years later, on May 6, 2001.
Today, Californians are still paying the costs of the debacle while according to state officials the power companies who manipulated the energy markets reaped more than $7.5 billion in unfair profits.
During those early months of the Bush administration, and even during the prior transition period, Dick Cheney was deeply involved in gathering information for a national energy policy. The intelligence he gathered would provide justification for a war against Iraq but would also place White House footprints all over a fraud scam. This is how it all happened.
Enter the Lead Villain
That Ken Lay, the former chairman of Enron, enjoyed a long and close relationship with George Bush senior is a well-known fact. What isn’t so well known is that George W. Bush also benefited from a close relationship with Lay. No one supported the younger Bush quite like Lay. Enron executives contributed more than $2 million to George W. Bush’s political campaigns since 1999, earning Lay an open door to the governor’s office. Lay was also Bush’s number one choice for Treasury Secretary. A study authorized by Rep. Henry Waxman reveals that Enron had 112 known contacts with the Bush administration in 2001. This figure does not include seventy-three disclosed contacts between former Army Secretary Thomas White and his former colleagues at Enron. (Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently fired White.)
Significantly, Ken Lay was also a close friend to Dick Cheney who is a former Enron shareholder. It should come to no one’s surprise that given the relationships, Ken Lay was selected to work on the Bush energy transition team under the chairmanship of Cheney. Lay’s easiest assignment? He interviewed potential candidates for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that would oversee his company (and months later lead a slow, long investigation into Enron’s role in the California energy debacle). The President picked Lay’s nominee, Pat Wood, to serve as chairman of the agency.
Ken Lay was a very useful and a very knowledgeable man to have around. He knew, for instance, of the holes in the California power market that could be exploited. He tried to warn officials about the problem in 1994 when Enron testified at a Public Utility Commission hearing. Unfortunately his advice was ignored. Enron then went with the flow. It reversed itself, endorsed the system, and lauded the politicians for setting up what Enron knew was an exploitable and faulty infrastructure.
As events would unfold, the dark side of Enron got part of its comeuppance when the Justice Department began investigations of Enron’s role in the California energy disaster.
Along with Dynegy and other power brokering companies, Enron employees were subject to federal criminal charges. One Enron employee pleaded guilty to wire fraud while Dynegy agreed to pay $5 million in fines.
Enter A Little Damning Document
In April of 2001, Ken Lay handed Dick Cheney a two-page memorandum recommending national energy policy changes. The memo contained Enron’s positions on specific, rather technical issues, which were presented as a “fix” for the California crisis. (Enron brazenly advised the administration not to place price caps on energy, which would be precisely the request California officials made to the President, and which the President and the Vice President would just as brazenly deny until public pressure forced them to capitulate.)
According to a special report prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, over seventeen energy policies recommended by Enron made their way into the official White House National Energy Policy report.
Congress awoke from its somnambulism, having become alarmed at Enron’s close association with the Bush administration. Congressional committees asked Dick Cheney for the names of those who advised him and the reports he relied upon in drafting the nation’s energy policy. Cheney bluntly and adamantly refused to reveal those facts. After months of standoff, the General Accounting Office (GAO) filed a suit against the Vice President in an effort to obtain the requested information. The White House then developed a fascinating legal strategy that helped them triumph over the legislative branch.
Defense attorneys from the civil division of the Justice Department should have been assigned to the case. However, in an unprecedented move, the Bush administration required the services of the nation’s number-one-gun, Theodore Olson, the Solicitor General, who normally only makes appearances before the Supreme Court. Olson, his Assistant Solicitor General, and a handpicked group of Justice Department lawyers formed a special “trial defense task force” to defend the Vice President. This act telegraphed to the court, press, and public that this was no ordinary case. The move paid off, a federal judge found for Mr. Cheney and the GAO declined to file an appeal. That, more or less, marked the end of the story. But then something happened.
Enter Obscure News Article
On October 6, 2002, a newspaper in the UK published a little known article about Mr. Cheney’s advisers. According to Neil Mackay, an award-winning journalist, writing for Scotland’s Sunday Herald, Dick Cheney commissioned an energy report from ex-Secretary of State, James Baker III. The time of this “commission” is not reported, but since the members of the appointed task force held three videoconferences and teleconferences in December, January, and February 2000-2001, Cheney therefore logically contacted Baker some time prior to the December 2000 meeting—during the presidential transition period.
Enter the Man Who Gets Things Done
James Baker was uniquely situated to fulfill Cheney’s commission, for among the many hats he wears, he is legal counsel to the Carlyle Group, one of the nation’s largest defense investment firms whose board consists of former high level government officials, including George Bush senior. Baker was also the “hired gun” for George W. Bush’s campaign in Florida, along with Karl Rove. But among the hats he wears, none is more valuable than his ability to become invisible and leave no fingerprints behind. James Baker courts the press and is hailed a statesman; he also serves as the honorary chairman of the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, a think tank that was involved in aiding the George W. Bush presidential transition teams.
Equally intriguing is the fact that Baker has ties with both the Bushes and Ken Lay. Years earlier, in 1993, after Baker stepped down from his stint as Secretary of State, he and Robert A. Mosbacher—Bush senior’s commerce secretary—signed a joint consulting and investing agreement with Enron. The two men began a lucrative career making joint global investments with Enron on natural gas projects. Baker Botts LLC, James Baker’s law firm, flourished in its specialty of international oil and gas counseling.
Since Baker walked in their circles, when he set out to select an energy team to advise the White House, he filled it with leaders of the oil, gas, and power industries. Three appointees stand out: Kenneth Lay from Enron, who was working on the Bush Energy Transition team under Dick Cheney at the time; Chuck Watson, the then Chairman and CEO of Houston’s Dynegy Inc., and Dynegy’s General Counsel and Secretary, Kenneth Randolf. Both firms were deeply involved in illegally manipulating the California energy market at the time and eventually faced criminal investigations.
The oilmen selected for the task force were Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director, formerly CEO of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; David O’Reilly, Chief Executive of Chevron/Texaco; and Steven L. Miller, Board Chairman, CEO and President of Shell Oil.
In his Sunday Herald article, Neil Mackay links another Fellow of the Baker Institute to the document, Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister. The Baker Institute’s report on energy was funded through Khalid Al-Turki and the Arthur Ross Foundation.
Sometimes a mystery is hidden in a loaded detail that most of us would rather skip over. A case in point is this: the Baker task force report shows a forty-one member task force, but the press release gives fifty-one as the number. This of course, could be just a typo. But when we look at the structure as revealed in the report, it shows the Baker energy task force team was divided into three separate groups. First came the names of the forty-one-all-star task force. Secondly, came the names of nine observers. And thirdly, there was an unknown number forming a group of “reviewers” whose identities were not disclosed, but who collectively had “broad academic, economic, and energy expertise.” According to the acknowledgements these “individuals reviewed drafts of the report at various stages and participated in the Task Force meetings.” Perhaps the most telling admission is that the final version was “greatly enhanced” by this shadowy group.
Enter Major Document No. 1
The Baker energy task force produced a report titled, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, dated April 2001. There is no mistaking the fact that reasonable, detailed and important expert advice is meted out to the new president. However, this amazing 107-page report strikes a drumbeat for action that grabs the reader as it propels a picture of a naked, energy-scarce nation, subject to energy shortages and price fluctuations, across its pages. Contrasting the state of what is, against what should be, and mercifully making powerful recommendations that will “save our economy,” it offers warnings such as: a sharp rise “in oil prices preceded every American recession since the late 1940s.”
The California energy crisis is raised again and again, along with the prophecy that America can expect “more California-like incidents” in the future. There’s even a connection made between the California crisis and the Middle East, which according to the report, “will remain the world’s base-load supplier and least expensive source of oil for the foreseeable future.” With that prophetic utterance, the stage is now set for a new actor, a new villain, and a new energy policy.
Enter Saddam Hussein
According to the Baker report, Saddam Hussein became a swing oil producer by turning Iraq’s oil taps “on and off” whenever he felt that it was in his interest to do so. During these periods Saudi Arabia stepped up to the plate and provided replacement oil supplies to the market to keep California type “disruptions” and scarcity from occurring in America. Hussein, the report says, used his own “export program to manipulate oil markets.” The report’s implications are clear: the national energy security of the U.S. was now in the hands of an open adversary and the Saudis might not make up the difference in the future. The Baker report recommends: “The United States should conduct an immediate policy review of Iraq, including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments…. Sanctions that are not effective should be phased out and replaced with highly focused and enforced sanctions that target the regime’s ability to maintain and acquire weapons of mass destruction.” Military intervention is listed as a viable prospect.
According to Neil Mackay in the Sunday Herald article, James Baker delivered the report to Dick Cheney in person in mid April 2001.
The subsequent events of September 11, 2001 helped take the world’s eyes away from the notion that an invasion of Iraq is for oil, but according to Mackay’s sources, the Bush cabinet agreed to military intervention in Iraq six months earlier, in April of 2001.
Enter Major Documents No. 2 and 3
A haunting familiarity exists between the Baker energy report and another policy paper that could negatively impact the Bush administration. The style of the two reports is similar, particularly in discussions on national security; their task force methodologies are essentially the same; they share the repeated use of a relatively rare term; they share similarly constructed phrases; they both name Iraq as an adversary and they both attack problems in the same manner. There is a possibility that one writer served on both task forces.
A little background is necessary: In June of 1997 a group of former republican administration officials launched The Project for the New American Century, a think tank offering research and analysis on a “revolution” in modern military methods and military objectives. Like the energy task force, the passionate neo-conservative authors endowed their Principles with hard-hitting force, calling for the necessity of “preserving and extending an international order friendly” to America’s “security, prosperity and principles.” The founders wrote: “The history of the 20th Century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and to meet threats before they become dire.” In fact, on pages 51 and 67 of the institution’s intellectual centerpiece, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the authors lament that the process of transforming the military would most likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” (How unfortunate for Americans, they got their needed event on September 11, 2001.)
The signers to the “principles” read like a who’s who of the Bush administration plus a chorus line of supporters: Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliott Abrams, plus world famous: William Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Dan Quayle, among others.
The signers endorsed two other dynamic enabling policies: increased military spending, and the necessity of challenging “regimes hostile to America’s interests and values.”
The seventy-six-page Rebuilding America’s Defenses was published in 2000. With a lot of expositional swagger, the authors created not only the ideal military preparedness level for their goal of global domination, but they identified a new kind of warfare that requires far less “force” than the military was accustomed to accept. What’s more, they identified the “hostile regimes” mentioned in the “Principles” to be none other than Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Syria.
The report credits Thomas Donnelly, a military writer, as “principal author,” and lists twenty-seven participants, some of whom contributed a “paper” to the discussion. The list of participants includes Dick Cheney’s present chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby as well as Paul Wolfowitz.
The two documents clearly show that before George W. Bush took office, key officials of his future administration not only listed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as “adversaries” who “are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate,” but endorsed an alien concept, the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against those nations believed to have hostile intent against the U.S. before such intent is manifested.
Enter Document No. 4
On May 16, 2001, Dick Cheney officially handed the National Energy Policy (national report) to George W. Bush. Ostensibly the cabinet members that formed the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) were its authors. But a careful study and comparison of the national report with the Baker report reveals the Baker report provided the skeleton framework upon which the national energy policy was hung. However, the skeleton was broken up into unrelated parts: the skull in the middle, the thigh bone on top.
When it was all unraveled, almost every major policy action in the Baker report was incorporated into the national report. The tedious process of comparing the two reports with each other occasionally revealed a subtlety. For example, the Baker report says, “The U.S. must have a strategic energy policy based on energy security.” The national report subtly changes this to: “The NEPD Group recommends that the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” This foreign policy change led to the discovery that an important topic is missing from the national report.
Although every other oil producing country was discussed in the national energy text, two countries were glaringly omitted from even a mention: Iraq and Iran. There’s an explanation for the omissions: First, in reading the Baker report one is struck by the strategic military information provided, which would be odd and inappropriate in a report on energy. Secondly, the Baker report is divided into two sections: the first part focuses on strategic steps the new administration should take immediately. The second part focuses on long-range energy policy. “Taking care of Iraq” is listed as an immediate step in the Baker report. The national report, however, focuses solely on long-range policy.
Enter Incriminating Statements
One of the most striking facts about the national report is that it makes 110 references to California’s energy crisis, which was ninety-nine more than the Baker report makes. Clearly, someone in the White House needed an impressive energy crisis to tout. How unfortunate that the crisis cited was fraudulently induced. Like the Baker report, the national report states, “The California experience demonstrates the crippling effect that electricity shortages and black outs can have on a state or region.” Warnings abound: “America in the year 2001 faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s.” The 110 repetitions of the word “California” linked with words like “energy crisis,” and “energy shortages and price spikes,” could turn the national energy report into an ad man’s prized primer.
Notwithstanding its importance as an example of what could happen to other states, the author of a passage (at page 5-12) of the national report suddenly yields to an impulse to relate what really happened in California. In doing so, he completely contradicts at least 105 references to California throughout the report. The significance of this contradictory entry into the National Energy Policy must not be underestimated.
In the process of reversing the carefully construed “California experience,” the author’s grasp exceeds his knowledge in that his understanding of the events in California go beyond what he should have reasonably known at the time of its writing. For he wrote, “The risk that the California experience will repeat itself is low, since other states have not modeled their retail competition plans on California’s plan.” This is an astounding statement. If the California crisis was caused by a supply shortage as the author claims a line above this sentence, surely other states could suffer similar shortages. But no, the author is actually making an admission here: he is admitting the energy crisis in California can’t be replicated in other states because certain market means do not exist in the other states. How could the author know this? The writer of that sentence would have to be someone intimately involved in the California system; know the real cause of the state’s crisis; and be familiar with all the other state rules and market infrastructures.
But our knowledgeable author is not done. In trying to amplify what he just revealed, he tried to hide the true actors in the next sentence by misdirecting the reader away from the culprits to blame the state. This is a formula for incoherence. Nonetheless, the writer’s sentence found its way into the national energy report where it spoke for the Bush administration: “California’s failure to reform flawed regulatory rules affecting the market drove up wholesale prices.” If this sentence is read literally, it asks the reader to believe that a state’s experience of failure to amend its rules, along with the flawed rules themselves, somehow had an independent power to “drive up wholesale prices,” without an intervening acting agent. The only sensible reading left to us is that the flawed rules allowed power brokers to manipulate the system. But how could our author and his administration editors know this to be true without being in collusion with the wrongdoers? If they were not in collusion they would have reported the crime. But if they remained silent when they had a duty to report or stop the commission of a crime, they became accessories.
Continuing his unexpected analysis, the author tells us, “Actions such as forcing utilities to purchase all their power through volatile spot markets, imposing a single-price auction system, and barring bilateral contracts all contributed to the problems that California now faces.” This is nothing more than the author, and through him the White House, attempting to throw responsibility for any wrongdoing by energy companies in California squarely at the feet of the state.
Many people were blaming the state at the time, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Hoover Institution jumped into the fray and released a book by James L. Sweeney, The California Electricity Crisis, which promotes and assigns blame like this: “After political leaders mismanaged the electricity crisis, California now faces an electricity blight while it struggles to recover from its self-imposed wounds.”
Not until the Sacramento Bee broke its story, “How Californians got burned” on May 6, 2001—ten days before the national report was released—did the public receive the first concrete signs the crisis may have been caused by manipulation. There was finger pointing in the media at the time, and accusations, but there was simply no proof. But after criminal convictions for federal wire fraud came thundering down, everything changed.
Enter the Federal Regulators
Following a two-year staff investigation, on March 26, 2003, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released findings that impacted this article in the above “Incriminating Statements” section. FERC’s latest investigation was to determine whether Enron or any other sellers manipulated the electricity and natural gas markets in California. In its report, “Price Manipulation in Western Markets” (Findings at a Glance) the FERC made the following finding:
“Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed market design and inconsistent rules made possible significant market manipulations as delineated in final investigation report. Without underlying market dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market would not be successful.”
Amazingly, the finding eerily echoes our unknown author’s statements published in the National Energy Policy document (the national report) at page 5-12. The questions I raised above are even more significant now: How could the author and the editors have inserted an accurate assessment of the causes of the California energy fraud in May 2001 without having inside knowledge and or without being part of the scam, when it took the FERC two years of investigation to release virtually the same findings as those published in the national energy report?
Enter the Question, “Who Done It?”
In a letter to the Vice President dated January 25, 2002, Rep. Henry Waxman outlined the information he gathered on how the National Energy Policy was written: passages not included in the draft of the national report, appear to have been added to the plan during the final revisions made under the direction of the White House. The White House energy plan was first drafted, Waxman says, by a “workgroup composed of staff from various agencies led by the Executive Director, Andrew Lundquist,” of Dick Cheny’s staff. Each chapter, according to Waxman, “was drafted by one of the participating agencies,” and those copies “were then circulated among all of the workgroup members.” The workgroup then met to discuss each agency’s comments before submitting the drafts to the White House.
Waxman wrote, “Any further changes in the plan were made under the direction of the White House. No subsequent versions of the White House energy plan were circulated to the interagency workgroup.” Assuming this description of the process applied to all the chapters of the national report, it appears the White House had the final word and made the final insertions and changes to the report.
In trying to answer the question, “Who done it?” our Sherlock Holmes people will have to look at the top levels of the White House and the Bush administration, and ask, “Who had sufficient knowledge of electricity markets in California and other states to have written the incriminating statements?”
Few if any names come to mind. Secretary of Energy, Spenser Abraham just doesn’t fit the profile. He was a one-term defeated junior senator from Michigan who is mainly known for never missing a roll-call vote and for his support of abolishing the same Department of Energy he now heads. Many people held the belief that Abraham’s appointment was a clear signal that Bush and Cheney would make all the energy decisions.
Andrew Lundquist, however, is another cup of tea. He was formerly the chief of staff for the Senate Energy Committee where he served brilliantly. Bush appointed him to be the Executive Director of the NEPD Group, chaired by Dick Cheney; however, he may never have seen the final changes.
Beyond Cheney and Lundquist and perhaps I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, or perhaps Pat Wood, Chairman of FERC, who may fit the profile, one runs out of names.
However, another player does come to mind: he was a lone outsider who insinuated himself into a position of power in Bush’s White House. He is one man who by far is the most knowledgeable and capable power-market-man in the country, and he also happened to know how the marketing system in California could be rigged. His name is Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of Enron.
Enter Ken Lay Act Two
Indeed, Rep. Henry Waxman’s Minority report on Enron found more instances of Ken Lay’s input transferred into recommendations to the President on pages 5-11 and 5-12 than any other portion of the national report. However, the recommendations don’t show the style and form of a contributing writer.
So the question is, are there any correlations between relevant passages in the text with other documents written by Ken Lay?
In a comparison of the two-page memo we know Lay submitted to Cheney, the passages attributed to the unknown author reveal similarities of vocabulary, including the identical use of words, a similar style of writing, and a correspondence of ideas expressed. It appears that Ken Lay may have written more of the national report than was previously suspected. So what about Dick Cheney as a suspect?
Although Mary Matalin, who was then serving as an adviser to the vice president, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that Cheney’s energy plan included input from many sources, “Just because some of the things are included in the plan doesn’t mean they were from the talks between Cheney and Lay.”
However, Mary Matalin may not have known what we now know: She apparently did not know that Ken Lay wrote his memo down on paper and submitted it to the Vice President. In fact, there may have been more than one memo submitted by Lay to Cheney, which might explain why the vice president went to such extremes to keep congress from viewing those documents.
It’s shocking to realize that at the same time the author’s incriminating admissions were being submitted to Dick Cheney, then read, edited and approved for publication by the White House, the fraudulent acts they referenced were being executed. This fact may have serious criminal justice implications for the White House. For in the spring of 2001, California was reeling from rolling blackouts and brownouts and the price of electricity was breaking through the sky like a con trail from a speeding jet.
It may be time to paraphrase Senator Howard Baker’s famous questions during the Watergate hearings, “What did the President and Vice President know and when did they know it?” At the very least, congress and the people of this country need to know who wrote the incriminating passages and who read them.
Enter Documents No. 5, 6 and 7
The New American Century Project’s writings were not the only brainy papers that were read and studied by conservatives before George W. Bush gained the presidency. We know the Baker Report went directly to Cheney. But other reports from Conservative think tanks like Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation had the ears of the group of neo-conservatives who favored using America’s great military power to not only carve out an empire but to set America on a course to global domination. One report, “Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal With Rogue States,” written in the mid 90’s by Thomas H. Henriksen, a senior fellow and associate director of the Hoover Institute is an analysis of the world following the end of the cold war. The report favors power over diplomacy. What is so striking about the paper is its wild-west, tough cowboy style.
Henriksen was worried about a few countries, “If left unchecked, rogue states like Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and others will threaten innocent populations, undermine international norms, and spawn other pariah regimes, as the global order becomes tolerant of this political malignancy.”
His solution? “America must act not like a policeman but like a sheriff in the old Western frontier towns, acting alone on occasion, relying on deputies or long-standing allies, or looking for a posse among regional partners. . .[America] cannot allow desperadoes to run loose without encouraging other outlaws to test the limits of law and order.” (Surely, given the president’s performance in his first two years in office, this sentence must have been inserted into George W. Bush’s play book.)
Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and the then-soon- to-be-appointed member of the National Defense Policy Board echoes this simple, lone star imagery, in an address to the Overseers Meeting of the Hoover Institution. “Somebody on horseback with a satellite phone and a laser designator connected directly with a B-2 bomber or a B-52 with smart weapons has a level of power unthinkable ever before in human history.”
Then there are the sensible folks of the Council on Foreign Relations, advising the new president in June of 2001, “Saddam Hussein and his regime pose a growing danger to the Middle East and the United States. The regime cannot be rehabilitated. Therefore, the goal of regime replacement should remain a fundamental tenet of U.S. policy options.”
The paper, written by Geoffrey Kemp and Morton H. Halperin, with sixteen other participants, advises the president there are three red lines describing actions that Saddam Hussein might possibly take. If he crosses any one of the three, the report states, we will gain the support of the Arabs and the Turks against him:
“First, Iraqi military threats or attacks on allied forces.
Second, Iraqi threats or attacks on neighboring states.
Third, Iraqi acquisition and deployment of weapons of mass
destruction or their use, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.”Note the tense of the third sentence: it is present or future tense as opposed to the past tense. Judging from the subsequent actions and words of the president, it appears that the third red line in Kemp-Halperin paper may have played a large role in the administration’s attempts to gain allies in its war against Iraq.
Newt Gingrich’s address before the Hoover Board of Overseers was titled, “National Security Initiative, the Transformation of National Security,” and was an attempt to describe a new kind of military that called for a new kind of military education. He advised dropping the “concept of exit strategies,” which he said was a “fetish that grew out of the Vietnam War.” As for Saddam Hussein, Gingrich said, “We need to immediately replace him.”
Pulling his words out carefully, Gingrich revealed a stunning use of psychological intimidation and warfare. He elevated coercive verbal bullying to weaponry status. He said, “You cannot change Saudi Arabia as much as we need to change Saudi Arabia until you have an Iraq which is an American ally. And you need an Iraq that’s an American ally [because] it has a larger oil reserve than Saudi Arabia does.”
Gingrich unveiled how coercive a threat an American-Iraqi friendship would have over the Saudis: the bi-national friendship would destroy the Saudi’s sense of their reality that they alone are the one single source for the world’s reserve supply of oil. “The morning they see that we are that serious and we are that determined, they will negotiate with us in a very different way.” In other words, once there are two sources of cheap oil, it isn’t likely the Saudis will thumb their noses at a U.S. president’s offer to buy reserve oil at two dollars a barrel. It’s either two dollars a barrel or it’s nothing. (Since this speech, Gingrich has become an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.)
Enter Document No. 8
By December of 2002, “an Independent Working Group” led by two Ambassadors, Edward P. Djerejian and Frank G. Wisner, wrote a report for the president to guide him on what comes after the war. They created a “perfect” war on paper: The war was presumed to have occurred. It was a fast, smooth war. It ended nicely. There were no complications. The report does not address the problems of a war that bogs down in urban street fighting or in mass demonstrations against the United States or any other messy possibility.
Titled, “Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq,” the report is cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University.
The President and his advisers are greeted with constraints such as “uphold the territorial integrity of Iraq.”
Addressing the motives of the U.S., the report tells the president, “Western anti-war activists, the Arab public, average Iraqis and international media have all accused the United States of planning an attack on Iraq not to dismantle weapons of mass destruction but as a camouflaged plan to ‘steal’ Iraq’s oil for the sake of American oil interests.” The solution: any repairs, future investments, oil exports and sales of oil must be made transparent and involve both international and Iraqi oversight.
The report gets most interesting when it talks about oil—the lure and the reality. While there is great potential, “it will require massive investment.” ($28 billion.) The president is told, “Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world (behind Saudi Arabia) estimated at 112 billion barrels with as many as 220 billion barrels of resources deemed probable. Of Iraq’s 74 discovered and evaluated oil fields, only 15 have been developed.” In the western desert “there are 526 known structures that have been discovered, delineated, mapped, and classified as potential prospects in Iraq of which only 125 have been drilled.” It must be very difficult for some individuals and nations to let go of such a vision. We know the president and his men could not.
Enter Painful Conclusion
When John DiIulio, a high-level Bush administration official, left his job at the White House, he sent a letter to Ron Suskind at Esquire, describing his experiences working in the administration. DiIulio gave the world an insider’s view into the secret center of power. “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus.”
DiIulio wrote, “The Clinton administration drowned in policy intellectuals and teemed with knowledgeable people interested in making government work.” DiIulio said simply that intellectual work wasn’t “Bush’s style.”
In “eight months,” DiIulio continued, “I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues.”
What Mr. DiIulio may not have known is what the Yurica Report discovered: the policy papers were written for this administration—and not by this administration. The National Energy Policy like the Baker report drills into the reader’s mind that devastating “California-like” crises can and will be repeated unless the administration and congress choose to take prescribed steps to regain control over energy supply-lines. Control or insurance is spelled out as w-a-r against Iraq. Something intervened, however, that made energy crises unnecessary as a justification tool for war. That something was another Pearl Harbor on September 11, 2001.
This story ends as it began: with unrequited lies, deception and fraud. Three sentences inserted into the National Energy Policy report reveal: 1) the White House knew the California crisis was man-made; 2) knew the power companies were manipulating the market in California; 3) and knew these facts at the time the people of California were being fleeced by the scam; 4) yet the Bush White House did nothing to stop the fraud.
A special prosecutor should be appointed by Congress to investigate this whole matter as well as what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney knew and when they knew it.
________________________
Documentation & Links
1. San Francisco Chronicle, “Memos show makings of power crisis,” May 10, 2002. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/05/10/MN24643.DTL
2. The Sacramento Bee, Special Report: “How Californians got burned” May 6, 2001.
http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/special/power/050601california.html
3. The two page Ken Lay Memo (Go to this page and click on the "Memo" photo-icon at the top of the article):San Francisco Chronicle, “The Enron Collapse”, January 30, 2002. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/30/MN46204.DTL
4. Bush Administration Contacts with Enron, Prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman by the Minority Staff Special Investigations Division Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives.
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_enron.htm
5. How the White House Energy Plan Benefited Enron Prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman by the Minority Staff Committee on Government Reform.
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_enron.htm
6. Neil Mackay’s article in the Sunday Herald:
http://www.sundayherald.com/print28285
7. The Baker Report Press Release:
http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/Pubs/reports/Pubs/bipp200107/bipp200107_03.html
Editor's Note: The Yurica Report has learned that the Baker Institute at Rice University has removed the Press release from their web site. For those interested for research and vital information purposes, we have placed a copy on our web site at:: Task Force Issues Recommendations for Energy Policy.
8. Document No. 1: The Baker Report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century:
http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/Pubs/workingpapers/cfrbipp_energy/energytf.htm
Editor's Note: You may also read the report from our PDF file linked here.
9. Document No. 2: Project for the New American Century “Principles”:
http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
10. Document No. 3: Rebuilding America’s Defenses
http://newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm
11. Document No. 4: National Energy Policy report:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/
12. FERC Findings and Report:
http://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/wem/03-26-03.asp
13. San Francisco Chronicle, “The Enron Collapse”, January 30, 2002.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/30/MN46204.DTL
14. Letter from Rep. Waxman to Dick Cheney, dated January 25, 2002. http://reform.house.gov/min/inves_energy/energy_cheney.htm
15. Document No. 5: Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal With Rogue States: http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/94/94a.html
16. Document No. 6: Newt Gingrich, “National Security Initiative, The Transformation of National Security.” A speech to the Board of Overseers Meeting, Hoover Institution, July 18, 2002. http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/research/conferences/boo2002july.html
17. Document No. 7: A Report on U.S. Policy Options Towards Iraq by Geoffrey Kemp, Morton H. Halperin, Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/publication_print.php?id=3990&content=
18. Document No. 8: Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq Edward P. Djerejian and Frank G. Wisner, Co-Chairs http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/Pubs/workingpapers/iraq/index.html
19. Esquire, “Why Are These Men Laughing?” January, 2003. “The DiIulio Letter” October 24, 2002,
Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, U.S.C. and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.
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| Sunday Herald - 06 October 2002 |
|
Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis
President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001
that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to
international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an
unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary.
Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on 'energy security' from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Snr. The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: 'The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments. 'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.' Baker who delivered the recommendations to Cheney, the former chief executive of Texas oil firm Halliburton, was advised by Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former chief executive of Enron, the US energy giant which went bankrupt after carrying out massive accountancy fraud. The other advisers to Baker were: Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. Another name linked to the document is Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute. President Bush also has strong connections to the US oil industry and once owned the oil company Spectrum 7. The Baker report highlights massive shortages in world oil supplies which now leave the US facing 'unprecedented energy price volatility' and has led to recurring electricity black-outs in areas such as California. The report refers to the impact of fuel shortages on voters. It recommends a 'new and viable US energy policy central to America's domestic economy and to [the] nation's security and foreign policy'. Iraq, the report says, 'turns its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so', adding that there is a 'possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time' in order to damage prices. The report also says that Cheney should integrate energy and security to stop 'manipulations of markets by any state', and suggests that Cheney's Energy Policy Group includes 'representation from the Department of Defence'. 'Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,' the report says, 'US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position.' |
|
Copyright © 2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd.
no.176088
|
| Posted on Sun, Sep. 05, 2004 | |
|
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday. The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote. And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees. Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'': ``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.'' ''Excuse me?'' I asked. ''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued. Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.'' Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism. He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers. Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government. Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training. When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote. The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report, Graham complained. Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.'' Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to the hijackers or al Qaeda plots to attack the United States. Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and then decided not to seek reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he hopes his book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in the war on terrorism and he also offers recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence community. On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA consistently overplayed its estimates of Saddam Hussein's threat in its public statements and declassified reports, while its secret reports contained warnings that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was not conclusive. In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were 550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were either produced or stored'' in Iraq. ''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different messages, directed at two different audiences. I was outraged.'' In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI for its inability to track al Qaeda operatives in the United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing intelligence.'' He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush. Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and even common sense -- indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. When the weapons were not found, one year after the invasion of Iraq, Bush attended a black-tie dinner in Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous speech with slides, showing him looking under White House furniture and joking, ``Nope, no WMDs there.'' Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive things I have witnessed. Having recently attended the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who left behind a young wife and two preschool-age children, I found nothing funny about a deceitful justification for war.'' |
|
From: "emet_usa" <emetsocal@a...>
Date: Mon Sep 6, 2004 7:02 am
Subject: Kerry urges inquiry of Bush protection of Saudis in 9/11
investigation
Kerry urges inquiry into senator's allegation of 9/11 muzzle
By Mark Silva
Washington Bureau Chicago Tribune
Published September 6, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry called
Sunday for an investigation of a fellow senator's claim that the
Bush administration blocked an inquiry into allegations that Saudi
Arabian government agents aided two of the hijackers involved in the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Referring to allegations in a new book by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.),
Kerry said, "These are serious allegations being made by a well-
respected and informed leader. If the White House and the FBI did in
fact block an investigation into the ties between the Saudi
government and the 9/11 hijackers, then this would be a massive
abuse of power."
Graham is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Graham said the FBI would not let his congressional investigators
interview two alleged Saudi agents. But a non-partisan commission
that investigated the attacks reportedly was able to interview one
of the alleged agents, and the commission said it had not found any
connection between the Saudi government and the hijackers.
The Bush campaign was quick to criticize Kerry for seizing on the
charges by Graham, who also sought the Democratic presidential
nomination.
"John Kerry is flailing about, making baseless attacks grounded on
the discredited assertions of a former presidential candidate," Bush
campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said Sunday. "The Kerry campaign
has added a lot of new people lately. I wonder if ["Fahrenheit 9/11"
filmmaker] Michael Moore is their new foreign policy adviser."
Graham, who was co-chairman of joint Senate and House inquiry into
the Sept. 11 attacks, maintains the Bush administration and FBI
prevented the investigation's staffers from pursuing allegations
about a link between Saudi agents in San Diego and two Sept. 11
hijackers.
The connection "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and
the government of Saudi Arabia,"' Graham writes in his
book, "Intelligence Matters," to be released Tuesday.
Graham's book, alleging "an attempted cover-up by the Bush
administration," maintains that mention of the ties between Saudi
agents and the Al Qaeda hijackers are contained in 27 pages of the
congressional investigation's report kept secret by the White House.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.
An official of the non-partisan commission has told Newsweek that
his staff was able to interview one of the men who Graham complains
was off-limits to his investigators, Omar Al-Bayoumi.
Philip Zelikow, commission staff director, told Newsweek the
commission had access to more material than Graham's investigators
had, and the commission concluded that there was no connection
between Al-Bayoumi and the hijackers.
The Kerry campaign said Bush should show more interest in resolving
the question than in questioning Graham's motives for raising it.
"Once again, the Bush campaign's approach is playing attack-dog
politics," said Kerry aide Phil Singer, "when it should be concerned
about getting to the bottom of whether the Saudi government played a
role in helping the 9/11 hijackers."
Graham also maintains in his book that Gen. Tommy Franks, former
head of the U.S. Central Command, told him over a year before the
invasion of Iraq that resources were being shifted from Afghanistan
in preparation for an invasion of Iraq.
"He laid out a very precise strategy for fighting the war on
terror," Graham said of Franks on NBC's "Meet the Press." "First, we
should win the war in Afghanistan . . . and that we should be very
careful about Iraq because our intelligence was so weak."
Graham was among 23 senators who voted against authorizing the Iraq
invasion. Kerry voted to authorize the war.
The Democrats will attempt to take the offensive on domestic issues
this week. Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman,
said Sunday that the party will stage "Front Porch" events in 21
battleground states.
The focus will change each day: On Tuesday, it will be out-sourcing
of jobs to other countries; Wednesday, fiscal responsibility; and
Thursday and Friday, health care.
For his part, Bush made a repeat campaign trip Sunday to one of his
favorite battleground states, West Virginia, where he will return
later this week.
"Seems like I'm making a habit of coming here," Bush said in
Parkersburg, commending the area's "beautiful scenery, good hunting
and fishing
Sen. Graham: Bush Covered Up Saudi Involvement in 9/11
By Mary Jacoby
Salon.com
Wednesday 08 September 2004
The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee tells Salon that the White House has suppressed convincing evidence that the Saudi royal family supported at least two of the hijackers.
As the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the run-up to the Iraq war, Sen. Bob Graham tried to expose what he came to believe were national security coverups and manipulations by the Bush administration. But he discovered that it was hard to reveal a coverup playing by the rules. Much of the evidence the Florida Democrat needed to buttress his arguments was being locked away, he found, under the veil of politically motivated classification.
Now, as he prepares to retire after 18 years in the Senate, the normally cautious former governor of Florida is unleashing himself in a new book, "Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America's War on Terror."
In his book, Graham asserts that the White House blocked investigations into Saudi Arabian government support for the 9/11 plot, in part because of the Bush family's close ties to the Saudi royal family and wealthy Saudis like the bin Ladens. Behind the White House's insistence on classifying 27 pages detailing the Saudi links in a report issued by a joint House-Senate intelligence panel co-chaired by Graham in 2002 lay the desire to hide the administration's deficiencies and protect its Saudi allies, according to Graham.
Graham's allegations - supported by the Republican vice chairman of the House-Senate 9/11 investigation, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, but not his co-chairman, Rep. Porter Goss, Bush's nominee to become director of the CIA - are not new. But his book states them more forcefully than before, even as Graham adds new insight into Bush's decision to invade Iraq, made apparently well before the president asserted he had exhausted all options.
In February 2002, Graham writes, Gen. Tommy Franks, then conducting the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan (and later to speak in prime time on behalf of Bush's candidacy at the Republican National Convention in New York), pulled the senator aside to explain that important resources in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, such as Predator drones, were being quietly redeployed to Iraq. "He told me that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went into Iraq, long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support," Graham tells Salon.
Graham voted against the congressional war resolution authorizing force to topple Saddam Hussein. In 2003 he briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, arguing that Bush had diverted resources from the hunt for America's real enemies with his joy ride in Iraq. (Graham dropped out before the primaries.)
Graham's book is being embraced by the John Kerry campaign, which arranged for him to discuss his conclusions with reporters in a conference call Tuesday. Dozens of journalists called in. This past Sunday, Graham appeared on "Meet the Press," and afterward Kerry issued a statement: "These are serious allegations being made by a well-respected and informed leader. If the White House and the FBI did in fact block an investigation into the ties between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers, then this would be a massive abuse of power."
Salon spoke with the senator by telephone on Tuesday, his voice already growing hoarse on the first day of a heavy book promotion tour.
You write about the Bush administration's suppression of the joint House-Senate intelligence panel's findings on Saudi Arabian links to 9/11. What exactly was suppressed, and why? Or at least tell us what you can, given that the information is still classified.
In general terms it included the details of why we [on the committee] had raised suspicion that the Saudi government and various representatives of Saudi interests had supported some of the hijackers - and might have supported all of them. My own personal conclusion was that the evidence of official Saudi support for at least two of the terrorists in San Diego was, as one CIA agent said, incontrovertible. That led us to another question: Why would the Saudis have provided that level of assistance to two of the 19 [hijackers] and not the other 17? There wasn't an adequate attempt to answer that question. My feeling was there wasn't anything to justify that discrepancy, and so there was a strong possibility that such assistance had been provided to others of the terrorists, but we didn't know about it. Then there's another question: If there was this infrastructure in place that was accessed by the terrorists, did it disappear as soon as 9/11 was completed? There's no reason to believe that it did.
Your investigation in Congress focused on a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, who had provided extensive assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they lived in San Diego. You say al-Bayoumi was apparently a covert agent of the Saudi government, and from that you conclude there was official Saudi support for the plot. Yet the independent 9/11 commission came to a different conclusion. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, has said his investigation had more access to information than yours - including the opportunity to interview al-Bayoumi. And the commission concluded he had nothing to do with the attacks, that his contacts with the hijackers were coincidental.
Let me say that what we know about this comes primarily from FBI and CIA reports that were in the file in San Diego. And in those files, FBI agents referred to Bayoumi as being a Saudi Arabian agent or Saudi Arabian spy. In the summer of 2002, a CIA agent filed a report that said it was "incontrovertible" that terrorists were receiving assistance, financial and otherwise, from Saudis in San Diego. No. 2: Bayoumi was supposed to be working for a firm that was a subcontractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority. Yet he never showed up for work. His boss tried to fire him, and he received a letter from the Saudi civil aviation authority demanding that he be retained on their payroll despite the fact he wasn't performing any services. And the subcontracting company that employed Bayoumi was owned by a Saudi national who, according to documents seized in Bosnia, was an early financial backer of al-Qaida. Now, that's rather suspicious.
Also suspicious is the number of telephone conversations between Bayoumi and Saudi government representatives. It was a very substantial number that remains classified. Then, the event that really raised our suspicions was that shortly after Alhazmi and Almihdhar flew from Bangkok [Thailand] to Los Angeles [after attending an al-Qaida conference in Malaysia that resulted in their being added to a CIA watch list], Bayoumi tells various persons that he was going to Los Angeles to "pick up some visitors." He drives from San Diego to Los Angeles with a friend. His first stop in Los Angeles was at the consulate of the Saudi government, where he stays for an hour and meets with a diplomat named Fahad al-Thumairy, who subsequently was deported for terrorist-related activities.
After that one-hour meeting, he and that companion go to a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles to have lunch. They overhear Arabic being spoken at a nearby table. They invite the two young men who are at that table to come and join them. It turns out those two young men are Alhazmi and Almihdhar, two of the 9/11 terrorists. When I asked the staff director of the 9/11 commission about this, he thought it was just a coincidence that they met at this restaurant. I did some independent research. There are at least 134 Middle Eastern restaurants in Los Angeles. So the statistical odds of these two groups meeting at the same Middle Eastern restaurant at the same time are staggering.
You don't believe the meeting was a coincidence?
I'm almost certain this was a prearranged meeting. Later, Bayoumi takes the two terrorists to San Diego, where he introduces them to people who arrange for them to obtain [phony] Social Security cards and flying lessons.
Did the White House specifically request classification of the section on the Saudis?
Technically, it was done by the CIA, but it was at the direction of the White House. I cannot tell you with 100 percent certainty, but I am 90 percent sure that was the case. The White House played a heavy role throughout not only our investigation but the investigation of the 9/11 commission.
You obviously don't believe the Bush administration was justified in classifying the 27 pages.
No. Sen. Shelby, who was the vice chairman of the [Senate intelligence] committee and who is a Republican, reread those pages shortly after they were classified. And I also reread them. Independently, we both came to the same assessment that 95 percent of the material that had been classified could have been released to the public. It did not represent concealment of national secrets or of sources and methods by which information is obtained.
Why do you think the White House is so intent on keeping that information from the public?
I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.
In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee's attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI's protective custody and could not be located without the bureau's cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?
We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn't want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.
Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to [co-chairman] Porter Goss and me, saying, "The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source." What that tells me is the FBI wasn't acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.
Did the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, play any role in what you describe as the support network for these two hijackers? As you know, Bandar is a great friend of the Bush family.
Most of the things that he did are, frankly, still classified. But he has clearly demonstrated that he has a close relationship with President Bush. You have no doubt seen that famous picture of the two of them together at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. And then there's the fact that within a few hours after 9/11, Prince Bandar was able to gain access to the president to make the case for why 140 or so Saudis should be given permission to leave the United States immediately.
Did the Saudi Embassy play a role?
I'm going to have to defer answering that question. Those things that still have not been made available to the public, such as this issue of what Prince Bandar's participation was, I did not include in the book.
It sounds then as if the role of Bandar and the Saudi Embassy is addressed in those 27 classified pages of the panel's report?
Most of it would be addressed there, yes.
Most of it? That implies you know other relevant information that's not in the classified report.
Yes. Some information came to our attention too late to be included in the report, or it was not directly related to the events of 9/11.
Let's move from 9/11 and the Saudis to the invasion of Iraq. Do you believe the president misled the American public about the justification for the invasion and the urgency of the security threat?
If he believed the evidence that was being presented to him - that there were 550 sites in Iraq where weapons of mass destruction were being either produced or stored - then he was very noncurious about finding out what the basis of that information was. He should have pursued the credibility of the intelligence before he committed us to taking one of the most serious actions any country can take. The user of intelligence has the responsibility to challenge the credibility of the intelligence. When [then CIA director] George Tenet said it was a slam-dunk that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the president supinely accepted that.
But a lot of people who were opposed to the war on the grounds that Saddam was already contained did believe there were probably weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What did you believe?
I was suspicious [about the intelligence], but I was prepared to accept the word of the president of the United States. But my reason for voting against the war was really a more strategic one: that al-Qaida was a greater threat to Americans than was Saddam Hussein, and that we should stay on the task of al-Qaida until we had finished it. I didn't think we should get into a situation where our prestige and reputation would suffer in the entire Middle East and into what now appears to be a quagmire which has no end in sight.
Along those lines, you said that in a meeting at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., in February 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks, who was then conducting the war in Afghanistan, told you that resources were already being shifted quietly to Iraq. Additionally, you write that Franks told you that Somalia and Yemen, not Iraq, were the next logical targets in any action to combat terrorism.
Yes. I had just received a briefing on Afghanistan when Gen. Franks invited me to come into his office, just the two of us. He told me that military and intelligence resources were being redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq. What that suggested to me was [first] that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went to Iraq, and long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support. Secondly, it suggested we couldn't fight the two wars concurrently to victory, but that it would take redeployment of personnel from Afghanistan to Iraq to make that a successful invasion. Third, it suggested that somebody - I assume the president - had decided that Iraq was a higher priority for the United States than was completing the war in Afghanistan.
Why do you think Franks told you this?
I don't know what his motivation was, but we had just heard a report on the status of the war in Afghanistan, which was very upbeat, [saying] we were making a lot of progress. So one motivation may have been to caution me that things in reality weren't necessarily what they appeared to be.
Do you believe the White House manipulated the intelligence to persuade the public to back the invasion? "Manipulate" may be too strong a word for you. But it took a request from you and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to get the intelligence community to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on the danger posed by Iraq, a step that would seem an obvious one to take, considering the stakes to the nation.
I am comfortable with the word "manipulate." There was a chapter that did not become known until three or four months ago that occurred in May 2002. Various leaders of the CIA were called down to the White House and told that the White House wanted to have a public document that could be released under the CIA's label but which would make the case for going to war with Iraq. I think one of the reasons they didn't want to do a formal National Intelligence Estimate was because it would be done not by the CIA alone but by all of the members of the intelligence community, and it was likely to reach a different conclusion. At least it would contain dissenting opinions and caveats that wouldn't be in a CIA public document.
This description of the CIA is one that is under the complete control of the White House, an agency that is not independent but highly politicized.
That's right. It is the expression of the leadership of the intelligence agencies, trying to placate their masters in the administration.
A later inquiry conducted by the Senate intelligence committee under your successor as chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., looked at the quality of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and concluded that it was execrable. Yet the Republicans on the panel blocked any probe of whether the administration pressured the intelligence agencies to manufacture the conclusions it sought to justify a war that it had already decided to wage. If you had still been the top Democrat on the committee, would you have insisted that the White House and the agencies be included in that probe?
I think Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D-W.Va.], who is the vice chairman of the committee, did insist, and the effect of that was to make clear to him that there would be no investigation of anything if he persisted. I think he decided the better course was to agree to just do the first component if there was a commitment to do the rest at a reasonably close later date.
You retire at the end of this year. What's next for you?
First, I'll be working on letting the American people know about the opportunity they have to better understand the intelligence matters of the United States by buying this book. (Laughs.) Then, I'll teach at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard for a year and after that come back to Florida to establish a policy center at one or more universities in Florida.
From: big brother <bigbrother_circa2004@y...>
Date: Wed Sep 8, 2004 8:55 am
Subject: Senator Bob Graham's new book on 9/11..and Laura sells weed
Ken Lambert / AP
Rep. Porter Goss (left) and Sen. Bob Graham, both of Florida, led a
joint inquiry into intelligence failures leading up the September 11
attacks
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The discovery led to a closed-door confrontation between the FBI and Florida Sen. Bob Graham, co-chair of the joint House-Senate panel investigating 9/11. Convinced that the bureau was stonewalling, Graham tried to slap the FBI's chief counsel with a subpoena to produce the informant. "With the subpoena still in hand, I approached him, holding it inches from his chest," Graham writes in his new book, "Intelligence Matters," which deals with his efforts to get to the bottom of the 9/11 attacks. "He leaned back from the subpoena as it if were radioactive." The FBI counsel asked for extra time to see if something could be worked out. In the end, the FBI refused to allow Graham and his colleagues to question a crucial witness.
The congressional inquiry—which was underway long before the 9/11 Commission began its work—was a contentious investigation that led to repeated clashes with the FBI and the Bush White House. Graham and others charged that the administration was engaged in a "cover-up" to protect a key ally, Saudi Arabia.
In his new book, Graham claims the president coddled the Saudis and pursued a war against Saddam Hussein that only diverted resources from the more important fight against Al Qaeda. Graham was furious when the White House blacked out 28 pages of the inquiry's final report that dealt with purported Saudi links to the 9/11 plot. Graham says much of the deleted evidence centered around the activities of a mysterious Saudi then living in San Diego named Omar al-Bayoumi, whom Graham calls a Saudi government "spy." Al-Bayoumi befriended two of the key 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they first arrived in the country.
Graham notes that al-Bayoumi was essentially a "ghost employee" of a Saudi contracting firm called Ercan, whose owner was an alleged early supporter of Osama bin Laden. He also had repeated contacts with a Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles who was later thrown out of the United States on suspicion of terrorist ties. But Graham's conclusions about al-Bayoumi conflict with the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission report. Philip Zelikow, the staff director of the commission, noted that his panel had access to more material than Graham did and ultimately got the chance to question al-Bayoumi. They concluded that he had no connection to 9/11. "We've spent hours and hours with Bob on this," says Zelikow, who believes Graham doesn't seem open to new evidence. "He's got all these details. But it's like they're frozen in amber."
Yet even Zelikow acknowledges that Graham may be right when he says the FBI never fully unraveled a Qaeda support network that helped the hijackers—and that still may be out there. One ominous new sign was the recent arrest in Britain of an Indian-born jihadi, Dhiren Barot, who was suspected of conducting the surveillance of financial buildings in New York and Washington, D.C.—prompting last month's Orange alert. According to the recent report by the 9/11 Commission, Barot—identified there as Issa al-Britani—had been dispatched more than three years ago by terror mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and ordered to case financial and "Jewish" targets inside the United States. He had also flown to Malaysia just before a crucial Qaeda planning meeting in January 2000, where he passed along the names of potential contacts living in America. Who were the contacts? To this day, the FBI admits it doesn't know for sure—ample evidence, in Graham's mind, that his fears and criticisms remain as valid as ever.
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From: Annie <smilingmoon14@y...>
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2004 7:40 am
Subject: PLEASE READ/// Arrest the President Now! By John Kaminski
Subject: [openmindandcodenews] Arrest the President Now! By John Kaminski
Arrest the President Now! By John Kaminski
Enough 9/11 evidence exists to hang Bush, imprison thousands.
On September 11, 2001, the most infamous day in American history, the tallest buildings in New York were not knocked down by airplanes hijacked by Arabs — they were destroyed by demolition charges.
This is no longer wild conspiracy theory — it is a series of provable facts, deftly presented on a website that every American should not only read but possibly memorize, so they can repeat it verbatim to every law enforcement officer in the country. The web site is located here: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/
The site outlines a terrifying proposition: If the collapse of the Twin Towers were caused by demolition the entire official story about that sad day collapses like the house of evil cards so many Americans and people around the world already suspect it is.
The site, http://wtc7.net, backs up its conclusions with a devastating play-by-play of what actually happened on 9/11, and what could not possibly have happened according to universally accepted engineering principles.
The official story collapses under scrutiny, the site insists. It lists five stunning assertions:
- Fires have never destroyed steel buildings.
- The collapses were not investigated.
- The physical evidence was destroyed.
- The official explanations are ludicrous.
- The evidence indicates demolition.
- Demolition is provable.
No steel high-rise building has ever collapsed due to fire, the site insists. And on 9/11, three of them collapsed in a matter of hours at the World Trade Center complex.
The total collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 were (based on the official story) the three largest engineering failures in the history of the world, yet no federal investigation was ever funded.
The evidence of the collapses was quickly destroyed. A series of explanations was promoted to explain the collapses, but each is ridiculed and debunked on the site, including killer fires, column failure, and truss failure. The site's conclusion: official explanations cannot explain any kind of total collapse.
Other curious phenomena examined were that the fires burned for 100 days, that the concrete was curiously pulverized in mid-air, and that the buildings fell so quickly despite following the path of most resistance, among other suspicious aspects.
After presenting its evidence, the site concludes the towers were deliberately demolished. Which means the disaster could not possibly have been the work of Osama bin Laden.
The implications of the story on this site are enormous. They mean that the official story told by George W. Bush's American government is a total fabrication. There is no evidence against Osama bin Laden if the buildings were demolished. It has all been a lie.
What this means is that George W. Bush is guilty of complicity in the most heinous crime in American history, the willful murder of more than 3,000 people and the destruction of a significant part of America's biggest city. And of course treason. There is no space to delineate here all the other charges of mass murder and obstruction of justice against this vain little demagogue who stole the U.S. presidency and now is raping the world.
Also guilty are Vice President Cheney and the entire Cabinet, the chiefs of staff of the armed forces, and many other members of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the government, plus many other federal and military employees, plus many state and federal regulatory officials and private citizens who were either friends of the Bush conspiracy or conspired in its coverup.
And perhaps the biggest problem is that also guilty of complicity in this tangled mess is the federal Justice Department, whose leader John Ashcroft was appointed by the principal defendant in this case.
America and the world have never faced such a colossal crisis, and that is no overstatement.
The entire American government is now a criminal defendant in the mass murder of its own citizens at the very moment the entire world is cringing in fear at America's new policy of preemptive war that threatens every sovereign nation on the planet.
It's true, my friends, although it's something you already knew — outlaws rule the world, and they own the cops, the army and the courts, not to mention all the legislatures.
How can America and the world possibly deal with this?
Well, for starters, the state of New York must assume the lead role, because all federal agencies, including the FBI, CIA and FEMA, are now all possible defendants in what will be the most amazing trial in history. Of course, state officials are as likely to be corrupted as federal officials, but this still seems to be the logical solution, at least to begin with.
What is at stake here, among so many other items, is the relationship of the states to the federal government. To say this is a profound Constitutional crisis is a severe understatement.
And the larger question becomes, can the people ever trust its government again. The quick answer, at least, is ... not this government — ever again.
But first, everyone must get the word out. Every American, or as many possible who aren't immediately felled by terminal apoplexy as they confront this material, should read the sequence of events as presented on this site.
Then, responsible people in many professions should confer as to the best way to deal with prosecutions on these charges, including how to suspend the functional legal legitimacy of the Bush adminstration, especially since this group seems intent on blowing up the world. Then it will have to be one step at a time with some sort of calmly constructed provisional government, with the current Congress most likely having absolutely no role in its creation.
This is a great and necessary opportunity for the individual states to regain some of the power that has been usurped by Washington when they create a new federal government without any help from the old one.
OK. I know this is all mind-boggling. Unfortunately for all of us, it happens to be reality. Shake off your stunned silence and incredulity. We have to deal with it, and we have to deal with it now.
Proper articulation of the offenses, machinery to effect remedies and prosecutions — and doing both of things in the proper venues — are of critical importance at this moment. Not being a lawyer, I don't know what they are. Somebody knows. That person or persons needs to speak, and soon.
Because if Bush knows his crimes are exposed and he is allowed to remain in power, God knows what will happen.
I know you've taken in a crushing amount of information just now, but I would beg you to try and digest a little bit more, this time from the mind of Kent State professor Walter Davis, who has articulated in a very coherent way the argument against George W. Bush continuing as the commander of the most deadly arsenal ever seen on this planet.
Read the whole piece at some point at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm
It's entitled "September 11th And The Bush Administration: Compelling Evidence for Complicity". Davis points out that the government has tried to cop a plea of ineptitude in failing to prevent the 9/11 disaster, but the professor concludes this excuse is "not consistent with the known facts."
With flawless logic and perfect professorial prose, Davis outlines and elaborates 22 reasons why he thinks Bush not only knew but helped plan and execute the tragic 9/11 deception. Davis's items range from the fact that the entire U.S. intelligence community knew the attack was going to happen and the American air defenses were "stood down" ... to historical precedents of leaders who lied about attacks in history. In between is the definitive version of the charges that should be laid upon Bush and all the criminal functionaries who participated in this profound crime against the American people.
I seldom say things are a "must read," but this is one of them, simply for its articulation of the basic crimes of 9/11 and the completeness of the magnitude of the atrocity and its implications. Read the damn thing. Try not to cry.
OK, OK, enough data. It's almost 4 a.m. and I've been up since 7 a.m. after being up til 3 a.m. the night before dealing with my e-mail, from all of you, my lovelies, who are getting this one.
I'm running out of time, as some of you know, and may not be able to do too many more of these missives. But this one is important, so I'm going to stay up til dawn punching in the addresses. Because you're running out of time, too. We're all running out of time, and we better do something fast.
The information contained in here is a critical step in the right direction. Take it and run with it.
Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. As you probably already know, with the Saudis reportedly aiming weapons at Israel, and China and Russia viewing the pathetic U.S. military performance in Iraq and Afghanistan with an eye toward maybe taking a cheap but well-deserved shot at the U.S. for its insane and murderous policies of late, all of us are going to be in for a very rough ride. In fact, you can be assured that many of us are not going to make it through these next few months and years, but we have no choice but to try and fix this problem as best we can if anybody is to have any hope of surviving.
America's Autopsy Report, a collection of his Internet essays. For more information on how to purchase this book go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/.John Kaminski (skylax@comcast.net) is the author of
| September 10, 2004
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| Ghosts of 9/11 They haunt us still
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| by Justin Raimondo
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The third anniversary of 9/11 reveals nothing but
our continued ignorance of the circumstances surrounding that event, which
seems ever more shrouded in mystery. This in spite of the plethora of
official reports, issued by the Senate, various congressional committees,
and an official U.S. government commission devoted to the subject, which
held public hearings, and
published its
report. The recommendations in that document are even now being signed
into law. Yet our understanding of why and how it happened, obscured by
myth and the tricks of memory, seems less than when smoke was still
pouring out of the twin towers. This seems distinctly odd, but what is
odder still is the development of two parallel theories of what really
happened on 9/11 that both point to our two best ostensible friends in the
Middle East as complicit in, if not the source, of the terror.
The first suspect is Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of oil, where billionaire sheiks wearing funny red-and-white-checkered headgear live in incredibly decadent luxury while preaching and subsidizing the austere puritanism of Wahhabist Islam. An entire school of thought has grown up on the right as well as the left, positing a Saudi connection to the 9/11 hijackers that has never been proved. The best the Saudi conspiracy theorists can come up with is the 27 redacted pages of the Senate Report on 9/11, the sort of "evidence" that leaves far too much to the imagination. The first 15 minutes of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 – replete with lurid images of sinister-looking Saudis in flowing robes – is the purest and crudest distillation of this theory. Moore, like many on the pro-war right, reiterates the anti-Saudi mantra, reminding viewers that 17 out of 19 of the hijackers were Saudi. Whether or how this means that they were acting on orders from Riyadh is never elaborated on. There is a purely right-wing version of this theory, without the Bush-bashing, emanating from American Likudnik circles. Adherents of this approach tried to link the hijackers to a friend of a friend of a friend of a third cousin of someone assisted financially by Princess Haifa, wife of Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar, but nothing ever came of it. The leftist version, however, involves the president and his close advisors as the central co-conspirators: this is the "they bombed themselves" school of thought, which somehow manages to drag in the CIA and any number of top U.S. government officials, all supposedly in on a plan to utilize the attacks as the basis of a coup. The methodology of this school is to ask: Cui bono? Who benefits? And they stop there. Because, after all, what more do we need to know? Well, a few facts would help. But all we get is the redacted pages of the Senate's 9/11 report and the hazy, fact-free innuendo of books like Forbidden Truth, which posits a conspiracy by an unholy trinity of the Saudi princes, the all-powerful Carlyle Group, and the Bush family. On the other hand, Senator Bob Graham has written an entire book based on the accusation that the Bush administration deliberately covered up the involvement of Saudi agents with two of the 9/11 conspirators living in San Diego. Graham, the former head of the Senate intelligence committee, and a rather quixotic presidential candidate, avers there is not only "a compelling case that there was Saudi assistance," but also points the finger at President Bush, who supposedly ordered the FBI "to restrain and obfuscate" the 9/11 investigation. While Senator Graham's foreign policy views are light years away from my own, I credit him with more than a little inside knowledge of the inner workings of the intelligence community. In a PBS interview with Gwen Ifill, the senator was asked if there were certain facts in the Senate committee report "which are classified that Americans should know about but can't?" Graham's reply merited mile-high headlines: "Yes, going back to your question about what was the greatest surprise. I agree with what Senator Shelby said, the degree to which the agencies were not coordinating was certainly a surprise: but also I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States." I cite Graham's comments in my book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, because he goes on to make clear that he means more than one foreign government was involved in the events leading up to 9/11. They had some degree of foreknowledge if not outright complicity – and they aren't through with us yet. Graham continues: "I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar supports, and even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are planing the next plots. To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified. I think overly classified." Graham's lament brings to mind the remark of a government spokesman to Carl Cameron, of Fox News, who reported the following in December 2001: "There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are 'tie-ins.' But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, 'evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information.'" Now we branch off into the alternate theory, far more controversial than the Saudi conspiracy, which posits that the hijackers were being watched by an extensive Israeli intelligence network operating on U.S. soil. Cameron's four-part series, broadcast in that bitter winter of 2001, caused a sensation – and then dropped into the black hole of journalistic memory, enjoying a periodic revival as various other aspects of the story came out in dribs and drabs. Salon reported on a mysterious outbreak of suspicious incidents, in the months prior to 9/11, involving young Israelis who claimed to be "art students," and who made it a habit to approach government facilities as if they were casing the joint. An interagency report was leaked, that documented the activities of this group, which obviously had more to do with the art of intelligence-gathering than with painting. Even more ominously, the young Israelis, in some instances, would approach government employees at home, and clearly had access to information they shouldn't have. The Salon piece, by Christopher Ketcham, theorized that the purpose of the "art students" operation might have been to divert attention away from something, to blow a lot of smoke and blind intelligence agencies to activities that were going on right under their noses. Le Monde followed up with reporting on the geographical synchronicity of the hijackers' odyssey though America and the location of the various colonies of Israeli "art students," as if the former were being shadowed by the latter: "More than a third of these 'students,' who, according to the report, moved in at least 42 American cities, stated they resided in Florida. Five at least were intercepted in Hollywood, and two in Fort Lauderdale. Hollywood is a town of 25,000 inhabitants to the north of Miami, close to Fort Lauderdale. At least 10 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11 were residing in Florida. "Four of the five members of the group that diverted American Airlines flight number 11 – Mohammed Atta, Abdulaziz Al-Omari, Walid and Waïl Al-Shehri, as well as one of the five terrorists of United flight 175, Marwan Al-Shehhi – resided all at various times in... Hollywood, Florida. As for Ahmed Fayez, Ahmed and Hamza Al-Ghamdi and Mohand Al-Shehri, who took over United flight 75, like Saïd Al-Ghamdi, Ahmed Al-Haznawi and Ahmed Al-Nami, of United flight 93 which crashed September 11 in Pennsylvania, and Nawaq Al-Hamzi, of AA flight 77 (crashed into the Pentagon), they all at one time resided at Delray Beach, north of Fort Lauderdale. "This convergence is, inter alia, the origin of the American conviction that one of the tasks of the Israeli "students" would have been to track the Al-Qaida terrorists on their territory, without informing the federal authorities of the existence of the plot." The Israelis, a silent omnipresent bodyguard, encircled Mohammed Atta and his cohorts, watching, and waiting – for 9/11, the catalytic event that would trigger a war binding the U.S. and Israel closer than ever before, a war that would not end even with the American occupation of Iraq – and would redound mostly to the advantage of the Israelis. Finally, the respected German weekly Die Zeit capped these revelations with a story entitled "Next Door to Mohammed Atta," which cited French intelligence and focused on the close proximity of the "art students" and the hijackers in the south Florida town of Hollywood, and environs: "Not until after the attacks of September 11 did the consequences of the spy ring become clear. Apparently the agents were not interested in military or industrial facilities, but were shadowing a number of suspects, who were later involved in the terrorist attacks against the US. According to a report of the French intelligence agency that Die Zeit examined, 'according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and suspected terror cells lived in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as in Miami and Hollywood, Florida from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity to the Israeli spy cells.' "According to the report, the Mossad agents were interested in the leader of the terrorists, Mohammed Atta and his key accomplice, Marwan al-Shehi. Both lived in Hamburg before they settled in Hollywood, Florida in order to plan the attacks. A Mossad team was also operating in the same town. The leader, Hanan Serfati, had rented several dwellings. … Everything indicates that the terrorists were constantly observed by the Israelis. The chief Israeli agent was staying right near the post office where the terrorists had a mailbox. The Mossad also had its sights on Atta's accomplice Khalid al-Midhar, with whom the CIA was also familiar, but allowed to run free.'" I cover this material, and more, in The Terror Enigma, but the sequel is being written in today's headlines. As news of an Israeli spy ring in the Pentagon roils the political waters and causes us to rethink just who our friends and enemies really are, let us pause to consider how we got to where we are today. And where is that? Hip-deep in Iraq, and in danger of going in over our heads, mired down in a ceaseless war that threatens to expand and has had the exact opposite of its intended result, swelling the ranks of terrorist groups worldwide. As bin Laden and his lieutenants strike from Spain to Russia to Baghdad in a triangle of death spanning two continents, the third anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity only brings the promise of more to come. The project to "democratize" the Middle East has only succeeded in pulverizing it. We have passed the thousand mark in the number of American deaths, but the Iraqis have suffered ten times that in Baghdad alone. Their relatives, loved ones, neighbors and friends will hate us as long as they live, and, in the dark recesses of a cave somewhere, Osama bin Laden is smiling. But so is Ariel Sharon. The Likudnik dream of a Greater Israel is making important advances: new settlements, along with a new American acquiescence in the face of Israeli aggression, have emboldened and empowered the increasingly militant Israelis. The extremists have won: so much so that Sharon is now considered a "moderate." The revelation that the FBI has been investigating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for over two years, conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Israeli penetration of U.S. Government agencies and the commission of possible illegal acts, including espionage, sheds new light on Israel's secret war against America, the so far hidden aspect of what we call the war on terrorism. The sheer scope of this investigation, in terms of manpower and other resources, suggests an Israeli covert operation much as Cameron described it: extensive, multi-leveled, and aggressive. I would urge you to pick up a copy of The Terror Enigma, of course, but I want to stress that it is hardly the last word on the subject. The mystery of 9/11 is a long way from being solved, and today, on this somber anniversary, we seem far from dispersing the murk and myth that obfuscates its true origins. We know that al-Qaeda and ultimately bin Laden conceived the plot, but how did they carry it off without at least some state assistance, however passive and indirect? The answer, it seems safe to say, is that they didn't: the Israelis, in my view, had some fair amount of foreknowledge, based on the above evidence, and neglected to let us in on the secret until it was far too late. I am also fully prepared to believe that Senator Graham's theory has some validity, and that the hijackers were aided by a faction of the Saudi royal family. The two theories, it seems to me, are not mutually exclusive. It wouldn't be the first time two mortal enemies moved in tandem to their mutual advantage. If Graham can point to the redacted pages of the Senate committee's 9/11 report to bolster the link to the Saudis, then the adherents of the Israeli complicity theory can point to the news that the White House is pressuring the Justice Department to quash the investigation into Israel's spy nest in the Pentagon. As the Financial Times reports: "An FBI investigation into suspected security breaches involving Pentagon officials and Israel is unlikely to result in prosecution of senior figures following pressure from the White House, according to people familiar with the case…. Analysts said that although the neoconservative proponents of regime change in Iraq and Iran had fallen out of favour with the White House, the presidential election in November still afforded them protection. "… Sources familiar with the investigation said the White House and John Ashcroft, the US attorney-general, had intervened to apply the brakes. 'The White House is leaning on the FBI. Some people in the FBI are very upset, they think Ashcroft is playing politics with this,'" a former intelligence official said. "Paul McNulty, the Virginia district attorney in charge of the probe, had been told to slow down, the sources said. Asked for comment, Mr McNulty's office would only say that the investigation was continuing." In the act of covering up, the government admits more than it cares to, fueling what the mandarins of the conventional wisdom deride as "conspiracy theories." But the story of 9/11 is about a conspiracy if it is about anything at all. Three years later, one of the few certainties we have about it is that we have yet to unlock its mysteries. – Justin Raimondo |
|
Friday, September 10, 2004
by Greg Palast
On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, "were told to back off the Saudis." We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, "SECRET" across the top and "199-I" - meaning this was a national security matter. The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a "suspected terrorist organization" in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001 -- two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters ... but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest.
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NEW YORK -- The government agency that owns the World Trade Center site said Friday it intends to hold Saudi Arabia and nearly 100 other defendants liable for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed the complex.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that it planned to join late Friday as a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed a week ago by Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, a bond trading firm that lost two-thirds of its workers in the trade center attack.
A Port Authority spokesman said shortly before 6 p.m. that the government agency had not yet filed its papers joining the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but that it planned to do so before midnight in an after-hours box at the court.
The Cantor Fitzgerald lawsuit named as defendants Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and other accused terrorists, along with financial institutions and charitable organizations that allegedly raised money for terrorism efforts.
In a statement, the Port Authority said it had "an obligation to preserve its legal options at this time" because a three-year statute of limitations was about to expire.
"We also have a responsibility to the millions of people who live and work in the region as well as to our bondholders to pursue every legal avenue to recover the losses we sustained on Sept. 11," according to the Port Authority, which lost 84 of its employees in the 2001 attacks.
The Cantor Fitzgerald lawsuit sought $7 billion in damages.
Although Saudi Arabia had been named as a defendant in similar lawsuits, the Cantor Fitzgerald action was particularly pointed in its criticism, accusing Saudi Arabia of supporting al-Qaida with money, safe houses, weapons and money laundering.
It said Saudi Arabia engaged in a pattern of racketeering as it participated directly or indirectly in al-Qaida's work through its "alter-ego" charities and relief organizations, which it funded and controlled.
Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 of its 1,050 employees on Sept. 11, 2001, and now has offices in midtown Manhattan.
Saudi Arabia last month defended itself as a loyal ally in the fight against terrorism, citing the Sept. 11 Commission's conclusion that the Saudi government did not fund al-Qaida.
Saudi embassy spokesman Nail al-Jubeir said the ads tell Americans "these are the facts that your own independent commission has said about Saudi Arabia. You make up your mind."
The commission had also criticized Saudi Arabia, calling it "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism." It said Saudi-funded Islamic schools have been exploited by extremists and, while Saudi cooperation against terrorism improved after the Sept. 11 attacks, "significant problems remained."
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of bin Laden and 15 of the
19 hijackers. 
| NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cantor Fitzgerald, the
bond brokerage that suffered more deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks than any
other company, on Friday sued al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and dozens of foreign
companies seeking damages related to the attacks on the World Trade Center.
The suit, filed as the three-year anniversary of the airplane attacks that killed about 3,000 people approaches, is the latest filed in New York federal court against al Qaeda, including one last year by a group of insurance companies. It seeks billions of dollars in damages, charging that the al Qaeda carried off the attacks with the aid of foreign governments and corporations. The attacks, according to the suit, "could not have been accomplished without the knowing and intentional financial support lent al Qaeda and its leaders by a global network of banks, financial institutions, charities, relief organizations, businesses, individual financiers, foreign governments and foreign governmental officials." Cantor Fitzgerald, which said it lost 658 employees in the
attacks, is seeking to join the previous lawsuit filed by insurance
companies, saying in court papers it would conserve time and resources.
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From: Zoltan Abraham <zsazle@y...>
Date: Sat Sep 11, 2004 9:53 am
Subject: The Truth About Bush and 9/11
Please circulate far and wide:
The Truth About Bush and 9/11
At the Republican National Convention, President George W. Bush tried to turn
the mass-slaughter of American civilians into election poll percentage points
for his campaign. But what is the truth about how George W. Bush handled the
9/11 tragedy?
President Bush had substantial warnings from all US intelligence channels about
the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He was either asleep at the wheel and
failed to do his job, or he deliberately allowed the attacks to occur in order
to use the tragedy to his political gain. In fact, 49% of New Yorkers suspect
that he knew about the attacks in advance and decided not to stop them. 66% of
New Yorkers want a new criminal investigation into the attacks.
When George W. Bush was informed about the second plane hitting the World Trade
Center, he was sitting in a Florida elementary classroom, listening to children
read. Instead of getting up and assuming command, as the Commander-in-Chief
would be expected to do, he sat for seven minutes, staring blankly.
After leaving the school, George W. Bush flew into hiding, instead of returning
to D.C. and taking charge of the situation. Many have wondered why he fled.
According to the official story, Airforce One was also known to be a terrorist
target, and therefore had to be whisked away. However, this story was later
debunked.
Although Osama bin Laden was soon suspected to be the mastermind of the 9/11
attacks, George W. Bush allowed members of the bin Laden family staying in the
United States to fly out of the country while the no-fly order was still in
effect for private planes and commercial planes carrying passengers. The bin
Ladens were not questioned extensively about their knowledge of Osama bin Laden
or the 9/11 attacks, even though the FBI had insisted that they should be.
After promising federal aid for New York, George W. Bush was very slow to allow
the city to receive any funds. To this day, more than half of the injury claims
from Ground Zero volunteer workers have not been resolved.
The Bush administration dismissed grave concerns about the environmental
contamination caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers. Many experts are
convinced that the air in the city has become dangerously polluted, leading to
wide-scale health damage. By dismissing such concerns out of hand, the Bush
administration has made it impossible for people who have gotten sick from the
pollution to receive federal funding for their medical needs.
Days after both Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy, an
independent commission was set up to investigate each tragedy. However, George
W. Bush refused to permit the formation of an independent commission to examine
the 9/11 attacks.
After a congressional inquiry was held to look into 9/11, George W. Bush ordered
28 pages of the final repot to be censored. Sources knowledgeable with the
contents of the report say that the blacked-out pages deal with the role of
Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman
Bob Graham, who had co-chaired the congressional inquiry, has stated that the
Bush administration is trying to cover up the connections between the Saudi
Arabian government and the 9/11 hijackers.
When family members of the 9/11 victims sued Saudi Arabia for its role in the
attacks, the law firm hired by the Saudi government for its defense was none
other than the firm of James Baker, former Secretary of State under Bush I, and
a Bush family friend. Baker himself was given an office in the White House as he
was defending the interests of Saudi Arabia against the grievances of American
citizens.
In time, George W. Bush was forced to give in to public pressure and allow for
the creation of a commission to investigate 9/11. However, he still refused to
permit the formation of an independent commission. Instead, he hand-picked the
commission members, thereby guaranteeing a favorable final report.
In the course of the 9/11 Commission’s work, George W. Bush sought to thwart
their progress systematically by refusing to release key documents and by not
collaborating with their requests for interviews. He made it clear that he would
not testify under oath, that he would appear only together with Vice President
Dick Cheney, that he would talk only with the co-chairs of the commission, and
then only for one hour. Later, he relented about the one hour restriction, but
the other conditions stayed in place. Also, he initially refused to allow
Condolezza Rice to testify, though he was eventually forced to backtrack on
this, due to enormous public pressure.
Given the hand-picked, Bush-friendly make-up of the 9/11 Commission, the final
report predictably exonerated George W. Bush from any wrong-doing or
short-comings with regard to the tragic attacks. However, a great many observers
consider the 9/11 Commission to have been no more than a carefully orchestrated
whitewash, and call for the formation of a new, truly independent commission.
After all, Bill Clinton was investigated tirelessly for his Whitewater real
estate deals (which proved to involve no wrong-doing) and for his relationship
with Monika Lewinsky. Only $3 million were spent investigating 9/11; whereas $70
million were spend investigating Whitewater and Monika.
In the three years since 9/11, a great many conspiracy theories have circulated
with regard to the attacks. Many people are of the opinion that the Pentagon was
not attacked with a commercial airplane, but with a missile, citing photographic
evidence. Questions have also been raised about whether or not the planes flying
into the Twin Towers were really two hijacked commercial planes, and whether or
not the buildings collapsed because of the crashes, or because of demolition
explosives already hidden in the building. Are any of these theories true? We
need an in-depth investigation to answer that question definitively. Conspiracy
theories like these should be easy to disprove. Why does the Bush administration
refuse to allow such an investigation to take place?
George W. Bush used the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse to roll back civil
liberties in the United States. He falsely claimed that Iraq had aided the 9/11
terrorists and used this lie as a justification for his invasion of Iraq.
Now Vice President Dick Cheney claims that if the nation chooses John Kerry on
November 2, the United States will be attacked again. Such fear-mongering is a
standard tactic of the Republican leadership – though Cheney’s comments are low
even for them. However, Dick Cheney seems to forget that the worst terrorist
attack against the United States happened under the watch of George W. Bush. He
didn’t protect us the first time. He didn’t do much to help the victims of the
attacks. He used the tragedy for his own political gain. Why should we trust him
with the leadership of this nation again?
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Colin Powell in
four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row Martin Bright Sunday September 12, 2004 The Observer A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq. Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Last week, the offices of Powell and Straw contacted Public Affairs, the US publishers of Naughtie's book, to say they would vigorously deny the claims if publication went ahead. But as no legal action was threatened, the US launch of the book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, will proceed as planned this week. Naughtie stands by his claims and is said to be privately delighted that Powell and Straw have reacted so violently to the suggestion that the former US general had fallen out with the 'neo-cons'. Provocatively, the phrase 'fucking crazies' will be quoted on the jacket of the book, according to a source at the publisher. 'We were surprised to receive calls from the offices of Jack Straw and Colin Powell within 24 hours of each other,' the source said. Naughtie claims that Powell and Straw spoke on an almost daily basis. Powell's concerns were said to have chimed with Straw's and those of Blair himself - that if America acted without UN sanction, allies would be lost. Cheney and his allies were preparing for a spring war and did not wish to be deflected by the UN inspection process. Powell is thought to have been terrified that the strategy of the 'crazies' would alienate the Blair government, which believed it needed UN backing to win over Parliament and the British public. John Kampfner, political editor of the New Statesman and author of Blair's Wars, said Naughtie's characterisation of the feverish political atmosphere of the summer of 2002 was entirely accurate. 'The British government saw Powell as the most significant voice of sanity in the US administration. At different times during this very difficult period, the Brits used Powell to get across their point of view to the White House. But, bizarrely, Powell sometimes also used Blair to pass messages to Bush.' Kampfner's book, which covers the Blair
government's military adventures in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, as
well as Iraq, reported that in July 2002 Blair sent his foreign policy
adviser David Manning on a secret mission to Washington to deliver a letter
hinting that, without a second UN resolution, Britain would not be able to
join a war in Iraq. |
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"If Saudi ties find their knot in the U.S. then
all current questions must be changed. No longer do we ask why the Saudi
information is still classified, but which Saudi ties can be traced back to
the United States? And who forced the classification? Who are these suspects
President Bush is so scared to have mentioned?" The Real Saudi Ties are U.S. Ties By Ewing 2001 - globalfreepress.com On Monday, President Bush acted against the wishes of Saudi Arabia and a number of U.S. lawmakers, deciding not to declassify the now notorious missing 28 pages in the 9/11 Report. "It would reveal sources and methods" (President Bush) It is believed these pages might point to specific foreign sponsorship of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Bush seems to be less concerned with national security--the only legitimate reason for censorship--and more concerned with not providing lawmakers and journalists information that might lead them to a sobering question: What if the "Saudi ties" are in reality homegrown? If Saudi ties find their knot in the U.S. then all current questions must be changed. No longer do we ask why the Saudi information is still classified, but which Saudi ties can be traced back to the United States? And who forced the classification? Who are these suspects President Bush is so scared to have mentioned? Maybe they haven't been blacked out in the 9/11 Report, but "somewhere" else? Here are some suggestions of which "Saudi" suspects should be asked first.... Vinnell "It is important for us to hold this information close so that those who are being investigated aren’t alerted." (President Bush) Vinnell, owned by the Carlyle Group (which has long-time ties to the Bush Family), this Virginia-based private military firm trains and advises the Saudi National Guard. Many of the 1,400 employees are ex-US Special Forces. Vinell is working as a consultant with Advisory and Training. The Saudi National Guard is connected with Vinnell since 1975.. In May 2003, the WP reported, said that Saudi authorities are investigating, "suspected illegal arms sales by members of the country's national guard to al Qaeda operatives in the country". Vinnell is a subsidiary of TRW/Northrop Grumman. In 1992, Vinnell was taken over by the Carlyle Group, whose chairman was Ronald Reagan's former Defence Secretary, Frank Carlucci. The question to the US President should be, how much does Vinnell know about these problems within the Saudi National Guard? BDM "There is a threat to the United States"(President Bush) BDM (Falls Church, Virginia) provides logistics, training and intelligence to the Saudi Army and Air Force. BDM is yet another private defense contractor where the Carlyle Group had a major stake in. In 1998, Carlyle sold its controlling interest in BDM to TRW. On the board of TRW is former CIA director Robert M. Gates and Michael H. Armacost, who served as Undersecretary of State under President Reagan and as Ambassador to Japan for former President Bush. Their influence in blocking embarrassing questions is pretty obvious. According to a Boston Herald article from December 2001, in 1996 and 2000, BDM Federal won two contracts: One, a $44.4 million deal to build housing at the Khamis Mushayt Military Base in Saudi Arabia, and the other, a $65 million contract to provide 845 personnel for maintenance of Saudi Arabia's fleet of U.S.-made F-15 fighter jets. Booz-Allen Hamilton "We’re doing a better job of sharing intelligence and collecting data, so we’re able to find, you know, able to anticipate" (President Bush) Booz-Allen Hamilton (BAH), another global leader in strategy and technology consulting, runs the Military Staff College of Saudi Arabia. But BAH has its corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia. On August 15th, 2002, Dale Watson, former FBIHQ, went to work for Booz. No one ever complained that it was Watson who was unwilling to connect the dots during the increased warnings on a pending attack against America in Summer, 2001, and it is clear why: Watson formerly worked for the CIA and seems to have political support from their headquarter. Booz Allen is also supported by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, who became Vice President of BAH on July 15th, 2002. In May 2003, Consultant News and Navy Weeks reports, that the government of Saudi Arabia, awarded Booz Allen Hamilton with a sole-source contract for naval consulting work worth $7.9 million with options that could take it to $95.3 million. Financial interests win out over political embarrassment. Getting Booz Allen Hamiliton involved in an investigation, seems more unrealistic than ever. Shea + Gardner "It would show people how we collect information and on whom we’re collecting information" (President Bush) Through their website, law firm Shea & Gardner, they represented "a key United Technologies employee in a criminal investigation of alleged improper payments to members of the Saudi Arabian royal family" Shea & Gardner was also James Woolsey's first business of choice after he left the CIA in 1995. Current Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, was a partner there prior to joining the Bush Administration. The ties between Shea & Gardner and the US Government are strong and obvious. Interestingly, Shea & Gardner is registered as a "Foreign Agent" for the Iraqi National Congress. Among their current clients are Bank of America, Boeing Company, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, CSX, Dana Corporation, Ernst & Young, General Electric, ITT Industries, Janus, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Automation, SAKS, United States Aviation Underwriters and Veriz. Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld "If people are being investigated, it doesn't make sense for us to let them know who they are." (President Bush) Akin/Gump is another US law firm, who represents Saudi businessmen. Here we find arguably the most embarrassing U.S. connection, which the Bush Administration covers up under the pretext of a “pending investigation." Bush washes this over, stating that the “enemy” need not know what is classified. But who is the enemy? Akin/Gump represents at least two suspects mentioned in pending lawsuits filed by family members of the victims of 9/11: Former director of BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz, and Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi . Khalid bin Mahfouz’s’ sister, Kaleda, is one of Osama bin Laden's wives. More embarrassingly, bin Mahfouz (formerly connected with Bush’s first company, Arbusto) also had stakes in Tom Kean’s company Amarada Hess. Kean is current head of the 9/11 Commission. In addition, Akin/Gump represents the largest Islamic charity in the United States, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, based in Richmond, Texas. The FBI had been investigating this charity, when its efforts were suddenly blocked by an as yet undisclosed governmental power. Partners at Akin Gump include one of President Bush's closest Texas friends, James C. Langdon, and George R. Salem, a Bush fundraiser. SAIC "It would help the enemy if they knew our sources"(President Bush) SAIC is the nation's largest employee-owned research and engineering company, providing information technology, systems integration and eBusiness products and services to commercial and government customers. SAIC is not only working as a private military contractor for the Pentagon, but also for the CIA. SAIC supports the navy and air defenses of Saudi Arabia (C4 systems for the Royal Saudi Naval Forces program). SAIC and its subsidiaries, including Telcordia Technologies, have more than 41,000 employees at offices in more than 150 cities worldwide. American Consulate in Jeddah "Perhaps we can put out the document" (President Bush) According to J. Michael Springmann , former chief of the visa section at the US Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Consulate was mainly controlled by the CIA. Springmann complained about intelligence officers, who regularly expedited U.S. visa applications from Saudi applicants. It is now public knowledge that 15 of the 19 hijackers obtained their visas from Saudi Arabia, most of them in Jeddah, yet the 9/11 Report remains silent on this issue. Regardless, the original visa applications are available online and have been featured in the pages of the conservative paper, National Review. Al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan The 9/11 Report mentions that two of the official hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi received money from Saudi Arabia's royal family through two Saudis: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan. What the report fails to point out is that Al-Bayoumi was assistant to the Director of Finance for Dallah Avco, a US company that worked with the Saudi aviation authority. This is relevant because Al-Bayoumi was accused of being an agent for Saudi Intelligence. As for Osama Basnan, he was living in California when the Saudi Embassy sent him $15,000 to pay a “surgical bill” for his wife. The terrorist financial ties tracing back to United States are countless. But since we’re here, we might as well keep counting…. Kroll O’Gara Hess + Eisenhardt Kroll O’ Gara Eisenhardt is one of the oldest security companies in the United States and, some say, responsible for every U.S. President since the end of WW2. What does an upstanding, powerful company like Kroll do in its spare time? Why it trains local forces in Saudi Arabia, of course! One partner of Kroll, Cable & Wireless provides training in Counter-Terrorism and Urban Warfare in Saudi Arabia. In August 2001, former Kroll employee, Jerome Hauer, arranged a security job in the Twin Towers for FBI Agent John O’Neill. At the time, O’Neill had been investigating ENRON’s business deals with the Taliban and was subsequently pulled from that investigation. Neither Kroll nor Hauer was asked to testify about this coincidence. Prince Turki al Faisal Former Saudi Intelligence Head, Prince Turki al Faisal, who resigned only a few days before September 11th, is another shady character who has yet to testify. Al Faisal is known for having had close relations with Osama bin Laden. It is interesting to note the endless conflict within the Saudi family. The family breaks down into two general factions: 1) The al-Sudairy faction led by King Fahd and Defense Minister Sultan. It is they who profit and gain power from the Saudi alliance with the United States. 2) The religious coalition of half-brothers led by the aging Crown Prince Abdullah, whose piety is backed by alliances with Wahhabi religious leaders. Prince Turki worked with the Argentine oil company Bridas, while Prince Abdullah worked with the Saudi company Delta Oil, part of the US-backed consortium headed up by Unocal. Finally, the involvement of private U.S. military contractors (passively or actively) with terrorists can no longer be ignored. The most popular private military contractors are MPRI, Halliburton Brown + Root, L3, and DynCorp, all of which had contracts with Saudi Arabia. All of the preceding information can be found in the news archives of various internet sites. It is public knowledge and none of it risks national security. In a move that would make Monty Python blush, President Bush decided not to declassify information that is already available to the average sleuth. The result is, the mainstream media will not pick up on any of this “classified” information and the majority of Americans not inclined to research anything on their own will eat the spoon-fed spin of their favorite networks. You can look for that spin to go something like this: Saudi Arabia is a base for Al-Quaeda. We thought they were our friends but they said one thing in our language and another thing in their own. The major financiers of terrorism reside in Saudi Arabia. Once this becomes doctrine, the PNAC cabal headed by Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz will start promoting their biggest dream: a winner-takes-all invasion of Saudi Arabia. This is a dream wet in oil and blood. Also see: 9-11, John Deutch, Mitre Corp., and the NRO http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2102 |
Geopolitical Weapon Mujahadeen Al CIAda Al Queda
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we."
George W.Bush and he was not kidding
Geopolitical Weapon Mujahadeen Al CIAda Al Queda
Brzezinski wrote the Grand Chessboard pointing out the need for oil in the
Fascist portfolio.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/zbig.html
That morphed into the PNAC. The PNAC is the strategy for the Fascists or Neo
Cons as they are sometimes called, to continue their quixotic exercise.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=PNAC+the+Mein+Kampf
Le Nouvel Observateur's Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Published 15-21 January 1998
Translated by Jean Martineau
Comment: The US & European States are still using Brzezinski's Muslim terrorist
strategy!
by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm
Interview with Brzezinski
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm#II
Mujahadeen Al CIAda Al Queda or Farcy sting? Connecting the dots.
http://raenergy.igc.org/alciada.html
SING THE VOTE
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=this_land&preplay=1&ratingBar=off
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE in song is the first step to a fascism free planet
"THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MADE FOR YOU AND ME"
IMAGINE: WE are children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
WE ALL have a right to be here
START SINGING THE PLANET'S ANTHEM AT ALL EVENTS TO SHOW HOW "WE" HAVE ALREADY
VOTED.
This would get some air time if we did it at GOP campaign events even in
congress this Summer and fall and beyond after all it is the anthem of the Age
of Aquarius no. We suggested that "THIS LAND" be the Global Village Planetary
anthem at Woodies celebration in San Francisco at the Geary Theater in 1967. It
was seconded by three ambassadors and has become the second third fourth etc.
anthems to many countries.
FOLKSAY(people say) ............ has become Our defacto Global Village Planetary
anthem and in essence we voted for citizen empowerment as we sung it. Now let's
get it officially on record by singing it everywhere as direct democracy.
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
http://raenergy.igc.org/raenergy.html
Worksheet bio
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html
Newsgroups beginning in the eighties
Call to Action blog
http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml
"Raleigh Myers" web
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Raleigh+Myers%22
"Raleigh Myers" groups sort by date also
http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Raleigh+Myers%22
raenergy web
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=raenergy
raenergy groups sort by date also
http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=raenergy
From Spookie
I sure hope Randi
will talk about this one. It seems very big to me. From the Miami Herald:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on Sun, Sep. 05, 2004
Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked
By FRANK DAVIES
fdavies@herald.com
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the
United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush
administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that
relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a
direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and
trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat
wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he
makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were
in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked
from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties
on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four
months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources --
including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden
and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with
Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an
action in Iraq,'' he continued.
Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was
loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.''
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001
through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October
2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al
Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss,
nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI
and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi
connections to two hijackers.
Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two
Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave
significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi
government.
Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil
Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf
al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find
apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot
training.
When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an
FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they
were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote.
The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi
support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final
congressional report, Graham complained.
Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should
not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's
loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.''
Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to the hijackers or al Qaeda
plots to attack the United States.
Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and then
decided not to seek reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he hopes his
book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in the war on terrorism and he also
offers recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence community.
On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA consistently overplayed its
estimates of Saddam Hussein's threat in its public statements and declassified
reports, while its secret reports contained warnings that the intelligence on
weapons of mass destruction was not conclusive.
In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were 550 sites where weapons of
mass destruction were either produced or stored'' in Iraq.
''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did
not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days
earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different messages, directed at two
different audiences. I was outraged.''
In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI for its inability to track
al Qaeda operatives in the United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing
intelligence.''
He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush.
Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and
even common sense -- indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative threats
posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
When the weapons were not found, one year after the invasion of Iraq, Bush
attended a black-tie dinner in Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous
speech with slides, showing him looking under White House furniture and joking,
``Nope, no WMDs there.''
Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive things I have witnessed. Having
recently attended the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who left
behind a young wife and two preschool-age children, I found nothing funny about
a deceitful justification for war.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2004 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
|
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| September 11, 2004 |
| Deconstructing the Neocons |
| by Alan Bock |
|
The war in Iraq is coming to
resemble the War on Drugs in this narrow sense: if it were simply a matter
of having enough persuasive, well-written, well-researched and responsible
books out there critiquing the war from different perspectives, the war
would have been ended some time ago. Unfortunately, while whatever
intellectually defensible justifications for both wars might once have
existed have long since crumbled, emotional support is still fairly
strong. And certain deeply entrenched interests still see themselves as
benefiting from both.
One of the more persuasive critiques of the war from a generally conservative perspective is America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 369 pp.) by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. The authors are both veteran cold warriors with long-term diplomatic experience. Stefan Halper, now a fellow of Magdalene College at Cambridge, was a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and is a contributing editor at the American Spectator. Jonathan Clarke, now at the Cato Institute, served in the British Foreign Service, with assignments in Germany, Zimbabwe and the United States. The two argue that part of the reason the West prevailed in the Cold War was that the United States, for the most part, retained superior moral authority vis-à-vis the Soviet empire. In the post-Soviet era, however, "its moral authority is at risk. That is because the policies adopted in response to the catastrophic horror of Sept. 11, 2001 have rested on a series of critically flawed premises, namely that the challenges we face are essentially military in character and that military power alone can deliver victory. And while that may be true when barbarian fights barbarian for strips of territory, it is a profound mistake when civilization hopes to emerge triumphant." The Militarization of Politics Noting the profound changes that have taken place in American society since 9/11 – "troops in combat fatigues patrolling public places … concrete barriers around government buildings and synagogues; the drastic changes to air travel; flashing highway signs urging drivers to report suspicious behavior;" the conversion of global sympathy after 9/11 to widespread anti-Americanism, not to mention the rising federal and state deficits and clogging of international intercourse in people, goods, services and capital – they see the most remarkable change in the insertion of the military front-and-center into more aspects of American life: "A decade ago, it was a proud Washington boast that well-fashioned American policy toward Latin America had moderated that region's love affair with its generals and returned the military to its barracks. Today, the trend in America is in the opposite direction. Few political rallies or speeches are complete without a military accent. The only extraordinary aspect of this is how ordinary it now seems to us, persuaded as we have been to forget that one of the unifying threads of our political culture, exemplified by Washington's resignation of his commission in 1783, has been an avoidance of military intrusion into politics. But now times have changed so that we observe passively when, in defiance of the underlying grain of the American political ethos, movement is in the direction of tighter central control. … "The greatest change is psychological. Today we have convinced ourselves (with a massive assist from cable news and talk radio) that, as Americans, our natural state is war – war that has no dimensions, with elusive enemies who may be equally residents of Damascus or Detroit and with no definition of what constitutes victory and thus with no end in sight. Having absorbed a siege mentality, we live our lives in crisis mode. 'It's the terror, stupid,' is the defining political slogan. Yet we are left with a stark paradox. Despite the massive application of American firepower overseas and an equally massive diversion of resources toward homeland security, Americans feel not a whit more secure – quite the opposite. Poll after poll shows Americans feeling more personally threatened than at any time in their history." The Neoconservative Contribution How did this country come to such a pretty pass? I resist the temptation simply to say that American foreign policy has been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservatives, for Halper and Clarke's analysis is much more subtle, fair-minded and balanced than that. Nonetheless, they do argue that "the neoconservatives have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour, veering away from the balanced, consensus-building, and resource-husbanding approach that has characterized traditional Republican internationalism – exemplified today by Secretary of State Colin Powell – and acted more as a special interest focused on its particular agenda." The two go back to the origins of the neoconservative movement or persuasion in the 1960s, when various often left-leaning intellectuals – Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Daniel Moynihan, Midge Decter, Michael Novak, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Peter Berger and others – struggled to come to terms with the cultural revolution of the 1960s twinned with a willingness to apologize for communism verging sometimes on knee-jerk anti-Americanism that characterized many sectors of American intellectual life. Many of these writers did important work in a variety of fields, from criticizing the shortcomings of the welfare state to trying to define the role of religion in an essentially secular society that continued to value religious freedom. Over time, perhaps driven by a conviction that protection of the state of Israel is a preeminent concern, neoconservatives narrowed their range of interests, coming to focus on foreign policy. However, "Even on foreign policy, modern neoconservatism focuses narrowly. It pays scant attention to the world beyond defense budgets and select areas of the world where its ideology is applicable." What began as a relatively intellectually adventurous and sometimes even transgressive – at least in terms of the U.S. academy persuasion – has yielded to a situation where today's exemplars "give the appearance of having been born intellectually middle-aged." Halper and Clarke devote careful attention to Albert Wohlstetter, who taught political science at the University of Chicago, was quietly but deeply influential in developing the U.S. strategic approach to the Soviet Union (especially the importance of high technology) and was something of a mentor to Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom were in turn influenced by the German-born political scientist Leo Strauss, whose advocacy of classical political thought and the importance of religion to maintaining virtue in a decent society led to profound disillusionment with modernism and secularism (although having read his book on natural rights I'm not sure just how personally religious he was or whether he cherished religion mainly for its utility in advancing what he saw as the good society). Strauss, of course, also influenced Claremont's Harry Jaffa and the school of thought idealizing Lincoln as the preeminent American statesman and democratic exemplar. All of this discussion bears no resemblance to the gotcha sometimes out-of-context quote-mongering that sometimes characterizes dissections of neoconservatism. It is sober and intellectually responsible, but more than forthright about the areas where the authors have disagreements, especially with the modern, foreign-policy-focused and perhaps surprisingly military-fascinated version of neoconservatism Neoconservatives and Reagan When Ronald Reagan died recently, inspiring a rather surprising and widespread effusion of affection and perhaps nostalgia, today's neoconservatives were among those in the forefront of trying to claim the mantle of Reagan to bless their current policy preferences. It is therefore useful that this book includes a chapter, tellingly titled "The False History," that details Reagan's actual policies and the often troubled relationship between the Reagan administration and the neocons, and between the neocons and other elements of the traditional conservative coalition. It is true that Reagan appointed prominent neoconservatives like William Bennett, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Eugene Rostow, Carnes Lord, Elliott Abrams and others to positions of prominence, "but they never joined the inner sanctum." Our authors note that for all his rhetorical flourish about the "evil empire" and his unabashedly conservative approach to the world, "Reagan's approach to the world may, in its basic philosophical instincts, have had something in common with neoconservatism, but the pragmatism of its execution set it a universe away from today's inflexible neoconservative designs. The severe neoconservative critique of Reagan's foreign policy that emerged from the early 1980s made this clear." As Halper and Clarke note, an early honeymoon with Reagan was quickly followed by neoconservative disenchantment. "Within four years, [Norman] Podhoretz had published articles with such titles as 'The Reagan Road to Détente,' 'The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy,' and 'Mistaken Identity.' Irving Kristol had written, 'The Muddle in Foreign Policy,' and Robert Tucker had published 'The Middle East: Carterism without Carter.' These articles made clear that the president had fallen out of favor with the neoconservatives." Essentially, while Reagan talked tough about the Soviets, when the circumstances seemed to warrant it he acted with relative moderation. His three acts of foreign intervention, in Beirut in 1982, in Grenada in 1983, and bombing Libya in 1986, were of limited goals and duration, and calculated not to create a confrontation with the Soviet Union. This disappointed the neocons, as did his relatively limited response to the imposition of martial law in Poland and the banning of Solidarity in 1981. As for Israel, while supporting Israel as "an accomplished fact," he rejected the idea of Israel incorporating Gaza and the West Bank and called for a freeze on Israeli West Bank settlements. He supported the UN declaration denouncing the de facto annexation of the Golan Heights as illegal. Commentary magazine complained that the administration "becomes ever more accustomed to playing the role of supplicant to the rulers of Arabia." And Norman Podhoretz claimed to see a "continuing tilt in American policy toward the enemies of Israel in the Middle East." The neocons also saw Reagan as soft on mainland China. Halper and Clarke say that, "Although Reagan's approach to the world was undoubtedly based on challenging Soviet expansionism and the decline of American influence, it was never predicated – in the neoconservative manner – on the unilateral deployment of U.S. military power. Consequently, Norman Podhoretz spoke for many neoconservatives, when he wrote, 'the President's warmest friends and his most virulent enemies imagined that they had found in him a champion of the old conservative dream of going beyond the containment of Communism to the "rollback" of Communist influence and power and the "liberation" of the Soviet empire. The truth, however, is that Mr. Reagan as President has never shown the slightest inclination to pursue such an ambitious strategy.'" Perhaps the most important distinction between Reagan and the neoconservatives is in psychology or temperament. Reagan was an optimist, generally appealing to the best in people and confident that freedom would triumph eventually. The neoconservative impulse, by contrast, is deeply pessimistic, "centered around Hobbes's doomsday vision of man in his primitive state," and seeing dire threats wherever they turn, whether from Woodstock, multiculturalism, a nation under siege from jihadists, and American young people hopelessly lax and inclined toward being corrupted, all of which must be met with firm action by the powerful state they see as the only hope for preserving even a modest semblance of civilized life. The Iraq Deception America Alone includes an excellent chapter on how neoconservatives captured the public discourse in the wake of the 9/11 attack to conjure a connection between that attack by a non-state organization based in Afghanistan and cyberspace and the perceived need to invade the nation-state of Iraq. Among their advantages were the fact that neocons had been making the case for invading Iraq since 1992, with the Wolfowitz-Cheney-Libby draft defense posture paper, and the Project for the New American Century position paper in 1997. So they didn't have to develop a position; it was already formed, and ready to be sold to the Bush administration, which was already salted with neocons in influential positions. They also cite a study, based on seven different polls between January and September 2003 that showed significant numbers of Americans believed in three misconceptions crucial to selling the Iraq war: that Iraq had played a role in the 9/11 attack and that Iraq and al-Qaeda were closely, even operationally linked; that weapons of mass destruction had actually been found after the war; and that world opinion in general approved of America's going to war. Interestingly (although on reflection perhaps not surprisingly), these attitudes arose not from paying too little attention to the news but from paying too much attention to certain news outlets. In sum, "those who principally watched Fox News were far more likely to have these misperceptions than those who did not." At a more detailed level, "Fox News watchers were by far the most likely to hold these [three mistaken] views and were three times more likely to hold all three." How significant is it, however, that while 80 percent of Fox viewers held at least one of these mistaken notions, fully 71 percent of CBS viewers also did, compared to 55 percent for NBC and CNN? Halper and Clarke are understated: "That those with higher exposure to Fox News and CBS News were more likely to misperceive and support the war in Iraq is a telling commentary on how little these networks concentrated on the objective provision of information." If this book has a shortcoming, it is a failure to offer much more of a policy framework for the future than a return to traditional conservative internationalism, with a proper balance among diplomacy, trade, alliances, multilateral or unilateral actions as appropriate, and military action as a last resort, only when all other means have clearly failed. The authors also believe that "the neoconservatives have had their moment" and their influence is bound to fade as the tragic results of their policy preferences become increasingly clear. I suspect they are more persistent and the American media and public less attentive than that. |
HARLEY SORENSEN
The Real Reason We're In Iraq
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Monday, September 13, 2004
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
We should get out of Iraq immediately. Let me explain ...
But, first, bear in mind why we're in Iraq. It has nothing to do with
weapons of mass destruction, and it has nothing to do with the brutal
dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
It has a lot to do with ambition.
Before we invaded Iraq, our politicians told us that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction in great quantities. Secretary of State Colin Powell even
went to the United Nations and described Iraq's cache in detail, down to the
pound of certain weapons.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us that not only did Iraq have
these weapons but he knew exactly where they were.
This is why I seriously doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
What our government told us defied logic and common sense.
The United Nations had inspectors in Iraq looking for weapons. They couldn't
find any. Logic and common sense, then, would have dictated that our
government tell those inspectors where to look. After all, if we knew, why
wouldn't we share our knowledge with the inspectors?
We wouldn't, of course, because we didn't know. Our government explained its
unwillingness to help by explaining that it didn't want to compromise
confidential sources.
How much sense does that make? Saddam has enough weaponry to attack the
western world, and we can't lead the UN inspectors to it because we don't
want Saddam to know how we got the information? Give me a break!
(As a footnote, it should be noted that a favorite trick of pathological
liars is to "protect" their nonexistent sources of information.)
We now know for certain that Saddam did not have the weapons we used to go
to war against Iraq.
And common sense tells that we didn't attack Iraq because Saddam is a brutal
dictator. He was a brutal dictator back in the days when we played footsie
with him as he fought Iran. (Do a Google image search for Rumsfeld and
Saddam, and you'll find pictures of Rummy and Saddam shaking hands.)
Historically, the United States has always been friendly with brutal
dictators if it's to our financial advantage. Currently, there are other
dictators afoot; Saddam wasn't the only one.
And anyone who can read knows that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
So why did we go to war with Iraq?
The short answer is "oil." But that's not the whole story.
Briefly, we went to war with Iraq because an influential group of
conservatives (now known as "neo-cons") convinced President George W. Bush
that it was in America's best interests to conquer Iraq as a first step
toward dominating the oil-producing nations in the Middle East and
eventually the world.
Not insignificantly, these same neo-cons wanted to eliminate Iraq as a
threat to their darling ally, Israel.
Their plan is laid out in detail on the Web at newamericancentury.org.
So we invaded Iraq not to save ourselves from weapons of mass destruction,
not to rid the world of a brutal dictator and not to avenge the murders of
Sept. 11. We invaded Iraq because Bush and his pals think America should
rule the world.
That's why we can't win. The rest of the world isn't going to let us win.
The rest of the world might admire us, but they do not want to be dominated
by us.
And that's why we should get out of Iraq today. Not tomorrow, not next week,
not a year from now, but today.
Try as we may, we are not going to turn Iraq into a model democracy. The
Sunnis don't want democracy. The Shiites don't want a democracy. The Kurds
don't want a democracy.
The Saudis do not want a new democracy as a neighbor. Nor do the Kuwaitis.
Nor do the Syrians. None of the countries in that region with despotic
rulers want us to succeed. And don't think for a moment they're above
slipping terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans.
The plan to conquer Iraq was half-baked from the start. Our troops were not
properly trained or equipped to do the job given them. (Sent to the desert
in jungle fatigues? Not given body armor? Completely untrained in handling
prisoners?)
There was no "exit plan" because we never intended to exit. The plan was,
and is, to build military bases in Iraq and stay there forever as cock of
the walk in the Middle East.
Many of our European friends, who have a sense of history, knew better than
to get involved in such a fool's mission.
Bush may be the idealist other people think he is, but his grandiose plan
for controlling the world has at least one fatal flaw: it depends,
childlike, on the good will of all involved.
Yet, not even the U.S., the alleged "good guy" in this mess, has
demonstrated purity. Our leaders see Iraq as a place to make money. So Bush
& Co. have set up their friends to cash in on the rebuilding of Iraq, a job
that should be done (for pay) by the people who built it in the first place:
Iraqis.
We can't win in Iraq. Hardly anybody wants us to. The longer we stay there,
the more Iraqi children end up maimed or dead, the more of our young men and
women die.
Clearly, our government lied to us, and to the world, to get us into this
war. That alone should tell us it's wrong.
Several years ago, George W. Bush made a decision to quit drinking. As one
of my e-mailers suggests, we would have been better off if he had decided,
instead, to quit lying.
It's not too late, George.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail
him at
harleysorensen@y....
©2004 SF Gate
September 14, 2004
By GARY LEUPP
Europe (Europe proper, the geographer's Europe) is an odd thing, curiously shaped and conceptualized since Herodotus invented it as the object of Persian invasion 2500 years ago. As the concept grew, Europe came to extend from Viking-settled Iceland in the mid-Atlantic (to the northwest); to the Iberian peninsula (abutting Africa in the southwest); and from the Kara Sea and the upper extremity of the Urals (in the northeast), down the mountain range to the Ural River, which avoiding all but a small slice of (Asian) Kazakhstan, defines Europe to the Caspian Sea. Thence the borderline straddles the Caucasus Mountains, from Baku on the Caspian to the Black Sea coast and onto the Crimean Peninsula, making the Caucasus the southeastern corner of the European continent, at least the European continent of the stickler academic. (Some place the Caucasian countries in the Middle East as well as Europe, rather like geographers count Vietnam alternately as an East Asian and Southeast Asian country.)
Actually, no Europe makes sense as a "continent," if the latter term is to claim any consistency or analytical utility. Europe is not surrounded by oceans, as are normal continents (Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Antarctica)---and as Asia would be if we simply included Europe, as Nietzsche once suggested, "as a peninsula of the greater Eurasian super-continent." Continental Europe is the invention of people who wanted to be as special, and separate as oceans can make you, but lacking the eastern ocean which ought to be there to validate continental pretensions. South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh), surrounded by the Indian Ocean and Himalayas, could make an equally valid case for continent-hood. The concept is ultimately arbitrary.
But back to the southeastern corner of this imagined Eurocontinent: the Caucasus. "Caucasian" is of course often used as a synonym for "white" (as in white people), and has been used in that sense since pioneer ethnologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in 1775, pronounced Caucasians (supposedly descended from Noah's son Japeth after the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat following the Flood) the "most beautiful race of menthe primeval type [from which] others divergewhite in color, which we may fairly assume to be the primitive color of mankind" But white folks flattered by Blumenbach's pseudo-science, and folks in general outside the region, have little knowledge of this part of Europe. I can think of various reasons why this unawareness is unfortunate:
(1) the Caucasus is a key site of Russian-U.S. contention concerning the construction of oil pipelines from the Caspian oilfields (in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan) to Black Sea and Mediterranean ports;
(2) it is a maze of new, weak nations with vigorous secessionist movements;
(3) it is a region of centuries-old Muslim communities, from which some "Islamic extremist" trends have emerged;
(4) it has, since the deployment of U.S. forces in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia in 2002, and the announcement of Russian President Vladimir Putin around the same time that Chechen rebels are al-Qaeda-like terrorists, been posited as a major theater in the "War on Terror;" and
(5) given its record, the U.S. government might do something very brutal and very stupid in the region. So one should pay attention. To understand "ethnic conflict" in this area in the context of big-power rivalry, one should brief oneself on the basics.
Compare the Balkans
The Caucasus embraces southern Russia (referring to the zone between the Black and Caspian Seas), and the three nations of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. This region is culturally linked to the west and north by Orthodox Christianity (kindred Russian, Georgian and Armenian varieties), and to the east by Islam (a legacy of past encounters between Persians and Turks and the local peoples). In this mix the Caucasus resembles the Balkans, where you have one more or less Muslim nation (Albania, where religious practice was banned for decades but which is officially now 70% Muslim); an unusually-constructed Bosnia-Herzegovina in which about 40% of the population (not all the Bosniaks) embrace Islam with varying degrees of interest; and the de facto NATO protectorate of Kosovo, which is about 90% Albanian Muslim. There are also longstanding Muslim minorities in Macedonia (29%), Bulgaria (12%) and elsewhere in the Balkans. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, the implosion of neutral "socialist" Yugoslavia involving catastrophic ethno-religious strife, and fall of the idiosyncratic Hoxhaite regime in Albania brought Balkan Muslims onto the world stage, as recipients of religious proselytization (by Arab "Wahhabis" in particular, backed up by Saudi largesse) and as the beneficiaries (at least short term) of US-NATO protection against the vilified Serbs and Croatians.
In the Balkans, Washington postures as the great friend of the Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars, although its position is fraught with contradictions. U.S. acquiescence to Helmut Kohl's reunited Germany, which unlike the U.S. State Department championed an independent Slovenia in 1990, contributed to the disastrous dismantling of the Yugoslav state. (This produced much ethnic conflict, including what some term the "Bosnian holocaust.") The U.S., having labeled the Kosovo Liberation Army "terrorists" in 1999, made common cause with the Kosovar Albanians against a Serbian foe whose atrocities were wantonly exaggerated to justify the bombing of Milocevic's Yugoslavia. The Russians meanwhile posture as friends of the Serbs and other Slavs aggrieved by Washington policy.
Across the Black Sea from the Balkans, in the Caucasus, we find Armenia, ethnically homogeneous but abetting an Armenian secessionist movement within the Armenian-peopled Nagorno-Karabakh region of neighboring Azerbaijan. Armenia has occupied 16% of Azeri territory since 1994. 94% of the population of Azerbaijan are Azeri, a Muslim Turkish people. (That's seven million Muslims, double the number of Albanian Muslims; hence if Azerbaijan is in Europe, it is the largest European Muslim country.) Fellow Azeris live across the border with Georgia; 5.7% of Georgia's 4.69 million people (668,000) live in the Adhzaria region. In Abkhazia, in the north along the Black Sea, live an additional 85,000 to 100,000 Muslims speaking a Causasian language distantly related to Georgian. Altogether 11% of Georgia's population (over half a million) is Muslim. About 4% of the population of Armenia are Kurds, mostly adherents of the Yezidi faith, which reveres the Prophet Mohammed but is not commonly regarded as an Islamic sect. So within the southern Caucasus, we have Azerbaijan, Adhzaria, and Abkhazia as Muslim zones. In the northern (Russian) Caucasus, we have in addition, lined up westward from the Caspian coast, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, three republics in the Russian Federation with predominantly Muslim populations. Daghestan has about two and a half million people, of whom at least 90% are Muslim. There aren't good current figures for Chechnya and Ingushetia, but in 1989, when they were united in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic, there were 735,000 Muslim Chechens and 164,000 Muslim Ingush, together 71% of the republic's population (the rest being mostly Russian).
Bordering Ingushetia is North Ossetia, a predominantly (80%) Christian republic in the Russian Federation, with an Ingush minority. (Among the ethnic Ossetians themselves, some 20% practice Sunni Islam.) Then to the west, bordering Georgia, are the predominantly Muslim republics of Kabardino-Balkaria (Kabardins mostly Sunni Muslims, Balkarians mostly Orthodox Christian) and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, whose Muslim populations together number maybe a million. In other words, in the Caucasus you have in addition to the seven or eight million Azeri Muslims, four or five million other Muslims, living in historically Muslim districts in the Christian-majority behemoth that is Russia, and in the ancient Christian land of Georgia.
Some of these Muslims, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, have become involved in violent secessionist movements. Moscow and Tblisi, who have differences between themselves, have both become inclined since 9-11 to depict their response to such movements as counter-terrorist in character, to represent the secessionists as ideological soul-mates of al-Qaeda, and to manipulate the "War on Terror" paradigm to justify their repressive measures and to even threaten "pre-emptive" actions. Putin like Bush vows to strike at terrorists "wherever they may be" (which might mean, say, striking at Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia). Thus in the Caucasus, the implosion of the USSR, like the implosion of Yugoslavia in the Balkans, produces a welter of nationalist strivings, coupled with long-dormant religious sensibilities, that both the hyperpuissance U.S. and the weakened regional hegemon Russia seek to exploit. They do so now in the context of Bush's eternal war project, which exploits anti-Islamic sentiment in the U.S. (drawing especially on the most ignorant varieties of Christian fundamentalist intolerance), even as the administration insists before the global audience that the U.S. respects Islam as "a religion of peace." Putin, powerless to prevent the U.S.'s projection of power into formerly Soviet territory from Central Asia to Georgia, applies an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" policy, depicting his own measures against unruly Muslims in Russia as part of the global Terror War.
Chechnya
Of Muslims seeking independence from Russia, the Chechens receive the most attention. Their secessionist movement has been the bloodiest in the region, and exacted a most grotesque toll on Russians, in particular, from the Caucasus to Moscow. The small Chechen homeland has had a very bad press, internationally, and most Americans who've heard of Chechnya no doubt by this point associate its people with Islamic terrorism. The recent school hostage episode in Beslan, in Russia's North Ossetia, presented the world with the most nightmarish spectacle: a school commandeered, children specifically targeted, seized, terrified, shot in the back as they attempted to escape. About 330 Christians, half of them kids, killed by Muslims from Chechya, and the adjoining Muslim republic of Ingushetia, and (if one believes an early Russian report uncorroborated by reporters) Muslim Arabs. (I seriously doubt any Arab participation, simply because it too obviously serves Putin's wish to depict his repression of the Chechen independence movement as part of the global Bush-war project targeting Arabs.) Anyway, a horrible, unforgivable scenario, which some may see as Russia's 9-11.
One might suppose that, as Putin seeks to link Chechen rebels to al-Qaeda, the U.S. would support the Russian leader in his moves against Chechen separatism, rather as it endorses every single move the Likud regime in Israel takes against the cause of the Palestinians (a "terrorist" cause to the Likudists in the Bush administration), or that President Arroyo in the Philippines takes against the Moro. But no, not quite. Just as Washington found it useful to validate Bosnian and Kosovar nationalism in the Balkans (entrenching its expanding NATO-self into what was once proudly non-aligned European territory), so it has (under the Clinton and Bush administrations alike) found it useful to promote Muslim separatisms in southern Russia, to better destabilize the Russian Federation. Why? Because Russia seeks to thwart U.S. oil pipeline ambitions and the U.S.'s general pursuit of geopolitical advantage in the Caucasus. Ruling circles in both the U.S. and Russia are acting rationally in pursuit of their ends. Those anti-people ends are the problem.
As the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chechens, having resented Russian domination for a century and a half, under the leadership of air force general Dzhokar Dudayev declared independence. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/chechnyatime1.html Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused to grant this, and Russian forces invaded in 1994 to reestablish central government authority. The invasion met with fierce resistance, prompting a withdrawal in 1996 and a peace agreement in 1997. A new Chechen government, headed by Aslan Maskhadov, failed to acquire international recognition, or to contain rampant crime, corruption, and warlordism. "Islamic extremism" flourished and spread into neighboring Ingushetia and elsewhere. In October 1992, Ingush militias clashed with Russian-backed North Ossetian security forces, paramilitaries and army troops in the disputed region of Prigorodnyi. This is 978 square kilometers of once-Ingush land given North Ossetia during the Stalin years. This land dispute is at the heart of Christian Ossetian-Muslim Ingush animosity, and the Ingush and Chechens, whose languages are mutually comprehensible, identify with one anothers' struggles. (The Beslan school seizure was a joint operation involving Chechens and Ingush militants.)
Thousands of Ingush homes were destroyed in 1992, and the bulk of the Ingush population in North Ossetia (46,000 by official Russian count) displaced. Complicating matters, South Ossetia, in the Republic of Georgia, attempted to succeed from Georgia and unite with North Ossetia. In response, the new Georgian government sent in troops, leveling 100 Ossetian villages and producing 100,000 refugees, many of whom wound up in Prigordnyi, seizing Ingush homes. (Tit for tat, Moscow tilted towards Abkhazia as fighting there killed 16,000 and drove 300,000 ethnic Georgians from their homes.)
Following bombings in North Ossetia that killed 53, an attack on a Russian military barracks in Daghestan, and the bombing of two Moscow apartment buildings in1999 that killed over 300, the government of President Putin resumed the war with Chechnya, forcing Maskhadov underground. Moscow blamed Chechens for the Moscow attacks, although rebel leader Shamil Basayev disclaimed responsibility, and skeptics claim the attacks were staged to justify renewed Russian intervention. When Putin succeeded Yeltsin as Russian president on December 31, 1999, his military was bogged down in an unwinnable guerrilla war in Chechnya, and cutting its losses, the Putin administration simply proclaimed victory, turning over power to a Chechen puppet (recently assassinated) in 2002. Russian troops remain, harassed by forces loyal to Basayev, whom Moscow says it knows "for certain" was behind the Beslan school attack. (A Russian daily has claimed that in a message signed by Basayev, he demanded an end to the war in Chechnya, the withdrawal of Russian troops, autonomy for Chechnya within the Commonwealth of Independent States, Chechnya's continued inclusion in the ruble zone, and CIS peacekeepers for the region.) Some of Basayev's forces, Moscow claims, operate out of bases in Georgia, and since 2002 Russia has threatened to take action against Chechen militants in that country. Washington warns against this.
The Neocons' Role
For over a decade, U.S. policy has been to criticize Russian actions against Chechen and Ingush rebels, while discouraging Russian support for all three separatist movements in Georgia. In 1999, many key players in the current administration formed an "American Committee for Peace in Chechnya" (ACPC), whose membership roster includes omnipresent neocon operator Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney, Glen Howard, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bruce Jackson, James Woolsey, and Caspar Weinberger. Since 9-11, while insisting on al-Qaeda links to Muslim terrorism everywhere else (from the Philippines to Palestine), they have pronounced any Chechen-al-Qaeda link "overstated." ACPC has successfully campaigned for the U.S. to provide political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in Maskhadov's toppled regime and considered a terrorist by Moscow. Bush policy was expressed by Steven Pifer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, in an appearance before the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2003: "[We] do not share the Russian assessment that the Chechen conflict is simply and solely a counterterrorism effort. . . . While there are terrorist elements fighting in Chechnya, we do not agree that all separatists can be equated as terrorists." According to John Laughland in the Guardian (Sept. 8), "US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere." Putin's Chechnya war, that is to say, is not, as the Russian leader wants to paint it, part and parcel of the global War on Terrorism initially focused on al-Qaeda. It is an ongoing statement of Russia's still-brutal, dictatorial character, and hence an encouragement for the Caucasian nations to strengthen ties with the U.S.
While seeking regime change throughout the Muslim Middle East, inventing facts to achieve that end, the Bush administration (pleased with the new U.S.-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, which it helped place in power; pleased to have military forces training troops in Azerbaijan; grateful to Armenia for its 50 troops in Iraq; planning on bringing these all into NATO) wants the status quo in the southern Caucasus (except for the remaining Russian bases in Georgia, which it wants to replace with its own). It also desires the advance of Muslim separatism in the northern (Russian) Caucasus. Should southern Russia decompose into a series of small, weak nations (from Daghestan to Karachayevo-Cherkessia), this part of Muslim Europe will fall firmly into the U.S. lap, terrorizing nobody and happily cooperating with U.S. energy corporations. This, at least, is the neocon hope, which is why they so embrace, even after the Beslan attack, what they imagine to be the Chechen cause. Meanwhile Moscow, repressing Muslim separatism at home, courts Muslim separatists in Georgia's Adzharia and Abhkazia. Thus the main issue in the Caucasus is not Islam, or Chechen terrorism, but geopolitical control, with the U.S. and Russia competing to depict their competition as a War on Terror.
To this the world should simply say, with Bertolt Brecht, "The valley to the waterers, that it yield fruit." (Caucasian Chalk Circle, Act V)
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
From:
Aaron@L...
Date: Sat Sep 18, 2004 2:26 pm
Subject: Re: Bush Authorized 911 Attacks??!!?!!!!!
From:
MLN00P@a...
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 13:28:49 EDT
Subject: Re: Bush Authorized 911 Attacks??!!?
This is a lot of material. I printed it out and read the hard copy. Apparently
Stanley Hilton knew Wofowitz and others at the University of Chicago in the 60s.
The Neocons talked about manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor back then. There
goal was to make a one party dictatorship. Stanley Hilton, Bob Dole's former
chief of staff is suing the government for 7 billion dollars for carrying out
9/11. Bush, according to Stanley Hilton, apparently ordered 9/11 to happen.]
Government Insider Says Bush
Authorized 911 Attacks
From Thomas Buyea
9-17-4
|
|
| From:
Alex Constantine <alexx33@s...>
Date: Sat Oct 2, 2004 1:04 am Subject: Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to the 911 Terrorists, Part I To: Brian <bsalter@g...> |
| Saudi
Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists, Part I By Alex Constantine Decades before burning skyscrapers, codified torture, secret trials and mass detentions, there was Barrick Gold, a mining concern in Canada with roots in the American intelligence establishment. It is fitting that gold, the seductive but dead heart of world capitalism, should christen a story about the most unconscionable event in Wall Street history: 911. Barrick¹s incorporation is obscure. Most accounts claim that the firm was founded by Peter Munk, a former radio manufacturer who made a splash in the Canadian press when he disposed of his shares in the company shortly before it was declared insolvent, a golden parachute paid for by investors and the Canadian taxpayer. His name was instantly mud in the investment community, but fortunately for Munk, no indictment was ever brought against him. Today, his overall worth is estimated at $350 million.1 Munk¹s redemption was the work of Saudi entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi, who would go on to notoriety as an Ollie North intermediary in the Iran-Contra affair. Khashoggi and Munk kicked off their partnership with a series of hotel investments. In 1983, the Saudi entrepeneur raided his fat cash reserves to purchase Barrick. Munk was installed as chairman. Khashoggi distanced himself from Barrick shortly after the Iran-Contra scandal broke (but held onto his stock, tied up as collateral for North¹s arms transfers to Iran in 1985), notes Observer reporter Gregg Palast in a book on the 2000 presidential election, before Bush was invited in. That was in 1995: ³Munk's reputation was restored, at least in his own mind, in part by massive donations to the University of Toronto. Following this act of philanthropy, the university awarded Munkadviser Bush an honorary degree. Several students were arrested protesting what appeared to them as a cash-for-honors deal.²2 The bonds were positively Sicilian. in 1986, Khashoggi was was arrested for fraud and held in a New York prison. Munk paid his $4 million bail.3 Financial researcher Lois Battuello was Palast¹s key source of information concerning Barrick. It was Battuello who gave Palast a file on Barrick Resources International (BRI), the nascent firm founded two years before Barrick Gold, a spin-off, by the Central Intelligence Agency¹s Kermit Roosevelt to serve as a dummy business front. This was roughly the same time that Roosevelt cemented relations with Khashoggi, who brought Munk along, on behalf of the CIA. In 1983, Battuello says, the disgraced entrepeneur ³picked up the mantle of this clandestine front (read looted taxpayer dollars) in Toronto as though it was his operation. It was simply put together with Œevil money,¹ and it gave Adnan Khashoggi an excuse to be visible in Toronto, where he established yet more businesses and outposts.²4 The offshore division of Khashoggi's Barrick Resources, for instance, controlled Jetborne, Inc., a company in Toronto used by Khashoggi to ship arms to Iran under the direction of Reagan¹s NSC.5 Khashoggi¹s empire, raised on a bed of gold, metastisized rapidly. In 1973, he dropped in his burgeoning portfolio a company in possession of nearly two million acres of prime real estate, the Arizona-Colorado Land & Cattle Company -- not far from the 100,000 acre Paloma Ranch near Gila Bend, deeded to the CIA¹s Kermit Roosevelt and John B. Anderson.6 Two years later, in cahoots with Sheik Kamal Adham -- then director of Saudi intelligence (1963-79), brother-in-law of King Faisal and the CIA¹s key liaison to the Arab world -- Khashoggi founded Oryx. But the Saudi Sheik¹s thieving bonds with Khashoggi and the CIA were forged decades earlier, with the incorporation of Barrick. The company¹s seed investors were Saudis with Agency ties, including Shiek Kamal Adham, Adnan Khashoggi, and Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz (a major investor in Barrick, code-named ³Tumbleweed² by his CIA contacts).7 By 1978, Adham was worth roughly $134 million. It was but two years earlier that the son of Prescott Bush, a well-heeled CIA director, struck up an alliance with Saudi Arabia and Iran under the Shah. George H.W. Bush¹s left-hand man at Langley was Kamal Adham. After leaving the CIA in January, 1977, Bush was appointed to the executive committee chair of First International Bancshares (FIB), the largest bank in the District of Columbia. (In the 1980s, the Shiek and Abdul Khalil ((Adham¹s successor as Saudi intelligence director)), then officers of BCCI, were implicated in a hostile bid for FIB, by this time transmorgrified into a dummy front for its scandal-infested parent, BCCI.) Raymond Close, another revolving-door, covert dervish, CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, took arms from the Saudis and gave them to Pakistan, and in Œ70s left the Agency and went to work for BCCI director Kamal Adham. Majority shares in Capcom, a BCCI susidiary, were held by Saudi spooks Adham and Khalil. Capcom sidelines included money laundering and drug trafficking.8 Adham was eventually prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case and paid a $100 million fine. Oryx, the demonic corporate brat of Khashoggi and Adham, has recently been linked by investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker (Welcome to Terrorland) to Wallace Hilliard, proprietor of Huffman Aviation in Florida, where Mohammed Atta¹s suicide cult trained in aero-terrorism. Of the 220 flight schools in Florida, Atta had to pick Huffman. Wallace Hilliard, Khashoggi¹s lackey, bought Huffman Aviation in 1999, and hired Rudi Dekkers, a Dutchman, to run it. The following year, Hilliard¹s LearJet was stopped on the runway at Orlando Executive Airport by armed DEA agents. At Huffman, too, the CIA was a silent partner. Sander Hickes, a reporter for the Long Island Press, found that Hilliard ³did business with Myron Du Bain, who worked alongside late ex-CIA director John McCone on the boards of several banks. Du Bain was chairman of the Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in 1981 when the company announced plans to acquire Employers Health, an insurance company cofounded by Hilliard.²9 In July, Daniel Hopsicker, after a two-year investigation into Huffman Aviation, offered from his MadCowMorningNews web soapbox the suggestion that Mohammed Atta had been engaged ³in a lucrative drug trafficking operation which linked Osama bin Laden's thugs and drug lieutenants to their equally-thuggish American counterparts. This places the two terrorists at the same airport where DEA agents brandishing submachine guns seized a Lear jet belonging to the owner of the flight school [Hilliard] where Atta and Al-shehhi were taking lessons ... at that very moment.² DEA agents, Hopsicker wrote, ³discovered 43 pounds of heroin aboard Hilliard¹s Lear. The Orlando Sentinel hailed the bust as Œthe largest seizure in Central Florida's history.¹ After we'd learned the whole story, we discovered the bust had been an accident, carried out by low-level DEA operatives not clued-in to the protected nature of the trade. Nor was this the only time Hilliard's name came up in connection with narcotics trafficking.²10 Likewise, Hilliard¹s Saudi boss would soon be immersed in criminal activity of his own -- with direct ties to terrorism -- in Armenia. Banking fraud was rampant there, Global News Wire reported in August, 2004, ³thanks to the Arab millionaire Adnan Khashoggi -- an active partner of Armenian businessmen in the illicit drug and arms trades.² Khashoggi¹s first bucket-shop banking operation was a branch of the Caucasus Investment Bank in Susa. In quick succession, with the assistance of Abu Muslum, an Arab businessman, he opened the Hamaz and Beit ul-Muqaddas banks. Rovsan Novruzoglu, a political scientist and director of the International Strategic Research Center in Azerbaijan, observes that Adnan Khashoggi¹s banks ³played a big part in the formation of terrorist camps and in the opening of laboratories for developing chemical and bacteriological weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh.²11 Back home, Hilliard's flight school, as Hopsicker reported, ³was training dozens of terrorists to fly -- including both pilots crashing into the World Trade Center.² ... ------------- NOTES 1) Greg Palast, ³Poppy Strikes Gold,² excerpt from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,² http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/07/09_gold.html. 2) Ibid. 3) Greg Palast, ³Best democracy money can buy: Gregory Palast examines the sources of the $500m that boosted Bush's bid for the White House,² Observer, November 26, 2000. 4) Lois Ann Battuello, e-mail exchange with author, October 1, 2004. 5) Ibid. Today, Khashoggi has interests in some 1500 companies, and indirect involvement in others. The second largest shareholder in Ruppert Murdoch¹s News Corp., for instance, is Prince Walid bin Talal bin Abdulaziz as Saud (Prince Alwaleed), a Khashoggi colleague. 6) Ibid. 7) Jay Taylor, ³Jay Taylor: J. Taylor's Gold and Technology Stocks² (Volume 22 No. 15), January 3 2004. 8) Martin J. Rivers, ³A Wolf in Sheikhs Clothing: Bush Business Deals with 9 Partners of bin Laden¹s Banker,² Geocities, March 15, 2004. 9) Sander Hicks, ³No Easy Answer - Heroin, Al Qaeda And The Florida Flight School,² Long Island Press, February 19, 2004. 10) Daniel Hopsicker, ³9/11's Big Dirty Secret,² MadCowMorningNews, July 19 2004, http://www.madcowprod.com. 11) M. Macidli, ³Azerbaijani Daily Outlines Activities of International Armenian Haybun Organization,² Global News Wire, August 27, 2003. |
From: "D. Cinelli" <d.cinelli@v...>
Date: Sat Oct 2, 2004 8:55 pm
Subject: Fw: whoever planned 911......
Whoever planned 9-11......
Whoever planned 9/11 did so when a consortium of international companies
had been planning an oil pipeline across
Afghanistan.
Whoever planned 9-11 did so just one year prior to 9/11 Bayer Corp.
filing for a patent for CIPRO antibiotic as a treatment
for inhalation anthrax.
Whoever planned 9-11 did so when the Saudi Binladin Group domain name on
the worldwide web
(www.saudibinladin-group.com)
was preset to expire on Sept. 11, 2001.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so just months following author James Bamford's
new book BODY OF SECRETS revealed how
the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans in the 1960s to
launch terrorist attacks against the US to incite public
sentiment against Cuba.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so three years to the day after the US Chemical
Biological Incidence Force conducted a practice
drill on 9/11/1998 to simulate a terrorist attack. The force had
already been nicknamed "911 Response Force". The main
point here is that the US Military was using the 9/11 date rather than
any known Arab or terrorist force.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so when Deputy Director of the FBI John O'Neill
resigned over White House obstruction of
investigations involving Osama bin Laden. O'Neill later accepted a
position as security chief of the World Trade Center and
was killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Whoever planned 9/11 scheduled the attack 10 months after Bruce Hoffman,
director of the Rand Institute in Washington DC,
indicated the next President will have to face up to the growing threat
of Islamic terrorism. If so, why was 9/11 described as
a surprise attack?
Whoever planned 9/11 did so when the US Government had already planned a
cabinet level position to combat terrorism, the
Secretary of Homeland Security Agency.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so at an uncanny time when Miramax Films
announced acquisition of the film rights to Andy
McNabb's novel "CRISIS FOUR" featuring a plot in which Osama bin Laden
aims to blow up the White House. The books
were written in 1999.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so at the same time Hollywood movie producers
were writing scripts and filming
war films, such as "Black Hawk Down, "Behind Enemy Lines," and "We Were
Soldiers. Actors in one of the movies trained at Army bases. How would
Hollywood know in advance
of an upcoming war?
Whoever planned 9/11 did so about a month prior to CNN airing a
documentary entitled BENEATH THE VEIL, which called
attention to the mistreatment of females in Afghanistan. (A propaganda
movie, made to soften up the public for post 9/11
war with Afghanistan?)
Whoever planned 9/11, which was portrayed as a surprise attack, managed
to pick a date two weeks after the FAA issue
warned airlines and airports that terrorist groups were planning to fly
on US airlines. The FBI denies it had prior
knowledge of the airborne attack against the WTC. Yet the owner of a
pilot training school in Illinois indicates FBI agents had
visited his business a month prior to investigate some of the alleged
terrorists. Actor James Woods reports in the NY Times
that he was on a flight in August from Boston to Los Angeles, sitting in
1st class with the only other passengers in the section
being four Middle Eastern-looking men who only talked in whispers and
did not read or sleep. Woods called the FBI on Sept.
12 to tell the FBI of his experience, but he had reported the incident
to airline and ground authorities when he landed in
August.
Whoever planned 9/11 knew to place options on United Airlines stocks 5
days prior to 9/11 that profited them an estimated
$5 million in profits.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so with surprising timing, just 3 days after
the Inova Fairfax Hospital in Northern Virginia
practiced a response to a mock terrorist attack that included anthrax.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so 4 days after the State Department issued a
memo stating Americans "may be the target of a
terrorist threat."
Whoever planned 9/11 did so one day after a group of top Pentagon
officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next
morning due to security concerns.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so on the very day that Simon & Schuster
released a book entitled BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
AND AMERICA?TS SECRET WAR.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so one day prior to a disaster preparedness
drill that had been scheduled for New York City.
FEMA personnel reported to Dan Rather on CBS News that they were on
the ground Monday night, September 10.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so when military training exercises (Operation
Northern Vigilance) were underway where NORAD
radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airlines at the same time,
and NORAD couldn't determine the real from the
simulated aircraft. A NORAD operator asked Is this real world, or
an exercise.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so without detection while the evening of
September 11 CNN aired a live news report from Kabul,
Afghanistan concerning the killing of an Afghan leader who opposed the
Taliban. Why was CNN reporting on otherwise
unrelated events in Afghanistan when no one knew at this early time who
actually had hijacked the airplanes? An early link
was being made for TV viewers between the WTC attack and the ruling
Taliban in Afghanistan, long before US intelligence
agencies could confirm the identities of the airborne hijackers and
their alleged association with Osama bin Laden.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so after Pakistani authorities had wired
$100,000 to WTC hijacker Mohammed
Atta. Why was Afghanistan fingered as the target for the war against
terrorism when Pakistan apparently was
complicit in the funding of 9/11?
Whoever planned 9/11 released the anthrax mail within days of British
Foreign Secretary Jack Strawâs announcement that
Britain must prepare itself for a terrorist attack that included
biological weapons.
Whoever planned 9/11 timed their attack against the WTC two months after
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani foreign secretary,
said he was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military
action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the
middle of October.
Whoever planned 9/11 did so when a bomb had been planted in the World
Trade Center. Louis Cacchioli, a firefighter with
engine company 47, said: "We were the first ones in the second tower
after the plane struck. On the last trip up a bomb went
off. We think there was a bomb set in the building."
Whoever planned 9/11 apparently released anthrax in letters mailed to an
office in Florida, which killed a man on October 5.
Envelopes with anthrax were also sent to Senator Tom Daschles office,
the leader of the opposing political party, and
Tom Brokaw, a reporter for NBC television, as if to send a message to
silence any opposition to the reigning political party
and the news media.
Whoever planned 9/11 fooled President Bush, who announced a campaign to
"drive terrorists out of their hidden caves and
bring them to justice." But a report in National Geographic says there
are few caves in Afghanistan. Limestone, the rock in
which most caves form, is found in only two small areas of Afghanistan.
Whoever planned 9/11 fooled American anti-terrorist forces, who
originally targeted Osama bin Laden as the planner of 9/11,
but by November, for unexplained reasons, shifted the blame to the
Taliban.
Whoever planned 9/11 fooled President Bush, who initially likened 9/11
to a surprise attack (This war came oh so
suddenly,--- statement made on board the USS Enterprise on Pearl
Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 2001), but then later Bush
admitted drawing up plans to attack Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11 and
admits he was briefed by the CIA in August of 2001
regarding possible terrorist attacks involving hijacked commercial
airliners.
Whoever planned 9/11 never could have dreamed that Building 7 in the
World Trade Center complex, a 47-story structure,
collapsed without being hit by aircraft.
Whoever planned 9/11 and released the anthrax letters used the Ames
strain of this bacterium that was likely acquired from
the US Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Whoever is alleged to have planned 9/11 in Afghanistan was able to
escape detection. The FBI admits that among
thousands of documents discovered in Afghanistan produced by al-Qaida,
"not a single sheet of paper--- not even one
computer entry --- mentions any aspect of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks."
Who could have such power, such intelligence gathering, such unusual
timing, such stealth ability to fool all the
security agencies of the world, coerce all the news media, in order to
plan and implement an attack on 9/11/2001.
Who?
The 9-11 Truth Movement
Cheney believes, “You don’t have to suppress the truth forever, just until it doesn’t matter anymore.”
9-11 is the defining crime of the century, the pretext for wars, the gutting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the justification for “Homeland Security,” and, now, sweeping legislation designed to expand “the National Security State,”( the CIA) into a “Global Security State.”
People were shocked, terrified, traumatized, by 9-11, but many, now believe, the attacks were a “false flag operation” designed to gain public support for wars, for geopolitical reasons, including control over the flow of oil and drugs.
The Project for a New American Century stated their desire for imperial world hegemony and said, "The process of [military] transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Dick Cheney and the neo-conservative cabal who seized power in 2000, authored the doctrine of “Pre-Emptive War.”
Activists demanded a Congressional Investigation of 9-11 in January 2002. Bush and Cheney, then asked Daschle to limit the official Inquiry, which was overseen by the CIA, and the men who should have been investigated for their own role in 9-11- Senator Bob Graham and Congressman Porter Goss.
Graham and Goss breakfasted on Sept. 11 with "the money man behind 9-11," (Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistani's ISI, who had $100,000 wired to Mohammed Atta, identified by the FBI as the lead hijacker in the attacks). The choice of Kissinger to head the Commission was another clue that a high level Cover-Up was taking place.
The 9-11 Truth Alliance was born in cyberspace. They devised tools to bypass media censorship. Over four million Deception Dollars, featuring key 9-11 websites and brilliant art were distributed; magazines, books, videos, DVDs, helped fund research, and public events- premieres of Guerrilla News Networks’s documentary, Aftermath- Unanswered Questions from 9-11, and The San Francisco International Inquiry into 9-11.
Citizen Inquiries in San Francisco, Toronto, and New York, brought together filmmakers, researchers, and activists who condemned the “Cover-Up Commission” for its’ conflicts of interest, and failure to ask key questions -
Why was the money man behind 9-11, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, meeting with top U.S. officials from September 4th through September 13th?
Why did the Bush Administration seek Pakistan's cooperation' in the "war on terrorism," despite the fact that the ISI was financing and abetting the 9-11 terrorists?
Why did the military fail to intercept the hijacked planes on September 11th, in violation of the most standard operating procedures?
Why did officials react in such a bizarre manner to news of the attack, with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Myers carrying on as if nothing unusual was occurring?
Why were the men most responsible for the military failure on 9-11 rewarded with promotions and increased budgets?
Michel Chossudovsky’s research shows that Al Qaeda is a joint creation of the CIA and Saudi Arabia through Pakistan’s ISI; on the surface Al Qaeda is the outside enemy to justify military actions, beneath the surface Al Qaeda has been a CIA asset.
The historical evidence, the failure of the military to defend New York and Washington DC on September 11th, the blatant lies, destruction of evidence, the Cover-Up, indicate official complicity in the attacks.
In August, Michael C. Ruppert, spoke, detailing key points in his new book- Crossing the Rubicon- The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil:
“I will name Vice President Richard Cheney as the prime suspect in the mass murders of 9/11 and will establish that, not only was he a planner in the attacks, but also that on the day of the attacks he was running a completely separate Command, Control and Communications system which was superceding any orders being issued by the FAA, the Pentagon, or the White House Situation Room;
“I will establish conclusively that in May of 2001, by presidential order, Richard Cheney was put in direct command and control of all wargame and field exercise training and scheduling through several agencies, especially FEMA. This also extended to all of the conflicting and overlapping NORAD drills -- some involving hijack simulations -- taking place on that day.”
A recent Zogby poll showed that half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall said that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act."
On the third anniversary of the attacks, thousands attended 9-11 educational events, including the New York- 9/11 Omission Hearings, and premieres of Barrie Zwicker’s excellent new documentary- The Great Conspiracy-The 9-11 News Special You Never Saw.
“Blow the Whistle on Cheney, the 9-11 Cover-Up! No to the Global Police State!” was the theme of a rally and march to the 6th Annual 9-11 Power to the Peaceful Concert in Golden Gate Park.
While Cheney tries to terrorize the population with the threat of another 9-11 should Bush lose the election, the truth is beginning to emerge through the countless efforts of millions of people. We can’t wait fifty years to unmask the real perpetrators of this crime. The truth matters now.
Carol Brouillet
Organizer of the San Francisco International Inquiry into 9-11
http://www.communitycurrency.org
From: <mschuder@b...>
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2004 5:43 pm
Subject: 911--a Hoax?
9/11 - ARE AMERICANS THE VICTIMS OF A HOAX?
The time has come to stop using the flag as a blindfold, to stop waving our guns and our gods at each other, to take a close look at the facts which have emerged from the attacks on the World Trade Towers and to recognize the very real possibility, indeed probability, that We The People are the victims of a gigantic and deadly hoax. In a normal terrorist event, the terrorists cannot wait to take credit, in order to link the violence to the socio-political intent of the terrorist organization. Yet the prime suspect in the New York Towers case, ex(?) CIA asset Osama Bin Laden (whose brother was one of George W. Bush's Texas business partners), has issued only two statements regarding the September 11th attacks, and both of those are denials of any involvement.
Huge problems are emerging in the official view of events. It's known that the United States was planning an invasion of Afghanistan long before the attacks on the World Trade Towers. Indeed the attacks on the World Trade Towers perfectly fit the timetable of an invasion by October stated by US officials just last summer.
The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't point to Afghanistan. They come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates; all across the middle east without a focus in any one region. Indeed, even as the FBI was admitting that its list of 19 names was based solely on identifications thought to have been forged, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saudi Al-Faisal insisted that an investigation in Saudi Arabia showed that the 5 Saudi men were not aboard the four jet liners that crashed in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11. "It was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened," Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press in Washington after meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House. A sixth identified hijacker is also reported to still be alive in Tunisia, while a 7th named man died two years ago!
The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't even appear on the passenger lists of the hijacked planes. Check it out for yourself - here's the full list of alleged hijackers along with the passenger manifests.
CNN reported that the men who hijacked those aircraft were using phony IDs, using the names of real people still living in Arab nations in the middle east.
FBI Chief Robert Mueller admitted on September 20 and on September 27 that at this time the FBI has no legal proof to prove the true identities of the suicidal hijackers. Yet in the haste to move forward on the already planned war in Afghanistan, our government and the FBI (which does not have the best record for honesty in investigations to begin with, having been caught rigging lab tests, manufacturing testimony in the Vincent Foster affair, and illegally withholding/destroying evidence in the Oklahoma Bombing case) are not taking too close a look at evidence that points away from the designated suspect, ex(?) CIA asset Osama Bin Laden.
In particular, the FBI, too busy harassing political dissenters to find spies in its midst, the long rumored mole inside the White House, or plug leaks in high-tech flowing to foreign nations, has willfully and criminally ignored the implications of some vital pieces of information the FBI is itself waving around at the public.
We are being told that this crack team of terrorists, able to breeze past airport security as if it wasn't there, wound up leaving so much evidence in its wake that the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (or the FBI) could not fail to stumble over it. The locations where the terrorists supposedly stayed are so overloaded with damning materials that they resemble less a crimes scene, and more a "B" detective movie set, with vital clues always on prominent display for the cameras.
Yet another problem lies with the described actions of the hijackers themselves. We are being told on the one hand that these men were such fanatical devotees of their faith that they willingly crashed the jets they were flying into buildings. Yet on the other hand, we are being told that these same men spent the night before their planned visit to Allah drinking in strip bars, committing not just one, but two mortal sins which would keep them out of Paradise no matter what else they did. Truly devout Muslims would spend the day before a suicide attack fasting and praying. Not only does the drinking in strip bars not fit the profile of a fanatically religious Muslim willing to die for his cause, but the witness reports of the men in the bars are of men going out of their way to be noticed and remembered, while waving around phony identifications.
Because of the facts of the phony identifications, we don't really know who was on those planes. What we do know is that the men on those planes went to a great deal of trouble to steal the identities of Muslims, and to make sure those identities were seen and remembered, then to leave a plethora of planted clues around, such as crop dusting manuals, and letters in checked baggage (why does a terrorist about to die need to check baggage?) that "somehow" didn't get on the final, fatal, flight.
Fake terror is nothing new. According to recently released files, our government planned Operation NORTHWOODS to stage phony terror attacks against American citizens in the wake of the Bay Of Pigs, to anger Americans into support for a second invasion of Cuba. The plan was spiked by JFK. If our government has ever actually carried out such plans to stage phony terror attacks, the documents have remained classified. But given the reality of Operation NORTHWOODS, or the manner in which FDR maneuvered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor, one cannot rule out the possibility that, once again, the people of the United States are being lied to by their own government, to manufacture consent for a war of invasion already being discussed with other nations the previous summer.
It is also quite possible, indeed likely, that the United States is being spoofed by a third party to trigger a war. It has happened before. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a defector from Israel's secret service, Mossad, Israel decided to mount a false flag operation designed to further discredit Libya, and provoke the US to attack an Arab nation. A transmitter loaded with pre-recorded messages was planted in Tripoli, Libya, by a Mossad team.
The `Trojan Horse' beamed out fake messages about Libyan-authorized bombings and planned attacks that were immediately intercepted by US electronic monitoring. Convinced by this disinformation that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which a US soldier died, President Ronald Reagan ordered massive air attacks on Libya, including an obvious- and illegal (under US law) attempt to assassinate Qadaffi himself. Some 100 Libyan civilians were killed, including Qadaffi's two year old daughter. Libyan officials had no idea why they were attacked.
It is worth remembering the motto of the Mossad is, "By way of deception, thou shalt do war."
Whether they were involved in the attacks or not, it cannot be doubted that Israel has benefited from the attacks in New York. While world attention is focused on what the US will do in Afghanistan, Israel has escalated its attacks against Palestinians towns. Israel has repeatedly tried to claim that Palestinians were involved in the New York attacks, hoping to bury the Palestinian cause under the rubble of the World Trade Towers.
Because of the faked IDs and stolen identities, we don't really know who planned the World Trade Towers attacks. We only know who they wanted us to blame.
And we know that the United States has been tricked in the past into bombing someone who did not deserve the attack, and that those who were bombed then embarked on what from their point of view was justified retaliation that culminated over Lockerbie. And while bombs were falling and planes were crashing, Israel was laughing at us that we had been so easily fooled into bombing Israel's targets for them.
Are we being hoaxed again, by Israel, or by our own government, or by both? It's impossible to rule that out. Right now there are a lot of people who want war. Oil companies want Afghanistan's petroleum products. Our corporations want "friendlier" markets. The CIA wants all that opium. And all those war-mongers, with all their greed and agendas, will not hesitate in the least to pour your tax dollars and your children's blood all over Afghanistan, to get those "friendlier" markets, oil, and opium.
Because of the vested interests at work here, American citizens must, more than at any other time in recent history, rely on themselves to decide what is happening in our nation. Too many of those who purport to report the "truth" to us are eager to grab more tax money and more children to pour into a war of invasion, poised at a region which has swallowed up every army that has tried to conquer it since the time of Alexander The Great.
And one more thing. Take a good look at the map of Eurasia and plot out where the United States has military deployments. They march in a straight line through the middle of Eurasia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan.
The United States is prepared to cut the Russian Federation off from the oil rich middle east, and to control transportation routes from China and India into the Middle East. When Russia realizes that this is the real agenda, that's when "Dubya Dubya Three" will really get going!
POSTSCRIPT: Looks like the cat is out of the bag. See http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/08/17401.html
Logo of the Mossad.
Top: "kee betachbulot ta'ase lecha milchama"
Translation: "By way of deception thou shalt do war"Bottom: "Ha'Mossad Le'modiein"
Translation: "The institute for the collection of Information"
IMPEACHMENTS AND INDICTMENTS!
Here is a partial list of war criminals that should be tried for war crimes!:
George Walker Bush, aka George Herbert Hoover Bush, Jr., aka George Heinrich Himmler Bush, Jr., aka George Benedict Arnold Bush, Jr.
Dick Cheney
Haliburton, Inc.
Kellogg, Brown, and Root, Inc.
Karl Rove
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
I. Lewis Libby
Condaleeza Rice
General Ralph Elberhart
General Richard Meyers
General Thomas Franks
Robert Mueller
George Tenet
John Asscrotch
Rudolph Giuliani
Colin Powell
Mikey Powell
William A. Rehnquist
Sandra Day O'Connor
Antonin Scalia
Anthony M. Kennedy
Clarence Thomas
Elliott Abrams
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle
Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
Norman Podhoretz
Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen P. Rosen
Henry S. Rowen
Vin Weber
George Weigel
William Kristol
Ahmad Chalibi
Salem Chalibi
Iraqi National Congress
Paul Bremmer
John Negroponte
Arturo Gonzalez
Jay S. Bybee
George Herbert Walker Bush, aka George Herbert Hoover Bush, Sr.
Frank L. Carlucci
James A. Baker, III
Richard Darman
Fidel Ramos
John Major
Hamad Kharzai
Unocal Corp.
Prince Bandar
King Faud
Ariel Sharon
Tony Blair
Jeb Bush
Cunthrine Harris
Teresa Lepore
Ralph Nader
Patrick J. Buchanan
Ruppert Murdoch
Lowery Mays
Mikey Eisner
Rushed Limburger
Bill O'Liely
Shaun Insanity
Alan Numb Nut Combs
Geraldo Rivera
Michael Weinerbitch
Robert Novak
Michael Medved
Dennis Prager
Hugh Hewitt
Laura Ingraham
Ann Cuntner
Bill Handel
Dr. Laura Schlesinger
John Noballs
Ken Shampoopoo
Phil Hendrie
Jim/Jack Zigler
Art Bell
George Noory
Gay Walter Wintchell Drudge
Lou Dobbs
Joe Scuzborough
Dan Abrams
These war criminals belong into several classes: 1) Those who directly perpetrated the attacks, 2) The planners at the Dan Quayle Memorial Project for a New American Empire and Dictatorship ("PNAC"), 3) Those who allowed Bush to be President without any constitutional fashion, and in fact denied the people of Florida their due process and equal protection rights, 4) The people who are behind the Carlyle Group, and their financial backers, 5) Allies of US terror, and 6) Propagandists who spread propaganda on behalf of the Bush Administration.
We also have the following links for you to do research on the 9-11 attacks and the Iraqi War:
The New Pearl Harbor [CENSORED BY HERR BUSH AND THE FUCKING BUREAU OF INSTIGATIONS!-WHOA! NOT NOW! IT'S ALSO ON PAGE 12 OF THIS WEB SITE, AND IN PDF FORM HERE!]
Yes, you can read David Ray Griffin's book online but you need to download the Adobe Reader to view each of the .pdf files.
The Dan Quayle Memorial Project for a New American Empire and Dictatorship
It also requires the Adobe Reader to view the site. Please see page 51. The war criminals urge for a "new Pearl Harbor".
Adelphia Founder John Rigas got convicted; don't get cable; don't get FOX-owned DirectTV; get the DISH!:
Corporate News Network? Fox Propaganda Channel? National Socialist National Broadcasting Company? They don't give you the news, they give you the Bush shit! DUMP THEM ALL!
If you have more Anti-Bush links or web sites, please e-mail me at recallarnold@sbcglobal.net
George W. Bush has stated he'd prefer to be a dictator at least three
times, according to BuzzFlash.com: 
