I am going to look for my news on emule when I wake up tomarrow
Yes, thats right. Corporations lie all the time. Guess what? So do people. You know what? Your a person!
dualsmp
Golden Member
- Aug 16, 2003
- 1,627
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It's funny how there's a shift from Osama being the terrorist, to now any American citizen that disagrees with the government is a terrorist. Large amounts of fertilizer?
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
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I believe anyone voting "NO" should be banned from ever again voting in a United States election.
Assuming that got your attention, let me explain. First, I agree the 26 people who have voted "Yes" are way out on the fringe ... unless they personally participated in staging the attack for Bush. While there are countless theories floating about, I've seen no evidence that could lead a reasonable person to conclude Bush actively participated in this attack. Speculation? Sure. Conclusions? No, sorry, don't see it at all.
On the other hand, I think those who voted "NO" are equally out of touch with reality. What is the basis for saying, "No, I am certain Bush was did not have a role?" History certainly doesn't support your beliefs. It would NOT be the first time a government or organization performed heinous acts "for the greater good." Our own government has committed such acts in recent history (though not on this scale, I agree). Look at some of the testing done on soldiers in the 20th century.
Some people will kill another for a few hundred dollars. Imagine what they might do for a few billion. I am NOT for a moment suggesting this proves Bush was involved. Of course not. But, as an intelligent and thoughful human being, one should always keep his mind open and objective, and recognize possibilities. The sad fact is that government involvement in such an act, while extremely unlikely, is simply NOT unthinkable. It could have happened.
Therefore, in my opinion, the correct answer is "Doubtful but possible." Anything less shows an ignorance of the dark side of human nature and an unhealthy lack of suspicion about people who seek great power. One doesn't have to be paranoid to recognize that almost anything is possible given the high stakes involved.
Assuming that got your attention, let me explain. First, I agree the 26 people who have voted "Yes" are way out on the fringe ... unless they personally participated in staging the attack for Bush. While there are countless theories floating about, I've seen no evidence that could lead a reasonable person to conclude Bush actively participated in this attack. Speculation? Sure. Conclusions? No, sorry, don't see it at all.
On the other hand, I think those who voted "NO" are equally out of touch with reality. What is the basis for saying, "No, I am certain Bush was did not have a role?" History certainly doesn't support your beliefs. It would NOT be the first time a government or organization performed heinous acts "for the greater good." Our own government has committed such acts in recent history (though not on this scale, I agree). Look at some of the testing done on soldiers in the 20th century.
Some people will kill another for a few hundred dollars. Imagine what they might do for a few billion. I am NOT for a moment suggesting this proves Bush was involved. Of course not. But, as an intelligent and thoughful human being, one should always keep his mind open and objective, and recognize possibilities. The sad fact is that government involvement in such an act, while extremely unlikely, is simply NOT unthinkable. It could have happened.
Therefore, in my opinion, the correct answer is "Doubtful but possible." Anything less shows an ignorance of the dark side of human nature and an unhealthy lack of suspicion about people who seek great power. One doesn't have to be paranoid to recognize that almost anything is possible given the high stakes involved.
How can you compare testing done on soliders to the mass killing of 3000+ innocent civilians in one of the most populated cities in the world. May I ask, even if the government did take part, what would they possibly have gained from doing so?
That's a pretty stupid response. The question is "Was 9/11 an act of the Illuminati/Bush administration?". It is not do you think that Pres. Bush had something to do with it or in some alternate reality is is possible he had a role but did he have a role.
Considering how many people would have to be involved and there has been no hint of any sort, no, I don't think it is even remotely possible. But hey, cynicism is part of the process of growing up and many of you here have a long way to go but I also fear it is a weapon of some of the people that wish the US harm.
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
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How can I compare? Because some people are so callous that human lives are just another entry on a ledger sheet. If we kill several thousand people here, but save thousands more there, then it's a worthwhile trade-off. Plus many people are quite willing to sacrifice lives for personal gain. They don't especially value human life at all. Reduce the surplus population, as it were.
As far as what might be gained, who knows? Halliburton picked up an extra billion or three it wouldn't have had otherwise. How many hundreds of other defense contractors have picked up extra millions or more? We're spending at least 200 billion dollars in Iraq, perhaps double that. All those dollars are going to someone.
If a hit man will kill one person for $1000, what's the price tag for 3,000 people? Only $3 million. That's only 0.0015% of what we are spending in Iraq. Can you be 100% sure there aren't people who would kill a few thousand people for $100,000 per person? For $1 million per person? It's a horrific thought to you and me, but not everyone is wired that way.
Bear in mind, I don't think any of this is likely. It's just not impossible.
Etech sees Commies under the bed. Very old school, you're either with us or agin' us, never hopeful of improving us. He keys on cynicism because that's who he is.
Moonie, thanks, I knew that Bowfinger could count on you to present an example of a true ad hom post.
Bowfinger, take note. Moonie's post contains nothing about the topic of the thread. What it does contain is only from his imagination and is in a jingonistic style. Note his fine use of bold on the word "he". All fine examples of the content of a true ad hom.
Now in my post I stated my contention that your post was stupid. That contention still stands and I explained my reasoning. It's your turn.
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
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Come again?
Right, no ad hominems there.
Perhaps a refresher is in order: ad hominem - adjective - appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason
I'm sorry, I didn't see anything in your stupid response that contradicted me. I agree, the logistics and secrecy challenges make it doubtful Bush was involved. That's what I said in the first place.
If you don't understand the difference between calling your post stupid and calling you stupid than perhaps I was mistaken in my post.
It is doubtful that you molest little boys bowfinger but than perhaps all the facts aren't in on that either. People can speculate about anything being possible. I find the reasons that some speculate on this particular subject to be revealing about their motives.
That is all. This topic got more attention than it deserved.
It is doubtful that you molest little boys bowfinger but than perhaps all the facts aren't in on that either. People can speculate about anything being possible. I find the reasons that some speculate on this particular subject to be revealing about their motives.
That is all. This topic got more attention than it deserved.
Hey, you can disagree with the government if you want to. I'm saying that with 0 evidence and ridiculous theories, you believe that Bush would sacrifice 3,000 people to go to war. Therefore, you're crazy. Insane crazy, not "wild and crazy guy" crazy. Why does he care?! He could have found other ways into Iraq if that's what you think he wanted.Originally posted by: dualsmp
It's funny how there's a shift from Osama being the terrorist, to now any American citizen that disagrees with the government is a terrorist. Large amounts of fertilizer?Nice Cointelpro move there. You should be working for the feds, they like people like you.
Why don't you think for a minute: what's his motivation???
1) Saddam tried to kill his dad. So why would he use this method to go into Iraq? Even if I concede the fact that he took cocaine at some point in his life, you cannot convince me that he's f---ing mentally, criminally insane! He did NOT need a war on terrorism to go into Iraq. He could have found other ways in.
2) He wanted to get the oil contracts for his friends. First of all, he's already rich. Second of all, you run into the same problem as before: he could have used other methods, so to say that he'd kill 3,000 people just to get more rich is just ridiculous.
i have no doubt that the government had prior knowledge of 911, so it's logical to assume that the government may have used 911 for its own agenda.
The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9-11 Attacks
by Michael C. Ruppert
From the Wilderness (FTW) , 22 April 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 23 April 2002
READ Mike Ruppert in CRG's Global Outlook, premiere issue on "Stop the War" provides detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
A dispassionate examination of existing reliable, open-source evidence on advance warnings of the Sept. 11 attacks provides strong and sustainable grounds to conclude the Bush Administration was in possession of sufficient advance intelligence to have prevented the attacks, had it wished to do so. With a known intelligence budget of approximately $30 billion, it must be assumed there are classified files that only add to the weight of the available data presented here. Is it reasonable to assume that what is presented here is the only intelligence the U.S. possessed?
This article will focus on four primary areas where the U.S. had information that forewarned of the attacks in sufficient detail to have prompted their prevention. Those areas are: Documented warnings received by the United States Government (USG) from foreign intelligence services; Obvious and large scale insider stock trading in the days before the attacks; Known intelligence successes achieved by the USG in its penetrations of Al Qaeda; and, the case of Delmart ?Mike? Vreeland, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer jailed in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities, who -- with his attorneys -- spent months attempting to warn USG and Canadian intelligence officials of the pending attacks, only to be rebuffed and ignored.
This article will not focus on a number of well-known and documented instances where the Bush Administration actively interfered with or curtailed investigations into Al Qaeda-linked groups that could have provided even more intelligence. Included in this category are reports by the BBC?s Gregg Palast, the French book ?The Forbidden Truth,? and a lawsuit/OPR complaint filed by an active FBI agent alleging investigations that could have prevented the attacks were derailed by superiors, in some cases on orders from the White House.
WARNINGS FROM FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
This section focuses on known advance warnings received by the U.S. government from foreign intelligence services that proved to be specific enough to have identified the date (within one week), method, targets, and perpetrators of the attacks. It will not include warnings issued to the USG that could be considered vague or non-specific. The latter includes documented warnings sent by the governments of Egypt and Israel. However, in light of the specific warnings, these additional warnings add greater weight to the argument that the Administration was in possession of sufficient information to have prevented the attacks.
As reported in the respected German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14, 2001 the German intelligence service, the BND, warned both the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were ?planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.? The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.
No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ story indicates that the information was received directly from BND sources.
According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.de, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning USG intelligence agencies in summer 2001 to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the USG for the story but refused to discuss additional details.
In August 2000 French intelligence sources confirmed a man recently arrested in Boston by the FBI was an Islamic militant and a key member of Osama bin Laden?s Al Qaeda network. The FBI knew the man had been taking flying lessons at the time of his arrest and was in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals, as reported by Reuters on Sept. 13.
According to a story in Izveztia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the USG that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.
In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the USG ?in the strongest possible terms? of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11.
As reported by CNN?s Daniel Seberg on Sept. 28, Newsbytes? Brian McWilliams on Sept. 27 and the Israeli newspaper Ha?aretz, Odigo, the Israeli instant messaging company located in Herzliyya, Israel, received telephone calls stating that attacks on the WTC were imminent. The calls came less than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC. This information was immediately forwarded to Israeli and U.S. intelligence.
Conclusion: From just these six press stories, then, the USG had received credible advance warnings, some from heads of state, that commercial aircraft would be hijacked by as many as 25 suicide pilots at airports, with Boston a strong candidate, during the week of Sept. 9. The call to Odigo would have signaled the exact day.
No known preventive measures were taken.
INSIDER TRADING
The documented pre-Sept. 11 insider trading that occurred before the attacks involved only companies hit hard by the attacks. They include United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Axa Reinsurance, Marsh & McLennan, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance, and Citigroup.
In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence agencies, then it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general counsel. And also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. ?Buzzy? Krongard.
One wonders if it was a coincidence then, that Mayo Shattuck III, the head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank -- which had its offices in the WTC -- suddenly resigned from a $30 million, three-year contract on Sept. 12, as reported by the New York Times and other papers.
The American exchanges that handle these trades, primarily the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the NYSE, know on a daily basis what levels of put options are purchased. ?Put options? are highly leveraged bets, tying up blocks of stock, that a given stock?s share price will fall dramatically. To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, ?Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.?
It is hard to believe that they missed:
- A jump in UAL put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack? [CBS News, Sept. 26]
- A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal on the day before the attacks. [CBS News, Sept. 26]
- No similar trading occurred on any other airlines. [Bloomberg Business Report, the Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzliyya, Israel citing data from the CBOE]
- Morgan Stanley saw, between Sept. 7 and Sept.10, an increase of 27 times (not 27 percent) in the purchase of put options on its shares. [ICT Report, Mechanics of Possible Bin-Laden Insider Trading Scam, Sept. 21, citing data from the CBOE].
- Merrill-Lynch saw a jump of more than 12 times the normal level of put options in the four trading days before the attacks. [Ibid]
These trades were certainly noticed after the attacks.
?This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you?ve ever seen in your entire life?This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,? said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed on Good Morning Texas on Sept. 20.
??I saw put-call numbers higher than I?ve ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,? said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle,? reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19. The paper also wrote, ?Agence France Presse, on Sept. 22, reported, ?And Germany?s Bundesbank chief, Ernst Weltke, said on the sidelines of the meeting that a report of the investigation showed ?bizarre? fiscal transactions prior to the attacks that could not have been chalked up to coincidence.
?Weltke said the transactions, ?could not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledge,? particularly heavy trading in oil and gold futures.?
ABC World News reported on Sept. 20, ?Jonathan Winer, an ABC News consultant said, ?it?s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan, to the U.S., to North America, to Europe.?
How much money was involved? Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German Parliament responsible for oversight of Germany?s intelligence services estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.
Not a single U.S. or foreign investigative agency has announced any arrests or developments in the investigation of these trades, the most telling evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks. This, in spite of the fact that former Security and Exchange Commission enforcement chief William McLucas told Bloomberg News that regulators would ?certainly be able to track down every trade.?
What is striking is that a National Public Radio report on Oct. 16 reported Britain?s Financial Services Authority had cleared bin Laden and his henchmen of insider trading. If not bin Laden, then who else had advance knowledge? Who else had certainty that the attacks would succeed to give them confidence to make millions of dollars in stock purchases?
It has been standard and established USG policy to be alert and responsive to anything even remotely resembling an attack on U.S. companies and/or the economy. The word ?remote? does not apply here. The possible claim by the Bush Administration that, ?Gee, we just happened to miss this,? becomes even more implausible when considering the lengths intelligence agencies go to in order to track stock trades.
Note that the Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism was the first entity to release a detailed report on the insider trading. That alone is prima facie evidence of a direct relationship between the financial markets and terrorist investigations.
CIA and the Markets
We can thank Fox News on Oct. 16 for breaking post 9-11 stories disclosing the use of sophisticated PROMIS software by the FBI and the Justice Department. A multitude of court records and investigative reports have established not only the reality, but the versatility of a program initially designed to incorporate data from a variety of data bases in different languages into one readable format. PROMIS has since been refined to include artificial intelligence and ?back doors? inserted by intelligence agencies to allow for surreptitious retrieval and/or removal and alteration of data.
The Fox stories clearly confirmed, especially when added to stories from last summer by the Washington Times which were based on interviews with Justice Department officials, that PROMIS was used to monitor banking and financial transactions in a virtual real-time environment.
This writer has written extensively on the software. More information can be found on the Web site at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html.
However, one point is critical to this report. In the Autumn of 2000 I was visited in Los Angeles by two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) national security staff. They were conducting a major investigation inside the U.S. to determine whether or not the RCMP?s version of the software had been compromised. During discussions with the Mounties, I confirmed several times that the software was used to monitor stock trades in real time. A subsequent investigation led me to contact several people in Canada who had been interviewed in the same investigation. They were stockbrokers.
In a taped panel discussion, which aired March 14 on Canada?s Vision-TV, I faced a panel of three Canadian experts on the issue of U.S. foreknowledge of, and possible complicity in, the 9-11 attacks. Among them was Ron Atkey, former Canadian Solicitor-General and the former parliamentary head of the committee charged with oversight of Canada?s military and intelligence operations. Over the course of the program I made specific statements, relying not only on the RCMP interactions but also on previous investigations, in which it was documented that intelligence services track stock trades in real time. On camera, I produced the business cards of the two RCMP agents. Atkey, who had not hesitated to challenge me on other points during the show, went silent.
INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES
Four basic intelligence successes need to be acknowledged here. These admitted successes, while not addressing any other still secret penetrations of the Al Qaeda network, further diminish any Bush Administration assertion that it did not know of the attacks.
On Feb. 13 United Press International terrorism correspondent Richard Sale, while covering a Manhattan trial of one of Osama bin Laden?s followers, reported that the National Security Agency had broken bin Laden?s encrypted communications. Even if that prompted an immediate change in bin Laden?s methods of communication, just six months before the attacks, the administration has consistently maintained -- and military and covert experience dictates -- that the attacks were planned for at least several years.
The FAZ story indicates that the secret eavesdropping program Echelon had been successful in securing details of the pending attacks. Echelon employs highly sophisticated computer programs capable of both voice and word recognition to filter billions of telephone conversations and locate specific targets. Assuming, as some sources indicate, Al Qaeda stopped using encrypted communications after it was known that their system was compromised, why was the NSA not able to pick up any cell phone calls or e-mails? Mohammed Atta and other alleged hijackers were known to have used cell phones. The FAZ story establishes that as late as June, Al Qaeda operatives were being tracked in this manner.
In the trial of a former Deutschebank executive Kevin Ingram, who pled guilty to laundering drug money to finance terrorist operations linked to Al Qaeda just two weeks before the 9-11 attacks, indications surfaced that the Justice Department had penetrated the terrorists? financial networks. A Nov. 16 Associated Press story by Catherine Wilson stated, ?Numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase weapons into the United States, said prosecutor Rolando Garcia.?
Two questions are begged but unanswered. How were the wire transfers blocked and how was the Justice Department able to monitor the money flows without alerting either the bankers or the suspects?
Finally, as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6 and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7, Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines, that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the WTC. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called ?operation Bojinka.?
Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.
DELMART ?MIKE? VREELAND
?I believe that, from the information I have seen, Mike Vreeland tried to pass information to the Canadian government that should have been passed to the U.S. government. That information had to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Whatever other attempts were made by Vreeland and his attorneys to alert U.S. and Canadian officials of the attacks, it is clear that he did pass information about the pending attacks to his guards in August. I am willing to go to the Secretary of the Navy to determine whether or not he was actually a Navy officer.
?I know that there have been other U.S. citizens with a similar background used on missions similar to what has been alleged by Vreeland. This man fits a pattern. I would like for the Secret Service to put him on a polygraph.? -- Mike Osborne, a veteran former CIA case officer with 26 years of experience in counter-terrorism.
With a court record now estimated to approach 10,000 pages, the case of Delmart ?Mike? Vreeland is starting to attract worldwide attention. Vreeland, with a growing amount of evidence admitted into court record in Toronto, Canada, claims to be a former U.S. Naval lieutenant assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence. He was jailed in Canada -- at the request of U.S. authorities -- in December 2000 after returning from Moscow.
Although Canadian authorities initially alleged vague fraud charges against him and also held him on an extradition warrant alleging credit card fraud in Michigan, the actual motive for his arrest now seems to be something quite different. All Canadian charges against Vreeland were dropped this March and he has been granted political refugee status in Canada until the extradition issues are resolved.
Vreeland?s position is that he returned from Russia to meet with a Canadian and a Russian intelligence operative, and had intended to hand over a sealed pouch containing intelligence documents. When the handoff was compromised and the Canadian did not show for the Toronto meet, Vreeland opened the pouch and looked at some of the documents. Those documents, which he later had translated, gave specific warnings of the pending WTC attacks that were to take place nine months later. Again, on its face, since these documents were in a sealed intelligence pouch, this indicates that intelligence operatives were aware of the contents because they had placed them there originally.
According to both Vreeland and his lawyers, as reported in numerous interviews with this writer and other members of the FTW staff, immediately after his arrest Vreeland began making urgent attempts to alert both Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials of the coming danger.
After eight months of unsuccessful attempts to have either Canadian or U.S. intelligence services debrief him, Vreeland wrote a desperate, last-ditch warning in August. Through means he will not disclose, he acquired two high-tech Pilot water-based pens with light blue ink and used them to write the letter. The only pens permitted by Canadian jail authorities were oil-based, dark blue Bic pens.
Immediately after writing the letter, Vreeland notified his jailers that he had pens which might be considered contraband. A Sept. 17 letter from the Ministry of Correctional Services was entered as Exhibit ?M? into court records on Oct. 7, along with Vreeland?s warning letter which had been opened on Sept. 14 and entered as Exhibit ?N.? The letter states, ?On August 13, 2001 inmate Vreeland?s corridor #2 was searched and as far as we know 2 blue ink pens were removed from his cell because they were considered contraband. There is no written record of them being placed in his personal property. He did submit a request to have them returned to him on August 14, 2001, but was denied.?
Since the ink on the warning letter, if tested, will match the ink in the confiscated pens, there can be no doubt that the letter was written a month before the attacks.
In an interview with this writer published on April 4, Vreeland clearly stated his belief that Al Qaeda operations had been completely penetrated by U.S. intelligence services. That belief is supported by a statement in his warning letter.
The statement, following a list of potential targets that included the WTC, the Pentagon and the White House said, ?Let one happen, stop the rest.? Such a statement could only imply complete penetration or compromise of the terrorist cells perpetrating the attacks.
Compelling evidence continues to grow that Vreeland was, in fact, a U.S. Navy officer. On Jan. 10 from open court with a court reporter recording the conversation, his attorneys placed a speaker-phone call to the Pentagon. A Pentagon operator, after checking a back-up military database, confirmed Vreeland was a U.S. Navy officer and provided an office listing and a telephone number for his office. The primary database had been disabled, according to Vreeland, on 9-11. In addition, redacted and incomplete military records provided by the Pentagon to the Canadian courts indicate Vreeland had a service record of more than 1,200 pages.
This is difficult to reconcile with the U.S. Navy?s assertion that Vreeland was discharged as a Seaman Recruit after four months of unsatisfactory service in 1986.
No press entity has covered the Vreeland case more than FTW. This writer has traveled twice to Toronto, sat in on court proceedings, and retained the services of a Canadian correspondent to cover the case. I have interviewed Vreeland personally and conducted numerous interviews with his attorneys. Greta Knutzen, FTW?s Canadian correspondent, has also interviewed Vreeland and his attorneys, as well as Vreeland?s mother. Knutzen has attended every court proceeding since January, 2002. All of our previous reporting on the case can be located on the Internet at www.copvcia.com.
Mike Vreeland believes that if he is successfully extradited to the U.S., he will be assassinated. Previous press stories concerning Vreeland?s criminal past and a criminal arrest record fail to account for the fact that, as an undercover operative who targeted organized crime and terrorist organizations, a criminal record would have been necessary to give him credibility with organizations that have previously demonstrated capabilities to retrieve law enforcement records. They also fail to account for an Oct. 2, 1986 Los Angeles Times story that lists Vreeland as a non-criminal witness to a major cocaine bust carried out by LAPD investigators known to have contacts with USG intelligence services.
There is much about Vreeland?s past that is objectionable, questionable, or both. But even in a worst-case scenario, nothing in his past explains how he was able to write a detailed warning of the attacks before they occurred, and why the intelligence services of both Canada and the U.S. ignored attempts to warn them while both Vreeland and his attorneys were banging down their doors.
CONCLUSION
There is clear and substantial evidence to suggest that the Bush Administration had sufficient foreknowledge of the attacks of Sept. 11 to have prevented them. Rather than viewing each of the four listed areas as a separate piece of evidence, they should be considered as a body, in the exact same way exhibits presented to a jury in a criminal trial are viewed as a body. By viewing the evidence in this manner, an unavoidable conclusion is reached -- the USG knew 25 suicide hijackers during the week of Sept. 9 were going to use United and American airlines commercial planes, some of them likely originating in Boston, to attack the WTC and the Pentagon. A multitude of press stories and intelligence reports indicate the WTC would have been the primary target.
Given the financial commitments made during insider trading activity that occurred immediately before the attacks involving businesses that were directly damaged by the attacks, the threats had clearly moved from the realm of speculation to reality. Why else would mysterious investors have risked millions of dollars to purchase the put options? There is compelling evidence to suggest these trades were noted by the CIA and other USG entities.
Recently, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., has been widely criticized in the mainstream press for raising the need for a Congressional investigation to answer some of these obvious questions. This, in spite of the fact that popular reaction indicates a different sentiment. An opinion poll, conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a day after McKinney?s remarks received wide public attention in a Washington Post story dated April 12, was pulled after poll numbers showed that 51 percent of the respondents agreed with McKinney.
The people seem to recognize and agree with the opinion of former CIA officer Mike Osborne who says, ?I think that the U.S. government needs to get behind McKinney?s questions because her agenda is truth and justice, and nothing else.?
Special Thanks: To Kyle Hence for meticulous research on insider trading coverage in the major media and to Tom Flocco for diligent work on the Kevin Ingram case
Mike Ruppert
Copyright © Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications 2002, www.copvcia.com all rights reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on web sites for non-profit purposes only. Reprinted for fair use only
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP204A.html
by Michael C. Ruppert
From the Wilderness (FTW) , 22 April 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 23 April 2002
READ Mike Ruppert in CRG's Global Outlook, premiere issue on "Stop the War" provides detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
A dispassionate examination of existing reliable, open-source evidence on advance warnings of the Sept. 11 attacks provides strong and sustainable grounds to conclude the Bush Administration was in possession of sufficient advance intelligence to have prevented the attacks, had it wished to do so. With a known intelligence budget of approximately $30 billion, it must be assumed there are classified files that only add to the weight of the available data presented here. Is it reasonable to assume that what is presented here is the only intelligence the U.S. possessed?
This article will focus on four primary areas where the U.S. had information that forewarned of the attacks in sufficient detail to have prompted their prevention. Those areas are: Documented warnings received by the United States Government (USG) from foreign intelligence services; Obvious and large scale insider stock trading in the days before the attacks; Known intelligence successes achieved by the USG in its penetrations of Al Qaeda; and, the case of Delmart ?Mike? Vreeland, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer jailed in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities, who -- with his attorneys -- spent months attempting to warn USG and Canadian intelligence officials of the pending attacks, only to be rebuffed and ignored.
This article will not focus on a number of well-known and documented instances where the Bush Administration actively interfered with or curtailed investigations into Al Qaeda-linked groups that could have provided even more intelligence. Included in this category are reports by the BBC?s Gregg Palast, the French book ?The Forbidden Truth,? and a lawsuit/OPR complaint filed by an active FBI agent alleging investigations that could have prevented the attacks were derailed by superiors, in some cases on orders from the White House.
WARNINGS FROM FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
This section focuses on known advance warnings received by the U.S. government from foreign intelligence services that proved to be specific enough to have identified the date (within one week), method, targets, and perpetrators of the attacks. It will not include warnings issued to the USG that could be considered vague or non-specific. The latter includes documented warnings sent by the governments of Egypt and Israel. However, in light of the specific warnings, these additional warnings add greater weight to the argument that the Administration was in possession of sufficient information to have prevented the attacks.
As reported in the respected German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14, 2001 the German intelligence service, the BND, warned both the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were ?planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.? The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.
No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ story indicates that the information was received directly from BND sources.
According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.de, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning USG intelligence agencies in summer 2001 to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the USG for the story but refused to discuss additional details.
In August 2000 French intelligence sources confirmed a man recently arrested in Boston by the FBI was an Islamic militant and a key member of Osama bin Laden?s Al Qaeda network. The FBI knew the man had been taking flying lessons at the time of his arrest and was in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals, as reported by Reuters on Sept. 13.
According to a story in Izveztia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the USG that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.
In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the USG ?in the strongest possible terms? of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11.
As reported by CNN?s Daniel Seberg on Sept. 28, Newsbytes? Brian McWilliams on Sept. 27 and the Israeli newspaper Ha?aretz, Odigo, the Israeli instant messaging company located in Herzliyya, Israel, received telephone calls stating that attacks on the WTC were imminent. The calls came less than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC. This information was immediately forwarded to Israeli and U.S. intelligence.
Conclusion: From just these six press stories, then, the USG had received credible advance warnings, some from heads of state, that commercial aircraft would be hijacked by as many as 25 suicide pilots at airports, with Boston a strong candidate, during the week of Sept. 9. The call to Odigo would have signaled the exact day.
No known preventive measures were taken.
INSIDER TRADING
The documented pre-Sept. 11 insider trading that occurred before the attacks involved only companies hit hard by the attacks. They include United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Axa Reinsurance, Marsh & McLennan, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance, and Citigroup.
In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence agencies, then it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general counsel. And also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. ?Buzzy? Krongard.
One wonders if it was a coincidence then, that Mayo Shattuck III, the head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank -- which had its offices in the WTC -- suddenly resigned from a $30 million, three-year contract on Sept. 12, as reported by the New York Times and other papers.
The American exchanges that handle these trades, primarily the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the NYSE, know on a daily basis what levels of put options are purchased. ?Put options? are highly leveraged bets, tying up blocks of stock, that a given stock?s share price will fall dramatically. To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, ?Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.?
It is hard to believe that they missed:
- A jump in UAL put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack? [CBS News, Sept. 26]
- A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal on the day before the attacks. [CBS News, Sept. 26]
- No similar trading occurred on any other airlines. [Bloomberg Business Report, the Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzliyya, Israel citing data from the CBOE]
- Morgan Stanley saw, between Sept. 7 and Sept.10, an increase of 27 times (not 27 percent) in the purchase of put options on its shares. [ICT Report, Mechanics of Possible Bin-Laden Insider Trading Scam, Sept. 21, citing data from the CBOE].
- Merrill-Lynch saw a jump of more than 12 times the normal level of put options in the four trading days before the attacks. [Ibid]
These trades were certainly noticed after the attacks.
?This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you?ve ever seen in your entire life?This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,? said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed on Good Morning Texas on Sept. 20.
??I saw put-call numbers higher than I?ve ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,? said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle,? reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19. The paper also wrote, ?Agence France Presse, on Sept. 22, reported, ?And Germany?s Bundesbank chief, Ernst Weltke, said on the sidelines of the meeting that a report of the investigation showed ?bizarre? fiscal transactions prior to the attacks that could not have been chalked up to coincidence.
?Weltke said the transactions, ?could not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledge,? particularly heavy trading in oil and gold futures.?
ABC World News reported on Sept. 20, ?Jonathan Winer, an ABC News consultant said, ?it?s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan, to the U.S., to North America, to Europe.?
How much money was involved? Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German Parliament responsible for oversight of Germany?s intelligence services estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.
Not a single U.S. or foreign investigative agency has announced any arrests or developments in the investigation of these trades, the most telling evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks. This, in spite of the fact that former Security and Exchange Commission enforcement chief William McLucas told Bloomberg News that regulators would ?certainly be able to track down every trade.?
What is striking is that a National Public Radio report on Oct. 16 reported Britain?s Financial Services Authority had cleared bin Laden and his henchmen of insider trading. If not bin Laden, then who else had advance knowledge? Who else had certainty that the attacks would succeed to give them confidence to make millions of dollars in stock purchases?
It has been standard and established USG policy to be alert and responsive to anything even remotely resembling an attack on U.S. companies and/or the economy. The word ?remote? does not apply here. The possible claim by the Bush Administration that, ?Gee, we just happened to miss this,? becomes even more implausible when considering the lengths intelligence agencies go to in order to track stock trades.
Note that the Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism was the first entity to release a detailed report on the insider trading. That alone is prima facie evidence of a direct relationship between the financial markets and terrorist investigations.
CIA and the Markets
We can thank Fox News on Oct. 16 for breaking post 9-11 stories disclosing the use of sophisticated PROMIS software by the FBI and the Justice Department. A multitude of court records and investigative reports have established not only the reality, but the versatility of a program initially designed to incorporate data from a variety of data bases in different languages into one readable format. PROMIS has since been refined to include artificial intelligence and ?back doors? inserted by intelligence agencies to allow for surreptitious retrieval and/or removal and alteration of data.
The Fox stories clearly confirmed, especially when added to stories from last summer by the Washington Times which were based on interviews with Justice Department officials, that PROMIS was used to monitor banking and financial transactions in a virtual real-time environment.
This writer has written extensively on the software. More information can be found on the Web site at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html.
However, one point is critical to this report. In the Autumn of 2000 I was visited in Los Angeles by two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) national security staff. They were conducting a major investigation inside the U.S. to determine whether or not the RCMP?s version of the software had been compromised. During discussions with the Mounties, I confirmed several times that the software was used to monitor stock trades in real time. A subsequent investigation led me to contact several people in Canada who had been interviewed in the same investigation. They were stockbrokers.
In a taped panel discussion, which aired March 14 on Canada?s Vision-TV, I faced a panel of three Canadian experts on the issue of U.S. foreknowledge of, and possible complicity in, the 9-11 attacks. Among them was Ron Atkey, former Canadian Solicitor-General and the former parliamentary head of the committee charged with oversight of Canada?s military and intelligence operations. Over the course of the program I made specific statements, relying not only on the RCMP interactions but also on previous investigations, in which it was documented that intelligence services track stock trades in real time. On camera, I produced the business cards of the two RCMP agents. Atkey, who had not hesitated to challenge me on other points during the show, went silent.
INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES
Four basic intelligence successes need to be acknowledged here. These admitted successes, while not addressing any other still secret penetrations of the Al Qaeda network, further diminish any Bush Administration assertion that it did not know of the attacks.
On Feb. 13 United Press International terrorism correspondent Richard Sale, while covering a Manhattan trial of one of Osama bin Laden?s followers, reported that the National Security Agency had broken bin Laden?s encrypted communications. Even if that prompted an immediate change in bin Laden?s methods of communication, just six months before the attacks, the administration has consistently maintained -- and military and covert experience dictates -- that the attacks were planned for at least several years.
The FAZ story indicates that the secret eavesdropping program Echelon had been successful in securing details of the pending attacks. Echelon employs highly sophisticated computer programs capable of both voice and word recognition to filter billions of telephone conversations and locate specific targets. Assuming, as some sources indicate, Al Qaeda stopped using encrypted communications after it was known that their system was compromised, why was the NSA not able to pick up any cell phone calls or e-mails? Mohammed Atta and other alleged hijackers were known to have used cell phones. The FAZ story establishes that as late as June, Al Qaeda operatives were being tracked in this manner.
In the trial of a former Deutschebank executive Kevin Ingram, who pled guilty to laundering drug money to finance terrorist operations linked to Al Qaeda just two weeks before the 9-11 attacks, indications surfaced that the Justice Department had penetrated the terrorists? financial networks. A Nov. 16 Associated Press story by Catherine Wilson stated, ?Numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase weapons into the United States, said prosecutor Rolando Garcia.?
Two questions are begged but unanswered. How were the wire transfers blocked and how was the Justice Department able to monitor the money flows without alerting either the bankers or the suspects?
Finally, as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6 and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7, Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines, that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the WTC. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called ?operation Bojinka.?
Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.
DELMART ?MIKE? VREELAND
?I believe that, from the information I have seen, Mike Vreeland tried to pass information to the Canadian government that should have been passed to the U.S. government. That information had to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Whatever other attempts were made by Vreeland and his attorneys to alert U.S. and Canadian officials of the attacks, it is clear that he did pass information about the pending attacks to his guards in August. I am willing to go to the Secretary of the Navy to determine whether or not he was actually a Navy officer.
?I know that there have been other U.S. citizens with a similar background used on missions similar to what has been alleged by Vreeland. This man fits a pattern. I would like for the Secret Service to put him on a polygraph.? -- Mike Osborne, a veteran former CIA case officer with 26 years of experience in counter-terrorism.
With a court record now estimated to approach 10,000 pages, the case of Delmart ?Mike? Vreeland is starting to attract worldwide attention. Vreeland, with a growing amount of evidence admitted into court record in Toronto, Canada, claims to be a former U.S. Naval lieutenant assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence. He was jailed in Canada -- at the request of U.S. authorities -- in December 2000 after returning from Moscow.
Although Canadian authorities initially alleged vague fraud charges against him and also held him on an extradition warrant alleging credit card fraud in Michigan, the actual motive for his arrest now seems to be something quite different. All Canadian charges against Vreeland were dropped this March and he has been granted political refugee status in Canada until the extradition issues are resolved.
Vreeland?s position is that he returned from Russia to meet with a Canadian and a Russian intelligence operative, and had intended to hand over a sealed pouch containing intelligence documents. When the handoff was compromised and the Canadian did not show for the Toronto meet, Vreeland opened the pouch and looked at some of the documents. Those documents, which he later had translated, gave specific warnings of the pending WTC attacks that were to take place nine months later. Again, on its face, since these documents were in a sealed intelligence pouch, this indicates that intelligence operatives were aware of the contents because they had placed them there originally.
According to both Vreeland and his lawyers, as reported in numerous interviews with this writer and other members of the FTW staff, immediately after his arrest Vreeland began making urgent attempts to alert both Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials of the coming danger.
After eight months of unsuccessful attempts to have either Canadian or U.S. intelligence services debrief him, Vreeland wrote a desperate, last-ditch warning in August. Through means he will not disclose, he acquired two high-tech Pilot water-based pens with light blue ink and used them to write the letter. The only pens permitted by Canadian jail authorities were oil-based, dark blue Bic pens.
Immediately after writing the letter, Vreeland notified his jailers that he had pens which might be considered contraband. A Sept. 17 letter from the Ministry of Correctional Services was entered as Exhibit ?M? into court records on Oct. 7, along with Vreeland?s warning letter which had been opened on Sept. 14 and entered as Exhibit ?N.? The letter states, ?On August 13, 2001 inmate Vreeland?s corridor #2 was searched and as far as we know 2 blue ink pens were removed from his cell because they were considered contraband. There is no written record of them being placed in his personal property. He did submit a request to have them returned to him on August 14, 2001, but was denied.?
Since the ink on the warning letter, if tested, will match the ink in the confiscated pens, there can be no doubt that the letter was written a month before the attacks.
In an interview with this writer published on April 4, Vreeland clearly stated his belief that Al Qaeda operations had been completely penetrated by U.S. intelligence services. That belief is supported by a statement in his warning letter.
The statement, following a list of potential targets that included the WTC, the Pentagon and the White House said, ?Let one happen, stop the rest.? Such a statement could only imply complete penetration or compromise of the terrorist cells perpetrating the attacks.
Compelling evidence continues to grow that Vreeland was, in fact, a U.S. Navy officer. On Jan. 10 from open court with a court reporter recording the conversation, his attorneys placed a speaker-phone call to the Pentagon. A Pentagon operator, after checking a back-up military database, confirmed Vreeland was a U.S. Navy officer and provided an office listing and a telephone number for his office. The primary database had been disabled, according to Vreeland, on 9-11. In addition, redacted and incomplete military records provided by the Pentagon to the Canadian courts indicate Vreeland had a service record of more than 1,200 pages.
This is difficult to reconcile with the U.S. Navy?s assertion that Vreeland was discharged as a Seaman Recruit after four months of unsatisfactory service in 1986.
No press entity has covered the Vreeland case more than FTW. This writer has traveled twice to Toronto, sat in on court proceedings, and retained the services of a Canadian correspondent to cover the case. I have interviewed Vreeland personally and conducted numerous interviews with his attorneys. Greta Knutzen, FTW?s Canadian correspondent, has also interviewed Vreeland and his attorneys, as well as Vreeland?s mother. Knutzen has attended every court proceeding since January, 2002. All of our previous reporting on the case can be located on the Internet at www.copvcia.com.
Mike Vreeland believes that if he is successfully extradited to the U.S., he will be assassinated. Previous press stories concerning Vreeland?s criminal past and a criminal arrest record fail to account for the fact that, as an undercover operative who targeted organized crime and terrorist organizations, a criminal record would have been necessary to give him credibility with organizations that have previously demonstrated capabilities to retrieve law enforcement records. They also fail to account for an Oct. 2, 1986 Los Angeles Times story that lists Vreeland as a non-criminal witness to a major cocaine bust carried out by LAPD investigators known to have contacts with USG intelligence services.
There is much about Vreeland?s past that is objectionable, questionable, or both. But even in a worst-case scenario, nothing in his past explains how he was able to write a detailed warning of the attacks before they occurred, and why the intelligence services of both Canada and the U.S. ignored attempts to warn them while both Vreeland and his attorneys were banging down their doors.
CONCLUSION
There is clear and substantial evidence to suggest that the Bush Administration had sufficient foreknowledge of the attacks of Sept. 11 to have prevented them. Rather than viewing each of the four listed areas as a separate piece of evidence, they should be considered as a body, in the exact same way exhibits presented to a jury in a criminal trial are viewed as a body. By viewing the evidence in this manner, an unavoidable conclusion is reached -- the USG knew 25 suicide hijackers during the week of Sept. 9 were going to use United and American airlines commercial planes, some of them likely originating in Boston, to attack the WTC and the Pentagon. A multitude of press stories and intelligence reports indicate the WTC would have been the primary target.
Given the financial commitments made during insider trading activity that occurred immediately before the attacks involving businesses that were directly damaged by the attacks, the threats had clearly moved from the realm of speculation to reality. Why else would mysterious investors have risked millions of dollars to purchase the put options? There is compelling evidence to suggest these trades were noted by the CIA and other USG entities.
Recently, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., has been widely criticized in the mainstream press for raising the need for a Congressional investigation to answer some of these obvious questions. This, in spite of the fact that popular reaction indicates a different sentiment. An opinion poll, conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a day after McKinney?s remarks received wide public attention in a Washington Post story dated April 12, was pulled after poll numbers showed that 51 percent of the respondents agreed with McKinney.
The people seem to recognize and agree with the opinion of former CIA officer Mike Osborne who says, ?I think that the U.S. government needs to get behind McKinney?s questions because her agenda is truth and justice, and nothing else.?
Special Thanks: To Kyle Hence for meticulous research on insider trading coverage in the major media and to Tom Flocco for diligent work on the Kevin Ingram case
Mike Ruppert
Copyright © Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications 2002, www.copvcia.com all rights reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on web sites for non-profit purposes only. Reprinted for fair use only
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP204A.html
Published on Saturday, June 1, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
by Bernard Weiner
Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.
Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?
A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system" spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation. Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had no idea as to the specifics -- they may not have known the exact details of the attacks -- but it is more and more apparent that they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including the possible targets.
Q. You're not just going leave that hanging out there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up?
A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more than enough documentation to establish that the Bush Administration was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda, by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced ten weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.)
Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least an, attack was coming, why did the Bush Administration do nothing to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status or even in the air as deterrents, get word out to the border police to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc.?
A. The explanation preferred by the government is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence, up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise!, prefer to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy). But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind the Bush Administration, get their political/business agenda through, have a reason to move unilaterally around the globe, and defang the Democrats and other critics at home -- what better way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader after a diabolic "sneak attack"?
Q. You're suggesting the ultimate cynical stratagem, purely for political ends. I can't believe that Bush and his cronies are that venal. Isn't it possible that the whole intelligence apparatus just blew it?
A. Possible, but not bloody likely. There certainly is enough blame to spread around, but the evidence indicates that Bush and his closest aides knew that bin Laden was planning a direct attack on the U.S. Mainland -- using airplanes headed for those icon targets -- and, in order to get the country to move in the direction he wanted, he kept silent.
Q. But if that's true, what you've described is utterly indefensible, putting policy ahead of American citizens' lives.
A. Now are you beginning to understand why Bush&Co. are fighting so tenaciously against a blue-ribbon commission of inquiry, and why Bush and Cheney went to Congressional leaders and asked them not to investigate the pre-9/11 period? Now do you understand why they are trying so desperately to keep everything secret, tightly locked up in the White House, only letting drips and drabs get out when there is no other way to avoid Congressional subpoenas or court-ordered disclosures? They know that if one thread of the cover-up unravels, more of their darkest secrets will follow.
Q. You're sounding like a conspiracy nut.
A. For years, we've avoided thinking in those terms, because so many so-called "conspiracies" exist only in someone's fevered imagination. Plus, to think along these lines in this case is depressing, suggesting that American democracy can be so easily manipulated and distorted by a cabal of the greedy and power-hungry. But I'm afraid that's where the evidence leads.
Q. You mean there's proof of Bush complicity in 9/11 locked up in the White House?
A. We wouldn't use the term complicity. So far as we now know, Bush did not order or otherwise arrange for Al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11. But once the attacks happened, the plans Bush&Co. already had drawn up for taking advantage of the tragedy were implemented. A frightened, terrorist-obsessed nation did not realize they'd been the object of another assault, this time by those occupying the White House.
Q. This is startling, and revolting. But I refuse to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon until I see some proof. Bush says he first heard about a "lone" pre-9/11 warning on August 6, and that it was vague and dealt with possible attacks outside the U.S. Why can't we believe him? After all, the FBI and CIA are notorious for their incompetence and bungling. You got a better version that makes sense, I'd love to hear it.
A. Bush and his spinners want us to concentrate on who knew what detail when; it's the old magician's trick of getting you to look elsewhere while he's doing his prestidigitation. We're not talking about a little clue here and another little clue there, or an FBI memo that wasn't shared. We're talking about long-range planning and analysis of what strategic-intelligence agencies and high-level commissions and geopolitical thinkers around the globe -- including those inside the U.S. -- saw for years before 9/11 as likely scenarios in an age of terrorist attacks.
The conclusion about Al-Qaeda, stated again and again for years by government analysts, was basically: "They're coming, by air. Get prepared. They're well-organized, determined, and technically adept. And they want to hit big targets, well-known symbols of America." (There was a 1999 U.S. government study, for example, that pointed out that Al-Qaeda suicide-bombers wanted to crash aircraft into a number of significant Washington targets; during the 199 5 trial of Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he revealed plans to dive-bomb a plane into CIA headquarters, and earlier he had told FBI agents that the list was expanded to include the Pentagon and other D.C. targets.)
Elements in the FBI, all over the country, who suspected what was coming, were clamoring, begging, for more agents to be used for counter-terrorism investigations, but were turned down by Attorney General Ashcroft; Ashcroft also gave counter-terrorism short shrift in his budget plans, not even placing anti-terrorism on his priority list; John O'Neill, the FBI's NYC antiterrorism director, resigned, asserting that his attempts at full-scale investigating were being thwarted by higher-ups; someone in the FBI, perhaps on orders of someone higher-up, made sure that the local FBI investigation in Minneapolis of Zacaria Moussauoi was compromised. All this while Ashcroft was shredding the Constitution in his martial law-like desire to amass information, and continues even now to further expand his police-state powers.
(Note: An FBI agent has filed official complaints over the bureau's interfering with antiterrorism investigations; his lawyers include David Schippers, who worked for the GOP side in the Clinton impeachment effort; Schippers says the agent knew in May 2001 that "an attack on lower Manhattan was imminent." A former FBI official said: "I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming...Within 24 hours [of the attack], the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and someone was sitting on it.")
One can accept the usual incompetency in intelligence collection and analysis from, say, an anti-terrorist desk officer at the FBI, but not from the highest levels of national defense and intelligence in and around the President, where his spokesman, in a bald-faced lie, told the world that the 9/11 attacks came with "no warning." More recently, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in a quavering voice, tried to characterize the many warnings as mere "chatter," and concerned attacks "outside the U.S." But the many warning-reports focused on terrorist attacks both inside and outside the United States; the August 6th briefing dealt with planned attacks IN the United States.
Not only were there clear warnings from allies abroad, but the U.S., through its ECHELON and other electronic-intercept programs, may well have broken bin Laden's encryption code; for example, the U.S. knew that he told his mother on September 9: "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while".
And, the word of an impending attack was getting out: put options (hedges that a stock's price is going to fall) in enormous quantities were being bought on United Airlines and American Airlines stock, the two carriers of the hijackers, as early as September 7; San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was warned by "an airport security man" on September 10 to rethink his flight to New York for the next day; Newsweek reported that on September 10, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns"; many members of a Bronx mosque were also warned to stay out of lower Manhattan on September 11, etc. etc.
Q. You're giving me intriguing bits and pieces. Can't you tie it all together and make it make sense?
A. OK, you asked for it, so we're going to provide you with a kind of shorthand scenario of what may well have gone down, a kind of narrative that attempts to tie a lot of disparate-seeming events together. There is voluminous, multi-sourced evidence that establishes this scenario. It's scary, so prepare yourself.
We believe that the HardRight began serious planning for a 2000 electoral victory -- and then implementation of a HardRight agenda, and the destruction of a liberal opposition -- a year or two after Clinton's 1996 victory. (The impeachment of Clinton was a key ingredient to sully Democrat opposition.) The GOP HardRight leaders decided early to select George W. Bush, a none-too-bright and easily malleable young man with the right name and pedigree. They ran into a speed-bump when John McCain began to take off in the public imagination, and so with dirty tricks they wrecked his campaign in the South and elsewhere, and continued on their merry course.
For a while, they fully expected an easy victory over dull Al Gore, tainted goods for a lot of conservative Republicans and others because of his association with Clinton, but, given the obvious limitations of their candidate, they weren't going to take a lot of chances. In Florida, for example, where it looked as if the race might be tight, they early on arranged things -- through Bush's governor-brother Jeb, and the Bush campaign's Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State -- so that George W. couldn't lose. An example: removing tens of thousands of eligible African-American voters from the rolls.
As it turned out, Gore won the popular vote by more than a half-million votes nationwide, and, we now know, would have won Florida's popular vote had all the ballots been counted, but the U.S. Supreme Court HardRight majority, despite its longtime support for states' rights, in a bit of ethical contortionism did a philosophical reverse in midair and ordered the Florida vote-counting to stop and declared Bush the winner, installing a President rather than letting the people decide for themselves.
Q. That's ancient history. I'm interested in 9/11, not tearing at an old scab.
A. OK. We're merely trying to indicate that the HardRight's campaign to take power was not an overnight, post-9/11 whim but worked out long in advance. After so many near-chances to take total control, they would do anything to guarantee a presidential victory this time around -- which would give them full control over the reins of power: Legislature (where HardRightists dominated the House and Senate), the Courts (where the HardRight dominated the U.S. Supreme Court and many appellate courts), and the Executive branch, not to mention the HardRight media control they exerted in so many areas.
They had followed the news, they knew that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network was engaged in a maniacal jihad against America, and was quite capable -- as they had demonstrated on many occasions, from Saudia Arabia to East Africa to the first attempt on the World Trade Center -- of carrying out their threats. They also knew, from innumerable intelligence reports from telecommunications intercepts, and from various commissions, CIA and foreign agents that Al-Qaeda liked to blow up symbolic icon structures of countries targeted, and that Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, had an affinity for trying to use airplanes as psychological or actual weapons. (The French had foiled one such attack in 1994, where a hijacked commercial airliner would be flown into the Eiffel Tower.)
By early 2001 and into the Summer, warnings were pouring in to U.S. intelligence and military agencies from Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, and other Middle East and South Asian intelligence sources, along with Russia and Britain and the Philippines, saying that a major attack on the U.S. Mainland was in the works, involving the use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, in June and July of 2001, the alerts started to be explicit that air attacks were about to go down in the U.S.; even local FBI offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis began passing warnings up the line about Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously at flight schools. In July, Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airliners and traveled only by private plane, and Bush, after but a few months in office, announced he was going to ground, spending the month of August on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cheney disappeared from view, and our guess is that he was coordinating the overall, post-attack strategy.
Under this scenario, in mid-Summer 2001, Bush&Co. decided this was it. Bin Laden unknowingly was going to deliver them the gift of terrorism, and they were going to run with it as far and as fast and as hard as they could. The various post-attack scenarios had been worked out, the so-called USA Patriot Act -- which contained various police-state eviscerations of the Constitution -- was polished and prepared for a rush-job (with no hearings) through a post-attack Congress, the war plans against the Taliban in Afghanistan were readied and rolled out, the air-base countries around Afghanistan were brought onboard, and so on. All during the Summer of 2001.
Q. I don't understand how war against Afghanistan could have been anticipated so early.
A. Follow the money. Various oil/gas/energy companies had wanted a Central Asian pipeline to run through Afghanistan (costing much less to build, but also so it wouldn't have to go through Russia or Iran); that project was put on hold during the chaos in Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over and brought stability to that country, the U.S. began negotiating with the Taliban about the pipeline deal. Even after sending them, via the United Nations, $43 million dollars for "poppy-seed eradication," and inviting them to talks in Texas, the Taliban began to balk. At a later meeting, the U.S. negotiator threatened them with an attack unless they handed over bin Laden and reportedly told them, in reference to the pipeline, that they could accept "a carpet of gold" or be buried in "a carpet of bombs." (The later U.S. Government spin was that the bin Laden issue and the pipeline issues were separate, and that the U.S. threats didn't mix the two and there were misunderstandings of what was said.) Shortly thereafter, bin Laden, hiding out in Afghanistan, initiated the September 11th attacks, and the U.S. bombing of that country began. Oh, by the way, in case you haven't noticed, under the new U.S.-friendly government in Kabul, the pipeline project is back on track. Oh, by the way, the pipeline will terminate reasonably close to the power plant in India built by Enron that has been lying dormant for years, waiting for cheap energy supplies.
Q. You're saying that U.S. war and foreign policy have been dictated by greed?
A. Among other pleasant motivations, such as hunger for domination and control, domestically and around the globe -- which always ties in with greed. That's why Bush&Co. play such political and military hardball. That's why the arrogant, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face attitude, to bully and frighten potential opponents into silence and acquiescence, even questioning their patriotism if they demur or raise embarrassing issues.
Q. But this is a democracy, people are still speaking their minds, right?
A. Certainly, there are areas of America's democratic republic that have not yet been shut down. But where there should be a vibrant opposition party, raising all sorts of questions about Bush Administration policy and plans, America receives mostly silence and timidity. However, as more and more of the ugly truth begins to emerge -- and Enron, Anthrax, and pre-9/11 knowledge are just the tips of the iceberg -- the Democrats (and moderate Republicans) are beginning to feel a bit more emboldened. But just a bit, preferring to run for cover whenever Bush&Co. accuse them of being unpatriotic when they raise pointed questions.
Q. You're so critical and negative about the Bush Administration. Can't you say anything good about what they're doing?
A. Yes. They have moved terrorism -- the new face of warfare in our time -- front and center into the world's consciousness, and have mobilized a global coalition against it. They may be making mistakes, which could lead to horrifying consequences, or acting at times out of impure motives, but at least the issue is out there and being debated and acted upon.
Now, having said that, we must point out that the institutions in this country -- the Constitution, the courts, the legislative bodies, civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, the press, etc. -- are in as much danger as they've ever been in. And the U.S.'s bullying attitude abroad may well lead to disastrous consequences for America down the line.
Q. So, what's to be done?
A. The most important thing at the moment -- even, or especially when, the inevitable next terrorist attack occurs -- is to break the illusion of Bush&Co. invulnerability. The best way to do that, aside from ratcheting up the Enron and Anthrax and 9/11 investigations (and it may turn out that those scandals are deeply intertwined), is to defeat GOP candidates in the upcoming November elections. If the Democrats hang on to the Senate and can take over the House, the dream of unchallengable HardRight power will be broken. Bush&Co. will become even more desperate, overt, nasty, and in their arrogance and bullying ways, will make more mistakes and alienate more citizens. The edifice will begin to crumble even more; there will be more and deeper Congressional and media investigations; resignations and/or impeachments (of both Bush & Cheney, and Ashcroft) may well follow.
Q. You're asking me to support ALL Democrats, even though in a particular race a moderate GOP conservative would be better?
A. Yes. In some cases, you may have to hold your nose and send money to, canvass for, and vote for a Democrat; we can get rid of the bad ones later. The objective right now -- for the future of the Constitution, and for the lives of our soldiers in uniform and civilians around the globe -- has to be to break the momentum of the HardRight by taking the House and keeping the Senate from returning to GOP control. Doing so would be even more important than what happened when that courageous senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, appalled by the HardRight nastiness and greed-agenda of the Bush folks, resigned from the GOP and turned the Senate agenda over to the Democrats.
Q. And you think if the GOP gets its nose bloodied in the November election, that will convince Bush to resign or lead to his impeachment? I don't get that.
A. Churchill once told the Brits during World War II that "this is not the beginning of the end, but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end." There is a lot of hard work and organizing and educating to be done, but the recent exposure of Bush coverup-lies about pre-9/11 knowledge is "the beginning of the beginning of the end." With a GOP defeat in November, Democrats will be emboldened to speak up more, investigate deeper, and those inquiries will unlock even more awful secrets of this greed-and-powerhungry administration. And that will be the beginning of the end -- and the beginning of the beginning of a new era of more humane values for America and the rest of the world.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government & international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego State University; he was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, and has published in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive, Northwest Passage and widely on the internet.
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The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
by Bernard Weiner
Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.
Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?
A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system" spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation. Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had no idea as to the specifics -- they may not have known the exact details of the attacks -- but it is more and more apparent that they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including the possible targets.
Q. You're not just going leave that hanging out there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up?
A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more than enough documentation to establish that the Bush Administration was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda, by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced ten weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.)
Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least an, attack was coming, why did the Bush Administration do nothing to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status or even in the air as deterrents, get word out to the border police to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc.?
A. The explanation preferred by the government is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence, up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise!, prefer to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy). But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind the Bush Administration, get their political/business agenda through, have a reason to move unilaterally around the globe, and defang the Democrats and other critics at home -- what better way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader after a diabolic "sneak attack"?
Q. You're suggesting the ultimate cynical stratagem, purely for political ends. I can't believe that Bush and his cronies are that venal. Isn't it possible that the whole intelligence apparatus just blew it?
A. Possible, but not bloody likely. There certainly is enough blame to spread around, but the evidence indicates that Bush and his closest aides knew that bin Laden was planning a direct attack on the U.S. Mainland -- using airplanes headed for those icon targets -- and, in order to get the country to move in the direction he wanted, he kept silent.
Q. But if that's true, what you've described is utterly indefensible, putting policy ahead of American citizens' lives.
A. Now are you beginning to understand why Bush&Co. are fighting so tenaciously against a blue-ribbon commission of inquiry, and why Bush and Cheney went to Congressional leaders and asked them not to investigate the pre-9/11 period? Now do you understand why they are trying so desperately to keep everything secret, tightly locked up in the White House, only letting drips and drabs get out when there is no other way to avoid Congressional subpoenas or court-ordered disclosures? They know that if one thread of the cover-up unravels, more of their darkest secrets will follow.
Q. You're sounding like a conspiracy nut.
A. For years, we've avoided thinking in those terms, because so many so-called "conspiracies" exist only in someone's fevered imagination. Plus, to think along these lines in this case is depressing, suggesting that American democracy can be so easily manipulated and distorted by a cabal of the greedy and power-hungry. But I'm afraid that's where the evidence leads.
Q. You mean there's proof of Bush complicity in 9/11 locked up in the White House?
A. We wouldn't use the term complicity. So far as we now know, Bush did not order or otherwise arrange for Al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11. But once the attacks happened, the plans Bush&Co. already had drawn up for taking advantage of the tragedy were implemented. A frightened, terrorist-obsessed nation did not realize they'd been the object of another assault, this time by those occupying the White House.
Q. This is startling, and revolting. But I refuse to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon until I see some proof. Bush says he first heard about a "lone" pre-9/11 warning on August 6, and that it was vague and dealt with possible attacks outside the U.S. Why can't we believe him? After all, the FBI and CIA are notorious for their incompetence and bungling. You got a better version that makes sense, I'd love to hear it.
A. Bush and his spinners want us to concentrate on who knew what detail when; it's the old magician's trick of getting you to look elsewhere while he's doing his prestidigitation. We're not talking about a little clue here and another little clue there, or an FBI memo that wasn't shared. We're talking about long-range planning and analysis of what strategic-intelligence agencies and high-level commissions and geopolitical thinkers around the globe -- including those inside the U.S. -- saw for years before 9/11 as likely scenarios in an age of terrorist attacks.
The conclusion about Al-Qaeda, stated again and again for years by government analysts, was basically: "They're coming, by air. Get prepared. They're well-organized, determined, and technically adept. And they want to hit big targets, well-known symbols of America." (There was a 1999 U.S. government study, for example, that pointed out that Al-Qaeda suicide-bombers wanted to crash aircraft into a number of significant Washington targets; during the 199 5 trial of Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he revealed plans to dive-bomb a plane into CIA headquarters, and earlier he had told FBI agents that the list was expanded to include the Pentagon and other D.C. targets.)
Elements in the FBI, all over the country, who suspected what was coming, were clamoring, begging, for more agents to be used for counter-terrorism investigations, but were turned down by Attorney General Ashcroft; Ashcroft also gave counter-terrorism short shrift in his budget plans, not even placing anti-terrorism on his priority list; John O'Neill, the FBI's NYC antiterrorism director, resigned, asserting that his attempts at full-scale investigating were being thwarted by higher-ups; someone in the FBI, perhaps on orders of someone higher-up, made sure that the local FBI investigation in Minneapolis of Zacaria Moussauoi was compromised. All this while Ashcroft was shredding the Constitution in his martial law-like desire to amass information, and continues even now to further expand his police-state powers.
(Note: An FBI agent has filed official complaints over the bureau's interfering with antiterrorism investigations; his lawyers include David Schippers, who worked for the GOP side in the Clinton impeachment effort; Schippers says the agent knew in May 2001 that "an attack on lower Manhattan was imminent." A former FBI official said: "I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming...Within 24 hours [of the attack], the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and someone was sitting on it.")
One can accept the usual incompetency in intelligence collection and analysis from, say, an anti-terrorist desk officer at the FBI, but not from the highest levels of national defense and intelligence in and around the President, where his spokesman, in a bald-faced lie, told the world that the 9/11 attacks came with "no warning." More recently, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in a quavering voice, tried to characterize the many warnings as mere "chatter," and concerned attacks "outside the U.S." But the many warning-reports focused on terrorist attacks both inside and outside the United States; the August 6th briefing dealt with planned attacks IN the United States.
Not only were there clear warnings from allies abroad, but the U.S., through its ECHELON and other electronic-intercept programs, may well have broken bin Laden's encryption code; for example, the U.S. knew that he told his mother on September 9: "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while".
And, the word of an impending attack was getting out: put options (hedges that a stock's price is going to fall) in enormous quantities were being bought on United Airlines and American Airlines stock, the two carriers of the hijackers, as early as September 7; San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was warned by "an airport security man" on September 10 to rethink his flight to New York for the next day; Newsweek reported that on September 10, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns"; many members of a Bronx mosque were also warned to stay out of lower Manhattan on September 11, etc. etc.
Q. You're giving me intriguing bits and pieces. Can't you tie it all together and make it make sense?
A. OK, you asked for it, so we're going to provide you with a kind of shorthand scenario of what may well have gone down, a kind of narrative that attempts to tie a lot of disparate-seeming events together. There is voluminous, multi-sourced evidence that establishes this scenario. It's scary, so prepare yourself.
We believe that the HardRight began serious planning for a 2000 electoral victory -- and then implementation of a HardRight agenda, and the destruction of a liberal opposition -- a year or two after Clinton's 1996 victory. (The impeachment of Clinton was a key ingredient to sully Democrat opposition.) The GOP HardRight leaders decided early to select George W. Bush, a none-too-bright and easily malleable young man with the right name and pedigree. They ran into a speed-bump when John McCain began to take off in the public imagination, and so with dirty tricks they wrecked his campaign in the South and elsewhere, and continued on their merry course.
For a while, they fully expected an easy victory over dull Al Gore, tainted goods for a lot of conservative Republicans and others because of his association with Clinton, but, given the obvious limitations of their candidate, they weren't going to take a lot of chances. In Florida, for example, where it looked as if the race might be tight, they early on arranged things -- through Bush's governor-brother Jeb, and the Bush campaign's Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State -- so that George W. couldn't lose. An example: removing tens of thousands of eligible African-American voters from the rolls.
As it turned out, Gore won the popular vote by more than a half-million votes nationwide, and, we now know, would have won Florida's popular vote had all the ballots been counted, but the U.S. Supreme Court HardRight majority, despite its longtime support for states' rights, in a bit of ethical contortionism did a philosophical reverse in midair and ordered the Florida vote-counting to stop and declared Bush the winner, installing a President rather than letting the people decide for themselves.
Q. That's ancient history. I'm interested in 9/11, not tearing at an old scab.
A. OK. We're merely trying to indicate that the HardRight's campaign to take power was not an overnight, post-9/11 whim but worked out long in advance. After so many near-chances to take total control, they would do anything to guarantee a presidential victory this time around -- which would give them full control over the reins of power: Legislature (where HardRightists dominated the House and Senate), the Courts (where the HardRight dominated the U.S. Supreme Court and many appellate courts), and the Executive branch, not to mention the HardRight media control they exerted in so many areas.
They had followed the news, they knew that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network was engaged in a maniacal jihad against America, and was quite capable -- as they had demonstrated on many occasions, from Saudia Arabia to East Africa to the first attempt on the World Trade Center -- of carrying out their threats. They also knew, from innumerable intelligence reports from telecommunications intercepts, and from various commissions, CIA and foreign agents that Al-Qaeda liked to blow up symbolic icon structures of countries targeted, and that Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, had an affinity for trying to use airplanes as psychological or actual weapons. (The French had foiled one such attack in 1994, where a hijacked commercial airliner would be flown into the Eiffel Tower.)
By early 2001 and into the Summer, warnings were pouring in to U.S. intelligence and military agencies from Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, and other Middle East and South Asian intelligence sources, along with Russia and Britain and the Philippines, saying that a major attack on the U.S. Mainland was in the works, involving the use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, in June and July of 2001, the alerts started to be explicit that air attacks were about to go down in the U.S.; even local FBI offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis began passing warnings up the line about Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously at flight schools. In July, Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airliners and traveled only by private plane, and Bush, after but a few months in office, announced he was going to ground, spending the month of August on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cheney disappeared from view, and our guess is that he was coordinating the overall, post-attack strategy.
Under this scenario, in mid-Summer 2001, Bush&Co. decided this was it. Bin Laden unknowingly was going to deliver them the gift of terrorism, and they were going to run with it as far and as fast and as hard as they could. The various post-attack scenarios had been worked out, the so-called USA Patriot Act -- which contained various police-state eviscerations of the Constitution -- was polished and prepared for a rush-job (with no hearings) through a post-attack Congress, the war plans against the Taliban in Afghanistan were readied and rolled out, the air-base countries around Afghanistan were brought onboard, and so on. All during the Summer of 2001.
Q. I don't understand how war against Afghanistan could have been anticipated so early.
A. Follow the money. Various oil/gas/energy companies had wanted a Central Asian pipeline to run through Afghanistan (costing much less to build, but also so it wouldn't have to go through Russia or Iran); that project was put on hold during the chaos in Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over and brought stability to that country, the U.S. began negotiating with the Taliban about the pipeline deal. Even after sending them, via the United Nations, $43 million dollars for "poppy-seed eradication," and inviting them to talks in Texas, the Taliban began to balk. At a later meeting, the U.S. negotiator threatened them with an attack unless they handed over bin Laden and reportedly told them, in reference to the pipeline, that they could accept "a carpet of gold" or be buried in "a carpet of bombs." (The later U.S. Government spin was that the bin Laden issue and the pipeline issues were separate, and that the U.S. threats didn't mix the two and there were misunderstandings of what was said.) Shortly thereafter, bin Laden, hiding out in Afghanistan, initiated the September 11th attacks, and the U.S. bombing of that country began. Oh, by the way, in case you haven't noticed, under the new U.S.-friendly government in Kabul, the pipeline project is back on track. Oh, by the way, the pipeline will terminate reasonably close to the power plant in India built by Enron that has been lying dormant for years, waiting for cheap energy supplies.
Q. You're saying that U.S. war and foreign policy have been dictated by greed?
A. Among other pleasant motivations, such as hunger for domination and control, domestically and around the globe -- which always ties in with greed. That's why Bush&Co. play such political and military hardball. That's why the arrogant, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face attitude, to bully and frighten potential opponents into silence and acquiescence, even questioning their patriotism if they demur or raise embarrassing issues.
Q. But this is a democracy, people are still speaking their minds, right?
A. Certainly, there are areas of America's democratic republic that have not yet been shut down. But where there should be a vibrant opposition party, raising all sorts of questions about Bush Administration policy and plans, America receives mostly silence and timidity. However, as more and more of the ugly truth begins to emerge -- and Enron, Anthrax, and pre-9/11 knowledge are just the tips of the iceberg -- the Democrats (and moderate Republicans) are beginning to feel a bit more emboldened. But just a bit, preferring to run for cover whenever Bush&Co. accuse them of being unpatriotic when they raise pointed questions.
Q. You're so critical and negative about the Bush Administration. Can't you say anything good about what they're doing?
A. Yes. They have moved terrorism -- the new face of warfare in our time -- front and center into the world's consciousness, and have mobilized a global coalition against it. They may be making mistakes, which could lead to horrifying consequences, or acting at times out of impure motives, but at least the issue is out there and being debated and acted upon.
Now, having said that, we must point out that the institutions in this country -- the Constitution, the courts, the legislative bodies, civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, the press, etc. -- are in as much danger as they've ever been in. And the U.S.'s bullying attitude abroad may well lead to disastrous consequences for America down the line.
Q. So, what's to be done?
A. The most important thing at the moment -- even, or especially when, the inevitable next terrorist attack occurs -- is to break the illusion of Bush&Co. invulnerability. The best way to do that, aside from ratcheting up the Enron and Anthrax and 9/11 investigations (and it may turn out that those scandals are deeply intertwined), is to defeat GOP candidates in the upcoming November elections. If the Democrats hang on to the Senate and can take over the House, the dream of unchallengable HardRight power will be broken. Bush&Co. will become even more desperate, overt, nasty, and in their arrogance and bullying ways, will make more mistakes and alienate more citizens. The edifice will begin to crumble even more; there will be more and deeper Congressional and media investigations; resignations and/or impeachments (of both Bush & Cheney, and Ashcroft) may well follow.
Q. You're asking me to support ALL Democrats, even though in a particular race a moderate GOP conservative would be better?
A. Yes. In some cases, you may have to hold your nose and send money to, canvass for, and vote for a Democrat; we can get rid of the bad ones later. The objective right now -- for the future of the Constitution, and for the lives of our soldiers in uniform and civilians around the globe -- has to be to break the momentum of the HardRight by taking the House and keeping the Senate from returning to GOP control. Doing so would be even more important than what happened when that courageous senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, appalled by the HardRight nastiness and greed-agenda of the Bush folks, resigned from the GOP and turned the Senate agenda over to the Democrats.
Q. And you think if the GOP gets its nose bloodied in the November election, that will convince Bush to resign or lead to his impeachment? I don't get that.
A. Churchill once told the Brits during World War II that "this is not the beginning of the end, but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end." There is a lot of hard work and organizing and educating to be done, but the recent exposure of Bush coverup-lies about pre-9/11 knowledge is "the beginning of the beginning of the end." With a GOP defeat in November, Democrats will be emboldened to speak up more, investigate deeper, and those inquiries will unlock even more awful secrets of this greed-and-powerhungry administration. And that will be the beginning of the end -- and the beginning of the beginning of a new era of more humane values for America and the rest of the world.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government & international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego State University; he was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, and has published in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive, Northwest Passage and widely on the internet.
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