Number of Ways the U.S. Government is Implicated in Operation 9/11 (Dec., 2010 Update; Dr. Eric Karlstrom)

Number of Ways the U.S. Government is Implicated in 9/11 (Dec. 22, 2010)- A Work in Progress

Eric Karlstrom, Professor of Geography, California State University, Stanislaus

The Crime

1. Complete stand down of fighter jets during the 1 hours and 40 minutes of alleged hi-jacking. Someone very high up in the command chain must have overruled the National Command Authority and instructed them not to scramble Air Force planes to intercept the hijacked airliners. On Sept. 11, for 78 minutes, between 7:45 and 9:03 a.m., with it widely known by the FAA and the military that four commercial planes had been hijacked, we are asked to believe that nobody notified President Bush. And it was not until 9:30 a.m. that Air Force planes were finally scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes. Thus, scrambling of military fighters is normally done, by law and standard procedure, within minutes of a commercial airliner irregularity, in this case, the National Command Authority waited for 78 minutes before scrambling aircraft (CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, L.A. Times, the New York Times).

The U.S. Air Force is the most technologically advanced in the world. On 9/11, seven Air Stations were armed and on full alert to protect American air space, each with 14 fully armed fighter jets and pilots on call around the clock. The USAF maintains at least another 28 bases in range to intercept the four wayward airliners on 9/11.

Law and standard emergency operating procedures in place for over 35 years until 9/11 dictate that if an FAA flight controller notices anything that suggests a possible hijacking, he must notify his superior. If the problem is not fixed within a minute, the superior must notify NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), which then orders the nearest air force base to scramble an F-15 or F-16 fighter jet. F-15s can go from the scramble order to 29,000 feet in 2.5 minutes, after which they can fly over 1800 mph to intercept the aircraft (Griffin, 2006). Typically, fighter jets intercept wayward aircraft within 15 minutes of being scrambled.

Fighter jets were routinely scrambled 67 times for far lesser threats in the 10 months between September, 2000 and June, 2001. On September 11, however, for nearly two hours (between 7:45 and 10:06 a.m.), with it widely known by the FAA, the military, and the White House that four commercial planes had been hijacked, not a single jet was scrambled. Tellingly, the official government story (as provided by NORAD #1, NORAD #2, and the 9/11 Commission Report) has been changed three times and hence, the government has deliberately obfuscated the timing of events on that morning (Zwicker, 2006).

In fact, on 9/11, two entire squadrons of combat-ready (F-16 and F/A-18) fighter jets were ready at Andrews Air Force Base, just10 minutes from the Pentagon. Clearly, someone very high up in the command chain must have overruled the National Command Authority and instructed them not to scramble Air Force planes.

However, two factors drastically changed military defense response on the morning of 9/11. First, in June of 2001, the Department of Defense issued a new directive to the effect that all requests to NORAD to scramble jets to intercept hijackers now had to be approved by Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld (International Citizen’s Inquiry into 9/11, San Francisco, 2004).

2. At least 15 military drills going on on the morning of 9/11, several including scenarios of live-fly aircraft crashing into the WTC.

It has now been established that on the morning of 9/11, there were as many as 15 drills or military exercises taking place simultaneously (Tarpley, 2006). These drills included “Vigilant Guardian”, “Northern Guardian,” “Vigilant Warrior,” “Northern Vigilance,” “Amalgam Warrior,” “Global Guardian,” “Crown Vigilance,” “Apollo Guardian,” “Amalgam Virgo,” “Timely Alert II,” and AWACS. They involved, among other things, live-fly hijackings of airplanes, air defense against hijacking, crashing planes into buildings, inserting false radar blips into FAA radar screens, moving F-16s to Canada and Alaska to perform military exercises, nuclear warfare, and emergency response to bomb attacks. Tarpley (2006) states:

Thanks to cooperativeresearch.org, we know that Amalgam Virgo 01 was run June 1-2, 2001. It was a “multi-agency planning exercise” sponsored by NORAD involving the hypothetical scenario of a cruise missile being launched by “a rogue (government) or somebody” from a barge off the East Coast. Bin Laden is pictured on the cover of the proposal for the exercise (American Forces Press Service, 6/4/02). The exercise takes place at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida (Global Security, 4/14/02). Although the barge could have been located somewhere else, this looks very much like what happened at the Pentagon, since it is clear that no commercial airliner ever hit that building on 9/11. The 2002 edition of this exercise was to include “two simultaneous commercial aircraft hijackings” with FBI agents impersonating the hijackers- another component of which may have occurred in the real world on 9/11.

We now know that on October, 2000, another drill was carried out based on a hijacked plane crashing into the Pentagon (Military District of Washington, 11/3/00).

Apparently, while some of these drills helped cripple our air defenses (Ruppert, 2005), others provided the cover and operational capabilities for the “synthetic terror” operation to actually be run through the official bureaucracy (Tarpley, 2006):

The open secret about drills is that they often hide the real thing… State terrorists wishing to conduct an illegal terror operation often find it highly advantageous to conduit or bootleg that illegal operation through the government military/security bureaucracy with the help of an exercise or drill that closely resembles or mimic the illegal operation. Once the entire apparatus is set up, it is only necessary to make apparently small changes to have the exercise go live, and turn into a real hecatomb.

The Anthrax letters

3. The Anthrax attacks on leading democratic Senators occurred directly following the 9-11 attacks, exacerbating the atmosphere of fear and confusion in Washington, D.C. After more than a year of intense FBI investigation no one has been indicted, although the strains of anthrax used have been shown to be of the highest quality and most resemble those manufactured at American military installations.

The Alleged Terrorists

Again, in a “false-flag, state-sponsored terror” staged event, we are supposed to be fooled into believing that the operation was carried out by designated ‘patsies,” who are generally members of a group targeted as political enemies (Tarpley, 2006). The following facts reveal that Osama Bin Laden and the 19 alleged hijackers (with box cutters) were patsies:

1) Again, Al Qaeda, the Mujahadeen, and Osama Bin Laden, and indeed, all the “Islamic Terror Networks” were created, trained, and funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia during the 1980’s proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, in “the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA.” The Pakistan intelligence agency (ISI) was used as go-between so effectively that generally speaking, Moslem “terrorists” did not know the identity of their (CIA) sponsors. More recently, the U.S. Congress found that Al Qaeda was still linked with U.S. intelligence agencies in the war in Kosovo and in Bosnia in 1998. Indeed, to this day, Al Qaeda continues to be an “intelligence asset” of the CIA and continues to conduct covert operations around the world on the CIA’s behalf (Chossudovsky, 2003). The most recent documented connection between Al Qaeda and the U.S. military/intelligence apparatus is that Al Qaeda was working with the CIA- supported KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and organized crime in the summer of 2001 (Chossudovsky, 2006).

2) Osama bin Laden purportedly purchased a jet form the U.S. military in 1993. Later, this jet was used to transport missiles from Pakistan that killed American Special Forces in Somalia.

3) In January, 2001, the Bush Administration ordered the FBI to “back off” investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama’s relatives (BBC Newsnight, Nov. 7, 2001). Could this be connected with the fact that in 1998 and 2000, George H.W. Bush, a consultant for the Carlyle Group (the U.S.’s 11th largest defense contractor), met with the Saudi Royal family and the extremely wealthy bin Laden family (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001). In fact, U.S. agencies have had many opportunities to arrest Osama Bin Laden but have chosen not to.

4) In July, 2001, Osama bin Laden, was visited by a top CIA official (presumably the Chief of Station) while he was recovering from a chronic kidney infection at the American Hospital in Dubai, France. At this time, Osama was officially wanted for bombing two U.S. embassies and for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Nevertheless, he was allowed to leave Dubai on his private jet (French newspaper, Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001).

5) On Sept. 10, 2001, Osama Bin Laden checked in to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In all likelihood, he was there on 9/11 while the attacks occurred. Since the Pakistan military has close connections with the CIA and the US military, his whereabouts must have been known by the military (Chossudovsky, 2006). In all likelihood, however, Osama Bin Laden died several years ago, as his health was reported to be bad and failing at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

6) On September 11, at 11:00 am EST, only about an hour after the 9/11 attacks were finished, the FBI identified Osama Bin Laden as the responsible, guilty party. They released the names of the 19 alleged hijackers three days later (Chossudovsky, 2006). No supporting evidence was offered. The very next day, on September 12, the news headlines pointed to “state sponsorship of the attacks by Afghanistan.” On Oct. 7, Afghanistan was bombed and invaded by U.S. troops. However, the decision to go to war with Afghanistan had been made months, even years before 9/11. Thus, 9/11 was simply the (orchestrated) pretext for the invasion. In fact, Osama and the 19 alleged hijackers are Saudi Arabians, not Afghanis or Iraqis.

7) On September 16 and September 28, Osama Bin Laden made public statements denying he had any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. On September 16, he stated:

I stress that I have not carried out this act. It appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivations.

On September 28, Osama stated in an interview with BBC, printed in Pakistan publication, Umat:

I have already stated that I have no involvement in the events of September 11 and the attacks on the United States. I had no knowledge of these acts. Nor do I consider the killing of innocent women and children and other humans an appreciable act. There exists a government within the government of the United States. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out these attacks. The U.S. should trace the perpetrators of those attacks to these persons who want to make the present century one of their own control- who want to enslave other countries.

8) On December, 13, the Pentagon and the White House released a tape showing a considerably heavier, bearded man, supposed to be Osama Bin Laden, confessing to the crimes of 9/11. However, various professors who are Bin Laden experts agree that this man is clearly not Osama Bin Laden (from Jones, 2006).

9) Months later, supposedly after the most intense FBI search in history, FBI Director Muller announced they had found no evidence connecting 9/11 with Bin Laden and the alleged hijackers:

The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot.

Hence, the only “evidence” the government has produced so far that connects Bin Laden with the crimes of 9/11 is a phony, doctored tape in which a man who is clearly not Osama claims responsibility for the attacks.

To summarize: Although the Bush administration identified Osama Bin Laden as the culprit within a few hours of the 9/11 attacks, it provided no evidence. After months of the most intense international investigations in world history, involving the world’s largest intelligence agencies, still no credible evidence was produced that linked the attacks to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was never apprehended.

10) And most recently (2006), Rex Tomb of the FBI admitted: “The FBI has no hard evidence linking bin Laden to 9/11.” Conclusion: Osama didn’t do it!
11) Four of the alleged hijackers are Saudi professionals whose identities, including “personal details,” were stolen by the FBI. These four were in the Middle East when the 9/11 attacks occurred and were “outraged” to be identified as terrorists. They include Saeed Al-Ghamdi, 25, a Saudi Airlines pilot who was training in Tunisia on 9/11. Abdul Aziz Al-Omari is an engineer who was at his desk at the Saudi telecommunications authority in Riyadh when the attacks occurred. Ahmed Al-Nami, 33, is an administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Aairlines who was also in Riyadh when the attacks took place. Finally, Salem Al-Hamzi, 26, was working at a petro-chemical complex in Yanbou on 9/11 (Harrison, 2006).

12) Fifteen of the alleged hijackers should have been denied entry to the U.S. for faulty visa documents (Washington Post, 10/22/02; Meacher, 2003). Michael Springmann, former head of the American Visa Bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has stated that since 1987, the CIA has been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the U.S. for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, 11/6/01). Springmann reports that he had rejected the immigration applications of many of the “9/11 terrorists” only to be overruled by the CIA (Meacher, 2003; Springmann, 2006).

13) Five of the hijackers were given flight training and language instruction at U.S. military installations (Newsweek, 9/15/01). The “puddle-jumper” flight training schools in Venice, Florida, at which some of the hijackers trained, have CIA ties and were established in the year 2000 with CIA money (Newsweek, 9/15/01, Washington Post, 9/16/01, New York Times, 9/15/01; Hopsicker, 2003). A U.S. Press report (3/2/02) stated:

New evidence linking the owner of the Venice, Florida flight school that trained Mohamed Atta to the Central Intelligence Agency surfaced last month. The new evidence adds to existing indications that Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre’s flight training in this country was part of a so-far unacknowledged U.S. government intelligence operation which had ultimately tragic consequences for thousands of civilians on September 11. Far from merely being negligent or asleep at the switch- the thrust so far of allegations expected to be aired at joint Senate and House Select Committee hearings this month- the accumulating evidence suggests the CIA was not just aware of the thousands of Arab student pilots who began pouring into this country several years ago to attend flight training, but was running the operation for still-unexplained reasons.

This alleged CIA operation involves claimed links to Caribe Air which:

is today controlled by an offshore bank located on the Carribean Island of Dominica, Banc Caribe, a private bank that may be being investigated currently by authorities pursuing the names involved in Enron’s secret offshore partnerships, many of which have the name Caribe in their title…

In addition, Paul (2004) notes that the flight school in Norman, Oklahoma where some of the alleged hijackers received training is owned by billionaire Warren Buffet.

14) None of the alleged hijackers named by the FBI were on the official passenger lists of the supposedly hijacked planes. In fact, there were no Arabic names on any of the passenger lists.

15) There is no airport security camera footage of the 19 alleged hijackers boarding the planes involved.

16) Records show that although the alleged hijackers attended flight schools, their instructors pronounced them incapable of flying even small aircraft. It would have been impossible for them (or any other hijacker) to have comandeered Boeing 757s or 767s.

17) There are no record of autopsy’s performed on any of the alleged hijackers.

18) Although Mohammed Atta has been portrayed as a Muslim fundamentalist fanatic, in fact he frequented bars and enjoyed lap-dances and prostitutes. He also was given language instruction at State Department facilities. In all likelihood, he was or perhaps still is a double agent (Hopsicker, 2003).

19) Seven to ten of the 19 alleged hijackers are now alive and well in the Middle East as of 2006. In addition to the four individuals listed in # 3 above, these include Abdul Raman Al-Omari (a pilot with Saudi Arabian Airlines), Waleed Al-Shehri, Mohand Al-Shehri, Wail Al-Hehrei, Ameer and Adnan Bukhari (Global Outlook, 2006).

20) And yet the FBI supposedly found one of the alleged hijacker’s (Mohammed Atta) passports amidst the rubble at the Twin Towers. Considering nothing was left at Ground Zero after the collapses of the Towers except steel and concrete ground as fine as talcum powder, this assertion ranks amongst the most ludicrous. The FBI’s original story, that the hijackers used shoebox cutters has subsequently given way to the story that they used gas to subdue the passengers and crew. And yet they had no gasmasks!

1. various INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and U.S. State Department officers, including Michael Springmann, have reported they had rejected immigration applications of many of these “terrorists” only to be overruled by the CIA.
2. Pakistan’s chief spy since 1999, U.S.-approved appointee Lt. General Mahmood Ahmad, was in direct contact with the CIA, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and the Pentagon. The FBI and Indian Intelligence proved that Ahmed had ordered Ahmad Umar Sheikh of Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) to wire $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, a week before 9-11. Indeed, Ahmed met with CIA officials including CIA Director Tenet between Sept. 4 and 9. At the time of the WTC attacks, he was having breakfast with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Peter Goss, Chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively, and Senator John Kyl and Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. Maleeha Lodhi. On Sept. 12 and 13, Ahmed met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Secretary of State Colin Powell. On Sept. 13, he met with Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ironically, Goss and Graham, the men who dined with Ahmed during the 9-11 atrocity, were placed in charge of the Congressional committee charged with investigating “intelligence failures” leading to 9-11.
3. In July, 2001, Osama bin Laden, was visited by a top CIA official (presumably the Chief of Station) while he was recovering from a chronic kidney infection at the American hospital in Dubai, France. At this time, Osama was officially wanted for bombing two U.S. embassies and for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Nevertheless, he was allowed to leave Dubai on his private jet (French newspaper, Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001).
4. Several of the hijackers were given flight training and language instruction at U.S. military installations. The “puddle-jumper” flight training schools in Venice, Florida, at which the hijackers trained have CIA ties and were established in the year 2000, possibly with CIA money.
5. The U.S. Congress found that Al Qaeda was linked with U.S. intelligence agencies in the war in Kosovo and in Bosnia in 1998. Indeed, to this day, Al Qaeda continues to be an “intelligence asset” of the CIA and continues to conduct covert operations around the world on the CIA’s behalf. And so, too Osama bin Laden.

Legal Action

1. 400 family members of 9-11 victims have filed a lawsuit against members of the Bush administration for “complicity” in 9-11, allowing it to happen for political gain.

VIII. Anthrax Letters and the USA PATRIOT Act

The mysterious and unsolved Anthrax attacks on leading democratic Senators occurred directly following the 9/11 attacks, exacerbating the atmosphere of fear and confusion in Washington, D.C. As of 2006, after years of supposedly intense FBI investigations, no one has been indicted. However, we know the anthrax was made at a military base in Fort Detrck, Maryland.

In October, 2001, the most lethal and weaponized form of anthrax in history was delivered by mail to the main opponents of the new USA PATRIOT ACT (Democratic Senators Daschle, Leahy, and Feingold), to network anchors Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, and to a Florida journalist who published the first photos of George W. Bush’s daughters being arrested for DWI. (This journalist is the only one who died.) Over a year later, it was disclosed that the source of the anthrax was the military facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. No one has been punished or held accountable for this crime. The Kean 9/11 Commission Report does not address the issue. Development of highly concentrated, militarized anthrax goes back to “Project Jefferson” (of the DIA) on orders from Donald Rumsfeld. It was reported on 9/9/01 that this new strain of anthrax had been created.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives had to vote on the Anti-terrorism bill (USA Patriot Act) within a month and a half of the 9/11 attacks without ever having the time to review or read the bill. The actual bill arrived on Capitol Hill on October 24, 2001, the night before a roll call vote was taken. Clearly, this lengthy and confusing bill was prepared by someone on behalf of the administration prior to 9/11 and was brought out when the time was ripe. Critics now say the bill does little to prevent terrorism but does greatly increase the ability of the government to conduct surveillance of all Americans without proper search warrants, effectively nullifying several Bill of Rights amendments and taking away part of another. Republican Congressman and Constitutional expert Ron Paul, said this about the “Patriot Act”: “Our forefathers would think it is time for a revolution. They revolted for much milder tyranny than this.”

Foreknowledge by Whom?

Researchers have uncovered many indications that insiders had prior knowledge of the attacks and that some profited greatly from their foreknowledge:

1) Prominent politicians were warned not to fly on 9/11. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was called by NSA head Condoleeza Rice on September 10 and warned not to fly the next day (San Francisco Chronicle). Attorney General John Ashcroft did not fly on commercial planes the entire summer of 2001. And on September 10, a number of top generals cancelled their flights for the morning of 9/11 (Newsweek).

2) Whistleblower FBI agents, such as Colleen Rowley, reported they knew over one month before 9/11 of the intended targets and the date of the attacks.

3) Mayor Rudi Giuliani reported receiving advance warning that the WTC buildings were going to collapse: “We were told it was going to collapse, and it did collapse.” Meanwhile, the nearly 3000 people who died on that day, including the 357 firefighters who lost their lives, received no advance warnings.

4) It was widely reported in the Arab world after 9-11 that about 4,000 Jewish workers at the World Trade Center did not report for work on the morning of 9/11. This is probably because Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world’s largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York City, received warnings of an immanent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC (CNN’s Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01).

5) On September 7, 2001, 27,294 put options, over five times the normal rate, were placed on Boeing stock on the Chicago Stock Exchange. (A put option is a bet that the value of the stock will go down). Also, on Sept. 6 and 7, 4744 put options were purchased on United Airlines (as opposed to only 396 call options) and 4,516 put options were placed on American Airlines as compared with only 748 call options (Ruppert, 2002). Many of these put options were purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by A.B. Buzzy Krongard, now third in command at the CIA (The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism). No other airlines show similar trading patterns and the put option purchases were 600% to 1100% above normal. Likewise, between Sept. 6 and 10, highly abnormal levels of put options were also purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines. All of these companies were also adversely impacted by 9/11. The San Francisco chronicle reported on Sept. 29, 2001, that $2.5 million in profits from the put options were still unclaimed.

It should be noted that using sophisticated PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) software, the CIA and Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency) monitor stock trades in real time and would certainly have known of this unusual trading activity in the days prior to 9/11 (Ruppert, 2002).

6) Recovery experts extracted data from 32 damaged WTC computer drives revealing a surge in financial transactions on 9/11. Illegal transfers of $100s of millions to many billions may have been made through WTC computer systems immediately before and after the disaster (Reuters, 12/18/01). One European report indicates massive trading in gold, oil and other commodities, with one single trade involving over $5 billion (Paul Thompson, San Francisco International Citizen’s Inquiry, 2004).

7) According to Loose Change, 2nd Edition, somewhere between $1 and $167 billion in gold was stored in the basements of WTC buildings. Although $230 million in gold bullion was recovered from an abandoned truck in the basement of WTC 4, the rest has disappeared. Could 9/11 have also involved a gigantic gold heist? Again, a legitimate investigation is still needed to resolve this question.

8) FEMA arrived at Ground Zero the day before the attacks occurred in order to conduct a pre-planned exercise.
1. It is was widely reported in the Arab world after 9-11 that about 3,000 Jewish workers at the World Trade Center did not report for work on the morning of 9-11. Could this be because Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world’s largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York City, received warnings of an immanent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC (CNN’s Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01).

10) People high in the banking and intelligence world had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks. On Sept. 6 and 7, 4744 put options (a speculation that stock will go down) were purchased on United Air lInes (as opposed to only 396 call options) and 4,516 put options were placed on American Airlines as compared with only 748 call options. Many of these were purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by A.B. Buzzy Krongard, now is third in command at the CIA . (The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism). No other airlines show similar trading patterns and the put option purchases were 600% above normal. Likewise, between Sept. 6 and 10, 2001, highly abnormal levels of put options were purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines- all of these were also impacted by 9-11. The San Francisco chronicle reported on Sept. 29, 2001, that $2.5 million in profits from the put options were still unclaimed.

Phony Terror Alerts

Terror Alerts based on Fabricated Intelligence

Another Machiavellian technique is to manipulate and rule the domestic population through fear. Although this was accomplished by the 9/11 operation itself, our leaders have contrived to maintain high levels of fear by issuing fabricated “terrorist alerts,” using a color-coded system for describing the “threat level.” Thus, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned of impending nuclear attacks- both from Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. In May, 2004, Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Muller warned that Al Qaeda was determined to strike America in the next several months, even naming seven suspects. In February of 2003, Powell warned us specifically that Osama Bin Laden would attack the U.S. using atomic bombs. And Vice President Cheney assured us:

I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty… It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared….

Economics professor, Michel Chossudovsky (Crying wolf, terror alerts based on fabricated intelligence, 2006) documents several instances since 2003, in which the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued terror warnings based on phony intelligence about possible Al Qaeda plans to launch an “attack on America” similar in magnitude to that of 9/11. For example, just before Christmas, 2003, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge issued a Code Orange Alert, warning America:

The near-term attacks… will either rival or exceed the 9/11 attack. And it’s pretty clear that the nation’s capital and New York City would be on any list (12/03).

More specifically, DHS warned that Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists were planning to hijack an Air France plane and “crash it on U.S. soil in a suicide terror attack similar to those carried out on 9/11.” Air France flights out of Paris were grounded. Anti-aircraft missiles were set up in Washington, D.C. Los Angeles International Airport was on “maximum deployment,” with counter-terrorism and FBI officials working around the clock.

When the FBI accused the CIA of fabricating the evidence for these threat levels, Tom Ridge, Head of Homeland Security remarked: “Despite the fabricated evidence, there are no plans to change the threat level.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld echoed the warning: “Terrorists still threaten our country and we remain engaged in a dangerous- to be sure- difficult war and it will not be over soon.”

However, a French-U.S. investigation subsequently revealed that the terror alert was a hoax. Indeed, the six “Al Qaeda men” turned out to be a five-year old boy, an elderly Chinese lady, a Welsh insurance salesman, and three French nationals! But only on January 2, 2004, did U.S. authorities admit the mistake.

Another bogus Code Orange Alert was issued by the DHS on the night of John Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention on July 29th, 2004. This alert also turned out to be fabricated and based on intelligence that was three years old. Chossudovsky concludes that the fabricated terror alerts were used at politically opportune moments and therefore, were used for political gain. He also concludes that fabricating terror alerts is criminal.

Energy and Geo-political background

As former Secretary of State Zbignew Bzrezinski makes clear in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, Eurasia has 3/4 of all known energy resources. The Caspian Basin, in particular, has an estimated $5 trillion (U.S.) in gas and oil reserves. Countries here include Tajiksistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Krgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. All of these former Soviet states share a border with Afghanistan. Brzezinski underscores that with worldwide energy consumption increasing worldwide, who controls the Caspian Basin oil/gas will control the world economy. In fact, his “Grand Chessboard” is a plan for strategic global dominance which this administration seems to be following. Hence, the U.S. already had established military bases in Uzebekistan and Khzakstan prior to 9-11. However, getting these fossil fuels to port for shipment to other regions is a geographic problem. Afghanistan, which has very little oil, is the best route to transport the oil to Asia. In 1994, Vice President Cheney helped broker a deal between Chevron and the state of Kazakhstan when he sat on the country’s Oil Advisory Board. Likewise, many former Reagan, Bush and Clinton advisors have personal investments in development and extraction of fossil fuels from the region. The real objective of American military presence there is to secure U.S. access to fossil fuel resources in Eurasia and make sure that other regional powers, such as China and Russia, do not threaten U.S. hegemony in the region.

2) Between 1991 and 1997, major U.S. oil companies, including Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, and Shell invested almost $3 billion in cash bribing the heads of state in Kazakhistan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves of this region. And they committed another $35 billion to future investment. (Testimony before House International Relations committee, 2/12/98).

3) The CIA poured over $3 billion into the training of the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist networks (including Al Qaeda) of the Mujahadeen in order to stage a proxy war with Russia in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Osama bin Laden, wealthy Saudi Arabian merchant, was a prize CIA recruit in this endeavor. One essential conduit of CIA influence was their training and funding of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-services Intelligence Agency). It was ISI that has funded and kept the Taliban in power since 1996. The Northern Alliance and U.S. Congressional transcripts and intelligence reports confirm a “Pakistanii ISI- Osama- Taliban” axis).

4) On December 4, 1997, representatives of the Taliban were invited to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support of the pipeline across Afghanistan which would transport oil and gas from Kazakhstan to India. (The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997).

5) After 10 years of CIA covert operations and involvement with the war and drug lords of Afghanistan during the 1980s, Afghanistan was the number one exporter of opium in the world. In 1999, the 4,600 metric tons of opium produced there made up 75% of the world’s opium production and was mainly and smuggled through the Balkans and sold to Europe. The ban placed on opium production by the Taliban in 2000 had the effect of shifting production to Columbia and to the Caucasus under the Kurds. Now the opium would be smuggled through shorter routes through Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbasijan. (Both Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage are members of the U.S.- Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce). The Taliban action of banning opium production was made at the prodding of Pakistan’s foreign Secretary Inam Ul-Haq. Sec. of State Colin Powell rewarded the Taliban for this action by giving them $43 million to replace the income lost to Afghani farmers.

6) The trade in illegal drugs is a $500 to 600 billion/year business and provides the world’s banking and financial systems with needed liquid cash. A German intelligence expert states that: “Seventy percent of the drug trade is licensed by the intelligence agencies”.

7) In Jan, 2001, The Bush Administration ordered the FBI to “back off” investigations involving the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia, including two of Osama’s relatives (BBC Newsnight, Nov. 7, 2001). Could this be connected with the fact that in 1998 and 2000, George H.W. Bush, now a consultant for the Carlyle Group, the U.S.’s 11th largest defense contractor, met with the Saudi Royal family and the extremely wealthy bin Laden family (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001)?

8) According to a Wall Street journal article, Sept. 19, 2001, one of the oil pipeline projects running through the new war zone in Afghanistan is a joint venture of the bin Laden family and the construction firm H.C. Price. This company is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser Industries that gave George W. Bush his first post-war job in 1948. Vice President Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense under Desert Storm, was Halliburton’s CEO until becoming Vice President in 2001.

In fact, Al Qaeda, the Contras, the Mujahadeen, each of which are creations of the CIA, were designed to destabilize and topple those governments. Incidentally, when CIA-creations and U.S. puppets such as Sadam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Daniel Noriega of Panama, etc. become too powerful and/or too nationalistic (the so-called “boomerang effect”), they are typically either removed via covert operations or by full scale wars.

A Long Tradition of fabricated War-pretext incidents and staged false flag synthentic terror events

Among the many examples of false-flag, state-sponsored, staged “terrorist” events are the deliberate sinking of the Maine as pretext for the Spanish-American War, the sinking of the Luisitania to help instigate U.S. involvement in World War I, Hitler’s burning of the Riechstag or German Parliament Building in 1933 as a pretext for consolidating his imperial powers, Pearl Harbor in 1941 as pretext for American entry into World War II, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 as pretext or “trigger” to escalate the war against Vietnam, etc., etc.

It is instructive to examine some historic pretexts and “triggers” which U.S. leaders have used to involve American citizens in previous wars.

1) During WWII, U.S. admirals knew that FDR had foreknowledge of the impending attacks on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese but did not warn the admirals in command at Pearl Harbor. Further, FDR actually helped provoke Japan’s murderous attack when he cut off Japan’s oil supplies. As planned, the Pearl Harbor attacks became the “trigger” which insured American involvement in WWII.

2) In 1962, after the CIA had failed in its illegal Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK was reluctant to topple Castro or wage war with Cuba. But the military and CIA desperately wanted war and needed a way to mobilize American public opinion for such a war. They came up with “Operation North Woods”, designed to trick the American and world public opinion into a war. Several possible strategies were developed to create this “trigger”: 1) Blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. 2) Develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington, and 3) Blow up John Glenn’s rocket at Cape Canaveral and blame it on Cuba. And most interestingly, as a possible parallel with 9-11, 4) Create an exact duplicate of a civil-registered aircraft, load the plane with selected passengers with carefully prepared aliases, and through remote control, blow the plane up by radio signal. And, of course, blame the Cubans, 5) faking Soviet MIG aircraft to harass civil aircraft, or attack surface shipping, 6) hijacking civil air and surface craft, 7) simulating the shooting down of a chartered civil airliner in Cuban airspace. President Kennedy rejected the plan.

In his book, Body of Secrets, James Bamford concludes from documentary evidence that the Joint Chiefs of Staff “proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba”. Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer wrote a memo stating that that the Joint Chiefs “have considered” an attached memo, which is a “description of pretexts which would provide justification for military intervention in Cuba”.

3) It is now well known that the government similarly utilized the cooked-up Gulf of Tonkin incident to “trigger” a full-scale war with Vietnam. On July 30, 1964, CIA crews aboard Norwegian-built SWIFTS (ships) attacked a radar station in North Vietnam on Hon Me Island, with the U.S.S. Maddox patrolling nearby inside North Vietnamese waters to provide cover for the CIA attackers. The North Vietnamese issued a formal protest to the U.S. and North Vietnamese sailors pursued the CIA marauders and confronted the Maddox. The Maddox then fired upon the North Vietnamese, who returned fire with torpedoes- that missed.

4) But this tactic goes back much further. In 1846, the U.S. government wanted a pretext to take large parts of Mexico. First it offered money and then land to any soldier willing to fight the Mexicans. When this failed to produce a sufficient force of volunteers, the government sent General Zachary Taylor with a small force to raid Mexican border towns. When Mexicans fired back, the headlines read: “Mexicans killing our boys in Texas”. Then, and only then, did enough men enlist that we were able to embark upon a war that resulted in the U.S. taking what is now New Mexico, Arizona, southern Colorado and California.

5) And Brzenzki may have been calling for just this scenario when he states in The Great Chessboard: “As America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat”.

Other recent “synthetic terror” events include the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the 7/7 bombings in London, the 3/11 train bombings in Madrid, and the assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963 and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968, to name just a few. The 1962 “Operation Northwoods” plan called for the U.S. military to conduct terrorist attacks on Miami and Washington, D.C. These would be blamed on Cuba, as pretext for invading Cuba. This plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but over-ruled by the Kennedy brothers.

Qui Bono- Who Benefits and What is the Payoff-
On July 24, 2001, Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties signed a $3.2 billion lease on the WTC complex (estimated to be worth $8 billion), personally paying out only $15 million (, or 0.005% of the total financing) to secure private ownership (Paul, 2002). Included in the lease was a $3.5 billion insurance policy specifically covering “acts of terrorism.” Silverstein’s main partners were mall-builder Westfield America and a group headed by Lloyd Goldman. It is an interesting post-script that while Silverstein originally demanded $7.2 billion in insurance payouts, claiming the two planes constituted two separate terrorist attacks, he was awarded only $2.2 billion on December 6, 2004. And in February, 2002, he was awarded $861 million to rebuild WTC Building 7. Altogether, Silverstein collected over $4 billion in insurance (Jones, 2006). Another interesting post-script is that the entire seven building complex was brought down by controlled demolition- either on or very shortly after 9/11.

The Real Estate Journal reported that, in regard to rebuilding the WTC site, Silverstein Properties had the support of New York Senators Charles Schummer and Hillary Clinton (he had hosted both on his yacht) as well as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. An 11/5/01 REJ article concluded:

It may also end up being a good investment. In the end, Mr. Silverstein may wind up controlling 11 million square feet of attractive, lower-rise space instead of 11 million square feet of 30-year old space in New York’s tallest and most conspicuous buildings.

Silverstein himself declared: “It should prove to justify the time, energy, and the psychic impact of what we’ve been through” (from Thorn, 2006)
2) Securing massive increases in Pentagon spending, from about $300 billion a year in 2001 to well over $440 billion/year in 2002 and even more today.

3) Curtailing civil liberties at home through the USA PATRIOT ACT and Homeland Security Act.

4) Systematic, secret domestic spying (“warrant-less wiretapping”) on Americans by the National Security Agency and its private sub-contractors.

5) Launching wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq in order install corporate-friendly puppet governments and establish U.S. military bases to control oil and natural gas resources. Both of these countries are considered strategically essential for controlling proven fossil reserves. Plans to invade each country were drawn up by key government officials before the 9/11 attacks.

6) Establishment of concentration camps around the world (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Graib, Iraq and numerous other locales) where torture is used systematically in the treatment and interrogation of (generally innocent) detainees. Numerous European and Middle Eastern countries have cooperated with CIA procedures of ”extraordinary rendition,” i.e, kidnapping, incarceration and torture of innocent civilians at torture facilities operated in secret by the CIA throughout the world.

7) Privatization of state-owned businesses in Iraq and granting of rebuilding contracts (through no-bid government contracts) worth billions of dollars to insider corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Dyncorps, etc.

8) Repeal of legislation and governmental regulatory functions in America that limit unbridled corporate profits for extractive industries, such as oil, gas, timber, mining, etc.

9) Massive tax cuts worth trillions of dollars for very wealthy Americans (the top 1-2%). Along with massive increases in spending for the military, this has the effect of dramatically reducing discretionary federal and state funds available for social needs (social security, public schools, health care, etc.). Indeed, “the plan” outlined by numerous radical right wing think tanks is to essentially tear up the “social contract” between government and the American citizenry altogether (Rampton and Stauber, 2004).

The Plan

the ultimate “plan” of the global ruling elite is that after the U.S. conquers the world, it will hand the world over to corporations:

The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role. In the long run, global politics are likely to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only global superpower, but is also likely to be the very last (Bzrezinski, 1997).

Former L.A. police department detective, Michael Ruppert (2002) interprets:

What does he say that’s going to happen? He says the United States will fold into a “one-world government” in which all nations will cease to exist… run by corporations…. Listen, I want you to know that the Third Reich did not lose the Second World War, it just changed venues.”

The Pentagon

On July 24, 2001, Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties signed a $3.2 billion lease on the WTC complex (estimated to be worth $8 billion), personally paying out only $15 million (, or 0.005% of the total financing) to secure private ownership (Paul, 2002). Included in the lease was a $3.5 billion insurance policy specifically covering “acts of terrorism.” Silverstein’s main partners were mall-builder Westfield America and a group headed by Lloyd Goldman. It is an interesting post-script that while Silverstein originally demanded $7.2 billion in insurance payouts, claiming the two planes constituted two separate terrorist attacks, he was awarded only $2.2 billion on December 6, 2004. And in February, 2002, he was awarded $861 million to rebuild WTC Building 7. Altogether, Silverstein collected over $4 billion in insurance (Jones, 2006). Another interesting post-script is that the entire seven building complex was brought down by controlled demolition- either on or very shortly after 9/11.

The Real Estate Journal reported that, in regard to rebuilding the WTC site, Silverstein Properties had the support of New York Senators Charles Schummer and Hillary Clinton (he had hosted both on his yacht) as well as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. An 11/5/01 REJ article concluded:

It may also end up being a good investment. In the end, Mr. Silverstein may wind up controlling 11 million square feet of attractive, lower-rise space instead of 11 million square feet of 30-year old space in New York’s tallest and most conspicuous buildings.

Silverstein himself declared: “It should prove to justify the time, energy, and the psychic impact of what we’ve been through” (from Thorn, 2006)

The Hoax of Flight 93

The media reported that Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, PA at 10:03 am on 9/11. However, there are many reasons to suspect that this is also a lie. Again, no wreckage or debris or remains of passengers were observed at the crash site. The movie, Loose Change, 2nd Edition, explores the confusing issues surrounding this crash site. Wally Miller, the Somerset County coroner, described the crash site like this to the Houston Chronicle and the Washington Post:

It looked like someone took a dump truck, dug a 10’ ditch and dumped trash into it…. I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes. There were no bodies there. I have not to this day seen a single drop of blood. Not a drop.

(Mayor) White stated on the morning of 9/11 that Flight 93 was moved to a secure area of the Cleveland (Hopkins) airport and was evacuated there. And United Airlines itself identified the evacuated plane as Flight 93 (WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, 11:43 am, 9/11). According to United Airlines, two flights were forced to land at the Hopkins Airport due to a bomb threat. One of these, UA Flight 93, landed at 10:43 a.m. whereupon 200 passengers were evacuated and brought to the Glenn Research Center, an empty NASA facility at the airport (from Loose Change). What happened to those passengers? We still do not know.

On April 10, 2003 David Freedman, an employee at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, spotted Flight 93 at O’Hare Airport. If Flight 93 is still operational, what plane crashed? Was it another military drone? What about the eyewitnesses who claim to have seen a (military) aircraft shooting down Flight 93? What about the debris supposedly scattered over 2.5 miles? Answers to these questions, apparently, will not be available until a legitimate investigation is conducted.

Vice President Cheney’s Role

1) In May, 2001, by presidential order, Vice President Richard Cheney was put in direct control of all war games and training drills of several agencies, including FEMA and NORAD.

2) As noted, on the morning of 9/11, as many as 15 classified war games and exercises were being simultaneously coordinated by Cheney, who was then playing the role of President in the White House situation room (Ruppert, 2005; Celsius 9/11, 2004). Again, although these classified exercises were never investigated by the press, they probably effectively paralyzed fighter response. All these war games and drills have now been reported by major newspapers and have been confirmed by NORAD press releases. Some involved commercial airliner hijackings and some involved false blips (military injects blips) on FAA radar screens. Some were live fly exercises that involved actual aircraft flown by either by remote control or by real pilots. Ruppert (2005) speculates that these drills effectively paralyzed FAA and NORAD response to the hijacking of the four airliners.

“Tripod II,” being conducted on 9/11, was a non-military exercise involving biological warfare in Manhattan that was conducted by FEMA and the office of Vice President Cheney. This exercise placed a fully staffed FEMA in Manhattan and the Department of Justice Command Post on Manhattan’s Pier 29 on September 10, just in time for it to be used as the command post after the Twin Towers collapsed. Ruppert (2005) notes that many officials had had the time and the knowledge to take direct action to stop the second tower from being hit, but didn’t.

3) Based on NYC Mayor Guliani’s testimony and the record of Cheney’s phone calls, Vice President Cheney was in command of joint White House/NORAD exercises in the White House situation room on the morning of 9/11 (Ruppert, 2005). Playing the role of the President in the situation room, Cheney was making phone calls to New York City between 8:45 and 9:15 am. Ruppert is confident that Cheney was a planner of the attacks and that on the morning of 9/11, he was running a completely separate command and control and communications system that superceded any orders given by national military command center (Pentagon) or the White House situation room. He was using communication systems maintained by U.S. secret service near the “bunker.” Because the Secret Service had radar screens that were the best available, Cheney had the ability to take complete control on 9/11. According to Indira Singh (see immediately below), the functionality that Michael Ruppert claims Cheney utilized to control several agencies simultaneously is the exact same functionality offered by the computer software program, Ptech. This software was in the possession of the White House and all relevant federal agencies, as well as numerous multi-national corporations. It has the capability of setting up a shadow “surveillance” system that would unobtrusively observe what’s going on and to “backdoor”, that is, “intervene” to change events and/or make things happen.

Official “Investigations” and The 9/11 “Omission” Commission

Within days of 9/11, Bush and Cheney called Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle, requesting him to limit a Congressional investigation. After much stonewalling and withholding of evidence, a bi-partisan Congressional Committee was established in early 2002. However, when the Congressional report was finally released, the White House had deleted 28 pages dealing with the role of Saudi individuals and government officials in financing the terrorists, and also redacted all of the papers relating to the May 6 presidential briefing document from the CIA regarding the likelihood of a domestic terrorist air attack in the U.S. Members of Congress reported that the White House, FBI, CIA, and Justice Department were not cooperating with their 9/11 inquiry (New York Times, 10/5/02, CBS 5/23/02).

Eventually, mounting pressure from victim’s families finally forced the government to also set up an “independent” investigation. But it wasn’t until 441 days after the attacks that Bush finally appointed the so-called “independent” commission (Zwicker, 2006). Compare this with the six days it took the government to set up a committee to investigate the sinking of the Titanic, the nine days required to set up a committee to investigate the Pearl Harbor attacks, and the seven days it took to set up committees to investigate the assassination of JFK and the Challenger disaster. A New York Times editorialized that it was clear that the goal of all this stalling was “to contain an investigation the White House long opposed.”

Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter observed:

The Bush White House did everything in its power to derail an open inquiry. Then when faced with its inevitability, the president and his aides sought to limit its scope, its access, and its funding.

And when the commission was finally set up, the individuals who were hand-picked by the President to serve had tremendous conflicts of interest. As one researcher put it, “the official investigation was overseen by the very individuals who should have been investigated” (Schoenmann, 2004). Thus, when the White House finally appointed the commission, it cynically chose the ultimate insider and White House ally, Henry Kissinger, to head the investigation. In response to public ridicule and protest, Kissinger soon stepped down, whereupon Bush appointed another Republican crony, Dr. Philip Zelikow, to replace him. Essentially a member of the Bush Administration himself, Zelikow, thereupon became Executive Director of the “National Committee on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,” or simply the 9/11 Commission.

Zelikow’s insider status is confirmed by the facts that 1) he had been a member of the National Security Council in the Bush I administration, 2) he co-authored a book with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who was later to be the star witness of the commission, 3) he was part of George W. Bush’s transition team for the National Security Council and 4) he was appointed to Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. As such, he was present when immanent warnings of 9/11 were given to the White House. As Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow oversaw a staff of 70 “researchers”, mostly comprised of ex-FBI, ex-CIA, and ex-Department of Justice employees skilled in the arts of misinformation and disinformation. Zelikow had the power to determine what would be researched and what would not be researched. The researchers were divided into seven teams, six of which were controlled by Zelikow himself (from Griffin, 10/3/04). Thus, The 9/11 Commission Report, which finally appeared in 2003, was effectively co-authored by the White House; and the process essentially amounted to the White House investigating itself (Griffin, 2004).

Although the commission was purported to be “independent,” it was packed with “insiders”, each of whom had severe conflicts of interest and vested interests. The Commission was informally named the “Kean-Hamilton Commission” for it’s co-chairs. Governor Thomas Kean, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and former business partner with Saudi Arabian named Mahfooz, a major funder of Osama Bin Laden who also helped fund George W. Bush’s early oil business ventures. He co-chaired the Homeland Security Project and has Azerbajan oil connections. Congressman Lee Hamilton has been termed by some 9/11 researchers as “Mr. Cover-up” because he has not found evidence of official malfeasance in any of the four Congressional investigative committees on which he has served. These include the committees that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal and the October Surprise that denied Jimmy Carter the presidency in 1980. The 18 other hand-picked members of the commission also had serious conflicts of interest. None of the 9/11 victim’s family members were allowed to serve on the commission.

Experts critical of the 9/11 Commission, including some of the people actually conducting it, cite the lack of meaningful financial support and poor coordination with the agencies cleaning up the disaster site. Congress originally allotted only $3 million for investigation; this figure was later upped to $15 million. (By contrast, $50 million was allocated for the Challenger disaster and the Clinton failed Whitewater deals, whereas $40 million was allocated for Ken Starr’s “independent” investigation of Clinton’s sex scandal). Critics pointed out that the committee had no subpoena power, little staff support, and was even unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed. The commission was unable to use the Freedom of Information Act. The White House released only about 25% of some 11,000 documents requested by the commission, and the documents released were often heavily blacked out. Administration officials refused to testify under oath. Eventually, Bush, Cheney, and Rice did meet with the commission in secret, behind closed doors, but they were not under oath, and no tape recorders or transcripts of the conversations were allowed. And the government has still not released much of the forensic data, which is either classified, concealed, or has been destroyed. Zwicker (2004) notes that in a court of law, this pattern of behavior is known as “guilty demeanor.”

Harpers Magazine, Oct. 2004, called The 9/11 Commission Report a “whitewash, a cheat, and fraud.”

Perhaps the best critique of The 9/11 Commission Report is theology professor and 9/11 Scholar Dr. David Ray Griffin’s The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2004). Griffin distinguishes two main explanations for 9/11; “the official conspiracy theory” and “an alternative conspiracy theory.” Calling the 9/11 Commission Report a “571-page lie,” Griffin notes that the “omission commission” selects only the “information” that supports the official conspiracy theory and systematically omits virtually every fact which supports the alternative theory. Thus, the report begins with the a priori assumption that Osama Bin Laden and 19 terrorists did it and then selects only the evidence that confirms that assumption. Griffin finds a staggering number of omissions in the report. Of 400 questions posed by victim’s families over the course of two years, none were addressed in the report findings. The report lays complete blame for the attacks on the FAA. However, a taped interview with FAA employees taken on the evening of 9/11 by an Italian journalist was confiscated and destroyed. Indeed, the FBI thereafter placed gag orders on all FAA employees.

Griffin (2004) notes that the report reads like a novel and does not contain an index. Much of testimony was not taken under oath or recorded or transcribed. The footnotes go nowhere and refer to things that cannot be checked or verified. The report does not state who its author is, although, Griffin and John Judge suspect it is Zelikow himself. No family members were allowed to participate in the process and the report does not answer the the family members’ questions. In one of his lectures, Griffin (2004) asked rhetorically; ”Can I find a true sentence in the book? It’s hard to find any truth there!”

And although the 9/11 Commission Report confirms and codifies the official 9/11 myth, it offers no proof of that theory either. Thus, the “official conspiracy theory” has simply been made to stick by years of repetition and propaganda. Griffin identifies Richard Clark as the main architect of this myth. On the evening of 9/11, Clark convened a high level meeting in the situation room and stated: “We all know this was Al Qaeda. FBI and CIA will develop the case.” And this was the idea he had been leaking all day long.

In all, Griffin documents 115 lies that the 9/11 Commission Report uses to reinforce “The Big Lie” of the official narrative. Some of the essential facts and issues completely omitted from the report include:

1) At least 6 of the alleged hijackers are still alive today and have been interviewed on the BBC.

2) The problems of the three WTC buildings coming down. That:

a) collapses of the three WTC sky-scrapers have 10 characteristics common to controlled demolitions, and

b) no steel-reinforced buildings in history have ever collapsed due to fire,

c) the South Tower, which was hit after the North Tower and which had smaller fires, collapsed first (within 57 minutes)

3) That WTC 1 and 2 were supported by 47 massive steel core columns. The report falsely gives the impression that each of the buildings only had a hollow shaft in the center, thus enabling the “pancaking” of one floor upon another.

4) Steel and other evidence was rapidly removed from the ground zero site and thus could not be examined.

5) Building 7 was not struck by an airplane.

6) For no apparent reason, Building 7 suddenly collapsed.

7) Building 7’s owner, Larry Silverstein stated on PBS that he and the fire department “made the decision to pull” Building 7.

8) That Mayor Guliani had foreknowledge that the WTC buildings were going to collapse.

9) That Marvin Bush, the President’s brother and Ward Walker were essentially in charge of security of the WTC complex.

10) That many WTC employees reported there was a shut down order in the buildings, during which time many people had access to the buildings.

11) Although the Pentagon first put out a story that the Flight 77 collision produced a hole 5 stories high and 200 feet wide in the Pentagon’s West Wing (Washington Post, 11/12/01), Associated Press and military photos show the hole in the façade of the West Wing was no more than 16-18 ‘ in diameter and there were no marks on either side of the hole such as would have been produced by a Boeing 757. This hole in the Pentagon was far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757 with a wingspan of 125’ and a height of 44’.

12) Photos show that there was no wreckage of a Boeing 757 outside or inside the Pentagon.

13) Although the Pentagon initially reported there was no video footage of the crash, later, it released 5 frames, which definitely do not show a Boeing 757.

14) Within 5 minutes after the Pentagon was struck, FBI employees confiscated video footage of the Pentagon crash taken from a gas station, a hotel and a Transportation department building across the street.

15) The Pentagon is the most fortified and protected building in the world and should have been protected by missiles.

16) Politicians such as Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and Willie Brown were given advance warnings not to fly on 9/11.

17) Attorney David Schippers was trying to share information with the Justice Department that attacks were immanent, but was repeatedly ignored.

18) Bin Laden was treated by an American doctor in Dubai, UAE, where he was visited by the
CIA station chief, as well as members of the Saudi royal family.

19) Three members of Saudi Royal family and a Pakistani general who had advance knowledge of the attacks were later killed.

20) FBI headquarters blocked investigations of their own employees, such Robert Wright, Colleen Rowley, and Sibel Edmonds. Some of these FBI agents reported that they knew the targets and the date of the attacks over a month in advance. Specifically, in April, 2001, an informant gave FBI officers detailed information regarding the 9/11 plot to the effect that the attack would involve airplanes and would involve terrorists already in the U.S. and would be carried out in a few months. This report was given to Director Muller in the form of the “Phoenix Memo” four months prior to attack. However, agents and translators were told to keep quiet. Colleen Rowley also reported that specific information about the attack had been provided. Mike Fagaly, the FBI supervisor responsible for the cover-up and the hindering of investigations, was later promoted to head up translation of Arabic documents in Washington, D.C.

In addition, FBI translator and whistleblower, although Sibel Edmonds gave 3.5 hours of testimony to the 9/11 commission, her testimony did not appear in the report. In her testimony, she related that she and 100s of other FBI translators who were translating Arabic documents were told to slow down and even stop translation of materials that related to terrorist activities. They were informed this was so that they could claim they needed additional funding. Her supervisor, Malek Can Dickerson, prevented Edmonds and others from translating countless documents and forged signatures on top-secret documents. Dickerson then left the U.S. in 2002 and her case remains uninvestigated.

21) The head of Pakistani Intelligence was in Washington, D.C. during the week of 9/11 meeting with high-level politicians and military commanders. The week before 9/11, he wired $100,000 to alleged lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

22) The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) documents such as “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” call for “some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a New Pearl Harbor” in order to mobilize American public opinion in support of resource wars abroad.

23) There were pre-existing plans for war in both Afghanistan and Iraq prior to 9/11. The motivation for these invasions had to do mostly with securing access to oil reserves and building military bases in the regions involved.

24) Evidence of insider trading on Wall Street on 9/11 includes the record number of put options placed on United Airlines, American Airlines, Boeing, and Morgan Stanley Dean Whitter.

25) Evidence of U.S. and Saudi funding of Al Qaeda.

26) The commission ignored the fact that the following governments warned the U.S. of impending attacks: England, Israel, Germany, France, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Argentine, Russia, and even the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, this author suspects that these governments may be thereby complicit in helping to create the impression that the attacks came from Al Qaeda, rather than from within the U.S. government itself.

27) Perhaps most the most blatant of all lies was the revising of the official chronology of events on the morning of 9/11 by NORAD and The 9/11 Commission Report:

The Role of External Collaborators and the New World Order

Historian Webster Tarpley’s thesis in 9/11 Synthetic Terror; Made in USA (2006) is that 9/11 is the work of a rogue, private network, a “secret government,” that has all the faculties and abilities of the visible legal government. In a talk before the International Citizen’s Inquiry into 9/11 (2004), Tarpley identified this network as the CIA/Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones/Bush Family/ Neo-conservative/Oligarch faction. Certainly, the “neoconservatives” are most powerful faction in the U.S. government today. Their doctrine is ideological. They endorse terrorism, martial law, coups, propaganda, lies, and enforcement of a state of emergency as the way to rule the masses. Their academic guru is the late University of Chicago political scientist, Leo Strauss (a German Jew). His disciples today include Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Lutti, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ex-CIA director, James Woolsey, William Kristol, and Samuel Huntington, i.e., the people who essentially run the Bush Administration. In turn, Strauss’ ideological gurus were proto-Nazi Frederich Neitche, considered one of the four precursors of Hitlerism, Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, and Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmidt. With this intellectual lineage, it should come as no surprise that the Bush administration behaves ina criminal manner; stealing elections, detaining and torturing innocent civilians, conducting preemptive wars abroad, and using Gestapo tactics at home and conducts wars of aggression abroad.

So are we dealing here with modern fascists, an American Fourth Reich? Fascism is defined as “a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” The following statements also help us understand the nature of fascism:

Fascism should more properly be called “corporatism’, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.

Benito Mussolini, Fascist Italian dictator

We stand for the maintenance of private property…. We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.

Adolf Hitler

The liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President

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.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

Upton Sinclair

In 1944, Vice President Wallace was asked by the New York Times: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they? Wallace answered:

The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power…

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy…. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.

The goal of American fascists then and now, was perhaps not much different from The Grand Plan, described in George Orwell’s fictional classic, 1984 (written in 1948). As summarized by A. Jones (1996), the centuries-old “Grand Plan” of the world’s ruling elite is spelled out in 1984 in The Book, formally titled “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchal Collectivism.” According to The Book, societies from time immemorial have divided themselves into High, Middle, and Low classes. The goal of the High has always been to stay High, the goal of the Middle, Marx’s “petty bourgeois,” has been to become High, and goal of the Low has been to abolish class distinctions so that everyone is equal. Thus, the goal of the ruling elite became the establishment of dictatorial rule (for instance, by helping establish Bolshevism in Russia and Fascism in Germany). But the problem remained: How to ensure that class distinctions remained permanent and thus, stop the ancient Middle/High replacement cycle?

In order to ensure their oligarchal security, the High devised this “Grand Plan” to manipulate public opinion so they could eventually abolish individual privacy and strip the Middle and Low of their physical resources (homes, land, businesses, etc.). A revolt of the Middle and Lows could be avoided by keeping them “stupefied by poverty”, and thus, ignorant of any better way to live. The Book explains why this is necessary:

If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.

The “Grand Plan” called for the world to be geographically divided into three parts. Wars would be waged continuously between the three, not to conquer an opponent, but in order to control one’s subjects and maintain the hierarchical structure of society. Thus:

The goal of the wars is to enable the economy to be kept going for the benefit of the High, its military, and its bureaucracy and control personnel (the Thought Police, etc.) but at the same time to assure that any excess production capacity is prevented from producing consumer goods for the lower classes. That excess capacity is directed to producing excess military goods which will ultimately rust away or be destroyed in warfare; that is, the excess capacity is deliberately wasted in order to turn it away from the production of goods which would result in added leisure or well-being for the lower classes… (Jones’ summary of the “Grand Plan).

The Book explains the goal of the High (from 1984):

Why does the Party cling power? The Party seeks power entirely for it’s own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power… The object of power is power… And the real power is not power over things, but over men…. And how does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy- everything… We have cut the links between child and parent, between man and man, between man and woman. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. There will be no art, no literature, no science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness… If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- forever.

In Orwell’s classic, as in the real world, the High consists of the banking and corporate elites, the richest 1% of global society, “the plutocracy.” Their allegiance is not toward any nation, but rather to wealth and power. Jones (1996) believes that Orwell was convinced that such a plan actually exists. Certainly, there are uncanny parallels between Orwell’s fictional world the realities of our world today, including perpetual warfare, the drive for power as an end in itself, the requirement that all citizen’s practice “doublethink,” and state manipulation of the masses through fear and propaganda, etc. (Stratton, 2003).

Indeed, as in 1984, it seems the “private network” that is guiding the 9/11 operation is also the international, monied elite, most notably the 13 or so families that control most of the world’s banks (Paul, 2004). And although 9/11 was an inside job, there were clearly external collaborators. Evidence presented here strongly suggests that the governments and intelligence agencies of Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, in particular, played key roles in the crimes of 9/11 and the two subsequent wars of aggression justified by 9/11. The real “axis of war” (“axis of evil”?), then, appears to be the United States, Britain, and Israel. However, we must again recall Tarpley’s (2006) assertion that this is a rogue, private network. Thus, we can postulate that these governments, among others perhaps, have been infiltrated and taken over by this network. Based on its actions to date, it appears that this network hopes to destroy (via war, debt, outsourcing of jobs, etc.) and then privatize the United States. And apparently, this is their agenda for the entire world (Juhasc, 2006), perhaps somewhat as in Orwell’s “Grand Plan.”

The United States today is a “one party state.” The Republicans are currently ruled by the “neocons” and supported by a radical group of Christian Reconstructionists who believe that now is the time for Christians to assert dominion over the entire earth (Miller, 2006; Moyers, 2005). By dint of this rather strange, unholy alliance as well as the financial backing of “the corporatocracy” (the High), Republicans control all branches of government, the media and the military/intelligenc apparatus, as well as the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, etc. (Rampton and Stauber, 2004). All these institutions, in turn, apparently answer to this private nexus of international bankers and corporate leaders (oil/weapons/drugs, etc.).

Alexander Cockburn sums it up in Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press:

One half of the world’s people live on less than $2 a day… Ultimately, the “war on terrorism” is about global control by U.S. corporations and the World Trade Organization. It wants to strike down public ownership, social organizations and institutions, and substitute control by the strong and rich over the weak and poor… The “drug war” is a code word for social control and repression.

Since the Bush administration seems to be following the PNAC script, we can anticipate their next moves. It appears incontrovertible that one purpose of 9/11 is to unleash a world war in the Middle East. Indeed, this war has already begun with the American invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps soon, Iran, and with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The blueprint for such a conflict has already been drawn up in CFR-member Samuel P. Hungtington’s Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order (1995). This book calls for war against two groups, first the Islamic World, then China. It is now obvious to all that the main pretexts for the present war in Iraq, namely that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was involved in 9/11, were deliberate lies. New conflicts are now being orchestrated with Iran, with Lebanon, with Syria, etc., based on similar lies. And of course, on this fifth anniversary of 9/11, President Bush is trying re-kindle fear of “Islamic terrorists” so that Americans will accept his new war of aggression against Iran. Another motivation for war, however, is that U.S. global hegemony has much to do with the fact that oil has been traded on the world market in U.S. dollar (Clark, 2005). This has given Washington and London a chance to skim profits and control the market. Recently, Iran, then Iraq, and then Venezuela all decided to switch their sales of oil to the Euro. As this threatens the entire economic system in the U.S., it gives the “neocon oiligarchy” in Washington, D.C. another reason to orchestrate war in the Middle East.

Again, the Machiavellian cabal that stole the last two national elections (Greenwald, 2002; Miller, 2006) serves a private, international financial network.
This cabal is part of the same “secret government” that orchestrated the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassinations, the secret wars of the CIA, the Iran-Contra affair, the Vietnam War, World Wars I and II, and the Great Depression (Still, 2004, Schoenmann, 2004). I would speculate, along with Ruppert (2002), that immediate goal of the global “ruling elite” is to establish American domination over the entire world through the phony “war on terrorism.” However, this sequence of wars could easily lead us into an apocalyptic, and perhaps final, world war, accompanied by a total collapse of the world economy. Then, they may decide to abolish most, if not all nation states, including the U.S., in order to usher their long-sought “one world government.” They may or may not elect to utilize the structure of the U.N. as the organizational center. This long-sought “New World Order”, if it comes to pass, would be the culmination of their centuries-old dream of creating a more or less permanent “oligarchy of the wealthy”.

There can be little doubt that this “oligarcharcy of the wealthy’ already exists. The New York Times reports that the richest 1% of Americans own and control over 90% of the wealth. However, the true oligarchy is apparently much smaller. According to Townsend (1983), about 5000 people control the economy. And these 5000 or so individuals each have an average of about 14 corporate directorships. Schoenmann (2004) notes that because this international banking and corporate elite has hegemony over capital it is able to control the state so that “the state is a vehicle for subsidizing their needs and imposing their will.” However, according to Schoenmann: “They are an isolated handful of people. And their power rests on an acquiescence that is precarious and impermanent.”

Because the corporate-controlled media has refined the techniques of public relations, propaganda, and coercion, American’s have been deceived into believing that the main issues involve left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, capitalist vs. communist ideologies. But the big issues are civic issues and class issues (Miller, 2006). Up until today, this country did the best job of embodying the enlightenment doctrines that power will always try to limit freedom and that therefore, governments should be subjugated to the will of the people. But today, things that we take for granted, such as the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, are no longer really applicable. Separation of church and state, checks and balances in three branches of government, freedom of the press- the 4th estate, freedom of speech for individuals, the triumph of reason, all of these are in jeopardy. Today, there is a profound assault now on the very ideals upon which our country was based, the ideals of the founding fathers. Now, we urgently need to reclaim the ideals that made this nation possible.

But the words and spirit of our founding fathers and other leaders still resonate with many Americans:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

A government afraid of its citizens is democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson

Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither.

Benjamin Franklin

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to main silent.

Thomas Jefferson

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1918