If the CBS report by Dan Rather is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, 2001, courtesy of America's ally, he was in all likelihood still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the 11th of September, when the attacks occurred. In all probability, his whereabouts were known to US officials on the morning of September 12, when Secretary of State Colin Powell initiated negotiations with Pakistan, with a view to arresting and extraditing bin Laden.
A recent Reuters report (11/13/03; scroll down) quoting Labeviere's book "Corridors of Terror" points to alleged "negotiations" between Osama bin Laden and the CIA, which took place two months prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks at the American Hospital in Dubai, UAE, while bin Laden was recovering from a kidney dialysis treatment
Enemy Number One in hospital recovering from dialysis treatment "negotiating with CIA"?
The "negotiations" between the CIA and Osama (a CIA "intelligence asset") is sheer disinformation. Even though the CIA has refuted the claim, the report serves to highlight Osama as a bona fide "Enemy of America," rather than a creation of the CIA. In the words of former CIA agent Milt Bearden in an interview with Dan Rather on September 12, 2001, “If they didn’t have an Osama bin Laden, they would invent one.”
Intelligence negotiations never take place on a hospital bed. The CIA knew Osama was at the American Hospital in Dubai. Rather than negotiate, they could have arrested him. He was on the FBI most wanted list.
According to the Reuters report: "At the time, bin Laden had a multi-million dollar price on his head for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa". So why did the hospital staff, who knew that Osama was at the American Hospital in Dubai, not claim the reward?
The Figaro report points to complicity between the CIA and Osama rather than "negotiation". (see excerpt below). Consistent with several other reports, it also points to the antagonism between the FBI and the CIA.
If the CIA had wanted to arrest Osama bin Laden prior to September 11, they could have done it then in Dubai. But they would not have had a the war on terrorism pretext for waging a major military operation in the Middle East and Central Asia.
According to Le Figaro:
"Dubai... was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July [2001]. A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that "public enemy number one" stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July. While he was hospitalized, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go [up] to bin Laden's hospital room. A few days later, the CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited bin Laden. Authorized sources say that on July 15th, the day after bin Laden returned to Quetta [Pakistan], the CIA agent was called back to headquarters. In the pursuit of its investigations, the FBI discovered "financing agreements" that the CIA had been developing with its "Arab friends" for years. The Dubai meeting is, so it would seem, within the logic of 'a certain American policy.'" (http://web.archive.org/web/20031209163353/http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html )
Osama back in Hospital on September 10, 2001, one day before the 9/11 attacks
According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was back in Hospital, one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, this time, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan. Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army's headquarters:
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good...
NYC Indymedia -Sat Nov 22 '03 (Modified on 10:16pm Mon Nov 24 '03)
An organic reconsideration of US history and major "conspiracy theories" of the past 40 years, including those pertaining to the 9-11 attack, and how they shed light on America's present drift into fascism.
An organic reconsideration of US history and major "conspiracy theories" of the past 40 years, including those pertaining to the 9-11 attack, and how they shed light on America's present drift into fascism.
Hijackers?
What makes you think you actually KNOW what happened on those planes? All four were obliterated, along with everyone on board, remember? No crime scene, no direct evidence, no recognizable remains, no witnesses whatsoever -- it's a blank canvas. How convenient for any party intent on launching a new era of global imperialism, and willing to spin this tragedy into a viable excuse. Indeed, all of the attack's consequences are far better explained by this agenda than by Bin Laden's purported death wish. Those presuming to examine this matter, i.e. ALL OF US, need to recognize that such trickery is a timeless specialty of governments.
And yet from that very day we have allowed the government-media complex to focus all attention on one rather thin explanation: Crazy Arabs did it! George W. Bush and his cabinet have made it known to us, in the most arrogant terms, that they will brook no discussion of other possibilities -- an edict most Americans, in their desperation to believe in this man, seem to have embraced. The Bush Administration even withholds its "proof" of Al Qa'eda's guilt; clearly, it considers mere citizens too unimportant to require full explanations, and once again, we're just rolling over and taking it.
The phrases 'spiritually broken' and 'morally adrift' come to mind...
Until the full case against Al Qa'eda is made available for public review, we have absolutely no assurance that this "proof" isn't exactly like the "proof" of Iraq's weapons programs -- i.e., a big fat lie from top to bottom. On these terms, wholesale acceptance of the hijacker scenario will continue to be what it has always been: a pathetic display of blind faith in this administration's utterances, and in those of its media accomplices. At present, it is astonishing that anyone places faith of any kind in either party: by means of the "WMD" debacle, both have proven themselves amoral, duplicitous, and utterly devoid of humanity. Indeed, why do we give them so much as a moment of our attention? No one with a lick of sense would do this.
A rigorous civilian investigation of 9-11 would help resolve such doubts. If Bush and the rest were standing on firm ground, they would fully support such a thing. Instead, they have worked to thwart both its formation and its progress, using every resource within their reach. Some time last year, they seem to have realized they were only fueling suspicions this way, so Bush grudgingly approved an "independent" investigation. The arrogance of this bunch is so disabling, however, that they actually damaged their credibility even further by naming Henry Kissinger to lead it. This is a man whose dedication to "US interests" verges on homicidal psychosis (see his treatment of Cambodians 1970, Chileans 1973, East Timorese and Kurds 1975, MUCH more). He could only be expected to skew this investigation accordingly, i. e., to omit and cover up any issue not conducive to empire building. Ironically, even Henry had the sense to admit he was an inappropriate choice, thus resigning from this duty, whereupon Bush immediately returned to his original tactic of stonewalling (1). Could the man possibly have something to hide?
To appreciate the ugliest possibilities of the 9-11 attack, one must first become aware of the continuous practice of such manipulations by the entire progression of American politicians. The need to cultivate this awareness is itself an enigma: if you have the honesty to see this pattern at all, its full enormity, emerging over time, will at some point cause your previous ignorance to amaze you. Imagine living your entire life with an 800-pound gorilla, then realizing one day it's not a sofa, after all. At the same time, finding this enlightenment is challenging, because the relevant facts are usually withheld from the public for decades, seldom appearing in mainstream discourse even after they become common knowledge -- not because of some grand conspiracy, but because legions of 'America Firsters,' including most of the famous and powerful, simply don't want to hear it. The telling of these facts is an affront to their most cherished political assumptions. Invariably, they respond with hostile apologetics, ranging from simple denial and ridicule to the claim that such incidents are random and unrelated "mistakes." That they can sincerely believe this 'unrelated' claim is remarkable, given the way it crushes into dust under any burden of historical proof: America's state crimes have been ethically monstrous, vast in both scale and number, unilateral in their aggression, virtually uninterrupted in their chronology, and very coherent in both motive and method. Certain themes just keep popping up:
1) Greed, particularly for territory;
2) Supremacism, driven only partly by race, perhaps more so by delusions of national grandeur allowed to ramify without limit;
3) An enthusiasm for "total war" -- i. e., the indiscriminate butchery of entire populations. This seems most likely to happen when "strategic" territories, resources, or victories are at stake. That is, when those in authority feel they "must win," and so discard principle to whatever extent is necessary;
4) The systemic corruption and antidemocratic functioning of every level of American government, made abundantly clear by its relations with sworn enemies of the public interest, namely corporations;
5) The bid for global empire that has all but defined the American agenda since W.W.II, in flagrant violation of democratic principle.
This last "US interest," discussed openly by flacks and shills only since 9-11 suspended all moral judgment on such matters, actually represents the driving passion of our ruling elite, going all the way back to the Revolution. Indeed, grasping the means of power, beginning with sovereign domain, was their main motive for pursuing revolution at all. Starting then and continuing ever since, they have whipped the people up to support their warped appetites, even as they have misrepresented them spectacularly. EVERY SINGLE TIME we as a people have committed to a war of expansion, we have been duped into doing so by their twin handservants, American politics and American media:
1776 to 1890 innumerable 'Indian wars' In which the western frontier was pushed through the territories of one Indian confederation after another, all the way to the Pacific. An early and definitive example is George Washington's post-revolutionary conquest of the Ohio Valley, where the Washington Family held deeds to immense tracts of prime real estate never actually ceded by the Indians. The lore that George was a "surveyor" is a populist distortion; he was no blue collar grunt, laying out property lines to earn a living. He was in fact the most ambitious of an elite family of 'land speculators' -- the colonial equivalent of venture capitalists -- and his toils were in the service of his own family fortune. Already one of the richest people in post-revolutionary America, he was determined to get even richer through the sale of his Ohio holdings, and wasn't about to be stopped by 'two-legged vermin' like the Shawnees and Miamis. To this end, he abused his dominance of the early federal government, arranging for Revolutionary War veterans (a battle-hardened militia) to be compensated with "land warrants" deep in Ohio's wilderness, far beyond his own holdings. He also encouraged the issuance of large bounties, equivalent to several months' income, for Indian scalps along the upper Ohio River. These were essentially open murder contracts that targeted ALL Indians, regardless of age, gender, or tribal affiliation. By this means, genocide was openly subsidized for decades wherever intact Indian cultures presented an obstacle to "progress." Primitive as media was, its role in all this was crude but sufficient: posting the bounties while inflaming the settlers' hatred with tales of Indian atrocities, real and imagined. In the Ohio Territory, these tactics rapidly progressed to open war, orchestrated by Washington against Tecumseh's Shawnee Confederation, and then to the total extermination and westward displacement of the Ohio tribes (2).
1846 to '48 The Mexican War: Beginning in 1818, when the Oregon Territory was acquired, American imperialists developed an intense interest in California. Simply adding it piecemeal to their territorial inventory wouldn't have worked, however: it was too isolated, too defensible by the Mexicans. To take California, all of northern Mexico -- what is now California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado -- would have to be taken, requiring the invention of some PRETEXT for doing so. In 1836, American "adventurers" (freelance political operatives) instigated a regional coup in the Mexican province of Texas, splitting it off to form an independent country, the Republic of Texas. Nine years later, this nation was annexed as the 28th state. Immediately afterward, President Polk made the predictable move of sending belligerent military incursions into disputed lands along the new border with Mexico. The Mexicans replied with patrols of their own, and then clashes developed, leading to the "spilling of American blood on American soil." Or so the press told it (their bias could be summed up in a phrase they coined around this time: "Manifest Destiny"). In fact, the soil in question was situated between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers, an area both governments held equal claim to. But no matter -- the people eagerly accepted this distortion, Polk got his dirty little war, and then proceeded to steal something like 650,000 square miles of territory from our next-door neighbor. Add to this the previous criminal acquisition of territory from Mexico, i.e. the "Lone Star State," and the area usurped approaches one-third of the contiguous 48 states, or HALF of what was originally Mexico (3).
Some years later, a fantastic mineral strike in this stolen territory -- the Comstock Lode -- would provide the Hearst Family with an immense fortune, soon parlayed by William Randolph into an infamous media empire.
1898 to '99 The Spanish-American War/Philippine Campaign: Though still a colonial client of Spain during the 1880s and '90s, Cuba was also a hotbed of insurrection, thanks to the efforts of Jose Marti and others. By 1898, the Cuban independence movement had Spain's colonial government on the ropes. The prominence of blacks among the rebels made this situation alarming for fin de siecle American royalists, among whom "Darwinist" (i.e. proto-Nazi) political thought was at the height of its popularity. Also, having just recently subdued the last free-roaming Indian tribes back home, their passion for grabbing other people's land could now be expanded into the Caribbean, Central America, and Pacific, via expanded activities of that handy agency, the US military. So in the fall and winter of 1897-98, the Hearst syndicate and other news organizations were blasting Americans with "yellow journalism" on the subject of Cuba -- sensational and often ludicrous accounts, custom made to induce support of US military intervention. The public thus primed, the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor gave McKinley all the excuse needed to commence grabbing up not only Cuba, but also Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. It was in the Philippines that the US military took "total war" beyond North America for the first time. Encouraged by the Filipino's uncanny resemblance to Native Americans, US troops mass-murdered something like 25% of the civilian population. As imperial outrages go, this was the equal of anything that's happened since (4).
A 1975 investigation led by Admiral Rickover determined that the Maine's hull was breached by an explosion originating INSIDE the ship. This could have been a spontaneous "coal-bin explosion," or it could have been a bomb placed by an imperialist traitor. As with 9-11, this catastrophe neatly erased any inconvenient witnesses to its real mechanics.
1917 to '18 World War I: Three years into the "Great War," it looked as though Germany would defeat Britain and France, our primary capitalist hosts in Europe. Big financiers like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, who between them had billions invested "over there," weren't about to just sit back and watch this happen. They barked orders to their underling, Woodrow Wilson, who then declared war, using German interference with US shipping activities as a feeble pretext. Leading up to this, the media minions whipped the public into a war frenzy, basing their wildly manipulative propaganda on incidents such as the sinking of the Lusitania, two years earlier. Funny thing about the Lusitania: it's hold contained a secret, illegal, and massive cargo of ammunition and other materiel bound for Liverpool, and its passengers were used as unwitting human shields for this cargo by the US government, which is why they died. Neither Wilson nor the media of the day ever admitted any of this (5).
The dynamics behind America's entry into World War II were virtually identical. Over 500,000 Americans died in these two wars, with 875,000 more wounded, and an additional and unknown number emotionally shattered, all of which brought untold misery to their families and communities. Given the choice between destroying all those lives or allowing the likes of Morgan and Rockefeller to suffer the tragedy of somewhat less obscene wealth, our "representatives" chose the former as the lesser sacrifice.
1941 to '45 World War II: France already lying crushed beneath Hitler's war machine, and Britain under a devastating siege, the White House was once again compelled to intervene on behalf of its capitalist masters, whose European investments had grown two magnitudes since the close of W.W.I. Unlike Wilson, however, FDR did a truly brilliant job of constructing a pretext. in September of 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, a treaty committing all three countries to counterattack against new foes faced by any one of them. This gave Roosevelt a back door into Europe via the Pacific. Beginning one month later, and fourteen months prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, he launched secret military and economic operations against the Japanese Empire, obstructing its only access to oil, rubber, and other strategic resources. The Japanese response to this blockade -- open hostilities against the United States, beginning with a crippling preemptive attack on the Pacific Fleet -- was entirely predictable. In fact, it was Roosevelt's whole purpose in setting up the blockade: Nearly unanimous "isolationist" sentiment at home was his first military target, and precipitating a "vicious sneak attack on US soil" was his deliberate design for destroying that sentiment. For this reason, he concentrated the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii as never before, where it would be seen as an imminent threat by Japanese generals. He then withheld intelligence of Japan's attack preparations from Pearl's top officers, continuing to exclude them even when radio intercepts revealed the movement of a Japanese carrier group toward Hawaii (6).
From 1941 to '46, and again in 1995, Congress investigated "the intelligence lapses that made this sneak attack possible" no less than NINE TIMES. On all of these occasions, officials of the Roosevelt Administration and the Office of Naval Intelligence perjured themselves and concealed vast amounts of evidence to preserve the historical fictions surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack. To this day, the NSA claims "national security" as its basis for withholding relevant material from the public. "National security" stands revealed, then, as a euphemism for this government's ruthless grip on power -- a thing that certainly would be threatened, were we to become fully aware of the treacheries it spawns. This context radically transforms "national security" rhetoric into an ideal excuse for all sorts of betrayals and deceits, and this seems to be it's actual interpretation among those who "safeguard" it.
The agonies of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, etc. under Hitler, not to mention those of the Chinese and Koreans under the Japanese Empire, were incidental at best to US motives for pursuing W.W.II, both before and during. It was only afterward that the camps were seized upon as a full-blown "pretext in retrospect" to maximize America's apparent heroism. With each year that has passed since, this myth has been more shamelessly advanced, so that now some stunning percentage of Americans believe that "halting genocide" was their government's main motive for waging war at all.
1945 to '89 The Cold War (a.k.a. W.W.III): was launched by the closing episode of W.W.II, i. e. the atomic bombing of Japan. President Truman's official rationalization for the bombing, trumpeted ad nauseum by the media of the day, was that it was the only way to end the war quickly, thus avoiding a horrific house-by-house assault of the entire Japanese Archipelago. In fact, the Japanese were already making conditional surrender overtures. Accepting their terms, however, would have made Truman's victory conditional as well, and he was determined to humiliate them. Even the total surrender he insisted on was only a few months away, by all signs. Meanwhile, the war in Europe having ended in May, the Russians were now free to join the allied fight against this old enemy of theirs, and were preparing to do exactly that. Given enough time to enter the Pacific War, they would have claimed a portion of Japan upon its surrender, just as they had recently claimed the eastern half of Europe. To keep the Soviets from horning in on this pending crown jewel of America's Pacific Empire, Truman needed his total victory immediately, and The Bomb gave him an irresistible means by which to secure it. As an early devotee of anti-Communist paranoia, he was also confronting the Russians with a demonstration of America's 'invincible technological prowess.' Finally, his decision to vaporize 200,000 Japanese civilians was made easier by his avowed hatred of the entire race (7).
The cover provided by the Cold War enabled the United States to pursue its largest campaign of expansion by far, extending its economic and strategic tentacles into every corner of the planet and even into space by means of literally hundreds of "anti-Communist" initiatives, interventions, and proxy wars. Our present "global hegemony," a source of endless glee for Bush and other miscreants, didn't "just happen" -- it was the overarching and unspoken goal of US Cold War politics.
Another important thing to understand about the Cold War: the "War on Terrorism" is directly adapted from it, just as the Cold War itself developed directly from W.W.II, which was in turn a direct consequence of W.W.I, which was Germany and Britain vying with one another for world domination -- a contest America ended up winning. What an epic of greed-crazed murderous lunacy! One that the present regime seeks only to perpetuate, and for the same reasons as always: expansion and consolidation of empire.
1950 to '53 The Korean War: To coerce public support for this war, the press and the Truman Administration whipped up public hysteria about the "Red Menace!" that was then "swallowing up" obscure Far Eastern precincts. No mention, of course, that the mounting anti-US sentiment in those precincts resulted entirely from collaboration between US occupation forces and the Japanese fascists they were supposedly there to remove. This collaboration ranks as one of the most arrogant foreign policy blunders in US history. For people throughout the Far East, it was an unbearable betrayal, as it effectively prolonged what had already been one of the most gruesome and protracted military occupations EVER. Similar dynamics had already developed in mainland China, a hornet's nest so immense that withdrawal quickly resolved as our only sane option. And also in the Philippines, where US troops and Huk rebels started out fighting side by side to expel the Japanese. Indigenous sovereignty being the Huk's ultimate goal, the Americans began killing them, too, as the Japanese were subdued. Two thousand miles from all these places, in French Indochina, the exact tensions seen in Korea arose AGAIN in response to brutal French/Japanese collaboration -- abetted by American field agents, naturally (8).
In all four places, revolutionary leaders greatly admired America's political tradition of anti-colonialism and self-determination, and sought to claim these values for their own countries. They even made earnest attempts to form friendships with the US; they thought colonialism was a 'european thing,' so that we must therefore be 'the good guys.' For strategic planners back in Washington, all this was at odds with their grand design for the Far East: now being vacated by its previous colonial tenants, it was seen as a "power vacuum," fairly begging for RE-colonization according to America's obfuscated formula of puppet politics and corporate infiltration.
American society has yet to recover from the "Red Menace!" propaganda barrage, which soon became a constant theme of international news coverage, and remained so for the next 40 years. As a means of inducing mass paranoia and public consent to limitless militarization, the "Red Menace" lost its punch following the collapse of the Soviet Union, necessitating its replacement with a more robust methodology -- the "Terrorist Menace!" Nazi Germany and Israel being the great innovators of this second method, America owes a great debt to both of them.
1965 to '73 The Vietnam War: By way of manipulating Congress into granting him war powers, LBJ reprised the "vicious sneak attack" gambit with his brazen lies regarding such action by the North Vietnamese against US Navy vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin. Beginning in 1969, Nixon and Kissinger expanded on this crime enormously, adding Laos and Cambodia to North Vietnam as targets of a redoubled 'total war' initiative. Several million tons of cluster bombs were then used to totally destroy vast civilian districts in all three countries (districts simply crawling, mind you, with subsistence farmers bent on global domination). All of which exactly repeated the pattern of the Korean War -- right down to America not winning (9).
As huge as the American effort against Vietnam was, it was just one element of a yet more enormous strategy of military encirclement (a.k.a. "containment") directed against mainland China. Other elements were: the permanent and massive US military presence in Japan; a similar presence in Thailand; unlimited military and economic support to Chiang Kai-Shek's exile government on Formosa (Taiwan); the Korean War and subsequent permanent US military presence in Korea; a strong strategic interest in India, including covert support of an otherwise preposterous nuclear weapons program; also, a US-equipped and -trained covert army of Chinese "nationalists" in eastern Burma, within what became known as the "Golden Triangle." It was here that the CIA first learned of the marvels of the international heroin trade.
To advance its "interests," the US government has manipulated the affairs of every region of the planet on this same incredible scale, and continues to do so. Other hotspots include Europe, the Middle East, Central Africa, and all of Latin America and the Pacific.
1991 to 2003 The Gulf War / "No-fly Zones" / Sanctions: To con Americans into backing this outrage, Daddy Bush and his media bed-buddies told a couple real whoppers. First there was the one about the satellite photographs of a massive Iraqi invasion force assembling on the northern border of Saudi Arabia (10). Then there was the Kuwait Incubator Hoax, an inventive revival of the childish "babies on bayonets" propaganda of World War I -- as told by a child, no less (11). As it turned out, Operation "Desert Storm" was merely the opening episode of a ruthless destabilization program, aimed primarily at hapless civilians, that would continue for over a decade, killing no less than 500,000 Iraqis in a fairly obvious attempt to turn them against their head of state. This fulfills any sane definition of terrorism, and is probably the most grandiose recent example of the state-sponsored variety. It was maintained with enthusiasm by the Clinton Administration.
2001 to present The "War on Terror" (a.k.a. W.W.IV): Pretexts include: 1) the 9-11 attack; 2) this Administration's single-minded incrimination of Al Qa'eda (a CIA proxy), backed up with such things as; 3) an obviously fraudulent videotape of Osama "confessing;" 4) the conceit that Al Qa'eda's guilt justified a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan (the combined strike force for which began building up at least six months prior to 9-11, disguised as a "war game"); 5) an implied equation between Al Qa'eda and Iraq's Ba'athite regime, and; 6) the absurd fantasy that Iraq, a country left all but helpless by the previous campaign, might pose a real threat to the world's deadliest strategic power.
By rights, I should have included the Civil War in this run-down: all the ingredients are there, with antidemocratic preservation of domain being equivalent to expansion. Also, the fable that 'freeing the slaves' was its entire purpose has to rank among the wildest disinformation campaigns ever perpetrated upon Americans by our "free press."
Though they never precipitated the full-scale wars their authors had in mind, a few other nasty episodes are especially relevant to 9-11:
Operation "Northwoods" A Pentagon plan for a massive "false flag" terror campaign against American citizens, the purpose being to provide pretext for a full-scale invasion of Cuba. If approved, it would have entailed such things as sniper attacks on random US citizens (a la the DC sniper), terrorist bombings, and a bogus missile attack on an unmanned, remote-controlled US airliner in the Caribbean, the plane's fictitious passengers to be reported as "entirely lost." All of this was to be carried out by US intelligence agents posing as Cuban operatives, whose dirty work would translate directly into the sort of massive public manipulation campaign this government always launches when it sees profit in war. The Northwoods plan was called off by Robert McNamara only when it was submitted for executive approval, having already been approved by every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (12).
Northwoods would never amount to anything more than a glimmer in some agency psychopath's eye. In Europe, however, the CIA's most deranged anti-leftist terror tactics were actually implemented ...
Operation "Stay Behind"; Operation "Gladio" As part of a larger US withdrawal strategy following W.W.II, the CIA created underground right-wing militias throughout Western Europe, to be activated as guerilla armies in the event of invasion by the Soviets. These were known as "Stay Behind" forces; they were a rogue's gallery of mercenary scum, dominated by devout ex-Nazis recruited by SS-cum-CIA agent Reinhard Gehlen. As the years passed and the Soviets failed to provide the anticipated invasion, the Stay Behinds resorted to other means of justifying their CIA paychecks. All across Europe, beginning in the 1950s, they morphed into right-wing hit squads and terrorist groups. They participated in massive CIA-NATO destabilization efforts against the Soviet Bloc countries, assassinating Soviet officials, sabotaging industrial plants and public infrastructure, and generally terrorizing civilian populations. The pattern should be familiar from similar terror campaigns against Cuba and Nicaragua. In East Berlin, the activities of Stay Behind units were the primary reason for the construction of the Berlin Wall. The Stay Behinds did not limit their mayhem to the Soviet Bloc, however; as time passed, their attention turned more and more to equivalent activities within their NATO home countries. Throughout Western Europe, particularly in Italy, leftist politics had a stronger following than it has seen in the US since the 1930s, and the Stay Behinds were the CIA's primary footsoldiers in its "dirty tricks" campaign against this percieved enemy. In a psy-war effort to alienate the public from the political left, they launched bogus left-wing terror outfits (the "Baader-Meinhof Gang") or framed real leftist undergrounds (the "Red Brigades") for atrocities they committed themselves. In Italy, where the Stay Behind operation was code-named "Gladio," agents posing as left-wing extremists perpetrated many public bombings during the '70s, killing at least 300 people. These culminated in the August 1980 Bologna Train Station Bombing, which killed 86. The 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro was another Gladio exploit. These activities had one purpose: to portray the political left as public enemy number one, thus isolating it domestically while building consent for military escalation and NATO aggression against the Soviets (13).
* * * * * * * * *
So what's it all about, anyway, all this intrigue and stomping of jackboots on distant shores? Thanks to its unrivaled military strength and exceptional geographic isolation (oceans make bitchin' moats), this country is all but perfectly invulnerable to invasion, and repelling invaders would seem to be the only defensible function of armies. No one's invaded this country since the War of 1812, when British expeditions came out of Canada, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico. Don't expect a repeat anytime soon. Although a massive one, the Pearl Harbor Attack was still just a raid, on what at the time was this country's farthest-flung primary military base.
To keep the entire planet under its thumb, our government burdens us with the gargantuan cost of the world's largest military, which it mostly uses to crush pitiful rebellions in the remotest and poorest corners of the world, places we truly have no business being in. This is exactly like a bully swaggering around a schoolyard, shaking down all the little kids. Is that really how you want your government representing you to the rest of the world? Shouldn't DOMESTIC policy take priority instead? Things like adequate health care and effective primary education -- programs that would serve the wants and needs of YOU, their citizen, whom they claim to be their master. But this is not their priority, and never has been. The geometric growth of this economy, by various forms of conquest, is their abiding passion, with domestic policy being attended to almost as an afterthought. To force our consent, they hypnotize us with lurid visions of one boogeyman after another, maintaining childish fear as our primary political sensibility, keeping us dependent, trusting, stupid, distracting us from our own self-interests...
Why is that?
WHO BENEFITS??
The average American, who spends his or her life chained to the machinery of wealth production, watching their share of its output dwindle steadily, sure as hell doesn't. The stratum of society that truly gains from all this just happens to be the same one that finds employment in high-level intelligence positions: big-time spooks like Kermit Roosevelt, the Dulles brothers, Nelson Rockefeller, George H. W. Bush -- i. e. America's ruling families. In their parlance, "US Interests" is just doublespeak for global empire and corporate colonialism, and these have always been the real purposes behind their warmongering.
All told, these wars killed over a million US soldiers, along with many times this number of civilians and combatants in the lands invaded, and this isn't even touching on the dozens of proxy wars that have been the American Empire's main battle front for going on sixty years. All of these millions of people, American and foreign alike, were MURDERED by a government intent on advancing the interests of a tiny minority while betraying the rest of humanity; a government willing to wield its power in their service in any manner, including technological and economic terror campaigns waged against entire national populations. And yet this government has the audacity to call itself a "beacon of hope to the world!" And the majority BELIEVE THEM!! It simply amazes.
America's shadowy patricians were already too powerful before the Cold War. And then decades of public hysteria borne of imminent nuclear annihilation delivered them into the fabled realm of "absolute power." This has been pretty obvious. Americans have avoided realizing it only by actively pursuing a mental state of utter denial on this subject, sort of like the three monkey icons of Shinto. Thanks to this determined ignorance, keeping the rest of us in the dark has been childishly easy for people like the Bushes. They can even be incredibly brazen and sloppy and get caught red-handed, as with Watergate. No biggy: just tell all the boobs it was Nixon acting alone, assisted by his best buddies, who just happened to be, um, CIA agents. Yah. They'll never notice this story's unbelievable stench; they'll be too relieved at having any sort of excuse to NOT think about it. You know, just like when the Warren Commission's whitewash came out.
One hypothesis is particularly good for sending 'America Firsters' into an apoplexy of denial: that the political culture now emerging in Washington is actually a product of 40 years of covert penetration into the Executive Branch. To substantiate this, one need look no further than the lineage of our present "leader." His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a military spy during W.W.I, a key financial collaborator with the Nazis, and a US Senator. His father, George H. W. Bush, was heir to the CIA realm under our most infamous presidential regime, a fixture in presidential politics for 20 years, and all in all one of the creepiest figures ever to darken the American political stage. The 'quiet coup' that brought this man to power traces back to the Eisenhower Administration, when the utterly creepy "National Security" underworld first became a secret and malevolent force in national politics -- a force whose power is still nearly impossible to measure. There are ominous glimpses, though: in 1960, Eisenhower's VP and political heir, Richard M. Nixon, was shouldered aside by John F. Kennedy, who over the next three years developed grave misgivings about this underworld and its power. Then he ended up dead, and yes, his assassination DID stink of black ops, as did the similar jobs on Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and his kid brother "Bobby," who would have been the SECOND Kennedy to sour Nixon's presidential hopes, had he lived to see the 1968 election...
Though the CIA denies it, several independent sources identify George H. W. Bush as a high-ranking agent during the Kennedy Administration, commanding covert operations against Cuba. The ships used in Operation "Zapata" (the "Bay of Pigs" invasion) were named by him, it is said, after members of his family. Those names indeed correspond with those of his wife and children. Among the most conclusive sources is an official memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, dated November 29, 1963, which refers to a "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" (14). The memo refers to Bush's evaluation of emotional reactions to Kennedy's assassination among Cuban exiles under his watch.
From here, Bush the Elder went on to become a protege of Richard Nixon's, was a mid-echelon member of his cabinet beginning in 1971, had very interesting connections to CREEP, and somehow eluded Congress's Watergate dragnet.
Watergate and a few other incidents proved that Nixon had a most unwholesome relationship with the CIA. Once this scandal had hemorrhaged to the point that Congress could no longer avoid taking action, containing the damage could be seen as the main theme of its response -- a hallmark of Congressional investigations. There was far too much eagerness to examine this matter only in terms narrowly relating to impeachment, thus leaving larger questions wholly unexplored: did the Watergate break-in really happen on Nixon's orders, or was the intelligence underworld acting on its own, using 'dirty tricks' to prop up their man in the White House, exactly as it has on countless occasions for entire puppet governments all over the world? In the latter case, letting Nixon take the fall would have been an extreme measure, but possibly the only sure way to divert attention from an abhorrent and illegal power structure, thus preserving it. Nixon himself would have been a likely author of this tactic, as it was he who trumped Congress' investigation by resigning, whence the entire matter was eagerly dropped.
Bone-tired of Watergate in any case, the public was predisposed to accept Nixon's implied guilt as the final answer: "responsibility can't go any higher than the President, right? Harry 'the buck stops here' Truman said so." In reaching this conclusion, we were assisted by major media organs, which immediately began spinning this as Watergate's "final resolution." In fact, this conclusion resolved nothing -- it left the most crucial questions hanging in mid-air, soon to be shrouded in rhetoric by professional apologists from all quarters. Its only definite outcome was the softening of a renewed public spirit of scrutiny and resistance, which in turn allowed a deadly authoritarian cancer to resume its march throughout our body politic. After going underground for seven years, this cancer emerged in full force as the Reagan Administration.
Dubya's announcement last April of another bogus 'conclusion' -- that of his Hitlerian conquest of Iraq -- had a strikingly similar effect. Once again, mounting vigilance was undone by a well-timed lie, universally disseminated.
Following Nixon's resignation, Poppy finally hit the big-time when Gerald Ford named him Director of the CIA. After toppling Carter, he became VP himself, and for the next twelve years was at the center of the Reagan era's continuous parade of treasonous covert operations. A few highlights: 1) the campaign to prevent an "October Surprise," in which Bush & Co. induced the Iranians to delay release of the American embassy hostages, thus undermining Carter's re-election bid; 2) an inhuman terror campaign against the people and government of Nicaragua, even after Congress declared it illegal, at which point the CIA was forced to devise covert funding arrangements such as 3) "Iran-Contra" and 4) operation "Watchtower." This last episode, which was going on around the time of Bush Senior's succession, is easily the most incredible: the CIA was a major domestic smuggler and distributor of "Crack" cocaine during the late '80s, when this drug became an inner-city plague (15).
At this point, the CIA was contemptuously wiping its ass with the Constitution, and got completely away with it. If this were truly the America the Boy Scouts taught you to believe in, the exposure of operation "Watchtower" would have destroyed the CIA.
Late in Reagan's second term, 60 minutes was granted a horrifying personal interview with Ronnie and Nancy in the Oval Office. Horrifying because, even though Reagan's Alzheimer's wasn't disclosed for several more years, it was perfectly obvious the man was totally gone. Faced with a steady stream of unscripted questions from Mike Wallace, Reagan's usual patter rapidly degenerated into stark senile mumblings. Desperate to conceal her husband's incoherence, Nancy kept practically thrusting her face into the cameras. This is consistent with puzzled accounts of writers and artists of the time, who, as dinner guests of the Reagans, were mystified as to how such an oaf could present himself so effectively on television.
All of which implies a striking parallel between the Reagan Presidency and that of Bush II: in both cases, Bush Senior can be discerned as the man behind the curtain, while the "president" is a mere speech reader, whose real job is to keep the public distracted with his amiable, vacuous, universally televised performances. Dubya's main puppeteers -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Powell -- are all Poppy's cronies, going all the way back to the Nixon Administration. The five Supreme Court Justices who put Junior in power are also Nixon/Reagan/Bush cronies, and their cancellation of democratic process was a classic "installation," reminiscent of the CIA's long-running antidemocratic escapades throughout the world.
It has Poppy's pawprints all over it.
If not for daddy's influence, Silver Coke-spoon Boy would be lucky to find work fishing golf balls out of water hazards at the local country club. This is obvious, and widely acknowledged. Most Americans, however, aren't willing to examine the enormously sinister ramifications, given Poppy's background, of the Bush Family's dynastic grip on American politics. Most Americans, after all, are a weak-minded lot -- though harassed by apparitions of unprecedented corruption, they lack the courage needed to fix their gaze upon them.
Which brings us to 9-11...
The most venerable means of transmitting control inputs from a plane's cockpit to its various aerodynamic control surfaces (rudder, ailerons, etc.) is via a system of cables, i.e. "aircraft cables." With the introduction of huge planes during and after W.W.II, unassisted human arms could no longer provide the force needed to actuate proportionately huge control surfaces, and so hydraulic assist devices and fully hydraulic control systems were developed. The introduction of autopilots and landing guidance systems over the next three decades layered yet another 'control system' over this one, an electronic layer capable of manipulating the hydraulics directly and thus flying the plane on its own. In the 757- and 767-series planes boarded by "the hijackers," Boeing expanded this layer enormously, making it much more sophisticated and integral to the continuous operation of these planes. For one thing, it continuously monitors such things as attitude, acceleration, turn rates, etc., and if necessary can assert exclusive control of the hydraulics at any time, modifying or even overriding pilot decisions that would otherwise result in drastic maneuvers, inappropriate for passenger service. Though meant to provide an added margin of safety in the event of gross pilot error, this arrangement introduces an ominous new dimension: in a very real sense, the humans on the flight deck have only tenuous control of flaps, rudder, etc.; the computer, the arbiter between the two, allows them direct control only on it's own immutable terms. If the computer can override the pilot some of the time, a potential exists for it to override the pilot ALL of the time. This is a vulnerable arrangement, as anyone who has dealt with a virus should know. In other words, the advancing dependency on avionic interfaces has brought with it an advancing potential for the total electronic co-optation of those interfaces. As they have grown exponentially in complexity, so too has the number of entry points by which such co-optation might be effected. All that was needed was for technologists to devise a "back door"...
Enter the US government and its defense contractors, who began joint development of remote flight control and flight circumvention technology at least two decades ago, using the full force of their virtually infinite R&D resources. The existence of these programs, and of the resulting technology, was verified soon after 9-11 by a panel of commercial and military pilots participating in an independent inquiry (16).
The existence of such technology IN ANY FORM raises intriguing questions/possibilities about 9-11: 1) could the planes have been hijacked via this technology alone? 2) Were they? 3) Remote hijacking and on-board hijacking are not mutually exclusive scenarios; if there were actual human hijackers on those planes, their plot may have been remotely co-opted by another party they knew nothing about, leaving them as horrified as anyone when the planes took control of themselves and banked straight into buildings.
Photographic evidence and eye-witness accounts support the idea that the override functionality of the planes' computers was somehow defeated, allowing "the hijackers" to make prohibited maneuvers. For example, there are multiple photographs and video clips showing AA Flight 175 making an outrageously hard turn into the second tower. According to official information, the plane that hit the Pentagon also made aerobatic descent maneuvers worthy of a fighter pilot. To have flown the planes in this manner, Atta and the rest would have needed 1) advanced large plane skills, and 2) a way to defeat the planes' avionic systems. Since that flight school they attended in Venice, Fla. probably didn't offer a course titled "Hot-dog Maneuvers with Airliners 101," they must have possessed these abilities already, so why would they have bothered with flight lessons at all? Any benefit they realized in terms of understanding new control layouts would have been at the cost of increased exposure, thus endangering their mission. On the other hand, if they were as inexperienced as the presstitutes tell us ("I just want to learn how to steer"), they couldn't possibly have flown the planes this way at all, which means someone else must have.
However distasteful, there is a real possibility that remote circumvention occurred on those planes, a possibility that any credible investigation would hardly ignore. All the more so because the necessary hardware isn't just a cockamamie theory: a fully developed, totally programmable remote flight control platform actually exists. Suggestively named the "Flight Termination System," it is manufactured by Systems Planning Corporation of Rosslyn, Virginia, which maintains web pages devoted to the FTS and various subsystems:
The CEO of Systems Planning's international division, Dov Zakheim, is a long-time DoD and Republican Party insider, and a founding member of the Neoconservative cult. While Bush was still Governor of Texas, Zakheim became one of his closest advisers, counseling him on defense technology and strategic aspects of Middle Eastern affairs. After the 2000 "election," Rummy rewarded Zakheim with a low-profile but strategically important position -- Comptroller, i.e. head money man, of the Defense Department.
Zakheim also co-authored the Heritage Foundation's infamous tract, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," in which the Bush Administration's entire design for renewed global conquest was laid down a full year prior to 9-11. On page 63, the authors note that timely implementation of their ideas would require "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
To identify the expansionist motive behind the "9-11 Wars," one need look no further than this document. Echoing Ziggy Brzezinski's thoughts in "The Grand Chessboard," the authors identify the Persian Gulf / Central Asian region as the world's greatest geopolitical prize, and recommend that decisive control of this region be made a top strategic priority.
The remote control scenario also neatly punctures the 'yada-yada objection' always employed by conspiracy theory critics: "It couldn't have happened that way, because too many people would have known, and someone would blab..." In fact, the most sensitive part of this plot would be that of anticipating or enabling nineteen flesh-and-blood "hijackers," and yet this part of the scenario is all but universally accepted. Nineteen men backed by a larger organization schemed to get on those planes and take control of them, and then they did; everyone knows they did because CNN has stated this "fact" about ten thousand times and counting. As for exactly WHICH organization did the backing, well, there's a saying about 'dead men' ...
Once the patsies were in position, the rest of this scenario -- the "really unbelievable part" -- could have been carried off in its entirety by a tiny team wielding extravagant technical skills and multimillion-dollar equipment. No larger conspiracy is necessary. As for the apparent complicity of the entire government and media, this is mostly just cynical opportunism and jello-brained obedience rising to the occasion -- a response easily anticipated by the real conspirators, for whom history provides a never-ending parade of examples on which to base such expectations.
Mind you, this is not to say that remote circumvention is definitely what happened. On its face, this scenario is wildly improbable. Speaking of improbable, what about four airliners being taken over simultaneously and used as missiles? Since this actually happened, we have no choice but to consider fantastic scenarios, and since the official scenario is itself an unsubstantiated "conspiracy theory," competing scenarios should also receive serious attention. Our reluctance to question official doctrine on this matter is a symptom of the societal role most of us have been bred and trained for: to be ever-faithful hounds, tails thumping the floor as we contentedly slorp the hand of class authority. Such credulity also becomes inevitable when the alternative is so unbearable: if someone in Bush's position is capable of lying to us about something as huge, as gut-wrenchingly horrible as 9-11, then everything we believe about this country -- about the nature of civilization itself -- might just be childish nonsense...
Most people simply don't have the guts to go there.
Given a desperate enough need to sustain the childish belief in government-as-benevolent-father, a person will adapt that belief to any circumstance. The behavioral end result can resemble courage; indeed, we are taught to regard it as the DEFINITION of courage. Actually, it's one of cowardice's darkest moments. Even a casual examination of Nazi Germany, where this phenomenon was rampant, will drive this point home.
It's almost funny, the way people readily see the threat of technological circumvention presented by Diebold's electronic voting machines, yet when the subject switches to the "Flight Termination System," which is every bit as real, and to the exactly parallel possibilities it represents vis-a-vis 9-11, they suddenly retreat into profound and combative denial. It's as if a threshold has been crossed into a realm of possibilities too vile to entertain, so they simply don't. Never mind that this country's operatives have been traveling the world, perpetrating similar horrors, for all of the past century. Rather than acknowledge the possibility of a unifying pattern, Joe Average would much rather 'shoot the messenger.'
Every so often, such people establish a new high-water mark for cowardice and facultative stupidity, and the present is definitely one of those times. After all, the official 9-11 scenario they cling to with such desperate faith comes from only one source: the Western "intelligence community" -- the most brazen, systematic, resourceful, and interlocked association of habitual liars this world has ever seen. As should have been made clear by the 'British dossier' scandal of last winter, the credibility of this bunch goes past zero into the negative: pending airtight proof, anything they say should be reflexively deemed a lie. You may remember that MI5 also provided the identities of "the 19 hijackers" -- information that soon also became quite suspect. At least six of the hijackers, possibly as many as nine, are still alive in the Middle East -- a pretty good alibi, considering. Several of these ex-suspects had their passports or other IDs stolen from them over the years, and it's entirely possible that all 19 hijackers had stolen identities, meaning they could have come from anywhere, or been absent altogether. The US media was pretty slack about acknowledging this at the time, and since then has dropped this ball entirely (17).
Rather than allow the "intelligence community" to render every detail of our comprehension on this matter, we would be much wiser to carefully identify and discard every assumption they hand us.
Far from being a source of independent corroboration, our "free press" is more like a public relations contractor for the spooks. This is because the entire fourth estate AND the governments of the West, including their intelligence services, are essentially employees of a single entity: the US-dominated coalition of international corporations -- by several magnitudes the largest concentration of wealth in human history.
The subjugation of governments by such an entity is hardly unprecedented. The Twentieth Century saw several extremely unsavory examples. It's called Fascism. You don't need to take my word for this -- just peruse the opinions of acknowledged experts:
Benito Mussolini:
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.
For many Americans, the word 'fascist' instantly evokes jackbooted Germans wearing Swastikas and stuffing Jews into ovens. In fact, that representation is a cardboard diorama, empty of nuance and historically specific almost to the point of meaninglessness, which is why the closet fascists who own the media keep force-feeding it to you.
Fascism is certainly a violation of every noble and enlightened political impulse. To advance their agenda, fascists must bring about a mass rejection of egalitarian and democratic ideals, and seem to get the best results by inflaming and feeding upon common fears and popular bigotries -- racist, nationalist, classist, religious, political, etc. ANY set of bigotries, suitably stimulated, will provide fertile soil for fascism, and the incurably ignorant, always a majority, are easily swayed by such methods -- fascism is a dictator's fantasy formula for subverting democracy. Bigotry, however, isn't fascism's whole essence; it's simply an expedient means by which fascism's agents, classic political pragmatists, consolidate the monolithic pattern of government corruption that is their true calling -- a syndrome America has been sliding into deeper and deeper throughout its history. Just look at the consistent warnings from all the presidents who noticed this trajectory and tried to alert a nation of groveling candy-asses:
Thomas Jefferson:
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Abraham Lincoln:
The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at the rear is my greatest foe.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.
Theodore Roosevelt:
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address, 1961:
In the councils of government, we must guard against unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
John Kennedy took Eisenhower's warning to heart, apparently. During the last year of his life, as he contemplated a second term and his own final contribution to history, he resolved to reverse America's moral and civic death-spiral, a.k.a. "the Cold War." His ideas included: ending the CIA's freedom from oversight; abandoning the country's rabid anticommunist stance, beginning with de-escalation in Vietnam; normalizing relations with Cuba and Moscow; by doing these things, redirecting Washington's immense weapons budget into sweeping domestic reforms (18). What's more, Kennedy's popular mandate was strong enough by this time that he probably would have succeeded.
From the viewpoint of the corporate capos that truly rule this country, one aspect of the Cold War was all-important: it was a pork barrel straight out of their wildest dreams of avarice. Watching Kennedy plant his feet and reach for its plug, these 'absolute power' addicts would have been sorely tempted to seek his removal by any means. As it just so happens, several of them were also supreme civilian commanders of the 'National Security' apparatus, meaning they had direct control of the most suspect means of effecting that removal (19).
Since Kennedy's death, dire warnings about corporate power have been conspicuously absent from the pronouncements of American presidents. Funny, huh? By daring to stand on his conviction that it was he, not them, who held the reins of American society, Kennedy quite possibly forced the financial elite to make an example of him. Since that time, their supremacy has been unchallenged by politicians.
It's as if democracy itself 'got whacked' by the Corleones and Gambinos! Fortunately for them, Americans are kept too delusional to notice.
* * * * * * * * *
On the strength of the fear-driven and essentially mindless popular mandate that followed the 9-11 attack, the Bushes and their kind are now concluding a plan they began formulating long before 1963: transforming this country into an abomination, a clinically exact violation of everything their core public THINKS it believes in. The situation is a three-ring circus of ironies: People like the Bushes, Ashcroft, etc., don't operate in a vacuum; they don't suddenly and magically "seize power," any more than Hitler did.
A former German cabinet minister is drawing huge crowds and stoking the fires of popular anti-Americanism with a book arguing that the US government mounted the September 11 attacks in a plot to win global domination. von Bulow has gone further than Michael Meacher, Tony Blair's former environment minister, who was widely criticised for claiming that America knowingly failed to prevent the attacks.
Mr von Bulow, 66, a former research minister in the German government, believes that September 11, when more than 3,000 people died, was staged to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Berlin has made no official response to the book, but behind closed doors ministers have tried to distance themselves from his radical views. However, his ideas are very popular in Germany, which is wallowing in a wave of anti-Americanism. Polls show that a fifth of the population, and one in three of those under 30, believe the US government ordered the attacks. "If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars," Mr von Bulow told The Daily Telegraph at his home in Bonn.
"They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence - that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda - in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation.
"What I saw on September 11 was a perfectly executed act that could have happened only with the support of intelligence services, and whoever controlled it must have known could only bring harm to the Muslim world," he said. "I'm convinced that the US apparatus must have played a role and my theory is backed up by the [Washington] government's refusal to present any proof whatsoever of what happened."
Mr von Bulow's book, The CIA and September 11, has sold more than 100,000 copies, a vast print run for Germany. In more than 271 speculative pages, full of "ifs", "buts" and "maybes", the lawyer weaves his own version of the world-changing events. In it the Arab hijackers were creations of the CIA and were not even told that the planes were to be used as weapons.
The World Trade Centre collapsed due to explosives, not the impact of the Boeings; no planes flew into the Pentagon or crashed in Pennsylvania; and mobile phone calls made by those on the latter flight were simulated by the CIA.
Mr von Bulow also argues that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, was involved in the attacks, warning Israelis to avoid the Twin Towers in the preceding days. His "proof" is that only one Israeli died in the attacks. Some say the highly lucid politician has become a paranoid publicity-seeker.
But he is not alone in his hypotheses. At least two other September 11 conspiracy theory books are on the bestseller lists in Germany. One, by a Left-wing journalist, Mathias Brockers, claims that President George W Bush is the "reincarnation of Hitler". Another, by Gerhard Wisnewski, asserts that the Pentagon was destroyed in a missile attack. In France, Thierry Meyssan has had a similar success with such theories. Mr von Bulow denies that his book is contributing to anti-American sentiment in Germany.
"I'm not in the least anti-American," he insisted. "I'm just part of a growing momentum against Bush and his chess power-politics. I feel sorry for those who are being sucked in by his ideas."
CIA rejects claim it sought Osama deal before 9/11
PARIS - The CIA has rejected as fantasy claims in a new book that it tried to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Osama bin Laden just two months before the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks against the United States.
Richard Labeviere, author of The Corridors of Terror, released on Thursday, says the CIA's Dubai station chief approached bin Laden while the al Qaeda leader was being treated for a serious kidney complaint in the United Arab Emirates.
He said the meeting took place in the American Hospital in Dubai on July 12, barely eight weeks before al Qaeda militants slammed fuel-laden hijacked airliners into the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Centre, killing almost 3000 people.
"Such an allegation is sheer fantasy, no such thing occurred," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said, echoing an earlier rebuttal of French media reports in October 2001 about the alleged Dubai meeting.
Labeviere said he learned of an encounter from a contact in the Dubai hospital, and said the event was confirmed in detail during a separate interview in New York with a Gulf prince who presented himself as an adviser to the Emir of Bahrain.
The prince, who the author met in a Manhattan hotel in November 2001, appeared well-informed about the CIA-bin Laden meeting.
Labeviere said the second contact told him the face-to-face had been arranged by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of the Saudi General Intelligence Department.
He quoted the second contact as saying:
"By organising this meeting...Turki thought he could start direct negotiations between the Saudi millionaire (bin Laden) and the CIA on one fundamental point: that bin Laden and his supporters end their hostilities against American interests."
In exchange, the CIA and the Saudi (intelligence) services undertook to allow bin Laden to return to his native country, even though he was stripped of his Saudi nationality in July 1994. The Dubai meeting was a failure, Labeviere said.
The Saudi intelligence chief was sacked in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Labeviere named Larry Mitchell as the CIA station chief who met bin Laden, describing him as a colourful figure well-known on the Dubai social circuit.
Mitchell left the Gulf state on July 15, 2001 and Labeviere said CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had told him the operative was unavailable for interview because he was on his honeymoon.
At the time, bin Laden had a multi-million dollar price on his head for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people.
Bin Laden was treated between July 4 and July 14 in the urology department of a kidney specialist at the American Hospital, Labeviere said, adding that the hospital denied this.
The Memory Hole has obtained 9/11 documents previously withheld by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. These transcripts of phone calls and radio transmissions, and copies of police reports, were finally released under a federal order resulting from a lawsuit brought by the New York Times. The Times originally sought the actual recordings but eventually settled for transcripts.
After the documents had been released to the media, a spokesperson for the Port Authority told The Memory Hole that it would not be able to get this material.
"We're screening pretty carefully," she said on the phone, adding that the only way we'd see these documents would be to get our hands on a set already released to a media outlet. She also said, without prompting, that the Port Authority will never put these public documents online.
After invoking the Port Authority's freedom of information policy, we were able to get the material, but only after paying $500 (a ridiculous 25 cents per page). Thanks to the generosity of contributors, we were able to cough up the money.
The material will be posted in chunks, with new portions every week until it's all online...
posted by ewing2001 on Saturday November 15, @06:17AM from the WP dept.
Update: Saudi Cash Scrutinized by U.S. for Terror Ties (11/17 LA Times)
Judge Rejects Saudi Terrorist Link
Suit Claimed Members of Royal Family Funded 9/11 Attackers WP Saturday, November 15, 2003; Page A16
Plaintiffs in a massive lawsuit against Saudi leaders have not provided compelling evidence that individual members of the Saudi royal family knowingly funded al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a federal judge ruled yesterday as he dismissed the victims' claims against two of the desert kingdom's princes.
The $1 trillion lawsuit, filed by more than 900 victims' family members and some injured firefighters and rescue workers, argued that several Saudi leaders and investment organizations helped fund the terrorist attacks and should be held responsible.
They charged that Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, as Saudi defense minister and leader of Islamic affairs, funded charities that he knew subsidized Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. They claimed that Prince Turki al-Faisal, director of the Saudi Department of General Intelligence, helped the royal family strike a deal to pay bin Laden protection money so he would not carry out terrorist strikes inside Saudi Arabia or work to bring down the Saudi government.
But U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that Sultan and Turki were immune from these specific claims in American courts. He said the princes, who asked earlier this year to be dismissed from the case, allegedly gave money to charities such as the International Islamic Relief Organization, the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, in their official capacity as high-ranking government officials.
Robertson said there was little evidence from plaintiffs that Sultan or Turki acted as an individual or to cause murders and injuries in the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
"Plaintiff's allegations that Prince Turki or Prince Sultan funded those who carried out the September 11th attacks would stretch the causation requirement . . . not only to the farthest reaches of the common law but perhaps beyond, to terra incognita," Robertson wrote.
Robertson stressed that he was not deciding the truth of the allegations, which were filed last year in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Rather, he wrote, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 generally bars claims against foreign officials, and plaintiffs could not establish that the case met any of the numerous exceptions that would allow their claims to proceed.
The suit will continue with more than a dozen remaining defendants.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs said yesterday that the legal team was still reviewing the decision, weighing a possible appeal and contacting its clients. "We're concerned, and we're upset," Jayne Conroy said. "There are thousands of people that will be devastated by this news."
Attorneys for the princes said yesterday that the decision vindicated their clients. "Prince Turki sought to bring Osama bin Laden to justice; he did not belong in this lawsuit," said Mark C. Hansen, Turki's attorney. "The plaintiffs offered no proof of this oft-repeated and false charge that the Saudi royal family made a corrupt bargain with Osama bin Laden."
William Jeffress, attorney for Sultan, said his client is gratified that the judge agreed the plaintiffs' allegations were "insufficient to overcome the immunity given foreign officials." And Adel al-Jubeir, former policy adviser to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, said: "We welcome this ruling. It vindicates our faith in the American judicial system."
The plaintiffs argued to Robertson in a packed Oct. 17 hearing that the princes knew the charities funded terrorism and should not be allowed immunity by saying it was their government job to aid groups that ultimately aided al Qaeda.
"When they fund terrorism and hide behind the cloak of government and say this is our official policy, we take issue with that," Conroy said yesterday.
Another key assertion in the complaint was that Turki, now ambassador to the United Kingdom, traveled to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1998 to craft a deal under which the Saudis would pay bin Laden to protect them from Islamic radicals. Turki's lawyers contended that the prince was seeking to have bin Laden extradited to the United States and submitted a transcript of bin Laden's comments on an ABC News "Nightline" broadcast as proof.
The judge also dismissed some claims that Sultan had contributed his own money to charities that funded al Qaeda, but he left open the possibility that the claims could be refiled.
...U.S. officials are quietly investigating whether funds disbursed by the Riyadh government have helped finance the spread of international terrorism
... A senior Saudi official vehemently denied that the government has knowingly given money to help finance terrorism. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Riyadh was working closely with U.S. officials, particularly in trying to determine whether any of the government's money ended up in the wrong hands.
The Saudi official confirmed that the subpoenas had been issued but said, "We would have given them voluntarily if they had asked."
On at least two occasions that have been disclosed publicly, such Islamic affairs officials have been linked to the Sept. 11 hijackers and other terrorists. A congressional review found that at least one official in Los Angeles had a closed-door meeting with a Saudi national just hours before he met two of the hijackers. The Saudi national later gave the two money and logistical help while they were living in San Diego.
In Germany, a Saudi Islamic affairs official left the country in March after German authorities suspected him of working with extremists now accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Western interests. German authorities found a business card of the Saudi official, Mohammad J. Fakihi, in the apartment of a since-convicted accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
.. Several U.S. lawmakers have called for an investigation into Saudi disbursements. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) said the Saudi government's support of Wahhabism "provides the recruiting grounds, support infrastructure and monetary lifeblood of today's international terrorists."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, (D-N.Y.), has called for the Saudis to fire their chief law enforcement and counter-terrorism official, Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, contending that he has helped, not hindered, Al Qaeda and other terrorists — a charge Saudi officials have repeatedly denied.
Saudi officials have repeatedly insisted that they have doled out huge sums of money without requiring information on who ultimately received the money and what it was used for, U.S. officials complain.
"We've been adamant that we make them accountable, and they have danced around it," said the first counter-terrorism official.
Times special correspondent John Goetz in Berlin contributed to this report.
posted by ewing2001 on Monday November 17, @09:46AM from the 9/11-Truth-Movement dept.
Update 11/19: GFP/Tom Flocco exclusive: 80% of 9/11 Victims turned Commission their Back after 12PM and didn't return from Lunch. 5th round turned out to be another flop. No investigation at all. Max Cleland ("Bush is scamming america") didn't show up. GFP distributed Deception Dollars. Press conference dominated by questions from 9/11 Investigators Tom Flocco, GlobalFreePress, Kyle Hence. Questions about PDB August 6, WTC 7, "Pakistan Meeting" etc.. 9/11 Family Member during a break : 100% don't believe in the official story anymore, most of them think, 9/11 was an Inside Job (11/18) 9/11 Victims-Skyscraper Safety Group (Gabrielle and Regenhard) criticised delay of new Firecodes Exclusive Story Tomorrow at TomFlocco.com
"...Look at the whole truth, Tom Kean," said one sign.." (USA Today 11/19)
9/11 Visibility Protest was planned at Drew
Some 9/11 Victims were holding signs during the event
On Wednesday 11/19, the 9-11 Commission will hold a public hearing at Drew University in Madison NJ starting at 10 a.m. This meeting comes a few days after the Republican commission chair, Tom Kean, agreed to a deal with the White House to prevent commission Democrats from having full access to the crucial CIA briefing of Bush on August 6, 2001.
According to reports of that briefing, Bush was warned Al Qaeda might hijack planes in the US. Kean's deal with Bush has outraged the 9-11 families. Show your support by bringing signs to a rally outside the Baldwin Gymnasium demanding an immediate end to the 9-11 cover up!
Advocates of skyscraper safety urge 9/11 panel to study issue MADISON, N.J. (AP) — A federal commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks should include skyscraper construction and emergency procedures in its list of topics to review and improve, a skyscraper safety advocate said Wednesday.
"Unbelievably, evacuation and emergency preparedness were sorely lacking or totally nonexistent on 9-11," Monica Gabrielle, whose husband Richard was killed at the World Trade Center, told the independent panel.
Gabrielle, co-chair of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, was among the witnesses at a hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The hearing focused on how government and private industry can cooperate on emergency planning.
"Look at the whole truth, Tom Kean," said one sign held by Sergio and Johanna Burani, residents of Mendham, N.J., who lost a friend on Sept. 11. They said the commission shouldn't have accepted any conditions on its access to government documents.
Sally Regenhard, founder and chairwoman of the skyscraper advocacy group, said the call for an overhaul of high-rise safety has, until now, largely fallen on deaf ears.
She wants the commission to endorse the idea of giving fire protection experts more of a say in the design and construction of large buildings.
"The inadequacy of codes to ensure safety of persons in high-rise buildings became glaringly apparent on 9-11," said Regenhard, a New Yorker whose son Christian was among the 343 firefighters killed.
...Barry Zelman, of Dover, whose brother Kenneth was killed at the World Trade Center, said he has some concern that the commission's final report won't be as complete as he'd like. He fears that the commission's mandate was "just a gesture" by the government to placate the public. And he's skeptical that the commission will get to see any evidence that might damage President Bush or implicate Saudi Arabia's royal family.
"I have the right to be cynical," Zelman said. "Here we are, two years down the road, and we're just starting to talk about some of the issues surrounding those days."
Kean's commission also is trying to accomplish what some other commissions have been unable to do - notably the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy but which did not exactly close the case for many Americans. Unlike the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were not a single event, Romance said.
According to the "Official Story" this video was shot by a Czech tourist (ed: Pavel Hlava) . While it perports to show the "Plane," it is showing the side of the building, not the front where the plane is supposed to have hit.
In these selected excerpts from his landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg looks at the Florida portion of the 9/11 Legend, using the recorded recollections of Yosri Fouda - the only journalist ever to interview the 9/11 mastermind - in order to expose a glaring contradiction in the "official" record of 9/11.
As for his choice for flight training, Atta and his comrades presciently chose to hone their skills within commuter distance of the C.I.A./military base that would later serve as Central Command for the War in Afghanistan. As posted on the CBS News site on March 5, 2003, here was Binalshibh's simple explanation to Yosri Fouda as to why Florida was chosen for its flight schools:
"The prices in America were convenient and the weather was ideal for more flying hours, especially in the coastal states like Florida ... and the term of study wouldn't take long."
Perhaps Binalshibh might have added that it would also allow Atta and his comrades to lay an incriminating trail in the presence of bona fide American eyewitnesses, and all within shouting distance of the military handlers at MacDill Air Force Base. As an added bonus, two of Atta's fellow hijackers would also be set up with rental accommodations by the wife of the employee of a C.I.A.-founded company.
Gloria Irish, the wife of the tabloid Sun editor Michael Irish, rented a Delray Beach apartment to hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi and Saeed Alghamdi. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but the very first victim of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks also happened to be a Sun photo editor by the name of Bob Stevens. And perhaps another peculiar coincidence, as reported in the St. Petersburg Times on October 15, 2001:
"Mike Irish, who, records show, is a licensed airplane pilot, several years ago was a member of the Civil Air Patrol based at a small-plane airport in Lantana, just north of Delray Beach, an official there told the Washington Post. One of the hijackers, Atta, reportedly rented a plane at that airport to practice flying for three days in August. Stevens, the Sun photo editor who died of anthrax Oct. 5, also lives in Lantana. But there is no indication whether Irish or Stevens ever crossed paths with Atta."
To anyone familiar with covert operations, the above item would perhaps set off alarm bells. In theory, if Atta and his comrades were intelligence assets, they would be handled by resident, intelligence-connected, "babysitters" whose job it would be to set up accommodations and provide support where needed. Were the Irishes "babysitters" in an intelligence operation?
...In addition to ... MacDill Air Force base and the Irishes, the state of Florida is host to a number of other eyewitnesses whose background - and testimonies - deserve far greater scrutiny than they have heretofore earned. For instance, witness Bert Rodriguez had specifically trained hijacker Ziad Jarrah in martial arts and close quarter fighting with knives. Perhaps Jarrah had a premonition that, on his designated flight - United Flight 93 - he would be facing off with a small coterie of rebellious passengers, in particular, martial arts champ Jeremy Glick.
Florida is also blessed with a profusion of flight schools. Yet of this rich aeronautical menu from which to choose, most of the September 11 hijackers were drawn to two flight schools practically next door to one another, both owned by Dutch nationals who purchased their respective schools within months of one another in 1998. The two owners, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof, also shared - according to independent journalist Daniel Hopsicker - a particularly troublesome post-9/11 fate, plagued by legal troubles and a pair of matching aviation accidents that nearly took both Dekkers and Kruithof out of the picture.
Kruithof also played a major part in one other crucial aspect of the 9/11 Legend. As FBI Director Mueller had taken pains to point out, Binalshibh was originally slated to be the "twentieth hijacker." Yet when his visa requests were repeatedly turned down, a decision was made to replace him with Moussaoui - at least according to the "authorized" version - and Binalshibh would thereafter play his part as the overall 9/11 coordinator in partnership with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. As for Kruithof's part in all this, I reference a portion of the following exchange between Fouda and Abdallah Schleifer of the Kamal Adham Center For Journalism (where Fouda was a fellow):
Fouda: "...I also interviewed the owner of the flight school, Arne Kruithof, where Ziad Al-Jarrah (who flew the United Airlines plane which crashed in Pennsylvania) learned how to fly. And Kruithof confirmed that he had twice tried to get Ramzi [Binalshibh] an entry visa upon Ziad's urging ... When Ziad asked Kruithof why the visa requests were turned down, the flight school owner said he didn't know. But American officials subsequently made no secret of it. They said Ramzi was turned down because he was implicated in the [October 2000]USS Cole attack."
Schleifer: "Your sources are presumably American intelligence sources?"
Fouda: "Yes."
Schleifer: "Now if I understand you correctly, American intelligence sources be it within the INS or some other agency the INS checked him out with, knew at the time they turned Ramzi down that he was implicated in the Cole attack. That's rather odd, because if they knew that and turned him down for that reason, you'd think they would have wondered who else was at that flight school and why?"
Why, indeed. In Fouda's account, Kruithof "didn't know" at the time why the visa requests were turned down. Yet an October 24, 2001 Los Angeles Times article by Eric Lichtblau and Carol J. Williams apparently offers an alternative account:
"...FBI agents told officials of the Florida flight school that Binalshibh was rejected because of unspecified involvement 'with the bombing of the USS Cole,' according to Arne Kruithof, president of the school."
In other words, Kruithof here admits - only six weeks after 9/11 - that he was personally informed as to the reason for Binalshibh's visa rejection. What the Times article does not make clear is whether Kruithof came by this knowledge at the time of Binalshibh's last reported visa rejection - May 2001 - or after September 11. It is a crucial question, for it goes to the heart of Kruithof's - and Fouda's - credibility.
In Fouda's account, Fouda had to glean the reason for Binalshibh's visa rejection through "American intelligence sources," though Fouda at the time could have easily learned of this from Kruithof, who had known this at least as early as October 24, 2001. In Fouda's account, his interview with Kruithof came after his historic interview with Binalshibh and Khalid - that is, far into 2002. And thus do we come to the Complicity v. Complacency debate of 9/11. In Schleifer's exchange with Fouda concerning the above episode, Schleifer opines:
"Or, even more to the point they should have issued him [Binalshibh] a visa just to get him in to the United States and grabbed him for the Cole attack. If that's the case it fits right into a list of intelligence blunders by both the FBI and the CIA that have already surfaced in the press and in Congressional hearings."
Not so fast. Lost amid all this is the crucial fact that Kruithof was making the visa request at the urging of 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. Assuming that Kruithof was informed of the reason for the last visa rejection at the time he received the rejection, then logic dictates that Kruithof would have felt compelled to report who urged him to make that request. In other words, there would be no wiggle room here for a "complacency" explanation. Unfortunately, the open-ended phrasing of the above-mentioned Los Angeles Times article does leave room for a lawyerly caveat that the FBI agents confided in Kruithof after 9/11.
Auch wenn der "Spiegel" die Fragen um die Terrorattacke des 11.9 in einer Titelstory (Das Gestaendnis) und in einer Art Doku-Soap im Fernsehen fuer erledigt erklaert hat, weil zwei Phantome aus dem Off gestanden haben (es waren Osama und die Wilde Neunzehn!), hindert dies unpassende Puzzleteile des Raetsels weiterhin nicht am Auftauchen. So wundert es nicht, dass auch einige alte Bekannte aus der WTC-Conspiracy-Serie weiterhin fuer Aufsehen sorgen.
Am 4.November 2001 war hier unter dem Titel Osama meets CIA! von dem Bericht des "Figaro" die Rede, nach dem Bin Ladin bei einem Aufenthalt im American Hospital in Dubai im Juli 2001 auch vom lokalen Statthalter der CIA besucht worden sei. Die Nachricht ueber das - aus den USA umgehend dementierte - Treffen machte weltweit Schlagzeilen. Sechs Tage spaeter, am 10. November, forderte Praesident Bush vor der UN-Vollversammlung:
Lasst uns niemals frevelhafte Verschwoerungstheorien im Zusammenhang mit dem 11. September tolerieren, boshafte Luegen, die bezwecken, die Schuld von den Terroristen selbst, von den Schuldigen wegzuschieben.
Nun sind von den verdaechtigen 19 Terroristen ueber zwei Jahren nach der Tat erst drei zweifelsfrei identifiziert, die sterblichen Ueberreste der neun "Hijacker" der Pentagon- und der Pennsylvania-Maschine liegen immer noch unidentifiziert auf Eis. Nicht einmal die Taeter, geschweige denn die Hintermaenner des 11.9. , sind also bis heute wirklich bekannt, schon gar nicht existieren ueberfuehrte "Schuldige", von denen man durch "frevelhafte Verschwoerungstheorien" ablenken koennte.
Dafuer ist Bin Ladins CIA-Kontakt in Dubai wieder zum Thema geworden, seit der Schweizer Journalist und Redakteur von "Radio France International", Richard Labeviere, letzte Woche in einem neuen Buch die zwei Jahre alten Berichte praezisiert hat.
Danach soll das Treffen zwischen dem CIA-Mann in Dubai, Larry Mitchell und Bin Ladin vom damaligen saudischen Geheimdienstchef Prinz Turki arrangiert worden sein. Richard Labeviere, Afrika- und Arabien-Spezialist und Autor eines Buchs ueber die Rolle der CIA in Saudi-Arabien ("Dollars for Terror", 2000) beruft sich auf Kontakte und Zeugenaussagen im "American Hospital", die das Treffen am 12.Juli 2001 ebenso bestaetigt haetten wie ein Insider der saudischen Dynastie. Es soll bei diesen (erfolglosen) Verhandlungen um ein Rueckkehrangebot fuer Bin Ladin nach Saudi Arabien gegangen sein, wenn dieser im Gegenzug seine Aktionen gegen "amerikanische Interessen" einstelle. Der CIA-Sprecher Mark Mansfield bezeichnete diese Behauptungen als "reine Phantasie" - fuer Professor Michel Chossudovsky hingegen ist zwar nicht das Treffen, aber sind die Berichte ueber angebliche Verhandlungen eher Desinformation :
Diese "Verhandlungen" zwischen CIA und Osama (einem CIA Geheimdienstaktivisten) sind reine Desinformation. Auch wenn die CIA die Behauptung zurueckgewiesen hat, dient der Bericht dazu, Osama als einen bona fide "Feind Amerikas" zu beleuchten, statt als Geschoepf der CIA. Wie es der ehemalige CIA-Agent Milt Bearden in einem Interview mit Dan Rather am 12. September 2001 ausdrueckte: "Wenn sie keinen Osama Bin Laden haetten, wuerden sie einen erfinden." Geheimdienstverhandlungen finden nicht an Krankenbetten statt. Die CIA wusste, dass Osama im American Hospital in Dubai war. Anstatt zu verhandeln haetten sie ihn verhaften koennen - er war auf der "Most Wanted"-Liste des FBI.
Als Phantom-Teufel ist der Dialyse-Patient Bin Ladin aber fraglos nuetzlicher - und eben deshalb liessen ihn die USA auch unbehelligt, als er am 10. September 2001 in ein Militaer- Krankenhaus m pakistanischen Rawalpindi eingeliefert wurde , wie CBS Ende Januar 2002 gemeldet hatte. Der Universal-Schurke und Chefplaner der WTC-Anschlaege am Tropf im Hospital des alliierten pakistanischen Militaers - als solcher haette er, weniger als 24 Stunden vor seiner angeblichen Großtat, nicht das monstroese Bild abgeben können, das fuer den Mega-Suendenbock im "war on terror" noetig war.
Folglich liess man ihn in Ruhe - so wie die Creme de la Creme der "al-Quaida", die einige Wochen später, nach der Bombardierung der Hoehlen in Tora Bora, von Spezialeinheiten in der Ortschaft Kundus zusammengetrieben worden waren. Als US-Hubschrauber zum Angriff auf Bin Ladins Elitegarde ansetzen wollten, erhielten sie Weisung, am Boden zu bleiben. Der Befehl kam, wie Seymour Hersh recherchiert hat, direkt aus Washington. Zu ihrem Entsetzen sahen sich die Einsatztruppen zum Zusehen verdonnert, als Osamas Leute, darunter auch einige seiner Familienangehoerigen, ins 150 Kilometer entfernte Pakistan ausgeflogen wurden. Dabei handelte es sich nicht, wie "Newsweek" und andere spaeter meldeten, um eine militaerische Panne, sondern wie Hersh im "New Yorker" gezeigt hat, um die Erfüllung einer Absprache zwischen dem Pentagon und dem pakistanischen Geheimdienst ISI, der fuer seine Leute sicheres Geleit vereinbart hatte. Und die "Leute" des ISI sind nun mal die Eliten der Taliban und der "al-Quida"-Truppe.
Hier kommen nun zwei weitere alte Bekannte des 9-11-Plots ins Spiel: der ISI-Chef General Mahmud Ahmed, der am 10.9. 2001, als sich Bin Ladin im Militaerkrankenhaus Rawalpindi eingefunden hatte, in Washington mit seinen CIA-Partnern konferierte. Dass sein prominenter Patient dabei eine Rolle gespielt haben duerfte, liegt auf der Hand. Und sein Topagent und Zahlmeister Omar Sheik. Ende Oktober 2001 trat General Ahmed dann "ueberraschend" zurueck, als bekannt wurde, dass Omar Sheik in seinem Auftrag 100.000 $ an Mohamed Atta ueberwiesen haben soll. Einen Tag, nachdem die "Times of India" ueber diese brisante Connection berichtet hatte, verschwand in Karatschi der Reporter des Wall Street Journals Daniel Pearl. Lange Zeit blieb unklar, auf welcher Spur sich Pearl vor seiner Entfuehrung und grausamen Ermordung befunden hatte, bis sein Moerder gefasst und im Juli 2002 zum Tode verurteilt wurde: der ISI-Topagent Omar Sheik.
Welche Gefahr von einer weiteren Entlarvung der "Masterminds" und Zahlmeister der 9-11-Taeter, General Ahmed und Omar Sheik, seit Oktober 2001 ausging, liegt auf der Hand: die Achse der Verdaechtigen - die Verbindung CIA-ISI-Taliban-Osama-Atta - waere allzu offensichtlich geworden. Und so machten sich die Propaganda-Koeche und Spin-Doktoren daran, die Legende umzustricken und zwei neue "Masterminds" zu installieren: Ramsi Binalshibh und Khalid Sheik.
Wie dies geschah. hat der amerikanische Journalist Chaim Kupferberg in einer beispielhaften Arbeit aufgezeigt - der 70- Seiten lange Essay There's Something About Omar (eine deutsche Zusammenfassung findet man unter dem passendem Titel Scheichegal!) gibt einen hervorragenden Einblick in die Details dieser Propagandaoperation, mit der der britische Staatsbuerger und ISI-Agent Omar Sheik und der CIA-Partner und ISI-Chef General Ahmed von der Bildflaeche abgezogen und durch die zwei "Masterminds" Binalshibh und Khalid Sheik ersetzt wurden.
Dies sind nun die beiden Terror-Phantome, die an unbekannten Orten ein unueberpruefbares Gestaendnis nach dem anderen ablegen, weiterhin das Obermonster Osama anschwaerzen und wahrscheinlich alles von sich geben, was ihnen von amerikanischen "Verhoerspezialisten" nahegelegt worden ist. Fuer Nachfragen aber stehen sie selbst Gerichten nicht zur Verfuegung - aus Gruenden der "nationalen Sicherheit".
Das betrifft uebrigens nicht nur US-amerikanische, sondern auch bundesdeutsche Gerichte: Auch in den Hamburger Prozessen gegen vermeintliche al-Qaida-Unterstuetzer konnten die beiden "Kronzeugen" aus diesem Grund nicht befragt werden, es gab nicht einmal die Moeglichkeit, in die Verhoerprotokolle Einsicht zu nehmen. Was den Richter freilich an einer Verurteilung nicht hinderte.
