Notes compiled by Eric Thor Karlstrom, Ph.D.
Professor, Dept. of Anthropology and Geography, CSUS, January, 2004
Epigraph quotes:
Cui prodest scelus, is fecit (the one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it).
Seneca (Roman playwrite)
Hiding evil is the trademark of a totalitarian government.
Senator Frank Church (Chair, Senate Intelligence Committee), 1975
The politics of fear must be overcome by the forces of truth.
Scott Ritter, former UNSCOM weapons inspector
All right. So he (George W. Bush) became president, but he didn’t know why. And on September 11, he discovered why.
Michael Ledeen, former advisor to President Reagan and one of the most influential “neocons”
Statement by Osama Bin Laden made in BBC interview, Sept. 28, 2001:
I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act….. The U.S. has no friends, nor does it want to keep any because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others.
Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates…. The countries which do not agree to become the U.S. slaves are China, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Syria [Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia] and Russia.
Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the U.S. Government has stated. But the Bush Administration does not want the panic to spread.
The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; (to) the people who are a part of the U.S. system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be anyone, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the U.S. itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American-Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.
Then there are intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. … Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the U.S. secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other U.S. President, cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes.
… there exists a government within the government in the United Sates. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks.
….. we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the [U.S. Government] system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom. This system is totally in the control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is clear that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid down by them. So the punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the U.S. is not uttering a single word.
ETK Introduction:
I am posting these notes some twelve years after originally compiling them in order to augment the information archive of this website respective to Operation 9/11 and its disastrous effects upon the Middle East, America, and the world. While some of the information that follows is dated and needs amending and updating, pertinent to more recently discovered facts, most of the below information is still valid!
What is clear in hindsight is that Osama Bin Laden’s interview statements of September 28, 2001 (above) are honest, accurate, and prescient. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Bin Laden was merely the designated patsy. In fact, Bin Laden was a CIA asset during the 1980’s proxy war between the U.S. and Soviet Union in Afghanistan. His CIA code name was Tim Osmond. In the above statement, Bin Laden more or less identified the true perpetrators of Operation 9/11. His conclusion that Israel, the Jews, and American intelligence agencies played the major roles in planning, executing, and covering up the 9/11 false-flag, synthetic terror attacks is also obliquely confirmed by Jewish neocon, Michael Ledeen’s (confession) statement above. Note that, generally speaking, the authors of terror events typically take credit for them, as Eqbal Ahmed observes in his excellent book: “Confronting Empire.” In Ledeen’s terse and preternaturally arrogant statement above, he basically admits that the Jewish neoconservatives that controlled Bush II also planned and executed Operation 9/11. This conclusion is borne out by an overwhelming abundance of evidence presented on this website.
As spokesperson for the neocon Jews, Ledeen also gained notoriety for the following paragraph in his book, “The War Against the Terror Masters.” In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq and the entire Middle East, Ledeen wrote:
“Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”
The “historic mission” to which Ledeen refers here is clearly the millennial Judeo-Masonic-Satanic plan to usher in the Jewish utopia/Jewish Universal Empire/one world government-one world religion system, and commonly referred to as the “New World Order.” The Hebrew name for this plan is Tikkun Olam, or “repair” or “mending of the world.” This plan is thoroughly exposed and outlined in many articles on this website, particularly those under subheading, “The Controllers.”
THE LEAD-UP
1) CIA spends over $3 billion in the 1980’s training and funding Mujihadeen terrorists, fomenting their jihad (“holy war”) against the Soviets. It also funded and created Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-services Intelligence) and training schools Madrasas, thereby creating the Taliban (“students” or “graduates”). Saudi Arabia also contributed many billions to these ventures (estimates range up to $40 billion). Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden is a prize CIA recruit who contributes his own money and helps form Al-Qaeda in 1988 or 1989. Over a million Afghans are killed in the 10-year proxy war between the US and the Soviets between 1979 and 1989. Bzrezinsky brags about drawing the Soviets into “the Afghan trap” that would bleed their empire. In fact it was the CIA that fomented civil war in Afghanistan and then quickly took control of the heroin industry- worth hundreds of billions.
2) Bin Laden buys a jet from the US military in 1993- later it is used to transport missiles from Pakistan that kill American special forces in Somalia. He also has some of his followers begin training as pilots in US flight schools.
3) In 1993, an expert Pentagon panel concludes that an airplane could be used as a missile to bomb national landmarks. In 1994, one expert states the WTC would provide an excellent target.
4) Feb. 26, 1993, A bombing attempt to knock down the WTC (World Trade Center) fails. 6 are killed. The bombing is organized by Ramzi Yousef, who has close ties to Bin Laden. The NYT reports that an undercover agent testifies that the FBI knew about the attack beforehand and told them to go ahead. Several of the bombers were trained by the CIA in Afghanistan.
5) In 1995, 1996 and 2000, Sudan offered all of its files on Osama bin Laden (who was living there) to the US and British intelligence. But the US and Britain repeatedly turn down the offer.
Brzezinski notes in his book “The Grand Chessboard” that with the world’s energy consumption increasing, whoever control Caspian oil/gas will control the world economy.
6) America’s top military leaders approved plans to commit acts of terrorism in US cities to trick public opinion into supporting a war against Cuba in 1962 (ABC, 5/1/01, Bamford’s book, “Deadly Deceits”).
7) George W. Bush’s oil company Harken Energy funded by Salem Bin Laden (Osama’s father) and Khalid bin Mahfouz, who also financed Osama bin Laden (American Freedom news). Mahfouz’s sister is married to Osama bin Laden.
8) In Oct. 2000, a drill was carried out based on a hijacked plane crashing into the Pentagon ( Military District of Washington, 11/3/00).
9) On Sept. 5, 6, and 7, 4744 put options (a speculation that stock will go down) were purchased on United Air Lines (as opposed to only 396 call options) and 4,516 put options were placed on American Airlines as compared with only 748 call options. Many of these were purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by A.B. Buzzy Krongard, now is third in command at the CIA . (The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism). No other airlines show similar trading patterns and the put option purchases were 600% above normal. Likewise, between Sept. 6 and 10, 2001, highly abnormal levels of put options were purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines- all of these were also impacted by 9-11. The San Francisco chronicle reported on Sept. 29, 2001, that $2.5 million in profits from the put options were still unclaimed.
10) On Sept. 10, top military officials canceled travel plans for the next day (Newsweek, 9/24/01).
11) The WTC buildings were officially condemned by the Guiliani government.
12) Larry Silverstein purchased the WTC buildings 2 months before the attacks. They had belonged to the city. He immediately sued NYC for $7 billion.
13) Marvin P. Bush, the President’s brother, was on the board of Directors of a company (now called Stratesec, Inc, formerly Securacom, located in Sterling, Va. And backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm) ) which had an ongoing contract to handle security at the WTC “up to the day the buildings fell down”, as well as United Air Lines, and Dulles International Airport. In Dec. 2000, Stratesec added a government division, providing security systems to the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Dept. of Justice. This same company stands to gain by limitations on liability and national-security protections from investigation provided in bills since 9/11. HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc, a reinsurance corp. on whose board Marvin Bush sat as director until November, 2002, similarly benefited from legislation pushed by the Bush White House and rubber-stamped by the Republican Congress. HCC carried some of the insurance for the WTC.(American Reporter, 1/20/03)
14) U.S. intelligence agencies were amply forewarned of the attacks by foreign intelligence agencies- in all there were 23 warnings from 11 foreign governments. In June, 2001, German Intelligence (the BND) warned the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are “planning to hijack commercial aircraft as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept., 14, 2001). Also in the summer of 2001, Russian intelligence notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically trained for suicide missions (the Russian Press). In August, Russian President Putin told Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government “in the strongest possible terms” of an immanent attack on airports and government buildings” (MS-NBC interview, Sept., 15, 2001). In addition, Egyptian President Mubarak, the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, and even elements within our own FBI warned of impending attacks. An Iranian man phoned U.S. law enforcement agencies and warned them of an immanent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9th. (German news agency “online.ie., Sept., 14). French and Arab intelligence agencies also warned the CIA concerning immanent terrorist attacks. Interestingly, CIA Director George Tenet met with the President every day for a month prior to 9-11 for one half hour oral briefings. They are reportedly good friends.
15) In July 2001, three American officials, Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assist. Secretary of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Dept. expert on South Asia) told Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October, 2001. Taliban representatives sat in on the meetings. (The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001; the BBC, Sept., 18, 2001, The Inter Press Service, Nov. 16, 2001). When Taliban refused to accept US terms for the Afghanistan pipeline, US representatives told Taliban “ either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we will bury you under a carpet of bombs.” (Inter Press Service, 11/15/01)
16) Pakistan’s chief spy since 1999, U.S.-approved appointee Lt. General Mahmood Ahmad, was in direct contact with the CIA, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and the Pentagon. The FBI and Indian Intelligence proved that Ahmed had ordered Ahmad Umar Sheikh of Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) to wire $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, a week before 9-11. Indeed, Ahmed met with CIA officials including CIA Director Tenet between Sept. 4 and 9. At the time of the WTC attacks, he was having breakfast with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Peter Goss, Chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively, and Senator John Kyl and Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. Maleeha Lodhi. On Sept. 12 and 13, Ahmed met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Secretary of State Colin Powell. On Sept. 13, he met with Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ironically, Goss and Graham, the men who dined with Ahmed during the 9-11 atrocity, were placed in charge of the Congressional committee charged with investigating “intelligence failures” leading to 9-11.
17) BBC reported (11/18/01) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretory, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid July 2001 that “military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”
18) Members of the neo-cons such as Wolfowitz and Perle had openly been calling for a “Pearl Harbor-like attack” to mobilize public opinion for the “war on terrorism”
Most of the alleged hijackers given flight training in this country were rather poor pilots.
THE EVENT
1) President Bush saw the attacks on TV while sitting in on an elementary school class in Florida and did nothing.
2) Bush and bin Laden have the same bankers.
3) Osama bin Laden, has recently re-surfaced and still roams free. (ETK correction: Actually, Bin Laden seems to have died of kidney failure in an American military hospital in Rualpindi, Pakistan, very shortly after September 11, 2001.
4) The mysterious total collapse of all U.S. air defenses. Despite that fact that planes had been routinely scrambled 67 times for far lesser threats in the 10 months between Sept. 2000 and June 2001 (following standard operating procedures). With 4 hi-jacked planes in the air and Flight 77 taking over an hour to reach the Pentagon, and fighters based 10 miles from the Pentagon, not a single plane was scrambled to intercept the hi-jacked planes. Meanwhile, there were two entire squadrons of combat-ready (F-16 and F/A-18) fighter jets at Andrews Air Force Base 10 minutes from the Pentagon. Someone very high up in the command chain must have overruled the National Command Authority and instructed them not to scramble Air Force planes to intercept the hijacked airliners. On Sept. 11, for 78 minutes, between 7:45 and 9:03 a.m., with it widely known by the FAA and the military that four commercial planes had been hijacked, we are asked to believe that nobody notified President Bush. And it was not until 9:30 a.m. that Air Force planes were finally scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes. Thus, scrambling of military fighters is normally done, by law and standard procedure, within minutes of a commercial airliner irregularity, in this case, the National Command Authority waited for 78 minutes before scrambling aircraft (CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, L.A. Times, the New York Times). Meanwhile, President Bush was at a photo-op, talking to elementary students in Florida at 8:45 am when American Airlines Flight 11 smashed into the North Tower. And although he certainly could and should have been notified by his secret service entourage, he continued to listen to a student talk about her pet goat for another 25 minutes, that is, until 7 minutes after the second tower was hit by Flight 175. Meanwhile, the third hijacked plane was bee-lining toward Washington, D.C., certainly being tracked by military radar, and still no Air Force Interceptors were scrambled. Finally, at 9:35 am, Flight 77, supposedly piloted by Arab graduates of a puddle-jumper flight school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, turned 360 ˚ over the Pentagon, conducted a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes; coming in so low it clipped electrical wires on the street, and smashed into the Pentagon with pin-point accuracy at 460 knots. (Incidentally, into a wing of the building that had just recently undergone major structural re-enforcement) In an article entitled “The So-called Evidence is a Farce”, retired U.S. Army veteran and West Point instructor Stan Goff states, “When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your daughter for her first drive on the freeway at rush hour by buying her a video driving game… There is a story being constructed about these events”.
5) Most people believe the twin towers (and building 7) came down due to fires. However, the maximum temperature at which hydrocarbons (including jet fuel) can burn is 825 ˚ C, whereas melting of steel requires temperatures of 1539 ˚ C. Tests show that uninsulated steel in cars subject to prolonged exposure to hydrocarbon fires reach maximum temperatures of 360 ˚ C. Therefore, the towers collapsed without adequate heat stress. Both of the twin towers and Building 7 came down in perfectly controlled demolition operations. The name of the contractor that removed materials from the site, in fact, is Controlled Demotions Inc., a demolitions expert which also took care of the cleanup (and the bombing) of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. It should be noted that a steel-reinforced building has never collapsed due to fire in the past (NYT, 11/09/2002). Video footage shows that all three buildings collapsed from the top to the bottom, and many segments show smoke clouds exploding through the windows- as you would expect if there were bombs set off inside the buildings. Video footage shows bomb clouds exploding from windows about 20 to 40 levels below the crashlevel. Danish bomb expert Bent Lund stated to the Daily Copenhagen Newspaper “BT”: “an estimated amount of about 1 tons of “Extra high-explosives bombs must have been detonated inside the World Trade Center complex in order to make the Towers collapse in the manner they did.” Danish film maker Henrik Melvang produces evidence that the video clips shown to Americans of the twin towers collapse is heavily edited. The strong steel-tube construction of the towers makes it impossible for the towers to collapse in a pancake manner unless the steel trusses were blasted apart at their joints. So say all the bomb experts.
In addition, tapes of conversation among firefighters in the towers indicate that just before the collapse, the fires on the 80th floor had virtually burned out. They indicated that conditions were controllable.
Audio tapes of phone calls recovered from 9-11 indicate that victims were told to stay in the buildings by emergency services.
6) It is was widely reported in the Arab world after 9-11 that about 3,000 Jewish workers at the World Trade Center did not report for work on the morning of 9-11. Could this be because Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world’s largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York City, received warnings of an immanent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC (CNN’s Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01).
7) People high in the banking and intelligence world had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks.
Black boxes were missing from all but one flight.
The Pentagon was not struck by a large passenger aircraft.
Cellphone calls alleged to have been made by passengers were essentially impossible.
OSAMA BIN LADEN AND THE ALLEGED HI-JACKERS
The U.S. Congress found that Al Qaeda was linked with U.S. intelligence agencies in the war in Kosovo and in Bosnia in 1998. Indeed, to this day, Al Qaeda continues to be an “intelligence asset” of the CIA and continues to conduct covert operations around the world on the CIA’s behalf. And so, too Osama bin Laden.
1) In July, 2001, Osama bin Laden, was visited by a top CIA official (presumably the Chief of Station) while he was recovering from a chronic kidney infection at the American hospital in Dubai, France. At this time, Osama was officially wanted for bombing two U.S. embassies and for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Nevertheless, he was allowed to leave Dubai on his private jet (French newspaper, Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001)
2) On Sept. 10, Osama was checked into the military hospital at Rawalpindi, at Pak Army headquarters in Pakistan (for kidney dialysis). Pakistan’s army is under direction of the Pentagon.
3) Many other opportunities for U.S. agencies to arrest Osama
4) Despite weeks of the most intense international investigations in world history, involving the world’s largest intelligence agencies, essentially no evidence was produced that links the attacks to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
5) The Bush administration identified Osama as the culprit within a few hours of the attack, but gave no evidence.
6) 15 of the alleged 9/11 hi-jackers should have been denied entry to the U.S. for faulty visa documents (Washington Post, 10/22/02). Various INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and U.S. State Department officers, including Michael Sprngmann, have reported that they had rejected immigration applications of many of these “terrorists” only to be overruled by the CIA.
7) Several of the hijackers were given flight training and language instruction at U.S. military installations. (Newsweek, 9/15/01, Washington Post, 9/16/01, NYT, 9/15/01). The “puddle-jumper” flight training schools in Venice, Florida, at which the hijackers trained have CIA ties and were established in the year 2000, possibly with CIA money. Of the 19 alleged hi-jackers, at least 7 have been shown to still be alive.
Four of the named hijackers were not in the US.
None of the suspects named by the FBI appeared on any of the official passenger lists. In fact there were no Arabic names on any of the passenger lists. There is no airport security camera footage of these men boarding the planes. And yet the FBI supposedly found one of the hi-jackers passports amidst the rubble at the Twin Towers. The FBI official story- that the hi-jackers used shoebox cutters has given way to the story that they used gas to subdue the passengers and crew. And yet they had no gas masks!
THE TALIBAN, THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE, AFGHANISTAN, AND HEROIN
1) The U.S. government, under the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, installed the Taliban in 1996 and paid all of their salaries as recently as 1999. A year after 9-11, the Taliban has been replaced by a puppet government comprised of a gang of warlords called the Northern Alliance, and the new leader of Afghanistan is a former consultant of Unocal oil.
In November and December, of 2001, opium planting resumed in Afghanistan under the U.S.- approved Northern Alliance. The newly appointed Afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as a former paid consultant for Unocal. (Le Monde).
The proposed Unocal oil pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, which was abandoned under the Taliban’s chaotic regime, is a go-project. Now Unocal (Union Oil of California) employee is now U.S. envoy to the new Afgani democracy and the new president, Hamid Karzai, is a former Unocal employee.
The area planted with heroin was
Big American basedss set up in Afghanistan after the war are almost identical to the projected rouite of the oil pipeline to go through the country (Chicago Tribune, 3/18/02)
Bin Laden denied having anything to do with the attacks and states they were carried out by an American terrorist group.
PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
PNAC founded in 1997 as a right-wing “neo-conservative” think tank. Among their recommendations: “pre-emptively attacking other countries not of immanent danger to the US, abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with US goals, installing US-friendly governments to do America’s will, using tactical nuclear weapons, simultaneously conducting “multiple theatre wares”, controlling space and cyberspace for military purposes. The goal is “benevolent hegemony.” All of these ideas are now enshrined in Bush’s National Security Strategy, late 2002.
Involved in PNAC are Dick Cheney (now VP), Donald Rumsfeld (Defense Sec) Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Defense Sec), Jeb Bush (President’s brother), Lewis Libby (Cheney’s Chief of Staff).
AFTERMATH
Anthrax is anonymously sent in letters to the main opponents of Bush’s domestic agenda, Sen. Tom Daschle. Chemical and DNA analysis of the anthrax lead to Ft. Detrich ,MD, home of the largest chemical/biological weapons lab in modern history. The 70-year archive of all known anthrax strains at the University of Ames in Iowa, which allows any given anthrax strains to be traced to a specific batch and to all those who ordered samples, was destroyed in cooperation with the FBI 10 days before the first anthrax envelop was mailed out. The Anthrax attacks on leading democratic Senators occurred directly following the 9-11 attacks, exacerbating the atmosphere of fear and confusion in Washington, D.C. After more than a year of intense FBI investigation no one has been indicted, although the strains of anthrax used have been shown to be of the highest quality and most resemble those manufactured at American military installations
Evidence at WTC and the Pentagon was removed before there could be an investigation. New York Times: “In calling for a new investigation, some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made in the chaotic aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams, and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have cost the investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with which to try to piece together an answer.” Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, fire protection engineering department, University of Maryland and WTC probe member said: “I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling.” NYT, 12/25/01.
No wreckage of AA Flight 77 or remains of its passengers have been found at the Pentagon.
Experts critical of the current effort, including some of the people who are actually conducting it, cite the lack of meaningful financial support and poor coordination with the agencies cleaning up the disaster site. They point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power and little staff support and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed.
1) The Bush administration has repeatedly thwarted attempts to launch official investigations into what happened on 9-11. Both Bush and Cheney called Senate leader Daschle to ask him to limit the investigtraion. The White House has stonewalled and delayed turning over essential information to both the congressional committee and to the blue-ribbon independent panel investigating 9/11. When the Congressional report was released, the White House deleted 28 pages dealing with the role of Saudi individuals and government officials in financing the terrorists, and also redacted all of the papers relating to the May 6 presidential briefing document from the CIA about the liklihood of a domestic terrorist air attack in the US.
2) Members of the U.S. House of Representatives had to vote on the Anti-terrorism bill (USA Patriot Act) within days of the 9-11 attacks without ever having the time to review or read the bill. Clearly, this lengthy and confusing bill was prepared by someone on behalf of the administration, prior to 9-11 and was brought when the time was ripe. Critics now say it does little to prevent terrorism but does increase the ability of the government to conduct surveillance of all of us without proper search warrants, thus effectively nullifying three Bill of Rights amendments and taking away part of another. Republican Congressman and Constitutional expert said this about the “Patriot Act”: “Our forefathers would think it is time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place.
3) Member of of Congress said that the FBI, CIA, and Justice Dept. were not cooperating with the 9-11 inquiry. The president opposed an independent inquiry (New York Times, 10/5/02, CBS 5/23/02).
4) Afghanistan’s Taliban government even offered to hand over Osama bin Laden if we would supply some evidence of his guilt. President Bush dismissed this offer summarily and proceeded to declare an indefinite “war on terrorism” against the perpetrators. This war is to be conducted in whatever country deemed appropriate by the administration and 60 have officially been listed as harboring terrorists.
5) Recovery experts extracted data from 32 damaged WTC computer drives revealing a surge in financial transactions on 9/11. Illegal transfers of $100 millions to billions may have been made through WTC computer systems immediately before and after the disaster (Reuters, 12/18/01).
6) On the days after Sept. 11 when planes were not allowed to fly, Bin Laden’s family was taken under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point where they left the country on a private charter plane three days after 9/11 (NYT, 9/30/01. They were apparently not questioned.
7) The U.S. government tried to silence the victim’s families by offering $1 million for each victim from the Victims Compensation Fund- that is, if they stopped asking questions. 400 family members of 9-11 victims have filed a lawsuit against members of the Bush administration for “complicity” in 9-11, allowing it to happen for political gain. Ellen Mariani and her lawyer Phillip Berg still have a suit in progress- they are suing Bush and Co. under the Civil RICO (Racketerring, Influence, and Corrupt Organization) Act for malfeasant conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death- as of January, 2004.
8) The May 16, 2002 New York Post article, headlined “Bush Knew”, revealed the nature of top secret documents made available to Bush before 9-11.
A group of military and civilian US pilots, after deliberating non-stop for 72 hours, concluded that the flight crews of the four passenger airlines involved in the 9-11 hijaking had no control over their aircraft. They report that it would be impossible for novices (such as the alleged hi-jackers to control those airplanes). Probably they were controlled by remote control. One Capt. Hill maintained that the four airliners must have been choreographed by an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). This system can engage several aircraft simultaneously by knocking out their on-board flight controls (The NEWS, 3/08/02)
FALLOUT FROM 9-11:
WHO PROFITS:
1) The president’s poll numbers doubled overnight.
2) Intelligence and defense services, which failed us completely, got huge budget increases.
3) Arms merchants like G.W. Bush’s Carlyle Group reaped tens of billions, from the new “War on Terrorism” orders.
4) Washington insiders like Halliburton and Bechtel harvested hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts as we methodically blow up and then rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq.
The airlines reaped billions in rewards in the form of grants, loans, and tax-breaks. Three of the airlines were headquartered in Texas.
One unnamed source stated that the options were purchased by two trusts, the Carousel Group and the Carlyle Group, and were executed through the Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch brokerage houses. This was NOT reported in next days’ Bloomberg Report. This source claims the Carlyle Group is also behind the heist of the Iraqi Museum and the priceless artifacts which were stolen in the initial phases of Gulf War II.
WHO PAYS:
1) The U.S. is swindled into endless war, recession or depression, financial collapse, loss of civil liberties.
Geopolitical and Economic Background:
To better understand the origins of 9-11, some geopolitical and economic background is useful:
2) As former Secretary of State Zbignew Bzrezinski makes clear in “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives,” Eurasia has 3/4 of all known energy resources. The Caspian Basin, in particular, has an estimated $5 trillion (U.S.) in gas and oil reserves. Countries here include Tajiksistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Krgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. All of these former Soviet states share a border with Afghanistan. Brzezinski underscores that with worldwide energy consumption increasing worldwide, who controls the Caspian Basin oil/gas will control the world economy. In fact, his “Grand Chessboard” is a plan for strategic global dominance which this admistration seems to be following. Hence, the U.S. already had established military bases in Uzebekistan and Khzakstan prior to 9-11. However, getting these fossil fuels to port for shipment to other regions is a geographic problem. Afghanistan, which has very little oil, is the best route to transport the oil to Asia. In 1994, Vice President Cheney helped broker a deal between Chevron and the state of Kazakhstan when he sat on the country’s Oil Advisory Board. Likewise, many former Reagan, Bush and Clinton advisors have personal investments in development and extraction of fossil fuels from the region. The real objective of American military presence there is to secure U.S. access to fossil fuel resources in Eurasia and make sure that other regional powers, such as China and Russia, do not threaten U.S. hegemony in the region.
3) Between 1991 and 1997, major U.S. oil companies, including Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, and Shell invested almost $3 billion in cash bribing the heads of state in Kazakhistan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves of this region. And they committed another $35 billion to future investment. (Testimony before House International Relations committee, 2/12/98).
4) The CIA poured over $3 billion into the training of the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist networks (including Al Qaeda) of the Mujahadeen in order to stage a proxy war with Russia in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Osama bin Laden, wealthy Saudi Arabian merchant, was a prize CIA recruit in this endeavor. One essential conduit of CIA influence was their training and funding of Pakistan’s ISI (Interservices Intelligence Agency . It was ISI that has funded and kept the Taliban in power since 1996. The Northern Alliance and U.S. Congressional transcripts and intelligence reports confirm a “Pakistani ISI- Osama- Taliban” axis).
5) On December 4, 1997, representatives of the Taliban were invited to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support of the pipeline across Afghanistan which would transport oil and gas from Kazakhstan to India. (The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997).
6) After 10 years of CIA covert operations and involvement with the war and drug lords of Afghanistan during the 1980s, Afghanistan was the number one exporter of opium in the world. In 1999, the 4,600 metric tons of opium produced there made up 75% of the world’s opium production and was mainly and smuggled through the Balkans and sold to Europe. The ban placed on opium production by the Taliban in 2000 had the effect of shifting production to Columbia and to the Caucusus under the Kurds. Now the opium would be smuggled through shorter routes through Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbasijan. (Both Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage are members of the U.S.- Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce). The Taliban action of banning opium production was made at the prodding of Pakistan’s foreign Secretary Inam Ul-Haq. Sec. of State Colin Powell rewarded the Taliban for this action by giving them $43 million to replace the income lost to Afghani farmers.
7) The trade in illegal drugs is a $500 to 600 billion/year business and provides the world’s banking and financial systems with needed liquid cash. A German intelligence expert states that: “Seventy percent of the drug trade is licensed by the intelligence agencies”.
8) In Jan, 2001, The Bush Administration ordered the FBI to “back off” investigations involving the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia, including two of Osama’s relatives (BBC Newsnight, Nov. 7, 2001). Could this be connected with the fact that in 1998 and 2000, George H.W. Bush, now a consultant for the Carlyle Group, the U.S.’s 11th largest defense contractor, met with the Saudi Royal family and the extremely wealthy bin Laden family (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001)?
9) According to a Wall Street journal article, Sept. 19, 2001, one of the oil pipeline projects running through the new war zone in Afghanistan is a joint venture of the bin Laden family and the construction firm H.C. Price. This company is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser Industries that gave George W. Bush his first post-war job in 1948. Vice President Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense under Desert Storm, was Halliburton’s CEO until becoming Vice President in 2001.
Conclusions
Most of these facts seem to support Scenario 3: Stated briefly: The hijackers were involved in a carefully planned intelligence operation. Elements within our own government were involved in the planning and cover-up of the 9-11 tragedy. And the ultimate objective of the war on terrorism is securing U.S. hegemony over the remaining fossil fuel resources in the world. In “the War on Freedom, Causes and Consequences of 9-11” Nafeez Ahmed concludes that bin Laden is merely a piece in a chess game. The stakes of that game are the last of world’s oil reserves and “the Bush administration’s (consolidation of power) to pursue a dramatic unlimited militarization of foreign policy on a massive and unprecedented scale required by long-standing elite planning, while crushing dissent and criminalizing legitimate protest.”
Why would our own government perpetrate a hideous act of aggression against its own people? Perhaps a statement by the Nazi, Hermann Goering, will illuminate the issue:
Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denouce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Some Historic Precedents, Pretexts, and “Triggers”
It is instructive to examine some historic pretexts and “triggers” which U.S. leaders have used to involve American citizens in previous wars.
1) During WWII, U.S. admirals knew that FDR had foreknowledge of the impending attacks on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese but did not warn the admirals in command at Pearl Harbor. Further, FDR actually helped provoke Japan’s murderous attack when he cut off Japan’s oil supplies. As planned, the Pearl Harbor attacks became the “trigger” which insured American involvement in WWII.
2) In 1962, after the CIA had failed in its illegal Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK was reluctant to topple Castro or wage war with Cuba. But the military and CIA desperately wanted war and needed a way to mobilize American public opinion for such a war. They came up with “Operation North Woods”, designed to trick the American and world public opinion into a war. Several possible strategies were developed to create this “trigger”: 1) Blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. 2) Develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington, and 3) Blow up John Glenn’s rocket at Cape Canaveral and blame it on Cuba. And most interestingly, as a possible parallel with 9-11, 4) Create an exact duplicate of a civil-registered aircraft, load the plane with selected passengers with carefully prepared aliases, and through remote control, blow the plane up by radio signal. And, of course, blame the Cubans, 5) faking Soviet MIG aircraft to harass civil aircraft, or attack surface shipping, 6) hijacking civil air and surface craft, 7) simulating the shooting down of a chartered civil airliner in Cuban airspace. President Kennedy rejected the plan.
In his book, “Body of Secrets,” James Bramford concludes from documentary evidence that the Joint Chiefs of Staff “proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba”. Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer wrote a memo stating that that the Joint Chiefs “have considered” an attached memo, which is a “description of pretexts which would provide justification for military intervention in Cuba”.
3) It is now well known that the government similarly utilized the cooked-up Gulf of Tonkin incident to “trigger” a full-scale war with Vietnam. On July 30, 1964, CIA crews aboard Norweigian-built SWIFTS (ships) attacked a radar station in North Vietnam on Hon Me Island, with the U.S.S. Maddox patrolling nearby inside North Vietnamese waters to provide cover for the CIA attackers. The North Vietnamese issued a formal protest to the U.S. and North Vietnamese sailors pursued the CIA mauraders and confronted the Maddox. The Maddox then fired upon the North Vietnamese, who returned fire with torpedoes- that missed.
4) But this tactic goes back much further. In 1846, the U.S. government wanted a pretext to take large parts of Mexico. First it offered money and then land to any soldier willing to fight the Mexicans. When this failed to produce a sufficient force of volunteers, the goverrnment sent General Zachary Taylor with a small force to raid Mexican border towns. When Mexicans fired back, the headlines read: “Mexicans killing our boys in Texas”. Then, and only then, did enough men enlist that we were able to embark upon a war that resulted in the U.S. taking what is now New Mexico, Arizona, southern Colorado and California.
5) And Brzenzki may have been calling for just this scenario when he states in The Great Chessboard: “As America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat”.
And as outlined in Vice President Cheney’s “Defense Planning Gudiance for 1994-1999 and 2004 –1009, “The Plan” is for the U.S. to rule the world by the unilateral use of force. We are to demonstrate our overwhelming military superiority by conducting multiple-theatre wars, pre-emptive military strikes, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, and by using weapons from space. All this, of course, will necessitate significant increases in military budgets and further decreases in spending on social programs at home such as Social Security. For this cause, the American’s themselves must be kept in fear and terror. Vice President Cheney is doing his best to accomplish this, with statemensts such as:
I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty… It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared….
The second major objective of the “War on Terrorism” is to repress internal dissent via the Patriot Act and the new $40 billion/year Homeland Security Agency. In a perpetual environment of fear and war, the label of “terrorist” can be applied by the government to any “enemies” of the American empire, whether they be environmentalists trying to stop the clear cutting of forests, unions protesting the actions of the World Trade Organization, or citizens of conscience protesting the terrorist curriculum of the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Welcome, alas, to the “Brave New World Order” predicted by Huxley and Orwell. Ben Franklin’s words resonate now more than ever: “Those who would sacrifice civil liberties for national security deserve neither.”
This is where we stand today: The wars we are asked to fight are orchestrated by our leaders for the benefit of the oil profiteers, the gun profiteers, the drug profiteers, etc. We pay for it; in blood, in money, in lost relatives, and in the accumulation of bad karma. Unless the American people reclaim their country, this pattern will continue until the American empire, and perhaps the entire world, goes bankrupt and is destroyed. We will are now squandering our strength and led the world, not toward a peaceful future but toward war and destruction. The five-headed monster that now runs the world consists of corporations, the stock market, the intelligence community, organized crime and the government. It fuels the military-industrial complex and owns the press. It maintains its power by casting a net of disinformation, fear and greed across the land. As these wars continue apace, we the sovereign people of the United States, have been manipulated into making a true devil’s bargain, our relative safety and plenty for their poverty and misery. Alexander Cockburn sums it up in Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press:
One half of the world’s people live on less than $2 a day… Ultimately, the “war on terrorism” is about global control by US corporations and the World Trade Organization. It wants to strike down public ownership, social organizations and institutions, and substitute control by the strong and rich over the weak and poor….. The “drug war” is a code word for social control and repression.
Carolyn Forche puts it more poetically in The Country Between Us:
There is a cyclone fence between ourselves and the slaughter and behind it we hover in a calm protected world like netted fish, exactly like netted fish. It is either the beginning or the end of the world, and the choice is ourselves or nothing.
Moving Forward
However, we, the people are waking up and still can reclaim our sovereign rights in this constitutional democracy. It is not inevitable that the American experiment end in a fascist, totalitarian empire that subjugates most of the world’s people to a state of economic slavery and reduces the natural environment to ruin. We still have democratic institutions, a Constitution that guarantees rule by the people, and a diverse populace that isn’t entirely asleep. We still have the inspiring words and examples of politicians such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, and of modern prophets like John Muir, Wendell Berry, and Noam Chomsky. We can still share information openly. We still have our brains and the internet and each other and consumer power and the power of the vote. And we have the courage of past successes. When the American people lead in the past, the government followed. The labor union movement, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, ending the Vietnam War, the cold war, and halting nuclear escalation; all of these occurred because people opposed and changed government policies.
People are becoming informed and involved in communities all across America and throughout the world. We may legitimately hope that this present crisis will precipitate a resurgence of respect and recognition for the rights of people and workers in all countries. We, the people, may have been lulled to sleep by the media, by our fears, by our comforts, and by our busyness. But we are waking up, getting informed, connected, and organized- so that we can return this country and the world to the principles and practices of genuine democracy, honesty, and justice for all.