THE DOCUMENT- Book 1 This is a book which has been circulating around the world via various distribution paths. This book is one of the few ways left to ensure that organized covert criminal efforts cannot, ever again, take over a community, a country or an economy. This book is the light which can wither corruption no matter how great its power. That lightsource is simply: DISCLOSURE. As a human on this planet, we each have a moral obligation to help, freely, redistribute this book to every person we come in contact with via mail, internet, posting, public reading, free publication, or other means. The source of this material is from hundreds of reporters and researchers around the world. All of the information provided here has sources noted and can be verfified with minimal research. This is What the mainstream special-interest media never tells you about how the world really works. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The US Power elite that pulls the most strings of the administration are: Sam Nunn Donald McHenry Donald Fites Helene Kaplan Franklin Thomas Carl Reichardt Michael Miles ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reuters Business Report Halliburton Shares Fall, SEC Starts Probe By Andrew Kelly HOUSTON (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL - News) shares fell as much as 7.5 percent on Wednesday, after the oilfield services and construction company said regulators were investigating its treatment of cost overruns on some construction projects as revenues. The Dallas-based company said late on Tuesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun a preliminary investigation and that it expected to receive a formal request for documents or a subpoena in the next few days. Halliburton said it planned to cooperate fully with the investigation, which it believes was triggered by a New York Times article on May 22 alleging the company adopted "aggressive" accounting policies to boost its revenues. After falling to a low of $17.90, shares later recovered some to close 63 cents, or 3.3 percent, lower at $18.72. They were the seventh most actively traded issue on the New York Stock Exchange on volume of 10.6 million shares. The accounting policies under investigation were adopted in 1998 while Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton. He held that post from 1995 to 2000. Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise referred questions about the SEC probe to Halliburton. Analysts who follow the company were unfazed by news of the agency's investigation. "I really don't expect much to come out of it," said Johnson Rice analyst Joe Agular. Analysts and investors discussed The New York Times article with Halliburton executives at a meeting on the day it was published and did not seem too concerned about it, Agular said. DISPUTED AMOUNTS Under the policy adopted in 1998, Halliburton began to recognize some of its unresolved claims against engineering and construction clients as revenue, even though the amounts of money at stake were still in dispute. Recent annual reports show that Halliburton booked $234 million in such claims as receivables at the end of 2001, up from $89 million at the end of 1998. The documents do not disclose what portion of those claims were booked as revenues. Halliburton said it believed the accounting practices under investigation are in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles for the construction industry. Agular, an oilfield services analyst, said he had spent some time looking over the accounts of other engineering and construction firms and concluded that Halliburton's accounting procedures did not differ much from theirs. Dennis Beresford, former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the nation's accounting rulemaker, said it was fairly common for companies to book revenues for cost overruns when they believe they can secure additional payments. "My understanding is that companies have to make their best estimate of what the total contract value will be and obviously be cautious about contract overruns, but I don't think it's unprecedented for companies to be able to do that," said Beresford, currently a professor at the University of Georgia. Halliburton's shares came under heavy selling pressure in December and early January, touching a 15-year low of $8.75 on Jan. 4, because of investor concerns about the company's exposure to hundreds of thousands of asbestos damages claims. The shares subsequently recovered following repeated management assurances that the company will not be ruined by its asbestos liabilities. Nevertheless, the current value of the shares is still well short of their 52-week high of $48 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday April 10th,2002" and Bush continues to insist that Israel not defend itself from the terrorists, (hmmm, looks like Bush is not with civilization, he's with the terrorists after all) , we thought it would be appropriate, because so many authors believe there is a Bush connection to the crime, to take a look at one of the mysteries of our time: The JFK assassination. Few believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, murdered President John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963. Was there a Bush connection? Perhaps our explorations of that mystery may help to throw some light on what makes Bush tick and why Bush is with the terrorists instead of with civilization. "George Bush, the forty-first president of the United States, denies that he had any relationship with the CIA prior to his 1976 appointment as its director, though there have been charges that he was connected to the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald. In a November 29, 1963, memo, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover mentioned that an FBI agent and a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency briefed "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" about the assassination. The Agency produced a George Bush, allegedly a former employee, who denied ever having been briefed about the assassination and claimed he had worked for the CIA for only six months in a low-level position examining photographs unrelated to President Kennedy's murder. Discovered after the death of George DeMohrenschildt, the man many believe was Lee Harvey Oswald's CIA control officer, was the following entry in DeMohrenschildt's personal telephone book: "Bush, George H. W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio, also Zapata Petroleum Midland." Plausible Denial" http://www.bobsjfkpage.com/bush.htm "Someone who described himself as "just a patsy", Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin, allegedly was provided with his job at the Texas School Book Depository through the efforts of an alleged former Nazi agent, alleged former CIA agent, named George De Morenschildt." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1102 George De Morenschildt was scheduled to meet with former federal investigator GAETON FONZI, who was investigating JFK's assassination, when De Morenschildt was found dead from a shot-gun blast. A description of the scene follows: "Also found in the case was a two- page personal affidavit which indicated it was written on March 11, 1977, in Brussels, Belgium, which made reference to his friendship with LEE HARVEY OSWALD, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November, 1963. Found in the deceased's pants pocket was newspaper article from the March 20, 1977 edition of the Dallas Morning News, which indicated that the deceased may possibly have been involved in, or have knowledge of, some type of conspiracy in the above-mentioned assassination. This, coupled with the fact that an investigator from the U. S. House of Representatives Committee on Assassinations had been at the residence earlier looking for the victim, indicated to this writer that the death of this individual could possibly be of major importance." "During this time, between 1000 hours and 1100 hours, an investigator for the House Committee on Assassinations, named GAETON FONZI, appeared at the Tilton residence inquiring about the victim and his whereabouts." Fonzi claims that Bush Sr.'s name and phone number were found In De Morenschildt's address book. Fonzi is the author of Last Investigation: A Former Federal Investigator Tells What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK Trade Paperback, 464 Pages, Thunder's Mouth Press, October 1994 ISBN: 1-56025-079-8 "De Mohrenschildt's personal telephone book, discovered after his alleged suicide in 1977, contained this entry: "Bush, George. H. W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland." (Footnote: "Bush name in de Mohrenschildt notebook: Mark Lane, Plausible Denial p. 332. Lane also notes odd similarities among Bush's Zapata Offshore oil company, the "Operation Zapata" code name given to the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the names of the invasions ships "Barbara" (Bush's wife's name) and "Houston" (Bush's business abode). ....deMohrenschildt later told his wife Jeanne, he was "playing a double game". (pp.273)*** Five hours after the assassination, Ilya Mamantov, who had never seen Oswald, received a phone call from Jack Crichton asking him to serve as interpreter for the interrogation of Marina (Oswald-widow of Lee Harvey Oswald). Crichton was in 1963 the president of Nafco Oil & Gas, Inc., and a former head of Military Intelligence. According to information uncovered by the Garrison investigations, Crichton had been among a small group of Army Intelligence officials *** George de Mohrenschildt, in his Warren Commission testimony, would describe Mamantov as the one "excessive rightist" of the Dallas's Russian émigré community. Interestingly Mrs. Igor Voshinin told me in 1992 that Mamantov "knew George Bush very well". Bush was president of Zapata Oil in Houston in 1963. "Mamantov died recently," said Voshinin, "but he told me that he had received a very charming letter from President Bush. I remember one line: 'You and I did it'." (She could not recall the context.) pp680 .....After the Watergate break-in where several ex -CIA men and Cuban exiles were caught in 1972, Richard Nixon expressed worry on the White House tape-recording system that this might open up "the whole Bay of Pigs thing." Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman later wrote of his belief that the president was really talking about the Kennedy assassination. George Bush, a Texas oilman in 1963, is also found on the periphery of the assassination. As noted earlier in this book, his name appeared in George de Mohrenschildt's personal notebook and bush was a friend of Marina Oswald's translator, Ilya Mamantov. When George Bush became CIA director (1976-7, Nagell is on record as having written to him about Robert Morrow's book "Betrayal" The White House has denied that the president was the "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" idntified in a Novermber 1963, FBI memorandum as having been briefed by the FBI on the reaction of Miam's Cuban exiles. But there is no denying the existence of another recently released FBI memo, which begins: "On Novermber 22, 1963, Mr. George H.W. Bush, 5525 Briar, Houston, Texas, telephonically advised that he wanted to relate some hearsay that he had heard in recent week, date and source unknown. He advised that on James Parrott had been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston." An FBI investigation into Bush's charge failed to turn up any connection whatsoever tying James Parrott to the assassination. Parrott was then an active member of Houston's Young Republicans, who had been involved in picketing members of the Kennedy administration. Bush was then serving as campaign manager for future Republican senator John Tower. Since Parrott's group had come out strongly against a then nascent alliance between Texas Republicans and representatives of the petroleum industry, Bush and Parrott were political enemies..... "(pp. 709-10)" http://www.smirkingchimp.com/viewtopic.php?topic=2499&forum=10 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/2704 http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr1195-clark.html "The Formation of the Clark Panel: More of the Secret Team at Work? By Lisa Pease The Clark Panel was the medical panel convened almost immediately after Ramsey Clark had been approved for his appointment as Attorney General in 1967. The panel was clearly convened to put to rest the growing doubts caused by the exposures of Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg, other researchers and even in late 1966, LIFE magazine itself. All of the above talked about the evidence of conspiracy, and the implication is that the medical evidence would either show conspiracy, or else, signs of tampering. What brought it to a crux was Jim Garrison's all-out investigation of the assassination, which, in 1967, was making official story proponents very nervous. One of the key questions raised by the New Orleans DA was this: Why hadn't the Warren Commission members examined the autopsy photographs and X-rays?" Ramsey Clark FOUNDED the International Action Center http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1514 Clark also dutifully backed the official findings that Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan each acted alone in the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers.*** Carlos Marcello biographer John Davis asserts that the kingpin continued to funnel money to (Ramsey) Clark('s father Tom Clark) when he, (Tom Clark) sat on the high court.*** ( http://www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0093.htm "FBI records indicate that when in 1961 Carlos Marcello had become one of Bobby Kennedy's targets for deportation, the New Orleans don contacted Santo Trafficante.) (Ramsey) Clark was complicit with Hoover's COINTELPRO. Following the 1967 riots in Newark and Detroit, he directed the FBI to investigate whether the unrest was the result of some "scheme or conspiracy." He instructed Hoover to develop "sources or informants in black nationalist organizations, SNCC and other less publicized groups." The result was Hoover's extensive "ghetto informant program. "In 1968, Clark prosecuted Dr. Benjamin Spock for advocating draft resistance. "As late as 1968, while campaigning for Lyndon Johnson in Wisconsin, Clark was shouting at anti-war protesters to take their grievances to Hanoi rather than Washington," wrote John B. Judis in a 1991 expose on Clark in The New Republic. In June 1980, with America mesmerized by the Iran hostage crisis, he joined a forum on "Crimes of America" in Tehran-the first of many such junkets. The '80s saw him globetrotting to schmooze with any dictator who happened to be on the White House shit-list. After the US bombing of Libya in 1986, he met with Col. Moammar Qadaffi in Tripoli. Things started to smell really fishy in 1989, when Clark represented ultra-right cult-master Lyndon LaRouche and six cohorts on conspiracy and mail fraud charges. The LaRouchies had been bilking their naive followers of their savings by getting them to cough up their credit card numbers. Clark (who had been silent when the real COINTELPRO was conducted under his watch at the Justice Department) now charged that the LaRouche case was an "outgrowth" of COINTELPRO. He said the case was manufactured by LaRouche's "powerful enemies within the establishment" who targeted the cult because of its crusade "to combat the traffic in so-called 'recreational drugs'...and the practice of usury." Clark was echoing the standard line of the LaRouche organization, which paradoxically pleads government persecution while boasting of its connections to the intelligence establishment (uniquely merging paranoia with delusions of grandeur). In fact, the cult has exchanged information with the FBI, and farmed out its "intelligence" services to Panama's Gen. Manuel Noriega. LaRouche's 1970s campaigns for a "War on Drugs" and space-based missile defense eerily predicted Reagan-era programs." http://shadow.autono.net/sin001/clark.htm "Boggs, Thomas Hale (1914-72?), U.S. lawyer and political leader, born in Long Beach, Miss.; U.S. congressman (Democrat) from Louisiana 1941-43, 1947-72, majority leader 1971-72; lost in plane flight over Alaska in Oct. 1972; wife, Corinne Morrison Claiborne (Lindy) (born 1916), succeeded to his seat 1973" http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/0250/02597632_Q.html#top "On Nov. 29, 1963, President Johnson created the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy to investigate and report on the facts relating to the tragedy. It functioned neither as a court nor as a prosecutor. Chief Justice Earl Warren was appointed chairman. Other members of the bipartisan commission were Senators Richard B. Russell of Georgia and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Representatives Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, Allen W. Dulles, and John J. McCloy. J. Lee Rankin was the general counsel. The report was published on Sept. 24, 1964." http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/0100/01001472_A.html "Congressman Hale Boggs, the only dissenting member of the Warren Commission who refused to sign the Warren Report until just before it was submitted... and who disappeared on an airplane flight in Alaska in 1972." http://www.nidlink.com/~akmoob/roberts.html "Rep. Hale Boggs rejected the so-called single bullet theory, an essential part of the Commission's single-assassin thesis." http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/faculty/dwilkes_more/jfk_11alone.html "According to Hale Boggs, a Warren Commission member: "Hoover lied his eyes out to the commission" http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/conspiracy_theories/Texas_Monthly/Texas_M onthly_The_Consp_Theories.html Louisiana Congressman Boggs had warned JFK not to go to Texas, he died in a plane crash... http://www.l0pht.com/pub/tezcat/Martial_Law/North_and_Constitution.txt "Disappearing Witnesses: what does "justice" mean.. with the conclusions. Hale Boggs did not follow Earl Warren and his disciples. Hetotally disagreed. Hale Boggs was in a plane crash lost over frozen Alaska. ..http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/DW.html [More results from www.ratical.org]US News: Pilot politics: keeping the skies safe and free the death of Rep. Hale Boggs in a 1972 small plane crash in Alaska, prompted Congress require "emergency locator transmitters" on all flights. Politics had ... http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990809/kennedy.htm Home Page... to Congress, Boggs became a well-regarded Congressional wife. When her husband was lost in an Alaskan plane crash, Boggs was the perfect choice to succeed him.Shackelford1d ... why he qualifies" as a mysterious death. He lists Boggs' death as "plane crash," though the plane was never found. *Thomas Davis: Checked into a New Orleans http://www.assassinationweb.com/shack1d.htm http://teaminfinity.com/c1.html Ithaca College News ... in the House of Representatives; when he was killed in a plane crash her mother, Lindy Boggs, was subsequently elected to the same House seat http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j041162.htm "In his Texas days, the politically ambitious elder Clark was cultivated as a useful connection by New Orleans mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello, and many feared Clark's new job would afford organized crime access to higher levels of power.AG Clark was repeatedly mired in corruption scandals. In 1945, he was accused of taking a bribe to fix a war profiteering case. In 1947, after he had four convicted Chicago mob bosses sprung from prison before their terms were complete, Congress appointed a committee to investigate-and was effectively road blocked by Tom's refusal to hand over parole records.Truman admitted to a biographer that "Tom Clark was my biggest mistake." "Roselli was a Las Vegas based Mafia figure and a link in the CIA-Mafia chain. He had close ties to three Mafia bosses associated with the Kennedy assassination: Sam Giancana of Chicago, Santos Trafficante of Florida, and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. According to columnist Jack Anderson, Roselli told him that mob leaders had ordered Jack Ruby to kill Lee Harvey Oswald because they were afraid he might crack and reveal their part in the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. In July 1976, shortly before Roselli was to be questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, his body was discovered floating in Dumfoundling Bay in Miami. He had been strangled and stabbed; his legs had been sawed off and stuffed into an empty oil drum along with the rest of his body. It is believed that Roselli was killed by someone working for Trafficante because he was talking too much about the Kennedy assassination. Conspiracy" http://www.bobsjfkpage.com/roselli.htm http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/george.gif Johnny Roselli http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/roselli.jpg Santo Trafficante Jr. http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/traff2.gif Carlos Marcello http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/marcello.gif "Crime and Cover-Up (p. 44): Here Scott discusses links between Ruby, Roselli, and Ramsey Clark. "One of Ruby's close personal friends' and character witnesses for his liquor license was Hal Collins (22 H 928), brother-in-law of prominent local attorney Robert L. Clark, the brother and uncle respectively of U.S. Attorneys General Tom and Ramsey Clark (CD 4.371)Robert L. Clark and his law partner Maury Hughes. arranged the...parole in 1947 of John Roselli." http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler4.h tml MOB RULE The mob rule in Miami EXPRESSED IN THE STORMING OF the Miami-Dade election canvassing board on the 37th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 22nd, 2000, was not the first such incident in Bush Family History. In 1950 Prescott Bush, father of Former President Bush, bussed caravan after caravan of McCarthyites into Connecticut in his unsuccessful US Senate run against Senator William Benton. Prescott Bush's name was actually on a list submitted to Nixon by Eisenhower as a possible Nixon running-mate in 1960. Fortunately Nixon wisely chose another running mate. Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush, was on yet another list submitted to Nixon , this time by Strom Thurmond, to be Nixon's running mate in 1968. Nixon again chose a different running mate instead. The only prominent Republican to boycott Nixon's inauguration in 1969 was George Herbert Walker Bush, who instead saw his old friend Lyndon Johnson off at the airport. When Agnew was forced to resign as Nixon's vice president Nixon was unable to get John Connally, former Democratic Governor of Texas, shot in the same car as JFK on November 22nd, 1963, approved as his Vice President and settled instead on former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford. Nixon was told by George Herbert Walker Bush at his last cabinet meeting: "Mr. President, you HAVE TO resign." Nixon had notably failed to name George Herbert Walker Bush as his Vice President when Agnew was forced to resign. In 1964 George Herbert Walker Bush had run for US Senate in Texas against Ralph Yarborough, the liberal Democratic US Senator whose intra-party feud with then Democratic Governor John Connally had brought JFK to Texas in the first place in an effort to heal the Yarborough-Connally feud. The two men hated each other so much neither would ride in the same car with the other. Thus Connally rode with JFK in the Dallas motorcade and Yarborough rode with LBJ. Had Connally died as a result of his wounds speculation would have centered on Bush's rival Yarborough as the person responsible for the shootings. George Herbert Walker Bush actually called the FBI, not the Secret Service, to report that a friend of his was planning to shoot JFK in Houston, not Dallas, later that week. Bush's call to the FBI was TWO HOURS BEFORE JFK WAS SHOT. "JOE MCCARTHY CAME INTO CONNECTICUT THREE TIMES THAT YEAR (1950) TO CAMPAIGN FOR BUSH AND AGAINST THE DEMOCRATS. BUSH HIMSELF MADE CHARGES OF " KOREA, COMMUNISM AND CORRUPTION " INTO A SLICK CAMPAIGN PHRASE AGAINST BENTON, WHICH THEN TURNED U P AS A NATIONAL REPUBLICAN SLOGAN. THE RESPONSE WAS DISAPPOINTING. ONLY SMALL CROWDS TURNED OUT TO HEAR JOE MCCARTHY, AND BENTON WAS NOT HURT. MCCARTHY'S PRO-BUSH RALLY IN NEW HAVEN, IN A HALL THAT SEATED 6,000, DREW ONLY 376 PEOPLE. BENTON JOKED ON THE RADIO THAT " 200 OF THEM WERE MY SPIES. Prescott Bush resigned from the Yale Board of Fellows for his campaign, and the board published a statement to the effect that the ' Yale vote' should support Bush-despite the fact that William Benton was a Yale man, and in many ways identical in outlook to Bush. Yale's Whiffenpoof singers appeared regularly for Prescott's campaign. None of this was particularly effective, however, with the voting population Then Prescott Bush ran into a completely unexpected problem. At that time, the old Harriman eugenics movement was centered at Yale University. Prescott Bush was a Yale trustee, and his former Brown Brothers Harriman partner, Lawrence Tighe, was Yale's treasurer. In that connection, a slight glimmer of the truth about the Bush-Harriman firm's Nazi activities now made its way into the campaign. Not only was the American Eugenics Society itself headquartered at Yale, but all parts of this undead fascist movement had a busy home at Yale. The coercive psychiatry and sterilization advocates had made the Yale/New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical School their laboratories for hands-on practice in brain surgery and psychological experimentation. And the Birth Control League was there, which had long trumpeted the need for eugenical births-fewer births for parents with " inferior " bloodlines. Prescott's partner Tighe was a Connecticut director of the league, and the Connecticut league's medical advisor was eugenics advocate Dr. Winternitz of Yale Medical School.Now in 1950, people who knew something about Prescott Bush knew that he had very unsavory roots in the eugenics movement. There were then, just after the anti-Hitler war, few open advocates of sterilization of " unfit " or " unnecessary " people. (That would be revived later, with the help of General Draper and his friend George Bush.) But the Birth Control League was public-just about then it was changing its name to the euphemistic " Planned Parenthood. "Then, very late in the 1950 senatorial campaign, Prescott Bush was publicly exposed for being an activist in that section of the old fascist eugenics movement. Prescott Bush lost the election by about 1,000 out of 862,000 votes. He and his family blamed the defeat on the expose The defeat was burned into the family's memory, leaving a bitterness and perhaps a desire for revenge." Magic Bullet Theory http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/assassinations/jfk/basi cev.htm One of the biggest lies ever foisted onto the American people was the "single bullet theory", a concoction by Arlen Specter (currently on the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee), who asked us to believe that a shot was made from a sixth story window, entered the back of Kennedy yet rose and flew out the neck, altering it's trajectory to cause seven wounds in Kennedy and Governor Connally in the seat ahead of Kennedy. But now comes: "Tuesday, 27 March, 2001, 07:59 GMT 08:59 UK Scientist questions JFK lone killer theory John F Kennedy was killed on 22 November, 1963 Two gunmen were almost certainly involved in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963, according to a new scientific article. A British forensic scientist backs the so-called "grassy knoll" theory that a second gunman shot at the president at exactly the same moment as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from a book depository. The scientist, DB Thomas, has examined recordings of radio channels used by police in the Texas city of Dallas, where the murder took place. In his article, he says five separate gunshot sounds can be heard on one of the tapes at exactly the time the president was killed. 'Mistakes' Mr Thomas says mistakes were made in synchronising conversations on the two police frequencies, leading earlier investigations to dismiss the theory that a second gunman opened fire from a grassy knoll overlooking the presidential motorcade. His article is published in Science and Justice, the journal of Britain's Forensic Science Society. "One of the sounds matches the echo pattern of a test shot fired from the grassy knoll," he writes in his paper. That was also the key finding of a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Assassinations that concluded 22 years ago Mr Thomas believes it was the shot from the knoll, seven-tenths of a second earlier, that killed the president. G Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the House Committee on Assassinations welcomed the new findings. "This is an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks," he said. "We thought there was a 95% chance there was a shot from a grassy knoll. He puts it at 96.3%. Either way, that is beyond reasonable doubt." http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1244000/1244907 stm http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/513 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/3028 http://frost.slimy.com/crypto/cyphernomicon/chapter16/16.14.html "Earlier CIA Bank Scandals (Nugan Hand and Castle Bank) Nugan Hand Bank, Australia Frank Nugan, Sydney, Australia, died in 1980 apparent suicide, but clearly rigged Mercedes, rifle with no fingerprints, position all wrong evidence that he'd had a change of heart was praying daily, and was thinking about getting out of the business set up Nugan Hand Bank in 1973 private banking services, tax free deposits in Caymans used by CIA agents William Colby on Board, and was their lawyer links to organized crime, e.g., Santo Trafficante, Jr. Florida, heroin, links to JFK assassination Trafficante was known as "the Cobra" and handled many transactions for the CIA money laundering for Asian drug dealers Golden Triangle George Bush's son, George W. Bush, was involved with Nugan Hand: linked to William Quasha, who handled NH deals in Phillipines owners of Harken Energy Corp. a Texas based company that bought G.W. Bush's oil company "Spectrum 7" in 1986 later got offshore drilling rights to Bahrain's oil with G.W. Bush on the Board of Directors Castle Bank, Bahamas, involved with Trafficante, CIA plot to kill Castro, and possible links to JFK assassination Vesco active in drug trade also involved in purchase of land for Walt Disney World 27,000 acres near Orlando" R RATED BUSH'S BILLION DOLLAR DISNEY DEAL "-Gov. George W. Bush was on the board of directors of a company that raised $1 billion to finance Walt Disney Co. movies" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:33:21 -0700 From: Peter Phillips Subject: Corporate Media Defaults on 9-11 Corporate Media Defaults on 9-11 By Peter Phillips Corporate media are ignoring many important questions related to 9-11 and have defaulted on their First Amendment obligation to keep the American electorate informed on key societal issues. Corporate news star Dan Rather in a recent interview with Matthew Engel for The Guardian admitted that the surge of patriotism after 9-11 resulted in journalists failing to ask the tough questions. Rather stated, "It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it." When was the right time to question the levels and intensity of civilian deaths during and after the bombings of Afghanistan? According to CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson there was never a good time. In a memo to his CNN correspondents overseas Isaacson wrote, "We're entering a period in which there's a lot more reporting and video from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. You must make sure people [Americans] understand that when they see civilian suffering there it's in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States." Isaacson later told the Washington Post, "Šit seems perverse to focus too much on the causalities of hardship in Afghanistan." Marc Herold, an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire compiled a summation of the death toll in Afghanistan-saying that over 4,000 civilians died from U.S. bombs-more than died at the World Trade Center. Yet only a handful of newspapers covered his story. Time magazine reviewed Herold's report but dismissed it stating, "In compiling the figures, Herold drew mostly on world press reports of questionable reliability." Time went on to cite the Pentagon's unsubstantiated claim that civilian casualties in Afghanistan were the lowest in the history of war. We were all shocked after 9-11. That same shock may well have extended to families being bombed in Afghanistan, but our corporate media refused to investigate civilian deaths. Media chose instead to do be "patriotic" and propagandize the public on behalf of the Pentagon. Other big questions abound. Both the BBC and the Times of India published reports several months before 9-11 that the U.S. was then planning an invasion of Afghanistan. The Unocal oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea region was to be built through Afghanistan and the U.S. needed a cooperative government in power. Agence France-Press in March 2002 reported that the U.S.-installed interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has worked with the CIA since the 1980s and was once a paid consultant for Unocal. An explosive post-9-11 report emerged from France regarding how the Bush administration, shortly after assuming office, slowed down FBI investigations of al-Qaeda and terrorist networks in Afghanistan in order to deal with the Taliban on oil. This slowdown has been related to the resignation of FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill, expert in the al-Qaeda network and in charge of that investigation. O'Neill later took a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center where he died "helping with rescue efforts." And what ever happened to the story in the San Francisco Chronicle September 29, 2001 about how millions of dollars were made on pre-9-11 put options on United & American Airlines stocks? Or what about the October 31 report in the French daily Le Figaro describing how Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official while in the American Hospital in the United Arab Emirates receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July? Corporate media today is interlocked and dependent on government sources for news content. Gone are the days of deep investigative reporting teams challenging the powerful. Media consolidation has downsized newsrooms to the point where reporters serve more as stenographers than researchers. Emerging in the vacuum are hundreds of independent news sources. Independent newspapers, magazines, websites, radio and TV are becoming more widely available. Labeled by the corporate as having "questionable reliability", emerging news sources are building their own audiences worldwide. For listings and links to independent news sources try www.indymedia.org. http://globalresearch.ca/, http://www.projectcensored.org/, http://www.mediachannel.org/, Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director Project Censored a media research group. He can be reached at peter.phillips@sonoma.edu Project Censored Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Ave. Rohnert Park, CA 94928 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE ============================================= INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT ============================================= ------------------------------------------------------------- "Independent Analysis for the Promotion of Human Rights, Justice and Peace" ------------------------------------------------------------- 20th May 2002 OSAMAGATE BREAKS OPEN OVER 9/11 INTELLIGENCE FAILURE THINK-TANK RELEASES EVIDENCE ON SEPTEMBER 11th TERRORIST ATTACKS Dear Friends, The recent controversy over "who knew what when on September 11" coincides with the release of a detailed 400-page study of the attacks on America, The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, by a British political scientist at the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD), documenting that the White House and the CIA must have known more than they admit. The author, the Institute's Executive Director Nafeez M. Ahmed, had this to add: "Both the Democrats and the Republicans are playing political games. We need a 9/11 inquiry not to point fingers, but to understand why the U.S. intelligence community failed to act, in spite of specific information on an Al-Qaeda hijacking attempt in the U.S.A., and on suspected Al-Qaeda members training at U.S. flight academies. Why weren't these suspected terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden apprehended and interrogated?" To help clarify the current debate, the Institute has published Chapter 4 of the study, 'Warning Signs of 9-11 and Intelligence Failures,' on the Internet at the Los Angeles-based Media Monitors Network (MMN). This meticulously researched paper on the warnings of the September 11th terrorist attacks received by U.S. intelligence, based on press reports and intelligence experts, is fully and freely available at: 'DID BUSH KNOW? WARNINGS SIGNS OF 9-11 AND INTELLIGENCE FAILURES' Media Monitors Network (MMN), Los Angeles, 18th May 2002, http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq36.html Ahmed, who was recently named a Global Expert on War, Peace and International Affairs by The Freedom Network of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation in Chicago, is a recognised authority on the September 11th terrorist attacks. His comprehensive study of the attacks, The War on Freedom, has been featured on national Canadian TV in a documentary series on September 11th by investigative journalist Barry Zwicker, an award-winning reporter on CBC-TV and CTV, and Producer and Host of MediaFile, Canadian Vision TV, http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/mediafile_Feb4.htm. Although the paperback edition will be out in June 2002, the ebook has been released and can be purchased online. The paperback may be ordered in advance. For further information please see http://www.thewaronfreedom.com. Please use this information as best you can in the struggle against injustice worldwide. We would greatly appreciate it if you forwarded this material - particularly our research paper 'Did Bush Know?' - to your friends, family and colleagues, in an effort to generate public awareness. Thank you. Warm regards, Institute for Policy Research & Development Suite 414, 91 Western Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 2NW, United Kingdom. Tel: +44(0)1273 32 95 30 Fax: +44(0)1273 70 60 30 Email: info@globalresearch.org Web: http://www.globalresearch.org See the new 9/11 study: http://www.thewaronfreedom.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- What Do You Think? We've seen some posts out there suggesting that there is something suspicious about the fact that Chandra Levy's remains have just turned up in Washington, D.C. 's Rock Creek Park. Chandra is even seen by some to be a distraction from other events. We don't see her as a distraction at all. We're really interested in plane crashes and who has died in them over the years. (Was Salem bin Laden an embarrassing witness? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1326 LET US HOPE THERESA LE PORE STAYS OFF AIRPLANES http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/263 We're interested at this moment in one of those "plane crash victims" Can you guess who we are talking about? Before we mention her name we'd like to reiterate that we do not believe that Bush created or sponsored or authorized the attacks on America of September 11th, 2001. We do not believe they were another Reichstag Fire. Nor do we believe that Bush was in any responsible for ordering her death. "The Chandra Levy case also brought the old cast from the Monica Lewinsky scandal back in force, with conservatives Barbara Olson, Ann Coulter and William Bennett reprising their roles as the nation's moral arbiters." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/080901a.html "Barbara Olson*** served as the Republican chief counsel for the congressional committee investigating the Clintons' involvement in "Travelgate" and "Filegate." http://www.challengerbooks.com/Nonfictionbooks/Nonfictionbooks.htm "Barbara Olson was the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson. She was aboard American Flight 77 from Dulles International Airport when it crashed into the Pentagon. She twice called her husband as the plane was being hijacked and told him the attackers were using knife-like instruments. Barbara Olson was a chief investigator for the House Government Reform Committee in the mid-1990s. She later became a lawyer on the staff of Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles, before branching out on her own as a TV commentator and private lawyer. She was a frequent critic of the Clinton administration and wrote a book about Hillary Rodham Clinton." http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/victimsprofiles/victims_o.htm The thing to remember about Barbara Olson is that not only was she very respected among Republicans, not only did she have an investigative background, not only was she extremely interested in the Chandra Levy case, but her husband was U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson. We think that somebody out there, and we do NOT mean Bush, thought that Barbara might turn into another Martha Mitchell. For those of you who do not know who Martha Mitchell was: "The outspoken wife of John Mitchell was always considered a "loose cannon" in Washington. She called members of the press on several occasions to record her disgust about Watergate. On one occasion she declared herself a political prisoner, saying "I'm not going to stand for all those dirty things that go on. If you could see me, you wouldn't believe it. I'm black and blue." Bob Woodward called her "the Greek chorus of the Watergate drama- sounding her warnings to all who would hear." It was the position of many in the Nixon administration that Martha was a total nutcase, and that John Mitchell was forced to rely on his corrupt staff a great deal in order to look after her. It was the position of Martha that the Nixon administration sedated her and held her against her will to keep her from speaking out." http://nixonrules.freeservers.com/martha.html "John N. Mitchell, Principal in Watergate, Dies at 75 By Lawrence Meyer Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 10, 1988; Page A01 John N. Mitchell, the only United States attorney general to serve a prison sentence, died here yesterday after suffering a heart attack. He was 75. Mitchell, a friend, confidant and law partner of Richard M. Nixon, became a familiar face on television screens across America in the summer of 1973 as he sparred with members and staff of the Senate Watergate Committee probing his role-and Nixon's-in the Watergate scandal." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stori es/mitchobit.htm "United States, November 8, 1988 : George and Barbara Bush watch the election results. At the age of 64, George Bush becomes America's 41st president." http://www.chez.com/georgebush/en/images/election1988/ What would have happened if Barbara Olson had not been killed on September 11th, 2001? Would she have become another Martha Mitchell, finally turning her overwhelmingly compelling interest in the Chandra Levy case into an investigation of Dubya's possible role in that case? "Jan. 3, 2000 According to the National Enquirer, the New York Post, and Tony Snow on FOX TV, Tammy Phillips, a 35-year old stripper, claims she just ended an 18-month affair with one George W. Bush of Houston, Texas (by way of New Haven, Connecticut and Kennebunkport, Maine). She says the affair lasted from late 1996 until June of last year. She told the National Enquirer that she met Dubya at a hotel in Texas and when he saw her micro-mini skirt, he "combusted." Could Dubya have reacted the same way to Chandra if he had met her? Did Dubya know Chandra? There ARE sexual predators roaming the earth. One may live at the White House." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1482 please see: "She (Chandra Levy) went to Bush's (January 20th, 2001) inauguration and attended one of the balls." http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/25/pitn.00.html CONDIT CHANDRA CHENEY AND BUSH http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1540 WHY DID IT TAKE CHENEY 81 DAYS TO GIVE CONDIT AN ALIBI ? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1525 Did George Do It? Did Dubya Do Chandra In? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1482 Part Two Did George Do It? Did Dubya Do Chandra In? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/1483 Some people may speculate that Bush is being blackmailed. They may wonder if that is the reason that Chandra's remains have surfaced now. We really don't know why they have surfaced now. It should be noted that The 1993 World Trade Center bombers managed to vaporize President Clinton's heavily armored limousine. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/americansecrets/message/220 Clearly someone had to have known exactly where that heavily armored Presidential limousine was parked. In the intelligence community one hires, or turns, or blackmails important people. Kim Philby was the head of British Anti-Soviet Intelligence, he dealt with the CIA and the FBI, when he was about to be arrested for being a Soviet agent he vanished and turned up in Moscow. The whole time Philby had been KGB. He died a KGB Colonel. IF Dubya murdered Chandra Levy, and we do not know if he did or not, it is possible that people in the intelligence community are aware of that "fact", if it is a fact. It should be noted that 2 top female aides to Dubya, Karen Hughes, and Mary Matalin, are leaving. Their departures may be coincidental. We have no information to the contrary. On the other hand some may speculate that Karen or Mary may be the Linda Tripps of 2002. What do they know about what happens back-stage at the White House. Whose fingernails scratched Dubya's face? We don't think it was a Pretzel! While some serial murderer preying on victims in Rock Creek Park cannot be ruled out as a suspect in Chandra Levy's murder, can Dubya be ruled out? The apparent fingernail scratches from a victim on Dubya's face bring this haunting possibility into all of our faces because Dubya is in everybody's face when we see him on TV. A better example of an Emperor who has no clothes cannot be imagined than a serial killer with fingernail scratches from a victim on his face. Meanwhile, if unable to convince everyone that he is the President, he tries to convince as many as possible that a pretzel is responsible for those scratches. Perhaps he should call himself the Pretzeldent? Talk about hiding in plain sight! TOO MANY COINCIDENCES WE DEMAND A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR http://groups.yahoo.com/group/americansecrets/message/554 It should be noted that Chandra Levy was not the first to be found dead in a park. Others have been found dead in Rock Creek Park. Another famous case involved Vince Foster. On July 20, 1993 Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park. Many of those who sew a conspiracy behind Vince Foster's death continue to see one today, insisting that Foster was killed elsewhere and moved to the park. The same theory about the victim being killed elsewhere and moved to the park, will no doubt arise, if it has not already, in the Chandra Levy case. Is Dubya being blackmailed into backing off on Iraq by Iraqi agents? We do not think so. "For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary May 23, 2002 Bush Meets with German Chancellor Schroeder Q: the Chancellor just said that your government does not seem to be very specific right now when it comes to plans to attack Iraq. Is that true, sir? And could you, nevertheless, try to explain to the German people what your goals are when it comes to Iraq? Bush: I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/20020523-1.html We believe that Iraq was behind September 11th,2001. We also believe that Dubya never really intended to attack Iraq. Dubya's Daddy, Cheney, and Powell, left Saddam in power in 1991. Bush has no intention of removing Saddam from power ever. Bush II is not calling Saddam on 9/11, in fact is probably suppressing attempts to draw a link between Saddam and 9/11 for a number of reasons, these include, we think, the obvious embarrassing Blowback of Bush I, Cheney and Powell leaving Saddam in power in 1991, the increased leverage available to Bush II Cheney and Powell to pressure Israel so that a so-called "coalition" against Saddam can be built among what we feel is an oxymoron "arab allies", by appeasing said non-existent allies, but real arab states, at Israel's expense. If the American people were told the truth: that 9/11 was Saddam's project, using Bin Laden as his agent, no appeasement of so-called "arab allies" at Israel's, or America's expense would be tolerated. Any arab state that stood in America's way would find that "regime change" would also be applied to that regime, i.e. the Saudi and Jordanian de jure monarchies, the de facto monarchy in Syria where a dictator, Hafez-al Assad was replaced by another dictator, his son, Bashir-al Assad, good thing that sort of thing only happens in 3rd world countries. We think Saddam has always known that Bush never intended to attack Iraq. That is why we think Saddam used the intelligence we think he had on which flight Barbara Olson was on, to make sure that was one of the flights hijacked by Saddam's agent: bin Laden. For Barbara Olson could have brought Bush down if she had not been murdered. We don't know how Saddam found out about that flight. But found out we think he did. Had Barbara Olson not been on that flight we think Saddam would have arranged to kill her at some other time. Whether or not Bush actually murdered Chandra Levy, Barbara Olson could have followed up on her interest in the Chandra Levy case to finally tie Bush, rightly or wrongly, to Chandra's murder. That would have destroyed Bush politically, whether or not he was ever actually convicted for Chandra's murder. That was something Saddam Hussein could not afford to permit. Bush will continue to protect Saddam Hussein, will continue to bully Israel, for as long as the American people do not demand his resignation. We don't think Bush is being blackmailed by Saddam. We think Bush is in bed with Saddam. But we don't think Bush is behind September 11th, 2001. We don't think Bush was behind Barbara Olson's death. We don't know about Chandra Levy. We wonder about JFK and Bush I. JFK was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29,1917. He would have been 85 years old on May 29th, 2002. His brother Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated almost 34 years ago on June 4th, 1968. One of world famous conspiracy theorist Barry Chamish's most interesting theories is that the late JFK Jr. was interested in the Rabin Assassination. I wonder why that would be so. One would think that the assassination JFK Jr. would Most be interested in would be that of his own father, then US President John F. Kennedy on November22nd, 1963 in Dallas Texas. Perhaps there is a connection however: Rabin is alleged to have been in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. If true Rabin would have been lured to Dallas by someone seeking to blame Israel, and Jews in general for the JFK assassination. Incidentally I do not agree with the bulk of Barry's theories but questioning authority is always a good idea. Here below some pure speculation on such matters: Mr.A. Harriman was the partner in Brown Brothers, Harriman, with Prescott Bush, the father of former President Bush and with former President Bush's grandfather George Herbert Walker. The W. in George W. Bush stands for Walker. Former President Bush's father Prescott Bush was a US Senator from Connecticut. Former President Bush was not a Senator himself, having been narrowly defeated by Incumbent Democratic Party Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas in 1964 when George Herbert Walker Bush ran for the US Senate. Farrish was Bush I's campaign manager for that campaign. Interestingly enough Yarborough's bitter enemy, then Democratic Governor of Texas, John Connally, http://c-spanstore.com/c-spanstore/10319.html later to become a Republican, and a close friend of Republican US President Richard M. Nixon, was the other person shot If Connally had died as a result of his wounds a suspicion which would be hard to prove might have surfaced: that Connally's arch -enemy, Yarborough, was someone behind the assassination-Things in Texas often get "settled" with guns.- Connally managed to survive being shot http://www.jfkassassination.net/jbchit.htm in Dallas,Texas on November 22nd, 1963 while riding in the same car as then US Democratic Party President John F. Kennedy. If Connally had died as a result of his Wounds Connally's bitter public enemy: Yarborough, the Bush I opponent in the 1964 Senatorial Campaign, a race Bush I was already involved in in November of 1963, would have been suspected of somehow being behind the assassination. This could only have benefited Bush I, who might well Have defeated Yarborough for that 1964 US Senate seat from Texas. As things turned out Connally survived, Yarborough was not blamed, and Bush I lost the 1964 Senate race to Yarborough. Kennedy had come to Texas to try heal the infamous "Yarborough/Connally Feud". Yarborough was riding with LBJ in the same motorcade. Connally had been then US President Richard M. Nixon's first choice to replace him as Vice President When then US Vice President Sprio T Agnew resigned. Unable to get Connally past the US Republican Party, then headed by Bush Sr. Nixon settled on Gerald R. Ford as his Vice President, Ford would later succeed Nixon after the infamous last cabinet meeting Which was attended by Bush Sr. in his role as head of the US Republican party, who told Nixon : "Mr. President, you HAVE to resign." This was the culmination of the so-called "Watergate Scandal" in which the telephone number of former A.Harriman Press Secretary , E. Howard Hunt, at the White House, was "discovered" in the address book of one of the alleged " Watergate burglars" who comprised a mixed bunch of "ex"- CIA, "ex" -FBI, professionals ,and others who had been involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the invasion of Cuba, which had allegedly been managed at least in part by alleged Harriman former Press Secretary E. Howard. Hunt, and long time alleged Harriman friend Bissell.. Called "Operation Zapata", the invasion of Cuba took place at a time in which Bush Sr. had allegedly been involved in an oil company named "Zapata Oil." The 2 ships in the Cuban harbor at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion were named "The Barbara" and "The Houston". By another interesting "coincidence" George Bush Sr. lived in Houston and was married to Barbara. What an interesting coincidence it was for this bunch to take along an address book on their "burglary" at the Watergate which "happened" to have E. Howard Hunt's address in it. Hunt is also alleged by some to have been one of the so-called "Three Tramps" in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 http://www.konformist.com/jfkland/tramps.htm A.Harriman is of course the person who was the former partner of Bush Sr.s Father and Grandfather in Brown Brothers Harriman. It certainly is a small world. Harriman actually gave Jackie Kennedy his house in Georgetown to move into after JFK was assassinated. Richard M. Nixon was in Dallas on that day, November 22nd, 1963, which probably explains why The JFK trip was scheduled then. Should something go wrong the real conspirators could blame Nixon, JFK's obvious enemy for the assassination. Had Nixon really had anything to do with It he would have been at the other end of the earth on that day.. Nixon, the 1960 failed Republican Presidential nominee went on to be re-nominated by the Republicans in 1968 and to be elected President that year. Had Nixon been blamed for the Kennedy assassination he would never have gotten the 1968 Republican Presidential nomination. The 1968 Republican ticket might well have included Bush I. The 1960 election saw the northern Democrat JFK pick the Texas Democratic Senate Majority Leader, LBJ as his Vice President, underscoring the key importance of Texas, then a swing state, in any Presidential election in that period. Had Bush I been a Republican US Senator from Texas in 1968 he could easily have become a part of the Republican national ticket in 1968. Barbara Bush even recounts that "there was some talk" about Bush I being on the Republican ticket in 1968, even though he was not a US Senator from Texas. Nixon, of course, would have none of it. Though Bush I worked for the Nixon Administration he hated Nixon, refusing even to attend the 1969 Nixon Presidential Inauguration, instead Bush I saw his old friend, LBJ off at the airport, making Bush I the only prominent Republican NOT to attend the 1969 Nixon Presidential Inauguration. Cover story after cover story would have been prepared by the real gang behind the JFK assassination. Someone who described himself as "just a patsy", Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin, allegedly was provided with his job at the Texas School Book Depository through the efforts of an alleged former Nazi agent, alleged former CIA agent, named George De Morenschildt, http://jfkassassination.net/death2. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/STchp20.html It was long time Harriman family attorney Allen Dulles, then CIA director, who "suggested that the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, T. Keith Glennan, release a pre-prepared cover story" on the U-2 which soon fell apart. Another long time Harriman buddy, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. was the CIA person "in charge of the U-2 project". Bissell also allegedly ran the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, allegedly along with alleged former press secretary to A. Harriman , E.Howard Hunt of Watergate "fame". Two key elements, time and space must be considered in the JFK Assassination. JFK was allegedly shot from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas where Oswald worked. Someone who have had to have a) placed Oswald in his job at the Texas School Book Depository and b) arranged the route of JFK's motorcade to pass the Texas School Book Depository to make the assassination work, particularly if Oswald was to become the "patsy", or "fall-guy" for the assassination. Oswald worked at a top-secret U-2 spy plane base in Asia before he allegedly "defected" to the then Soviet Union. Some feel he was working for the CIA or others perhaps, and that his alleged "defection" to the USSR was part of a wider plot. Oswald allegedly was working for the CIA at that base and allegedly reporting ultimately to one Desmond "Dizzy Fits" Fitzgerald at the CIA according to a book titled: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Richard Case Nagell and the Assassination of JFK Trade Paperback, 824 Pages, Carroll and Graf Publishers, Incorporated, October 1993 ISBN:0786700297 whose author is Dick Russell. One wonders if Jennifer Fitzgerald, alleged mistress of former President Bush, was a relative of Desmond "Dizzy Fits" Fitzgerald. For that matter, perhaps John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a relative? ( Warren Commission Member Gerald Ford , Pat Robertson, the late Pamela Harriman, Dick Cheney, Dubya and the other Bush family members and Colin Powell ARE all relatives of one another, so too perhaps is the infamous Jew Hater, Bush Gang Point Man in Florida, James A. "F---The Jews They Don't Vote For Us Anyway" Baker. See the DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY series in this archive for more on all of that.) JFK certainly benefited from Oswald's alleged "defection" to Moscow. Oswald allegedly provided the Soviets with the information on the U-2 spy plane. With that information Moscow was allegedly able to shoot down the U-2 spy plane over the then Soviet Union. That torpedoed the planned summit between then US President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita S.Krushchev With the summit shot down along with the U-2 the way was paved for JFK to defeat Nixon in 1960. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is being sent on behalf of tony@gaia.org as part of the mailing list that you joined. List: PEPIS URL: http://www.bilderberg.org 1. Bilderberg 2002 Press Release 2. Robert Fisk on Bush and Bin Laden 3. Roundtable added to www.bilderberg.org 4. The Explosive Plan for a Third Temple in Jerusalem 5. Is Bush an Occultist? 6. Amnesty report from Janin 7. How Biased is Your Press? 8. Weird New Website - a bit too close to the truth? Dear Friends, This Thursday, while all eyes are on the world cup, the first Bilderberg since the transatlantic Ă©lite declared 'war on terrorism' gets under way. The secretariat are keeping their heads down as ever, hoping and praying that they can stop any press scrutiny of or speculation about the event. This communique contains a suggested press release as part of my campaign for proper press access to Bilderberg. I ask you to use all means to poke it under the noses of journalists, editors, indeed anyone you know who might like to mention the conference in the national and international press. Fax or email it into newsrooms wherever you can, a phone call to your favourite channel or paper will usually suffice to get newsroom fax numbers. It's also available in 'Word' and 'rich text' format at http://www.bilderberg.org/brelease.doc http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/brelease.rtf http://www.bilderberg.org/brelease.doc http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/brelease.rtf Anyway do please see if you can help spread the word about Chantilly. Also enjoy - as I'm sure you will - the brilliant piece by Robert Fisk plus the usual PEPIS concoction. And could anyone with a good copy of the Bilderberg 'secret rulers of the world' channel 4 programme please let me have a copy. cheers, Tony ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// Power Elite Public Information Service - http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis - to join/leave list. Please put in a link to http://www.bilderberg.org - now funded 'til 2003. PLEASE FORWARD TO NEWSGROUPS AND ANYONE YOU FEEL WOULD BE INTERESTED IN THIS INFORMATION. This is an occasional (max. 1 per month) email list as part of the campaign for an open press conference at and public awareness of Bilderberg and similar elite meetings. See http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis for more info. Archives: http://www.bilderberg.org/pepis00.htm http://www.mail-archive.com/ & http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/pepis/messages \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- 1. Bilderberg 2002 Press Release PRESS RELEASE - 00:00 GMT - 29May02 - For immediate release Transatlantic Elite to meet in secret on May 30th Tony Gosling - www.bilderberg.org The latest initiatives needed to usher in a United States of Europe and to bring about global domination for the Western powers are about to be revealed at a secret power elite conference West of Washington D.C.. If you ever wondered why so many nations signed up to the Euro currency without the people in those countries being asked, or how the war on terrorism has arrived just in time to save the gravely indebted U.S. economy you may need to look no further. This year's Bilderberg Conference, featuring 120 or so of the most influential men in Europe and North America, looks certain to be taking place between Thursday 30th May and Sunday 2nd June 2002 at The Westfields Marriott Hotel in Chantilly Virginia. In its Élite Conference Guide of Christmas 1987, the Economist described Bilderberg as 'Ne plus ultra' or 'the top of the top.' The Ă©lite that attend Bilderberg have real power to change the world for the better but the press are 'encouraged' not to cover the event because Bilderberg's power centralising policies such the Euro, the war on terrorism and cuts in public spending are making things much, much worse. Bilderbergers are afraid that the global strategists who plan and force through these geostrategic policies will be identified and exposed as the real villains of the world. Venues for these annual Ă©lite meetings are consistently palatial. Hotels generally have their own golf course attached and are sealed off from the outside world behind high walls. Though the Bilderberg secretariat insists the meetings are private, national military agencies such as MI6 or the CIA provide round-the-clock security at public expense. But there have been leaks. Top of the agenda this year, we're told, is Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and how to persuade a reluctant west to once more attack one of the world's weakest countries. Already ravaged by ten years of sanctions and with an infant mortality rate currently at about five to six thousand a month an attack on Iraq is nevertheless deemed 'necessary' by the Ă©lite to justify continued Western troop deployment and control of oil reserves in the Middle East. The leaks come from Jim Tucker, a writer for American Free Press in Washington DC, who is the only journalist in the world to discover the venue and date of the annual Bilderberg Meeting before the event. He is leaked information from a concerned source very close to the Bilderberg steering committee. Without Tucker there would be absolutely no press coverage. Even with the advance warning he provides there is far less coverage than might be expected. Reuters, News International, Washington Post, Hollinger and other media in attendance encourage token or zero coverage within their own empires. But it's not just the press and public who are kept in the dark. In 2000 the exasperated mayor of Genval near Brussels, where a Bilderberg conference was taking place, expressed disbelief when approached by a Belgian TV reporter. "If Queen Beatrix were coming to Genval, somebody would have told me!" Despite the enormous wealth and power wielded by the participants, Bilderberg is almost unknown amongst the general public. Many journalists or others who have heard of the meetings 'switch off' when Bilderberg is mentioned, expecting another wild conspiracy theory about meetings with aliens. But those who ignore these annual summits are playing into the hands of the conference organisers who will use any means, even encouraging madcap theories, to divert attention from what is being discussed inside. Critics have been falsely accused of anti-Semitism, disturbing when not many of the participants are Jewish. To the Bilderbergers any bypassing of democratic processes and suppression of legitimate media coverage is justifiable as 'good business'. European political, financial and military union under corporate control will also be on the agenda this year. Chair of the commission Romano Prodi is now openly being called the 'president' of Europe yet he has never been elected to the post. Prodi is not the first powerful person to be invited to Bilderberg before making it to the top. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, George Robertson and Jack Santer all attended just before a great leap forward in their respective careers. Ex-government ministers such as Britain's Kenneth Clarke have been ticked off for failing to declare their free Bilderberg trips. Ever since it began Bilderberg has promoted the integration of European nations into a United States of Europe run not by elected representatives but by appointed 'Commissioners' who many believe to be in the pockets of banks and big business. This is nothing new. European based multinationals such as Philips and Volvo played a major part in designing the superstructure of the European State. In Europe, the European Round Table of Industrialists or E.R.T. corporate lobby group works with the unelected European Commission to draw up legislation. The European Parliament only has a chance to rubber stamp or delay these initiatives before they become law. The growth of the Euro currency is a major priority always at Bilderberg, the plan being to peg the Euro to the Dollar when all E.U. nations have joined creating a de facto world currency. The conferences began in 1954, an initiative of ex SS Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Bilderberg's first chairman. After the Lockheed bribery scandal in 1975 Bernhard resigned in disgrace but his wife, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, still attends the conference regularly. Bilderberg has been deciding policy since World War II which, along with NATO, is bringing about the strongest ever U.S. influence over Europe and the whole continent of Eurasia. The agenda at Bilderberg is set and invite list drawn up by a small steering committee consisting of Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and a hand picked representative from each major economic nation in the western world. Although there is no official membership, U.S. attendees at Bilderberg tend to be members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a private club that decides U.S. foreign policy and/or David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission which brings together Ă©litists from Europe, the USA and Japan. Though big names are present: Kissinger, George Robertson, Conrad Black, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, James Wolfenson, David Rockefeller etc. the Bilderberg Group usually manage to duck coverage and criticism by the world's press. They refuse requests for interviews and prepare cover stories. In 2000 the conference was an 'international croquet tournament'. Even these lies are, it seems, better than the truth about what is being talked about inside getting out. Under Bilderberg's 'Chatham House' rules none of the participants are allowed to mention where they picked up the latest line on Europe or whatever is being discussed. A request for a press conference this year has been ignored. It is crucial that Bilderberg begin to open themselves up more fully to media scrutiny. Only by knowing of the existence of such power networks can the people make a decision on their legitimacy. Although the Bilderberg office in Leiden, Holland issues a 'press release' of its own, it does so a few hours after the last black Mercedes containing the last participant has left the conference area. Coldly calculated to ensure the press can't cover anything. If you didn't get an invite to Bilderberg this year you're in good company - only quislings need attend. Contacts: Westfields Marriott Chantilly, Virginia +1 (703) 818 0300 Jim Tucker American Free Press, Washington D.C. +1 (202) 543 6525 Bilderberg Secretariat Leiden, Netherlands +31 71 5280 521 Tony Gosling www.Bilderberg.org, Bristol UK +44 117 944 6219 All references to information contained in this release can be found at www.bilderberg.org The release itself is at www.bilderberg.org/2002.htm It's also available in 'Word' and 'rich text' format at http://www.bilderberg.org/brelease.doc http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/brelease.rtf http://www.bilderberg.org/brelease.doc http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/brelease.rtf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 2. Robert Fisk on Bush and Bin Laden There is a firestorm coming, and it is being provoked by Mr Bush More and more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Osama bin Laden http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=298681 (full article) Robert Fisk: Independent Newspaper - 25 May 2002 So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein is Hitler. And George Bush is fighting the Nazis. Not since Menachem Begin fantasised to President Reagan that he felt he was attacking Hitler in Berlin – his Israeli army was actually besieging Beirut, killing thousands of civilians, "Hitler" being the pathetic Arafat – have we had to listen to claptrap like this. But the fact that we Europeans had to do so in the Bundestag on Thursday – and, for the most part, in respectful silence – was extraordinary. I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who, tired of the wearying invocation of the Second World War to justify yet more Israeli brutality, began an article with the words: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is dead." Must we, forever, live under the shadow of a war that was fought and won before most of us were born? Do we have to live forever with living, diminutive politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher and, of course, Blair) or Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who gassed his own people," Mr Bush reminded us for the two thousandth time, omitting as always to mention that the Kurds whom Saddam viciously gassed were fighting for Iran and that the United States, at the time, was on Saddam's side. But there is a much more serious side to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening Iran. He wants the Russians to lean on the northern bit of the "axis of evil", the infantile phrase which he still trots out to the masses. More and more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Mr bin Laden. And still he tries to lie about the motives for the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Yet again, in the Bundestag, he insisted that the West's enemies hated "justice and democracy", even though most of America's Muslim enemies wouldn't know what democracy was. In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorising Americans. There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts – note how carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation of the West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror" – and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, over the past three days, you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans than Mr bin Laden..............(continued) http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=298681 (full article) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 3. Roundtable added to www.bilderberg.org ROUNDTABLE: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/ I'm pleased to announce that the 'roundtable' website which is an excellent critique of the Council on Foreign Relations is now copied or 'mirrored' at http://www.bilderberg.org/roundtable/ My emails to the webmaster were blocked recently so I decided it was a good time to give the author some small credit for his fascinating exposee and get him a little more exposure. The CFR is one of the most destructive institutions on earth, being a mechanism by which U.S. based multinational corporations translate their aggressive, expansionist desires into state department policy and thence to overt and covert action by the CIA, NSA and more conventional military arms of government. The CFR has, since the first world war, steadily eaten away at the American people's view of what U.S. foreign policy should be and set these agencies on a mission to aquire new markets and raw materials to extend the influence of U.S. multinationals. The Council on Foreign Relations is an organisation every schoolchild in the world must be taught about. Here's a start... This is from the site "The Council on Foreign Relations was formally established in Paris in 1919 along with its British Counterpart the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs can trace their roots back to a secret organization founded and funded by Cecil Rhodes, who became fabulously wealthy by exploiting the people of South Africa. Rhodes is the father of Apartheid. The Council on Foreign Relations was founded by a group of American and British imperialists and racists intent on ruling the world. Many of the American members were American intelligence officers that belonged to the first American Intelligence Agency -- THE INQUIRY. Many of the British members were British Intelligence Agents. THE INQUIRY and its members, who included such notable Americans as Col. Edward Mandel House, Walter Lippmann, Isaiah Bowman, and James Shotwell, wrote most of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points. The CFR/RIIA method of operation is simple -- they control public opinion. They keep the identity of their group secret. They learn the likes and dislikes of influential people. They surround and manipulate them into acting in the best interest of the CFR/RIIA. The Council on Foreign Relations, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs are adept at using the media to create massive psycho-political operations used to manipulate public opinion. The psycho-political operations are often designed to create tensions between different groups of people. The object is to keep the world in a state of perpetual tension and warfare to maximize profits from CFR/RIIA munition, medicine, media, energy, and food businesses." (continues) Welcome to the Bilderberg website roundtable ;-) btw - don't forget Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler - essential related reading http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html --------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- 4. The Explosive Plan for a Third Temple in Jerusalem The trouble is if the Jews go ahead and build this temple it will almost certainly be on the site where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque are now - two of the holiest sites in Christianity and Islam - knocking them both down and aggravating both religions (particularly the Moslems) to the point of almost inevitable bloodshed and religious war. There have already been clashes between Moslems and Right-wing Jews who have tried to place a foundation stone for this third temple right next to the Mosque. And the floor of the mosque is collapsing in parts due to Jewish excavations underneath! Tony From a Messianic Jewish perspective The Red Heifer... Check out: http://www.templeinstitute.org/current-events/RedHeifer/index.html There have been some red heifers in the past, but they turned out to be flawed by a single white hair or something else. Our non-believing Orthodox Jewish brothers and sisters await a flawless Kosher red Heifer to sacrifice for the ashes that they will put in their mikvahs for the priest to go down into so they will be ceremonially clean. Then they can go up on the Temple mount and commence the laying of the cornerstone for the third Temple (Ezekiel's Temple) and the building of the altar for the daily sacrifices. This will consitute the beginning of said third Temple and that officially to the Orthodox Jews brings in the Messianic Era.... Now for Christians and Messianic Jews what does this mean? .... The covenant that is confirmed by many for 7 years will also be making way for this Temple to be built. This begins the last seven years before Yahushua (Jesus) returns! I estimate that we are within five years of this all commencing and the anti-annointed one (anti-christ) taking his seat in the rebuilt Temple and declaring himself to be Elohim (god). What exciting times we are living in! The mayhem before he comes back will go something like this.... The Temple begins and Israel welcomes a Messiah (the false one). 3 1/2 years will pass and then the abomination that makes the Temple desolate happens (from Daniel and Revelation) and then the last 3 1/2 years of the 7 year period is the time called the "Great Tribulation". Yahushua said there will not have been such great tribulation ever seen upon this earth before. It is my personal belief that during this time non-Torah observant Christianity will be suffering greatly and not knowing why. Then after the tribulation of those days (Matt. 24:29) the sign of Yahushua's coming will appear. He'll come down and ressurect those who are dead in Him and then we will be changed in a moment. From there I guess it's off to the battle of Armageddon? and then the marriage supper of the lamb that many regular Christians may not be able to be a part of because their garments are spotted because of saying the Torah (Law of Moses) was nailed to the cross and they didn't have to obey it. Truly, Yahushua said not one Jot or Tittle shall pass from the Law till all things be fulfilled. It won't be too much longer and all things will be fulfilled. wooooowhoooo! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 5. Is Bush an Occultist? A member of the 'Skull and Bones'? According to Robert Goldsborough of Washington Dateline, Governor George W. Bush has a secret ingredient which will help him in his bid to become America's next president - membership in a society which is even MORE secretive than Masonry. The society goes by the unofficial names of Skull and Bones and/or The Order, and its members are usually referred to as "Bonesmen." http://www.newswatchmagazine.org/weekly_editor/9.1.00.htm Bush family and Skull and Bones society - The home of Skull and Bones on the Yale campus is a stone building resembling a mausoleum, and known as ``the Tomb.'' Initiations take place on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River (an island owned by the Russell Trust Association), with regular reunions on Deer Island and at Yale. Initiation rites reportedly include strenuous and traumatic activities of the new member, while immersed naked in mud, and in a coffin. More important is the ``sexual autobiography'': The initiate tells the Order all the sex secrets of his young life. Weakened mental defenses against manipulation, and the blackmail potential of such information, have obvious permanent uses in enforcing loyalty among members. http://www.tarpley.net/bush7.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 6. Amnesty report from Janin Israel / Occupied Territories: Preliminary findings of Amnesty International delegates' visit to Jenin http://www.amnesty.ca/library/news/mde1505802.htm Breaches of the Geneva Convention by Isreali Defence Forces under the command of the Isreali government: * Failure to give civilians warning or time to evacuate Jenin refugee camp before Apache helicopters launched their first attacks. * Failure by the Israeli Defence Forces to protect the people of the refugee camp, who are "protected people" under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians Persons in Time of War. * Allegations of extrajudicial executions * Failure, for 13 days, to allow humanitarian assistance to the people in the camp who were trapped in the rubble of demolished houses or running out of food and water. *Denial of medical assistance to the wounded in the refugee camp and deliberate targeting of ambulances. *Excessive use of lethal force and using civilians as a "human shield". *Ill-treatment, including beatings and degrading treatment, of Palestinian detainees. * Extensive damage to property with no apparent military necessity. http://www.amnesty.ca/library/news/mde1505802.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 7. How Biased is Your Press? TV news biased against Palestinians, says study http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4394734,00.html Matt Wells, media correspondent Guardian Tuesday April 16, 2002 British television news is routinely biased towards the Israeli view of the conflict, according to academic research. As a result of lobbying by the Israeli government's public relations machine and the difficulties of explaining a complex story in ratings-driven bulletins, few people can understand the roots of the story, the Glasgow Media Group suggest. Young people in particular are unaware of key elements of the conflict. In a sample of 300 questioned by the researchers, only 9% knew that Israel was the occupying force. When the intifada began in 2000, a team led by Professor Greg Philo of Glasgow University examined 3,536 lines of text transcribed from 89 news bulletins. Only 17 lines were devoted to the conflict's history. Consequently, he said, the Israeli side was favoured, because attacks were portrayed as responses to Palestinian acts. Writing in today's Guardian, he adds: "A news journalism which seeks neutrality should not endorse any point of view, but there were many departures from this principle." The broadcasters deny bias. Roger Mosey, BBC head of television news, said: "I don't believe there's any institutional bias towards one side or other in the Middle East conflict." ITN said: "We've been covering this conflict fairly and impartially for more than half a century. We are not in the business of providing a daily history lesson." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4394734,00.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 8. Weird New Website - a bit too close to the truth? I am not sure how for real these guys are, but they take themselves seriously and certainly give the impression that they are for real. Thanks Jeremy for sending me in these bizarre links - T One World Order website The most intelligent and educated humans are superior to all others and they must reproduce with others at all costs and must be protected at all cost. http://oneworldorder.org/ In light of our success, and with the growing number of worthless books written about us and our Freemason friends, we have decided that time is ripe for us to emerge to the forefront, at least in part, and in doing so, we need to set the record straight once and for all. http://oneworldorder.org/About.htm http://oneworldorder.org/forward.htm What is One World Order? http://oneworldorder.org/manifesto.htm The constitution of oneworld free society Word Version http://oneworldorder.org/IC.doc http://www.oneworldorder.org/The-Government.htm International Relations http://www.oneworldorder.org/international-relations.htm The Declaration of Individual Rights http://oneworldorder.org/rights.htm Personal Financial Services http://oneworldorder.org/PFS.htm Evolutionary Advancements http://oneworldorder.org/EvolutionaryAdvancements.htm http://oneworldorder.org/stock.htm HOT Stock Picks! ///////////////////////// Power Elite Public Information Service - http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis - to join/leave list. Please put in a link to http://www.bilderberg.org - now funded 'til 2003. PLEASE FORWARD TO NEWSGROUPS AND ANYONE YOU FEEL WOULD BE INTERESTED IN THIS INFORMATION. This is an occasional (max. 1 per month) email list as part of the campaign for an open press conference at and public awareness of Bilderberg and similar elite meetings. See http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis for more info. Archives: http://www.bilderberg.org/pepis00.htm http://www.mail-archive.com/ & http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/pepis/messages -------------------------------------------------------------------------- JFK George De Morenschildt was scheduled to meet with former federal investigator GAETON FONZI, who was investigating JFK's assassination, when De Morenschildt was found dead from a shot-gun blast.." Fonzi claims that Bush Sr.'s name and phone number were found In De Morenschildt's address book. Fonzi is the author of Last Investigation: A Former Federal Investigator Tells What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK Trade Paperback, 464 Pages, Thunder's Mouth Press, October 1994 ISBN: 1-56025-079-8 Roger Hilsman. was described as a "friend of" (JFK) and (RFK) (Hilsman) "had been director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research". "Hilsman was in the little circle that had come to make up Harriman's Vietnam team. A graduate of West Point and a Yale Ph.D." As Buddhist protests in South Vietnam against the repressive Roman Catholic regime mounted it became increasingly clear to those Managing Vietnam policy in Washington that the Roman Catholic regime in South Vietnam could not Successfully prosecute the Vietnam War. It could not win the hearts and minds of the 90% of South Vietnam's people who were Buddhist. A famous cable from Harriman and Hilsman read in part: "Regardless of who is running the show, we should continue to seek the same objectives. These are 1-acceptable solutions to the Buddhist problem and 2- a more responsive and representative government capable of carrying on the war effectively. GVN (Government of Vietnam) must show own population and world that improvement in Buddhist position will be eventual outcome of evolving situation. If we impress this need on both civilians and military at all levels (of the) GVN, we may be able to achieve some progress not only on immediate Buddhist problem (with all implications this has for US and world opinion ) but also on longer range objective of broadening regime and limiting Diem's exercise of arbitrary power. As situation develops, we may deem it useful to throw our influence toward reducing or eliminating the power of the Nhus (sic)." Hilsman later "drafted and Harriman approved a reply to (US Ambassador to South Vietnam) Lodge's request for guidance. In the most blunt language the administration had ever used concerning the government of South Vietnam it all but sanctioned a coup against the Diem regime." It stated in part: "US government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu's hands-Diem must be given chance rid himself of Nhu and his coterie and replace him with best military and political personalities available. If in spite of all your efforts Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved. " This cable is described as:"THE MOST FAMOUS CABLE OF THE VIETNAM WAR" It also stated that Ambassador Lodge and his team : "should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary. You will understand that we cannot from Washington give you detailed instructions as to how this operation should proceed, but you will also know we will back you to the hilt on actions you take to achieve our objectives." Known as the Harriman-Hilsman memo, or cable, JFK himself ironically signed on to its premises in an interview with Walter Cronkite, JFK said that the Vietnam War was :"their war", which could not be won unless the South Vietnamese government regained the support it had lost as a result of its treatment of the Buddhists , a goal that could be accomplished "with changes in policy and perhaps with personnel.". Tragically JFK failed to realize that as the Roman Catholic President of the United States, he too was a liability to the successful prosecution of the Vietnam War as Buddhist resentment against Catholics was not limited to resentment against the brutal and repressive Roman Catholic Diem-Nhu regime of South Vietnam but extended also to the Roman Catholic President of the United States who had expanded the war from the 800 "advisors" in Vietnam during the Eisenhower-Nixon era, to some 40,000 troops, including Green Berets and Special Forces, under JFK. JFK had had close relations with the Roman Catholic regime in South Vietnam and had had the support of American Roman Catholic Cardinals in that effort. Three weeks to the day after the November 1st,1963 coup in South Vietnam which saw the end of the Diem and Nhu regime and of Diem and the Nhus, JFK himself was Assassinated in Dallas,Texas, on November 22nd, 1963. On that date, November 22nd, 1963 Harriman chaired " a meeting of oil company executives about the future of their contracts with the government of Argentina-Beforehand, he went to a Hilsman luncheon with a delegation of politicians from the Philippines. He was finishing his desert and talking with Senator Frank Church of Idaho about extremism in American politics when Church was called to the telephone. A minute later the senator rushed back into the room, his face ashen. The President had been shot, he said and was feared dead."Source for much of the Vietnam material above: SPANNING THE CENTURY : THE LIFE OF W. AVERELL HARRIMAN, 1891-1986 by Rudy Abramson ASIN:0688043526 Earlier on that infamous day, November 22nd, 1963 one George Herbert Walker Bush, later to become President himself, made a call to the FBI, not to the Secret Service. The call was Placed TWO HOURS BEFORE JFK WAS SHOT. You can read more about that call in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH: Richard Case Nagell and the Assassination of JFK Trade Paperback, 824 Pages, Carroll and Graf Publishers, Incorporated, October 1993 ISBN: 0786700297 Author: Russell, Dick The page # there is page 710 and it states that George Herbert Walker Bush and James Parrott, the man named by Bush as planning to kill JFK in Houston, later that week"were political enemies", Parrott is also described in the book above as "an active member of Houston's Young Republicans." Another of many sources for the Bush call to the FBI 2 hours BEFORE JFK was killed is The July/August 1992 issue of Spy Magazine, Page 39 ISSN 0890-1759 5 Union Square West, NYC 10003 In that story, by David Robb Parrott was already known to the Secret Service for similar threats to JFK as of 1961, yet here was Bush reporting Parrott to the FBI, 2 hours BEFORE JFK was killed Those of us who can recall such things know that it was The Warren Commission That did the original official investigation of the assassination of JFK. Who was Earl Warren, For whom the commission was named? Writing in Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? Author: Lane, Mark Hardcover, 416 Pages, Avalon New York, November 1991 ISBN: 1560250003 Mark Lane states on Page 41 that : "Warren ran for vice president of the United States in 1948. Thomas Dewey was the Republican candidate for president that year. They were defeated." In a footnote at the bottom of the same page Lane adds that: " Allen Dulles served in that campaign as the speechwriter for the Dewey-Warren ticket. In exchange he had been promised by Dewey that he would be appointed director of the CIA . When Eisenhower was elected four years later, he honored that commitment." Prescott Bush, father of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, dined regularly with CIA Director Allen Dulles for many years. After JFK fired Dulles Prescott Bush dined regularly with Dulles's successor. Lane also goes into some of the interesting cross-connections in the JFK assassination on page 98 of the same book: "Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA, Charles Cabell was its deputy director ( his brother was the mayor of Dallas) and Richard Bissell was the deputy director for plans, the dirty tricks department of the agency." http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/STchp20.html It was long time Harriman family attorney Allen Dulles, then CIA director, who "suggested that the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, T. Keith Glennan, release a pre-prepared cover story" on the U-2 which soon fell apart. Another long time Harriman buddy, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. was the CIA person "in charge of the U-2 project". Bissell also allegedly ran the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, allegedly along with alleged former press secretary to A.Harriman E.Howard Hunt of Watergate "fame". you can see some photos of the infamous alleged 3 tramps at http://www.koelle.dk/dealey_plaza_16.html http://www.koelle.dk/dealey_plaza_17.html one of Allen Dulles is at http://www.koelle.dk/who_13.html Frank Sturgis is in one at http://www.koelle.dk/who_36.html Allen Dulles and JFK may be seen at http://libweb.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ ex/adulles/ Photos CIA JM/WAVE station, Miami http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/jmwave.jpg Desmond Fitzgerald http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/desfitz.jpg E. Howard Hunt http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/ehhunt.gif Mark Lane, author of Plausible Denial quotes from Hunt's testimony in a civil suit On pages 250-251 of that book : " I made my way back to the States via California and stayed with a fellow OSS officer at his home- I came east and got a job with the Marshall Plan." Q: " What was the Marshall Plan?" A: "That was the plan conceived by General George C. Marshall and approved by then President Truman, to reestablish the European economy that was destroyed or semi-destroyed by the war as a means of withstanding the Soviet encroachment from the east." Q: "Where were you?" A: " I was press aide to Averell Harriman in Paris." Q: "What was Harriman's job with the Marshall Plan?' A: "He was the European director of it." (Averell Harriman chose Richard M. Bissell, whom he had known in London in 1942, To head what was popularly known as the Harriman Committee's professional staff, in furtherance of the Marshall idea some weeks after Marshall's speech.) According to another source: SILENT COUP The Removal of a President by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin St. Martin's Paperbacks 1991 ISBN:0-312-92763-0 Page 115 "Hunt and Liddy-worked to locate evidence that might link President John Kennedy to the assassination of former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963." Regarding that in her Opening Statement To The House Judiciary Committee, Proceedings On The Impeachment Of Richard Nixon Congresswoman Barbara Jordan said on July 25, 1974 "What the president did know on June 23 was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy administration." George DeMohrenshildt http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/george.gif Johnny Roselli http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/roselli.jpg Santo Trafficante Jr. http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/traff2.gif Carlos Marcello http://www.busprod.com/hellion/jfk/photos/marcello.gif "The following is from Volume 10 of the HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATION: (176) In his book about his role in the Bay of Pigs operation, former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt used a pseudonym when referring to the chief of the operation.(182) The chief of propaganda was David Phillips Hunt called him "Knight."(183) (177) When asked by the committee if he was familiar with anyone using the cover name of Bishop at the JM/WAVE station, Cross said he was "almost positive" that David Phillips had used the cover name of Maurice Bishop.(184) He said he was "fairly sure" that Hunt himself had used the cover name of Knight.(185) Cross said, however, that the reason he was certain that Phillips used the name of Bishop was because he recalled sometimes discussing field and agent problems with Phillips' assistant, Doug Gupton, and Gupton often saying, "Well, I guess Mr. Bishop will have to talk with him." Cross said: "And, of course, I knew he was referring to his boss, David Phillips." (186) Submitted by: GAETON J. FONZI, Investigator" http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bishop.txt a variety of sources were used for much of the material below which may be found at numerous places on the internet and elsewhere"The Man Who Wasn't There, 'George Bush,' C.I.A. Operative" By Joseph McBride THE NATION, July 16/23, 1988 Vice President George Bush's resume is his most highly touted asset as a candidate. But a recently discovered F.B.I. memorandum raises the possibility that, like many resumes, it omits some facts the applicant would rather not talk about: specifically, that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in 1963, more than a decade before he became its director. The F.B.I. memorandum, dated November 29, 1963, is from Director J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department and is subject-headed "Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963." In it, Hoover reports that the Bureau had briefed "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" shortly after the assassination on the reaction of Cuban exiles in Miami. A source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities." Informed of this memorandum, the Vice President's spokesman, Stephen Hart, asked, "Are you sure it's the same George Bush?" After talking to the Vice President, Hart quoted him as follows: "I was in Houston, Texas, at the time and involved in the independent oil drilling business. And I was running for the Senate in late '63." "Must be another George Bush," added Hart. Because the Vice President's response seemed something of a non-denial denial (he described what else he was doing rather than specifically denying C.I.A. involvement), I put the following queries to him via Hart: Did you do any work with or for the CIA prior to the time you became its director? If so, what was the nature of your relationship with the agency, and how long did it last? Did you receive a briefing by a member of the F.B.I. on anti-Castro Cuban activities in the aftermath o the assassination of President Kennedy? Half an hour later, Hart called me back to say that he had not spoken again to the Vice President about the matter, but would answer the questions himself. The answer to the first question was no, he said, and so he could skip number two. "This is the first time I've ever heard this," C.I.A. spokesman Bill Devine said when confronted with the allegations of the Vice President's involvement with the agency in the early 1960s. "I'll see what I can find out and call you back." The next day Devine called back with the terse official response, "I can neither confirm nor deny." Told what the Vice President's office had said, and asked if he could check whether there had been another George Bush in the C.I.A., Devine seemed to become a bit nonplused: "twenty-seven years ago? I doubt that very much. In any event, we have a standard policy of not confirming that anyone is involved in the C.I.A." Hoover's memo, which was written to the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, was buried among the 98,755 pages of F.B.I. documents released to the public in 1977 and 1978 as a result of the Freedom of Information Act suits. It was written to summarize the briefings given to Bush and Capt. William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency by the F.B.I.'s W.T. Forsyth on November 23, the day after the assassination, when Lee Harvey Oswald was still alive to be interrogated about his connections to Cuban exiles and the C.I.A. - "The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency..." (We attempted to locate William T. Forsyth, but learned that he is dead. Forsyth worked out of the Washington F.B.I. headquarters and was best known for running the investigation of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Bureau's subversive control section. Efforts to locate Captain Edwards by press time were unsuccessful.) Vice President Bush's autobiography, "Looking Forward," written with Victor Gold (Doubleday, 1987), is vague to the point of being cryptic about his activities in the early 1960s, when he was running the Houston-based Zapata Off-Shore Company. ("Running an offshore oil company," he writes, "would mean days spent on or over water; not only the Gulf of Mexico but oceans and seas the world over.") But the 1972 profile of Bush in "Current Biography" provides more details of his itinerary in those years: "Bush traveled throughout the world to sell Zapata's oil-drilling services. Under his direction it grew to be a multimillion-dollar concern, with operations in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Japan, Australia, and Western Europe." And according to Nicolas King's "George Bush: A Biography," Zapata was concentrating its business in the Caribbean and off South America in the early 1960s, a piece of information that meshes neatly with the available data on Bush's early C.I.A. responsibilities. Bush's duties with the C.I.A. in 1963 -- whether he was an agent, for example, or merely an "asset"-cannot be determined from Hoover's memo. However, the intelligence source (who worked with the agency in the late 1950s and through the 1960s) said of the Vice President: "I know he was involved in the Caribbean. I know he was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination:." The initial reaction of Senator Frank Church, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to the firing of William Colby and the naming of Bush as Director of Central Intelligence in 1975 was to complain that it was part of a pattern of attempts by President Gerald Ford (a former member of the Warren Commission) to impede the Church committee's nearly concluded investigation into C.I.A. assassination plots, with which Colby was cooperating but which Ford was trying vainly to keep secret. Hoover's memo "explains something to me that I've wondered about. It does make sense to have a trained C.I.A. man, with experience, appointed to the job." "Date: November 29, 1963 To: Director Bureau of Intelligence and Research Department of State From: John Edgar Hoover, Director Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT F. KENNEDY NOVEMBER 22, 1963 The substance of the foregoing nformation was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W.T. Forsyth of this Bureau."---""On November 22, 1963 Mr. GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 5525 Briar, Houston, Texas, telephonically advised that he wanted to relate some hear say that he had heard in recent weeks, date and source unknown. He advised that one JAMES PARROTT had been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston. "PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in politics in the Houston area." "Bush's spokesman Stephen Hart commented: "Must be another George Bush." Within a short time the CIA itself would peddle the same damage control line. On July 19, 1988 in the wake of wide public attention to the report published in The Nation, CIA spokeswoman Sharron Basso departed from the normal CIA policy of refusing to confirm or deny reports that any person is or was a CIA employee. CIA spokeswoman Basso told the Associated press that the CIA believed that "the record should be clarified." She said that the FBI document "apparently" referred to a George William Bush who had worked in 1963 on the night shift at CIA headquarters, and that "would have been the appropriate place to have received such an FBI report." According to her account, the George William Bush in question had left the CIA to join the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1964. George William Bush had indeed worked for the CIA, the DIA, and the Alexandria, Virginia Department of Public Welfare before joining the Social Security Administration, in whose Arlington, Virginia office he was employed as a claims representative in 1988. George William Bush told The Nation that while at the CIA he was "just a lowly researcher and analyst" who worked with documents and photos and never received interagency briefings. He had never met Forsyth of the FBI or Captain Edwards of the DIA. "So it wasn't me," said George William Bush. 21 Later, George William Bush formalized his denial in a sworn statement to a federal court in Washington, DC. The affidavit acknowledges that while working at CIA headquarters between September 1963 and February 1964, George William Bush was the junior person on a three to four man watch shift which was on duty when Kennedy was shot. But, as George William Bush goes on to say, I have carefully reviewed the FBI memorandum to the Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State dated November 29, 1963 which mentions a Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency....I do not recognize the contents of the memorandum as information furnished to me orally or otherwise during the time I was at the CIA. In fact, during my time at the CIA. I did not receive any oral communications from any government agency of any nature whatsoever. I did not receive any information relating to the Kennedy assassination during my time at the CIA from the FBI. Based on the above, it is my conclusion that I am not the Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." You are invited to join: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/americansecrets/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Lie Won't Stand - Copyright Statement Included -- Please Distribute Widely----- Original Message ----- From: Michael C. Ruppert To: From The Wilderness Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 7:06 PM Subject: The Lie Won't Stand - Copyright Statement Included -- Please Distribute Widely Please Distribute Widely... THE LIE WON'T STAND Bush Administration Explanations for Pre-9-11 Warnings Fail the Smell Test Warnings Received From Heads of State, Allied Intelligence Services Specifically Warned of Suicide Attacks by Hijackers Insider Trading Also Clearly Warned of Attacks by Michael C. Ruppert [© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.] May 16, 2002, 19:00 PDT (FTW) -- Never in the history of scandals involving the United States government has an attempt to conceal criminal conduct by an administration been more transparently dishonest or more easily exposed. On May 15 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer -- while making the startling admission that President Bush received CIA and FBI intelligence briefings in August indicating Osama bin Laden might be planning hijackings -- told major news sources including CBS News, "All appropriate action was taken based on the threat information we had," Fleischer said. "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." In other statements Fleischer told the press, "The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9-11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile." According to a May 16 story by the New York Times, "Mr. Fleischer said the information given to the president in Texas [last August], had prompted the administration to put law enforcement agencies on alert." Every major position taken by an administration in full retreat and on the defensive can be easily deconstructed and shown to be false. For more than seven months FTW has been documenting specific warnings received by the U.S. government from both foreign intelligence services and, in one case, from Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicating commercial airliners were going to be used by terrorists to attack -- among other things -- the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. In order for Fleischer's statement to be credible he would have to assert then that George W. Bush either ignored or was not informed of a direct warning from a head of state and also from the German intelligence service, the BND. As reported in the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14, the BND warned both the CIA and Israel in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom. No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ report indicates the information was received directly from BND sources. According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.ie, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning U.S. intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the U.S. government for the story but refused to discuss additional details. According to a story in Izvestia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets. In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Putin stated he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11. No credible information has emerged from any source indicating that Putin omitted the above information when issuing the warning. Many other direct warnings were received by the U.S. government and have been documented in FTW's 9-11 timeline located at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html. These stories give the immediate lie to Fleischer's statements that Bush had no inkling of airliners being used as weapons. But there is more. In 1996 -- as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6, and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7 -- Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called "Operation Bojinka." Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. FBI MEMOS TRIGGER WHITE HOUSE BACKSTEPPING In "traditional" hijackings the hijackers have no need or desire to learn how to fly. As reported by the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post (among others) the events leading to Fleischer's statements were the recent disclosure of FBI memoranda originated by field agents in Arizona and Minnesota that warned of a possible hijack attempt by bin Laden's followers. In both cases the suspects were taking flight lessons. According to Newsweek and the New York Times, FBI agents in Phoenix submitted a classified memorandum in July naming Osama bin Laden and tracking the activities of possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects who had enrolled in local flight schools. The memo, according to the Times, stated bin Laden's followers "could use the schools to train for terror operations." The information in the Phoenix memo was not shared with FBI field agents in Minnesota who had uncovered other startling evidence. Just days before the attacks in early-September, FBI agents in Minnesota wrote notes that subsequently became included in an internal FBI document warning that accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui "might be planning on flying something into the World Trade Center." A story from the May 20 issue of Newsweek by Michael Isikoff described how a local flight instructor had reported Moussaoui had "showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer [and not land] large airliners.The [FBI] agents were 'in a frenzy, absolutely convinced he was planning to so something with a plane.'" A multitude of sources have reported the FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer but were denied by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. After the 9-11 attacks the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks. This apparent lack of support from within the administration is consistent with reports released last fall by the BBC's Gregg Palast showing that in January 2001 the Bush Administration had issued direct orders to the FBI to curtail investigations of two of Osama bin Laden's relatives, Omar and Abdullah bin Laden. The two bin Ladens had been connected to possible terrorist activities and were living in Falls Church, Va., near CIA headquarters. APPROPRIATE WARNINGS? Fleischer's statement that adequate warnings had been given to appropriate federal agencies falls flat on its face. Two of the most "appropriate" agencies would have been the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard. As documented by researchers like Jared Israel at www.tenc.net, it has been standard FAA procedure for more than 25 years to scramble U.S. fighters to intercept -- not shoot down -- any errant or non-responsive aircraft under FAA control. This protocol is even more stringent in the case of a hijacking. Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have stated publicly there were no fighters available in some cases, and there was no heightened state of alert on Sept. 11. For 50 minutes on 9-11, in direct contravention of established policy, no fighters were scrambled to intercept two outstanding hijacked airliners even though it was known attacks were in progress. Given the above information, it would have been an obvious move to have placed fighter aircraft on a heightened state of alert in this time period. This unresponsiveness stands in contrast to the fact that, in October 1999 at a time when there was no heightened alert, the ill-fated Lear Jet occupied by golfer Payne Stewart had an F-16 fighter and an A-10 attack aircraft flying beside it within minutes of losing radio contact and veering off course. INSIDER TRADING FTW has spent months on this important story that proves foreknowledge of the attacks by people who also profited from them. This was a glaring warning signal, since such trades ran the risk of being detected by intelligence agencies that routinely monitor all market activity in real time. The insider trading involves the placement of large numbers of "put" options on stocks of companies directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. They include United Air Lines, American Air Lines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, AXA Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance and Swiss Reinsurance. Put options are a leveraged bet that a stock's price will fall dramatically. As CBS news noted on Sept. 26, the peak of trading activity occurred just before the attacks. There was a jump in United Air Line's put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It is uncontested that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying before the attacks. No other airlines were affected. A May 13 story by the Washington Times' Insight Magazine attempted to explain the insider trading by stating higher numbers of put options had been placed on United and American stocks earlier in 2001. By relying only on the numbers of put options, Insight asserted that there was nothing unusual about the pre-9-11 trades. However, FTW has contacted several experienced traders and reviewed existing documentation from financial experts, which indicate the alarm for insider trading is to look for any "imbalance" between the level of put options (a bet that a stock's price will fall) and the level of call options (a bet that a stock's price will rise). It is a significant imbalance in puts vs. calls that indicates criminal insider trading. The Insight piece did not address this point. Several traders have stated that in a fairly flat market with high trading volumes, it has been a routine procedure for experienced traders to place roughly equal numbers of puts and calls on various stocks in order to generate a paper cash flow. They were quick to point out that by September, the market had gone into sharp decline and trading volumes were way down. Thus, lower numbers of put options did not mean that everything was normal. They stressed it was the imbalance in put-to-call ratios that signaled the insider trading. [Ed. Note: FTW has undertaken a more detailed investigation of this trading activity and hopes to have a more comprehensive report within 4-6 weeks]. Part of the problem in Insight's research stems from the fact that since Sept. 11, there has been no transparency from either the government or the financial sector on how the trades worked or how the markets tracked them. Secrecy is everywhere. Telephone calls have not been returned, and the government refuses to divulge any information about probes it admits are still ongoing. But simplistic dismissals from sources quoted in the Insight story contradict not only other evidence, but statements made by financial experts and major news sources just after the attacks. "This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you've ever seen in your entire life.This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence," said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed Sept. 20 on Good Morning Texas. "'I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,' said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle," reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19. To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market." Assertions that the reported number of puts involved were not abnormal also failed to analyze highly intricate shell games that involve the movement of put options to markets outside the U.S. or hidden in what traders refer to as "net positions." Serious financial experts have indicated the profits from insider trading could have been in the billions. Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German parliament responsible for oversight of Germany's intelligence services, estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million. A hasty conclusion reached by many is the insider trades were placed by bin Laden and his associates. Such a notion is flatly contradicted by the now absolute certainty that such insider trades would have -- and apparently did -- set off alarm bells. It makes little sense to argue bin Laden et al would have risked compromising at the last minute an operation planned in total secrecy for at least four years. Also lacking credibility is the argument that many of the trades were what some brokers described as inconsequential amounts valued at $1 million or $2 million. This does not address the possibility that U.S. intelligence officials decided in a few cases to make a quick profit from attacks they knew were going to succeed. As distasteful as it may seem, this explanation is far more credible than an assumption that bin Laden made the trades himself and risked the exposure of what the world has been led to believe was his life's "masterpiece." For more information on 9-11 insider trading please visit www.copvcia.com. The explanations offered by the Bush Administration over the last 48 hours will not withstand even the slightest scrutiny if a major press organization asks any question about the warnings received from credible foreign government sources and heads of state. Other questions must inevitably follow that will implode an oil dictatorship whose sins and crimes are exposed and just waiting for someone to pick them up and run with them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sharon Buccino / Rob Perks Natural Resources Defense Council Chevron Helped Dictate U.S. Energy Policy Bush Administration's Energy Task Force Adopted Several of the Oil Company's Recommendations WASHINGTON (May 22, 2002) - Among the roughly 1,500 additional documents from the Energy Department related to Vice President Cheney's energy task force, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has uncovered evidence showing the Bush administration implemented energy policies requested by Chevron Corporation. The company provided several recommendations, ranging from easing federal permitting rules for energy projects to relaxing standards fuel supply requirements, which ultimately were included in the president's national energy plan. NRDC unexpectedly received these documents late last night, 41 days after the final court deadline for their release. According to Sharon Buccino, NRDC senior attorney, "The administration has unlawfully delayed the release of some of the most embarrassing evidence of industry involvement in the Bush energy plan." In a February 5, 2002, letter to President George Bush and copied to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Chevron CEO David J. O'Reilly recommends four short-term actions the administration should take to "eliminate federal barriers to increased energy supplies." The energy task force - officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) - included Chevron's recommendations in its report to President Bush on May 17, 2001. Examples follow: Permitting for Energy Projects Chevron Recommendation: "Charge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator to identify and address federal barriers to permitting energy projects (e.g. projects to develop new supplies of energy, and projects that produce cleaner transportation fuels)..." Task Force Recommendations: "The NEPD Group recommends the President issue an Executive Order to rationalize permitting for energy production in an environmentally sound manner by directing federal agencies to expedite permits and other federal actions necessary for energy-related project approvals on a national basis. This order would establish an inter-agency task force chaired by the Council on Environmental Quality to ensure that federal agencies responsible for permitting energy-related facilities are coordinating their efforts. The task force will ensure that federal agencies set up appropriate mechanisms to coordinate federal, state, tribal, and local permitting activity in particular regions where increased activity is expected. "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Secretary of Energy to take steps to ensure America has adequate refining capacity to meet the needs of consumers. * Provide more regulatory certainty to refinery owners and streamline the permitting process where possible to ensure that regulatory overlap is limited. * Adopt comprehensive regulations (covering more than one pollutant and requirement) and consider the rules' cumulative impacts and benefits. "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy and other relevant agencies, to review New Source Review regulations, including administrative interpretation and implementation, and report to the President within 90 days on the impact of the regulations on investment in new utility and refinery generation capacity, energy efficiency, and environmental protection." "Boutique" Fuel Requirements Chevron Recommendation: "Promote legislation to address the balkanization of transportation fuels. Recent federal, state and local regulations have led to a patchwork of boutique fuel requirements, which have contributed to supply constraints and increased fuel costs. Comprehensive energy legislation should address the regulatory requirements affecting the nation's motor fuel supply. A federal plan should be developed to move the U.S. to nationwide performance-based standards for gasoline and diesel fuels." Task Force Recommendation: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the EPA to study opportunities to maintain or improve the environmental benefits of state and local 'boutique' clean fuel programs while exploring ways to increase the flexibility of the fuels distribution infrastructure, improve fungibility, and provide added gasoline market liquidity. In concluding this study, the Administrator shall consult with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and other agencies as needed." Offshore Oil Exploration - Gulf of Mexico Chevron Recommendation: "Proceed with domestic energy development, including Lease Sale 181 in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico scheduled for later this year. This announcement would complement and reinforce your support to open ANWR, and demonstrate a commitment to reject unjustified opposition to new energy leasing and development." Task Force Recommendations: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior to consider economic incentives for environmentally sound offshore oil and gas development where warranted by specific circumstances: explore opportunities for royalty reductions, consistent with ensuring a fair return to the public where warranted for enhanced oil and gas recovery; for reduction of risk associated with production in frontier areas or deep gas formations; and for development of small fields that would otherwise be uneconomic. "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to re-examine the current federal legal and policy regime (statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders) to determine if changes are needed regarding energy-related activities and the siting of energy facilities in the coastal zone and on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior continue OCS oil and gas leasing and approval of exploration and development plans on predictable schedules." Trade Sanctions Chevron Recommendation: "Oppose any attempt to reinstate the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) which sunsets on August 5, 2001, and consider lifting or modifying the current Executive Order that prohibits U.S. companies from doing business with Iran. U.S. energy policy should recognize the global nature of energy supply, and the role that foreign countries play in our nation's energy security. We urge your administration to support U.S. based companies efforts to expand and diversify the supply of energy throughout the world. This includes your support for eliminating ineffective, unilateral trade sanctions and promoting open trading relationships." NEPDG Recommendation: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to initiate a comprehensive review of sanctions. Energy security should be one of the factors considered in such a review." ------- **Click Here to View Chevron's Letters (pdf format) The Bush administration's National Energy Policy Report is on the Web at: www.fe.doe.gov/general/energypolicy.shtml . Other documents reveal key involvement by the National Mining Association, the National Petroleum & Refiners Association, General Motors and other major industries in the development of the Bush energy plan. As part of its ongoing efforts to obtain additional energy task force documents that the administration continues to withhold, NRDC will be back in federal court tomorrow. Print ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not a fan of Dennis Miller the comedian or self-proclaimed football analyst, I was sent this bit of writings I almost deleted before reading and was quite surprised of his commentary. Perhaps it may strike you in the same fashion. A View >From Dennis Miller: A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go: The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course-that's where the real fun is-but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel-or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it-for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one. Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshalling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death. Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful.Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id . . . uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is a letter read by Claire Braz-Valentine, the author, at this year's In Celebration of the Muse, Cabrillo College. It is worth knowing that the author is a woman of 60+ years, conservatively dressed and obviously quite talented. AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES On January 28, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he spent $8,000 of taxpayer's money for drapes to cover up the exposed breast of The Spirit of Justice, an 18 ft aluminum statue of a woman that stands in the Department of Justice's Hall of Justice. John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stick explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us, while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses , take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capital buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare, nuclear destruction, annihilation, you are out buying yardage to save Americans from the appalling alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of evil, that terrible ten foot tin tittie. You might not be able to find Bin Laden, but you sure as hell found the hooter in the hall of justice. It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the women of Afghanistan to not cover up their faces, you are begging your staff members to just cover up that nipple, to save the American people from that monstrous metal mammary. How can we ever thank you? So, in your office every morning, in your secret prayer meeting, while an American woman is sexually assaulted every 6 seconds, while anthrax floats around the post office and settles in the chest of senior citizens, you've got another chest on your mind. While American sons arrive home in body bags and heat seeking missiles fly around a foreign country looking for any warm body, you think of another body. And you pray for the biggest bra in the world. John, you see that breast on the Spirit of Justice in the spirit of your own inhibited sexuality. And when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, our granddaughters, our sisters, ourselves, when we women see that statue, the Spirit of Justice, we see the spirit of strength, the spirit of survival. Every day we view innocent bodies dragged out of rubble, and women and children laid out like thin limp dolls and baptized into death as collateral damage, and we see the hollow-eyed Afghani mother whose milk has dried up underneath her burka in famine, in shame, and her children are dead at her breast. While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the Spirit of Justice, and deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it as a testimony to motherhood. You see it as a tit. It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send. We've got the right to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans out of millions of dollars and then just not want to tell Congress about it. We've got the right to drop bombs, night and day, on a small country that has no army, no navy, no military at all, because we've got the right to bear arms. But we just better not even think about the right to bare breasts. So now John, you can be photographed while you stand there and talk about guns and bombs and poisons without that breast appearing over your right shoulder, without that bodacious bosom bothering you and we just wanted to tell you in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of truth, John, there is still one very big boob left standing there in that picture. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shadows on The White House We do not believe that Bush was deliberately behind 9/11. We do believe that Bush's pro-arab tilt discouraged the FBI, CIA, etc. from pursuing leads as vigorously as possible, and from more assertive actions. We do not think 9/11 was another staged Reichstag Fire. Bush I armed Saddam, which has produced highly embarrassing examples of Blowback, from the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to, we think, 9/11. We believe that Saddam used Bin Laden to pull off 9/11 thus providing himself with plausible deniability. Saddam has gone to great lengths to provide himself with "plausible deniability" time after time. Saddam Hussein International Terrorist boss of bosses, even pretended to be on the Serbian side in the Balkan War, while secretly using his terror gang, which looks, walks, acts, and talks, very much like the Duck called Al Queda, to attack Serbia in the Balkans "during the night of July 18-19, 1998 a group of several hundred heavily armed foreign mercenaries (mostly "mujahideens," Islamic "holy warriors") frontally attacked from Albania the Yugoslav Army border guards near the Djeravici mountain. The attack was repulsed by the Serbian troops, and the foreign assailants suffered heavy casualties. Among the dead were six mercenaries from Yemen, five from Saudi Arabia, four from Macedonia. A short while later, Yugoslav authorities arrested Nuri Salip Muhamed, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Iraqi Army as he was trying to enter Yugoslavia illegally from Bulgaria. This Iraqi officer, who reportedly spoke perfect Serbian, was supposed to have commanded the July 18-19, 1998 terrorist attack from Albania. But lucky for him, he had not arrived there in time." That time Saddam got caught. Bin Laden's forces fought openly on the side of the albanians against Serbia in the Balkan War. Bush II is not calling Saddam on 9/11, in fact is probably suppressing attempts to draw a link between Saddam and 9/11 for a number of reasons, these include, we think, the obvious embarrassing Blowback of Bush I, Cheney and Powell leaving Saddam in power in 1991, the increased leverage available to Bush II Cheney and Powell to pressure Israel so that a so-called "coalition" against Saddam can be built among what we feel is an oxymoron "arab allies", by appeasing said non-existent allies, but real arab states, at Israel's expense. If the American people were told the truth: that 9/11 was Saddam's project, using Bin Laden as his agent, no appeasement of so-called "arab allies" at Israel's, or America's expense would be tolerated. Any arab state that stood in America's way would find that "regime change" would also be applied to that regime, i.e. the Saudi and Jordanian de jure monarchies, the de facto monarchy in Syria where a dictator, Hafez-al Assad was replaced by another dictator, his son, Bashir-al Assad, good thing that sort of thing only happens in 3rd world countries. "Iraq has the motivation and the means to actively support the Islamist networks of the region*** In the past, there have been intelligence reports of possible cooperation between Iraq and Osama bin Laden. Iraq has already tried to assassinate President Bush Senior in 1993, when he visited Kuwait as a private citizen. In the attack on the USS Cole in Aden last October, there could have been an Iraqi connection. Iraq has excellent relations with the anti-Western Yemeni Islamists of the Army of Aden-Abyan, whose militants have been arrested by the Yemenite authorities in connection with the attack. Such an attack required long preparations, technical and military skills and good operational intelligence. In addition, the explosive used in the attack was sophisticated, a "shaped charge" like a torpedo or a missile, a device not in use by terrorist organizations, and which may have come from a military stockpile." http://www.adl.org/ict/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/2760 Sept. 11th 1990 Dubya's Dad Speaks to Congress on Iraq When ? September 11th? Yes ! September 11th 1990. Exactly 11 years to the day before the infamous September 11th 2001 attacks on America. Saddam's Revenge !!! How clear it is!!! "Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit September 11, 1990 http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9711/04/iraq.us.history/ "In June 1993, after Washington uncovered an Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George Bush, President Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on Baghdad." http://www.usembassy.ro/USIS/Washington-File/300/98-02-11/eur308.htm "US officials state that an FBI investigation had substantiated charges that the Iraqi government plotted the assassination of former President Bush while visiting Kuwait in April 1993." Dubya's Lips Sinking Our Ship Of State! Did arab terrorists read George W's Lips? http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/11/politics/12CND-TEXT.html Bush-Gore Presidential Debate Excerpt October 13th,2000 "MR. LEHRER: On hate crimes laws? " MR. BUSH:*** there is other forms of racial profiling that goes on in America. Arab Americans are racially profiled on what's called secret evidence. People are stopped. And we got to do something about that. My friend Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan is pushing a law to make sure that, you know, Arab Americans are treated with respect." Dumbya Dumbo Dubya ! Sending The Wrong Signals Costs American Lives! If arab terrorists who murder Americans , or seek to murder Americans, feel that America's Commander in Chief or, in this case, the person who is Impersonating our Commander in Chief, is reluctant to use "secret evidence" and secret intelligence to stop them they will continue to murder Americans. It did not take them long to go after us after Dubya's insane comments in his debate against Al Gore. http://www.spear.navy.mil/ships/ddg67/ http://www.cnn.com/2000/us/10/13/uss.cole.02/index.html "USS Cole attack victims evacuated Navy casualty list includes men and women October 13, 2000" "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Seeking to deflect Congress from President Bush's proposal for a missile defense system, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said his committee would concentrate on the threat of bioterrorism during the current Congressional session. "In my view, the threat from anonymously-delivered biological weapons and from emerging infectious diseases simply dwarfs the threat that we will be attacked by a third-world ICBM with a return address," http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/09/05/bioterror.threats/index.html http://www.cnn.ru/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/13/congress.iraq/ "Lieberman Frustrated By Allies' Reluctance To Back Iraq Strike By John Bisney/CNN WASHINGTON-A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee says he is puzzled and frustrated about the lack of support from allies and Iraq's Arab neighbors for a U.S. military strike against Saddam Hussein- Please read 2 very important books on Iraq: REPUBLIC OF FEAR: THE INSIDE STORY OF SADDAM'S IRAQ by SAMIR AL-KHALIL Paperback (1991) DIANE Publishing Co; ISBN: 0091751713 SPIDER'S WEB : THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOW THE WHITE HOUSE ILLEGALLY ARMED IRAQ by Alan Friedman ASIN: 0553096508 . http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/2248 "It occurred on the second anniversary of Iraq's expulsion from Kuwait City, and the Bank of Kuwait just happened to have a vault in the basement of the World Trade Center. The Hunt Begins The mystery of who triggered the new york blast prompts a massive manhunt. What the experts are looking for- and where the clues may lead By Russell Watson NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE March 8, 1993 issue - The explosion in the basement of the World Trade Center did deadly work in more ways than one. It shook the building, all 110 floors. It killed at least five people (two others appeared to be missing) and injured more than 1,000. It trapped tens of thousands of frightened workers and visitors in coal-dark elevators and smoke-filled offices and stairwells. It knocked local television stations off the air and welded the streets of lower Manhattan into a gridlock built for the ages. It instantly shut down a city-size office complex, a symbol of America's enduring power in the global economy. The explosion shook more than the building; it rattled the country's confidence, dispelling the snug illusion that Americans were immune, somehow, to the plague of terrorism that torments so many countries. "No foreign people or force has ever done this to us," said New York's Gov. Mario Cuomo. "Until now, we were invulnerable." "At approximately 12 noon on February 26, 1993, a massive explosion rocked the World Trade Center in New York City." http://www.dssrewards.net/english/wldtrade.html "Remarks at the Commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Liberation of Kuwait Secretary Colin L. Powell Kuwait City, Kuwait (US Embassy) February 26, 2001 http://www.state.gov/secretary/index.cfm?docid=954 "Middle East Correspondent, Robert Fisk: Why was it that the bombing of the two embassies in Tanzania and Kenya occurred on the eighth anniversary to the very day of the first arrival of American troops of the 82nd airborne in Saudi Arabia in 1990?" http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s12267.htm Saddam loves 11th anniversaries, for instance " Saddam Hussein's speech on the 11th Anniversary of the Great Victory Day In the Name of God, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful Great People, The Valiant of Our Brave Armed Forces, Sons of our Glorious Arab Nation, Friends http://www.index.com.jo/iraqtoday/auguste.html Sept. 11th 1990 Dubya's Dad Speaks to Congress on Iraq When ? September 11th? Yes ! September 11th 1990. Exactly 11 years to the day before the infamous September 11th 2001 attacks on America. Saddam's Revenge !!! How clear it is!!! "Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit September 11, 1990 Mr. President and Mr. Speaker and Members of the United States Congress ***. We gather tonight, witness to events in the Persian Gulf as significant as they are tragic. In the early morning hours of August 2d, following negotiations and promises by Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein not to use force, a powerful Iraqi army invaded its trusting and much weaker neighbor, Kuwait. *** We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective-a new world order-can emerge: a new era-freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. ***" READ THE WHOLE OF DUBYA'S DADDY'S SPEECH TO CONGRESS ON SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1990 AT http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/ " The address was broadcast live on nationwide television and radio." http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/ Iraq Cheers September 11th Attacks on America "Wednesday, September 12, 2001 Baghdad TV Commentary: US 'Reaping Fruits of Crimes Against Humanity' Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television in Arabic 1700 GMT 11 Sep 01 [TV Commentary by Sa'd Yasin Yusuf read by announcer over footage of explosions in New York] [FBIS Translated Text] [With thanks to Laurie Mylorie - Iraq Watch] The American cowboy is reaping the fruits of his crimes against humanity. It is a black day in the history of America, which is tasting the bitter defeat of its crimes and disregard for peoples' will to lead a free, decent life. The massive explosions in the centers of power in America, notably the Pentagon, is a painful slap in the face of US politicians to stop their illegitimate hegemony and attempts to impose custodianship on peoples. It was no coincidence that the World Trade Center was destroyed in suicidal operations involving two planes that have broken through all US security barriers to carry the operation of the century and to express rejection of the reckless US policy. Panic has spread among US official circles, which evacuated the White House following a series of explosions. They also evacuated the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress and closed down the airports and government institutions. The collapse of US centers of power is a collapse of the US policy, which deviates from human values and stands by world Zionism at all international forums to continue to slaughter the Palestinian Arab people and implement US plans to dominate the world under the cover of what is called the new [world] order. These are the fruits of the new US order. [Video of explosion rocking World Trade Center] [Description of Source: Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television in Arabic-Official television station of the Iraqi Government]" http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3 "try to avoid having the principal travel by commercial airline on terrorist anniversaries" from "The Art of Executive Protection" http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/000450.html CNN LARRY KING LIVE America's New War: Laura Bush Discusses the Impact of September 11 Aired October 2, 2001 - 21:00 LARRY KING: A couple of other things: Have you spoken to your father- in-law? (Not in transcript, but the father in law in question is one George Herbert Walker Bush !!!) LAURA BUSH: I've spoken to my father-in-law. They were-they had actually spent that Monday night here. (not in transcript but "here" means at the White House !!!) LARRY KING: Really? LAURA BUSH: I had just seen them off that morning when I got in the-got in the car and found out about the first plane. LARRY KING: Didn't know that. LAURA BUSH: They were-they were on their way to St. Paul, Minnesota to give a speech, and they were in a private plane, and their plane was diverted to Minneapolis." http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/02/lkl.00.html "US officials state that an FBI investigation had substantiated charges that the Iraqi government plotted the assassination of former President Bush while visiting Kuwait in April 1993." "Terrorist Pilot Met With Iraqi Intelligence Agent By RICK JERVIS Special to The Wall Street Journal Europe Wall Street Journal, Europe October 4, 2001 [With thanks to Laurie Mylroie - Iraq News] PRAGUE-Mohamed Atta, who allegedly crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, met at least one Iraqi intelligence agent last year in Prague before moving to the U.S., a Czech official close to the investigation said." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/2614 "The Myth Of The Palestinian People by Yehezkel Bin-Nun December 26, 2001 "Palestinians doubt Blair can deliver," announces the BBC. "Four Palestinians die in West Bank," reports CNN. "IDF demolishes building used by Palestinian gunmen," announces Israel's government run Channel 1 News. The modern media is filled with stories about the Palestinians, their plight, their dilemmas and their struggles. All aspects of their lives seem to have been put under the microscope. Only one question never seems to be addressed: Who are the Palestinians? Who are these people who claim " the Holy Land" as their own? What is their history? Where did they come from? How did they arrive in the country they call Palestine? *** It would be prudent to seek answers to these questions. For all we know, Palestine could be as real as Disneyland. The general impression given in the media is that Palestinians have lived in "the Holy Land" for hundreds, if not thousands of years. No wonder, then, that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believe (falsely) that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Palestinian state existed in its place. Yet curiously, when it comes to giving the history of this "ancient" people most news outlets find it harder to go back more than the early nineteen hundreds. CNN, an agency which has devoted countless hours of airtime to the "plight" of the Palestinians, has a website which features a special section on the Middle East conflict called "Struggle For Peace". It includes a promising sounding section entitled "Lands Through The Ages" which assures us it will detail the history of the region using maps. Strangely, it turns out, the maps displayed start no earlier than the ancient date of 1917. The CBS News web site has a background section called "A Struggle For Middle East Peace.'' Its history timeline starts no earlier than 1897. The NBC News background section called ''Searching for Peace'' has a timeline which starts in 1916. BBC's timeline starts in 1948. Yet, the clincher must certainly be the Palestinian National Authority's own web site. While it is top heavy on such phrases as "Israeli occupation" and "Israeli human rights violations" the site offers practically nothing on the history of the so-called Palestinian people. The only article on the site with any historical content is called "Palestinian History - 20th Century Milestones" which seems only to confirm that prior to 1900 there was no such concept as the Palestinian People. While the modern media maybe short on information about the history of the "Palestinian people" the historical record is not. Books, such as Battleground by Samuel Katz and From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters long ago detailed the history of the region. Far from being settled by Palestinians for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the Land of Israel, according to dozens of visitors to the land, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty. Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book, Recollections of the East, he writes "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound…." None other than the famous American author Mark Twain, who visited the Land of Israel in 1867, confirms this. In his book Innocents Abroad he writes, "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely…. We never saw a human being on the whole journey." Even the British Consul in Palestine reported, in 1857, "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population…" In fact, according to official Ottoman Turk census figures of 1882, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab. This number was to skyrocket to 650,000 Arabs by 1922, a 450% increase in only 40 years. By 1938 that number would become over 1 million or an 800% increase in only 56 years. Population growth was especially high in areas where Jews lived. Where did all these Arabs come from? According to the Arabs the huge increase in their numbers was due to natural childbirth. In 1944, for example, they alleged that the natural increase (births minus deaths) of Arabs in the Land of Israel was the astounding figure of 334 per 1000. That would make it roughly three times the corresponding rate for the same year of Lebanon and Syria and almost four times that of Egypt, considered amongst the highest in the world. Unlikely, to say the least. If the massive increase was not due to natural births, then were did all these Arabs come from? All the evidence points to the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. In 1922 the British Governor of the Sinai noted that "illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria." In 1930, the British Mandate -sponsored Hope-Simpson Report noted that "unemployment lists are being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania" and "illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material." The Arabs themselves bare witness to this trend. For example, the governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey el Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to the Land of Israel. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Land of Israel, noted in 1939 that "far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied." Far from displacing the Arabs, as they claimed, the Jews were the very reason the Arabs chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Jobs provided by newly established Zionist industry and agriculture lured them there, just as Israeli construction and industry provides most Arabs in the Land of Israel with their main source of income today. Malcolm MacDonald, one of the principal authors of the British White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, admitted (conservatively) that were it not for a Jewish presence the Arab population would have been little more than half of what it actually was. ***. Not only pre-state Arabs lied about being indigenous. Even today, many prominent so-called Palestinians, it turns out, are foreign born. Edward Said, an Ivy League Professor of Literature and a major Palestinian propagandist, long claimed to have been raised in Jerusalem. However, in an article in the September 1999 issue of Commentary Magazine Justus Reid Weiner revealed that Said actually grew up in Cairo, Egypt, a fact which Said himself was later forced to admit. But why bother with Said? PLO chief Yasir Arafat himself, self declared "leader of the Palestinian people", has always claimed to have been born and raised in "Palestine". In fact, according to his official biographer Richard Hart, as well as the BBC, Arafat was born in Cairo on August 24, 1929 and that's where he grew up. To maintain the charade of being an indigenous population, Arab propagandists have had to do more than a little rewriting of history. A major part of this rewriting involves the renaming of geography. For two thousand years the central mountainous region of Israel was known as Judea and Samaria, as any medireview map of the area testifies. However, the state of Jordan occupied the area in 1948 and renamed it the West Bank. This is a funny name for a region that actually lies in the eastern portion of the land and can only be called "West" in reference to Jordan. This does not seem to bother the majority of news outlets covering the region, which universally refer to the region by its recent Jordanian name. The term "Palestinian" is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Canaanite tribe, the Phillistines, that died out almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil. Who is to know the difference? Given the absence of any historical record, one can understand why Yasser Arafat claims that Jesus *** was a Palestinian. Every year, at Christmas time, Arafat goes to Bethlehem and tells worshippers that Jesus was in fact "the first Palestinian". If the Palestinians are indeed a myth, then the real question becomes "Why?" Why invent a fictitious people? The answer is that the myth of the Palestinian People serves as the justification for Arab occupation of the Land of Israel. While the Arabs already possess 21 sovereign countries of their own (more than any other single people on earth) and control a land mass 800 times the size of the Land of Israel, this is apparently not enough for them. They therefore feel the need to rob the Jews of their one and only country, one of the smallest on the planet. Unfortunately, many people ignorant of the history of the region, including much of the world media, are only too willing to help. *** On second thought, it may be unfair to compare Palestine to Disneyland. After all, Disneyland really exists. http://www.arutzsheva.com/article.php3?id=747 Subscribe to email news at: subscribe.IsraelNationalNews.com Or send email to info@IsraelNationalNews.com " How Alfred Nobel would have reacted. By Joshua Hasten Legend has it, that if one were to visit the grave site of Alfred Nobel in San Remo Italy, and listen very closely, one would hear old Alfred tossing and turning in his grave. The phenomenon is said to have begun in 1994 when a Norwegian peace prize committee bestowed its prestigious award, named after its founder, to Yasser Arafat. Poor Mr. Nobel hasn't been able to rest in peace since. Nobel's intention was to have an award, presented to individuals, Who did the best work for fraternity between nations and promotion of peace. Examining the lifetime accomplishments of Arafat, it is hard to see exactly how he was ever considered Nobel Peace Prize material. Arafat to his credit, can be linked to: The murder of thousands of Lebanese Christians in Damour Lebanon in 1976. The blowing up of 3 Airplanes in Jordan in 1970. Trying to overthrow King Hussein in 1970, which led to thousands of people being killed. The murder of 12 Israeli Olympians during the 1972 Munich games. The murder of the United States ambassador to the Sudan, Cleo Noel, in 1973. The bombing of the United States Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 people. The hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 and the murder of hostage Leon Klinghoffer. And, most recently, the current mini-war in Israel that has claimed hundreds of lives including the lives of American citizens. So what was the Nobel committee thinking in presenting Arafat with the award? Kare Kristiansen, a former member of the Nobel committee *** resigned in protest over Arafat's nomination, ***.Arafat hasn't changed much since his moment of glory when he received the award. He still remains the evil dictator that he always has been, ruling over his own people with an iron fist and constantly seeking ways to annihilate the Jewish state and its inhabitants. After Arafat turned down a more than generous offer at Camp David and instead initiated a war of terror against Israel, it has become obvious to any sane person, that Oslo was doomed from the start.*** the world has seen that Arafat and his cronies have no intention of making peace. While all previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians had required the Palestinian Authority to prevent terrorism and discipline all elements that engage in terror, over three hundred captured terrorists were let loose ***. Many of those felons are to be held accountable for taking leadership roles in the current wave of violence. In addition, the official Palestinian media outlets still engage in the business of inciting the masses to use violence against Israel. In a fiery sermon on official Palestinian-Authority controlled television following the Tel-Aviv suicide bombing that killed 20 Israelis, Muslim religious leaders called for an increase in more suicide bombings against the Jewish nation. Arabs teach there people, that when they kill Jews, they will go to heaven and be with 72 virgins. Can you imagine a people so murderous. The most significant indicator that peace is not even on the horizon are the official Palestinian textbooks used in schools. On their hateful pages, Jews are compared to "Nazis" and "dogs." Even though it was the Palestinians who were in Cahoots with Hitler.(ARAFAT'S UNCLE THE GRAND MUFTI OF JERUSALEM) Hajj Amin Al Husseini was a genocidal partner of Hitler. Maps of the Middle East include a country called "Greater Palestine" while the word "Israel" is nowhere to be found. This serves as a forecast of how the next generation of Palestinians will view their fellow "peace partners." While Arafat has not shown signs of remorse or atonement nor a desire to lead his people down a true path of peace, there is still a chance for the Nobel committee to make amends for its error in judgment. There is still hope that future generations will not include Yasser Arafat in the same breath as someone like Dr. Martin Luther King. (Arafat Behind MLK, RFK Murders? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushBusters/message/3418 ) The Arabs have never stopped their terrorist war against Israel and have never sought peaceful co-existence with Israel, simply for its own sake. Little Israel has only wanted to be left alone and in peace throughout its existence.The Arabs violent and tribal mentality has never allowed that to happen. To reestablish the Nobel Peace Prize as the most distinguished, honorable, and most celebrated award on the planet, it's time to take back Yasser's. Let poor Alfred once again rest in peace." "we appeal to all people of morality and good faith to stand up and express their anger and disappointment in Mr. Arafat by calling for the revocation of his Nobel Peace Prize." http://www.revoketheprize.org/ Please Take The Poll In most civilized nations a policy of coddling terrorists coupled with a massive intelligence failure that led to the massive death toll and economic disaster of the terrorist raid on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would result in the government's resignation. We are calling for that resignation now. We think Cheney should resign first and that Bush should then nominate the real winner of the 2000 election: Al Gore as Vice President. Once Al Gore has been confirmed by the Senate Bush should resign and Al Gore can be sworn in as President, the office he was elected to in 2000 by the American People. Do you agree? o Yes Bush and Cheney Should Resign under the above formula o No Bush and Cheney Should Not Resign ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Preface A previous version of this page (to October 11th, 2001) supported the thesis that the terrorist attacks of September 11th were carried out by Arab hijackers but that the operation was actually an inside job (that is, so-called Americans planned and directed it). There were always problems with the "Arab hijackers" theory, but since only those ready to die for their cause would deliberately kill themselves by flying planes into the Twin Towers there seemed no alternative. New evidence, however, has emerged, and it now seems that it was entirely an inside job, with no Arabs directly involved (except those who happened to be innocent passengers on the doomed planes). Hard to believe, perhaps (especially because of the constant repetition in the mainstream media, in the weeks following the event, of the term "suicide attack"). Shocking, yes. But if one looks at the evidence, and thinks about it, this is what emerges. This page also previously asserted (until October 23rd, 2001) that the Twin Towers did not collapse because of the fires (alleged to have caused the steel structural supports to melt) but rather because explosives were placed in the towers and detonated so as to bring the towers down in a controlled demolition. While there is convincing evidence (see below) that the towers did not collapse because of the fires, but rather were deliberately demolished, the manner in which this was accomplished has yet to be determined (possibilities are discussed below). Until February 2002 the author of this page believed that part of the official story which asserted that the four "hijacked" Boeings all crashed as stated (two into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania). New evidence suggests that in fact only one of these Boeings crashed — the one that crashed in Pennsylvania. (What happened to the other three planes, and their passengers, will be revealed below.) In the light of this new evidence this web page underwent a major revision on April 7th, 2002. The implications of this analysis are disturbing, but to ignore them (or the evidence itself) would be an attempt at denial which would constitute a surrender to evil. In this matter anyone with any degree of moral awareness will want to know the truth, however unpalatable. Continued willful ignorance on the part of the American people may result in slavery for all people everywhere. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On September 11, 2001, the 28th anniversary of the CIA-directed military coup d'etat in Chile (and the 2nd anniversary of the coming into effect of a peace treaty known as WYE II, signed on September 4th, 1999, at Sharm-el-Sheik by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Baruk, to come into effect one week later), terrorists (but not Arab terrorists) took control of four planes and (according to the official story) crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers, causing fires within. Again according to the official story (pre-written and rushed into print in the mainstream media immediately after the events, together with the identity of the alleged culprit) the fires then caused the steel girders to melt and the towers to collapse. But, as will be shown below, the Twin Towers did not collapse because of the plane impacts and the fires. Possibly (but not certainly) explosives were placed besides their structural supports at numerous levels in the towers, explosives which were detonated 47 and 104 minutes after the planes hit, bringing the towers down in controlled implosions, killing several thousand American citizens and others. The Twin Towers were designed to survive the impact of a jumbo jet. Had one of them collapsed, that would have been amazing. That both of them collapsed, quickly, neatly and symmetrically (without falling over onto the surrounding buildings in Manhattan's financial district), collapsed completely into fragments, ash and dust — with no remains of their central massive vertical steel columns left standing — solely as a result of the plane impacts and the resulting fires, is, upon examination, unbelievable. Due to the astuteness of some Americans, who thought hard about the U.S. government's explanation of the events of September 11th, the official story quickly began to unravel. The big lie has been revealed for what it is (but word of this has not yet reached most people). And the reason for it. If you don't already know, this page will inform you as to what really happened and what's really going on. As in the "War on Drugs", in the "War on Terrorism" just say 'Know'. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. A Controlled Demolition Millions of people around the world watched the WTC events unfold live on CNN on September 11, 2001, in near-disbelief. They saw huge clouds of thick black smoke billowing over Manhattan and saw the towers collapse ... in a curious way. They did not fall over; they imploded, in the way that most people have seen when a building is destroyed in a controlled demolition: the building does not collapse in a chaotic way, hurling debris over a wide area; rather it collapses upon itself. This was how the WTC towers collapsed: not because they were hit by the hijacked planes, but because someone, with expert knowledge of demolition of tall buildings, brought them down. That the towers were demolished was noted immediately by some astute observers: From: "David Rostcheck" To: USAttacked@topica.com Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 3:12 PM Subject: WTC bombing Ok, is it just me, or did anyone else recognize that it wasn't the airplane impacts that blew up the World Trade Center? To me, this is the most frightening part of this morning. ... If you watch the time sequence, you'll see that it happens like this: - A plane hits tower #1, blowing a hole in it high up. The expected things then happen: - The building stays up. A reinforced concrete building is *extremely* strong. Terrorists set off a large bomb *inside* that building without significant damage. ... The WTC towers were specifically designed to survive a direct impact from a jumbo jet - which *both do*. ... - The second plane hits the second tower, lower and moving faster. It blows a bigger hole through it, showering debris on the street, but the building is clearly still standing and still looks quite solid. - The second building begins burning, also from the impact point up. - Perhaps a half hour later, the fire in the first building *goes out*. It is still smouldering and letting off black smoke, but there is no flame. ... - The fire in the second building goes out. - Then, later, the second building suddenly crumbles into dust, in a smooth wave running from the top of the building (above the burned part) down through all the stories at an equal speed. The debris falls primarily inward. The tower does not break off intact and collapse into other buildings. ... The crumbling comes from the top (above the damage). It moves at a uniform rate. All of the structural members are destroyed in a smooth pattern, so there is no remaining skeleton. The damage is uniform, symmetric, and total. In summary, it looks exactly like a demolition - because that's what it is. - The first tower collapses in a similar demolition wave. There's no doubt that the planes hit the building and did a lot of damage. But look at the footage - those buildings were *demolished*. To demolish a building, you don't need all that much explosive but it needs to be placed in the correct places (in direct contact with the structural members) and ignited in a smooth, timed sequence. ... — davidr (Full text of this message is here.) This message was posted to the internet on September 11th, within hours of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Right from the beginning, some people were not deceived. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Official Story: The Twin Towers The official story is: This "Attack on America" was planned and directed by America's enemy, Usama bin Laden. On the morning of September 11th four Boeing passenger jets were hijacked within an hour by nineteen Arab terrorists armed with boxcutters. Pilots among these terrorists took control of the Boeings and changed course toward targets in New York City and Washington D.C. Two of the Boeings flew to the Twin Towers and crashed into them, causing raging fires which melted the steel structural supports, causing the buildings to collapse completely, killing thousands of innocent American civilians. A third Boeing flew to the Pentagon and crashed into it, while the fourth crashed from unknown causes in Pennsylvania. A nation (and world) in shock largely accepted this story, since it did provide some explanation. Even those who considered this explanation hard to believe were inclined to believe it because there seemed no other explanation (and, after all, the President of the United States was telling the world that this is how it was). But the official story does not withstand critical examination. It is, in fact, full of holes. It's not just full of holes, it's a deliberate lie, designed to fool the American people and the rest of the world. According to the official story the four jetliners were hijacked by nineteen Arab terrorists. It is certainly possible to find Arabs who are willing to die for their cause (freedom of their people from ongoing American and Israeli aggression) — although finding nineteen of them for a single mission could be difficult — but where do you find such Arabs who also know how to fly Boeing 757s and Boeing 767s? At least four highly trained pilots are needed. (Alleged hijacker-pilots Mohammed Atta, Marwanal Al-Shehhi and Hani Hanjour had received pilot training but were considered by their flying instructors to be incompetent to fly even light single-engined planes.) The official story expects us to believe that these alleged nineteen on-board hijackers (acting with military coordination and precision) overpowered the flight attendants (with nothing more than boxcutters and shouted commands), forced their way into the cabin (were all eight official pilots absorbed in contemplation of the clouds?), overpowered the pilots (apparently none of them, some ex-military, could offer any resistance to hijackers armed only with boxcutters), took command of the planes, having acquired the necessary flying skills from training courses in Florida and from flight manuals, flew them expertly to their targets (good navigators, those Arabs; and flying with the skill of a trained military pilot in the case of the jet which, allegedly, hit the Pentagon), met absolutely no opposition from the U.S. authorities (including the U.S. Air Force) responsible for safeguarding America's airspace (despite the fact that the planes as they approached New York City and Washington must have been visible on radar), hit those targets and killed themselves. Sure. And pigs can fly. — Anyone who would believe this story obviously has nothing between their ears. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clearly the towers did not collapse because of the plane impacts alone, because both towers stood for 45 to 90 minutes after impact. The official explanation, parroted faithfully by the mainstream media, is that the towers collapsed because burning jet fuel caused the steel girders supporting them to melt. Let us examine this hypothesis as to its credibility. Firstly, much, or perhaps most, of the jet fuel was consumed in the fireballs which erupted when the planes hit the towers. Furthermore, it is likely that the jet fuel which managed to enter the towers would have burnt fairly quickly (jet fuel does not burn slowly like wood). And finally there were sprinkler systems in place in the towers, and although these systems no doubt suffered some damage it is likely that they would have been at least partially operative and would have hindered the spread of the fire (by soaking combustible material) even if they had no effect on the burning jet fuel itself. The Twin Towers were giving off a lot of black sooty smoke, but there was little fire visible. But to melt steel you need the high temperature produced by, e.g., an oxy-acetylene torch. Jet fuel burning in air (especially in an enclosed space within a building, where there is much smoke and little available oxygen) just won't do it. And if the steel columns had melted, would this have produced the implosive collapse observed? If the columns had melted like toffee they would have bent, causing the towers to fall over on one side (probably the side where the planes hit), producing a kind of collapse in which concrete and steel girders would have rained down over a wide area (causing huge damage to the surrounding buildings and many fatalities among their occupants). This did not happen. These considerations (and others, given below, concerning the probable maximum temperature of the fire) show that the claim that tens of thousands of liters of burning jet fuel produced a raging inferno and caused the steel columns to melt is extremely dubious, and does not account for the collapse of the towers. Examination of the times of the events of September 11th provides further evidence that it was not the fires that caused the Twin Towers to collapse. The North Tower was hit first, at 8:45 a.m. The plane (not necessarily a Boeing jumbo jet though) hit the tower directly, in the center, and all the jet fuel which was not immediately consumed in the fireball entered the building, causing a major fire. Then at 9:03 a.m. the South Tower was hit, but whoever was controlling the plane did not manage a direct hit; rather the plane hit the tower toward a corner and at a shallow angle, and comparatively little of the jet fuel entered the building, most being consumed in the fireball (click on the image at left for further evidence). The metal fragments of the Boeing would have followed the same path as the jet fuel. This path was through one corner of the South Tower. The steel beams bearing most of the load were located in the center of the tower, and thus most of the metal from the plane would not have hit the central steel beams, which would thus have remained largely undamaged by the impact. The fire in the South Tower was thus less intense than that in the North Tower. But the South Tower collapsed first, at 9:50 a.m., 47 minutes after impact, whereas the North Tower collapsed at 10:29 a.m., 1 hour and 44 minutes after impact. Had the fires been the cause of the collapse then the North Tower, with its more intense fire, would have collapsed first. Or, put another way, had the fires been the cause of the collapse then the South Tower, hit after the North Tower, and subjected to a less intense fire, would have collapsed after (not before) the North Tower collapsed. The Split-Second Error ... Exposing the WTC Bomb Plot ... Note: This page assumes that an on-board hijacker was piloting the plane, but its argument concerning the cause of the collapse remains valid if the plane was actually being controlled remotely (see below). A convincing case (with numerous web references supporting his argument) that the Twin Towers did not collapse because of the fires has been given by J. McMichael in his article I Tried to be Patriotic. ... heating steel is like pouring syrup onto a plate: you can't get it to stack up. The heat just flows out to the colder parts of the steel, cooling off the part you are trying to warm up. ... Am I to believe that the fire burned all that time, getting constantly hotter until it reached melting temperature [1538°C, not 800°C as was reported]? Or did it burn hot and steady throughout until 200,000 tons of steel [the amount of steel in one of the Twin Towers] were heated molten — on one plane load of jet fuel? ... Fake? Here is a picture showing the top 25 floors of one tower (probably south) toppling over sideways (http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1535000/images/_1538563_thecollapseap150.jpg). Why are there no reports of this cube of concrete and steel (measuring 200 ft. wide, 200 ft. deep, and 200 ft. high), falling from 1000 feet into the street below? ... Where is the ruin where the 200ft x 200ft x 50 story-object struck? Forty floors should have caused a ray of devastation 500 ft. into the surrounding cityscape. ... When the platters [the floors] fell, those quarter-mile high central steel columns (at least from the ground to the fire) should have been left standing naked and unsupported in the air, and then they should have fallen intact or in sections to the ground below, clobbering buildings hundreds of feet from the WTC site like giant trees falling in the forest. But I haven't seen any pictures showing those columns standing, falling, or lying on the ground. Nor have I heard of damage caused by them. — I Tried To Be Patriotic In a sequel to this article J. McMichael writes: ... the maximum temperature in the unprotected steel supports in those test fires [in the U.K., Japan, the U.S. and Australia] was 360 degrees C (680 F), and that is a long way from the first critical threshold in structural steel, 550 degrees C (1022 F). ... I think the case is made: The fire did not weaken the WTC structure sufficiently to cause the collapse of the towers. — Muslims Suspend Laws of Physics! Part II -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As for the story which appeared in Newsweek, etc., about plucky passengers on UA Flight 93 jumping the hijackers ("OK, let's roll!") — this was almost entirely fictitious, fabricated by some psy-war operative with training as a two-bit Hollywood scriptwriter and disseminated with the help of some willing media whore. The story even has the ultimate terror of imminent death in the 'reported' (but unheard by you or I) last words of an airline stewardess. "My God, my God, I see buildings....water!" Down at the bottom of the Bargain Bin, in the pulp fiction section of the local charity shop, I can find dime-a-dozen trashy novels with plenty of "My God, My God..." dialogue. But the REAL world of actual airline stewardess has people, not cartoon dumb blondes. They KNOW what New York looks like from the air ... She might have said something credible like: "Jesus Christ! We're gonna hit Manhattan." But no. "I see buildings...." (...and, wait for it...) ..pause.. "...water." Check out that pregnant pause in every publication of the quote. Does that pause feel right to you? Not to me. The whole thing feels like a ham-fisted effort designed to make us believe certain things. — Tall Tales of the Wag Movie It is possible, however, that the part about the passengers calling on their cell phones has some truth (see below in Section 5) — but not the part which has one of the passengers, Mark Bingham, calling his mother, saying "Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. The Official Story: The Pentagon According to the official story, as reported by the New York Times (International Herald Tribune, 2001-10-17, p.8), the Boeing 757, AA Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon executed a 270-degree 7,000-foot descent over Washington while flying at 500 mph. It approached the Pentagon on a horizontal trajectory (so as to maximize the damage to the building) so low that it clipped the power lines across the street (but somehow managed to squeeze between two poles which were separated by less than the wingspan of a Boeing 757). We were told (and, of course, expected to believe) that this maneuver was executed by an Arab pilot, Hani Hanjour, who in August 2001 was judged by the chief flight instructor at Bowie's Maryland Freeway Airport as not having the piloting skills required to fly a Cessna 172 solo. (Is there something fishy here?) In contrast to the attention given to the collapse of the Twin Towers, the attack on the Pentagon received little attention until in February 2002 a French website appeared which reproduced images obtained from U.S. Army websites: http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm These images cast doubt upon the official story that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 jetliner. For example, here is a picture of the Pentagon crash site (shortly after the impact, since the fire is still burning). Can you see any remains of the approximately 100 tons of metal (including engines, wings and tail section) which makes up a Boeing 757? And here's a nice one (at right). What happened to the wings of the Boeing? Presumably the wings, with their engines attached, would have sheared off when they hit the sections of the building (to the left and right of the hole in the side of the building) which are obviously still standing, with many wing and tail fragments ending up on the lawn in front of the Pentagon. See any remnants of wings in the picture above (or in any of the other pictures on the French website)? How about an engine or two? No? Curious ... Could it be that in fact no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon? Note that the French website does not say that no aircraft hit the Pentagon. It could be taken to suggest that the damage was caused by a truck bomb, or that no aircraft struck the Pentagon, but a careful inspection will reveal that the website suggests only that the damage was not caused by a Boeing 757. What, then, caused the damage? And another question: AA Flight 77 had between 56 and 64 passengers and crew members aboard. What happened to the bodies? And the passengers' luggage? No trace of either has ever turned up. In every aircraft crash there are always corpses (however badly burned). Were any remains of passengers on AA Flight 77 ever returned to their relatives for burial? If not, could it be because the passengers on AA Flight 77 did not die at the scene of the attack on the Pentagon? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. What Actually Happened In October 2001 two articles appeared on the web which provided the first clues to what really happened. One was Carol Valentine's "Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS". This article drew attention to the possibility of remote control of a large jet aircraft. That this technology exists is public knowledge. It was developed by Northrop Grumman for use in Global Hawk, an automated American military jet with the wingspan of a Boeing 737. (For further details about Global Hawk see Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS.) Since it is possible to control a Boeing 757 or 767 by means of remote control, might not the jets which hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon have been remotely controlled? In which case there would be no need to maintain the improbable hypothesis that the four jets were simultaneously hijacked by nineteen on-board Arab terrorists. The other article discussing the possibility of remote control of Boeing aircraft was Joe Vialls' "Home Run: Electronically Hijacking the World Trade Center Attack Aircraft". In the mid-seventies ... two American multinationals collaborated with the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) on a project designed to facilitate the remote recovery of hijacked American aircraft. [This technology] ... allowed specialist ground controllers to ... take absolute control of [a hijacked plane's] computerized flight control system by remote means. From that point onwards, regardless of the wishes of the hijackers or flight deck crew, the hijacked aircraft could be recovered and landed automatically at an airport of choice, with no more difficulty than flying a radio-controlled model plane. ... [This was] the system used to facilitate direct ground control of the four aircraft used in the high-profile attacks on New York and Washington on 11th September 2001. — Joe Vialls: Home Run: Electronically Hijacking the World Trade Center Attack Aircraft But there's a problem with this theory: Although the technology for the remote control of a Boeing jetliner certainly exists, and could be installed (if it is not already standard) on four Boeings, getting all four remotely controllable planes to take off within an hour of each other would not be easy, and would require more people with insider knowledge than is advisable (the more people involved the more chance there is of a mistake, or of information being leaked). Not only would United Airlines and American Airlines personnel be needed to coordinate the plane assignments but also four different teams of remote controllers would be necessary, one for each remotely hijacked plane. Thus, although the Vialls web page was important in reinforcing the notion that remote control of a Boeing jet was involved, some have suggested that this theory, because of its inherent implausibility as it stands, was in fact intended to discredit the notion of remotely controlled planes being used in the September 11th attacks. Only Joe Vialls knows for sure. Considering the stakes involved in an operation which was intended to kill thousands of U.S. citizens, there could be no room for error. What was needed was a fool-proof plan, and the remote hijacking of four planes is a scenario with too many possibilities for something to go wrong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The actual plan which was implemented is amazingly simple when it is finally understood, and it was carried out almost (but not completely) without a hitch. It was revealed to Carol Valentine by an informant (as recounted in 9-11: The Flight of the Bumble Planes). To put it briefly, a plot was hatched, not by Arabs, but by so-called Americans (agents of the civilian "state security and intelligence" agencies and bureaus such as the CIA, military intelligence types and high-level officials within the U.S. Administration), perhaps (some would say, almost certainly) with a significant degree of Israeli involvement: to take control of four civilian airliners to carry out attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon causing huge loss of life to make it appear that these airliners were used to carry out the attacks to eliminate the passengers on the airliners who would not be involved in the operation except as reluctant witnesses to blame these attacks on "Arab terrorists" and to use this as a pretext to launch military campaigns against "enemies of America" in the Middle East and in Asia. What happened on September 11th was very likely something close to this (there are two or three variations, as noted below): Three planes had been made ready by U.S. military personnel (possibly from NORAD), capable of being controlled remotely, with no-one on board: A business jet loaded with high explosives. An F-16 jet fighter armed with a missile. A Boeing 767, painted up to look like a United Airlines jet (call this "Pseudo Flight 175"). In the alternative theory one of the first two planes is replaced by an AGM-86C cruise missile capable of being fired from a B-52 and of flying to its target under GPS-guidance, and able upon impact to generate heat of over 2,000°C. Or perhaps cruise missiles are used instead of both of the first two planes. Early on the morning of September 11th Mohammad Atta and some other Arabs board American Airlines and United Airlines planes under instructions from their CIA handlers. Atta and others, some recorded by airport security cameras, will later be declared to be "the hijackers". The four civilian jet airliners take off: AA Flight 11, a Boeing 767, leaves Logan Airport, Boston, at 7:59 a.m. headed for Los Angeles, with between 76 and 81 passengers (about 39% of capacity) and 11 crew members aboard. (This is the jet which, according to the official story, hit the North Tower.) AA Flight 77, a Boeing 757, takes off from Dulles Airport in northern Virginia at 8:10 a.m bound for Los Angeles, with between 50 and 58 passengers (about 27% of capacity) and six crew members aboard. (This is the jet which allegedly hit the Pentagon.) UA Flight 175, a Boeing 767, departs from Logan Airport, Boston, at 8:13 a.m. for Los Angeles with between 47 and 56 passengers (about 26% of capacity) and nine crew members aboard. (This is the jet which allegedly hit the South Tower.) UA Flight 93, a Boeing 757, scheduled to leave Newark Airport at 8:01 a.m. for San Francisco, is late and does not depart until 8:41 a.m., taking off with between 26 and 38 passengers (about 16% of capacity) and seven crew members on board. (This is the jet which crashed in Pennsylvania.) Pseudo Flight 175 takes off from its military base, flying under remote control, and flies so as to intercept the flight path of UA Flight 175. Radar operators tracking UA Flight 175 see the two blips merge. A half-hour or so after taking off the pilots of the four civilian airliners are informed by radio that the U.S. is under attack by terrorists and that they are to shut down their transponders and land their planes at a military base in some north-eastern U.S. state (directions to the base are given). The pilots obey this order and change course accordingly. Pseudo Flight 175 changes course toward New York. To radar operators it appears as if UA Flight 175 is now flying toward Manhattan. The passengers on UA Flight 93 are led to believe that the plane has been hijacked, and are instructed to use their cell phones to tell this to their relatives (thus planting fake evidence which will later be used in the official story). The business jet takes off under remote control and (perhaps after intercepting the flight path of AA Flight 11 to confuse the radar operators) crashes into the North Tower at 8:45 a.m. (In the alternative theory it is an AGM-86C cruise missile which strikes the North Tower.) The moment of impact is captured on "the fireman's video", in which a small cloud of smoke is first seen in the center of the tower (consistent with an impact by a business jet or a cruise missile, not a Boeing 767), followed by a huge explosion. (George W. Bush watches the impact on closed circuit television from his limousine outside a schoolhouse in Florida.) Pseudo Flight 175 approaches Manhattan under remote control and crashes into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. Its controllers, not used to remotely controlling the 100 tons of a Boeing 767, almost miss the tower, but manage to hit it at an angle, toward one corner. Most of the jet fuel passes through the corner of the tower and explodes in a huge fireball outside the building. The approach of the Boeing 767 and the impact and fireball are recorded by several cameras. U.S. Air Force planes are finally scrambled at 9:30 a.m., over an hour after the first of the commercial jets has gone off course. The F-16 jet fighter (see 1. above), under remote control, flies at high speed toward Washington D.C. (perhaps after intercepting the flight path of AA Flight 77), descends to near ground level, makes a horizontal approach to the Pentagon, fires a missile which produces a huge explosion at the outer wall of the Pentagon, then itself crashes into the building (at about 9:40 a.m.), its engine penetrating several rings of the Pentagon. The event is recorded by a security camera (see below). In the alternative theory it is an AGM-86C cruise missile which strikes the Pentagon. It crossed several of the building rings of the Pentagon, creating in each wall it pierced a progressively bigger hole. ... When traversing the first ring of the Pentagon, the object set off a fire, as gigantic as it was sudden. — Who was Behind the September 11th Attacks? Meanwhile (by sometime between 9:15 a.m. and 9:45 a.m.) all four AA and UA jets have landed at the military base to which they were directed. The 199 (later listed) passengers and crew from AA Flight 77, AA Flight 11 and UA Flight 175 are herded onto UA Flight 93, where they join the 33 (later listed) passengers and crew, for a total of 232 people. Explosives are loaded on board. The South Tower collapses (at 9:50 a.m.) in a controlled demolition, 47 minutes after impact. Sometime around 10:00 or 10:15 a.m. UA Flight 93 takes off from the military base (either under remote control or under the control of a military pilot unaware of his fate) and flies toward Washington in a fake "terrorist attack". The North Tower collapses (at 10:29 a.m.) also in a controlled demolition, 1 hour and 44 minutes after impact. Either explosives on board UA Flight 93 are detonated, or the jet is blown apart by a missile fired by a U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jet, over Pennsylvania (at 10:37 a.m., almost two hours after it took off from Newark Airport). Pennsylvania state police officials said on Thursday debris from the plane had been found up to 8 miles away (from the crash site) in a residential community [Indian Lake] where local media have quoted residents as speaking of a second plane in the area [this was the F-16] and burning debris falling from the sky. — Reuters, Sept. 13, as quoted in Troubling Questions in Troubling Times All passengers and crew from all four "hijacked" planes, other than those 34 (later unlisted) passengers (including Mohammad Atta) who are part of the operation, are in this way eliminated. Around midday the media whores begin to disseminate the story that this "terrorist attack" was masterminded by Usama bin Laden. A shocked and outraged America cries out for revenge against the perpetrators, which they assume (encouraged by the Jewish-dominated mainstream media) are Arab Muslim fundamentalists. George W. Bush announces his "War on Terrorism" and the Pentagon swings into action to implement its previously-prepared plans to bomb Afghanistan into submission. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the side the plotters have purchased put options for companies whose stocks are sure to be adversely affected by these events, such as the parent companies of the airlines whose planes are believed to have been hijacked. Their intention is to make a killing, so to speak, by purchasing the right to sell stocks in these companies at a price which they know will be considerably higher than the price they can buy them at on the open market (after the September 11th attack has driven the prices down). September 6-7, 2001 — 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. — Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA's Highest Ranks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The French website mentioned above provided photographic evidence that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. Evidence that the Pentagon was hit by an F-16 jet figher (just after firing a missile) is provided by images released by the Pentagon itself on March 7th, 2002. In the first image the outline of a jet, probably an F-16, is visible toward the right of the picture: The horizontal trail of (what looks like) white smoke visible at the extreme right is probably from a missile which has just been fired by the F-16, which has itself moved on and has overtaken the missile's exhaust plume. All four images were placed on the web at http://www.bosankoe.btinternet.co.uk/pentagon.gif in the form of an animated GIF, which is reproduced at right. Frame 1: The jet approaches the Pentagon at ground level, having just fired a missile carrying a high-explosive warhead. Frame 2: A huge, white-hot, fireball erupts from the detonation of the missile's warhead as it hits the Pentagon. The white missile trail is still visible, on both sides of the foreground object. Frames 3, 4 and 5: A red fireball erupts, resulting from the impact of the jet and the ignition of jet fuel (together with the cooling fireball from the missile explosion). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Those who planned this operation would have realized that, although it was possible to crash planes into the Twin Towers under remote control, this would in itself have produced only huge damage, with perhaps hundreds of lives lost, which was not enough. What they needed was the destruction of both towers completely, for maximum psychological effect upon the people of the U.S. and the world and for the provocation of a hysterical reaction from the American people directed against Arabs and the Islamic world. Thus they needed to arrange for the demolition and total collapse of the Twin Towers following the plane impacts. One obvious possibility was to plant explosives in the Twin Towers, to be detonated after the impacts by the remotely-controlled planes. This possibility is discussed in detail in: Was the WTC Demolished by the Use of Explosives? Another possibility is that the Twin Towers were designed, or re-engineered, to collapse on demand, and that they collapsed because a deliberate order was given to initiate the collapse mechanism. This possibility is discussed in detail in: Did the Twin Towers Collapse on Demand? As shown in Section 3 above, the fires did not cause the collapse of the towers, but it remains unproven that explosives caused the collapse. But the towers did collapse, and in a very strange manner, as if demolished in a controlled way, leaving almost nothing but metal fragments from the outer shell and huge quantities of fine ash and dust, without the central steel columns from the lower sixty floors either standing or fallen. This is very strange. Look at all that dust (click on the image for an enlargement and for two further pictures of the clouds of dust). It is as if some high-energy disintegration beam had been focused on the tower, pulverizing every concrete slab into minute particles of ash and dust (and leaving a nauseous odor which lingered on in Manhatten for many weeks, causing health problems for New York residents). But no country possesses such a disintegration beam — or if so, we have not been told of it. The possibility that the Twin Towers were brought down by the use of laser weapon is discussed in detail in: Laser Beam Weapons and the Collapse of the World Trade Center But if "black" technology was used (rather than explosives) then one insight emerges: Why it was made to appear that commercial passenger jets were hijacked and crashed into the Twin Towers. The reason would be that such "black" technology is certainly beyond the capabilities of any Arab terrorists. Had this technology simply been used to bring the Twin Towers down then many questions would have been asked as to how this happened. A story that Arab terrorists detonated explosives which completely destroyed the buildings would not withstand criticism, so some other "plausible" explanation for the collapse of the towers had to be provided and this was done in the form of the plane impacts and subsequent fires. This "explanation" has an initial plausibility, and it was immediately broadcast by the mainstream media, and immediately accepted by a public in a state of shock. Only a careful examination of this story, such as has been done in J. McMichael's article, reveals its inadequacy, leading to the conclusion that either explosives were used to demolish the Twin Towers or some "black" technology was used. Who possesses such technology? For sure not Arab terrorists, whose expertise with destructive technology extends not much beyond truck bombs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. The Perpetrators The demolition of the WTC was part of an ongoing plan (in effect since the Kennedy assassination if not before) to destroy the American Republic (what's left of it anyway) and replace it by a de facto dictatorship (as part of the drive toward a global dictatorship in the form of a world government). The person who, shortly after the attacks on the WTC, was announced as "the prime suspect" (without any evidence) was Usama bin Laden, who has made no secret of his animosity toward the U.S. for its support of Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians, for what he sees as the Americans' defilement of Saudi Arabia (the location of two of the three holiest Islamic sites), the continued bombing of Iraq and the Americans' support of the (as he sees them) apostate regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The contempt with which the U.S. is regarded by certain Arab organizations, and the involvement of Arabs in the ineffective bombing of the WTC in 1993, means that Arabs are automatically suspected in any terrorist attack against the U.S. (as they were in the Oklahoma City Bombing until the government announced that Timothy McVeigh was the culprit). Within hours of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon Dan Rather and other mainstream media whores were quoting "government sources" as stating that Usama bin Laden was the likely culprit. As the WTC bombers intended, most Americans immediately believed this claim and now regard him as the perpetrator of this atrocity and the entire Arab world as their enemy (a reaction welcomed by many in Israel). Many people in Arab countries also believe he did it because for them Usama bin Laden personifies the resentment against American exploitation of the third world which they themselves feel. But Usama bin Laden has never said that he was behind the September 11th attack, and, indeed, has explicitly denied this. I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children and common people ... — Usama bin Laden, Interview with Pakistani newspaper Ummat (Karachi), September 28, 2001. Full text here. After one of the video broadcasts from the Al-Jazeera TV station in Qatar (which, as has been pointed out elsewhere, may have been a Western-concocted forgery, since Usama bin Laden, or someone impersonating him, is shown wearing a U.S. Army jacket — much as if Churchill had delivered his wartime speeches wearing a swastika armband and the uniform of a Luftwaffe colonel) Condoleeza Rice declared that this was an "admission" by Usama bin Laden of responsibility for the September 11th attack. It was not, but by claiming it was she maintains the official line of blaming "Arab terrorists" and draws attention away from the true perpetrators of this atrocity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Several thousand civilians died in the collapse of the WTC towers, and hundreds of military personnel were killed in the attack on the Pentagon — though the numbers are small compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilians incinerated in the U.S. fire bombings of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, and in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the two to five million post-World-War-II refugees from the Soviet Union who were forcibly returned to Stalin, to face either immediate execution or a slow death in the Gulag, on the orders of Roosevelt and Eisenhower in Operation Keelhaul; the millions of civilians who died from hunger and disease as a result of U.S.-instigated mass starvation of Germans during 1945-1950 under the Morgenthau Plan; the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans killed by white settlers in the 19th Century or allowed to starve to death by the U.S. government in the 20th; the 20,000+ Vietnamese killed by the CIA in their political assassination program Operation Phoenix; the million or so Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians killed by the American military in the 1960s and 70s whilst defending their countries from American domination (or simply because they happened to be where the Americans carried out their carpet bombings); the tens of thousands of civilians who were tortured and murdered by CIA-installed dictatorships in Central and South America; the 200,000 people (all civilians) killed as a result of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975 for which prior approval was given to Suharto by Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford; the six million Brazilian Indians who have died as a result of the policies of multinational corporations; the 10,000 to 20,000 people, mostly civilians, killed in the U.S.-supported 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel; the 100,000 civilians killed by Reagan's CIA-cocaine-funded Contras in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s; the 6,000 (perhaps as many as 20,000) Iraqi civilians killed during the 41 days and nights of bombing by the British and the Americans in 1991 (during which time the civilian infrastructure was targeted, a war crime); the tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts slaughtered on the "Highway of Death" by U.S. Navy pilots during their attempted retreat from Kuwait in 1991 (another war crime because the soldiers killed were not in a combat situation); the tens of thousands of civilians in Sudan who have died due to the absence of medicines resulting from the destruction of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by American cruise missiles in 1998 and from the economic sanctions imposed on Sudan; and the one to two million Iraqi civilians, two-thirds of them children, who have died in the last ten years as a result of the effects of the hundreds of tons of cancer-causing depleted uranium left over from the million or so exploded rounds of DU ammunition used in attacks by American warplanes in the 1991 American/British 6-week terrorist campaign against Iraq and from the subsequent U.S./British-imposed economic blockade (not to mention those killed by the bombing raids which occur every week). America expresses outrage at the deaths of several thousand of its citizens but ignores its responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions of civilians at the hands of its military and its CIA — and still expects and demands the world's sympathy for its loss. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The attacks against the WTC and the Pentagon were brought to us by the same people (though "human" may not be the correct term for them) who brought us the murderous policies and events mentioned above as well as both the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Evidence suggests that the former was actually planned and directed, not by Arab terrorists (who were merely the operatives), but by the FBI. The mastermind [of the 1993 WTC bombing] is the government of the United States. It was a phony, government-engineered conspiracy to begin with. It would never have amounted to anything had the government not planned it. — Ron Kuby, defense attorney, quoted in Troubling Questions in Troubling Times In the Oklahoma City Bombing explosives were placed by the structural supports of the Murrah Federal Building, demolishing it and killing hundreds of people. The psy-war propaganda experts then succeeded in convincing the more gullible among the American people that this was the work of one or two men using a truck full of ammonium nitrate. (Some of the high-explosive devices planted within the building did not explode, were seen by four witnesses after the attack, and were removed by the FBI but were never officially mentioned.) Within a few days of the bombing the Counter-Terrorism Bill was passed by Congress, a piece of legislation which provided for secret trials and seizure of assets without due process of law. The Enemy is Very Much Within (168 KB) The enormity of the atrocity of the attack on the Twin Towers is made worse by its being perpetrated, not by external enemies of America, but from within — by a secret group of traitors who may be American-born but who care nothing for American national pride since for them control of the U.S. is just a means toward total control of the planet. For at least forty years this group of traitors (most of whom are present or former occupants of the White House or are working or have worked in those U.S. government organizations whose activities are hidden behind a cloak of "national security") has controlled the U.S. government by subversion of its democratic institutions, has manipulated a gullible American population and the political leadership of other countries by the skillful use of propaganda (with the help of shamelessly compliant — and Jewish-dominated — "news" organizations), has ruthlessly exploited the economic resources of the Earth for its own profit, and must now be laughing and congratulating itself that its lies appear to have been believed by almost everyone and that its plans for complete economic and military conquest of the entire planet are coming along so nicely — thanks to the stupidity of the American people, who appear to be mostly incapable of thinking about anything except their own amusement (if they are well-off, or their own economic survival if they are not) and who are willing to believe whatever their lying government tells them. But just as the attempt by the predecessors of these traitors to establish a "Thousand-Year Reich" resulted in complete and ignominious defeat, their plans also may yet come to naught, though at what cost to the American people and the rest of the world remains to be seen. The situation may actually be much worse than this. The evil which has been perpetrated by these traitors, acting through the U.S. government, its military and its multinationals, the IMF and other institutions, over many years, is sufficiently great that one has to wonder whether the instigators have any concern at all for the welfare and dignity of the human species. Furthermore, the manner in which the Twin Towers collapsed, and the nature of the resulting debris, suggest the use of technologically highly advanced means of destruction unknown to us. The real instigators of this atrocity (and of the larger drive to enslave, or perhaps exterminate, the entire population of the planet) may actually not be human at all (see The Gods of Eden). If so, we have a real problem. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. The "War on Terrorism" Just as the Oklahoma City Bombing created a situation conducive to the government's rushing through "anti-terrorist" legislation this "Attack on America" has provided a further nice justification for eliminating whatever civil liberties the American people had up to now managed to hold on to. In the name of "safety" and "security" the "authorities" now have a "legal" right (the appropriate legislation has already been passed by a compliant and corrupt Congress under the guise of "an emergency anti-terrorist package") to do whatever they want to monitor and control the entire population. Anyone accused of being "a threat to the safety and security of the American people" (in reality, to the state and those who control it) will find themselves imprisoned without benefit of trial (if they do not "disappear" completely as did many of the victims of Chile's DINA secret police). Already in mid-October the FBI announced the arrest of more than 600 people, "refusing to identify most of the detainees and offering few details about why the government wanted them behind bars." (International Herald Tribune, October 15, 2001) By December the number had grown to over 1,200, with only one of those persons charged with a crime. Torture was being considered for those who are "uncooperative". (Let's hope no-one in your family gets arrested, by mistake, and information is demanded from them which they don't have.) And so one of Secretary [of Defense] Rumsfeld's first tasks will be ... to develop a strategy necessary to have a force equipped for warfare of the 21st century. — George W. Bush, Washington DC, December 28, 2000 And, of course, this heinous act of "international terrorism" provided a fine excuse for a yet greater military build up (and justification for Bush's $344 billion war budget) — in particular the already-planned development of "defensive" missiles, allegedly to foil attacks by "international terrorists" (even though they neither possess nor need intercontinental nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles), but which might also prove quite useful in defending the U.S. from retaliation by any nation which it chooses to attack. WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind ... — Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations Indeed, the U.S. government (in violation of the United Nations charter and international law) has now given itself permission — in the form of a congressional resolution — to attack whoever it wants to, to engage openly in political assassinations in the manner of Israel, and generally to wage war upon whoever it chooses to label as its enemy. Already the number of innocent civilians who have died as a result of U.S. military action (in Afghanistan) is greater than the number of those who died in the WTC attack. But, of course, since those killed were not Americans, Europeans or Australians, this is of no concern, except insofar as it might result in international condemnation, making it difficult to maintain the "international coalition" that the U.S. seeks to provide a fig-leaf for its planned military aggression against those countries which decline to accede to its demands. (And, by the way, such aggression and the collateral regional wars that it will cause in various parts of Asia will, of course, be good for U.S. arms manufacturers, and other American companies with friends in the U.S. government, which profit from war.) We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile. — George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000 Bush has announced that America is now embarked upon a "War on Terrorism" (in his speech to the joint session of Congress on September 17th, 2001, he used the words "terror", "terrorist" and "terrorism" at total of 32 times, and "war" twelve times, so no-one would fail to get the message). But before the U.S. retaliated by bombing Afghanistan day and night for weeks it should first have established exactly who instigated, planned and directed the terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Despite the attempt to blame nineteen passengers on the four planes who happened to have Arabic names, this was not done. Such evidence, if it were ever produced (and, of course, it will never be produced), must be such as to convince third parties such as the Europeans, and the evidence must be made public (not every last detail, but enough to establish the case). Insiders such as the U.S. President, the British Prime Minister and the NATO Secretary-General declaring themselves "convinced" is insufficient. Such declarations will fool some people, but these officials are literally warmongers and will do anything to justify their waging of war, including lying to the public about the convincingness of the alleged evidence. Only when convincing evidence has been made public, and the identity of the attackers established, would it be possible to declare "war" without misuse of language. Until then the "War on Terrorism" will be a propaganda campaign like the "War on Drugs" — a way of disguising the true aims and motivations of those waging this "war", which in this case is that age-old motivation: territorial and economic conquest. But, of course, the U.S. government will never reveal who exactly planned and directed these attacks, firstly because it was an inside job, and secondly because blame must be laid upon "Arab terrorists" in order to "justify" the "War on Terrorism" and the military assaults upon Arab countries (recently and, as the U.S. and Britain plan at least, for years to come; indeed, in the words of one Pentagon official, possibly "for the rest of our lives"). Not only did Bush announce a "War on Terrorism", he even spoke stupidly of a "crusade", invoking memories of the medieval Christian crusades against Islam to recover "the Holy Land", though these days it is more accurate to speak of gaining control of the oil fields, which is another reason (actually, the primary reason) why America has given itself permission to invade whatever countries it chooses to. And it's not just Middle Eastern oil — there are huge oil deposits in the Caspian Basin (larger than in Saudia Arabia). In 1998 Unocal testified before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that a pipeline across Afghanistan was crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian Ocean. Bush and the American oil companies would dearly like to lay such a pipeline across Afghanistan, but, say some, they cannot do so because the Taleban have been demanding too large a per centage as their cut for allowing the pipeline project to proceed. Hence, the oil monopoly needs to overthrow the Kabul government, install their own government, and proceed with the pipeline project. — Sherman H. Skolnick, The Overthrow of the American Republic, Part 2 George Monbiot: America's Pipe Dream In fact from February to August 2001 the Bush administration conducted detailed negotiations with the Taliban to lay this hoped-for pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan so as to profit from lucrative sales to oil-hungry Asian countries. In August the negotiations broke down, after a U.S. negotiator threatened military action against the Taliban, saying, accept our offer of a carpet of gold or you will get a carpet of bombs (see Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth). One month later the rationale for the carpet-bombing was provided by the destruction of the WTC. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This "War on Terrorism" has three major components: (1) A propaganda war waged firstly against the American people and secondly against the rest of the people on this planet who have access to TV and newspapers. (2) A large increase in the powers of surveillance and control exercised by the U.S. federal government over U.S. citizens and residents and in the ability of the government to impose censorship. (3) The use of American military force (with help mainly from the British), to whatever extent necessary, to gain control of the oil reserves of the Caspian Basin, the mineral wealth of Central Asia and whatever other economic resources in other parts of Asia that the U.S. wishes to control. The purpose of (1) is to disguise the true nature of (3) by presenting it as the use of military force to protect Americans against future terrorist attacks. The purpose of (2) is to stifle any protest and dissent from those Americans who are not fooled by (1) and who object to (3). Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft & Co. know from the 1960s demonstrations against the Vietnam War that domestic opposition to military aggression abroad can bring that aggression to an end, and they wish to make sure in advance that the same thing will not happen this time. David Cole: A Matter of Rights As part of the implementation of (2) Bush has as good as told the American people that they have to sacrifice their civil liberties and their rights under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in support of his "war", which most people seem willing, sheep-like, to do (such amazing stupidity! or is half the population on Prozac?). Attorney General Ashcroft urged Congress to pass proposed "anti-terrorist" legislation (which is very probably unconstitutional) even before it had been committed to paper. The legislation was hastily rushed through (the same day it was introduced) over the objections of civil rights advocates by a corrupt and compliant Congress in the second week of October 2001. It consisted of 342 pages, and those who voted for it could not possibly have read it. The American government says that America is "at war" (as if that justifies anything the government wishes to do). But a war requires an identifiable enemy. A war is a war between two or more opposing sides. A "war" in which one side is invisible is a fantasy — a pretext to restrict civil liberties, to impose censorship and to deny rights guaranteed to American citizens under the U.S. Constitution. It is a tool for psychological operations directed against both domestic and foreign populations, for deceiving the American people and others and persuading them to submit willingly to violations of their human rights. (Though one might say that if they do submit then they deserve the enslavement that will come to them.) And in this case, as noted above, the purpose is to suppress any domestic opposition to U.S. military action abroad. And at home; remember that the U.S. military has been used against American citizens before — at Waco. What is too shocking for many Americans to contemplate is that the terrorist attacks, from which the people of the U.S. are supposed to be protected by the "War on Terrorism", are themselves part of the propaganda war. In order to "justify" to the American people the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and the deaths of Afghan civilians, the violent overthrow of the (admittedly reprehensible) Taleban government, the deployment of U.S. ground troops to sieze territory in Afghanistan and in other countries, and the use of whatever weapons of death the Pentagon plans to use (including "low yield" nuclear weapons), the U.S. must present its actions as being morally good and noble (as in World War II), specifically, as motivated by the desire to protect decent, innocent American citizens from the evil of terrorist attacks. Without terrorist attacks there is no justification for the military action, so terrorist attacks there must be. The attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were the first (unless we count the Waco Massacre and the Oklahoma City Bombing), brought to you by those people who are directing the propaganda campaign and, indeed, scripting this entire "War on Terrorism". And (as the CIA informed members of Congress in early October 2001) it is certain that there will be more terrorist attacks (how did they know?) — most of them far less spectacular than the destruction of the Twin Towers, but sufficient (such as the controlled release of anthrax bacteria, probably by the CIA itself) to induce in the American public a state of constant fear — made worse by their not knowing who is really behind these attacks. Does the WTC attack feel like a movie? It does? Well of course it does! It has been specifically written as a movie script. ... This entire sequence of: hijack; first plane; second plane; Pentagon ;WTC collapse; phone calls from the planes; copy of the Koran; more attempted hijackings; arrests; plucky passengers; etc., etc., has been scripted by a crew of cynical planners who could care less that REAL people died in the Twin Towers. — Tall Tales of the Wag Movie In March 2002 Dick Cheney toured the Middle East trying to drum up Arab support for a second American-led war against Iraq. He was politely informed by Arab leaders to crawl back into his hole. So the Bush administration now needs another Big Catastrophe on American soil to justify the war they want to wage against Iraq (primarily to secure control of the rich Iraqi oil fields). Look for something like a low-yield nuclear explosion in the vicinity of Washington D.C., sufficient to scare the congresscritters into going into the underground bunkers that have been prepared for them, leaving America entirely in the hands of George W. Bush's "shadow government". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wars end when one of the opposing sides is beaten into submission and can no longer fight. But if one side is invisible then the war can never end, because there is no way to know that the opposing side has been defeated. Indeed, if the American people begin to believe that perhaps the "terrorist threat" has begun to recede you can be sure that another "terrorist attack" will occur, courtesy of those scripting the "War on Terrorism", which will return them to their former state of fear and dread, which is just where the perpetrators want them to be. The "enemy" will remain an invisible, diabolical presence, unseen except for its evil effects when "the terrorists" attack again. The American people have entered what may be a long, drawn-out, nightmare, in which nothing will be what it seems. It is The Towering Inferno, Armageddon and The X-Files suddenly emerging into daily life. The "War on Terrorism" is the psy-war successor to the "War on Drugs". It has been clear to almost everyone for quite some time that the "War on Drugs" is totally discredited, and those who are informed know that it is basically a component in a huge and long-running scam whereby the U.S. government finances its covert operations and (in part) its military by means of its profits from its international drug trafficking (see Prohibition: The So-Called War on Drugs for details). It became clear to the U.S. government, especially in view of the tolerance and regulation of drug use adopted in recent years in many European countries, that it can no longer maintain its "War on Drugs" with any degree of credibility. Thus the people of the U.S. had to be hoodwinked into supporting a new "War", and the bogeyman of "militant Arab fundamentalists" (helped greatly by a Jewish-dominated mainstream media and terrorist attacks on the WTC in 1993, probably provoked by the FBI, and on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which US Army explosives had reportedly been used) provided a useful target. This "War on Terrorism", like the "War on Drugs", will involve the usual propaganda techniques such as lies, deception, misrepresentation of opposition viewpoints, disinformation, fake opposition and media emphasis on what is irrelevant (for example, that Mohammed Atta may have contacted an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague — of only minor interest since there were no on-board hijackers and he and the other Arabs on board were set up to take the blame). The propaganda campaign will continue until the instigators and scripters of this "War" believe they have finally gained domination over all countries and have attained control of the entire planet and all its economic resources — or until they themselves have been defeated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. What is to be Done? Immediately after the events of September 11th there were calls for greatly increased security at airports and on planes, and many millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars are still being spent on this. Troops with automatic rifles stand around at airports, waiting for the next gang of Arab terrorists to burst into the departure lounge shouting "God is great!" in Arabic and threatening everyone with letter openers. Airport check-in now takes hours, passengers are subjected to invasive searches before boarding planes, and if you look Middle Eastern then you may not be allowed to fly at all. All this is useless and irrelevant and is a major disruption in the lives of ordinary Americans, because, as noted above, there were no suicide pilots. No hijackers boarded the four doomed planes carrying knives and box cutters, so installing expensive security equipment at airports and treating every passenger as a potential hijacker is not only an insult but is also a complete waste of time and money (though it is sure to make a lot of money for the manufacturers of airport security equipment). Bush's "War on Terrorism" is not about terrorism (except insofar as staged terrorist acts are an important part of the propaganda campaign) — it's about control of the Earth's economic resources, in particular, oil. To oversimplify somewhat and to put it a tad indelicately, "It's the oil, stupid!" Big Oil (one of Bush's principal controllers) wants economic control and exploitation of the vast oil and mineral wealth of Central Asia, and if a pan-Asian war is required to achieve this then so be it. The Bush clique believes that such a war would enable it to remain in power indefinitely (elections will become a thing of the past or will be rigged), would be good for American (and British) weapons manufacturers, and would perhaps avert an economic depression in the U.S. (since, many believe, it has worked before, as in the 1930s military build-up to World War II). A pan-Asian war will involve many countries, including the nuclear- and CBW-armed countries of India, Pakistan, Russia and China (not to mention the other nuclear- and CBW-armed countries that are likely to be drawn in: Britain, France, Israel and the U.S. itself), and it will mean that millions of civilians will die: shot, burnt, blasted, asphyxiated, crushed, incinerated, poisoned. Nor will all these civilians be Asian; this war will also extend to the U.S. mainland and probably to Europe, despite what the Pentagon planners intend. Violence will lead to more violence, and wars will escalate (remember "escalation"?) until eventually nuclear weapons are used — first "low-yield", later the big ones, in the megaton range, whose detonations (if there are enough of them, and we don't know how many will be used) will produce high levels of radiation in the atmosphere of (mainly) the Northern Hemisphere, leading to millions of cases of cancer among the populations of Western countries. This is what should not be done, but on October 7th, 2001, the U.S., by attacking Afghanistan with bombers and cruise missiles (a military assault which was illegal under international law because military action against Afghanistan had not been specifically authorized by the United Nations), began what may eventually lead to this. To those who believe that the attack on the Twin Towers was, at least in part, the work of foreign terrorists the answer to the question of what is to be done is: The root causes of foreign terrorism directed against the United States must be addressed. Those in power in the U.S. have been reluctant to do this (and will continue to resist doing this), mainly because violence, the threat of violence and a demonstrated ruthless willingness to use violence (combined with the use of mass propaganda and bribery and blackmail of officials at all levels, both elected and unelected) are the primary means by which they themselves remain in power. The initiators of the attacks decided to implement their plan after America has provoked immense hatred throughout the world. Not because of its might, but because of the way it uses its might. It is hated by the enemies of globalization, who blame it for the terrible gap between rich and poor in the world. It is hated by millions of Arabs, because of its support for the Israeli occupation and the suffering of the Palestinian people. It is hated by multitudes of Muslims, because of what looks like its support for the Jewish domination of the Islamic holy shrines in Jerusalem. And there are many more angry peoples who believe that America supports their tormentors. Until September 11, 2001 ... Americans could entertain the illusion that all this concerns only others, in far-away places beyond the seas, that it does not touch their sheltered lives at home. No more. — Uri Avnery: Twin Towers In a representative democracy, such as allegedly exists in the U.S.A., can the people deny responsibility for the actions and policies of their government? How long can they allow their government, whose leaders they elect, to commit one atrocity after another and at the same time pretend that they themselves are innocent of any wrong-doing? Like the Four Riders of the Apocalypse, the unknown kamikaze rode their giant crafts into the two visible symbols of American world domination, Wall Street and the Pentagon. ... They could be practically anybody: ... anybody who rejects the twin gods of the dollar and the M-16, who hates the stock market and interventions overseas, who dreams of America for Americans, who does not want to support the drive for world domination. ... Germans can remember the fiery holocaust of Dresden with its hundreds of thousands of peaceful refugees incinerated by the US Air Force. Japanese will not forget the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima. the Arab world still feels the creeping holocaust of Iraq and Palestine. Russians and East Europeans feel the shame of Belgrade avenged. ... Asians count their dead of Vietnam war, Cambodia bombings, Laos CIA operations in millions. ... The Riders could be anybody who lost his house to the bank, who was squeezed from his work and made permanently unemployed, who was declared an Untermensch by the new Herrenvolk. ... America could see this painful strike at her Wall Street and her Pentagon, as the last call to repent. She should change her advisers, and build her relations with the world afresh, on equal footing. Probably she should rein in the domination-obsessed Jewish supremacist elites of Wall Street and media, part company with Israeli apartheid. She could become again the universally loved, rather parochial America of Walt Whitman and Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Abe Lincoln. — Israel Shamir: Orient Express "Repent" is an apt term. Today the United States of America is morally bankrupt. During the coming months, or while there is still time, America (and to some extent Europe) must engage in some deep self-examination. Americans have willfully ignored the reality that exists beyond their borders (other than sporting events and vacation destinations), often preferring to "create their own" so as to avoid acknowledging what they don't wish to see. Americans have been completely self-absorbed, not knowing and not wanting to know the effects of their government's policies and actions on billions of people who live outside the U.S. Those policies and actions have resulted in millions of deaths through widespread malnutrition and the persistence of eradicable diseases; in economic, social and educational impoverishment for the majority of the world's population; and in the denial of human rights for all those who live under tyrannical regimes supported by the U.S. That is why the U.S.A. is so hated. (And insofar as other governments — in particular, the British government — have supported, and continue to support, U.S. policies they too deserve moral condemnation.) Sherri Muzher: Racism: When will We Face the Facts? The denial by Israel of the human rights of the Palestinians, and its decades-long intransigent refusal to address their legitimate grievances, is just the most visible of the many evils resulting from morally bankrupt U.S. policies. The U.S. (at the urging of American Jews and acting through the United Nations at a time when most Arab states were not yet members) created Israel in 1947 against the wishes of the people of the Middle East. (The U.S. basically stole the land from the Palestinians and gave it to the Jews, and then gave the state of Israel money — currently three billion dollars per year — for all the police and military hardware — the tanks, the attack helicopters, the missiles, the grenades — it needed to hold onto that stolen territory and to steal, or "annex", even more.) Now the U.S. has to deal with the consequences (and it is interesting to note that just prior to the WTC attack the U.S. was preparing to announce its support for a Palestinian state — mandated by the U.N. in 1947 anyway — much to the displeasure of Israel). Arundhati Roy: Why America Must Stop the War Now Less visible are the many ways in which U.S. multinational corporations conspire with the U.S. government (which does its best to coerce other governments to follow it), the IMF, the World Bank and other organizations whose undeclared purpose is to make the rich richer and to maximize their profits regardless of the widespread impoverishment this brings to many people not only in developing countries but also to those people in modern industrial societies who do not belong to the moneyed and ruling class. The facts have long been available to any U.S. resident who cares to read The Nation, Z Magazine, or the thirty or so books of Noam Chomsky (rarely mentioned in the mainstream media). I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. — Noam Chomsky, Language and Responsibility Or any of the many audiotapes, videos, CD-ROMS, books and magazine articles exposing the immoralities of the CIA (a terrorist organization which richly deserves to be eliminated as soon as possible, preferably by an act of Congress, with its headquarters at Langley demolished and the land ploughed over). But no — most Americans couldn't care less about the sufferings of people outside America, being too busy either trying to survive as wage-slaves in a corporate capitalist society or (for the more fortunate) constantly scanning their immediate environment for ways to "enrich" their lives. Now they know what death, destruction, fear and dread are, what people in other countries have long known (over long periods) as a result of the actions and policies of the U.S. government and those of the corrupt regimes it has installed to serve its purposes. So how have they responded to this revelation? Mostly with mindless demands on their government to seek revenge and further death and destruction, and George W. Bush has pandered to this desire for revenge, declaring that he wants the alleged culprit Usama bin Laden "dead or alive". Seems he's changed his views on revenge since the 2000 Presidential campaign: ... you cannot lead America to a positive tomorrow with revenge on one's mind. Revenge is so incredibly negative. — George W. Bush, Interview with the Washington Post, March 23, 2000 But after September 11th revenge was uppermost in the minds of most Americans and few of them were inclined to look at what brought this catastrophe to their land. Were they to look for the causes of the events of September 11th they might eventually be led to ask themselves whether their government is not so hypocritical, vicious, ignoble and immoral, so much the opposite of that ideal of government expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, that it must be reformed completely, with most of its current office holders, including the President, the Vice-President, the entire Cabinet and most long-term members of Congress, removed in disgrace, before they can again think of themselves as Americans with any degree of self-respect. Wade Frazier: The Things We Do Not Want To Know Their mindlessness is willful, and at least partly conscious. They do not know what is really happening because they do not want to know what is really happening. Why? As far as I have seen, it is because they benefit from the current arrangement (at least in the short term), and denial helps protect their flickering consciences. ... All those institutions that we have given our power away to — corporations, governments, churches, etc. — have largely enslaved us with our own power. The only path to true freedom is by reclaiming our power, responsibility and sovereignty, and doing it lovingly. During the bombing of Afghanistan in October and November 2001 there were many (poorly reported) demonstrations against Bush's intention to wage war but there can now be no return to a "peace" which allows Americans to ignore, as they have done for so long, the evils which their government perpetrates abroad. In the weeks following the attack on the Twin Towers there were many pleas, such as those quoted above, for America to understand what motivated the terrorists to commit their heinous acts and for America to reconsider its policies and actions toward other countries. But although such a reconsideration is highly desirable, this view still assumes that it was Arab terrorists who were responsible, and such pleas were not well-received by those (perhaps the majority) who felt that revenge was the immediate priority. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But if the attack on the Twin Towers was not, even in part, the work of Arab terrorists, but was the work of terrorists within the U.S. government itself who seek to gain control of Central Asian oil and to impose a fascist dictatorship not only upon the United States but also upon the entire world, then what is to be done? The answer is not so different. The only difference is that instead of the September 11th terrorist attack being the work of foreign terrorists outraged by decades of injustice and poverty in third-world countries produced by a corrupt and immoral U.S. government it was the work of a group of traitors at high levels within that corrupt and immoral government itself. The answer remains that those traitors (prominent among whom is the Bush crime family) must be exposed, their crimes revealed, and they themselves removed from the positions of power they presently hold. Furthermore, government in the U.S. must be cleansed of corruption and restored to conformity with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights: a restoration of the American Republic. The "anti-terrorist" legislation of October 2001 (and that of April 1995 and Britain's Terrorism Act of 2000), intended to facilitate government surveillance and control of the people so as to stifle free speech and dissent, must be repealed. The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have a right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances. — Harry Browne: Harry Browne on Anti-terrorist Proposals America must also end its long history of the practice of genocide, honor the principles expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and cease its ruthless exploitation (mainly for the benefit of a capitalist ruling class) of the world's economic resources and the world's people. This means that better-off Americans will have to give up some of the luxuries they've taken for granted, but perhaps they can make the sacrifice more readily if they remind themselves that over one billion people on this planet currently live (if you can call it living) on less than US$1 a day. Examples of genocide within U.S. history are common enough not to be considered remarkable or even genocide. Among historic crimes which are not commonly called genocide: the destruction of North American Indian peoples, the liquidation of six million Brazilian Indians through the policies of multi-national corporations, effects of U.S. economic and military policies on the poor throughout the Americas, the Euro-American slave trade and subsequent treatment of black Americans, and the fate of the American poor. ... Corporate capitalism may simply be legitimized genocide by economic means. ... Those without ethics no longer sell beads to the indians, but rockets and missiles to "underdeveloped countries," where the arms kill off as many poor people as possible. — J. B. Gerald: Is the U.S. Really a Signatory to the U.N. Convention on Genocide? If the people of the United States do not themselves cleanse their government of its current corruption, and return the nation to conformity with the principles of a republic, upon which it was founded, then disaster will ensue: Either a global fascist dictatorship will result or the U.S. government will be destroyed by the combined military forces of the rest of the world. Either of these possibilities could produce such damage on a global scale that the survival of the human species would be in doubt. The instigators and scripters of the "War on Terrorism", who place their trust in modern technology (and propaganda), believe themselves invincible in their drive to enslave everyone, American and non-American alike. But they overlook the fact that those Americans who have not prostituted themselves to the national security state and who, as true Americans, hold liberty among their highest values (and there are a lot of them) are unlikely to submit without a fight when they understand what is really going on. The CIA has always maintained as a matter of historical record that it has never murdered an American citizen on American soil. If, as a result of Eric Olson's persistence in trying to uncover what really happened to his father [Dr Frank Olson, a U.S. Army scientist], and the investigating skills of public prosecutor Saracco, this turns out to be a lie, it could well be the beginning of the end of the Agency. — THE OLSON FILE: A secret that could destroy the CIA Similarly if the CIA can be shown to have been involved in the murder of the 200 or so passengers (most of them American citizens) on the four commercial jetliners involved in the September 11th attacks, who died when UA Flight 93 exploded in the sky over Pennsylvania, then the Agency will be finished (and none too soon either). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. The Corruption of the Republic The BBC's George Arney reported on September 18, 2001, that Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, had stated that he had been informed by senior American officials at a Berlin UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan in mid-July that Pentagon plans for a military assault on Afghanistan had already been completed. (This was the meeting in which a U.S. representative threatened the Taliban representatives with a carpet of bombs.) The assault on Afghanistan had to be carried out before snow begins to fall in the mountain passes, which is around mid-October — and, indeed, it began on October 7th, 2001. The timing of the WTC attack was thus very convenient. The Pentagon was clearly delighted at the opportunity of trying out all the new-fangled lethal technology it had developed in the ten years since it last demonstrated its capability for mass slaughter in its 1991 terrorist campaign in the Gulf (this was in part a demonstration of its weapons systems for the benefit of potential purchasers, and the same happened again in Afghanistan). The AC-130 [gunship, which began to be deployed in Afghanistan in mid-October] is one of the most lethal American warplanes in terms of its ability to chew up ground forces. ... [and] because of its fearsome firepower. It circles a target and saturates it with automatic fire from three computer-controlled guns, including cannon and heavy machine guns capable of firing 1,800 rounds a minute. The plane's guns can cover an area the size of eight football fields with a round in each square yard ... [and] has banks of electronic sensors on board capable of detecting ground targets normally elusive from the air." — International Herald Tribune, October 17, 2001, p.1 A soldier who is prepared to risk his own life when attempting to kill enemy soldiers is a brave man. Such a man is not to be despised. But the design, development, deployment and use of this sort of highly efficient lethal technology is done, not by brave men, but by cowards — by those willing to slaughter other humans only if their own lives are not placed in danger. It can only be done by people who are either mentally ill, morally depraved or too stupid to understand what they are really doing. Such machines as the AC-130 gunship are just the latest in a long line of devices invented in the United States for efficient slaughter on a large scale, from the Gatling gun (invented about 1862) to the atomic bomb (the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused more than a quarter of a million deaths and injuries) to the hydrogen bomb (whose capability to cause death and destruction is almost unlimited) to cluster bombs and fuel-air bombs. The [fuel-air] bomb works thus: there are two detonations; the first spreads a fine mist of fuel into the air, turning the area [about the size of a football field] into an explosive mix of vast proportion; then a second detonation ignites the mixture, causing an awesome explosion. The explosion is about the most powerful "conventional" explosion we know of. At a pressure shock of up to 200 pounds per square inch (PSI), people in its detonation zone are often killed by the sheer compression of the air around them. Human beings can typically withstand up to about a 40-PSI shock. The bomb sucks oxygen out of the air, and can apparently even suck the lungs out through the mouths of people unfortunate enough to be in the detonation zone. Our military used it on helpless people [in the 1991 Gulf Slaughter]. — Wade Frazier: My Experiences in America Regarding Iraq In early November the Americans began to drop "daisy cutter" bombs on troops in the Taleban front lines. This "daisy cutter" is the fuel-air bomb as described above. Only a nation sunk in depravity could descend to the use of such diabolic devices against human beings, soldiers or otherwise. The United States thus shows itself to be depraved and barbaric. And any nation which, by providing military support to the American war machine, condones this barbarity forfeits (as the United States has already forfeited) any claim it might have to be regarded as a civilized nation in the eyes of the world. A barbarian nation drags its allies into barbarity also. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler the German nation sank also into barbarity (from which it emerged after 1945). One of the defining characteristics of the German Nazis was their willingness to use violence to achieve their ends — not just their willingness to use violence but their willingness to use unlimited violence. As for them, for those who now control the American military juggernaut, there is no limit to the degree of death and destruction that they are willing to use to achieve their ends. This is one reason why they may properly, truly and without exaggeration, be described as "Nazis". Are these the sort of "leaders" that the American people really want? These calculating, cold-blooded, racist mass murderers? Are they representative of what America stands for? Perhaps so. The worship of violence, death and destruction has in recent decades become a defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It appears in its television shows, its video games and its Hollywood-produced films. It manifests itself in the willingness of its multinational corporations to rape the Earth. America is by far the largest manufacturer and merchandiser on the planet of lethal hardware, of military and police equipment, of machines for the production of death and destruction. This is a sign of a profoundly sick society. This state of affairs has not come about because the American people are inherently violent and psychopathic. As with all social matters of this scale the historical causes are complex. But one of them is the dominance in American society of corporate capitalism, which elevates shareholder profit above all other concerns, and which has created the social conditions where evil men can attain great power and influence, both within government and without. The American people tend to trust their government and their political leaders (though there have always been those who could recognize corruption in individual politicians when they saw it). This trust is given partly because of the indoctrination Americans receive as children in school but also partly because their government was in fact founded on republican principles designed to ensure their liberty and happiness. But this trust has now been betrayed. When evil men become leaders of the nation this corruption percolates down and sickens all levels of society. Since the end of World War II, and partly due to the absorption then into the American "security and intelligence" agencies of so many former Nazis (Gestapo, SS and Wehrmacht intelligence), the entire political structure of the United States has been infected with evil. There have, of course, been men of outstanding moral stature, for example, Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr, U.S. Senator George Mitchell and President John F. Kennedy (whose assassination in 1961, probably involving the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, military intelligence, American supporters of Israel and two future U.S. Presidents, Nixon and Bush Sr., was the first coup d'etat in the history of the U.S., the second being the coup which began with the 2000 usurpation of the Presidency by George W. Bush, a coup which is still being implemented in 2002 under cover of the "War on Terrorism" and has not yet been completed). But there have also been corrupt Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist and Scalia), primitive, blatantly racist U.S. Senators (Jesse Helms), a transvestite head of the FBI who was blackmailed into ignoring organized crime (J. Edgar Hoover), a scumbag President (Nixon) succeeded by a series of traitors possessing only contempt for the U.S. Constitution (Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.), along with a multitude of elected and unelected officials (including many judges at all levels) whose only concern was and has been their own power, prestige and material wealth, who were and are ready to support genocidal foreign and domestic policies (targeted at the expendable and the non-white both within and without the U.S.) as long as there is something in it for them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But we should not blame only the leaders and official functionaries, corrupt and in same cases evil, though they may be. It is not fundamentally the government which is at fault — it is the mass of the people themselves, who seem to lack the moral sense required of a people who are to restrain their government from descent into depravity. Many Americans have consciously prostituted themselves, realizing that the CIA and gang are creating immense death and destruction throughout the world, but as long as they enjoy cheap gasoline, coffee, bananas and tennis shoes, they think it is great. ... Many in the upper classes think that the CIA, FBI and NSA are great institutions, keeping the chips flowing their way. Those who condone bloodshed and exploitation in the service of their lifestyles, often coming up with highly strained rationales, will create future circumstances where they will find the shoe on the other foot. They will experience what living like a slave is like, barely surviving while their masters live in opulence. — Wade Frazier: Investigating Possible Conspiracies Actually democracy itself, when implemented so that every adult (however stupid) is given a right to vote, is inherently flawed, since it inevitably becomes the tyranny of the majority. As noted 200 years ago by A. F Tyler, democracy leads to the corruption of the financial system of any nation, because voters (in particular the stupid and self-interested ones) sooner or later discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, by electing whichever politician promises to give it to them. In order to fulfill that promise (to some extent at least, so as to be re-elected) that politician must connive in the acquisition of government wealth by any means available, which in the case of the United States, is mainly the economic exploitation of third-world countries and of the economic resources of the planet (partly to manufacture weapons of death to sell to those and other third-world countries for financial gain). A U.S. politician remains in office basically by stealing (together with his fellow politicians) from the rest of the world to finance the comparatively comfortable (and generally self-indulgent) lifestyle of the middle-class American voter (whether Democrat or Republican). George W. Bush's "War on Terrorism" is a campaign, not against terrorism, but to gain total control of the Earth's economic resources so as to maintain this system of global theft. Without continued capitalist exploitation of the planet's resources the American social and financial system will collapse. But if it persists then we face global tyranny and probably global eco-death once the fifty billion barrels of oil in the Caspian Basin (following a similar amount from already-exploited resources) has been extracted, refined and burned, with the major risk of producing irreversible atmospheric heating. Contrary to the widespread belief among Americans that the U.S. is a constitutional democracy, the words "democracy" and "democratic" are nowhere used in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution of the United States does not establish a democracy; it establishes a republic. ... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. — James Madison, as quoted in Robert Welch's Republics and Democracies Democracy in the United States (in which the votes of dim-witted uneducated manipulable illiterates count as much as the votes of those of above-average intelligence who can understand what is best for society as a whole and not just for themselves) has finally produced a tyranny, with power concentrated in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government and denied to the states and to the people. The other two branches of the government, the legislative and the judicial, have largely become willing tools of the executive, exactly as happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Everything the German Nazis did was legal, either because they appointed corrupt judges to interpret existing law as the Nazis wished or because they enacted laws to allow them to do what they wished to do (as has again occurred in the U.S. Congress with the October 2001 passage of the grossly misnamed "Patriot Act" — those congresscritters really have a perverted sense of humor). The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [that is, do not lack] virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots. — Elbridge Gerry, delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, as quoted in Republics and Democracies But actually the executive branch no longer requires a compliant legislative branch to enact laws because it can do so itself, by means of executive orders. The President can stipulate that something is the case and if no-one in Congress raises any objection within a few weeks (and no congresscritter has ever raised any objection to the thousands of executive orders which have been promulgated) then whatever the President has stipulated becomes part of the law of the land. This mechanism of executive orders provides near-dictatorial powers to the U.S. President. And George W. Bush has now issued an executive order giving him the legal right to order the killing of anyone deemed to be a terrorist (Bush Gives Green Light to CIA for Assassination of Named Terrorists). Interestingly, it seems that although the executive order is presented as applying to foreign "terrorists" there is nothing to prevent it from being applied to domestic "terrorists". A "terrorist" is a "terrorist" whether he is within the borders of the U.S. or beyond. And who's to say a "terrorist" cannot be an American citizen? Thus George W. Bush has now given himself the legal right to order the killing of any American citizen that he chooses to label as a "terrorist". The American Republic has indeed fallen upon grim times. A tyrannical executive branch of the U.S. federal government, arrogating all rights and powers to itself in blatant disregard of the 9th and 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, has now embarked on a war of aggression against the rest of the world (particularly against any countries whose actions may threaten American economic dominance), having cynically duped the American people (by carrying out a fake terrorist attack which took the lives of thousands of them and then blaming "Arab terrorists") into believing that this is a just and moral war. It is an administration that is dominated by men who have no moral scruples, who seek only to increase their own power and wealth, who have only contempt for the principles upon which the United States was founded, who are in fact traitors to the American Republic, and who deserve to receive the penalty for treason — and that soon, before they succeed in extending the tyranny which now exists in the United States to encompass the entire planet (or else produce by their actions the enormous death and destruction resulting from another world war, with large-scale use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. Questions About the Events of September 11th In view of the $30 billion given annually to the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. "intelligence" agencies, why were these agencies completely unaware (or so they say) of this conspiracy before they saw its results on CNN? And why has this (apparent) incompetence been rewarded with yet more billions? Why would hijackers intending to crash planes into the WTC hijack jets taking off from Boston rather than from someplace closer such as JFK Airport in New York? Why would hijackers intending to crash a plane into the Pentagon hijack a jet from Dulles Airport near Washington DC and allow it to fly for an hour away from its target before turning around and flying another hour back to it? AA Flight 77 (the jet which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon) was allegedly hijacked at about 9 a.m., at about the same time as the Twin Tower impacts, and its change of course back toward Washington, or its transponder having been turned off, would have been known to flight controllers, who were aware of the impacts; why, then, were U.S. Air Force jets not scrambled to intercept AA Flight 77, when there were U.S. Air Force jets at seven locations normally ready to take off at ten minutes' notice? What is on the flight data recorder and the cockpit recorder from UA Flight 93, the jet which crashed in Pennsylvania? Were there any recorded radio transmissions from this jet just prior to its crash, and if so what were they? Why, exactly, did this jet crash? Was it shot down? Where are the black boxes from all four jets? Have they been examined by experts from the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency which normally investigates airplane crashes? If not, why not? "Workers at Indian Lake Marina [six miles from the place where UA Flight 93 crashed] said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion that signaled the crash [or the attack on the jet] at 10:06 a.m. Tuesday." (Pittsburg Post Gazette, Sept. 13, 2001) If this plane was not shot down, but rather remained intact until hitting the ground, how could this debris travel the six miles from the crash site to Indian Lake in minutes when there was only a 10 mph wind blowing? (For wind-borne debris to travel six miles in, say, six minutes requires a 60 mph wind.) Were the conversations between the pilots of the other three hijacked planes and air traffic controllers recorded? If so, what did those pilots say? Were those recordings siezed by the FBI? Were (alleged) transcripts given by the FBI to the mainstream media? Were those transcripts fabricated to provide false evidence in support of the "Arab hijackers" story? Considering that all persons on board all four planes died, how did the FBI come up so quickly with a list of names of the alleged nineteen Arab hijackers — including aliases used by fourteen of them, in some cases seven aliases (see the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2001-09-27)? Did they simply pick out all names on the passenger lists which sounded Middle Eastern? Indeed, were those names on the passenger lists at all? If not, why not? Or did the FBI know in advance the names (and aliases) of the "Arab hijackers" on those flights? Why did the South Tower collapse first, 47 minutes after it was hit, rather than the North Tower (which was hit first and collapsed 1 hour and 44 minutes after being hit), even though the fire in the North Tower (the alleged cause of the collapse) was more intense? Would jet fuel burning in an enclosed space (with little oxygen available for combustion) actually produce temperatures high enough (1538°C, i.e. 2800°F) to melt massive steel beams (and all the steel beams, since steel conducts heat efficiently) enclosed in concrete in just 47 minutes? If so, wouldn't the Twin Towers have buckled and bent, and toppled over onto the surrounding buildings in the Lower Manhattan financial district, rather than collapsing neatly upon themselves in the manner of a controlled demolition? Were the Twin Towers re-engineered in the mid-1990s to make possible a collapse-on-demand if that were judged necessary? Was FEMA aware of this? Do the blueprints of the Twin Towers reveal any evidence of this? Why were such huge quantities of ash and dust produced? How could fire convert concrete into dust? Has the ash been chemically analysed to determine what it really is and how it might have been produced? Is it not the case that the Twin Towers collapsed, not because of airliner impacts and fires, but because they were expertly demolished (even though we do not yet know exactly how this was accomplished)? Who stood to benefit from the complete destruction of the Twin Towers? Why were no aircraft fragments, identifiable as coming from a Boeing 757, recovered from the Pentagon crash site? Why were no remains of the approximately sixty passengers and crew on the jet which allegedly hit the Pentagon returned to relatives for burial? In September the Securities and Exchange Commission initiated an inquiry to establish who benefited from the unusually high numbers of put options purchased prior to September 11 for shares in companies whose stock prices subsequently plummeted, on the supposition that whoever was behind the hijacking was also behind most of the purchases of these put options. Why has this inquiry stalled? Why have those who benefited from the purchases of these put options not been identified (or at least, not publicly)? How is it that a sealed envelope opened by jailers in Toronto on September 14th contained a document written prior to September 11th by Mike Vreeland, a Naval Lieutenant on active duty with an office in the Pentagon, which describes attacks against the WTC and the Pentagon? Is it not the case that this atrocity was planned and carried out by elements at high levels of command in the U.S. Air Force, the CIA, the Justice Department and FEMA (possibly with the involvement of well-placed civilians outside the government), acting under orders from, or with the approval of, high officials within the U.S. Administration, and that those same elements are now directing a propaganda campaign against the American people to justify a war of aggression in Asia and the Middle East aimed at controlling the oil and mineral wealth of those regions? The U.S. attack on Afghanistan has had major repercussions in the Islamic world, and it is now planning similar attacks on Iraq, Iran and North Korea (which the U.S. regards as a threat to its economic interests because if it made peace with South Korea this would open up an overland trade route between Japan and Europe via Russia). Further military campaigns will have unforeseeable consequences and could lead to nuclear war between India and Pakistan (possibly drawing in China and Russia). If Bush's "War on Terrorism" is expanded beyond Afghanistan (in particular, to Iraq) it will probably lead to the overthrow of those Arab regimes whose leaders are in the pay of the Americans (in the case of Egypt, to the extent of a good chunk of the two billion dollars per year military "aid"). Will Middle Eastern oil continue to flow to the Western industrial societies and to Japan and to China? What might be the consequences for those countries (especially as regards feeding their people and keeping them warm in winter) if oil supplies are cut off for an extended period of time? Have America's geopolitical strategists thought this through? Perhaps they have, and see advantage to themselves in the form of the eventual realization of the goal that the Nazis set for themselves in the 1930s: a global fascist dictatorship achieved by the use of military force, and the consequent enslavement of all humans (with those unfit to work being eliminated). We ordinary Americans are being led, step by step, down the road to a dictatorship more evil and all-pervasive than that of the late Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party of the German aristocracy. — Sherman H. Skolnick: The Overthrow of the American Republic, Part 2 And what if the U.S. warmongers achieve their aims of gaining control of all sources of oil in Asia (and the Middle East and North Africa), and of the mineral wealth of Central Asia? Will the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese feel secure in the knowledge that the United States will surely sell them whatever they need to maintain their industrial economies — and their military capabilities? (The Russian and Chinese leaders surely understand the long-term threat to their national sovereignty, and are acting accordingly.) Or is there something even more sinister going on? Is the goal "at the highest level" the extinction of the human species? If so, will the American people prove to be "useful idiots" facilitating the attainment of this goal? Or, on the contrary, might they yet awaken from their ignorance, their stupidity, their greed and their egoism, take a hard look at themselves, understand what their lying, vicious, rapacious, hypocritical government is doing in the name of "freedom and democracy", and rein in and reform that government, reconstitute their nation as a republic as the authors of the Constitution intended, and save the world, as they believe (or used to believe) is their manifest destiny? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The 9/11 You Were Never Told About - Part 1 Was the White House attacked by a drone aircraft with a dead pilot? Joe Vialls, January 2002 Cessna 172R Charles Bishop Bank of America 5 January 2002 Cessna 150L Frank Corder The White House 11 September 1994 Frank Corder According to the mainstream media, at about 2300 hrs on 11 September 1994, Frank Eugene Corder stole a single-engine Cessna 150L plane from an airport north of Baltimore, then headed south to Washington, flying over the National Zoological Park and down to the Mall, probably using the Washington Monument as a beacon. As he neared the famed obelisk, he banked a tight U-turn over the Ellipse, came in low over the White House South Lawn, clipped a hedge, skidded across the green lawn that girds the South Portico and crashed into a wall two stories below the presidential bedroom. Unfortunately, there are huge problems with this glib media account of what was, in reality, the first known deliberate air attack on a major building in America. Corder had no obvious motive for the crime, and although his wife had died some weeks before from cancer, Frank was getting on with life as best he could. He was building a small kit aircraft of his own at the same airport the Cessna 150L was stolen from, and frequently worked alone at night on his pet project, making him the perfect target of opportunity for anyone needing a pilot, dead or alive. Immediately after the crash, intelligence sources concurred that the flight was most probably flown as a “Proof of Concept”, designed to thoroughly test Washington’s air defenses and expose possible flaws. If the Cessna 150L managed to strike the White House wall directly, the concept would be considered proven, perhaps paving the way for later attacks using heavier aircraft loaded with munitions. In this respect the flight was a complete success. Although Corder’s badly mangled body was recovered from the wreckage, there was no forensic way of establishing whether he had died in the crash itself, or several hours earlier. No one witnessed Frank Corder board or steal the Cessna in Maryland, and at no time did he make radio contact with the control tower or anyone else. Frank Corder behaved in all respects like a ghost, and he may well have been dead before the Cessna left the ground in Maryland. How? By use of remote control. Remote controlled aircraft have been around since the late fifties, and can be flown from the ground with absolute precision. All that is needed is a reliable radio link to the target aircraft, and if the target aircraft gets out of normal radio range, a “shepherd” aircraft to act as a radio relay, or as airborne flight director. It is now beyond reasonable doubt that the WTC attack aircraft of 11 September 2001 were controlled in a similar manner, in this case utilizing a counter-hijack system known as “Home Run”. Those not familiar with “Home Run” can read a comprehensive report here, or use the link at the bottom of this page. Detailed technical information about aircraft remote control systems will be provided later in this report, but before getting into the heavy stuff, we should probably take a closer look at 15 year-old Charles Bishop. Bishop is alleged to have stolen a Cessna 172R in Florida, and then “committed suicide” by flying into the Bank of America building in downtown Tampa on 5 January 2002. Unfortunately, just like Frank Corder in 1994, no one witnessed Charles Bishop board or steal the Cessna in Florida, and at no time during the flight did Bishop communicate with the control tower or anyone else. Charles Bishop, Age 15 Years Spookily perhaps, there is at least one visual indicator that Bishop was probably dead long before his aircraft hit the Bank of America. A Coastguard helicopter patrolling in the local area actually flew alongside the Cessna in an attempt to force the pilot to land, but without success. In the words of the helicopter pilot: “He [Bishop] sat motionless at the controls. He would not look at the helicopter, nor would he respond to radio or hand signals telling him to land his aircraft”. Think about it people, think about it! If this excitable 15 year-old was on a glorious suicide mission in support of his alleged “idol” Osama Bin Laden, the temptation to give the Coastguard helicopter crew the finger would have been almost irresistible. After all, what did he have to lose? On the other hand, what if Bishop’s aircraft had been hijacked by remote control without his knowledge or consent? If he was still alive and saw himself being steered unerringly towards the Bank of America, chances are he would have been clawing desperately at the aircraft window, trying to get the Coastguard to save him from imminent destruction. "I would characterize it as a suicide," said Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder. A suicide note, which was found in the wreckage of the plane, "clearly stated that he had acted alone, without any help from anyone else," Holder said. "He did, however, make statements expressing his sympathy for Osama bin Laden and the events which occurred September 11, 2001." News of the note police found stunned Bishop's fifth-period algebra teacher, who described him as a bright, disciplined student who was well-liked by his classmates. "I'm floored. Totally floored," said Rayette Bouldrick. "He always had a smile. He was always pleasant and respectful." The suicide note “clearly stated that he had acted alone”? Sure it did… It is not hard to imagine a Kamikaze school kid thinking ahead to the time when his local Police Chief will have to explain what happened, and for political reasons will need to reassure the public that no one else was involved. Absolute Bulldust! If Police Chief Bennie Holder is incapable of recognizing deliberately planted evidence, he should quit his job and go fishing. Many readers find the concept of remotely controlled aircraft difficult to grasp, and in the past I have received many emails critical of this aspect of my investigations. Accordingly I decided to post precise details from various sources. It is a fascinating subject little known to the public, and it all really began near a sleepy little village in Wales during the fifties. Nestling beneath the stunning backdrop of the Snowdonia mountains on the mid-Wales coastline is the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) station of Llanbedr, home to the most unusual collection of 'aircraft' in the UK. It is here that DERA provide remotely piloted Drone 'aircraft' for use as aerial targets by the RAF and other UK forces. Situated within reach of the sand dunes of Cardigan Bay, the site is clearly visible from the nearby tourist havens of Barmouth and Shell Island. The airfield itself was constructed in 1939, however by 1950 Llanbedr had been used by the Army for Korean War training, but was refurbished in order to return it to aviation use by No.5 Civil Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit with its Mosquito target tugs and Meteor TT8 aircraft. However it was intended that an unmanned target aircraft should be used from Llanbedr, and plans were laid to procure a RPV called 'Jindivik' from Australia. However development delays led to a decision, taken in September 1951 to develop a number of surplus Royal Navy Fairey Firefly aircraft as a target drones, to bridge the inevitable gap. The piston engined Firefly was a useful asset, but it was not long before the drone programme was authorised to use jet powered ex-RAF Meteor F4's and F8's, as they became available. In its drone guise the Meteor became known as the U.15. The first take-off under automatic control took place on 17 January 1955 with a human safety pilot on board. Llanbedr received the first Meteor U.l5 in January 1957 and the first Meteor drone sortie took place on l7 July 1958. Remote Controlled British DERA Meteor U-16 Telemetry as such was not available then, so a shepherd aircraft, usually another Meteor would escort the drone to the entrance to the Range, hold well clear and rejoin after the mission was concluded. As the Meteor F.8 became more available, surplus airframes were also converted into the more sophisticated Meteor U.l6, which made its first drone flight in the September of 1960, with over 200 of the type eventually being 'droned'. More details on RAF Llanbedr here. Note carefully here, that although Llanbedr was nominally a Royal Air Force military base, development and effective control of the remotely controlled Fireflys and Meteors, lay in the hands of the civilian British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), which has close though discreet ties with the civilian American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Back in the seventies it was DARPA and two American multinationals who collaborated in order to manufacture the system now known as “Home Run”, a secret counter-hijacking system designed to recover hijacked aircraft to a friendly airport with minimum damage to surviving passengers and crew. Similar systems used on the Meteors at Llanbedr were used on American aircraft, which improved enormously as the years went by. Nowadays the most sophisticated unmanned aircraft is probably the conversion of an F4 Phantom fighter to “QF4”, denoting full remote control capability. However, most of QF-4s retain a piloted capability. This is because test and training scenarios require a high degree of choreography to make them as realistic as possible, and so pilots have to fly the QF-4s through "dry runs" to ensure that all details are considered. The US Air Force refers to unpiloted flights using the acronym NULLO ("Not Utilizing Local Live Operator"), while the US Navy calls them NOLO ("No Onboard Live Operator"). Still No Pilot Phantom QF4E Parked on Apron Look No Pilot! Phantom QF4G Airborne on Range QF4 Remote Ground Control Up to four QF-4s can be flown in formation during NULLO flights. The drones do not interact with each other, they are simply commanded to follow a specific moving point in space known as a "rabbit", with each aircraft maintaining a specific three-dimensional offset from the rabbit. The autopilot system on the QF-4 is very sophisticated. For example, the remote operator can land the aircraft simply by giving it a single command to land. Although missiles used in air combat tests don't usually have combat warheads, once a QF-4 is used as actual target in exercises, its expected lifetime is no more than four missions. The QF-4 carries a self-destruct system to destroy itself if missile damage fails to shoot it down but causes it to become a potential threat. More details on the unmanned QF-4 are available here. It does not take a rocket scientist to fit a basic remote control (plus rabbit), to a humble little Cessna standing unguarded at a remote civilian airfield. Once the pilot is on board – or placed on board, the basic system will fly the aircraft wherever the controller desires, including into the wall of the White House or the Bank of America building. Basically all he or she needs to do is “lead” the aircraft with the invisible rabbit, and the Cessna will follow as vigorously as a greyhound at a race track. The reason for the attack on the White House on 11 September 1994 is still shrouded in mystery, but the logic of a “Proof of Concept” flight is compelling. We can safely leave that incident alone for the present, especially bearing in mind later events on 11 September 2001, which need no further explanation here. Not so obvious is the use of young Charles Bishop against the Bank of America late on Saturday 5 January, so informed speculation will have to suffice. At the subliminal television level, the two words “Bank” and “America” certainly acted as powerful psychological reinforcers on the global viewing public. Everyone knows that the World Trade Center was America’s premier “banking” zone, and everyone knows “America” has been attacked by aircraft belonging to “American” Airlines. Whether intentional or not, the effect of the Cessna crash in Florida was to once again sensitize Americans and others to flying over, or even near, America. Srill on the subject of psychological reinforcers, it cannot be denied that this particular crash served to highlight the utter futility of grounding crop spray planes to prevent "terrorists" from spreading "biological toxins". The simple reality here is that Bishop's small plane, or any of the other tens of thousand like it, could easily carry enough Anthrax spores to kill half the population of Florida, or any other state, simply by crashing into a tall city building.. An alternative motive, perhaps compelling for the American Administration, would be that of “reinforcing” the absolute fiction that a bunch of “Arab Hijackers” with basic Cessna training, managed to control three heavy jets moving at over 400 miles per hour, manipulate their descent, and then hit three target bullseyes in Washington and New York so small that success would tax the skills of highly experienced jet fighter pilots. Vast numbers of American and others around the world are questioning the involvement of Osama Bin Laden in the events of 11 September, even more so now after the release of George W Bush’s blatantly forged “Osama Confession” video. Somehow this questioning must be stopped, and the public forced to believe the increasingly wild claims about the "hijackers". What better way than to arrange for a 15 year-old boy with only six flying hours to mount an attack on the Bank of America building in Florida? Think about it. If 15 year-old Bishop could score a direct hit on Bank of America, then surely everyone must believe that the far more experienced and older Mohammed Atta (or whoever), with ten flying hours on a 4,000# Cessna, could obviously throw a 420,000# Boeing 767 airliner around New York’s restricted airspace like a giant kiddy toy. But the show must go on. Though Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the New York and Washington attacks, from the viewpoint of certain American institutions it is vital that American military operations in Afghanistan be allowed to continue unhindered, to their final and extremely profitable conclusion. Put simply, the “War on Terror” in Afghanistan has nothing to do with terror, and absolutely nothing to do with Unocal plans for an oil pipeline running from the Caspian Sea, through Afghanistan, to a Pakistani port. Though plans were once drawn up for just such a pipeline, estimated infrastructure costs were so high that the project was permanently filed in the wastebasket. Afghanistan is all about the drugs trade, which provided nearly 80% of the world's #4 100% pure opium through American cartels and the CIA, until the Taliban took control in 1996. For a while the Taliban stopped the trade altogether, then started it again when the heroin was required as “trade” for more weapons and ammo from China and Russia. The problem after 1996 was that Taliban heroin was no longer routed via the American cartels, which lost tens of billions of dollars as a direct result. The “War on Terror” was launched to get rid of the Taliban, and their strangle- hold on the heroin reserves rightfully “owned” by the American cartels. That job is almost complete. As I write, all of the CIA’s old warlord “friends” have been restored to power, and the Afghan poppy fields have already been sowed with the 2002 crop. So courtesy of a thoughtful and caring American Administration, fresh supplies of lethal heroin for your children and their friends, should be arriving in your very own American town or city sometime soon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- One wonders how these events could have been ignored by the major media or treated as isolated incidents. Failing that, how could skilled news agencies avoid being outraged, or at least even just a little suspicious? 1.      1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. ["The Price of Oil," by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.] 2.      December 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997] 3.      February 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca - later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan - testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.] 4.      1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Q'aeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by Robert Baer (release date Feb. 2002). 5.      April, 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002.] 6.      1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," -  http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/carlyle.html. ] 7.      January, 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast - Nov 7, 2001]. 8.      Feb 13, 2001 - UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale - while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Q'aeda followers - reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years. 9.      May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001]. 10.     May, 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections and he is the recipient of the highest civil decoration awarded by Pakistan. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001.] 11.     June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.] 12.     July, 2001 - Three American officials: Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verité Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, September 22, 2001; the BBC, September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001] 13.     Summer, 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by The Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002] 14.     Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana." 15.     Summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. [Source: The Times of India, October 11, 2001.] 16.     Summer 2001 - An Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source: German news agency "online.de", September 14, 2001, translation retrieved from online.ie in Ireland.] 17.     June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate' US and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by US and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.] 18.     August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, September 13.] 19.     August 11 or 12 - US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records] 20.     Summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer. 21.     July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source: Le Figaro, October 31st, 2001.] 22.     August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MS-NBC interview with Putin, September 15.] 23.     August/September, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent. 24.     Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11. 25.     September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23, 000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.] 26.     September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida web site listing of Governor's Executive Orders.] 27.     September 6-7, 2001 - 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.] 28.     September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT - above] 29.     September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off." 30.     September 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV, No.7, October 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/oct152001.html. ] 31.     It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times,  June 15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October  26, 2001, - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/magic_carpet.html; FTW, Vol. IV, No.6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/sept1801.html; FTW, Vol. 3, No 7, 9/30/00 - www.fromthewilderness.com/ free/pandora/052401_promis.html. 32.     September 11, 2001 - Gen Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Porter Goss (R), FL and Bob Graham (D), Fl [Sources: MS-NBC, Oct. 7, The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002.] 33.     September 11, 2002 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01; Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, 9/27/01; Ha'aretz, 9/26/01.].  34.     September 11, 2001, For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred - an event that has never happened in history. [Sources: CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.] 35.     September 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001.] 36.     September 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records] 37.     September 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown unit of Deutschebank. 38.     September 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options. 39.     October 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments." 40.     October 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2002.] 41.     Mid October, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations. 42.     November 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country. 43.     November 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible." 44.     December 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the US government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, 12/4/01]. 45.     December 25, 2001 - Newly appointed afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde.] 46.     January 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalamy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, 1/9/02] 47.     January 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2002. 48.     January 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior Court.] 49.     January 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting Federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco who have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002 - FTW original investigation, The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I, Apr 4, 2002.] 50.     February 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader General Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity" including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghani government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, 2/9/02] 51.     Feb 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late Spring of 2002 will reach a world record 4500 metric tons. Now, let's go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro - the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June. The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room. "Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta÷ "According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory."÷ "Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, "What do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence."÷ "On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American policy.'" Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1 contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On November 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time. Who do you believe? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FTW, November 2, 2001 - 1200 PST -- On October 31, the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official - presumably the Chief of Station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and this year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14th he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROJECT CENSORED CENSORED 2001: THE TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES OF 2001 - http://www.projectcensored.org/stories/2001/cyearbook.htm Introduction: Project Censored 25th Anniversary; By Noam Chomsky #1: World Bank and Multinational Corporations Seek to Privatize Water #2: OSHA Fails to Protect U.S. Workers #3: U.S. Army's Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN #4: Did the U.S. Deliberately Bomb the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade? #5: U.S. Taxpayers Underwrite Global Nuclear Power Plant Sales #6: International Report Blames U.S. and Others for Genocide in Rwanda #7: Independent Study Points to Dangers of Genetically Altered Foods (Dismissed by Media and Biotech Industry) #8: Drug Companies Influence Doctors and Health Organizations to Push Meds #9: EPA Plans to Disburse Toxic/Radioactive Wastes into Denver's Sewage System #10: Silicon Valley Uses Immigrant Engineers to Keep Salaries Low #11: United Nations Corporate Partnerships-A Human Rights Peril #12: Cuba Leads the World in Organic Farming #13: The World Trade Organization is an Illegal Institution #14: Europe Holds Companies Environmentally Responsible, Despite U.S. Opposition #15: Gerber Uses the WTO to Suppress Laws that Promote Breastfeeding #16: Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapens #17: IMF and World Bank Staff Tightly Connected to New Yugoslav Government #18: Indigenous People Challenge Private Ownership and Patenting of Life #19: U.S. Using Dangerous Fungus to Eradicate Coca Plants in Colombia #20: Disabled Most Likely to be Victims of Serious Crime #21: U.S Military Bombing Range Destroys Korean Village Life #22: U.S. Government Repressed Marijuana-Tumor Research #23: Very Small Levels of Chemical Exposures Can be Dangerous #24: Pentagon Seeks Mega-Mergers Between International Arms Corporations #25: Community Activists Outsit McDonalds ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings from the Center for an Informed America! Please forward this message widely. If this message was forwarded to you and you would like to receive future mailings, e-mail a request to be added to this mailing list. This article comes courtesy of Swans. The original is at: http://www.swans.com/library/art8/dmg001.html America Through The Looking Glass by David McGowan April 8, 2002 In the immortal words of Lewis Carroll, things are getting curiouser and curiouser. If there has ever been a more bizarre presidential team in place at the White House at any other time in U.S. history, it doesn't immediately come to mind. Consider, if you will, that we have a vice-president (and I use that term rather loosely) who has all but disappeared from public view without any kind of credible explanation having been given to the American people. It appeared at first as though Cheney's vanishing act was a temporary and cynical ploy that would allow George the Younger to appear as though he were actually running the show. But six months have now passed and Dick has only been whipped out for a few passing photo-ops (and to do some arm-twisting in the Middle-East). Never before, even during times of World or Civil War, has such secrecy and security ever been deemed necessary. What possible explanation can there be for this? What credible threats is the vice-president facing? The only possible danger that Cheney could find himself in would be facing impeachment proceedings for, among other things, his involvement in the Enron scandal and his questionable dealings with Iraq (1). But that of course could only happen if we had a Congress that wasn't as fully corrupt as the White House team that they are supposed to provide checks and balances on. Consider also that we have a president (and I use that term even more loosely) who is so intellectually challenged that before even losing the election he had already issued enough verbal gaffes to fill a book or two. He seemingly cannot open his mouth to utter an unscripted response without lapsing into almost complete incoherence, as though he received his English instruction via home-schooling by his dad. On top of that, he has appeared in public no fewer than three times now with noticeably large bruises/contusions on his face. First there was the enormous bandage he sported in the dark days of the 'hanging chads.' Then there were the obvious contusions late in the year that would have gone without mention were it not for a reporter's question; only then did the White House hurriedly issue a claim that Bush had had lesions removed from his face. And then we were treated to the sublimely comical story that our fearless leader lost consciousness while snacking on a pretzel and fell face-first into a coffee table (I could make a cheap joke here about the 'leader of the free world' being unable to watch TV and chew pretzels at the same time, but will refrain from doing so). And we were told that this is actually a very common occurrence. Say what? In what parallel universe is this a common occurrence? What exactly is going on behind closed doors on Pennsylvania Avenue? Is Poppy Bush trying to slap some sense into his brain-addled youngster? Is George hitting the bottle a little too hard ... just before hitting the floor? Is Stepford-wife Laura a closet dominatrix who sometimes gets a little carried away ("Goddamnit, Laura! How many times do I have to tell you? ... stay away from the face!")? Something is obviously not quite right here. The media though doesn't seem to find anything unusual about the George and Dick Show. Nary a question has been raised about what exactly Cheney is doing in his 'secure' location. Bush's incoherent mumblings, brain-deadening jingoism, and stunning lack of knowledge about any issue of any significance are somehow presented as though the man has magically assumed presidential stature unequaled in U.S. history. What the hell is going on here? For the most part, just business-as-usual as the media performs its time-honored role of covering-up for the inadequacies and crimes of our 'elected' leaders. Yet it has become bizarrely surreal as the press struggles mightily to continue performing that function even while faced with an administration both arrogant and criminal almost beyond human comprehension. How are we to digest the events of the last year? – the wholesale theft of a presidential election, the massive give-aways to the largest and most corrupt corporations in the country, the largely unexplained and completely uninvestigated September 11 attacks, the declaration of open-ended war on much of the world, the rapidly escalating attacks on civil liberties and privacy rights .... Millions are surely struggling to make sense of their world as the full extent of the corruption of the American political, economic and legal systems is increasingly laid bare. Denial is a fierce weapon, but it does have its limits – even when aided and abetted by a 'mental health' community that hands out MK-ULTRA-derived anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs like Halloween candy. How are we to make sense of a vast sea of media outlets all shouting the same lies and all failing to ask the most obvious of questions? How are we to account for an allegedly thriving 'alternative' press that takes at face value the official version of the events of September 11 – pretending not to notice the gaping holes in the story? And how are we to make sense of the fact that the leading voices of the supposed 'left' have questioned the events of 9-11 only in terms of so-called 'blowback,' carefully avoiding questioning the underlying assumption that "Osama did it"? And how long can we cling to the futile hope that the Democratic Party is somehow going to ride to the rescue and get us out of this mess? The party whose two standard-bearers, "Animatronic Al" Gore and Joe "Jews for Fascism" Lieberman, have openly cheered the 'War on Terrorism,' all but demanded its expansion into Iraq, endorsed the preposterous notion of an 'Axis of Evil,' and given favorable reviews to America's new nuclear 'Posture'? The party whose congressional members, in both houses, have embraced nearly every reactionary appointment by the Bush regime, signed on to every openly fascistic 'security' measure that has come their way, given a huge thumbs-up to virtually unlimited military spending, and failed completely to voice even the tiniest protest over the flagrant theft of the election or to launch any sort of an investigation into the events of September 11? And those are just a few of the Democratic Party's recent sins. Of course, our learned opinion-shapers insist that the Democrats' hands are tied – hampered by the massive public support behind the Bush agenda. Opinion polls, brought to you by the very same media to whom lying is an art form, keep insisting that to be the case. And I have a couple of towers in New York that I can let you have for a real good price .... The truth is that the Democratic Party, quite frankly, offers no resistance to the Bush juggernaut because they differ from their Republican counterparts only in that they give slightly more lip-service to social issues. And that, of course, is only posturing for public consumption. Changing the party in charge of the White House and/or Congress isn't going to significantly alter the agenda. Everyone of any importance in Washington is on-board the war train for the long haul. And the notion that the war is being prolonged just to gain a Republican advantage in the 2002 and 2004 elections, propagated by many a pseudo-dissident journalist, is pure fantasy. As has been made quite clear by a steady stream of official statements, this is a 'war' without end – a war with the goal of wiping out any and all pockets of resistance throughout the world, including here on the home front, to the corporate and military elite's vision of a system of global fascism, and with the parallel goal of identifying false enemies to keep the American people too frightened, disoriented and disjointed to fight back against the encroaching police state. Doesn't anybody read Orwell anymore? But I know how comforting it is to believe in the American ship of state. To believe in the two-party system. To believe in the Democratic Party as the party of the people. To believe that things will be OK again just as soon as the next election rolls around and we can get 'our' party back in charge. To believe that our obviously free press isn't really lying to us. To believe that 'this too shall pass,' and that we'll be back to 'normal' soon. It wasn't that long ago that I was a believer. But that was before I joined the ranks of those who inhabit a strange, hallucinatory world that is roughly akin to waking up every morning finding yourself trapped in a cheesy sci-fi film. Clicking on the TV, you find that the same lies that you just heard the day before are still spewing out. Turning the channel, you discover that everyone is telling the same lies, in the same way, using the same catch-phrases as though if everyone repeats them they somehow acquire some kind of inherent meaning. No matter how many times you change the channel, all you hear is "war on terrorism ... axis of evil ... rule of law ... evil-doers ... weapons of mass destruction ... enduring freedom ... 9-11 ... 9-11 ... 9-11 ... " You briefly ponder whether you might be a victim of some kind of practical joke – an unwitting participant in some kind of new 'reality show.' But then you find that everyone else seems to believe the lies, or at least they pretend to. Could they all be in on the joke? And if this isn't a joke, then how come you seem to be the only one who can see so clearly that the emperor has no clothes? You hear on the news that the key witness in the biggest financial scandal in the nation's history has been found shot to death in his car not long before he is to begin delivering his testimony. "Holy shit!" you say, "they're killing off witnesses in broad daylight." But no, the somber newscasters all intone, it was an unfortunate suicide. "Ha!" you say, "nobody's going to believe that one. The shit is really going to fly now." You remember back to when Vince Foster supposedly committed suicide, and how the 'liberal' media had a field day with the story. "Payback's a bitch," you say to yourself. "The Dumbocrats are going to get some mileage out of this one." But nobody says a word. No one on Capitol Hill, no one in the press corps. You mention to some co-workers that the suicide story sounds a little suspect, and they look at you as though you are wearing an "I Love Osama" button on your lapel as they robotically ask you if you've been to see Black Hawk Down yet. Realizing that you've blown your cover, you start nervously watching out of the corner of your eye for the goon squad to arrive and send you happily on your way to Guantanamo. The Enron scandal, you quickly realize, is not going to be seriously investigated – just as the coup-like nature of the election wasn't investigated, and just as the 'terrorist' attacks on Washington and New York aren't being investigated, and just like the anthrax attacks, so obviously timed to ratchet up the level of fear and outrage among the American people, aren't being investigated. You absent-mindedly take note of the 'terrorist alert' warning color for the day as you ponder when this extended acid trip began and if and when it is going to end. What will it take to wake the American people up to the fact that there is something seriously wrong with this picture? The mounting of a coup d'etat in that diseased appendage known as Florida didn't do it (2). Nor did the Supreme Court arrogantly ruling that the American people have no right to have their votes counted in a presidential election (3). Nor the revelation that the Bush regime - itself a shamelessly illegal, unconstitutionally-assembled government - has established an even more illegal, secret and unaccountable 'shadow' government. And neither did the fact that military tribunals have been proscribed that have the authority to hand down anonymous death sentences based on secret evidence presented by government-appointed lawyers. The indefinite detention of 'suspects,' held without charges in undisclosed locations and largely deprived of legal counsel, didn't do it. Nor the open talk of torturing these same 'suspects.' Nor the open admissions of an emerging surveillance infrastructure that goes far beyond anything Orwell ever envisioned. Nor even the deliberate leaking of the country's sociopathic 'Nuclear Posture Review.' And, as we have seen repeatedly in the past, mercilessly bombing yet another civilian population in yet another oil-driven military venture certainly didn't do it. Is the control too complete – control not just of information, but of thought? Are we so blinded by propaganda, and so desperately clinging to the basic human desire to view ourselves as the good guys, that we are fundamentally incapable of taking an objective look at the world we live in? Can the government get away with literally any lie, no matter how brazen? Is there no hope? Or is the script of this particular Roger Corman flick somewhat different than what it appears to be? What if you're not the only sane person left in a world gone mad? What if there are millions of others out there, all harboring serious doubts about the increasingly unpalatable servings of 'news' we are being dished-up? And what if the number of such individuals is growing every day? What if the constant touting of Bush's alleged popularity is all part of a well-orchestrated psy-war campaign aimed at stifling dissent by intimidating doubters in the crowd into keeping their opinions to themselves, lest they be viewed as clinically insane for failing to interpret reality in the same way that everyone else purportedly does? A campaign designed to make you feel, in other words, precisely as you now do: alone, isolated, frustrated, powerless, frightened and confused. A part of that campaign seems to involve, amazingly enough, efforts to taunt you – to rub in your face your utter powerlessness - by dropping tantalizing hints along the way, as though you are being dared to do something about it. Wasn't it, after all, France's Le Figaro that dropped that little bombshell about bin Laden meeting a CIA operative in a Dubai hospital room shortly before September 11? And isn't Le Figaro owned by the Carlyle Group, whose investors and principals include the Bushes, the bin Ladens, and various ranking members of the national security infrastructure? And wasn't it that mouthpiece of the far-right, the Wall Street Journal, that dropped the story about the stock market manipulations that occurred in the days immediately preceding the September 11 attacks? And wasn't it a vice-president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, itself a fully-integrated part of the military/intelligence complex, who initially identified the collapse of the World Trade Center towers as controlled implosions? And wasn't it James Bamford (a man with uncomfortably close connections to numerous NSA operatives), working with Doubleday (a publisher not known for bringing the work of dissident authors to light), whose book - released just five months before 9-11 - revealed the details of 'Operation Northwoods' – a purported anti-Cuban operation involving a staged provocation with marked similarities to the events of September 11? And what of the obviously deliberate, and curiously well-publicized, leaks of the so-called Nuclear Posture Review, of the existence of Dick's 'shadow' government, and of the proposed Ministry of Propaganda*? Why leave all these crumbs scattered along the evidence trail? It's a little something the spooks like to call 'Mind War' – more commonly known on the streets as 'fucking with your head.' They want you to feel as though you are stuck in the Twilight Zone. I believe Mr. Orwell referred to it as a state of "controlled insanity." But even with the endless blizzard of propaganda - coming straight at you from all directions, including from virtually every avenue of the media, 'news' and 'entertainment' alike - there are clear indications emerging that there is considerably more dissent out there, considerably more questions being raised, than we are being led to believe. As just one indication, several commentators have noted that Michael Moore's new book, Stupid White Men, is selling like hotcakes, despite the fact that conventional wisdom holds that there is currently no market for what is reportedly a fairly harsh assessment of America under a Bush. Perhaps a more significant measure of the level of discontent and frustration among the American people was reflected in the shockingly low turnout for the recent California gubernatorial primary. As the Los Angeles Times reported: "After the terrorists struck and the buildings fell, Americans united in a surge of patriotism not seen in a generation. On Tuesday in California, citizens were asked to join in what may be the most patriotic ritual of all, the celebration of democracy known as voting. Two out of three registered voters were no-shows." (4) The article also noted that many eligible voters didn't even bother to register. The net result was that nearly four out of five eligible California voters opted not to cast a vote in the March primary. The Times further noted that the California election was a continuation of a post-September 11 trend: "In Washington, for instance, turnout for the November general election - which featured two ballot initiatives on taxes - was 13 percentage points below the 1999 figure. Virginia and New Jersey elected governors in November, and turnout was down about 3% and 7%, respectively, from the previous governor's races in 1997. "In Georgia, meanwhile, a special election to fill a state Senate seat was decided by just 3% of the electorate: 'It's always low in specials, but we usually get 15%,' lamented Georgia's director of elections, Linda Beazley. 'This is dismal. What's wrong with our voters?'" (4) A concerted effort is made by the Times reporter to offer up any number of excuses for the dismal voter turnout. But three words in the article, uttered by a small-business owner in Fresno, pretty much said it all: "Politics are crooked." Or, to elaborate just a bit – a large majority of citizens recognize that voting - when presented with hand-picked, interchangeable candidates - is not a true exercise of democracy, but rather an exercise in futility. Perhaps one of the clearest indications that large sectors of the American electorate aren't buying the mainstream-media line is the fact that the decades-long effort to discredit and marginalize those dissidents derisively referred to as 'conspiracy theorists' has been stepped-up dramatically in recent months, by both the corporate media and the self-proclaimed 'alternative' press. Prominent among those heaping derision on 'conspiracy theories' is The Nation's David Corn. Among other inanities, a piece penned by Corn makes the rather remarkable claim that: "Simply put, the spies and special agents are not good enough, evil enough, or gutsy enough to mount this operation ... Such an operation -- to execute the simultaneous destruction of the two towers, a piece of the Pentagon, and four airplanes and make it appear as if it all was done by another party -- is far beyond the skill level of U.S. intelligence." (5) No ... an operation of that sort would clearly require a loosely-organized band of poorly-equipped cave-dwellers. There's no way that the largest and most well-funded intelligence network the world has ever seen could pull off something like that. They may be capable of rigging foreign elections, routinely plotting and carrying out assassinations and coups, and 'destabilizing' the economies and political structures of various hapless nations, but it clearly strains credulity to posit that they could hijack a few planes. They may have an enormous, secret and unaccountable budget, 'front' companies and organizations set up in every corner of the globe, and prominent mouthpieces installed throughout academia, the media, the legal community, the mental health community, the entertainment community, the medical community, and pretty much every other community that is in a position to influence public opinion; and they may control proxy armies and fascist (though certainly not 'terrorist') cells around the world, and they may have their very own private air force, but certainly no one would ever seriously suggest that such a vast intelligence network could pull off something of the magnitude of what the world saw on September 11. As yet another reason why alternative explanations of 9-11 are, in Corn's words, "absurd," "tripe," and "crap," he makes the bold claim that: "in the spy-world some things [are] beyond the pale." One of those things, insists Corn, is "kill[ing] an American citizen." (5) That would certainly take the wind out of the sails of many a 'conspiracy theory' – if it weren't a statement totally unsupported by the historical record. Corn has already been challenged in print by such writers as Stephen Gowans, Alex Constantine, and Michael Ruppert, who is identified in the Corn article as one of those who are promoting conspiracy theories "too silly to address." Corn has also, apparently, been challenged by many of his readers. In an L.A. Times opinion piece, he complains of the response to his missive: "I was besieged by people accusing me of being a CIA disinformation agent." (6) Imagine that. Corn ends his diatribe on an interesting note: "Perhaps there's a Pentagon or CIA office that churns out this material. It's mission: distract people from the real wrongdoing." (5) There is little doubt that at least some of the conspiracy theories seeking to explain the events of September 11 have been put out as deliberate disinformation to muddy the waters. But when it comes to distracting people from the "real wrongdoing," few allegedly progressive publications do as good a job at that as does the one that Corn is associated with. The L.A. Times piece, written by Gale Holland a few weeks after the Corn article was posted, is a particularly offensive attack on 'conspiracy theorists.' The article, entitled "Have You Heard About Osama's Cheez-It Stash?," is illustrated with oversized, side-by-side photos of Osama bin Laden and, naturally enough, Elvis Presley. The obvious and rather heavy-handed intent is to equate alternative explanations for the September 11 attacks with Elvis sightings. Apparently the newspaper didn't have any stock photos of any 'alien grays' to accompany the article. Holland refers dismissively to what he calls a "conspiracy lobby, a tiny but persistent subgroup spawned by the John F. Kennedy assassination" that is obsessed with "shadowy government agencies with Maxwell Smartish-sounding acronyms." (6) As for how this "persistent subgroup" views September 11, Holland writes that: "In the misty climes where the far left meets the far right, conspiracy theories have begun to dominate the 9/11 rumor mill. The basic premise is that President Bush/ the CIA/ Big Oil either planned the attacks or let them happen to secure a U.S. oil pipeline/ take over the Middle East/ launch a one-world government." (6) Well ... let's see now. Is it 'conspiracy theorizing' to posit that Bush, the CIA and "Big Oil" would work together towards a common cause? Is there any political family in the country with closer and more extensive ties to both the CIA and the oil industry than the Bush family? Isn't it only stating the obvious to note that this triumvirate shares common interests and goals – goals that were in fact advanced as a result of the 'terrorist' attacks? As for the pipeline, it is a well-documented fact that the U.S. has long harbored plans to build both oil and natural gas pipelines through the nation of Afghanistan. (7) It is also an established fact that the oil companies have long coveted having a 'stable regime' (which is to say, a regime under the direct control of the U.S.) in place before committing to constructing those pipelines. (7) And it has already been reported that those pipeline plans, which have languished in recent years, have now been put on the fast track. (8) As for the Middle East, it certainly appears as though there is a major effort underway to destabilize the entire region – currently being spearheaded by the U.S.-armed proxy known as Israel, but likely soon to be coupled with a U.S. invasion of Iraq, accompanied by general mayhem in the area. It should also be noted that oil-rich Central Asia is quite obviously slated to be brought under the control of the U.S. as well, with troop deployments and the building of military bases in the region accelerating rapidly. (9) And as for the notion of a one-world government, what exactly does Holland think is the goal of all those "Maxwell Smartish-sounding acronyms" - the IMF, the WTO, the CFR, the TLC - if not to turn the planet into one global marketplace governed only by corporate spreadsheets – a global marketplace that can be exploited and pillaged to consolidate all of the world's wealth into the hands of the few? Even while dismissing 'conspiracy theories,' Holland obliquely acknowledges the implausibility of the official 9-11 story: "Faced with the inexplicable, we seem to take comfort in irrational pseudo-explanations." (6) Or perhaps, when faced with the irrational pseudo-explanations offered by the state, we take comfort in searching for a more rational, logical explanation. Or, as Gowans has written for Swans: "Where the official conspiracy theory is so bad, other conspiracy theories rush in to fill the void." (10) Also jumping into the conspiracy-bashing fray, the very same week that the L.A. Times opinion piece was published, was the allegedly progressive L.A. Weekly. A report by Ella Taylor purported to shed light on the KPFK controversy – by declaring the "jewel in [the station's] crown" (11) to be Marc Cooper, the 'left's' leading cheerleader for the 'War on Terror' and an unapologetic supporter of the Warren Report. Throughout the article, Taylor refers to anyone whose politics fall to the left of hers - which is to say, anyone who is even vaguely progressive - as "hard-line Marxists," the "Marxist left," the "far left" which spouts "vulgar Marxist doctrine," and finally as the "loony left." Exemplifying the "far left," according to Taylor, is "Amy Goodman's popular Democracy Now" – easily the most honest offering the station serves up. Singled out for derision in Taylor's tirade, as he was by both Corn and Holland, is Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD investigator who runs the From the Wilderness website (www.copvcia.com) and newsletter. In the Weekly piece, he is described as a "defrocked cop" and a "nutball conspiracy theorist." That title is bestowed upon him for the sin of having compiled a timeline of occurrences in the months leading up to September 11, drawn from respectable media sources, that all raise serious questions about the official version of events. As for Taylor's hero - Marc Cooper, one of Corn's fellow scribes at The Nation - she notes that he "has received hundreds of e-mails insinuating that he survived the coup in Chile because he's a CIA agent who plotted the murder of his boss, Salvador Allende." (11) Imagine that. The conspiracy debunkers are striking on other fronts as well. A website billing itself as the Urban Legends Reference Pages (www.snopes2.com) has skyrocketed in popularity in the post-9-11 world, largely due to numerous citations in the print and broadcast media (Holland's L.A. Times piece references the site twice). Along with purportedly debunking so-called 'urban legends,' the site has focused its attention of late on various September 11 'conspiracy theories.' On television, cable's TNN premiered its new Conspiracy Zone in January 2002. The primary purpose of the show appears to be to make 'conspiracy theorists' the butt of jokes by the show's marginally talented host, Kevin Nealon, and by the show's almost entirely untalented celebrity guests, such as Gabe "Welcome Back, Kotter" Kaplan and Adam "The Man Show" Carrolla. The most recent airing of the show, on March 31, 2002, featured an appearance by, of all people, Mike Ruppert – to discuss the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy. Every effort was made to discredit the facts brought to the table by Ruppert (who came very well prepared), but the ringer brought in for the job, Ann Coulter, was clearly outclassed and reduced to repeatedly making the asinine assertion that "million-to-one coincidences" actually occur millions of times every day, and so we should expect to find numerous oddities and discrepancies littered throughout the RFK evidence. Coulter is, by the way, the very same reprehensible individual who recently wrote in the National Review that America's response to the perpetrators of September 11 should be to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." More recently, princess Ann has been quoted as saying: "In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into outright traitors." (12) Talk about your "nutballs" ... The question that needs to be raised here is: why is all this energy being expended to discredit 'conspiracy theorists'? If we're just talking here about a few "nutballs" preaching to a "tiny subgroup," then why all the fuss? What possible threat to the purportedly rock-solid American system could such a marginalized group pose? As anyone who has ever published material in this country that falls outside of the boundaries of acceptable dissent can tell you, the first response of the power structure is not to attack the messenger – it is to ignore the messenger. If the publication receives no mention by the media, if it garners no reviews and - as is virtually always the case - the publisher lacks the resources and/or the opportunities to market the work, then for all intents and purposes the published material does not exist. It is only if and when the information manages to find an audience despite the obstacles erected, despite being ignored in the hopes that it would just go away, that the second line of defense kicks in: destroy, by any means necessary, the credibility of the source. We can only conclude from this then that 'conspiracy theories' are beginning to reach a much wider, and much more receptive, audience than the boys in Washington are comfortable with. And that which can't be ignored must be destroyed. Coupled with the depressed voter turnouts and the apparent hunger by the American people for books critical of the current agenda, it begins to look as though there may be a considerable amount of dissent bubbling just beneath America's tranquil surface. That simmering anger and frustration can be gauged in another way as well – by perusing the e-mails that are pouring in to websites that offer alternative 9-11 scenarios. The confusion, anger and fear is palpable in such mailings. They frequently begin something like this: "I have never considered myself to be a conspiracy theorist, but .... " The desperation evident in such mailings is striking, as respondents struggle mightily to find answers to questions they never thought they would be asking. One such letter, drawn from my own mailbag, captures quite eloquently the spirit of such letter writers. It is reproduced here just as it was received: "I am 52 years old, an Episcopal nun (formerly a professional musician and, before quitting my day job, a math teacher) and the executive director of a small non-profit organization - an interfaith meditation center. I'm a pretty mainstream sort of person - liberal on most issues and conservative on a few. I'm moderately well educated (master's degree), reasonably well read, and considerably well traveled - having studied some in England and worked for years in both Ireland and South Africa as well as various parts of the United States. Until quite recently I considered "conspiracy theorists" to be, at best, pathetically misguided and, more likely, suffering from paranoid delusions. I don't know what was the wake up call for me after September 11. Maybe it was Dan Rather prostituting himself on the Dave Letterman show. Maybe it was Time Magazine's photograph of Osama Bin Laden in evil red. Maybe it was watching unprecedented war powers handed to the executive branch with only one congressperson daring to utter a lone plea for moderation that hardly qualifies as dissent. Maybe it was that implosion of the towers that looked suspect from the get-go. I'm the only person I know who has actually read huge chunks of that so-called "Patriot's Act" and it makes my blood run cold. I knew then that I was watching a coup inexorably unfold and I'm sick at heart. "I've only talked about any of this with one trusted colleague who warned me that I was starting to sound like those crackpots who think the moon landings were faked. I don't dare tell him that I'm actually having my serious doubts about that too. (Why haven't we gone back in 30 years? Why has no other nation duplicated the feat?) "I'm wondering if I'm losing it or finally seeing clearly. The magnitude of it all is devastating. The "cognitive dissonance" is horribly painful. I understand why people turn off their faculties for critical thought and inquiry; they want to be able to sleep in their beds in reasonable peace. "What do you propose that ordinary people like me actually do? I currently live in a very conservative part of the country where the flag-waving jingoism is nauseating." E-mails such as this pile up in my in-box day after day, week after week – awaiting answers that are difficult to come by. What, indeed, can ordinary people do to reverse the course we are on? How are we to begin to fight back against a system that few seem to even recognize as an enemy of the people? The best advice that I can offer at this time to all those who currently inhabit The Twilight Zone is to let your voices be heard. Stop biting your tongues and begging off from engaging in political debates. You just may find that there are other non-believers around you who are just waiting for someone else to break the ice. As much as appearances may suggest otherwise, you are not alone. There are many other non-believers out there, but they too are intimidated into silence. You will only find them if you have the courage to speak up – if you refuse to be cowed by the propaganda war. Only then can grass-roots organizing begin to take shape. Alone, you are powerless. But you don't have to be alone. Gale Holland concluded his L.A. Times opinion piece with the following words: "Getting at the truth is tough, accepting it can be harder still. Paranoia is a lot easier." (6) Getting at the truth is indeed tough. And accepting it may be one of the hardest things that you ever do. But it is not paranoia that is easier; it is complacent acceptance of the inexplicable. The unfortunate reality though is that there isn't time for complacent acceptance. We don't have the luxury of taking the easy route. And maybe, just maybe, there are enough quiet dissenters out there to make a difference. And maybe, just maybe, our fearless leaders have overstepped this time – overestimated the level of lies and corruption that they can get away with. Those are, alas, very big 'maybes.' But now is certainly not the time to throw in the towel by standing mute. The stakes are far too high. Our children and grandchildren have to grow up in this world that is being created for them. They deserve far better. For their sake, it is time for all the non-believers to stand up and be counted. And to refuse to sit back down until our voices are heard. The clock is ticking .... * All of these leaks were, notably, disinformational. The premise of the Nuclear Posture Review, for instance, was that America's eagerness to unleash nuclear weapons came about in response to the September 11 attacks. Earlier documents reveal, however, that the United States has been itching to cross the nuclear threshold since long before last September. The reports of the establishment of a 'shadow' government implied that America hasn't long been run from behind the curtain. And the uproar over the proposed establishment of a disinformation ministry served to cloak the fact that the overwhelming majority of the news we already get is government approved disinformation/propaganda. REFERENCES 1. Martin Lee "Reality Bites: The Campaign Issue That Wasn't," San Francisco Bay Guardian, November 13, 2000 2. David McGowan "The Unelectable Son: Parts I, II, and III," The Center for an Informed America, November 10, 15, and 28, 2000 3. David McGowan "A Supreme Injustice: Parts I, II, and III," The Center for an Informed America, December 4, 12, and 13, 2000 4. Jenifer Warren "Election Turnout Hit a New Low," Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2002 5. David Corn "When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad," ZNet, March 1, 2002 6. Gale Holland "Have You Heard About Osama's Cheez-It Stash?," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2002 7. "Testimony by John J. Maresca, Vice President, International Relations, Unocal Corporation to House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific," February 12, 1998, Washington, D.C. 8. Daniel Fisher "Afghanistan: Oil Execs Revive Pipeline From Hell," Forbes.Com, February 4, 2002 9. Patrick Martin "US bases pave the way for long-term intervention in Central Asia," World Socialist Web Site, January 11, 2002 10. Stephen Gowans "Conspiracy Theory as Received Wisdom," Swans, March 25, 2002 11. Ella Taylor "Family Feud: The Left Eats Its Own at KPFK," L.A. Weekly, March 22-28, 2002 12. Patrick Martin "Conference of US right-wingers hears call to execute John Walker," World Socialist Web Site, February 27, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Greed, Fraud, And Apologies: Corporate America's New Bottom Line By Arianna Huffington Every day the morning paper brings a fresh example of the flotsam bubbling to the surface following the collision of corporate greed and post-Enron reality: golden boy executives forced to walk the plank, formerly high-flying companies "restating" fraudulently inflated earnings, internal emails exposing the depths to which Wall Street firms have sunk to boost their bottom lines. Yet the word emanating from on high -- from the well-appointed congressional committee rooms of Washington to the elegant dining rooms of L.A. -- is that the worst is behind us. Yes, they say, Enron was a bit of a wake-up call, but let's not overreact. We've learned our lesson, so please pass the truffle sauce and let's move on. And, more than likely, that's exactly what we'd be doing were it not for Eliot Spitzer, the crusading attorney general of New York, whose investigation into conflicts of interest in the investment banking world is ruffling feathers from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. His probe has so far uncovered shocking evidence that analysts at Merrill Lynch gave investors misleading stock recommendations in order to help promote companies their firm's investment bankers were doing business with. It has also forced the sheep-in-wolf's-clothing Securities and Exchange Commission to actually begin to do its job and launch its own inquiry into the matter. The result? Well, surprise, surprise, Spitzer is now being told to back off and leave the matter to the big boys in Washington. While being careful not to cross jurisdictional swords, SEC chairman Harvey Pitt gently reminded Spitzer that "only the federal government can set nationwide standards." And Rep. Richard Baker, whose Capital Markets subcommittee held hearings on conflicts of interest on Wall Street, cautioned Spitzer: "It is essential that the SEC now lead the concluding phase of this inquiry." Concluding phase? Baker thinks the inquiry is wrapping up while Spitzer, who is after fundamental reform, knows it has barely begun. So now he's having to both take on the bad guys -- and the guys who are supposed to protect the public from the bad guys. If Congress and the SEC had done their jobs, there would be no need for Spitzer. The good news is that he is a man on a mission and won't be easily deterred. "Nobody can force me to pull back," he told me, "and I have no intention of doing so." As for the urgings of Messrs. Pitt and Baker, Spitzer doesn't pull any punches: "The hearings conducted by Mr. Baker were pointless. They didn't ask the right questions and they didn't produce the kind of evidence necessary to bring about real reform. As for the SEC, it clearly didn't step up and prevent these abuses from occurring." Spitzer is savvy enough to realize that he won't be able to overhaul the way Wall Street does business without the support of the public -- and its outrage. That's why he released those damning Merrill Lynch emails, in which the firm's analysts privately trashed companies as " a piece of crap" (and other, less publishable, synonyms) while publicly urging investors to buy shares in the same companies. The emails also show that the highly touted "Chinese Wall" between Merrill Lynch's stock researching analysts and its stock promoting investment bankers was more of a wide-open gate. "The whole idea that we are independent from banking," wrote one analyst "is a big lie." Spitzer's gambit has paid immediate dividends, shaming Merrill Lynch's CEO, David Komansky, into offering a mea culpa -- albeit a mealymouthed one. "Anything that happens on my watch," said Komansky, "I'm responsible for. Those emails were embarrassing to me.and I truly regret that they ever happened." Notice that he doesn't regret the out-and-out fraud the emails reveal; he regrets the emails. How much do you bet that the newest Merrill Lynch employee training session is something on the lines of "Making the Delete key your new best friend"? Komansky's carefully calibrated contrition was the very model of the latest in PR-approved damage control: apologize quickly, accept responsibility, and put the past behind you. Only you don't really apologize, and you don't really accept responsibility. It also doesn't hurt to hire high-profile power players to help guide you through the crisis. To that effect, Merrill Lynch has retained Rudy Giuliani as an advisor. Maybe he can give Merrill Mike Milken's number. But all the apologies and damage control in the world won't make this problem go away. Too many people were lied to and financially devastated along the way. Since the Merrill Lynch emails were made public, lawyers across the country have been inundated with calls from angry investors looking for restitution. "Merrill Lynch used to be the gold standard for how an investment banker should do business," Philip Aidikoff, president of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, told me. "Now, at my firm alone, we're getting 40 to 45 calls a day from Merrill customers who feel they've been duped." So Merrill Lynch has gone from gold standard to "crap" pusher. And it's not alone. To pull our corporate culture out of the muck, it's going to take more than public contrition and non-stop mea culpas on CNBC, which, given the current volume, may have to turn itself into the Self-Flagellation Channel. It will take some CEOs paying a real price for fraud, and securities regulations with real bite. Stay tuned, this one is far from over. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- WARS FOR OIL Petroleum has been behind all recent wars, beginning in the early 1940s when a mostly rural and isolationist America was suddenly thrown into World War II as a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans mourned the loss of some 3,000 soldiers and civilians in Hawaii and, in righteous indignation, allowed their country to be turned into a giant military camp. The Federal government, which had consolidated so much power unto itself under the Depression-busting policies of President Franklin Roosevelt, grew even stronger and more centralised under the aegis of "national security". It all seemed quite natural and necessary at the time. But serious students of history now know that even that "good war" was the result of machinations by a handful of wealthy and powerful men. By closing off Japan's oil supplies in the summer of 1941, Roosevelt, the quintessential Wall Street insider, ensured an eventual attack on the United States. It has now been well established that Roosevelt and a few close advisers knew full well that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7, 1941, but chose to allow it to happen to further their agenda for launching America into war. (The details of this may be found in my book, Rule by Secrecy.) The Vietnam War was prosecuted by men who were close to Roosevelt and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and who had long voiced a desire to gain control over Indochina's oil, magnesium and rubber assets. Again a provocation was created. In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson whipped Congress into a frenzy by claiming that North Vietnamese gunboats had attacked the US Sixth Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam. "Our boys are floating in the water," he cried. Congress responded by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which bypassed the Constitution and gave Johnson the power to wage war to stop attacks on Americans. It was the beginning of the real-shooting Vietnam War. And it was all a lie. No evidence has ever been brought forward that such an attack took place. In fact, editors for US News & World Report (July 23, 1984) called it "The 'Phantom Battle' that Led to War". While America was waging war against North Vietnam, which we were told was merely a puppet of communist Russia and China, Johnson was encouraged by his CFR advisers to grant the Soviet Union loans at higher levels than offered during World War II when they were our ally. US-backed loans provided Russia with the means to build facilities which turned out war materials that were then sent to North Vietnam for use against American troops. This was a good example of the duplicity of our modern wars. The Gulf War was all about oil, from the wells in Kuwait slant-drilling into Iraq's southern reserves to the destruction of the oilfields at its finish. Here we found a new Hitler in Saddam Hussein, an enemy armed and financed by the CIA--an agency whose top officials have long been connected to oilmen, CFR members and other globalists (see Rule by Secrecy). Saddam Hussein, strapped for cash due to his eight-year war against Iran on behalf of the US, decided to regain Kuwait as a means of increasing his income. Kuwait had been carved out of southern Iraq by British troops. When asked her thoughts on this move, US Ambassador April Glaspie replied that the US Government had "no opinion" and that the matter of Kuwait was not associated with America. But when he moved his troops into Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush mobilised a United Nations force against him, backed by a US$4 billion secret fund provided by his business associates in Saudi Arabia. Yet, as those patriotic soldiers closed in on Saddam, the whole war stopped and George H. W. Bush's old business partner is still in power. It appears to have been yet another provocation. And as in Vietnam, even as we prepared to fight against Saddam, the American taxpayers backed $500 million in loans that Bush used to purchase arms for use against our forces.   CASPIAN SEA OIL COVETED Today the real issue is the rich oil reserves of the Caspian Sea region--the prize sought by Hitler, whose drive to that area was stopped only by the tenacious Russian defence of the Volga River city of Stalingrad. In the late 1970s, with the Soviet discovery of vast untapped oil in Chechnya, the region was ripe for exploitation but control over Afghanistan was needed to ensure the safety of a pipeline to bring the oil to world markets. But after almost 10 years of brutal, no-quarter fighting against Afghans and Arab mercenaries including Osama bin Laden, and backed by the US, the Soviets were forced to withdraw. The economic stress of this Russo-Afghan War was enough to topple communism in the early 1990s. Now the international bankers and oilmen have a foothold in cash-strapped Russia, and the estimated $40 billion in Caspian Sea oil is again attracting serious attention. In 1997, six international companies and the Government of Turkmenistan formed Central Asian Gas Pipeline Ltd (CentGas) to build a 790-mile-long pipeline to Pakistan and perhaps on to the New Delhi area of India. Leading this consortium was Unocal Corporation, whose president, John F. Imle, Jr, said the project would be "the foundation for a new commerce corridor for the region--often referred to as the Silk Road for the 21st century". But problems developed with the fundamentalist Muslim government in Afghanistan, not the least of which was the Taliban government's treatment of women which prompted feminist demonstrations against firms seeking to do business there. Additionally, the Taliban regime was creating chaotic conditions by pitting the various Islamic sects against each other in order to maintain control. In mid-1999, Unocal withdrew from the pipeline consortium, citing the hazardous political situation, and the project languished. Notice that in President George W. Bush's declaration of War on Terrorism, he never mentioned terrorists in Northern Ireland or Palestinian suicide bombers. Attention was focused only on Afghanistan, the one nation necessary to complete the lucrative pipeline. It should also be noted that Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton, a giant oil industry service company with vested interests in the region, and he is generally thought to be more powerful than the President.   AFGHAN ACTION PLANNED LONG AGO Today it can be demonstrated that military action against Afghanistan was in the works long before the September 11 attacks. As reported by the BBC's George Arney, former Pakistan Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik was alerted by American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would be launched by mid-October. At a UN-sponsored meeting concerning Afghanistan in Berlin, Naik was informed that unless bin Laden were handed over, America would take military action either to kill or capture both him and Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the initial step in installing a new government there. In a 1998 interview published in the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur (the significant portions of which never made it to the United States), former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that American activities in Afghanistan actually began six months prior to the Soviet action of December 1979. Brzezinski said the Jimmy Carter administration began secretly funding opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul in July 1979, with the full knowledge that such action might provoke a Soviet invasion. Soviet leaders at the time argued that the invasion was necessary to thwart American aggression in Afghanistan. The former National Security Adviser, who helped found the globalist Trilateral Commission, expressed no regret at this provocation, stating: "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire." It also produced the Taliban regime which we are fighting today, as well as Osama bin Laden. By 1984, with Vice President George Bush overseeing the Afghan situation, bin Laden was in charge of the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), which funnelled money, arms and manpower from the outside world into the war against the Soviets. He soon helped form a polyglot formation of Muslim troops from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps, whom the CIA found easier to deal with than the Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan. There should be considerable soul-searching about America's role in arming and training an international group of Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, long after their comrades destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut and hijacked numerous airliners. Little noticed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks were reports that China had signed a pact with the Afghans and was quietly inducted into the controversial World Trade Organization--action which under normal circumstances would have drawn widespread protest. Although such a pact is unconfirmed at this time, Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf, chairman of their joint chiefs and chief of the Pakistani Army Staff, this year visited China at their request and discussed matters of mutual interest. Although it is claimed that Pakistan is aiding the US in the current War on Terrorism, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, Michael Sheehan, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that Pakistan supports and trains terrorist groups in Afghanistan. This raises the spectre of Chinese intervention, should US forces become bogged down in mountainous Afghanistan. This prospect is particularly unsettling, as back in 1555 the French prophet Nostradamus, who has been proven correct in so many of his prophecies, published his prediction that America and Russia would go to war against a coalition made up of Arab nations and China (see C. III v. 60; also C. VI v. 21). Until just recently, such a notion seemed absurd.   WOULD AMERICANS ATTACK AMERICANS? The WTC/Pentagon attacks provided a convenient excuse to launch the pre-laid plans for military action against Afghanistan. But were they simply allowed to happen, or were they contrived? The question becomes: "Would any American allow an attack on fellow Americans, just to further his own business or political agenda?" The answer unfortunately appears to be "Yes". Incredibly, 40-year-old government documents, thought to have been destroyed long ago but recently made public, show the US military in the early 1960s proposed making terrorist attacks in the United States and blaming them on Fidel Castro. They are discussed in a recent book on the National Security Agency (NSA), entitled Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, by James Bamford [see Reviews this issue of NEXUS. Ed.]. These documents were produced beginning in late 1961, following the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that spring. President John F. Kennedy, angered by the inept actions of the CIA, had shifted responsibility for Cuba from that agency to the Department of Defense. Here, military strategists considered plans to create terrorist actions which would alarm the American population and stampede them into supporting a military attack on Cuba. Under consideration in Operation Northwoods were plans: Ą to create "a series of well-coordinated incidents" in or around the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to include inciting riots and blowing up ammunition stores, aircraft and ships; Ą to "develop a Communist Cuba terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington"; Ą to "sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated)...foster attempts on the lives of Cuban refugees in the United States"; Ą to explode bombs in carefully chosen locations and coordinate with the release of "prepared documents" pointing to Cuban complicity; Ą to use fake Russian aircraft to harass civilian airliners; Ą to make "hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft", even to simulating the shooting down of a civilian airliner. Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods and senior military officers ordered the documents destroyed. But someone slipped up and the papers were discovered by the Assassination Records Review Board and recently released by the National Archives. On a more recent event, The New York Times (October 28, 1993) reported that an informant named Emad Salem was involved early in 1993 with Middle Eastern terrorists connected to Osama bin Laden, to develop a bomb for use against New York's World Trade Center. Salem, a former Egyptian Army officer, wanted to substitute a harmless powder for the explosive, but his plan to thwart the attack was blocked by an FBI official who apparently did not want to expose the inside informant. The attack was allowed to proceed. The February 26, 1993 explosion in the WTC resulted in six deaths, more than 1,000 casualties, and damage in excess of half a billion dollars. We now see that creating crises to further political goals was a methodology well understood and utilised in the 20th century. Is this the game today? Let's examine the September 11 attacks.   QUESTIONS OVER THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS Superficially, it all seemed straightforward enough. According to the official story, about 19 suicidal Middle Eastern terrorists, their hearts full of hatred for American freedom and democracy, hijacked four airliners, crashing two into the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth reportedly crashed in western Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to fight the terrorists. But many disturbing questions have arisen. Among them: Ą Why was the US military preparing war plans against Afghanistan months before the September 11 attacks? Were they just looking for some event to propel the normally disinterested American public into a war, as in the past? Ą How could paper documents incriminating bin Laden be found intact at the WTC, but the planes' "black box" flight recorders--designed to withstand crashes--were damaged beyond use? Ą Even days and weeks after the WTC attack, why were news cameramen prevented from photographing the ruins from certain angles, as complained about by CBS correspondent Lou Young, who asked, "What are they afraid we're going to see?" Ą Why has the NYPD liaison to the FBI been sent packing as a "security risk", as reported in the October 16 New York Times? Whose security is at risk? The FBI's? What is it that the Bureau does not want NYPD to know? Ą How could an obviously sophisticated terrorist plan, involving perhaps as many as 100 persons and in the works for five years, escape the notice of our intelligence services, especially the FBI and CIA? And why, instead of cashiering those responsible for this intelligence failure and totally restructuring these agencies, are we doubling their budgets? Ą Why did the WTC South Tower collapse first, when it was not as extensively damaged as the North Tower which burned for almost an hour and a half before collapsing? Ą Why did many witnesses claim to hear further explosions within the buildings? And why did the destruction of the towers appear more like a controlled implosion than a tragic accident? Ą Why did FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledge that the list of named hijackers might not contain their real names? Doesn't everyone have to show a photo ID to claim a boarding pass? Where was the normal security? Ą Why was there a discrepancy of 35 names between the published passenger lists and the official death toll on all four of the ill-fated flights? Internet columnist Gary North reported that "the published names in no instance match the total listed for the number of people on board". Why the discrepancy? Ą As none of these listed passengers had an Arabic-sounding name, how did the government know which ones were the hijackers? Ą Why did the seat numbers of the hijackers, given in a cellphone call from Flight Attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston Air Traffic Control, not match the seats occupied by the men the FBI claims were responsible? Ą Since Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister claimed five of the proclaimed hijackers were not aboard the death planes and in fact are still alive, and a sixth man on that list was reported to be alive and well in Tunisia, why are these names still on the FBI list? Ą Why were no names of the named hijackers on any of the passenger lists? If they all used aliases, how did the FBI identify them so quickly? Ą Why did one of the named hijackers take luggage on a suicide flight, then leave it along with an incriminating note in his car at the airport? Ą As for the overall investigation into the September attacks, by late October US authorities conceded that most of their promising leads for finding accomplices and some of their long-held suspicions about several suspects have unravelled, according to the New York Times. Since more than 800 people have been arrested and more than 365,000 tips have been received from the public, why has nothing substantial been forthcoming in the largest US criminal investigation in history? Ą Why, of the nearly 100 people still being sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is none seen as a major suspect? Ą Why are we bombing Afghanistan, when apparently no listed hijackers were Afghans but instead Arabs from various Middle Eastern nations? Since Iraq was implicated in the 1993 WTC attack, why are we not bombing that "rogue" nation? Ą Why does the heavy drinking and searching for hookers by some of the hijackers in Boston, as reported by Reuters news service, sound more like mercenaries carousing before a mission than pious religious fundamentalists about to meet their maker? Ą How did the terrorists obtain top-secret White House and Air Force One codes and signals--the excuse for hustling President Bush all across the country on September 11? Was this evidence of an inside job, or was it, as reported by Fox News, evidence that former FBI employee and double agent Robert Hanssen had delivered an updated version of the purloined Promis computer software to his Russian handlers who passed it along to bin Laden? Does this software, which was stolen from a US company during the Reagan administration by Justice Department officials under Attorney-General Ed Meese, allow outsiders carte blanche entrée to our top-security computers? (Hanssen's last job before being arrested as a spy was to upgrade the FBI's intelligence computer systems.) Ą If United Airlines Flight 93 crashed as the result of a struggle between heroic passengers and the hijackers, why did witnesses tell of a second plane which followed it down, falling burning debris, no deep crater and crash wreckage spread over a six-mile area, indicative of an aerial explosion? Ą Why did news outlets describe the throat-cutting and mutilation of passengers on Flight 93 with box cutters, when Time magazine on September 24 reported that one of the passengers called home on a cellphone to report, "We have been hijacked; they are being kind"? As Internet pundit Gary North wrote: "We need a theory of the coordinated hijackings that rests on a plausible cause-and-effect sequence that does not assume the complete failure of both check-in procedures and the on-board seating procedures on four separate flights on two separate airlines. I don't see how anyone can make an accurate judgment about who was behind the attacks until he has a plausible explanation of how hijackers got onto the planes and were not removed." But the Federal government, aided by a sycophantic mass media, did not allow such rational thinking to interfere with a rush to judgement that Osama bin Laden was the culprit behind the attacks.   OSAMA BIN LADEN AND HIS FRIENDS As in the JFK assassination, authorities had a suspect even before anyone knew for certain what had happened. Osama bin Laden, born into a wealthy Saudi oil/construction family, received arms and financing from the US Government during the Russo-Afghan War of the 1980s. Despite the fact that bin Laden has denied any knowledge of the September 11 attacks, he is presumed guilty by both the government and the press. No other interpretation of the attacks has been allowed in the corporate mass media. Bin Laden is a made-to-order enemy, the man reportedly behind the 1993 WTC attack and a fugitive from United States justice for more than a decade. It has been noted that the government apparently has spent more time and money chasing Microsoft's Bill Gates than in capturing bin Laden. This may be due to the business connections between our new terrorist enemy and wealthy American companies. According to several reports, including Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne's book The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of the BCCI (Random House, NY, 1993) and American Free Press (October 15, 2001) (the reincarnation of the Washington newspaper The Spotlight), Bush family friend James R. Bath used money from Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem, to open a partnership with George W. Bush in Arbusto Energy, a West Texas drilling company. Bush believed the Spanish word arbusto to mean "bush", although it generally refers to "shrub". According to the Houston Chronicle, Salem bin Laden named Bath his business representative in Texas shortly after the senior Bush was named CIA Director by appointed President Gerald Ford in 1975. It was the Bush family, particularly Jeb and Neil, who were involved in the 1989-93 Savings and Loan debacle that cost taxpayers more than US$500 billion. Through a tangled web of Texas oilmen, wealthy Saudi sheiks and unscrupulous bankers connected to BCCI, the younger George Bush eventually gained a sizeable interest in a new oil company called Harken Energy. Two months before Saddam Hussein sent Iraqi troops into Kuwait, Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock, netting himself nearly a one-million-dollar profit. The stock dropped when the Iraqi invasion began. The BCCI was closed by federal investigators in 1991 after suffering some US$10 billion in losses. It was a Pakistani-run institution with front companies in the Cayman Islands that used secret accounts for global money-laundering and it was used by US intelligence to funnel money to bin Laden and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan who were fighting against the Soviet-backed government. Salem bin Laden, incidentally, was killed in the strange crash of an ultralight aircraft in 1988. The single-passenger craft suddenly and inexplicably veered into high-voltage electric powerlines near San Antonio, Texas. It should be noted that during the Persian Gulf War it was Binladen Brothers Construction (now the Saudi Binladen Group) that helped build airfields for US aircraft. The bin Laden brothers were then described as "a good friend of the US Government". Later, the bin Laden firm continued to be hired to construct an American air base in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that Osama had already been blamed for terrorist acts such as the truck bombing of the Khobar Towers at the Dhahran base, which killed 19 Americans. A WorldNetDaily writer commented: "So let's get this straight. Osama blows up our facilities and his family gets the contract for rebuilding them. Do you get the feeling there is more going on than meets the eye?" Another close connection between bin Laden and the Bush family is the $12-billion private international investment firm known as The Carlyle Group. Although it has removed its website since the September 11 attacks, it is known that Carlyle directors include former Reagan Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Bush Secretary of State James Baker, and former Reagan aide and GOP operative Richard Darman. The New York Times reported that former President Bush was allowed to buy into Carlyle's investments, which involve at least 164 companies around the world. According to the Wall Street Journal (September 28, 2001): "George H. W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through The Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." It has been confirmed by the senior Bush's chief of staff that Bush sent a thank-you note to the bin Laden family after a social visit in early 2001. With such connections and a son as a sitting President of the United States, the senior Bush and his Carlyle involvement were questioned by Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel of Judicial Watch, who said: "Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush administration is sure to throw business to The Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse The Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States Government." After detailing some of the Carlyle/bin Laden investments in several businesses including aerospace industries, web writer and former LA policeman Michael C. Ruppert commented: "In other words, Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the US defense budget, have just made his family a great big pile of money." What made these business dealings that entangle former and current American political leaders with Middle Easterners even more suspect was the announcement that several US firms were being investigated for short-selling stocks just prior to the September 11 attacks.   SHORT-SELLING INDICATES FOREKNOWLEDGE Short-selling of stocks involves the opportunity to gain large profits by passing shares to a friendly third party, then buying them back when the price falls. Historically, if this precedes a traumatic event, it is an indication of foreknowledge. It is widely known that the CIA uses the Promis software to routinely monitor stock trades as a possible warning sign of a terrorist attack or suspicious economic behaviour. A week after the September 11 attacks, the London Times reported that the CIA had asked regulators for the Financial Services Authority in London to investigate the suspicious sales of millions of shares of stock just prior to the terrorist acts. It was hoped the business paper trail might lead to the terrorists. The Times said market regulators in Germany, Japan and the US all had received information concerning the short-selling of insurance, airlines and arms companies stock, all of which fell sharply in the wake of the attacks. City of London broker and analyst Richard Crossley noted that someone sold shares in unusually large quantities beginning three weeks before the assault on the WTC and Pentagon. He said he took this as evidence that someone had insider foreknowledge of the attacks. "What is more awful than he should aim a stiletto blow at the heart of Western financial markets?" he added. "But to profit from it. Words fail me." The US Government also admitted it was investigating short- selling which evinced a foreknowledge of the tragedy. There was unusually heavy trading in airline and insurance stocks several days before September 11, which essentially bet on a drop in the worth of the stocks. It was reported by the Interdisciplinary Center, a counterterrorism think-tank involving former Israeli intelligence officers, that insiders made nearly US$16 million profit by short-selling shares in American and United Airlines, the two airlines that suffered hijacking, and the investment firm of Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. Apparently none of the suspicious transactions could be traced to bin Laden because this news item quietly dropped from sight, leaving many people wondering if they tracked back to American firms or intelligence agencies. According to Michael C. Ruppert, these transactions were handled primarily by Deutsche Bank-A. B. Brown, a firm which until 1998 was chaired by A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard, who today is Executive Director of the CIA. Besides Krongard, other prominent Americans who have been connected to both the CIA and Wall Street power include Clark Clifford (who was a key player in gaining legitimacy for the BCCI), John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles (Allen oversaw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and sat on the Warren Commission), Bill Casey, David Doherty, George Herbert Walker Bush, John Deutch, Nora Slatkin and Hank Greenburg. As detailed in Rule by Secrecy, the CIA historically has been top heavy with members of the Wall Street elite who desire to advance their globalist agenda. It also operates a number of front companies which themselves deal in stocks and bonds. "I am absolutely convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency had complete and perfect foreknowledge of the attacks, down to the date, time, place and location," Ruppert told OnLine Journal on October 12. There were other indications of foreknowledge. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown stated that on September 10 he was warned by his personal "airport security" not to fly the next day, according to radio station KSFO. More ominous was a piece in the September 28 edition of the Washington Post, stating that officials with the instant messaging firm of Odigo in New York have confirmed that two employees in Israel received text messages warning of an attack on the WTC two hours before the planes crashed into the buildings. The firm's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Alex Diamandis, said it was possible that the warning was sent to other Odigo members, but they had not received any reports of such. Military forces had been on a heightened state of alert for several days before the attack, and several psychics claimed to have had a premonition that something was afoot. Even the Russians got in on the act. Dr Tatyana Koragina, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Macroeconomic Researches, part of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, gained credibility due to her July prediction that an unusual catastrophe would strike America in late August, ruining the economy. In a Pravda interview, she stated: "The US has been chosen as the object of financial attack because the financial centre of the planet is located there. The effect will be maximal. The strike waves of economic crisis will spread over the planet." Following the September 11 attacks, Dr Koragina was interviewed again and asserted that the "powerful group" behind the attacks will make new strikes. "When [Americans] understand after the upcoming, new strikes that their government can guarantee them nothing, they will panic, causing a collapse of their financial system." Asked who was really behind this odious plan, she replied that it is not the 19 terrorists identified by the FBI but, rather, a larger group seeking to reshape the world. She said this group of extremely powerful private persons hold total assets of about $300 trillion and intend to legitimise their power under a new global government.   REMOTE-CONTROLLED AIRCRAFT A REALITY Thanks to newly revealed technology, it is now possible to theorise that none of the hijackers intended to die. "Global Hawk" is the name of the latest version of a high-altitude, long-endurance. unmanned air vehicle (UAV); in other words, an unmanned drone plane that can take off, conduct missions such as photographing battlefields and land by remote electronic control. This Buck Rogers equipment made its first operational flight on October 7 when it was used for reconnaissance over Afghanistan in preparation for US air and missile strikes against the Taliban regime. But this remote-controlled plane, similar to a Boeing 737 commercial airliner, was successfully tested earlier in 2001, first at Edwards Air Force Base and later at Edinburgh Air Force Base in South Australia. When news of Global Hawk was first released, there was speculation that the UAV technology might be used to thwart airline hijackings. Once a hijacking took place, the Global Hawk technology would be triggered and the captured plane flown to a landing at a safe location regardless of the actions of the flight crew or the hijackers. In fact, following the attacks the New York Times, in a September 28 article on increasing air safety, mentioned "new technology, probably far in the future, allowing air traffic controllers to land distressed planes by remote control". This made it seem that such technology is not yet available, but earlier in 2001 a former chief of British Airways suggested that such technology could be used to commandeer an aircraft from the ground and control it remotely in the event of a hijacking. Needless to say, there are those today who question if Global Hawk's first truly operational use might have been conducted on September 11. After all, as all experienced aviation and military persons well know, if a technology such as Global Hawk is publicly revealed, it most probably has been in secret use for several years. But regardless of how the planes with the terrorists were controlled, it is clear that their managers had information, if not help, from inside the government.   BIN LADEN AND THE MEDIA And what of Osama bin Laden? What did he have to say about all this? Don't look to the corporate mass media to inform you, as they have all agreed not to broadcast anything that might detract from the official government story, even though it is acknowledged that Bush's media denunciations of bin Laden have been more filled with descriptions like "evil" and "evil-doer" than specific evidence. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAR) noted that, on October 10, network executives representing ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN were involved in a conference call with National Security Adviser and Council on Foreign Relations heavyweight Condoleezza Rice. The execs apparently agreed to limit how and what they broadcast regarding bin Laden or his al-Qaeda group. Bush people even tried unsuccessfully to have al-Jazeera, called "the CNN of the Middle East", broadcasting from Qatar, tone down its coverage of bin Laden. They were more successful with members of Congress when they threatened to cut off intelligence reports if members spoke offhand to the media. The next day, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, already on the record as saying Americans "need to watch what they say", extended this constraint by contacting major newspapers and asking that they not print full transcripts of bin Laden's interviews. According to a FAR news release: "The point is not that bin Laden or al-Qaeda deserve 'equal time' on US news broadcasts, but that it is troubling for government to shape or influence news content. Withholding information from the public is hardly patriotic. When the White House insists that it's dangerous to report a news event 'in its entirety', alarm bells should go off for journalists and the American public alike." Here's what bin Laden did say in an interview on September 28, according to the Pakistani newspaper Ummat: "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of battle. It is the United States which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children and common people." In this interview, apparently suppressed in the United States, bin Laden unsurprisingly blamed the attacks on Israel, claiming: "All that [has been] going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel [and for] what had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya and Bosnia." Bin Laden went on to state: "We are not hostile to the United States. We are against the [US Government] system which makes other nations slaves to the United States or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom." One cannot, of course, take bin Laden at face value--but then, the same could be said for the US Government, which has been caught in so many lies and deceits in the past that it is surprising that anyone pays any attention to official pronouncements.   US FOREIGN POLICY What should be thoughtfully considered is the dismal record of United States foreign policy since World War II. This policy, as confirmed by the New York Times years ago, has been in the hands of the Council on Foreign Relations elite since at least 1939. This elite and its associates includes former Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and (the late) Richard Nixon, virtually every CIA Director as well as a considerable number of familiar past and present government officials such as Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Wesley Clark, Strobe Talbott, Alexander Haig, Alan Greenspan, James A. Baker III, Sandy Berger, Colin Powell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank C. Carlucci, John Deutch, Lawrence Eagleburger, Robert McFarlane and Casper Weinberger. This policy has been one of neo-colonialism; that is, the subjugation and control of other nations through military dictators or wealthy families supported by, and often placed in power by, the US military or intelligence services. The names of nations that have felt the brunt of US CIA and/or military activity as a result of foreign policy include Somalia, Afghanistan, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Palestinian Territories, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Haiti, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Brazil, Chad, Sudan and many others. As Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, stated during the Vietnam War: "My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence." He did not say "my country" or "my people". It is the government--or, rather, those who control it--that is responsible, although we, the distracted and unaware citizens who claim to live in a democracy, must take our fair share of the blame.   HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS Is there precedence in history for what is happening to America today? So much so, there is not enough space to present it all. Nero burned Rome, blamed it on his enemies and took dictatorial power. But consider what happened just last century. On February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag or Parliament was destroyed by fire. Hitler and his Nazis blamed the destruction on communist terrorists. They even caught one: a retarded Dutch youth named Marinus van der Lubbe, who carried a Communist Party card. After some time in custody, the youth confessed to being the arsonist. However, later investigation found that one person could not have started the mammoth blaze and that incendiaries had been carried into the building through a tunnel which led to the offices of Hitler's closest partner, Hermann Goering. Less than a month later, on March 24, 1933, a panicky German Parliament voted 441 to 94 to pass an "Enabling Act" at Hitler's urging, which was the starting point for his dictatorship. As a result of this act, Germans soon saw gun confiscation, national identity cards, racial profiling, a national security chief (Heinrich Himmler) and, later, mass murders and incarcerations in concentration camps. One of the Western leaders who supported Hitler and his policies was Prescott Bush, grandfather of President George W. Bush. He must have taken notice of Hitler's method for gaining unwarranted power. Since the Reichstag fire, the Bush family and their associates in the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers have often mimicked Hitler's tactics of creating a problem, offering a draconian solution and advancing their agenda through any resulting compromise. The real enemy is whoever is behind the September 11 terror attacks. Osama bin Laden, so closely connected to the financial interests of the Bush family and the CIA, may be the mastermind, or he may be a convenient scapegoat--yet another provocation to stampede Americans into another war for oil. We must thoughtfully consider where the real source of terror lies: with one bearded fanatic in an impoverished Middle Eastern country, or with those who would profit while shredding the US Constitution in the name of defending freedom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sidebar: Major-General Smedley Butler on Interventionism "War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defence at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns six per cent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 per cent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again, as I have done, to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for: one is the defence of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss": supernationalistic capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had--as the boys in the back room would say--a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." (Source: Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by Major-General Smedley Butler, USMC.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brief Descriptions of The Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission The brief descriptions of the major Elite organizations, the Bilderbergs (BB), Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Trilateral Commission (TC), in this book were intended to be brief. For more details, refer to my companion book, They Don’t Dare Let Us Tell the People (soon to be released). The fundamental differences between these three Elite secret organizations are: 1. The BB members are largely from Western Europe, Turkey, Greece, the Scandinavian countries, the US, and Canada. 2. The CFR members were originally from the New York City area, but later expanded to include Washington, DC, and then the rest of the US. 3. The TC members come from all the same above areas, but in this case the Japanese were included because of their dominance of the banking industry. (The largest banks in the world are in Japan.) 4. The BB’s are the most secretive of the three. When they meet, they clear out all the guests, and employees in the buildings in which they are to meet, they completely debug all the rooms, bring in their own cooks, waiters, housekeepers, heavily armed security guards, etc., and do not allow "outsiders" anywhere near the meeting place just before, during, and immediately after they meet. In Recent meetings, the security forces were told to "shoot to kill" if anyone tried to break into their meetings. They claim that there are no written records taken of their discussions, but The Spotlight has occasionally acquired very detailed documents that prove otherwise. The attendees are required to maintain complete and absolute secrecy regarding these deliberations. Liberty Lobby’s crack investigative reporters on The Spotlight have positioned a mole within the BB that somehow acquires a copy of the invitation list, and often a copy of the agenda, but have never penetrated the actual meetings (to date). Each time that they have met on US soil, the meetings were held on Rockefeller owned property. The object of the formation of these organizations is to enlist key political and economic leaders around the world, in order to gain their assistance in dominating the entire world. The other differences, and similarities are covered in the following brief descriptions: Bilderbergs (BB) John J. McCloy (former Chairman of the CFR, and Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank) used his position as coordinator of information for the US government to build the framework of what was to become the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), created in 1941-1942 era, headed by Bill Donovan. During 1947, the OSS was rolled into a new group called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the 1947 National Security Act, which made the activities of the CIA immune from all civil, and criminal laws. In 1950 General Walter Bedel Smith became Director of the CIA. The CIA helped organize, and sponsored the formation, and operation of the Bilderberg Conferences. There is little doubt that the CIA sponsored the formation of the Bilderbergs, and continue to do so, to this day. Kai Bird’s excellent account in "The Chairman, John J. McCoy, The Making of the American Establishment", states: "In late 1952, Retinger went to America to try the idea out on his American contacts. Among others, he saw such old friends as Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller, and Bedel Smith, then director of the CIA. After Retinger explained his proposal, Smith said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you come to me in the first place?’ He quickly referred Retinger to C. D. Jackson, who was about to become Eisenhower’s special assistant for psychological warfare. It took a while for Jackson to organize the American wing of the group, but finally, in May 1954, the first conference was held in the Hotel de Bilderberg, a secluded hotel in Holland, near the German border. Prince Bernhard, and Retinger drew up the list of invitees from the European countries, while Jackson controlled the American list." Prince Bernhard, of The Netherlands, became the first Chairman, and served in this post until scandal forced him to resign in 1974. Dr. Retinger became the first Secretary, and remained so until his death. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 300 Independence Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20003, publishes a weekly newspaper titled The Spotlight. At my request, they sent me a reprint of a summary of Bilderberg information, titled Spotlight on the Bilderbergers, Irresponsible Power, published mid-June, 1975. Page 6 of this document states: "The Congressional Record - US Senate, April 11, 1964, states: (Speaking) - Mr. (Jacob) Javits - Mr. President, the 13th in a series of Bilderberg meetings on international affairs, in which I participated, was held in Williamsburg, VA, on March 20, 21, and 22. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a background paper entitled ‘The Bilderberg Meetings.’ The Bilderberg Meetings The idea of the Bilderberg meetings originated in the early fifties. Changes had taken place on the international politician and economic scene after World War II. The countries of the Western World felt the need for closer collaboration to protect their moral and ethical values, their democratic institutions, and their independence against the growing Communist threat. The Marshall plan and NATO were examples of collective efforts of Western countries to join hands in economic and military matters after World War II. In the early 1950’s, a number of people on both sides of the Atlantic sought a means of bringing together leading citizens, not necessarily connected with government, for informal discussions of problems facing the Atlantic community. Such meetings, they felt, would create a better understanding of the forces, and trends affecting Western nations, in particular. They believed that direct exchanges could help to clear up differences, and misunderstandings that might weaken the West. One of the men who saw the need for such discussions was the late (Dr.) Joseph H. (Heironymus) Retinger (as a matter of interest, the name Heironymus is literally translated to be "MEMBER OF THE OCCULT"). In 1952, he approached His Royal Highness, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, with the suggestion of informal and unofficial meetings to discuss the problems facing the Atlantic community. Others in Europe wholeheartedly supported the idea, and proposals were submitted to American friends to join in the undertaking. A number of Americans, including C. D. Jackson, the late General Walter Bedel Smith, and the late John Coleman, agreed to cooperate. (Very reliable information from a former CIA member now reveals that the CIA financed Dr. Retinger's efforts to convince Prince Bernhard to form this group that was later to be called the Bilderbergs. This is confirmed by the fact that General Walter Bedel Smith was the CIA director from 1950 to 1953, so, is it surprising that he would agree to join this group?) The first meeting that brought Americans and Europeans together took place under the chairmanship of Prince Bernhard at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, from May 29 to May 31, 1954. Ever since, the meetings have been called Bilderberg meetings. No Strict Rules of Procedure From the outset, it was the intentions of the Bilderberg founders, and participants that no strict rules of procedure govern the meetings. Every effort was made to create a relaxed, informal atmosphere conducive to free, and frank discussions. Bilderberg is in no sense a policy-making body. No conclusions are reached. There is no voting, and no resolutions are passed. The meetings are off-the-record. Only the participants themselves may attend the meetings. Participants It was obvious from the first that the success of the meetings would depend primarily on the level of the participants. Leading figures from many fields - industry, labor, education, government, etc. - are invited, who, through their special knowledge or experience, can help to further Bilderberg objectives. Representatives of governments attend in a personal, and not an official capacity. An attempt is made to include participants representing many political parties, and points of view. American participation has included Members of Congress of both parties. Over the years, Bilderberg participants have come from the NATO countries, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Finland, and have included prominent individuals such as Dean Rusk, Christian A. Herter, Maurice Faure, Franz-Josef Strauss, Amitore Fanfani, Panayotis Pipinelis, Reginald Maudling, the late Hugh Gaitskell, Omer Becu, Guy Mollet, the late Michael Ross, Herman Abs, C. L. Sulzberger, Joseph Harsch, and T. M. Terkelsen. Individuals with international responsibilities have also participated, among them being Gen. Alfred Gruenther, Lord Ismay, Eugene Black, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, Paul-Henry Spaak, and the late Per Jacobsson. ` The Meetings Bilderberg meetings are held at irregular intervals, but have taken place once or twice a year since 1954. All the early conferences were held in Europe, but a meeting is now held on this side of the Atlantic every few years to provide a convenient opportunity for American, and Canadian participants to attend." The Spotlight reports that the Bilderberg meetings are highly secret, and are held at random times each year, and rarely at the same location, for security reasons. The responsibility for security for these meetings is in the hands of the government of the country in which the meetings are held. They must supply military security, secret service, national and local police, and private security personnel to protect the privacy and safety of these very powerful international Elite members who are not required to conform to regulations that private citizens are subject-to, such as customs searches, visa requirements, or public notice of their meetings. When they meet, no "outsiders" are allowed in or near the building. They bring their own cooks, waiters, telephone operators, housekeepers, and bodyguards. The Bilderberg membership is made up of Kings, Queens, Princes, Chancellors, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, Wall Street investors, international bankers, news media executives, and wealthy industrialist. Their meetings are by "invitation only", and no "outsiders" in the news media are allowed, except by special invitation. However, the news media are always present at these meetings such as: Peter Jennings (BB, Anchor & Senior Editor of ABC News, World News Tonight), Joseph C. Harsch (BB, CFR, former Commentator for NBC, Inc.), Bill D. Moyers (BB, Executive Director of Public Affairs TV, Inc., former Director of the CFR), William F. Buckley, Jr. (BB, CFR, Editor-in-Chief of National Review, and host of PBS’s Firing Line), Gerald Piel (BB, CFR, former Chairman of Scientific America, Inc.), Henry Anatole Grunwald (BB, CFR, former Editor-in-Chief of Time, Inc.), Mortimer B. Zuckerman (BB, CFR, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief of the US News, and World Report, New York Daily News, and Atlantic Monthly), Robert L. Bartley (BB, CFR, TC, Vice President of the Wall Street Journal), Peter Robert Kann (BB, CFR, Chairman & CEO of Dow Jones & Company, and husband of Karen E. House, CFR), William Kristol (BB, Editor & Publisher of the new The Weekly Standard magazine), Donald (Don) C. Cook (BB, CFR, former European Diplomatic Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times), Robert Leroy Bartley (BB, CFR, TC, Vice President of the Wall Street Journal), Albert J. Wohlstetter (BB, CFR, writer for the Wall Street Journal), Thomas L. Friedman (BB, CFR, TC, Columnist for the New York Times), and the "Queen" of the Elite - Katharine Graham (BB, CFR, TC, Owner, and Chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the Washington Post). The 1998 meeting included Leslie Stahl, of CBS’ 60 Minutes. Even though the media moguls attend these secret meetings, they do not file reports about the Elite Bilderberg activities during their meetings. The security measures taken by the Bilderberg Conferences are clearly illustrated in an article appearing in The Spotlight, which stated: EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT By James P. Tucker, JR. Bilderberg is scheduled to meet June 3-6 (1999) at the Caesar Park Penha Longa in Sintra, Portugal. Sintra is a remote resort, about 40 miles from Lisbon. Information about the secret meeting was provided by an agent inside Bilderberg. Of all the media in the world, only THE SPOTLIGHT, has tracked the Bilderbergers every year and reported on their secret meeting where vital questions and issues are decided which effect every person in the world. American and European financiers, manufacturers, media moguls and politicians meet at remote luxury resorts, allow only "loyal staff" to remain on the job, empty the establishment of all others, employ platoons of police, military and their own private security to seal themselves off. They have tried to keep the meetings secret for 45 years. But this year following extensive SPOTLIGHT-generated publicity last year in Scotland, and earlier in Germany, Scandinavia, Georgia, and Canada, Bilderberg is taking more extreme steps, its agent confided. Instead of closing down the Penha Longa to all outsiders one day before the meeting starts on June 2, Bilderberg has ordered the resort shut down a full 48 hours before the internationalist confab. In addition, Bilderberg will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse the Portuguese government for deploying military forces to guard their privacy and for helicopters to seek out intruders. All Bilderberg participants, their staff members and resort employees will wear photo identification tags that look much like state drivers' licenses. They will have separate colors to identify the wearer as a participant, staff, or employee. A computer chip "fingerprint" will assure the identity of the card's wearer. ‘Any intruders are to manhandled-cuffed, jailed, or if resisting or fleeing, shot,’ the agent said. Bilderbergers are greatly disturbed over the growing public knowledge of their control of the world and of resistance to their schemes for a global government as nationalism grows around the world. Bilderberg was instrumental in tearing down Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded France's National Front. The French-first party has stunned the Establishment by regularly capturing 15 percent of the vote in that nation. Expecting recession, Bilderberg feared Le Pen and "nationalists" from other countries would interfere with their "free trade" goals as they fight to protect their domestic industries from exploitation by the global cabal. Because Bilderberg shares common goals with the Trilateral Commission, the agenda that emerged in Washington (SPOTLIGHT, March 29, 1999) will be major topics in Portugal, too. This includes a "Globalization summit" called for by Peter D. Sutherland, head of Goldman Sachs International. Sutherland attended the Bilderberg meeting in Scotland last May and is expected in Portugal. Sutherland is expected to again call for "Supranational institutions to manage the global economy while denouncing nations that "cling tenaciously to their separate identities" while calling for "sharing sovereignty" In a related topic, there could be renewed calls for the UN to be able to directly tax all people. In the past, Bilderberg has proposed a UN levy on International travel and on the oil at the wellhead, so all who travel or drive will be taxed. SPOTLIGHT, VOLUME 24, No. 14, Page 3, April, 1999 More very revealing facts about the Bilderbergs will see sunshine soon. - Stay tuned. The Bilderberg's addresses are: US Charles W. Muller Phone: 1-212-879-0545 American Friends of Bilderbergs, Inc. 477 Madison Ave., 6 th Floor New York, NY 10022 Europe Maja Banck-Polderman Phone: 31 20 625 0252 Fax: 31 20 624 4299 Bilderberg Meetings Amstel 216 1017 AJ Amsterdam The Netherlands Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Let’s start with the smoke, and mirrors furnished by the CFR in several of their Annual Reports. Then we will provide the other-side-of-the-coin, as observed by quite a number of independent researchers, and writers. The CFR’s Annual Report for July 1, 1993-June 30, 1994, page 4, states: "The Council on Foreign Relations is a nonprofit, and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of US foreign policy, and international affairs through the exchange of ideas. The Council was founded in 1921 shortly after the end of World War I. Several of the American participants in the Paris Peace Conference decided that it was time for more private American citizens to become familiar with the increasing international responsibilities, and obligations of the United States. This decision led to the creation of an organization dedicated to the continuous study of US foreign policy for the benefit of both its members, and a wider audience of interested Americans." Now, the other side of the coin. The New World Order, by Pat Robertson, Copyright 1991, by Word, Inc., Dallas, Texas. All rights reserved, page 66-67, states: "This august body of ‘wise men’ has effectively dominated the making of foreign policy by the United States government since before World War II. The CFR has included virtually every key national security, and foreign policy adviser of this nation for the past seventy years." Page 96: "In government policy, the most visible expression of the Establishment is the Council on Foreign Relations, and its publication, Foreign Affairs. Out of some twenty-nine hundred members, at least five hundred are very powerful, another five hundred are from centers of influence, and the rest are influential in academia, the media, business, and finance, the military, or government. A few are token conservatives." Page 97: "According to a man who had been a member for fifteen years, Rear Admiral Chester Ward, former judge advocate general of the navy from 1956 to 1960. ‘This purpose of promoting disarmament, and submergence of US sovereignty, and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government is the only objective revealed to about 95 percent of 1,551 members [in 1975]. There are two other ulterior purposes the CFR influence is being used to promote; but it is improbable that they are known to more than 75 members, or that these purposes ever have even been identified in writing.’ The goals of the Establishment are somewhat strange, and we will discuss them in detail. At the central core is a belief in the superiority of their own skill to form a world system in which enlightened monopolistic capitalism can bring all of the diverse currencies, banking systems, credit, manufacturing, and raw materials into one government-supervised whole, policed of course by their own world army." (Could this be the army of the United Nations?) CFR membership is made up of present, and past Presidents, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, Wall Street investors, international bankers, foundation executives, Think Tank executives, lobbyist lawyers, NATO, and Pentagon military leaders, wealthy industrialist, media owners, and executives, university presidents, and key professors, select Senators, and Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, Federal Judges, and wealthy entrepreneurs. They hold regular secret meetings including members, and very select guests. Occasionally they will hold a public meeting, and invite the open press (including C-SPAN), in order to give the impression that they are a harmless group engaged only in social activities. A number of people, when hearing about the CFR ask, "If you say that the CFR is such a secret organization, why is it that we can get a copy of their annual report, which contains a list of their members? Why should I believe you when you say that they are a secret organization?" Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, states that the definition of attribute is "To ascribe by way of cause, inherent quality, interpretation, authorship, or classification..." The literal translation is "You had better not tell the outsiders what we do, or say". The answer then comes from their own document, the Council on Foreign Relation’s 1992 Annual Report, where they emphatically state, in 20 different places, and in varying terms, that members better not tell: Page 21: "At all meetings, the Council’s rule of non-attribution applies. This assures participants that they may speak openly without others later attributing their statements to them in public media or forums, or knowingly transmitting them to persons who will." Page 122: "Like the Council, the Committees encourage candid discourse by holding their meetings on a not-for-attribution basis". Page 169: Article II of the by-laws states: "It is an express condition of membership in the Council, to which condition every member accedes by virtue of his or her membership, that members will observe such rules, and regulations as may be prescribed from time to time by the Board of Directors concerning the conduct of Council meetings or the attribution of statements made therein, and that any disclosure, public, or other action by a member in contravention thereof may be regarded by the Board of Directors in its sole discretion as grounds for termination or suspension of membership pursuant to Article I of the by-laws." Page 174: "Full freedom of expression is encouraged at Council meetings. Participants are assured that they may speak openly, as it is the tradition of the Council that others will not attribute or characterize their statements in public media or forums or knowingly transmit them to persons who will. All participants are expected to honor that commitment." Page 175: "It would not be in compliance with the reformulated Rule, however, for any meeting participant (i) to publish a speaker’s statement in attributed form in a newspaper; (ii) to repeat it on television or radio, or on a speaker’s platform, or in a classroom; or (iii) to go beyond a memo of limited circulation, by distributing the attributed statement in a company or government agency newspaper. The language of the Rule also goes out of its way to make it clear that a meeting participant is forbidden knowingly to transmit the attributed statement to a newspaper reporter or other such person who is likely to publish it in a public medium. The essence of the Rule as reformulated is simple enough: participants in Council meetings should not pass along an attributed statement in circumstances where there is substantial risk that it will promptly be widely circulated or published." ... "In order to encourage to the fullest a free, frank, and open exchange of ideas in Council meetings, the Board of Directors has prescribed, in addition to the Non-Attribution Rule, the following guidelines. All participants in Council meetings are expected to be familiar with, and adhere to these Guidelines. ..." Page 176: "Members bringing guests should complete a "guest notice card", and acquaint their guests with the Council’s Non-Attribution Rule governing what is said at meetings." Later on page 176: "As a condition of use, the officers of the Council shall require each user of Council records to execute a prior written commitment that he will not directly or indirectly attribute to any living person any assertion of fact or opinion based upon any Council record without first obtaining from such person his written consent thereto." In "A letter from the Chairman" in the 1994 Annual Report for the CFR, Peter G. Peterson states on page 7, that: "... Members had occasion to meet in intensive off-the-record sessions with Secretary of State [Warren] Christopher, National Security Advisor [Anthony] Lake, Secretary [of State emeritus, George Pratt] Shultz, Ambassador [Mickey] Kantor, Under Secretary of the Treasury [Lawrence H.] Summers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other ranking officials. Next on our agenda are plans for reaching out to congressional leaders as well, an opportunity we will fashion as one component of an enhanced Washington Program." The CFR’s 1999 Annual Report, page 5, states their three goals: 1. Add value by improving understanding of world affairs and by providing new ideas for US foreign policy. 2. Transform the Council into a truly national organization to benefit from the expertise and experience of leaders nationwide. 3. Find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders and thinkers. These are "THEIR" words, not mine. I am simply reporting these facts to you. If this is not a secret organization, then why would they be so emphatic, and state in 20 different ways that non-attribution (or you better not tell) was so important, in their very own annual report? In addition, if you are proud of what you say, and do, then you don’t care whether it becomes public knowledge, or not. The other side of this coin is: if you are doing something illegal, immoral, unethical, unpopular, and/or unconstitutional, you will do whatever is necessary to see that it is kept secret. In his book, "The ANGLO-AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT", Dr. Carroll Quigley writes, "One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire, and to the world as a whole. For these men were organizing a secret society that was, for more than fifty years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation, and execution of British imperial and foreign policy. The three men who were thus engaged were already well known in England. The leader was Cecil Rhodes, fabulously wealthy empire builder, and the most important person in South Africa. The second was William T. Stead, the famous, and probably also the most sensational, journalist of the day. The third was Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, friend, and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential advisor of King Edward VII, and King George V. The details of this important conversation will be examined later. At present we need only point out that the three drew up a plan of organization for their secret society, and a list of original members. The plan for organization provided for an inner circle, to be known as "The Society of the Elect", and an outer circle, to be known as "The Association of Helpers". Within The Society of the Elect, the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a "Junta of Three". The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described." - Quigley, Carroll (1910-1977), The Anglo-American Establishment, From Rhodes to Cliveden, 1981, Books In Focus, NY, NY pg. 3 Of the Secret Societies goals, and methods of operation Quigley writes, "The goals which Rhodes, and Milner sought, and the methods by which they hoped to achieve them were so similar by 1902 that the two are almost indistinguishable. Both sought to unite the world, and above all the English-speaking world, in a federal structure around Britain. Both felt that this goal could best be achieved by a secret band of men united to one another by devotion to the common cause, and by personal loyalty to one another. Both felt that this band should pursue its goal by secret political, and economic influence behind the scenes, and by the control of journalistic, educational, and propaganda agencies... - " Quigley, Carroll (1910-1977), The Anglo-American Establishment, From Rhodes to Cliveden, 1981, Books In Focus, NY, NY pg. 49 Between 1910-1915 the Secret Society evolved into an international group of coconspirators called Round Table Groups that were established in seven nations: Britain, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, and the United States. (The British Round Table was actually created in England in Feb. 5, 1891. In the US it is called the Council on foreign Relations, in England it is the Royal Institute for International Affairs, in Canada the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, in Chile it is the Chilean Council on Foreign Relations, and so on.) In 1920 the Secret Society evolved into the Institutes for International Affairs, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Many of the founding fathers belonged to America's first intelligence agency the INQUIRY. Note - The above quotes were furnished by "Round Table", who has a web site at: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807 The CFR could not accomplish their goals without complicity of the mainstream news media, which they absolutely control with an iron fist. They do this using psychological operations (PSYOPS). The RAND Corp. is one of the chief users of this technique. This is clearly explained by the following Internet message: "Not many people have heard of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) or know how they operate. This is not an accident, the group has purposely maintained a low profile. The CFR is a branch of an international group of coconspirators called the Round Table Group. This group has been controlling public opinion throughout the world for over 100 years. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have defined psychological operations (PSYOPS) as those that: "include psychological warfare, and, in addition, encompass those political, military, economic, and ideological actions planned, and conducted to create in neutral or friendly foreign groups the emotions, attitudes, or behavior to support achievement of national objectives." Another proposal "develops the concept of 'strategic psychological operations' as aimed at influencing, and shaping decision-makers' power to govern, or control their followers." The American people, are among the groups being targeted, and controlled. "Tactics of Deception" are formalized psychological warfare techniques. "Tactics of Deception" build a psychological environment that differs from the material environment. "Tactics of deception" are used to create false reality worlds. In terms of perceptual psychology, "Tactics of Deception" provoke illusory precepts. To influence behavior the deception must follow three basic rules. First, the deception must be "reasonable"; second there must be no simple way of checking the facts in the case; and third the use of deception should not discredit a source which may have valuable future potential. One way to stop this group is to expose them, and their techniques to the people they are manipulating. One "Tactic of Deception" used to achieve Council on Foreign Relations aims, is to place Council members on both sides of an issue. Another "Tactic of Deception" is to use CFR control of the legal, legislative, and court systems to create the perception that laws are being followed when in fact, Lawyers, Legislators, and Justices are committing blatant illegalities to further CFR aims. A third "Tactic of Deception" is simply to lie." Source: roundtable’s Web Page: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807 Another excellent example of deception and cover up is the book, "The Kennedy Tapes". Two CFR members, Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, supposedly listened to all of President John F. Kennedy audio tapes and wrote this book quoting all of the interesting facts so as to assure the public that there were no other important statements made on these tapes that the public would care to know about. There were to motives involved here: (1) to print only what the Elite wanted printed about the JFK assassination, and (2) to throw any other potential researchers off the trail. This was a very grueling task of listening to hundreds of hours of taped conversations. Therefore, other researchers should just "take their word" that they had printed all of the interesting facts from these tapes. I suspect that two non-CFR researchers would have written an entirely different book. As Peter Grose stated in his Council on Foreign Relations Book, Continuing the Inquiry (1996) on page 5: "They (the British) proposed a permanent Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs, with one branch in London, the other in New York." The headquarters for the CFR is The Harold Pratt House located at 58 East 68th Street in New York City, New York 10021. Oddly enough, this building is located just across the street from the Russian (former Soviet) Embassy. Trilateral Commission (TC) In 1973, David Rockefeller asked Zbigniew Brzezinski to put together an organization of the top political, and business leaders from around the World. He called this group the Trilateral Commission (TC). According to an information sheet supplied to me by the TC, dated March 23, 1994: "The European Community, North America (US and Canada), and Japan - the three main democratic industrialized areas of the world - are the three sides of the Trilateral Commission. The Commission’s members are about 325 distinguished citizens, with a variety of leadership responsibilities, from these three regions. When the first triennium of the Trilateral Commission was launched in 1973, the most immediate purpose was to draw together - at a time of considerable friction among governments - the highest level unofficial group possible to look together at the common problems facing our three areas. At a deeper level, there was a sense that the United States was no longer in such a singular leadership position as it had been in earlier post-World War II years, and that a more shared form of leadership - including Europe, and Japan in particular - would be needed for the international system to navigate successfully the major challenges of the coming years. These purposes continue to inform the Commission’s work. The rise of Japan, and progress of the European Community over the past twenty years - particularly in the world economy - have validated the vision of the Commission’s founders. At the same time, the end of the Cold War calls for a fresh vision of what this outward-looking partnership can accomplish in the coming years. The opportunities are remarkable, and yet, with the welcome end of the old Soviet threat, part of the ‘glue’ holding our regions together has dissolved. Helping meet that leadership challenge is at the heart of the Trilateral Commission effort. The full Commission gathers once each year - in Lisbon in 1992, in Washington in 1993, in Tokyo in 1994." (In Copenhagen, Denmark in 1995.) The above are their words. Below are words of those who see this group in a different light. The New World Order, by Pat Robertson, Copyright 1991, Word, Inc., Dallas, Texas. All rights reserved, Page 102, states: "In 1970 a young Polish intellectual named Zbigniew Brzezinski foresaw the rising economic power of Japan, and postwar Europe. Brzezinski idealized the theories of Karl Marx. In his book, Between Two Ages, as in subsequent writings, he argued that balance-of-power politics was out, and world-order politics was in. The initial world order was to be a trilateral economic linkage between Japan, Europe, and the United States. David Rockefeller funded Brzezinski, and called together an organization, named the Trilateral Commission, with Brzezinski as its first executive secretary, and director. The stated goals of the Trilateral Commission are: "Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, in fostering economic redevelopment, and alleviating world poverty will improve the chances of a smooth, and peaceful evolution of the global system." (Emphasis added.) The Shadows of Power, by James Perloff, Copyright 1988, pages 154-156, states: "How did the TC begin? ‘The Trilateral Commission,’ wrote Christopher Lydon in the July 1977 Atlantic, ‘was David Rockefeller’s brainchild.’ George Franklin, North American secretary of the Trilateral Commission, stated that it ‘was entirely David Rockefeller’s idea originally.’ Helping the CFR chairman develop the concept was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who laid the first stone in Foreign Affairs in 1970: ‘A new, and bolder approach is needed - creation of a community of the developed nations which can effectively address itself to the larger concerns confronting mankind. In addition to the United States, and Western Europe, Japan ought to be included ... A council representing the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, with regular meetings of the heads of governments as well as some small standing machinery, would be a good start.’ That same year, Brzezinski elaborated these thoughts in his book Between Two Ages. It shows Brzezinski to be a classic CFR man - a globalist more than lenient toward Communism. He declared that ‘National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept’, and that ‘Marxism represents a further vital, and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision. Marxism is simultaneously a victory of the external, active man over the inner, passive man, and a victory of reason over belief...’ The Trilateral Commission was formally established in 1973, and consisted of leaders in business, banking, government, and mass media from North America, Western Europe, and Japan. David Rockefeller was founding chairman, and Brzezinski founding director of the North American branch, most of whose members were also in the CFR. In the Wall Street Journal, David Rockefeller explained that ‘the Trilateral Commission is, in reality, a group of concerned citizens interested in fostering greater understanding, and cooperation among international allies.’ But, it was not all so innocent according to Jeremiah Novak, who wrote in the Atlantic (July 1977): ‘The Trilateralists’ emphasis on international economics is not entirely disinterested, for the oil crisis forced many developing nations, with doubtful repayment abilities, to borrow excessively. All told, private multinational banks, particularly Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, have loaned nearly $52 billion to developing countries. An overhauled IMF would provide another source of credit for these nations, and would take the big private banks off the hook. This proposal is the cornerstone of the Trilateral plan. Senator Barry Goldwater put it less mercifully. In his book With No Apologies, he termed the Commission ‘David Rockefeller’s newest international cabal’, and said, ‘It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial, and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.’ Zbigniew Brzezinski showed how serious TC ambitions were in the July 1973 Foreign Affairs, stating that ‘without closer American-European-Japanese cooperation the major problems of today cannot be effectively tackled, and ... the active promotion of such trilateral cooperation must now become the central priority of US policy.’ (Emphasis in the ordinal.) The best way to effect this would be for a Trilateralist to soon become President. One did." (Jimmy Carter.) ... In 1973, Carter dined with the CFR chairman (David Rockefeller) at the latter’s Tarrytown, New York estate. Present was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was helping Rockefeller screen prospects for the Trilateral Commission. Brzezinski later told Peter Pringle of the London Sunday Times that ‘we were impressed that Carter had opened up trade offices for the state of Georgia in Brussels, and Tokyo. That seemed to fit perfectly into the concept of the Trilateral.’ Carter became a founding member of the (Trilateral) Commission - and his destiny became calculable. Senator Barry Goldwater wrote: ‘David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be their ideal candidate. They helped him win the nomination, and the presidency. To accomplish this purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community - which is subservient to the wealth of the great tax-free foundations - and the media controllers represented in the membership of the CFR, and the Trilateral.’ Seven months before the Democratic nominating convention, the Gallup Poll found less than four percent of Democrats favoring Jimmy Carter for President. But, almost overnight - like Willkie, and Eisenhower before him - he became the candidate." This is probably one of the very best illustrations of the great power of the Elite. They can make or break any president or candidate for president. They made Jimmy Carter in his efforts to become president, and broke Senator Barry Goldwater in his failed attempt. The TC membership is made up of present, and past Presidents, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, Wall Street investors, international bankers, foundation executives, Think Tank executives, lobbyist lawyers, NATO, and Pentagon military leaders, wealthy industrialist, media owners, and executives, university presidents, and key professors, select Senators, and Congressmen, and wealthy entrepreneurs. They hold annual secret meetings including only members, and very select guests. "The Trilateral Commission doesn't run the world, the Council on Foreign Relations does that!" by Winston Lord, Assistant Secretary of State, the U. S. State Department. The Trilateral Commission's US headquarters is located at: 345 East 46th Street, Suite 711, New York, NY 10017. Level of Involvement by Elite Members Do I think that everyone who belongs to one of these secret organizations is EVIL. Absolutely NOT. If you look at the Elite as though they were an archery target, then: Center or Bulls Eye - Is made up of the Czar and the members of the Inner Circle. They are the decision makers and are therefore 100% informed and involved in the Global Union movement. David Rockefeller is the only "obvious" member of this group. We can speculate about the members of the Inner Circle, but we will probably never have these speculations confirmed. Inner Ring - This group is made up of the Officers & Directors and triple members of all three Elite groups. They are probably 90% informed by the Czar and the members of the Inner Circle, and are heavily involved in the Global Union movement. (see the preceding listing and following charts for these members) Center Ring - This group is made up of the leaders, implementers and double members of the three Elite Groups, and who are probably 80% informed by the Czar and the members of the Inner Circle, and are moderately involved in the Global Union movement. Outer Ring - These members are included for camouflage purposes only, and are made up of many of those who belong to only the CFR. These members are aware of only about 50% or less of the goals and objectives of the Global Union movement. A large number of these people are members for ego and social reasons only, and would very likely resign immediately, when they find out what the Global Union is "really" up to. An example is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the Hollywood actor, who probably falls completely off the above target. He would be classified as true camouflage. Another example of another possible member of the Outer Ring is Ben J. Wattenberg. He would be in the Outer Ring if he told the absolute truth on C-SPAN, with Bryan Lamb, on August 29, 1995, when he stated "I plead guilty to being a member of the CFR, and I only pay my dues, but never, or rarely attends their meetings." If he was truthful, I would place him in the Outer Ring. On the other hand, the CFR's bylaws absolutely prohibit their members from discussing this Elite organization. For this reason, he could have just been complying with their bylaws, and in all reality, he may be a very active member, and really belongs in one of the inner rings. Skull & Bones Society "America's Secret Establishment", by Antony C. Sutton, 1986, page 5-6, states: "Those on the inside know it as The Order. Others have known it for more than 150 years as Chapter 322 of a German secret society. More formally, for legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856. It was also once known as the "Brotherhood of Death". Those who make light of it, or want to make fun of it, call it 'Skull & Bones', or just plain 'Bones'. The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States. The order is not just another Greek letter fraternal society with passwords and handgrips common to most campuses. Chapter 322 is a secret society whose members are sworn to silence. It only exists on the Yale campus (that we know about). It has rules. It has ceremonial rites. It is not at all happy with prying, probing citizens - known among initiates as 'outsiders' or 'vandals'. Its members always deny membership (or are supposed to deny membership) and in checking hundreds of autobiographical listings for members we found only half a dozen who cited an affiliation with Skull & Bones. The rest were silent. An interesting point is whether the many members in various Administrations or who hold government positions have declared their members in the biographical data supplied for FBI 'background checks'. Above all, The Order is powerful, unbelievably powerful. If the reader will persist and examine the evidence to be presented - which is overwhelming - there is no doubt his view of the world will suddenly come sharply into focus, with almost frightening clarity. It is a Senior year society which exists only at Yale. Members are chosen in their Junior year and spend only one year on campus, the Senior year, with Skull & Bones. In other words, the organization is oriented to the graduate outside world. The Order meets annually - patriarchies only - on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River. Senior societies are unique to Yale. There are two other senior societies at Yale, but none elsewhere. Scroll & Key and Wolf's Head are supposedly competitive societies founded in the mid-19 th century. We believe these to be part of the same network. Rosenbaum commented in his "Esquire" article, very accurately, that anyone in the Eastern Liberal Establishment who is not a member of Skull & Bones is almost certainly a member of either Scroll & Key or Wolf's Head. .. The selection procedure for new members of The Order has not changed since 1832. Each year 15, and only 15, never fewer, are selected. In the past 150 years about 2500 Yale graduates have been initiated into The Order. At any time about 500-600 are alive and active. Roughly about one- quarter of these take an active role in furthering the objectives of The Order. The others either lose interest or change their minds. They are silent dropouts. .. The most likely potential member is from a Bones family, who is energetic, resourceful, political and probably an amoral team player. ... Honors and financial rewards are guaranteed by the power of The Order. But the price of these honors and rewards is sacrifice to the common goal, the goal of The Order. Some, perhaps many, have not been willing to pay this price. The Old Line American families and their descendants involved in the Skull & Bones are names such as: Whitney, Perkins, Stimson, Taft, Wadsworth, Gilman, Payne, Davidson, Pillsbury, Sloane, Weyerhaeuser, Harriman, Rockefeller, Lord, Brown, Bundy, Bush and Phelps. For a complete and accurate discussion of the Skull & Bones Society and the secret shadow government in control of this nation, you should purchase a copy of American Secret Establishment, by Antony C. Sutton, available from RIE. Bohemian Club The August 2, 1982 edition of Newsweek magazine reported: "... the world's most prestigious summer camp - the Bohemian Grove - is now in session 75 miles north of San Francisco. The fiercely guarded, 2,700 acre retreat is the country extension of San Francisco's all-male ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club to which every Republican President since Herbert Hoover has belonged. With its high-powered clientele, coveted privacy and cabalistic rituals, the Bohemian Grove has prompted considerable suspicion. ... The most important events, however are the "lakeside talks" (past orators: Alexander Hague and Casper Weinberger). This year's speaker was Henry Kissinger on The Challenge of the '80s." Maclean's magazine, March 23, 1981 reported: "Each summer, for three weekends - this year's will be the 103rd - nearly 2,000 Bohemians, with guests in tow, speed in by car and corporate jet to their guarded Grove, close by the hamlet of Monte Rio (population 1,200) on the Russian River. The Grove's Shakespearean motto, "Weaving spiders come not here," is an injunction to forget wheeling and dealing which is widely ignored. While 'ruling-class cohesiveness' rarely lets slip details of accommodations arrived at there, some - such as the 1967 agreement by Ronald Reagan, over a drink with Richard Nixon, to stay out of the coming presidential race - have helped mold America's destiny. ... Oddly enough, reporters are barred from this club, formed one night in 1872 by five bored news hawks on the old San Francisco Examiner to promote good fellowship (i.e., booze-ups) and 'to help elevate journalism to that place in the popular estimation to which it is entitled.' That aspiration went down the drain when membership was extended to show people, and by 1878, the year of the first Grove-fest, the journalist were already on their way out. Today, a prospective member faces an interrogation that, according to one club man, 'would satisfy the KGB.' There is a waiting list of 1,500 notables, all eager to pay the $2,500 initiation fee and $600 a year dues. Mother Jones, August 1981 volume 6 page 28, reported a partial list of some of the prominent members: "George P. Shultz, Stephen Bechtel, Jr., Gerald R. Ford, Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Jr., Fred L. Hartley, Merv Griffin, Thomas Haywood, Joseph Coors, Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, A. W. Clausen, George Bush, William French Smith, John E. Swearingten, Casper W. Weinberger, Justin Dart, William E. Simon, and hundreds of other prominent politicos and businessmen." Antony C. Sutton, Editor of an excellent monthly newsletter, Phoenix Letter, stated in the October, 1996 edition: "Up to a few months ago, our knowledge of Bohemian Grove, the exclusive elitist hideaway by supposedly adult wheeler dealers, a.k.a. Washington statesman and prominent people (all male.) We dismissed the behavior as immature, even pitiful by emotionally disturbed juveniles and not worth attention. This is where Kissinger, Ford, Nixon, Bechtel, Bush, Cheney, Hoover and their friends (2600 members) hang out and "relax." And if they want to behave as little boys that is their privilege, it is private property. Recent [O'Brien and Phillips, TRANCE Formation of America (pp 170-1)] information may radically change this perception of Bohemian Grove. Not merely drunkenness, unbounded use of alcohol and drugs with vague homosexual tones (confirmed by our sources) but reported activities much more serious - kidnapping, rape, pedophilia, sodomy, ritual murder. Investigation is blocked under the 1947 National Security Act. (!) And like the Omaha child abuse case, includes illegal detention of children. For decades, there have been vague rumors of weird goings on in Bohemian Grove in more remote parts of its 2200 acres. Reliable reports claim Druidic like rituals, druids in red hooded robes marching in procession and chanting to the Great Owl (Moloch.) A funeral pyre with "corpses." (Scores of men work in the Bohemian Grove as servants so this party is fairly well established.) An article in a local community newspaper, Santa Rosa Sun (1993, July) reported on the Cult of Canaan and the legend of Moloch in place at Bohemian Grove. The Moloch Pagan Cult of Sacrifice is human sacrifice. About the mid 1980s there were rumors of murders in remote parts of the property. A local police investigation went nowhere. State investigators on related criminal acts went nowhere. According to an observer and near victim, who can describe the Bohemian Grove inner hideaways, the closed sanctum, even the decor at secret locations, places where no outsider goes (or servants according to our sources) there is an UNDERGROUND lounge (sign spelled U.N.derground) a Dark Room, a Leather Room and a Necrophilia Room. Here is one of O'Brien's quote "Slaves of advancing age or with failed programming were sacrificially murdered at random in the wooded grounds of Bohemian Grove and I felt it was only a matter of time until it would be me." This potential victim survived. Others reportedly did not. The Origin of Moloch, Druid and Canaanite Cult These cults were based on human sacrifice. Why would a 20th century resort reproduce the cult ceremonies? At the minimum, it demonstrates an attraction to the ceremonial practices of the cult, i.e. adoration of destruction, blood, barbarity and sacrifice of children. In brief, the O'Brien charges are consistent with the tenants of Bohemian Grove as played out in ceremony. This is not a resort devoted to, for example, tennis or swimming. It is apparently devoted to blood sacrifices. John Milton in Paradise Lost described Moloch as follows: "First Moloch, horrid king, besmirched with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears, Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol." "Many political reputations and world governments secrets were staked on the belief that I could not be deprogrammed and rehabilitated to recall that which I was supposed to forget." So much for the programming experts. Colonel Aquino is a psychology "expert" linked to mind control with Defense Intelligence Agency and presumably first class talent, yet (Cathy) O'Brien was apparently deprogrammed and secrets spilled all over." (end quoting) The monthly Phoenix Letter is available by writing to Phoenix Letter, Suite 216 C, 1517 14th St. West, Billings, MT 59102. 490 of the Richest Individuals & Families in the World Forbes magazine in their July 18, 1994, pages 152-219, and July 15, 1996, pages 142-243 issues listed an index of the Billionaires around the world. These articles implied that they are all-inclusive lists. However, it becomes clear that they are not complete lists when they excludes such prominent wealthy persons such as: Her Royal Majesty Elizabeth - Queen of England, Her Royal Majesty Beatrix - Queen of the Netherlands (known as the wealthiest woman in the world), Her Royal Majesty Margaret the II - Queen of Denmark, Her Royal Majesty Sofia - Queen of Spain, Sir Muda Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzadin Waddaulah - The Sultan of Brunei, Darussalam, King Fahd - Monarch of Saudi Arabia, Emir Shaikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir as-Sabah - King of Kuwait, Sultan Qabus bin Said - King of Oman, Emir & Prime Minister Khalifah ibn Hamad ath-Thani - King of Qatar, President Zaid ibn Sultan an-Nahayan - Ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Haydar Abu Bakr-al Attas - Prime Minister of Yemen, Amir isa bin Sulman al-Khalifa - King of Bahrain, the House of Rothschild, the Wallenberg interests, the Warburg interests, the Schiff interests, or many others. The ultra-rich are very likely members of the Inner Circle of the Elite and do not want their massive wealth to be known by the public, therefore, they are not likely to be listed by Forbes magazine or any other news media. World's Wealthiest Individuals or Families by Country Sorted by Number and Total Wealth Country 1994 No. 1996 No. % Change 1994 Billions 1996 Billions % Change United States 41 172 420% $248.5 $372.1 150% Hong Kong 8 20 250 41.9 68.7 164 France 4 16 400 21.1 38.2 181 Switzerland 3 12 400 19.7 37.9 192 Indonesia 3 10 333 10 29.8 298 Taiwan 4 8 200 15.9 26.7 168 Mexico 7 27 386 44.1 26.6 60 Malaysia 3 11 367 7.5 26 347 Philippines -- 9 * 6.2 23.8 384 Korea 3 7 233 10.3 23.5 228 Thailand 3 11 367 14.1 21.1 150 Brazil 2 12 600 11 18.4 167 Saudi Arabia 2 8 400 10.1 18 178 Scandinavia 2 5 250 12.5 16.9 135 Italy 2 6 300 10 16.2 162 Canada 3 6 200 13.5 15.8 117 United Kingdom 2 6 300 10.5 14 133 Greece 2 5 250 10 13.3 133 Singapore 1 4 400 4.9 12 245 The Netherlands 1 4 400 9 11.4 127 Argentina 1 4 400 6.7 6.7 100 Turkey 1 3 300 3.9 8.9 228 Chile -- 4 * 4.7 7.5 160 China -- 1 * -- 5.5 * India 1 3 300 3.2 4.7 147 Lebanon 1 2 200 3.8 4.3 113 Colombia -- 3 * 3.5 4.2 120 Spain -- 3 * 4.1 4.1 100 Israel -- 3 * 2.9 4 138 South Africa -- 2 * 1.5 4.1 273 Venezuela -- 2 * 2.5 2.4 96 Kuwait -- 1 * 1.5 3 200 Australia 1 1 100 2.3 2.3 100 Liechtenstein -- 1 * -- 1.5 * Bahrain -- 1 * -- 1 * Ecuador -- 1 * -- 1.2 * Totals 147 490 333% $763 $1,120 147% Note: The above chart reflects the wealthy people with $1 billion or more. The 1993 edition of Forbes did not list all those who had $1 to $2 bil.. It would be very revealing if we had the ability to compare '93, '94 and '96 for those with $1 billion or more. It is very clear from the above that the rich are getting richer and the middle-class and poor must be getting poorer. * There is no mathematical percentage value when going from 0 to a positive or negative value. Any number divided by zero is undefined, and this is illogical. Sometimes it is useful to define it as "infinity" but even this produces inconsistencies and paradoxes. The Global Union The old "NEW WORLD ORDER" is dead. The new "GLOBAL UNION" is very much alive and kicking. In this context, I define the Elite as anyone who is now, or who has ever been a member of the Bilderbergs (BB), Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and/or Trilateral Commission (TC). The worldwide Elite oligarchy has decided that the public is "on-to-them" when they use the term "New World Order", so they have changed the code words to "GLOBAL". When you hear them use such terms as Global market, Global architecture, Global economy, Global village, Global interests, Global neighborhood, Global movement, Global needs, and the like, you can substitute the old code name of New World Order, and you will know that they are still talking about the secret cabal that is trying to dominate economic and political control of the ENTIRE world. The name of the European Economic Community (EEC) was changed to the new name of EUROPEAN UNION (EU), as agreed to in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. This EU now has one central bank in Frankfurt, Germany, one monetary system (except for three holdout nations), one judicial system, one government, and are working on one military force so that they can abandon the current NATO force. Their present goal for changing the name of North, Central and South America, plus the Caribbean Islands to the new name - AMERICAN UNION - is the year 2005, which is just around the corner of time. They will then change the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to its new name - ASIAN UNION, by around 2010. During this same period, the former SOVIET UNION will be resurrected, but this time not under hard line Communist control, but under the direct and absolute control of the Elite. Then by around the year 2015, the governing body over all these four GLOBAL REGIONS will assume full command, and will be called the - GLOBAL UNION (or perhaps another name will be used by then). By this time, national sovereignty of all nations will be lost completely, and we will all be under strict Elite control. Then, there will be only two classes of people - the Elite, and the rest of us - their slaves. You can verify this by reading the United Nations document titled "OUR GLOBAL NEIGHBORHOOD, A Report of the Commission on Global Governance", published in 1995, by Oxford University Press (this book is available through your local bookstore). "Who's Who of the Elite" is designed to inform the general public about the Elite. Many Americans hear the news about the state of the world today and wonder, "What's going wrong? What's happening here? I don't feel that I'm in control of anything anymore." There are some that are aware of what's happening, but millions more would be shocked to learn the truth. The answers are slowly emerging. This book tells you everything that you need to know about what's going wrong, and what is happening here, and all over the world as well. In it, you will find complete lists of names of the very people who are in control of what's going on. These are the wheelers and dealers of the biggest stock of all; peoples' lives. With this book, you can better arm yourself with the knowledge that has awakened thousands of other people wondering about the same things that you are. "Who's Who of the Elite" is the book "they" don't want you to see. This is the information "they" don't want you to know. Many books will tell you the truth, but no other book condenses it all together in one source like this one does. It gives a brief history of the Bilderbergs (BB), Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Trilateral Commission (TC). It lists the members by name, secret organizations that they belong to, their "day job" title and their affiliation. It then sorts these members by affiliation to reveal the stranglehold that they have over our federal government, banks, news media, industry, universities, think tanks, financial institutions, labor unions, and many others. It also gives the real current facts about the true ownership of the Federal Reserve System. Why Should We Care? Even though these Elite organizations go to a lot of effort and expense to remain secret, the word seems to get out anyway. There have been dozens of very good books written since the beginning of this century on this subject, but they remain rather obscure, because the Elite conspire to suppress them. The BB's are the most secretive of the three. When the BB's meet, they clear out all people in the buildings where they are to meet, they completely de-bug all the rooms, bring in their own cooks, waiters, housekeepers, heavily armed security guards, etc., and they do not allow outsiders anywhere near the meeting place just before, during, and immediately after they meet.These very powerful people do not meet to discuss the latest recipe for blueberry pancakes, or the melting rate of snow at the South Pole. When they meet, they more than likely discuss and decide: Wars - They decide when wars should start, how long they should last, when they should end, who will and will not participate, the changes in boundaries of countries resulting from the outcome of these wars, who will lend the money to support the war efforts, and who will lend the money to rebuild the countries after they have been destroyed by war. Money - They own the central banks, such as the Federal Reserve System in the US, and similar organizations in all major countries throughout the world, and therefore are in a position to determine discount rates, prime rates, money supply levels, the prices of gold and other precious metals, and very tightly control who and/or what countries should receive loans (guaranteed by the taxpayers of the respective countries, or if that fails, the taxpayers of the US will pay the bills). If they are successful in loaning money to various nations, the International bankers pocket the profits. If their loans fail, the taxpayers foot the bill. When they say in the mainstream news media that the US has bailed out Russia, Mexico, Southeast Asian nations, or the like, what they REALLY mean is that the money never left the US, it was just sent to the International bankers on Wall Street who made the loans. Governments - They decide who will be allowed to run for the offices of President, Prime Minister, Chancellor, Governor General, or other names applied to the leaders of all major countries around the world. For example; Bill Clinton attended the 1991 BB meeting in Baden Baden, Germany, so that he could be vetted by the Elite to become the 1992 US president. Tony Blair attended the 1993 BB meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, so that he could be grilled by the Elite before becomming Prime Minister of Great Britain, and on and on. Stocks, Bonds, & Commodities - Since the Elite own the major banks and the Central banks, they know exactly what interest rates and money supply levels will be, so it is very likely that they regularly run these exchanges up and down to their financial gain. News and other information - They directly, or indirectly own all the major news media, and can therefore tell the public exactly what they want them to hear, and deny the public the information they do not want them to see, hear or read. For example; the House of Rothschild bought Routers news service in the 1800's. Within the last 20 years, Routers bought the Associated Press. Now the Elite own the two largest wire services in the world, where most newspapers get their news. Wages and salaries - They directly or indirectly own all the major banks, businesses, industries, and the like, and therefore can suppress wages and salaries by either shipping the production jobs to the cheapest labor rates around the world, by importing the technical specialists from the cheapest countries around the world, and by employing mostly temporary and/or part time workers in their home countries. The labor unions do not resist such efforts, because the labor leaders are members of the Elite as well. I don't know about you, but these above activities seriously concern me, because my children and grandchildren will suffer many times greater than we do today under the control of these EVIL MONSTERS (I have tried to find worse terms for them, but this is the best that I can think of to describe them). My ancestors finally decided to leave Ireland for the New World in 1772 because of economic suppression. The absentee landlords and money merchants had raised the rents on the tenant farmers of Ireland three times in just one year, and the farmers could no longer afford to ply their trade. These brave people risked their lives in this new undeveloped land rather than continue to be persecuted by the Elite of that period. The writers of our Constitution took great care in drafting this fine document so as to protect us from Elite domination. We are again being conquered by the Elite in ever increasing ways and I, for one, have had enough. The best way to stop this cabal's efforts is "SUNSHINE". Who's Who of the Elite is my spotlight on this grand conspiracy. So, if you want answers to your questions about who is really in charge, this book will open your eyes. Can The Elite be Stopped? "Yes, they can be stopped." But only if everyone works very hard at the solutions, for nothing happens on its own, and apathy is NOT the answer. However, violent efforts are inappropriate because: (1) It is wrong to break our laws. (2) Many innocent people will be killed or wounded, and their property destroyed. (3) The Elite control our courts, the Pentagon, the U.N., NATO, N.S.A., C.I.A., F.B.I., B.A.T.F., our Senate and House of Representatives, and directly, or indirectly control all local law enforcement agencies. All efforts to stop the Elite must be legal, such as: 1. Everyone must go to the poles in each election, and vote for their independent party candidates of choice. 2. No Independent party has enough money to defeat the Republicans and Democrats. Therefore, we must organize a Third Party Convention to be held soon enough before the 2000 presidential elections to allow for full participation of all third parties. 3. Two months before the first Republican or Democrat Convention, each third party should offer their best candidate for President. One month should be spent by these candidates presenting their case to the public. The next month should provide a Third Party Convention and debate between all independent candidates who seek the office of president. All of these candidates names should then appear on the ballot at the primary elections held by the Democrats and Republicans. The top three candidates should then spend a month telling the people why they should be the party candidate. A run-off election should then be held with the top vote receiver becoming the party candidate for president and the second highest to become the candidate for vice president, with their names placed on the general election ballots in November of 2000. 4. The candidates for president that did not win should immediately file for either a Senate of House of Representatives race that they are eligible to participate in. 5. There should be an Independent Party candidate for every state and federal election position. 6. Once the independents have gained control of our state and federal governments, perhaps that is the time to eliminate the party system completely. 7. Every state that does not now have the right, should petition their state legislature for Initiative, Referendum and Recall rights. 8. Once each state has Initiative, Referendum and Recall rights, then petitions should be presented to demand the following: A. Every candidate for public office should run on their own efforts and merits, with financing only from individuals who have resided for at least 5 years in the district or area that they propose to represent.Violation of the new campaign financing proposal should be a felony with stiff monetary fines and jail time for the convicted offenders. B. All elections must be reduced to two months for the primary and one month for the general elections, and all voting must be on a Saturday and Sunday. C. All votes should be on paper ballots and should be counted by precinct Citizens Oversight Committees. The last place on each list of candidates on the ballots must be "NONE OF THE ABOVE", and if this is selected by a majority of the voters, a new slate of candidates must be submitted for vote, until one candidate receives 50% + one vote of all the votes cast. D. The Electoral College must be eliminated entirely with the President and Vice President elected by popular vote only. E. All this should be accomplished by a Constitutional Amendment approved by both houses of Congress and ratified by 38 states. F. Constitutional Amendments should not be done by a Constitutional Convention, because the Elite would take charge of the convention, and our Constitution would be eliminated, or changed so drastically that it would be unrecognizable. G. State and federal laws should be passed prohibiting anyone from being appointed, elected or otherwise employed in any public office or position that has been a member of any secret organization for the previous five years, including the Klu Klux Klan, Black Panthers, Islamic Jihad, Red Brigade, Bilderbergs, Bohemian Club, Council on Foreign Relations, and/or Trilateral Commission. These laws should exclude the typical "grandfather" clauses, so that once these laws are passed, anyone who meets this definition must resign immediately. If anyone wanted to belong to these groups and hold public office, then these organizations must change their rules so that every meeting, including board of director's meetings, must be opened up to attendance by the public and the press, with two weeks advance notice published in the local press stating the date, time, and place of all meetings, along with the agendas of all meetings. H. The Federal Reserve Act must be repealed, and the exclusive right to create money and credit must be restored to the US Treasury Department, as stipulated in the US Constitution. I. The present practice of "fractional reserve" banking requiring only 10% reserves for banks to make loans should be eliminated. Within a one year period, this rate must be raised to 100% reserves. Without this change, banks would continue to have the ability to create money and credit, which should be exclusively reserved for the Treasury Department. J. The US national debt should be completely eliminated by a one-time exchange of non-interest bearing Treasury Notes for all of the outstanding interest bearing Treasury Bonds. K. The Treasury Department should be designated as the sole lender to all states, counties and municipalities for capital projects that are now financed by municipal bonds, and the like. The rate charged for these loans should be fixed by law at 3%. L. The Treasury Department should offer loans to banks at the fixed rate of 3% on the condition that they must not add more than 5% of true annual interest to the loans to any borrower of these funds. Violation of this requirement must be a felony with stiff monetary fines and jail time penalties for violating this provision, with the fines and jail time being given to the chief executive officer of the erring bank. Both houses of Congress should be allowed to change this interest rate if 80% of those"eligible" to vote on the change, vote in the affirmative. Any changes to this rate must only be in effect for 365 days, when it would automatically revert to 3% again. M. Inflation should not be controlled by varying interest rates, but by varying the supply of money and credit. N. The Internal Revenue Act should be revoked because it is severely regressive, is extremely complicated, and all federal taxes be raised by No. 10 envelope size tax returns which addresses all income and the sale of all property. The tax rates should be progressive with anyone who is legally eligible to receives welfare should be exempt, and the progressive rate starting at 2% and rise to 40% for the highest income levels. All property sold should be taxed at a progressive rate based on the length of time that it is held, with less than six months charged a rate of 33%, and over seven years a rate of 0%. O. Every law passed by Congress must first pass the test of the Constitution. If the proposed bill is not specifically allowed by the Constitution, it becomes null and void. If it is sufficiently important to pass a new law that fails the Constitutional test, amend the Constitution. P. Every bill submitted for approval by both houses of Congress must be single issue bills, and must not contain any amendments that are not clearly and specifically related to the proposed bill. Q. All bills proposed that require increases or decreases in taxes, or other revenue streams must be approved by at least 80% of all those eligible to vote on the bill in both houses of Congress. This is just a start on needed changes, but if enacted, we will again have government by and for the people. Winston Churchill one said: "Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." What will happen after the year 2000? 1. Since Clinton won the 1996 election for president (with just 24% of the eligible votes, and 31.9% of the registered voters), you can expect rapid and numerous changes prior to the 2000 elections. By law, he cannot run for the office of president again, so he will not have to check with focus groups or news media polls to decide what to do to be re-elected again. This means that the Elite will be counting on him to accomplish their goals and objectives during his lame-duck term. Most of the appointed positions in Clinton's remaining administration will be filled by the Elite. They do not need to spend their money to lobby our public officials, because they own them, lock, stock and barrel. 2. N.A.F.T.A. will be rapidly expanded. Chile will be the next nation included, then Argentina, then Brazil, and then the rest will join in rapid succession, because their goal is to create the AMERICAN UNION by the year 2005, and much is to be done in order to reach this goal. During the second week of October, 1997, Clinton toured South American countries preparing them for the Union of the Americas, or American Union. 3. Starting in mid-2000, thousands of unsafe Mexican trucks, with triple trailers, and with Mexican drivers will flood over the border, and travel all over the US and Canada, as stipulated in N.A.F.T.A. This is how the Elite transport their illegal drugs into this country, and they must drug the citizens into submission in order to take control. The Elite owned banks, such as Chase, Citibank, Morgan Guarantee Trust, American Express, and others launder their drug money through their branches in Mexico, so expect the flow of drugs and laundered money to greatly increase. Billions of dollars will be spent on an enlarged NAFTA highways between Mexico and Canada. As these trucks cross the border, few will be stopped and inspected, so massive amounts of illegal drugs will freely fan out over the United States. 4. The C.I.A., F.B.I. and B.A.T.F. will secretly stage numerous bombings and public threats in order to give the president the excuse to declare Marshall Law, and to outlaw private ownership of personal firearms. They will have great difficulty taking over completely as long as the citizens are so well armed. Clinton and past presidents have signed Executive Orders instructing F.E.M.A. to take over absolute control of every critical function in this nation. The president has exclusive authority to declare Marshall Law under severe economic conditions or critical national security reasons. The killer is that the president is the only one authorized to make this determination, and when it happens, we will be immediately under control of a Dictatorship rather than a Constitutional Republic. One very probable severe economic condition that could trigger Marshall Law is very likely to be another Federal Reserve System imposed depression, exactly as they did in the 1929 crash. 5. The de-industrialization of the United States will accelerate, which will cause jobs to be scarce, incomes to drop, more homeless people on the streets and on welfare, and crime to grow rapidly, because the unemployed people will do whatever is necessary to survive. 6. Illegal and legal immigration will climb to new heights, so as to increase the demand for jobs, as the number of jobs available decline rapidly due to de-industrialization. The purpose is to completely eliminate the middle-class in the US. The Elite of the Soviet Union could not install communism in their union 70 years ago as long as there was a middle class. The answer was that Joseph Stalin murdered somewhere between 28 and 66 millions of the middle-class citizens in the USSR, with the resulting creation of a two-class system, the Elite and the peasants. We are headed for the same results in this country without the Elite having to fire a single shot. 7. There is a steady movement to require all those on welfare to get a job within the next two years, or lose all benefits. This will cause riots, and social unrest will increase rapidly during the next four years due to the above, which is just what the Elite want to happen, so that they can be justified in the outlawing of personal firearms, and the unrest will be one of the excuses used to declare Marshall Law. The end result will be a US Dictatorship. Will our new Dictator be Bill Clinton or Al Gore? Not likely. The best bet is that they will be forced from office, and possibly indited on a number of charges. The best bet is Gov. George W. Bush, who is now backed by the Elite to become the next president. Possibly, unless he is also indited, as well. Madeline Albright cannot move up to president because she is not a natural born citizen of the US. It could be someone like Jay Rockefeller!!!! Stay tuned. Nelson A. Rockefeller almost made it by devious means, when the Elite manipulated Congress to change the order of succession by passing the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. Fate took his life before he made it into the White House. Is it now Jay's turn to make his play for the office of DICTATOR???? And, reporting directly to the Czar of the Global Union, his brother, David Rockefeller!!!!! Troubled times are just ahead. "Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." - Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg meeting at Evian, France, May 21, 1992. Transcribed from a tape recording made by one of the Swiss delegates. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get The DEEP Dirt On This Family Of Criminals, w/links and, photos and documents GALORE!! Post Your Comments & Info!! http://pub97.ezboard.com/bbushsecrets http://www.geocities.com/tigre35/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bushcon4/ We Have The Inside Story On Everything!! All About Anthrax! The US Created And Supported The Taliban Until Sept. 11 The Bush's - STILL Doing Business With The Enemy! The Goverment Had Prior Knowledge Of 9/11 More Bush Dirt Where IS The Plane That "Hit" The Pentagon? Bush Hides History From Americans! This Fake War And All The Innocents Killed To Stage It! Fasces - Proof That We Are A Fascist Country And Proud Of It! No Plane Hit The Pentagon? Smoking Gun? Taiwan-Gate - Bigger Than Enron Enron Is The Tip Of The Iceberg! Bush Family Plan! Our Government Participated in 9/11! WTC Collapse - Bombs Used? Two Petitions Bush/Nazi Connection! And, more!! Be Informed. Join today!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/business/10MANA.html Enron Offered Management Aid to Companies By David Barboza April 10, 2002 HOUSTON, April 9 - The sales pitch to major corporations went something like this: Having trouble with cash flow or meeting profit forecasts? We can help you manage the numbers, and even put a little cash in your pocket. The financial expert was the Enron Corporation, which until its sudden collapse last year had been widely admired in financial circles for the innovative techniques - like off-balance-sheet partnerships - that it used to enhance its performance. But Enron did not just find creative ways to manage its own cash flow and profits. It marketed that expertise to other major corporations, including AT&T, Eli Lilly & Company, Owens-Illinois, Lockheed Martin and Qwest Communications, according to documents and interviews with more than a dozen former Enron executives. It is unclear exactly how many corporations hired Enron explicitly to provide financial management services. But at least six big companies signed complicated deals, intended to enhance their results with financing and accounting ploys. Most of the deals involved purchasing other Enron services. Scores of smaller companies may also have participated, executives said. Enron and a customer might, for instance, agree to swap telecommunications services, use shell corporations or take advantage of accounting loopholes to improve each other's balance sheet or income statement, former Enron officials said. Few of the companies that signed major deals with Enron would talk about them, while some that rejected Enron's proposals termed them peculiar. But former Enron employees who marketed the services said that their mission was clear: to sell a form of "structured finance" that could accelerate a customer's earnings or otherwise dress up the corporate books. "Ultimately, that was my job - to help companies make earnings," said one former executive of Enron's broadband services unit who insisted on not being identified for fear of being drawn into litigation. "This was one of the secrets of Enron." One internal training document for the sales staff of the Enron Energy Services unit described the financial advantages to be offered prospective clients, including "acceleration of earnings/cash from outsourcing for both EES and our customer" and the promise to "unlock benefits from a difficult tax position that the customer may have." None of this would be unusual for Wall Street investment banks like Merrill Lynch or J. P. Morgan Chase, which in recent years have used a wide range of derivatives and other structured finance products to help big corporations reduce their taxes and deliver just the right amount of profits, quarter after quarter. But the Enron scandal has heightened the sensitivity of regulators, investors and corporate finance experts to such efforts by underscoring the potential for fraud and deception. And the discovery that Enron was marketing its financial management techniques has only heightened the anxiety of some experts. "This is outrageous," said Frank Partnoy, a former Wall Street investment banker and now a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, after reviewing some of Enron's sales presentations. "In some ways, they were polluting the entire financial system. To the extent that others weren't doing this, Enron was going out on the road and showing them how to do it." Mark Palmer, a spokesman at Enron, declined to comment. Arthur Levitt, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Internet stock bubble, spoke out strongly against the practice of earnings management in 1998, a view he has reiterated many times. "I fear that we are witnessing an erosion in the quality of earnings, and therefore, the quality of financial reporting," he said. "Managing may be giving way to manipulation." The critical point, finance experts say, is to distinguish between altogether legal strategies taking advantage of accounting and tax rules to smooth out bumps in quarterly earnings and financial machinations that are so aggressive that the true nature of a company's finances is misrepresented. "If accounting is just compliance with 10,000 rules, then the party that's expert at gamesmanship can manipulate the rules and help you in exchange for some kind of accommodation fee," said John C. Coffee Jr., a securities law expert at Columbia University Law School. Former executives said that a culture of "earnings management" permeated Enron. They said it went far beyond the efforts of Andrew S. Fastow, the company's chief financial officer, who was dismissed last October after Enron discovered that he had made more than $30 million from a series of off-balance-sheet partnerships that did business with Enron. "Every unit was doing this," said one former energy services official. "We were entrepreneurial, and one thing people thought we could do better than anyone else is structured finance." Former employees in Enron's broadband and retail energy services operations said the company's financial management strategies were first developed at Enron Capital and Trade, a unit that prospered in the 1990's under the leadership of Jeffrey K. Skilling, who helped set up a "gas bank" to finance struggling gas producers. Initially, the company sold energy and other commodities to big corporations in structured deals - for example, power sales packaged with hedges to limit the risk of price swings. Most employees regarded such arrangements as perfectly acceptable "financial solutions" for their customers. By 1999, Mr. Skilling was Enron's president, and the company had grown more aggressive, stretching for lucrative, if ephemeral, deals in the spirit of the stock market bubble. Corporations that did business with Enron were shown ways to disguise loans on their balance sheets; or to book profits over long periods, even though a lump sum was paid upfront; or to lower near-term costs artificially to report higher profits, when necessary. Former Enron employees said that there were dozens if not hundreds of techniques marketed to customers with names like the "tilted curve" or "blend and extend." Some acknowledged that the results - which included allowing clients to book premature profits and realize premature cash flow - sometimes leaned toward deception. "We knew this was earnings management, but it was under the guise of buying some contract from them," one former Enron executive said. After Enron created a retail energy unit in 1997, to take advantage of the deregulation of electricity markets around the country, the sales force often arranged deals that traded big energy supply contracts for cash up front, in arrangements that executives said could be deemed as loans to Enron's customers. For example, in deals with companies like Owens-Illinois and Eli Lilly, Enron advanced funds - $50 million, in Lilly's case - or, using off-balance-sheet arrangements, invested in energy facilities on the customers' behalf, according to executives of Enron and the client firms. Eli Lilly, one of the country's largest drug companies, said it was the offer of a cash advance that sold it on Enron's plan to supply the company with energy services over 15 years. "We had looked at several other companies, and this was a piece that Enron could bring something to the table that others did not," said Joan Todd, an Eli Lilly spokeswoman. "We saw it as they were so confident that they could deliver the savings to our company that they were willing to make an upfront payment." In addition to charging standard fees for loans and other banklike services, Enron booked about $10 billion in revenue from long-term energy deals, even though it actually was laying out money from the start on transactions like the one with Lilly. For their part, customers were able to lock in energy prices over the term of the contracts and receive tax advantages. And they were able to keep the money advanced to them by Enron off their balance sheets. The transactions continued into Enron's final days. Last September, Enron struck a deal with Qwest Communications, the local phone company in 14 Western states, to swap fiber optic cable and services at exaggerated prices to improve each other's financial reports, according to former Enron executives. Officials of Qwest, whose accounting practices are under formal review by the S.E.C., have insisted there was nothing improper about the deal. The complexity of the deals that Enron marketed is apparent in an "earnings and cash flow management" plan that Enron's broadband unit presented to AT&T in July 2000. AT&T rejected all of Enron's proposals, an AT&T spokeswoman said. One slide from Enron's presentation described a "prepay" deal that was a swap of cash for future services and cash; three former employees said it was essentially a "disguised loan." Another slide laid out what it called a "reverse prepay (earnings capture)" deal. The transaction would have allowed AT&T to take a prepayment for 20 years' worth of services from a customer and yet book long-term earnings or revenues, as well. One way to achieve this accounting effect, the documents indicate, was to set up an off-balance-sheet partnership. "This is really an accounting trick," said Ian Giddy, a professor of finance at New York University, after reviewing the presentation to AT&T. "AT&T gets the cash up front and yet they recognize the full value of the earnings over time. This is Enron saying you can have your cake and eat it, too." Enron, of course, choked on its own baking. The company borrowed heavily to be able to advance cash to its trading and financial management clients. Using so-called mark-to-market accounting, it booked profits on trades and other transactions based on rosy assumptions about the future, executives said, accelerating its own earnings but leaving the company at risk if its bets failed to pay off. When many did fail at once - investments in technology companies premised on ever-rising stock prices, or energy trades premised on ever-rising power prices - the flaws in Enron's financial offerings were exposed, these executives explained. "Enron was known for its financial engineering," one former executive of the broadband unit said. "We knew how to accelerate earnings. But it's a nasty little treadmill. You can only run for so long." $nbsp; http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/100/oped/Enron_cuts_to_capitalism_s_core+.shtml Enron Cuts to Capitalism's Core By Robert Kuttner 4/10/2002 THE MORE we learn about Enron, the more it becomes an indictment both of our financial system and its toothless watchdogs. The real outrage is that Enron isn't more of a scandal. In a new lawsuit filed this week by Enron shareholders, some of the country's top banks and investment banking houses are accused of conspiring with Enron to create phony partnerships that enriched insiders. Why would bankers, models of probity, go along with the scam? The lawsuit alleges that some of the insiders who profited from the rigged books were the bankers themselves. The suit claims that senior bank officers from such trusted institutions as Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse First Boston, and others created enormous, illicit profits - not just for Enron insiders or even for the banks, but for senior banking executives who got a personal piece of the action. If true, this would help explain why some of the smartest financiers in America seemed to be asleep at the switch. At this writing, the banks have not issued detailed comments, but they are expected to challenge the suit. From the beginning, the leitmotif of the whole Enron affair has been conflicts of interest. Accountants who were supposed to be attesting to the honesty of Enron's books were making a bundle as Enron consultants. Politicians who were supposed to be overseeing government regulators were taking campaign contributions from industry and urging the regulators to back off. Now comes the allegation that the bankers, who had a fiduciary duty to their own customers and shareholders, may have been on the take as well. Enron ought to be the emblem of all that's corrupt about this era of American capitalism. But Enron may never quite make it into the ranks of widely appreciated scandals, for two big reasons. First, the subject matter is numbingly technical. Enron set itself up to take advantage of the deregulation of electricity. There is a good deal of evidence that Enron profited, not by being an honest broker of electricity contracts, but by manipulating price and supply and then rigging the rules. In theory, deregulated markets were less vulnerable to political interference. In practice, they were more corruptible. But unlike, say Watergate, where Nixon's henchmen broke into Democratic Party headquarters, or Whitewater and its presidential dalliance with an intern, there is nothing especially sexy or easily fathomable about electricity deregulation. And if you find that subject a bit esoteric, try some of the technical issues about accounting standards. The financial pages have been full of articles debating whether stock options for corporate executives should be counted as expenses. And that's a relatively straightforward question compared to many of the others. Enron's scam was impenetrable to all but its own insiders. But there's second reason why Enron does not have political legs. The opposition party - the Democrats - were part of the problem. During the 1990s, the SEC was fighting a losing battle against new kinds of corporate scams. Politicians from both parties were opposed to a more assertive SEC. When I was first covering economics, Republicans were the party of free enterprise and Democrats were the party of the mixed economy. Republicans believed capitalism regulated itself. Democrats knew better, remembering the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that saved capitalism from its own excesses. As voters and citizens, we did not need to immerse ourselves in all the technical accounting details, because one party stood for the idea that capitalism needed to be regulated. In a representative democracy, our elected officials could keep track of the details. Unfortunately, many of today's Democrats were among the leading deregulators. So even though several Enron investigations are now pending in Congress, the Democrats have largely failed to connect Enron to principled philosophical differences between the parties, because the differences are eroding. Here is the real scandal: Both parties are letting the market system devour itself. If investors can't trust accountants and bankers, then capitalism itself is at risk. And if politicians are corrupted by political money, there is no one to watch the watchers. Post-Soviet Russia is a mess today because honest markets have not yet emerged. It wasn't enough that communism fell; efficient markets require democratically accountable and relatively uncorrupted government. We in America have enjoyed both dynamic private enterprise and effective government, and each depends on the other. But Enron suggests that both institutions are imperil ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/opinion/21GORE.html The Selling of an Energy Policy By Al Gore April 21, 2002 NASHVILLE - Under the presidency of George W. Bush, the environmental and energy policies of our government are completely dominated by a group of current and former oil and chemical company executives who are trying to dismantle America's ability to force them to reduce the extremely dangerous levels of pollution in the earth's atmosphere. The first step was to withdraw from the agreement reached in Kyoto to begin limiting worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. Then the administration cancelled an agreement requiring automobile companies to make the leap to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Other acts of sabotage are taking place behind the scenes. Just as Enron executives were allowed to interview candidates for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - and to veto those they didn't think would approve of Enron's agenda - ExxonMobil has been allowed to veto the United States government's selection of who will head the prestigious scientific panel that monitors global warming. Dr. Robert Watson, the highly respected leader of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, was blackballed in a memo to the White House from the nation's largest oil company. The memo had its effect last Friday, when Dr. Watson lost his bid for re-election after the administration threw its weight behind the "let's drag our feet" candidate, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri of New Delhi, who is known for his virulent anti-American statements. Why is this happening? Because the largest polluters know their only hope for escaping restrictions lies in promoting confusion about global warming. Just as Enron needed auditors who wouldn't blow the whistle when the company lied about the magnitude of its future liabilities, the administration needs scientific reviews that won't sound the alarm on the destruction of the earth's climate balance. How long they get away with it depends on how long they can sow confusion and doubt. But with folks wearing bikinis in Boston in the middle of April and with the massive melting of ice at both poles and in nearly every mountain glacier on earth, public awareness and concern are growing rapidly. At a time when the world needs enduring leadership from the United States to rally all nations to join in a concerted effort to stop global warming, the administration is working overtime to block any progress whatsoever. So tomorrow, on this Earth Day, more than ever before, we need real, forward-thinking leadership and a renewed focus on the environment. True leadership means ensuring that we take the necessary steps to leave a cleaner environment for generations to come - and that means strengthening environmental protections. Instead, this administration's so-called Clean Skies initiative actually increases air pollution levels by allowing more toxic mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur emissions than does current law. Put simply, on the environment, this administration has consistently sold out America's future in return for short-term political gains. True leadership means guaranteeing our national security and role as a world leader - and one of the best ways to do this is by decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, so that America cannot be held hostage to oil imports and tinhorn tyrants like Saddam Hussein. But instead this administration is now investing less in energy innovation and conservation and more in corporate subsidies for oil exploration and extraction and nuclear power. True leadership means assuring an economy that rewards innovation and productivity. We can do so by leading the world in investments in technological innovations that will result in environment-friendly products like more efficient cars and renewable energy sources. Such investments would open up the door for new economic growth. But this administration is taking only those steps that increase our addiction to fossil fuels and outdated and inefficient technologies. On all these fronts, this administration has walked away from the tough choices and has instead chosen to subsidize the solutions of the past. Instead of leading, it has attempted to mislead. Instead of sharing a vision with the people, the administration has given access to special interests. We can return to the path of progress, on which we value economic growth that rewards innovation and productivity and meets the needs of our families and of national security. We can return to the days of record growth coupled with record improvement in the air we breathe. We can return to true leadership on the environment. We ought to look at the environment as a critical piece of the nation we will be. I urge Americans to re-engage in a forward-looking discussion of how to secure our nation's energy needs while pursuing environmental policies that will make us safer, more efficient and more respectful stewards of our planet and our nation's great potential. Al Gore, vice president from 1993 to 2001, is a professor at Fisk Universi ty and Middle Tennessee State University. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When even neoliberals like Michael Kinsley write so scathingly about George Lush and his handlers, it's clear the moral novocaine of 911 is finally beginning to wear off, at least among members of the print press...] The Washington Post - April 19, 2002, Page A25 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13130-2002Apr19.html Lying in Style By Michael Kinsley Honest administrations are all alike, but each dishonest administration is dishonest in its own way. Actually, there are no honest administrations. But each presidency does bring its own unique style to the task of deceiving the citizenry. And at least you can derive some truths about a president from the way he chooses to lie to you. Consider the latest three. The characteristic lying style of George Bush the Elder derived from his core belief that politics and real life are separate realms. This derived in turn from the cherished preppy-snob distinction between life and games. In life one must be decent and honest and must not seem to be trying too hard. But in games -- including politics -- one must be ruthless, and one must win. One is not really misbehaving, because it's only a game. So the memorable dishonesties of Bush I were highly original artifices on novel or obscure topics, such as Massachusetts prison furlough policy, or teachers who won't pledge allegiance to the flag or how many times Bill Clinton raised taxes as governor of Arkansas. The great ones were often technically true and essentially false at the same time, and the complete performance always included wave upon wave of follow-up obfuscation. Bush the Elder didn't actually do a lot of the heavy lying himself. He had people for that sort of thing. For Bill Clinton, by contrast, a lie was a seduction -- and a personal challenge. Clinton's biggest lie -- will it ever be topped? -- was a daredevil triple back flip off the high board. It concerned Topic A on everyone's mind, not some issue invented in the campaign laboratory. It gave him no help in the plausibility department. And yet he offered it boldly, fearlessly, with an actual intention to persuade. And many of us were persuaded. If the truth was too precious to waste on politics for Bush I and a challenge to overcome for Clinton, for our current George Bush it is simply boring and uncool. Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven't bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they'd try that too. The characteristic Bush II form of dishonesty is to construct an alternative reality on some topic, and to regard anyone who objects to it as a sniveling dweeb obsessed with "nuance." You can just see Bush rolling his eyes at the fuss -- small as it is -- over his administration's role in the recent military coup in Venezuela. It is unclear what exactly Bush administration officials said to the coup planners in meetings over the past few months. Conflicting anonymous quotations mean there is some lying of the conventional sort going on. But a simple "just don't do it: The United States believes in democracy" was obviously not the message or the coup would not have gone ahead. One problem with reality of the traditional sort is that the pieces have to fit together. In alternative reality there is no such tedious restraint. We brag about our devotion to spreading democracy, especially in Latin America, but we don't care at all for this pesky left-winger these fools in Venezuela seem to have elected. Oh, him? "He resigned," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer with no basis and no twinkle in his eye. It would be convenient if he had resigned, and so: He resigned. And then two days later the coup fizzled and the elected president was back. I mean, how embarrassing is that? Not very, if you just stick to your story. "The people have sent a clear message . . . that they want both democracy and reform," Fleischer revealed. He went on to lecture the restored president -- whose overthrow we at least tacitly supported -- about "governing in a fully democratic manner." Alternative reality can be simple and sleek. That's one thing our Bush du jour likes about it. And simplicity is a genuine virtue in, for example, mobilizing a nation for war. It was quite effective for a while when Bush declared, after Sept. 11, that we were engaged in a Manichean struggle with a single overarching enemy called terrorism. But then Reality Classic intrudes. Ariel Sharon says: Hey, I'm fighting an all-out war against terrorism too. You got a problem with that? And the answer is, Yes, we do. But it's hard to say what our problem is without admitting that we're not engaged in a Manichean struggle with terrorism. American interests and values are more varied and complicated than that. Another inconvenience of traditional reality is that there can be only one of them at a time. There is no such limit on alternative realities. You can stash them around the house for use as needed. So Bush can have one reality where battling terrorism is paramount and another where Israel must negotiate and compromise with the sponsors of suicide bombers. And if he can really juggle all these realities in his head without their bumping up against each other, maybe it doesn't even count as dishonest. © 2002 The Washington Post Company -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Palestine, Iraq, Cuba and Venezuela--What's Oil Got to Do With It? The politics of the covert oil war, 2002 AD By: Lee Siu Hin April 23, 2002 Since April of this year, after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell failed to make progress in his mission to Israel and Palestine, international oil prices have reached $25 per barrel -- 25% higher then the same period last year. And on April 8th Iraq announced its 30-day oil embargo to protest Israeli attacks on Palestine, and from April 12-14 Venezuela suffered a military coup that disrupted its oil supply. When it comes to oil, there's no doubt: all eyes remain focused on Middle East production. Despite the large amount of oil coming from other major international producers such as Mexico, Russia and Venezuela, Iraq and the other major Gulf region oil producers (Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) still have a huge influence on the price of oil. Iraq's recent decision to cut off oil exports for one month will deeply affect the international oil market. The United States, on the other hand, uses its military and political muscle to further its own economic interests. By undermining the international oil price, it sends an unquestionable message to the world: America is the only country that will decide who can produce, who can sell, and who can buy at what price. The recent failed military coup against President Hugo Chavez is a clear example of how US oil interests undermine the democracy of Venezuela - a country who dares to sell oil to Cuba, who dares to go against the Iraqi oil embargo protesting Israel's attacks on Palestine. And the US military has been in the Gulf region protecting corrupt Gulf oil monarchies since the 1990-91 Gulf war, most notably after September 11 in Afghanistan to further the US agenda. It's the Oil, Stupid The oil market is completely and artificially controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Western powers such as the United States. For the past 10 years, although Mexico and Venezuela export more oil to the US then Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and Iraq (Iran does not export oil to the US) are still the ones who control the price. "The international petroleum market is just like the orange juice section in the supermarket," an oil expert explains. "If one of the brand-name juices drops its price, the rest will be forced to follow." Iraqi oil can be considered one of these brand name products. American military campaigns against Iraq are the determining factor for international oil prices, and - what is less widely known - are the best way to steal Iraqi oil. During and after the Gulf war, when the United Nations was enforcing an oil/trade embargo against Iraq, the US openly denied that it was buying Iraqi oil, instead using the United Nations' "oil-for-food" program to purchase the cheap, below-market-price Iraqi oil behind closed doors. Although this "oil-for-food" program was originally designed to "help" the Iraqi people while sanctions were maintained against the Iraqi government, nearly 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports end up on U.S. soil, going to Bush-friendly Texas and California based oil companies such as Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Valero and Clark. After Israel attacked and occupied the West Bank this past March, on April 22 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called on Arab oil exporters to stop sales to the United States and Israel, as well as to cut their exports in half. And he announced that Iraq would stop exporting oil for 30 days or until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories, an announcement that triggered an immediate increase in world oil prices. The United Sates government and oil experts initially downplayed the impact of this announcement. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), a strong supporter of Alaskan oil-drilling, even called for prohibiting US direct and indirect imports of Iraqi oil in response to Saddam's action. But the Bush administration opposes this Senate plan to ban U.S. imports of Iraqi oil out of concern it could "undermine a U.N. program to meet Iraq's humanitarian needs." Therefore Venezuela has become a wild card for the US against the Iraq/Gulf region OPEC price monopoly. Although Venezuela is the third largest US oil exporter after Canada and Saudi Arabia, Venezuela's supply alone does not fundamentally affect international oil pricing. However, if the US depends less on oil from the Gulf and relies more on other cheap suppliers such as Mexico and Venezuela, it can undermine OPEC's price monopoly in favor of the US in the long run, and won't have to worry so much about the oil politics of those Gulf countries who are angry about US support for Israel's war on Palestine. Compared with the Washington-friendly governments of Canada and Mexico, Venezuela's popularly elected president Hugo Chavez is not so friendly with Uncle Sam. The US was angry at Venezuela's refusal to allow foreign oil companies to invest, at its continuing to sell oil to Cuba, at its using its OPEC membership status to maintain high oil prices, at its lack of support for "Plan Columbia" and at its criticism of the US "War on Terrorism." Washington worries that Venezuela will become a second Cuba, and that it will undermine American efforts to control the global oil market. It was in this context, when international oil prices steady increased early this year, that strikes and mass protests initiated and organized by pro-U.S. Venezuelan business councils and pro-business right-wing trade unions spread across Venezuela's oil producing sector. For several months, the Venezuelan oligarchy (jokingly referred to as the "oilygarchy"), its right-wing media and the U.S. government had been provoking civilian opposition to President Chavez, a deja-vu of the CIA-backed Chilean military coup against President Allende 30 years earlier. On April 12 when an ill-planned military coup against Chavez was attempted, the US supported the coup. Two days later when the coup failed and Chavez was back in power, Sen. Jesse Helms, the Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican, said he hoped that Chavez "has learned from his ordeal." It remains to be seen how long Iraq, Venezuela and the situation in Palestine will affect the international oil market, but it's clear that in this round the US has lost the game. This loss will affect Bush's decisions on Palestine - he will not be able to risk further angering Middle Eastern countries, and may have to delay the planned mass military campaign against Iraq. Is Somebody's Loss Someone Else's Gain? Ironically, while the US and western countries would like to see lower oil prices, on the flip side of the coin higher oil prices mean more income for US oil companies and boosted investment returns for oil-related mutual funds. In New York, for example, oil-related stocks comprise about 85% of Excelsior's Energy and Natural Resources Funds portfolio, said Michael Hoover, the fund's manager. And today's higher oil price --influenced by OPEC -- means more return on oil-related investments. "The price isn't so high that it chokes growth, but high enough that they've a good return on investment," Hoover said. Higher oil prices mean more secure profits for some oil companies as well, such as Exxon Mobile Corp. Oil stocks act as a hedge when instability in the Middle East unhinges much of the market. It is clear that one of the reasons the US maintains the Iraqi sanctions is to allow the major oil companies to reap huge profits. Yet the overriding motivation behind US policies is to retain hegemony over the oil-rich Persian Gulf which provides about a quarter of the world's oil. Above all, the goal is to send an unmistakable message: that any country bold enough to stand up to the US will reap the same unprecedented and brutal consequences inflicted upon Iraq. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- www.tenc.net - Emporer's new clothes (Jared Israel)* www.copvcia.com - From the Wilderness (Michael Ruppert)* http://davesweb.cnchost.com/ - Center for Informed America (Dave MacGowan)* www.michaelmoore.com - Follow the Stupid White Men book tour * www.jimhightower.com - Get on the Rolling Thunder bandwagon! www.mwaw.org - media workers against the war www.annoy.com - biting satire http://www.ourfuture.org/front.asp - Campaign for America's Future, progressive bent * www.fair.org - Fairness and Accuracy in reporting www.democracyrising.org - Ralph Nader www.counterpunch.org - Alexander Cockburn et al. www.workingforchange.com - Working Assets sponsored www.wsws.org - world socialist web site www.guerrillanews.com - check out the Crack the CIA flick for starters http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/ - conservative idiots of the week http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/ - good overview, perspective and irony, etc. www.thismodernworld.com - the weekly cartoon www.parallel-youniversity.com/ - UK Fraser Clark's multi-colored weekly compilation called UPgrade ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000021883mar26.story Industry's a Key Player in Energy Data Politics: Bush team, faced with a deadline, releases documents on task force. Many passages are edited out, fanning controversy. By Richard Simon, Edmund Sanders and Elizabeth Shogren March 26 2002 WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration Monday released thousands of documents on its energy task force, showing that industry groups provided substantial input in drafting the president's energy plan. In putting out 11,000 pages of documents before a midnight deadline, the Energy Department gave new ammunition to critics of the administration's energy policy, who say it is tilted in favor of the coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries. The documents show that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with more than 30 industry representatives at eight sessions from Feb. 14 to April 26. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America and the American Coal Co. were among the business groups invited to those sessions. No representatives of environmental or consumer groups were listed as meeting with Abraham. In a statement, Abraham said the documents show that the energy plan was "balanced" and that the Energy Department "not only sought but included all viewpoints." Department officials said they sought input from environmentalists but were often rebuffed. Environmental groups have said their calls to administration officials weren't returned. The department said that Abraham had declined a number of requests from business executives for meetings. The documents did little to quell a legal and political controversy over the dealings of the energy task force, established by President Bush only days after he took office. Bush, a former oilman, named Vice President Dick Cheney, who had led an energy services company, to head the task force. The administration's refusal to provide details of the task force's meetings led the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to file its first-ever lawsuit Feb. 22 against the executive branch. That lawsuit has not been resolved. Separately, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization, and Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, successfully brought court cases forcing the Energy Department and other federal agencies that participated in the task force to make their records available. Those two organizations had sought documents last spring under the Freedom of Information Act and sued when it appeared that the government was dragging its feet on those requests. The two judges in these lawsuits set Monday as the deadline to begin releasing the documents. Energy Dept. Withholds Thousands of Pages In addition to the Energy Department documents, about 5,000 pages of documents were released Monday by the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget. The Energy Department withheld 15,000 pages of documents. Of the 11,000 provided, many were heavily redacted. The omissions fanned the controversy over the task force's secret meetings and contacts with industry groups, many of which were sources of sizable donations to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Abel Lopez, director of an Energy Department office that deals with requests for records, said the deletions were permitted under the Freedom of Information Act, which "protects advice, recommendations and opinions" that are part of the executive branch's decision-making process. Such redaction is not uncommon. Under the Freedom of Information Act, government agencies may refuse to release information for a variety of reasons, including protecting an individual's privacy or shielding policy debates. But Judicial Watch officials accused the administration of holding back key records and vowed to return to court. "They're withholding information that the public has a right to obtain," said Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel of the conservative watchdog group. The documents were provided to a variety of environmental groups and media organizations, including The Times, which had requested the information under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the California energy crisis last year was a much-discussed topic at the Energy Department, with e-mails on the state's troubles often flagged as high priority. But in most cases, the content of the e-mails was edited out. "Virtually all the e-mails we have seen have been completely blanked out," said John Walke, director of clean air programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are huge blank passages associated with the e-mails. Some of the sentences are cut off in the middle and redacted out in the bizarre way." Walke was particularly interested in learning about plans for the new source review provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires plants to install state-of-the-art pollution control devices when they renovate their plants in a way that increases pollution. But while the phrase "New Source Review" or its abbreviation may appear in the subject or below an attachment icon, there is no text. "It gives you nothing," Walke said. "The substance is purposefully stricken from the document." Give-and-Take Revealed in E-Mails Among the documents released were e-mails between energy officials, detailed schedules for the secretary's chief of staff and other key officials, e-mails from citizens praising the plan or suggesting various technologies that would help solve the country's energy woes. Some of the e-mails from industry lobbyists and representatives to key members of the administration's energy task force suggested that there was significant give-and-take in the development of the plan. For instance, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn. and the Nuclear Energy Institute supplied recommended paragraphs to drop into specific sections of the plan. The release also included many documents already public, such as energy proposals from think tanks, environmental groups and industry associations; administration officials' testimony to Congress; letters to the agency from members of Congress; and news reports on energy troubles from newspapers, wire services and broadcast outlets. The EPA documents included appeals by the oil industry for reducing the number of gasoline formulas used across the country and by the auto industry for reevaluating the government's fuel-economy standards. The administration's plan called for studying both issues. Democratic lawmakers contend that the energy industry, including scandal-plagued Enron Corp., heavily influenced shaping of a production-tilted energy policy that favors the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries. Indeed, the administration has acknowledged that Enron officials met six times with task force officials, including once with Cheney himself. The Republican-controlled House last summer approved an energy plan that included a number of the administration's initiatives, including opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. The Democratic-controlled Senate has been bogged down in a debate on a far different energy bill that would stress conservation over production. The GAO is continuing to wage its legal battle to secure additional information, including White House records. Administration officials have said they may claim executive privilege--a doctrine that presidents from George Washington onward have used to withhold information from Congress or the judiciary--to maintain the confidentiality of Cheney's records. They also contend that releasing the information would set a bad precedent for future administrations seeking candid advice from outside experts. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that the release of the documents did not alter the White House's opposition to making public the details of Cheney's meetings. "The constitutional principle that the president and the vice president have enunciated remains in place," Fleischer said, "and the president will continue to fight for that." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This information was on a USENET newsgroup but appears worth passing along. Several other excellent links on the DOE papers, and industry contributions to both parties can be found at: http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/taskforce/tfinx.asp http://www.opensecrets.org/news/energy_task_force/doelist.asp The copied story on how the admin tapped other alternative energy funds is provided as follows: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020329/ts_nm/energy_bush _dc_2&printer=1 Bush Tapped Solar Energy Funds to Print Energy Plan Fri Mar 29, 9:33 AM ET By Tom Doggett WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While environmentalists have slammed the White House national energy plan for not doing enough to promote renewable energy, the Bush administration found those government research programs useful in paying the bill for printing copies of the 170-page plan. Photos Reuters Photo The administration took money from the Energy Department's solar and renewable energy and energy conservation budgets to pay for the cost of printing its national energy plan. Documents released under court order by the Energy Department this week revealed that $135,615 was spent from the DOE's solar, renewables and energy conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House energy plan released last May. Another $1,317.39 was spent for producing 16 "briefing boards" used by administration officials to illustrate and explain the White House energy plan. The newly released documents also show that $176.40 was taken from the energy conservation program to pay for an Alaska trip by Andrew Lundquist, the White House energy task force's staff director, to promote the energy plan. The administration's energy policy called for drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (news - web sites), a proposal strongly opposed by environmentalists. At the same time the White House tapped the renewable budget for funds to print the energy plan, administration was urging Congress to cut the renewable and energy efficiency research budgets by more than 50 percent. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), who headed the White House energy task force, criticized environmentalists for relying too much on renewables and conservation to solve the nation's energy problems. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," Cheney said two weeks before the energy plan was released last May. The administration did try to spread around the cost of producing the energy plan. It dipped into the DOE's fossil energy program, which covers primarily oil research, to pay $100.92 for a hotel room near the Government Printing Office where the policy publication was being produced. The documents did not name the official or if the hotel offered a government rate. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Time Ripe for International Tribunal on The Great 9.11 Deception ? Ever since it happened, people with any historical insight have known that the official version(s) of the Sept 11 terrorism is a big lie. People knřwledgeable of treacherous deceipt being a normal pretext, for example Reichstag Fire 1933, Pearl Harbour, Italy's 'red' brigades, Mossad's routine deceptions, etc., were not in doubt for one moment. By asking the fundamental question of any criminal case: Whom benefits the crime, it turned out that all of the foreseeable consequences of this attack would be in favour of the illigitimate fascist US regime at a very critical moment for its reign: The Bush gang was facing a long economic depression, bankruptcy of mega corporations like Enron and others, complete revelation by the global resistance movement of the devastating consequences of the worldwide corporate conspiracy and their international instruments for suppression and exploitaion, etc. But suddenly the 9.11 attacks under pretext of blaming 'terrorists' opened up for realization of all of the pre-existing fascist agenda for total world domination, occupation of Central Asia's oil, attacking other countries with oil reserves or non-compliant governments, cutting the constitutional rights in the Homeland so as to eliminate any dissent, etc. The institutions to prevent and counteract this criminal agenda - the Democratic Party and the media - being complicit and therefore out of function, have left it for the people itself to stop the madness. For 6 months the Democratic Party - besides voting for the so-called 'Patriotic Act' - have done nothing for unmasking the treason. When some symbolic investigation finally had to be initiated they chose a CIA representative to lead the investigation of CIA ! The completely silent mainstream media are owned by the culprits and on top of that run by 50 Zionists with a pro Sharon fascist agenda. This war-criminal probably had a central role in the Great Deception. The control functions of the 'democracy' thus being non-existent, several patriots therefore have spent the last 6 months with researching what REALLY happened. And now an overwhelming evidence of the events has emerged, see for example http://www.copvcia.com, http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/frameup, http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFalloutShelter http://www.apfn.org http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/agentsmiley http://www.truthout.org http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/insight.htm http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-crusade The logical next stage calls for a synthesis of the huge amounts of evidence collected by these experts. As the publication of the conclusion for the time being is the only hope for stopping the warmongers, a maximum spreading of this information in spite of the silence of the corporate media is essential. A tribunal of internationally renown personalities could evaluate the evidence gathered by the experts. If possible, government employees involved in the conspiracy could witness, if guarantee for their security from becoming assassinated by CIA could be provided for in one way or the other. All governments of the world should be invited to attend the tribunal to evaluate for themselves whether the 'war on terrorism' hereinafter should be supported, or respectively rejected as a criminal pretext for subverting their own countries. This people's court of course also should invite the US terror regime to publicly defend its ridiculous version of its Sept 11 terror. Please send all comments and proposals with regard to experts, tribunal members, location, protection of possible witnesses, etc., to the listserv http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/take_over The United Peoples http://www.unitedpeoples.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/archive/new sid_1873000/1873368.stm Anthrax attacks 14/3/02 A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control. The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed five people. In the wake of Sept 11th, the anthrax attacks caused panic throughout the States and around the world. But has the FBI found the whole case too hot to handle? Our science editor Susan Watts reported from Washington. SUSAN WATTS: America's anthrax attack last autumn was second only to that on the Twin Towers in the degree of shock and anxiety it caused...Some even say the anthrax letters triggered sub-clinical hysteria in the American people...yet this, the first major act of biological terrorism the world has seen remains an unsolved crime... Initially the investigation looked for a possible Al-Qaeda or Iraqi link, then to a domestic terrorist, then inwards to the US bio-defence programme itself. But in the last four or five weeks the investigation seems to have run into the sand...There have been several theories as to why ... Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg - an acknowledged authority on US bio-defence - claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an arrest would be embarrassing to the US authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes further...suggesting there could have been a secret CIA field project to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail - whose top scientist went badly off the rails... DR BARBARA ROSENBERG: FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: Some very expert field person would have been given this job and it would have been left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out. The result might have been a project gone badly awry if he decided to use it for his own purposes and target the media and the senate for his own motives as not intended by the govt project...but this is a possibility that I think needs to be considered WATTS: And another leading bio-defence analyst has already sketched out a similar profile for the kind of person likely to be behind the anthrax attacks... MILTON LEITENBERG: CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL & SECURITY STUDIES: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: I would think it was somebody who had this kind of experience, and I think the word that I used for you was 'a cowboy' when we first spoke, that simply means in the United States someone who feels such bravura in his actions, he feels he's a free actor, he can decide what should be done and what shouldn't be done, and what the reason is. WATTS: In recent weeks, the focus of the investigation has been the US army medical research institute at Fort Detrick near Washington. Fort Detrick is the site at the centre of a web of military centres spread across the US and twilight private companies which work with these military sites hand-in-hand as contractors... Colonel David Franz was in charge at Fort Detrick for eleven years - he's had hands-on experience with biological agents and has his own ideas about the kind of person the FBI should be looking for. COLONEL DAVID FRANZ: FORMER DETRICK MEDICAL RESEARCH PROG, 1987-98: It's not someone who just got on the Internet or went to the library and got a book and held the book in one hand and a big wooden spoon in the other and stirred up batches. It's someone who has spent a significant amount of time I believe working with a spore former of some kind and knew how to grow ...and how to purify and how to dry WATTS: Inside accounts by former staff at Fort Detrick during the nineties reveal a research site in disarray with questionable security measures. We spoke to one former lab technician now working in Belize about unexplained night-time activities in the lab. DR MARY BETH DOWNS: ST MATTHEW'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: FORMER FORT DETRICK EMPLOYEE: I came in developed my negatives and here they said anthrax and I looked at this little counter that would have been putting the sequential numbers on the film and there weren't any films missing and yet I knew that Friday I had used it and it hadn't said anthrax. WATTS: What did that suggest to you had been happening over the weekend? DOWNS: That someone had been in there working on anthrax....Anyone who did have access to the labs was not monitored in what they did, either in what they did in the lab that is the amount of agent they were growing, or in what they did with that agent, that is if they put it in their pocket and took it home ... WATTS: Such is the FBI's determination to establish if Fort Detrick is at the heart of this that it has turned to genomic analysis of the powder itself...The Inst for Genomic Research was founded by Craig Venter - the man who sped up the decoding of the Human Genome... their anthrax team has created a DNA "fingerprint" of anthrax taken from the body of the first person to be killed - a Florida-based newspaper man. They're looking for differences between this so-called Florida "strain" and stored samples from a number of US military sites This is the first time genomic analysis has been used for microbial forensics...Tim Read is one of the world's leading authorities on the genetic make-up of anthrax . He compared the fingerprint of the Florida strain with that of samples originating at Fort Detrick. The results are not yet published - so he's being careful what he says: DR TIMOTHY READ: THE INSTITUTE OF GENOMIC RESEARCH: They're definitely related to each other ...closely related to each other WATTS: Could they be so closely related that one could consider them to be one and the same thing? READ: I'm not commenting on that... WATTS: But the real answer may lie not just in where the anthrax came from, but who had access to it. Veterans of the 1960s US germ warfare programme were the obvious first thought. Early on in the investigation, there was one name that immediately came to many people, but few dared whisper it aloud. William Capers Patrick the third was part of the original US programme, which officially drew to a close in the 1960s...The New York Times claimed last December he was the author in 1998 of a secret paper study on the possible effects of anthrax sent through the mail, although he now denies that. ... We went to see Bill Patrick to ask him if he might know the culprit... Hello Susan Watts BBC Patrick is an acknowledged showman...known for his startling demonstrations ...some in less than classified company. During the course of our interview he told us several pieces of technical information which one expert said could help anyone intending to create an anthrax weapon. WILLIAM CAPERS PATRICK III: BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CONSULTANT: I've prepared two harmless simulant powders... beautiful flow properties... WATTS: It's clear from what Bill Patrick told us that he's been a central figure in the bio-defence community for many years and that he may well have met or come across the person behind the attacks... PATRICK: Most of my discussions about the biological problem has been in secure conferences and meetings, and involve people with need to know, with security clearance and what have you. I don't talk about 'how to', I don't get into 'how to' with many people, no people other than the fact that those who really have a need to know. WATTS: Does it nag at you in the back of your mind that possibly you do know him? PATRICK: Possibly, possibly, I could have talked to these people. But it would have been within the context of their having a need to know. WATTS: He told me two FBI agents and an official from the attorney general's office interviewed him for 3 and a half hours two weeks ago. He says they told him he had been a suspect, but left him believing he was in the clear. And just to put on record can I ask you did you perpetrate these attacks.. PATRICK: my goodness I did not ....I did not...I'm an American patriot. WATTS: Patrick was on the UN team that inspected Iraqi weapons facilities in the mid 1990s, and he WAS surprised the FBI didn't come to him straight after the attacks, simply because of his expertise. He acknowledges it was only logical to consider him a suspect, but for Patrick, the most likely explanation, or perhaps the most comfortable, is that the powder and the motive originated overseas - in some rogue state... PATRICK: I would hate to think that anyone in our country.. that would do this to our own people, if we ever find whoever does this I hope it comes from overseas, because that way I would.. well I don't want.. I want someone to be caught, I want the perpetrator to be caught, but I would rather think that it came from our enemies outside of our own country as opposed to our own people perpetrating this crime against our own WATTS: Bill Patrick is no longer seen as a suspect, but the net IS closing around someone at the heart of the US germ warfare programme. We now know by piecing together information from well-placed sources that there's another individual. He's been interviewed by FBI agents, and remains under widespread suspicion... But he's no loner. He's likely to have worked on a key government project in the past and to have a network of friends and colleagues he can rely on. The possibility that more than one person is involved may answer some of the perplexing geographical questions about where the attacks originated. DR RONALD ATLAS: AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MICROBIOLOGISTS: I think that the significance of focussing on a group is that you can have one person with the expertise to produce this weaponised anthrax and someone else to actually deliver it to Trenton. I think that a large part of the investigation early on focused on AN individual. As such we would ask the question, could that individual have gotten to New Jersey. If you begin to think that it could have involved two or more, then the alibi of an individual that I was not near New Jersey may in fact fall apart and you could look at someone else delivering it... WATTS: The private contractor companies linked to the military and jokingly referred to as "beltway bandits" because they're sprinkled around the Washington beltway ring-road, is where individuals with the right mix of skills might be working. Some of these contractors are now known to have been involved in classified bio-defence projects. One of these secret projects, carried out in the Nevada desert, was part of a series of three In the first few days of September last year - immediately prior to the attacks of the 11th, the New York Times carried a major investigation which at any other time would have been a story of huge significance...It revealed three secret bio-defence projects at a time when the American people believed none was taking place. One - run by a contractor - Battelle - was to create genetically altered anthrax. The question now is - are there more such projects? MILTON LEITENBERG: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: now we've discovered that the CIA is in this business too, though presumably only through contractors. But we don't know how many contractors. One contractor is now publicly disclosed, Battelle, that did one of those projects. There may be other contractors, so there was this whole story has not been clarified publicly, so that's the rest of your iceberg, in other words we don't know how many contractors, we don't know how many projects. WATTS: The 1998 paper study on anthrax in the mail was one secret project. Dr Rosenberg is making the astonishing suggestion that there may have been a deadly follow-up by somebody else. Last time she questioned the investigation, she was attacked by the FBI and the White House. But she says she's prepared to speak out again because she's so afraid of what might happen next. DR BARBARA ROSENBERG: FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: This person is.. knows a lot about forensic matters, knows exactly what he can be prosecuted for and what he can get away with and I think he had some personal matters that he might have wanted to settle but I think in addition that he felt that biodefence was being under-emphasised for some time in the past WATTS: Rosenberg's claims are astonishing but she's an insider with good contacts. She thinks the FBI must act soon. ROSENBERG: I think the time is rapidly coming when it will be very important to bring him to trial, even if they don't think they have sufficient evidence. This might at least, if not result in a criminal conviction, make it possible to bring civil charges somewhat like what happened to OJ Simpson in the past. So I think it's time to start moving because it's very important from the point of view of deterrence of any possible future terrorist. WATTS: America's desire to protect its biodefense programme from scrutiny at all costs was part of why it walked away from an international agreement to control biological weapons last summer. Could its near obsessive secrecy have come home to roost? breeding a climate that allowed one of its experts to take a step too far and turn bio-terrorist against his own? THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS READ OUT AFTER THE BROADCAST : The CIA have told Newsnight they totally reject Dr Rosenberg's theory and say they were unaware of ANY project to assess the impact of anthrax sent through the mail. -------------------------------------------------------------------- EX-CIA DIRECTOR WOOLSEY CALLED IT A BLOCKBUSTER We think Woolsey, who served as CIA director under former President Clinton is right. "James Woolsey, a former CIA director who favors military action against Iraq and is critical of his former agency's performance on Middle East terrorism, called the New Yorker article "a blockbuster." Before you read it please read the first short piece immediately below: "Protecting Saddam By WILLIAM SAFIRE March 18, 2002 WASHINGTON - Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson." The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 - five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. - between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there. On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister (like his boss, a former K.G.B. disinformation specialist) said of this widely reported Iraqi-Qaeda connection: "That is wrong information." That denial of an observed connection between bin Laden's suicide bomber and Saddam's spymaster was preceded by a David Ignatius column in The Washington Post last week deriding such reports by me and by James Woolsey, former C.I.A. chief, in The Wall Street Journal. Pooh-poohing the notion of a meeting that "supposedly took place," Ignatius asserted "there is no solid evidence" of such a link. On the contrary, he opined, "hard intelligence to support the Baghdad- bin Laden connection is somewhere between 'slim' and 'none.' " My colleague in columny, a respected commentator with a fine writing style, bases his conclusion on recent interviews with "senior European officials." (He also wears another hat as executive editor of The International Herald Tribune and I am buttering him up in the hope he will not kill my column therein.) These unidentified Europeans tell him that "the C.I.A. now shares their skepticism about the Atta-al Ani connection. . . . Even the Czechs . . . have gradually backed away." Let us now depart from the line that Ivanov and "senior European officials" and supposedly backing-away Czechs are peddling to gullible commentators. (Couldn't help it; you can cut that line in the Trib.) On solid evidence: The Czech intelligence agency, B.I.S., had the Iraqi embassy spy in Prague under constant visual and wiretap surveillance, especially after a threat to the Radio Free Europe headquarters there. Three months ago, after the absolve-Saddam campaign began to cast doubt on the report of the Atta-al Ani meeting at the Prague airport, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross issued a statement that "B.I.S. guarantees the information, so we stick by that information." No backing away; on the contrary, strong reaffirmation. On corroboration of the evidence that Atta flew 7,000 miles, from Virginia Beach to Prague and back to Florida (his third trip to Prague in a year): The F.B.I. has car-rental and other records that Atta left for Prague on April 8, 2001, and returned on April 11. The B.I.S. report of the meeting that Saddam's case officer had with the suicide hijacker fell precisely within those dates. Czech intelligence, in identifying al-Ani's contact as Atta, had no knowledge of the F.B.I.'s evidence that independently corroborates Atta's brief presence in Prague. On C.I.A. assessment of the evidence: James Risen reported in The New York Times last month that while not enough evidence ties Saddam specifically to Sept. 11, "senior American intelligence officials have concluded that the meeting between Mr. Atta and the Iraqi officer, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, did take place." Congressional intelligence committees could confirm that with one secure phone call. Now let's walk back the cat, as the spooks say. What's behind the campaign to cast doubt on the meeting? It cannot be only posterior-covering by junior C.I.A. analysts and N.S.A. "Big Ear" monitors who should have known of a meeting about what was then believed to be the terrorist threat to Americans at R.F.E. in Prague. The smooth Russian diplomat, "European officials" and Arab potentates seeking to erase the evidence have one purpose: to throw dust in our eyes about Saddam's clandestine support of international terrorism. They don't want the U.S. to have any reason to liberate the Iraqi people. They see great profit in doing oil business with Saddam and collecting tens of billions in debts. The name of their game is delay - to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/opinion/18SAFI.html "March 19, 2002 In Saddam's Shadow Issue of 2002-03-25 Posted 2002-03-18 In this week's issue, Jeffrey Goldberg reports from Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, where, in the late nineteen-eighties, Saddam Hussein waged a devastating chemical and, possibly, biological war against the Kurdish people. Today, the Kurds have achieved limited autonomy, thanks to the U.S.-British no-fly zone, but they still face the threat of ethnic cleansing. Goldberg's report also raises questions about fears of future biochemical attacks against America or Israel-as well as Iraq's possible links to Al Qaeda. Here Goldberg discusses his trip to Kurdistan and his article. THE NEW YORKER: To write this article, you travelled to Kurdistan. How did you get in? What were some of the barriers, and some of the risks? JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Actually, one of the most difficult parts of reporting this story was simply figuring out a way into Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan has three neighbors: Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Turkey would seem like the obvious way to go-it's an American ally, after all. But the Turks seem to believe that any publicity for any Kurd anywhere would impact them negatively, so they refused to let me cross their border into Iraqi Kurdistan.*** As for the other two countries, I approached the Iranians about getting permission to cross, but they weren't interested, so it was up to the Syrians, who, surprisingly, came through. I went to Damascus, then flew to Kameshli, and from there I went by Land Rover to the Tigris River, where I picked up a rowboat with a wheezy outboard engine and floated across into Kurdistan-a very scenic way to go, by the way. Once I was in Kurdistan, my hosts-the two rival Kurdish parties-made things as easy as possible for me. They provided me with security and made sure I got to see the right people. They get very few visitors, and certainly very few American visitors. Your account of Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks on Kurdish towns and villages in 1988 is horrifying, both because of what happened and because, fourteen years later, the full story is not well known. Why has the genocide of the Kurds not made a greater impression on the West? I think the answer is simple: the man who committed the genocide is still in power, fourteen years after the fact, and the world is still dealing with him. It is estimated that as many as two hundred thousand Kurds were killed, including five thousand in a single gas attack on the city of Halabja. Dozens of other towns and villages were also struck by chemical weapons. If the world were to fully acknowledge the crime that took place, wouldn't it be a moral necessity to remove Saddam Hussein from power? Imagine if Hitler remained in power into the early nineteen-sixties. I doubt we'd have heard as much about the Holocaust. There are other reasons, too. One is the physical isolation of the Kurds, and another is their relative lack of knowledge about how to play the Western game of public relations. How were you received by the people you met there? The Kurds are, to my mind, one of the most naturally pro-American groups of people in the world. They want American troops to protect them from Saddam. (The American and British air forces already do that, enforcing a no-fly zone over much of Kurdish territory.) There's a certain frustration in Kurdistan over the American unwillingness so far to rush in and fix the problem, and there's also frustration on the part of the victims of the chemical attacks, who, even today, are still suffering and still in need of medical attention. Some Kurds I met in hospitals and clinics were disappointed to learn that I wasn't a doctor. And, in certain cases, I, too, was disappointed that I wasn't a doctor; some of the problems these people face could be solved with modern medicine and technology. You note that the survivors' homes have never been decontaminated-they drink from wells that were poisoned and sleep in rooms that were once filled with gas. What is the long-range medical prognosis for the people in these communities? And how did you feel, as a visitor, breathing the air there and drinking the water? I could have assumed that the chemicals would have broken down by now, that they're not poisoning people who live in these towns and villages. But it is a dangerous assumption, because there is no definitive word on which chemical agents were used. There is no long-range medical prognosis for these communities, because there has been no large-scale, systematic study of the attacks or their effects. Did I feel safe? Yes. Maybe it was a bad assumption, but it got me through the day. I do try to drink bottled water when I can***. The Kurds are one of Saddam Hussein's targets, but so is Israel. How vulnerable is Israel to chemical and biological attacks from Iraq? What do you think are the possible consequences of a showdown between the two countries? *** I think Israel is ready, but I also think that it simply takes one missile, or one low-flying bomber, or one terrorist with a supply of anthrax and access to the ventilation system of an office tower to make a horrible mess. The belief is, of course, that an Iraqi biological or chemical attack on Israel would be answered by a nuclear attack from Israel. Then we'd be in a new world altogether. What, if anything, can you conclude about the connections between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda? I'm making no conclusions; I'm just reporting what I've heard. Without full access to secret intelligence, I'm not capable of making a definitive conclusion on this subject. The only thing I can say is that it seems worthy of further American investigation, because I spoke with people who seemed, to me, to be credible, who said they had information about such connections. What are the United States' options with regard to Iraq? There is a fairly convincing argument that moral considerations need to play some role in foreign policy-that Saddam Hussein's murder of his own citizens should affect how we deal with him. ***I believe that moral considerations need to play a role in the formulation of foreign policy, and I believe that all humans have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. What do you see happening next? Ah, that's the big question.***." http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?020325on_onlineonly01 Issue of 2002-03-25 Posted 2002-03-17 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 17, 2002 THIS WEEK IN THE NEW YORKER PRESS CONTACTS: Perri Dorset, Director, Public Relations (212) 286-5898 Betsy Judelson, Junior Publicist (212) 286-5996 In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq, captured members of Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group operating in the area, tell Jeffrey Goldberg, in "The Great Terror," in the March 25, 2002, issue of The New Yorker, that their organization "has received funds directly from Al Qaeda; that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with Al Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of Al Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of Al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan. If these charges are true," Goldberg writes, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought." The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. haven't come out yet," the director says. According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reports, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in Al Qaeda." One official explains, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri." The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan; last September, the officials say, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam three hundred thousand dollars. These officials say that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they say, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service. "A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official tells Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer." Kurdish intelligence officials say that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they do claim that several men associated with Al Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja. Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking Al Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, says that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him. After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he says. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group"-Ansar al-Islam-"but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat." In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle- to high-ranking member of Al Qaeda, and who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan. Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, tells Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late nineteen-nineties. In 2000, Jawad's Al Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad tells Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon. "There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of Al Qaeda since 1992," Jawad says. "The Great Terror" also provides a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late nineteen-eighties, during which as many as two hundred thousand Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million. Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out two hundred thousand men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children." Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she says, "the Kurds were for practice." Gosden tells Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery." Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, tells Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?' " Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent." Baban tells Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban says, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities." In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, tells Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer says. Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg writes, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provides information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he says, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."" http://newyorker.com/press/content/ "Magazine: Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida have ties in Iraq By JOHN MINTZ The Washington Post WASHINGTON - A new report in the New Yorker magazine suggests that Iraqi intelligence has been in close touch with top officials in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group for years, and that the two organizations jointly run a terrorist group that operates in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.*** the top ranks of the Defense Department, has scoured the world for such Saddam-al-Qaida connections. Yesterday some people in this camp hailed the New Yorker article as significant new evidence buttressing their viewpoint. The article focuses in part on a Muslim extremist guerrilla group in the Kurdish zone of Iraq called Ansar al-Islam, which it said is made up of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps. The article's author, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he interviewed several operatives of the group who had been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a pro-American Kurdish group that controls one province in northern Iraq. The captives said that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida are running Ansar, that a number of al-Qaida fighters fleeing Afghanistan have escaped to Iraqi Kurdish territory controlled by Ansar, and that Iraq hosted a top Egyptian leader of al-Qaida in Baghdad in 1992. *** The article asserted that U.S. intelligence agencies apparently had not adequately looked into what the Ansar captives have to say, and haven't completely debriefed the PUK leaders who have assembled a dossier on the alleged Iraq-al-Qaida ties. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, citing the complications in responding to such assertions over a weekend. James Woolsey, a former CIA director who favors military action against Iraq and is critical of his former agency's performance on Middle East terrorism, called the New Yorker article "a blockbuster." "The CIA has over recent years not been real enthusiastic about the Iraqi resistance, and I think that's a shame," Woolsey said on CNN's Late Edition. "If they got beat on this story by the New Yorker and Jeff Goldberg, three cheers for the fourth estate." "This is clearly a very important story," said a former senior U.S. official with deep experience in U.S. policy toward Iraq. He added that "it's likely that Saddam Hussein would try to destabilize the Kurdish areas" by using Ansar al-Islam, and that it's possible al-Qaida could have ties to the group.***. Under an 11-year-old arrangement after the Persian Gulf War, the PUK and a rival Kurdish faction control three semi-autonomous provinces in northern Iraq, and are protected from Iraqi attack by U.S. and British combat jets. A senior administration official disposed toward U.S. military confrontation with Iraq said the thrust of the New Yorker report "doesn't strike me as incredible, and may fill in gaps in our knowledge." "It sounds like an important story, and I'll be interested in what our intelligence people say," the official said***." http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_show.html?article=9699 "Magazine report links Sadaam, al-Qaida The Washington Post WASHINGTON-A new report in the New Yorker magazine suggests that Iraqi intelligence has been in close touch with top officials in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group for years, and that the two organizations jointly run a terrorist organization that operates in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.*** The article focuses in part on a Muslim extremist guerrilla group in the Kurdish zone of Iraq called Ansar al-Islam, which it said is made up of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps. The article's author, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he interviewed several operatives of the group who had been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a pro-American Kurdish group that controls one province in northern Iraq. The captives said that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida run Ansar, that a number of al-Qaida fighters fleeing Afghanistan have escaped to Iraqi Kurdish territory controlled by Ansar, and that Iraq hosted a top Egyptian leader of al-Qaida in Baghdad in 1992.*** James Woolsey, a former CIA director who favors military action against Iraq and is critical of his former agency's performance on Middle East terrorism, called the New Yorker article "a blockbuster." "This is clearly a very important story," said a former senior U.S. official with deep experience in U.S. policy toward Iraq. He added that "it's likely that Saddam Hussein would try to destabilize the Kurdish areas" by using Ansar al-Islam, and that it's possible al-Qaida could have ties to the group." http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/02/3/18/15319678.cfm see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42471-2002Mar17.html "Ansar Other Commonly Used Spellings: ANSAAR means helpers. These were the people of Madinah who responded to the Prophet's call to Islam and offered Islam a city-state power." http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/glossary/term.ANSAR.html "Arafat a plain north of Mecca. It is on this plain that humanity will be raised on the Day of Judgement for questioning and judgement. During the Hajj on the ninth day of the month of Zhu-l-Hijjah, Muslim pilgrims gather on this plain for one day." http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/glossary/term.ARAFAT.html "The Harkat ul-Ansar was formed by the merger of two Pakistani groups, Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami and Harkat ul-Mujahedin, and led by Maulana Saadatullah Khan. The merger of these two political groups and its transformation into a militant group came about as part of the Afghan jihad. With a pan-Islamic ideology, the outfit strove to achieve the secession of Jammu and Kashmir from India through violent means and its eventual merger with Pakistan. About 60 per cent of its estimated 1000 strong cadre were Pakistanis and Afghans. The Harkat-ul-Ansar was termed a terrorist organization by the US due to its association with the exiled Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in 1997. To avoid the repercussions of the US ban, the group was recast as the Harkat ul-Mujahideen in 1998." http://web.nps.navy.mil/~library/tgp/hua.htm "Osama bin Laden's most tragic impacts have been in Kashmir. That Indian province has been partitioned between India and Pakistan since 1949. However, the conflicts have intensified since bin Laden got involved in 1997. His Kashmir allies, the Ansar, imposed a strict Taliban style dress code, which suddenly banned jeans and jackets. Ansar militants in 1997 shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying satellite broadcasts. The Ansar's imposition of puritanical codes on Kashmiri Muslims pales beside the violence they carried out against the state's Sikhs and Hindus. Their emergence greatly intensified the violence in Kashmir, causing, as Human Rights Watch/Asia notes, a "tactical shift" in the separatists' strategy. In 1998, Ansar militants massacred more than 90 Hindu civilians, prompting 300,000 Hindus to flee to refugee camps in Delhi. Osama bin Laden has exacerbated the severity of the Taliban dictatorship and helped extend its rule in Afghanistan. Based largely on the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban faced serious obstacles in the north. Here other ethnic groups such as the Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras, have more liberal interpretations of Islam, and reject such characteristic Taliban abuses as denying women education and hospital care." "Saturday, March 16, 2002: A Taliban-style militia has emerged in the Kurd-controlled northern area of Iraq, which I think is still patrolled by US and UK planes.: The group - Ansar al-Islam - emerged just days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the US. It delivered a fatwa, or manifesto, to the citizens in mountain villages against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society there, according to Kurdish party leaders. Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, and Afghans - a composition similar to the multinational Al Qaeda network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border. The article has some speculation that Saddam Hussein may be funding these guys, to destabilize his Kurdish opposition. But the more likely inspiration is Al-Qaeda: "We have captured two of [Ansar's] bases and found the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US," says Mustapha Saed Qada, a PUK commander. "In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." He adds that the group has received $600,000 from the bin Laden network, and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers. In an interview with the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati, the group's leader, Mala Kreker, declared bin Laden the "crown on the head of the Islamic nation." You can tell they're trouble because their first priority is oppressing women.." "Coalition intelligence officials also have information that the al-Qaida lieutenant who met with Hezbollah leaders also met with members of the Sunni Muslim militant group Usbat al-Ansar, according to the Times report. Al-Qaida is also a Sunni group and has close ties to Usbat al-Ansar, according to the report." You are invited to join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheLoyalOpposition TheLoyalOpposition-subscribe@yahoogroups.com We are TheLoyalOpposition we support the war against terrorism even as we oppose the Bush-Cheney Gang. We hope that the war against terrorism is expanded to go after Saddam Hussein, who we believe is the Butcher Behind Bin Laden, and other terrorists from arafat to the monsters in Chechnya and Kosovo and Kashmir. We support all such anti-terrorist measures but we remember that it was Bush's Daddy who left Saddam in power in 1991 and we don't want to see that mistake repeated now. Please post exposes on Bush and Cheney et.al. Whatever can be used to Impeach Bush and Cheney will be a big help. Please remember to include sources such as book titles, authors, magazine and newspaper article dates and page numbers urls where available in your postings.etc. The goal is NOT a Hastert Presidency but a Gore Presidency. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheLoyalOpposition ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: "AnAmericanPeaceMovement" , "BayAreaActivistList" , "MayDayMMM-list" , "Compassionate Moms" , endsecrecy@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel Sheehan" , "Joe Firmage" , "a-act@egroups.com" , star-wars-dharma-walk@yahoogroups.com, "ARIANNA ONLINE" , "O'Reilly Factor" , "MSNBC" , "CBS24hours" <48hours@cbsnews.com>, "ABC News Webmaster" , "President George W. Bush" , "Vice President Richard Cheney" , truthamnestyreconciliation@yahoogroups.com, "Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space" , "RamseyClark InternationalActionCenter" , "NBC News" , ""US State Department Office of Inspector General"" , "Wall Street Journal (NY)" , "New York Times SrEd" , "Los Angeles Times - D.C. Bureau Chief" , "San Francisco Chronicle" , "San Jose Mercury News ( CA)" , "Chicago Tribune (IL)" , "MiamiHerald NationalNews" , "International Herald-Tribune" , "Politically Incorrect" , "CIADrugs List" , "Le Monde Diplomatique (France)" , "War Resisters League" , Friends@foxnews.com, MainLineNews@onelist.com, "Honorable William M. Thomas" , "Honorable Mayor Jerry Brown" , "CNN Reply" , "FoxNewsWire" , "MSNBC Hardball" , thepoint@cnn.com, "Linda Loyd" , "apbnews" , "Theresa Conroy - Phillynews" , "Gloria Campisi" , "Dan Rubin" , "Marty Moss-Coane" , "WHYY Radio NPR" , "Philadelphia Inquirer (PA)" , "Philadelphia Daily News" , "Jonathan Takiff" , "Jacqueline Soteropoulos" , "Howard Altman" , "IRAlist" , coordinator@cseti.org, "Dr. Steven Greer" CC: "Dr. Jack Sarfatti" , lcrowell@swcp.com, "Paul Zielinski" , alw@peaceinspace.com, webmaster@pravda.ru, weeklyfiles@filersfiles.com, quanta@mail.cruzio.com, mosca@optonline.net, Hankskids@aol.com, glenl@pacbell.net, "Dick Farley" , davidg3141@hotmail.com, sforacle@prodigy.net, truzzi@toast.net, mike@hia.com, product@northbeachlabs.com, "Dr. Evan Harris Walker" , creon@nas.nasa.gov, robbins@math.sfsu.edu, purple@ingress.com, yokatta@oxy.edu, schwann@webtrance.co.za, "Eldon Byrd" , "Kim Burrafato" , "Stephen Schwartz" , "Lara Johnstone" , "Ron Pandolfi" , "Dan Smith" , "Wes Thomas" 5 Airdates for One Hour Special Featuring Mike Ruppert on Canadian TVFormer award winning LAPD officer and now prominent investigative journalist on US government intel agency corruption, Mike Ruppert will appear on panel of experts in 5 upcoming air dates for Canadian TV with web access for transcript of program claiming US Government complicity in 9-11 attacks. Dr. Jackshift Sarfatti, with nominal physique of consciousness, says "it's all lies" (sight unseen) because The Schwartz told him so. What do you think? ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Ruppert [[[see more at http://www.copvcia.com]]] To: From The Wilderness Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 6:04 PM Subject: 5 Airdates for One Hour Special Featuring Mike Ruppert on Canadian TV 5 Airdates for One Hour Special Featuring Mike Ruppert on Canadian TV Canadian Mainstream TV to Air Roundtable of Experts, Gov't Official, Discussing US Gov't Complicity in 9-11 Attacks by Greta Knutzen, FTW Staff Writer TORONTO, Mar. 10, 2002 (FTW) - Michael C. Ruppert, editor and publisher of From The Wilderness, raised more than a few eyebrows, during a televised debate, when he presented a scathing indictment of US government complicity in the attacks of September 11. The program, produced by Vision TV, is estimated to reach 7 million North American homes. Vision TV Insight presents the special one-hour long edition of Mediafile, entitled "9/11 Roundtable," that will air on Thurs., Mar. 14, at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on the Vision TV network. Special added screenings have been scheduled for Mar. 15 at 7 AM and 1 PM and for Saturday Mar. 16 at 8 PM. All times are Eastern Standard Time. Six months after the attacks of September 11, the official explanation of events has been left largely unchallenged by mainstream North American media. The producers of Vision TV Insight have taken bold steps aimed at challenging the status quo, reminding us that the media does have a duty to inform and challenge its audience. The programme "9/11 Roundtable," follows on the heals of Vision TV's Medialfile host, Barrie Zwicker's controversial six-part commentary which boldly examined the official narrative of the events of September 11 and found it to be "frankly implausible." Zwicker's series touched a nerve. The positive response it received indicates that there is a growing audience that does indeed want answers to the questions exposed by the official explanation of events of September 11 and its aftermath. The groundswell of opposition to the official narrative of 9/11 is reflected by Ruppert's increasingly popular lecture series, bourgeoning FTW subscription lists and massive sales of his video, "The Truth and Lies about 9/11." Increasing numbers of people in all walks of life, are clearly eager for alternative analysis of the events of September 11 and unwilling to accept the official narrative any longer. "9/11 Roundtable," hosted by executive producer Rita Deverell, provides a forum for a long overdue yet refreshingly frank debate focusing on the question, what really happened on September 11? Ruppert faces an influential Canadian panel including Ron Atkey Q.C., former chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the agency responsible for CSIS (the Canadian intelligence community), journalist-educator Peter Desbarats, and ethicist Phyllis Creighton. Ruppert's insightful analysis challenged the panel to tackle thorny issues such as the relationship between illicit drug trade, oil and U.S. foreign policy; the long history between the bin Laden and Bush families; questions raised by the actions and inaction of the U.S. government prior to, and on, September 11; and the lack of plausibility and logic in the U.S. governments official explanation of those events. "9/11 Roundtable," provides a valuable alternative to the passive and subservient post-9/11mainstream media coverage and deserves audience attention. Transcripts of the show and Zwicker's controversial series can be obtained from http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/insight.htm Panel bios: Peter Desbarats was the Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario from 1981-97. He sat on the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia and was later appointed as the Maclean Hunter Chair of Communications Ethics at Ryerson University. Ron Atkey Q.C. was a former Conservative Solicitor General and minister in the government of Joe Clark. From 1984-89, he was the first chairman of he Security Intelligence Review Committee, the agency responsible for CSIS (the Canadian secret service). Phyllis Creighton serves on the Health Canada board on reproductive technologies. She is a council member of the International Peace Bureau, the oldest peace organization in the world. She was a member of the group that produced "Just War? Just Peace!," an educational resource for the Anglican and Lutheran churches. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-enron-bush-gao.html Bush Flatly Refuses to Hand Over Energy Papers By REUTERS March 13, 2002 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A defiant President Bush flatly refused on Wednesday to divulge details of internal energy task force meetings to congressional investigators, calling the information privileged and the request a threat to executive authority. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, sued the administration in February for records of the task force's meetings. Democratic lawmakers allege Enron Corp. and other energy companies played a disproportionately large role in the task force's deliberations, whereas environmentalists were largely shut out. The task force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, produced a policy favoring more oil and gas grilling as well as a revival of nuclear power. Cheney's office has acknowledged that representatives of Enron, Bush's biggest financial backer in the 2000 campaign, were among industry experts the task force consulted. But Bush insisted that releasing the documents would damage the executive branch's ability to obtain candid outside advice, signaling he was ready for courtroom combat. ``When the GAO demands documents from us, we're not going to give them to them,'' Bush told a White House news conference. ''These were privileged conversations.'' ``I have an obligation to make sure that the presidency remains robust and that the legislative branch doesn't end up running the executive branch,'' he added. Enron declared the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in December, destroying thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investor equity, and prompting 10 congressional committees, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department to launch investigations. An internal inquiry ordered by Enron's board alleged senior managers used off-the-books partnerships to hide losses, fool investors and enrich themselves. During the 45-minute press conference, the president did not mention by name Enron or its long-time auditor, the accounting firm Andersen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oct 26, 2001 Bin Laden's Family Cutting Ties With Carlyle Investment Firm in U.S. By Marcy Gordon The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Osama bin Laden's family in Saudi Arabia is cutting its financial ties with the Carlyle Group, a politically connected U.S. private investment firm, a source familiar with the relationship said Friday. The break was a mutual decision, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bin Laden family decided to sell its investment worth $2.02 million back to the firm mainly because its stake in a Carlyle fund that invests in buyouts of military and aerospace companies, the source said, confirming a report in Friday's editions of The New York Times. There had been criticism in Saudi Arabia after the Sept. 11 terror attacks that the family, which disowned exiled Islamic militant Osama bin Laden years ago, might profit from increased military spending in the U.S. war against terrorism. The family, whose construction company is one of the largest in the Middle East, also has invested with a number of other investment funds and financial institutions around the world, reportedly including U.S. financial services giant Citigroup, Deutsche Bank of Germany and the Dutch bank ABN Amro. Carlyle has some $14 billion in assets under management. Its chairman is Frank Carlucci, a former U.S. defense secretary. Former President George Bush, former secretary of state James Baker and Arthur Levitt, who had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission through most of the Clinton administration, are senior advisers to the firm. --- On the Net: Carlyle Group: http://www.carlylegroup.com ------------------------------------------------------------- The White House connection: Saudi 'agents' close Bush friends by Maggie Mulvihill, Jonathan Wells and Jack Meyers Boston Globe Tuesday, December 11, 2001 A powerful Washington, D.C., law firm with unusually close ties to the White House has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist front. The influential law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld has represented three wealthy Saudi businessmen - Khalid bin Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris - who have been scrutinized by U.S. authorities for possible involvement in financing Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network. In addition, Akin, Gump currently represents the largest Islamic charity in the United States, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Richmond, Texas. Holy Land's assets were frozen by the Treasury Department last week as government investigators probe its ties to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group blamed for suicide attacks against Israelis. Partners at Akin, Gump include one of President Bush's closest Texas friends, James C. Langdon, and George R. Salem, a Bush fund-raiser who chaired his 2000 campaign's outreach to Arab-Americans. Another longtime partner is Barnett A. "Sandy" Kress, the former Dallas School Board president who Bush appointed in January to work for the White House as an "unpaid consultant" on education reform. In September, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas for Holy Land records around the same time terrorist investigators froze the assets of a North Texas Internet firm hired by Holy Land. Holy Land shared office space with that firm, InfoCom Corp., which was raided by police on Sept. 5, just days before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Holy Land has denied any link to Hamas. According to Akin, Gump, the firm represents Holy Land in a federal lawsuit filed against the charity and another suspected Hamas entity by the parents of a man allegedly murdered by Hamas operatives in the Middle East. In a statement issued Friday, Akin, Gump said it decided last week to decline a request to represent Holy Land in its defense of terrorism-related charges made by the U.S. Treasury Department. Akin, Gump, which maintains an affiliate office in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, is also a registered foreign agent for the kingdom. It was paid $77,328 in lobbying fees by the Saudis during the first six months of 2000, public records show. In addition to the royal family, the firm's Saudi clients have included bin Mahfouz, who hired Akin, Gump when he was indicted in the BCCI banking scandal in the early 1990s. In 1999, the Saudi's placed bin Mahfouz under house arrest after reportedly discovering that the bank he controlled, National Commercial Bank in Saudi Aabia, funneled millions to charities believed to be serving as bin Laden fronts. A bin Mahfouz business partner, Al-Amoudi, was also represented by Akin, Gump. When it was reported in 1999 that U.S. authorities were also investigating Al-Amoudi's Capitol Trust Bank, Akin, Gump released a statement on behalf of their client denying any connections to terrorism. One year earlier, the firm had co-sponsored an investment conference in Ethiopia with Al-Amoudi. Akin, Gump partner and Bush fund-raiser Salem led the legal team that defended Idris, a banking protege of bin Mahfouz and the owner of El-Shifa, the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles in August 1998. cw-2 The plant was targeted days after terrorists - allegedly on the orders of bin Laden - bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. The U.S. Treasury Department also froze $24 million of Idris' assets, but Akin, Gump filed a lawsuit and the government later chose to release the money rather than go to court. Idris, who insists he has no connection whatsoever to bin Laden or terrorism, is now pursuing a second lawsuit with different attorneys seeking $50 million in damages from the United States. Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan political watchdog group, said Akin, Gump's willingness to represent Saudi power-brokers probed for links to terrorism presents a unique ethical concern since partners at the firm are so close to the president. The concern is more acute now, Lewis said, because Bush has faced stiff resistance from the kingdom in his repeated requests to freeze suspected terrorist bank accounts. "The conduct of the Saudis is just unacceptable by international standards, especially if they are supposed to be one of our closest allies," Lewis said. Speaking of Akin, Gump partner Kress' office in the White House, Lewis added: "That's not appropriate and frankly it's potentially troublesome because there is a real possibility of a conflict of interest. Basically you have a partner for Akin, Gump . . . inside the hen house." But another longtime Washington political observer, Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of counter-intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, said the political influence a firm like Akin, Gump has is precisely why clients like the Saudis hire them. "These are cozy political relationships . . . If you have a problem in Washington, there are only a few firms to go to and Akin, Gump is one of them," Cannistraro said. Cannistraro pointed out that Idris hired Akin, Gump during the Clinton presidency, when Clinton confidante Vernon Jordan was a partner at the firm. "He hired them because Vernon Jordan had influence . . . that's a normal political exercise where you are buying influence," he said. Akin, Gump is not the only politically wired Washington business cashing in on the Saudi connection. Burson-Marsteller, a major D.C. public relations firm, registered with the U.S. government as a foreign agent for the Saudi embassy within weeks of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. One of Burson-Marsteller's first public relations efforts for the Saudis was to run a large advertisement in the New York Times reading: "We Stand with You, America." The Washington chairman for Burson-Marsteller, which also maintains an office in Saudi Arabia, is Craig Veith, who ran communications for the Republican Party in the 1996 elections. Other GOP heavyweights who have held top positions at the PR giant include Sheila Tate, the campaign press secretary for the elder George Bush; Leslie Goodman, deputy director of communications for the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign; Craig L. Fuller, chairman of the 1992 Republican National Convention and elder Bush's vice presidential chief-of-staff. PART II | Bush advisers cashed in on Saudi gravy train By Maggie Mulvihill, Jack Meyers and Jonathan Wells Tuesday, December 11, 2001 Second of two parts. Many of the same American corporate executives who have reaped millions of dollars from arms and oil deals with the Saudi monarchy have served or currently serve at the highest levels of U.S. government, public records show. Those lucrative financial relationships call into question the ability of America's political elite to make tough foreign policy decisions about the kingdom that produced Osama bin Laden and is perhaps the biggest incubator for anti-Western Islamic terrorists. Nowhere is the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel more evident than within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers, starting with the president's father, George H.W. Bush. At the same time that the elder Bush counsels his son on the ongoing war on terrorism, the former president remains a senior adviser to the Washington D.C.-based Carlyle Group. That influential investment bank has deep connections to the Saudi royal family as well as financial interests in U.S. defense firms hired by the kingdom to equip and train the Saudi military. Last year, former President Bush visited Saudi Arabia's King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, but a Carlyle spokesman said the two did not discuss Carlyle business as previously reported. The elder Bush is reportedly paid between $80,000 and $100,000 for each Carlyle speech he makes. The company declined comment on the former president's pay. The Carlyle Group has also served as a paid adviser to the Saudi monarchy on the so-called "Economic Offset Program," an arrangement that effectively requires U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to give back a portion of their revenues in the form of contracts to Saudi businesses, most of whom are connected to the royal family. A company spokesman said yesterday that arrangement was ended "a few months ago," but said he did not know whether it was terminated before or after the Sept. 11 attacks. A spokesman for former President Bush, reached yesterday, had no immediate comment on his work for the Carlyle Group. These intricate personal and financial links have led to virtual silence in the administration on Saudi Arabia's failings in dealing with terrorists like bin Laden, said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group. "It's good old fashioned 'I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.' You have former U.S. officials, former presidents, aides to the current president, a long line of people who are tight with the Saudis, people who are the pillars of American society and officialdom," said Lewis. "So for that and other reasons no one wants to alienate the Saudis, and we are willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that might otherwise cause our blood to boil. We basically look away," he said. "Folks don't like to stop the gravy train." Some foreign policy observers said as long as American power brokers in lucrative business deals with the Saudis do not simultaneously craft U.S. foreign policy, there is no conflict of interest. "To have Bush Sr. on the board of Carlyle is not necessarily a significant problem because Carlyle has interests all over the world," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former counter-intelligence chief for the Central Intelligence Agency. Companies regularly entice powerful political figures to work for them, he said. "It's kind of business as usual. Where it really affects things is when someone with a financial interest in a company also has a policy position in the administration," Cannistraro said. Insiders trading A significant portion of the millions of dollars U.S. companies and their politically influential executives have earned in deals with the Saudis has been through military contracts. The Carlyle Group had a major stake in the large defense contractor B.D.M., which has multimillion-dollar contracts through its subsidiaries to train and manage the Saudi National Guard and the Saudi air force, U.S. Department of Defense records show. In 1998, Carlyle sold its controlling interest in B.D.M. to defense giant TRW International. Meanwhile, the boards of directors of the Carlyle Group, B.D.M. and TRW are all stocked with high-level Republican policy makers. Frank C. Carlucci, a former secretary of defense under President Reagan, was chairman of B.D.M. for most of the 1990s. Carlucci, who also served as Reagan's national security adviser and a deputy director of the CIA, now heads the Carlyle Group. Along with former President Bush, other officials from past Republican administrations now at the Carlyle Group include: former Secretary of State James A. Baker III; ex-budget chief Richard Darman; and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt. President Bush is himself linked to the Carlyle group: He was a director of one of its subsidiaries, an airline food services company called Caterair, until 1994. Six years later, when Bush was governor of Texas, the board of directors of the Texas teachers' pension fund - some of whom were his appointees - voted to invest $100 million with the Carlyle Group. The president of B.D.M. is Philip A. Odeen, a former high-level Pentagon official in the Nixon administration. During the Clinton administration, Odeen chaired the Pentagon task force that planned the restructuring of the U.S. military for the 21st century. Currently, he is the vice-chair of the Defense Science Board, which advises the Pentagon on emerging threats. TRW, the new owner of B.D.M., has its own noteworthy board members, including former CIA director Robert M. Gates and Michael H. Armacost, who served as undersecretary of state under President Reagan and as ambassador to Japan for former President Bush. Big Saudi money also makes its way back to Texas and the Bush family. The family of Saudi Arabia's longtime U.S. ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, gave $1 million to the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. The revolving door Another example of the complex web connecting U.S. and Saudi powerbrokers is Dick Cheney, who moved from the Pentagon to the international oil business and back as vice president last year. After serving as the elder Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was hired to run oil-services giant Halliburton Co., where he worked until he resigned last year to campaign with the younger Bush. In 2000, his last year with Halliburton, Cheney received $34 million when he cashed out from the company. Not surprisingly, Halliburton's links to Cheney and other Washington power brokers appear to have helped the company's business prospects in the Middle East. Just last month, Halliburton was awarded a $140 million contract to develop an oil field in Saudi Arabia by the kingdom's state-owned petroleum firm, Saudi Aramco, and a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, along with two Japanese firms, was hired by the Saudis to build a $40 million ethylene plant. Cheney isn't the only member of President Bush's inner circle whose work for firms connected to the Saudis has paid big dividends. The current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is a former longtime member of the board of directors of another giant oil conglomerate with business in the Saudi desert, Chevron, which merged with Texaco this year. Rice even has a Chevron oil tanker named after her. Substantial profits received by U.S. leaders in private sector deals with the Saudis have helped to squelch criticism of the royal family's refusal to address the role its country has played in fueling Islamic terrorism, Lewis said. "There's a disconnect there," Lewis said. "I'm fascinated that we don't lay this at Saudi Arabia's doorstep. But the chances to cash in and the amount you can cash in for are starting to become absolutely astronomical. Who wants to look like the Boy Scout complaining about it and potentially jeopardize their own post-employment prospects?" Former advisers to the president's father also hold key positions with U.S. firms which have teamed up with the Saudis on major oil deals. Former Bush Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady and a former Bush assistant, Edith E. Holiday, are both on the board of directors of Amerada Hess, an American petroleum firm currently teaming up with several powerful Saudi families to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. Another company that has done business with wealthy Saudis is international energy firm Frontera Resources Corp. based in Houston. Until recently, Frontera was a 30 percent investor in a $900 million project to develop oilfields in Azerbajian. Also investing in the project were Azerbaijan's state-run oil company and Delta-Hess, a joint-venture created by the Saudis' Delta Oil and Amerada Hess. Randy Theilig, a Frontera spokesman, said the company relinquished its interest in the project in July because it was no longer "economically viable," and has no current business dealings with the Saudis or in Azerbajian. Members of Frontera's board of advisers, which includes former CIA director John Deutch and former Secretary of the Treasury and U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, have been active financial supporters of the Democratic Party. Shining a bright light on the web of financial connections between the power elite in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is critical, Middle Eastern foreign policy experts said. "I think the fact that they have these connections makes it important for this information to be made public," said Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations. Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a non-partisan group that examines money and politics, said the Bush-Carlyle connection is a concern. "It is well known that the father is a close adviser to his son and therefore it does raise concerns," Noble said "It's not necessarily that the father has been compromised, but the danger is that it leads people to question George W. Bush. The public has a right to feel their leaders are making independent judgments without the influence of private interests." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let There Be Light by William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | 01.18.02 "We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows." - Robert Frost It has been 130 days since September 11th. We have heard many debates, accusations, and arguments about the genesis of the attacks. Every major news agency, and every talking head with a whisper of breath in their lungs, has weighed in. We have been told how we should respond. We have been told how we should feel. We have been told how we can help. In all that time, however, something essential has been missing. We have yet to be told how such a thing was allowed to happen in the first place. It is a curious phenomenon. Whenever anything occurs in this country, be it a shark attack or the disappearance of a Capitol Hill intern, the media drumbeat has always played the same tune: Why? Why? Why did this happen? This Greek chorus has fallen silent in the weeks since the Towers came down. Rather than question the genesis of our woe, we have been afforded endless observations about how we have and should react. There is no looking back. There are no answers. Thousands of Americans died on September 11th, and thousands of Afghan civilians have joined them in the dust in the days since. Millions, nay, billions worldwide have been affected. American soldiers stand in peril to defend our freedom, or so we are told. Yet we are afforded no answers, no understanding, no succor. All we have are threads of data flapping in the winds of battle and response. We deserve better. The time has come to take those threads and weave them together as best we can. It cannot be denied that the attacks of September 11th represent the most spectacular Intelligence failure in the history of the nation. The planning required to pull off such an audacious attack likely was years in the making, formulated by people all across the planet. Somehow, these people managed to locate and exploit a security loophole left by the mighty FBI, CIA and NSA, and flew four deadly bombs laden with fuel and humanity right through it. There are two possible explanations for this astounding lapse. The first is that, despite all the funding they are provided by our tax dollars, despite all the human and technological resources at their disposal, these agencies failed utterly to glean even a whiff of menace. If this proves to be the case, every individual employed by these agencies should be fired with prejudice. The buildings that house them should be razed to the ground, and the rubble burned. The earth upon which they sat should be salted, so nothing will ever grow there again. If this proves to be the case, these agencies should be torn down brick by brick and built anew for the sake of our safety. They let it happen through negligence, ergo they should cease to exist, and a new cadre should be brought in who can be trusted to defend the interests and security of this country. These axioms are being applied in Afghanistan; they should be applied right here at home. The other possibility is far more sinister, and smacks of all the bleak realities we have become far too familiar and comfortable with. The other possibility is that the September 11th attacks happened because powerful men were pursuing an agenda of self-interest, in defiance of prudence and security, and their very presence in the equation created the opening for the attack. It has been widely reported that 13 of the 19 terrorists who commandeered the aircraft on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia, and that some 80% of all Al Qaeda recruits come from that oil-rich nation. It stands to reason, therefore, that American Intelligence agencies would have a vested interest in paying a great deal of attention to Saudi Arabia. Somehow, however, these terrorists managed to elude notice until they appeared in the blue New York sky. American security concerns overseas fall primarily within the bailiwick of the Central Intelligence Agency. This agency was run in the 1970s by none other than George Herbert Walker Bush, father of the sitting Commander in Chief and a former President himself. Bush Sr. ranks among the most venerated members of the Old Guard from the Nixon and Reagan days, and commands the loyalty of government officials past and present. Because of his long years in politics, Bush Sr. also enjoys a vast array of business connections. This is common knowledge, available in any updated high school history textbook. Since his departure from the political scene, however, the activities of Bush Sr. have not been paid much attention by the national media. Supporters of the former President would be pleased to know that he has done quite well for himself. He has, in the days since his defeat at the hands of William Jefferson Clinton, secured a position on the advisory board of an organization called the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a multi-national, multi-billion dollar private investment firm, managed by former members of the Reagan and Bush administrations, and is involved in everything from soda bottling to pharmaceuticals manufacture. It is here that Bush Sr., whose contacts with Saudi Arabia have been legend since the forming of the Gulf War coalition, comes into play. As early as January of 2000, Bush Sr. was courting the favor of Saudi crown prince Abdullah in the name of Carlyle, which was working with the telecommunications giant SBC to gain control of a large share of the Saudi phone system. He has, over the years, done similar outreach work for Carlyle's oil interests, because the petroleum/energy business is central to the Group's financial strength. It has long been true that the business of America is business, to the detriment of many other important factors. Given the connections between the former President and head of CIA, a major energy business player, and a nation that contains oil and terrorists in equal measure, questions about conflict of interest must be raised. The American petroleum industry relies upon the stability of Saudi Arabia to keep their oil flowing in the proper fashion. Because the business of America is business, it is not too far a leap to conclude that the business of the American Intelligence community is also business, deliberately so. Public questions about and investigations into Saudi Arabia's hosting of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, whose family calls that nation home, would certainly make it difficult for the American petroleum industry to work comfortably with the Saudi regime. Add to this the fact that the CIA, whose job it would be to investigate terrorist connections in Saudi Arabia, claims as its former head Bush Sr., who has a vested financial interests in healthy and unobstructed U.S.-Saudi relations. The result of this line of inquiry is chilling. Could the CIA have been dissuaded from fully investigating the roots of terrorism in Saudi Arabia because such investigations would have conflicted with the interests of entities like the Carlyle Group? If this was not the case, the explanation must be chalked up to simple incompetence. Considering the complexity of what transpired on September 11th, the simple answer is not reliable. Occam's Razor fails in the face of the facts. The sins of the father may well have been visited upon the son. George W. Bush's affinity for the energy industry is well-known, and his personal financial involvement in a number of oil businesses before his political career is part of the record. His administration is riddled with dozens of high-ranking appointees who held a large amount of stock in the now-defunct Enron corporation. Many of these people are also former Enron employees. Enron, a giant in the energy industry, contributed millions to Bush's political aspirations. The company was heavily involved with Vice President Cheney, himself an energy industry veteran from the Halliburton Petroleum Corporation, in the creation of national energy policy behind closed, locked doors. Enron's dazzling financial implosion on December 2nd, 2001, has led to a number of pressing investigations into the circumstances behind the collapse. More than a few questions about the financial and political connections between Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, and George W. Bush have been raised. The intense scrutiny has shaken loose two emails sent by Lay to his employees in August of last year. In them, Lay waxes optimistic about the strength and stability of his company, and exhorts his employees to buy into the company's stock program. Most observers view this as the gasping lies of a drowning criminal, desperate to keep his operation from flying apart under the burden of his and his associates' shoddy business practices. When held up against recently revealed information, however, Mr. Lay's messages must be considered in a different light. A book recently published in France titled 'Osama bin Laden: The Hidden Truth' by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique has put some serious questions on the table for consideration. In 1998, American oil company Unocal's attempt to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan, in order to exploit the vast Turkmenistan natural gas fields, was foiled by Osama bin Laden's attack on American embassies in Africa. The Clinton administration forbade any company from dealing with the Taliban, protectors of bin Laden, who were in control of Afghanistan at the time. Upon his arrival in Washington D.C. in 2000, Bush revived negotiations with the Taliban to see this pipeline through. High-level talks between Washington and Kabul continued through August of 2001 to this very purpose. The Bush administration was trying to get the Taliban on board with the pipeline idea, and believed they could depend upon the regime to be stable enough to see it built. The rationale for these actions is simplicity itself: Bush's campaign was funded by the energy industry, and negotiations like this were their payoff. The business of America is business. Problems arise when one considers the fact that the chief bin Laden hunter in America, former Deputy Director John O'Neill, quit his post in protest some two weeks before the September 11th attacks. O'Neill had been the lead investigator in several previous bin Laden-controlled attacks, and was considered to be the most knowledgeable man in America about the terrorist mastermind's activities and capabilities. He quit in frustration, stating that his efforts at capturing bin Laden had been thwarted by oil interests in America, and by a desire by powerful people to protect America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. After leaving the FBI, O'Neill took a job at head of security at the World Trade Center, and died in the September 11th attack. The irony of this is agonizing. O'Neill knew that bin Laden called Afghanistan home. Was he kept from pursuing the terrorist there by an administration that wanted to protect its relationship with the Taliban in order to see the pipeline through? Did his departure create a security gap in America that allowed the attacks to take place? Conversely, did America's dalliance with the Taliban incite bin Laden to attack? It is well documented that his terrorist career began with the arrival of American troops onto Saudi soil, a land he considered sacred. Was he motivated to attack again when his new home seemed ready to allow the Crusaders in? Finally, does this pipeline deal shine a light onto the emailed optimism of Kenneth Lay? There is no question that Enron was Bush's favorite company. If the pipeline was to happen, it is easy to imagine that Enron would get the contract. Lay would have known this. His last email was sent on August 27th, about the same time as the last U.S./Taliban meeting. If a deal was near at hand, and if he knew that his company was about to get a plum government contract, he had every reason to be optimistic about the future. Is this why Arthur Andersen was ordered to shred documents? Did those documents detail the preparations for the pipeline, thus demonstrating beyond doubt that Bush was dealing with the Taliban? Were the consequences of releasing these documents more damaging than the consequences of destroying them because of this? It will be a long hot season before we know the half of it. One thing, however, is certain. Not long from today, we will stand in observance. Before we know it, one year will have passed since the attacks of September 11th, 2001. We will light candles, unfurl wind-tattered flags, sing patriotic songs, and remember the dead. In that year we will have mourned for those lost, and mourned the passing of an age of innocence in America. The oceans that separate us, the armies that guard us, the weapons that make others fear us, protected us not at all on September 11th. The security we felt before that day is gone forever. We deserve to know why. http://www.willpitt.com/WillPitt.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The truth is out there ... right? At first, it all seemed so obvious. It was those Islamic terrorists. Osama bin Laden. Mullah Omar. George W. Bush had nothing to do with it ... did he? Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Saturday, February 23, 2002 AP Files / President George W. Bush continued speaking to kids after the attack ... hmm. Reuter Files / The World Trade Center towers explode and burn after being hit by planes Sept. 11. "The right wing benefited so much from September 11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they'd done it." Norman Mailer When the paladin of Camelot joined the fray, I knew 9/11 had become the Kennedy Assassination of the 21st century -- a real-life X-Files episode occurring before my eyes. Like those X-Files accounts of aliens living in oil deposits, this was a story with such staggering implications the mainstream media are loath to go near it. The question isn't who killed the president -- it's who piloted the airplanes that slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvanian countryside. Just as there remains lingering doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald fired a burst of fatally accurate shots from the Texas Book Depository, so there is skepticism that cells of Islamic terrorists secretly coordinated and simultaneously commandeered four commercial jetliners. The culprit responsible for the Sept. 11 attack is now rumoured to be the same one who lurked behind the grassy knoll: the oil-dependent U.S. military-industrial complex. Not everyone is ready to accept this -- a substitute teacher in North Vancouver's Sherwood Park elementary school has been called on the mat for suggesting to Grade 5 students the Central Intelligence Agency might have been involved in 9/11. And at last count, there were a dozen U.S. Congressional Committees investigating the tragedies and how such an intelligence and security breakdown was allowed to occur. But President George W. Bush and his right-hand man, Vice President Dick Cheney, have taken the unprecedented step of trying to restrict those investigations, pouring fuel on the simmering conspiracy theories being propagated in alternative publications, on wingnut Web sites and among some serious media outlets. In Germany, a former minister of technology, Andreas von Buelow, made headlines when in an interview he dismissed the U.S. government's explanation that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is responsible for the attacks. His own explanation implicated the White House. "I wonder why many questions are not asked," von Buelow said. "For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground; 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive." In Britain, a flight engineer has published a detailed paper asserting the U.S. took the joysticks out of the pilots' hands using a method of remote control developed by the American military in the 1970s. In the U.S. and Canada, independent publisher and editor Mike Ruppert (a former LAPD cop who hates the CIA) has drawn huge crowds to his two-hour lecture in which he states baldly that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks and had foreknowledge. He opens his documentary presentation with an offer of $1,000 US to anyone who can prove any of his sources were misrepresented or inauthentic. A former U.S. government agent also has given interviews claiming the CIA has been dealing with Osama bin Laden since 1987. According to those who do not believe in The Lone Gunman, the truth is as plain as the nose on your face: Sept. 11's terrorist acts were planned and paid for by the CIA to enable the Bush Administration to "legitimately" bomb Afghanistan into submission on behalf of the oil industry. After all, everyone knows the Bush family has strong and long acknowledged ties to the oil industry, as do other senior members of the administration. Cheney until recently was president of a company servicing the oil patch. National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice was a manager for Chevron. Commerce and Energy Secretaries Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant. Follow the money, as they say, and you'll find the smoking gun. Under this scenario, conspiracy theorists say a pliant Afghan regime was essential because of plans to pipe central Asian oil across Afghanistan. And there is a harvest of coincidence and contradiction to feed such imaginings. Consider first that the intelligence breakdown that led to 9/11 appears to have been a consequence of the Bush Administration telling the Federal Bureau of Investigation to back off on its investigation of Middle Eastern terrorism. A senior FBI investigator resigned from the agency, noisily claiming its main obstacle in the investigation was Big Oil's political influence. In an ironic twist of fate, the agent died in the World Trade Center. (Fox Mulder, was that you? Is that why they cancelled the series?) There also are recurring reports the CIA station chief in Dubai met with bin Laden only seven weeks before 9/11 while he was laid up for surgery. (The CIA denies this, but of course you can't believe anything it says.) Now think about this for a second: The Independent in London questions how Bush could claim in two public appearances to have seen the first plane hit the first tower long before any such TV footage was broadcast. The paper also asks why Dubya continued sitting with elementary school students after the second tower was hit and he'd been told, "America is under attack." Very mysterious, when standard procedure for such a situation is to whisk the president away to safety. Unless -- and here is the nub -- unless he knew something more than we did that morning. As the Independent asked, "What television station was HE watching?" This is rich stuff for those who see Them under the bed, especially since the financial miasma melds nicely with the already swirling rumour and insinuation. In the days before the attacks, there was unusually heavy trading in airline and related stocks using a market tactic called a "put option" that essentially bets that a stock will decline in value. If you were Osama, buying puts would be a great way to boost the value of your investment portfolio. And sure enough, unusually high numbers of put options were purchased in early September for the stocks of AMR Corp. and UAL Corp., the parents of American and United -- each of which had two planes hijacked. The U.S. government is now investigating suspicious trading in 38 companies directly affected by the events of Sept. 11. The initial survey of beneficiaries, however, turns out not to include one tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned, Allah-loving, Saudi-born sheik. Mainly the profiteers were blue-chip, establishment, red-white-and-blue Americans, some of whom were tenants in the collapsed twin towers, such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Lehman Brothers and the Bank of America, major airlines, cruise companies, General Motors Corp., Raytheon and others. Several insurance companies are also on the 38-name list U.S. and Canadian financial firms were asked to review and compare with their records for any unusual patterns. (Which may say more about who plays the market than anything else, but why quibble with the quixotic?) Cynics are also questioning the incredible speed with which evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed. Never in the history of fire investigations, they say, has evidence been destroyed before exhaustive investigations are complete. (Say what? Two skyscrapers' worth of debris should be warehoused?) And then there were the curious developments swirling around the anthrax public health hysteria triggered shortly after 9/11. Even dullards can appreciate that anthrax sent to a top Democrat and to the U.S. media helped unify the nation behind the war effort while literally shutting down Congress -- a remarkably useful outcome for Dubya and his gang. Indeed, specialists in biological warfare say the anthrax appears to be a U.S. military strain and the culprit a disgruntled American scientist who possesses a rare combination of laboratory skills that make him (they believe it's a man) relatively easy to identify. Hmmm. And who didn't smell a bad odour two weeks ago when Tennessee driver's licence examiner Katherine Smith died in Memphis under "most unusual and suspicious" circumstances. One day before her arraignment on charges she conspired to provide phoney licences to five Arabs tied by the FBI to the 9/11 attacks, her car crashed into a utility pole. The car was only slightly damaged, the gas tank was full and intact, but the vehicle was immediately engulfed in flames. As one report pointed out, Smith and the car interior apparently were doused with gasoline, which would certainly qualify in my book as at least "suspicious." And Memphis ... Memphis? Wasn't that the same place a noted Harvard bio-warfare expert "fell" off a bridge in December? Scully! The truth is out there. I know it. You too can help find it. If you would like an activist kit to get involved in urging a full public investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath, reply to findtruth 40@hotmail.com with "Send kit." But be warned. The Pentagon has just established a new Office of Strategic Influence that calls for the planting of false stories in the foreign press, phoney e-mails from disguised addresses and other covert activities to manipulate public opinion. This could be one of them. Ian Mulgrew claims to be a Vancouver Sun reporter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/647/1/59/ With help from a friend, Enron fleeces South Americaby Tim WheelerWASHINGTON – A couple of weeks ago, Argentina’s daily newspaper, La Nacion, was looking for an explanation of the country’s economic collapse, with $141 billion in unpayable foreign debt and five governments falling in the space of a week. They turned over a rock and found – you guessed it – Enron.According to La Nacion, George W. Bush came to Argentina in 1988 as an Enron lobbyist and met with Rodolfo Terragano, the Argentine government’s Minister of Public Works. According to Terragano, Bush pressed him “on Enron’s behalf” to help push through privatization of Argentina’s publicly owned energy complex. Bush told the cabinet minister that Enron should be given first option to buy up the gas, electricity, water and other utilities of that South American country.At the time, Bush was the son of the Vice President who was soon to be elected President of the United States, and had backing from Enron and every other oil and gas company in Texas. Since the mid-1980s, the newspaper report added, the Bush family had invested heavily in Argentina and had cultivated crony ties to Carlos Saul Menem.In 1989, Menem was elected president of Argentina. He embraced Enron’s privatization and deregulation policies with a vengeance.In 1996, Enron and its subsidiary, Enron Global Power & Pipelines, bought a controlling interest in Transportadora de Gas del Sur S.A. (TGS), owner of a 4,104-mile natural gas pipeline system in Argentina. The pipeline is the largest in South America, with a capacity of 1.9 billion cubic feet of gas per day.At the time, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay said the purchase of TGS “reflects our continued confidence in Argentina and TGS.” By then, Enron South America had spread its tentacles throughout the hemisphere.“Enron is playing a key role in the deregulating energy markets in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and other countries in the region,” boasts an Enron statement on their official website. “Enron is building power plants, operating natural gas pipelines and providing energy, commodity and finance solutions to industrial and commercial customers.” It brags of its skill at “risk management.”The trick in these privatization schemes was to take over pipelines, pumping stations and other facilities that had been constructed at taxpayer expense, thus sparing Enron most of the cost of building these facilities. They pursued a similar strategy in the U.S., maneuvering – so far without success – to get their hands on power generated by the federally owned Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest.On May 4, 1998, the Menem regime surrendered to Enron’s diktat. Its wholly owned Argentine subsidiary, Enron Commercializadora de Energia Argentina, “has been granted the first power marketer license in Argentina,” permitting Enron to buy and sell electricity. Scott Porter, executive secretary of Enron International, called the license, “an important step in Enron’s strategic efforts to establish marketing operations in Latin America and to further participation in the future integration of the Southern Cone’s energy markets.”In early 2000, Argentina’s energy regulatory agency, known by its acronym ENARGAS, pleaded with Enron to postpone a rate increase pegged to the U.S. producer price index. Like the pegging of the Argentine peso to the dollar, this rate increase was ruinous for the fragile and depressed Argentine economy. Eduardo Ojea Quintana, CEO of TGS, brushed aside this request. “We will maintain the firm position of strictly applying the clauses agreed upon in the privatizing process,” he wrote to Enron shareholders. “Any violation of them would imply serious damage to the country’s credibility.”Quintana boasted that while the Argentine economy plunged deeper into recession and 80 percent of the people fell below the poverty line, “our revenues increased a record 11 percent – the highest revenue growth since the commencement of our operations.”In 1996, Enron and Shell jointly acquired a 50 percent stake in all the transportation assets of the 1,655 mile pipeline owned by Bolivia’s Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), a nationalized energy company. Enron and Shell also took a 50 percent ownership of the 1,438 mile long pipeline that will reach from Bolivia to Brazil. Ominously, an Enron news release reports, “The remaining interest in the transportation assets will be held by the Bolivian Pension Fund.”Enron also owns a pipeline in Colombia. The Associated Press reported from Bogota Feb. 6, “A top level Bush administration delegation unveiled plans yesterday to widen U.S. involvement in Colombia’s civil war, including training, arming and providing air support to Colombian troops to protect a pipeline carrying U.S. oil.”The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. taxpayer-funded outfit, provided much of the capital for these Enron foreign investments. OPIC has warned that Enron’s bankruptcy “could leave U.S. taxpayers liable for as much as $1 billion in debt.”_________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- They Were Warned! See internet addresse: http://www.counterpunch.org/aftershocks.html "German police have confirmed that an Iranian man, while in German custody, phoned US police and the Secret Service several times last week warning that a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center complex was impending. The man also brought his concerns to officials at the Langenen prison in Lower Saxony, where he was being held pending deportation back to Iran. However, according to the Justice Ministry there, his warnings were discarded by both German police and the US Secret Service. Frank Woesthoff, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry, told the Hanover paper, Neue Presse, that the man phoned America "several times", but that he was dismissed as being "mentally unstable". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bush's radical shift in military policy Boston Globe, 2/19/2002 GEORGE W. BUSH is widely regarded as the avatar of a conservative restoration, but he is the opposite. This presidency marks a radical overthrow of traditional American values and policies. Civil liberties are obviously at issue in the new regime of homeland security, but the most drastic shift involves American attitudes toward war. For a generation, the massive US arsenal has been managed with the purpose of not being used. With the exceptions of the Gulf War and the NATO air war against Serbia, this purpose was achieved. It was rooted in the post-Vietnam assumption that war is a last resort, to be avoided if possible. And it was confirmed when the terrifying conflict with the Soviet Union ended nonviolently, a victory for the policies of deterrence and containment that finally enabled the Soviet peoples themselves to take back their governments. Something called the ''peace process'' moved from the idealistic fringe to the heart of the exercise of American power. Now, a radically different assumption is undergirding American purpose, a repudiation of the experience of the last 55 years. With putative battlefields around the globe, war is all at once being defined as the essence of who we are, and nothing makes this clearer than the new Pentagon budget. For the next fiscal year, the Bush administration proposes to spend nearly $400 billion on defense. Last week, in testimony before the House Budget Committee, Lawrence J. Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, put this figure in perspective. It represents a 30 percent increase over last year; a level 15 percent more, averaged annually, than what the Cold War required; the biggest budget jump since Vietnam. If approved, America's military spending will exceed the total defense outlays ''of the next 15 countries in the world combined.'' This year's ''increase of $48 billion alone is more than the total military budgets of every nation in the world.'' This budget request, Korb observed, surpasses any budget that Donald Rumsfeld sent to Congress when he served as secretary of defense during the height of the Cold War. But doesn't Rumsfeld's war on terrorism require such urgent increases? No. As Korb notes, the war in Afghanistan has cost about $6 billion, and the budget for next year allocates $10 billion for the ongoing conflict against terrorism - both figures falling far short of the new increases which, Korb argues, will push the budget total to $580 billion by 2007. The proposal funds programs and equipment that will play no role in any conceivable war against stateless terrorists - high-tech aircraft, submarines, tanks, the missile defense system. Fulfilling just these commitments will cost more than $100 billion. All of which amounts, in Korb's view, to ''throwing ... money at the Pentagon and refusing to make choices.'' Korb's is a lonely voice in this debate, and, incidentally, not one raised from the left. He served as assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. Here are the questions raised by the Bush administration's proposed military budget: Who benefits? Alas, the old answer, in the era of Enron, suggests itself with a new edge. Of dubious security value, these unprecedented expenditures will enrich resuscitated defense contractors and reelect politicians they fund. Compared to this nexus of corporate-political corruption, Enron is benign. Aware that the preparation for war has its own momentum, are we setting loose forces we cannot control? Has the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mode of the war on terrorism led to a new recklessness in relation to anticipated wars against states that alone justify such a budget? Knowing what the effect on our enemies of such a massive new arsenal will be, what will be its effect on us, just having it? The moral question: When America could have used its unprecedented power to lead the world away from war, what will it reveal about our national character that we did the opposite? If this budget is adopted, will it mean that we Americans responded to our traumatic season of vulnerability with a radical new military posture because it seemed to salve a wound? World violence more likely, the long-term economic health of our own country undermined - and for what? To feel better? These questions boil down to questions about our president. In proposing such a wildly disproportionate defense budget, is Bush deluded, or is he cynical? Is he consciously exploiting the nation's moment of uncritical patriotism, or is he himself ontologically uncritical? And which would be worse? In wrapping himself in the flag, while putting the interests of defense contractors ahead of the nation's, is Bush betraying what the flag stands for? And while this radical change is being implemented in Washington, why aren't conservatives asking such questions? James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 2/19/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. National Resources Defense Council "Faking Nuclear Restraint: The Bush Administration's Secret Plan For Strengthening U.S. Nuclear Forces - February 13, 2002 For the tables go to: http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020213a.asp ************ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, or Elliott Negin at 202-289-6868; or Christopher Paine at 804-244-5013 If you are not a member of the press, please write to us at nrdcinfo@nrdc.org or see our contact page. Faking Nuclear Restraint: The Bush Administration's Secret Plan For Strengthening U.S. Nuclear Forces WASHINGTON (February 13, 2002) -- After a year in office the Bush administration has completed the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) mandated by Congress in the fall of 2000. The NPR establishes the broad outline of Pentagon planning for U.S. nuclear strategy, force levels and infrastructure for the next 10 years and beyond. It also endorses significant revisions to the nuclear war planning process to enhance its flexibility and responsiveness, which would allow the Pentagon to generate new nuclear attack plans and have them approved quickly in a crisis. The administration has provided the public with a cursory view of the NPR, but the entire report remains secret. The NPR has received little attention from the news media and even less from analysts. This is unfortunate. The logic and assumptions underlying the administration's hostility to arms control, and its infatuation with nuclear weapons, deserve vigorous public scrutiny and debate. Not since the resurgence of the Cold War in Ronald Reagan's first term has there been such an emphasis on nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy. Behind the administration's rhetorical mask of post Cold War restraint lie expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them, within a so-called "New Triad" of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defenses and nuclear weapons infrastructure. NRDC has learned from a variety of sources more about the likely implications of this review for the evolution of the U.S. nuclear posture. Words and phrases in quotation marks are said to be from the NPR or the Department of Defense (DOD) special briefing on the NPR: Nuclear Weapons Forever? * The Bush administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces at least for the next 50 years. Starting from this premise it is planning an extensive and expensive series of programs to sustain and modernize the existing force and to begin studies for a new ICBM to be operational in 2020, a new SLBM and SSBN in 2030, and a new heavy bomber in 2040, as well as new warheads for all of them. Nuclear weapons will continue to play a "critical role" because they possess "unique properties" that provide "credible military options" for holding at risk "a wide range of target types" important to a potential adversary's threatened use of "weapons of mass destruction" or "large-scale conventional military force." * The NPR uses terminology from the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, which states the purpose of possessing nuclear weapons is fourfold: to "assure allies and friends," "dissuade competitors," "deter aggressors" and "defeat enemies." * The Bush administration will not eliminate the relatively inflexible nuclear "counterforce" Major Attack Options that characterized the Cold War nuclear planning process, despite the administration's pronouncements about being in a post-Cold War world. Instead, the administration will scale the attack options to the size required to preempt opposing threats, and supplement them by an "adaptive planning" process that anticipates a range of nuclear contingencies and is flexible enough to respond quickly where and when a crisis occurs. The Numbers Game * The United States is "adjusting its immediate nuclear force requirements" for "operationally deployed forces" downward, from 8,000 warheads today to 3,800 in 2007, in recognition of the changed relationship with Russia, but "Russia's nuclear forces and programs remain a concern." Barring unforeseen adverse developments, the NPR's eventual "goal" is to reach the level of 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed weapons" in 2012. * Over the next 10 years, the Bush administration's plans call for the United States to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapon components that is roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed weapons." This is an accounting system worthy of Enron. The operationally deployed weapons are only the visible portion of a huge, hidden arsenal. To the "accountable" tally of 2,200 one must add the following: * about 240 missile warheads on two Trident submarines in overhaul at any given time; * about 1,350 strategic missile and bomber warheads in the "responsive force;" * about 800 "nonstrategic" bombs assigned to US/NATO "dual-capable" aircraft; * about 320 "nonstrategic" sea-launched cruise missile warheads in the "responsive force;" * about 160 "spare" strategic and nonstrategic warheads; * about 4,900 intact warheads in the "inactive reserve" stockpile; equals * about 7,800 intact warheads; plus * about 5,000 stored plutonium "primary" and HEU "secondary" components that could be reassembled into weapons. In other words, the Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000. Future Plans * The administration plans to deactivate the MX/Peacekeeper ICBMs in phases over a three-year period beginning October 1, 2002. It will withdraw them in conjunction with introducing Trident II missiles into the Pacific. In the order of their conversion to Trident IIs, the Pacific fleet SSBNs are the Alaska (SSBN-732), Nevada (SSBN-733), Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730), and Alabama (SSBN-731). Current plans call for the MX silos to be retained, rather than destroyed as specified in the SALT and START treaties. MX missile stages and nuclear warheads will also be retained. * The administration plans to cut the number of Trident ballistic missile submarines from 18 to 14 by FY2007 (of which two in overhaul at any given time will not be considered part of the "operationally deployed force"). Four Trident SSBNs (Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Georgia ) will be converted to each carry up to 154 conventional cruise missiles. The submarines also may be used to support Special Operations Forces. There is $1 billion in the FY 2003 budget to begin the conversion. The submarines would remain accountable under the START I Treaty, though they will not carry SLBMs or the 768 warheads attributed to them. * After these initial modest force reductions, the NPR provides that "no additional strategic delivery platforms are scheduled to be eliminated from strategic service." * Each of the 500 Minuteman III ICBMs to be retained and modernized under the administration's plan will be equipped with a single reentry vehicle/warhead combination, either the Mk12A/W78 or a Mk21/W87. The Safety-Enhanced Reentry Vehicle (SERV) program permits the MM III to carry the Mk21. NRDC estimates that the 150 Minuteman IIIs at Minot AFB and 150 at Malmstrom AFB would carry the W78, while 150 Minuteman IIIs at F. E. Warren AFB and 50 more at Malmstrom would carry the W-87. * The Pentagon is considering extending the life of the dual-capable F-16C/D and F-15E or to make some of the new Joint Strike Fighters nuclear capable. * In the event of an international crisis, "the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear force levels and posture" by returning weapons from what henceforth will be labeled a "responsive" reserve back to the "operationally deployed" force. This "uploading" could be accomplished in a period ranging from days or weeks to months or years, depending on the particular weapon system. Satellites, Intelligence and C3 * The administration believes that our military satellites are not "optimized" for the "current and developing mobile target challenge." Consequently, the DOD plans to develop extensive new real-time intelligence systems and long-range precision strike weapons to "dissuade a potential adversary from investing heavily in mobile ballistic missiles" or other "threatening capabilities." Planned improvements would provide the capability to rapidly locate and track mobile targets "from the time they deploy from garrison until they return." * The administration will continue to invest in better intelligence capabilities for "Information Operations targeting, weaponeering, and strike execution," including better data on "adversary computer local area networks" and "other command and control systems." * The current nuclear command and control system architecture will be expanded "to a true C2 conferencing system" through deployment later in the decade of new secure wideband and survivable Extremely High Frequency satellite communication systems. Missile Defense * The administration believes that deploying missile defenses will increase the United States' ability to "counteract WMD-backed coercive threats" by defeating small-scale missile attacks intended to coerce the United States into abandoning an embattled "ally or friend." * The administration plans to integrate missile defense into the New Triad, which will enhance the United States' ability "to use its power projection forces" by "improving the ability to counterattack an enemy," and may also provide the president with "an option to manage a crisis" involving "one or more" opponents with weapons of mass destruction. * The administration believes that missile defenses can have a "dissuasive effect" on potential adversaries by making it "more arduous and costly for an adversary to compete militarily with or wage war against the United States." * The administration is considering an "emergency missile defense capability" for the 2003-2008 time period consisting of a single Airborne Laser for "limited operations" against "ballistic missiles of all ranges," a "rudimentary" Alaska-based midcourse interceptor system against "longer-range threats," and a sea-based Aegis system with "rudimentary midcourse capability" against "short-to-medium range threats." * Based on the technical progress achieved with these early systems, the United States could deploy "operational capabilities" in the 2006-2008 time frame, including two to three Airborne Laser aircraft, "additional" ground-based midcourse sites, four sea-based midcourse ships, and "terminal" defense systems, such as the PAC-3 (an upgraded version of the Patriot "Scudbuster" missile that missed most of its targets in the 1991 Persian Gulf War) and the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, slated for deployment by 2008. The Nuclear Complex and Infrastructure * The administration plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear infrastructure with the capacity to: upgrade existing systems, "surge" production of weapons, and develop and field "entirely new systems." All of this is designed to "discourage" other countries from "competing militarily with the United States." * The administration believes that the current arsenal -- a subset of what was in place at the end of the Cold War -- is not what is needed for the future. That arsenal was developed and deployed mainly to deter the former Soviet Union and to carry out the "Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)." In the administration's view, significantly modified and quite possibly new nuclear warheads will be required to accomplish new military missions, and thus the NPR calls for a revitalized nuclear weapon complex that could, if directed, design, develop, manufacture and certify new warheads. The administration believes that the development of this arsenal must begin now because it will take much longer than a decade to complete. This arsenal would have the capability to target and destroy mobile and re-locatable targets and hard and deeply buried targets. * Plans are underway to expand the capacity and capability of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Pantex nuclear weapons assembly-disassembly plant near Amarillo, Texas, to meet a planned workload of some 600 warheads (assembled or dismantled) per year, up from the current capacity of 350 warheads per year. * For the "long term," the NPR projects the need for "a new modern production facility" to deal with the "large-scale replacement" of plutonium components and "new production." The NNSA is "accelerating preliminary design work" on a "modern pit manufacturing facility" so that new production capacity can be "brought on line when it is needed." * The NNSA is embarked on a seven- to eight-year project to expand the capacity and capability of the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to meet the planned workload for replacing nuclear warhead secondary stages and other uranium components. * The NNSA is reestablishing advanced warhead concept design teams at each of the three design laboratories -- Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories -- "to energize design work on advanced concepts." This initiative will focus on "evolving DOD requirements," including nuclear weapons to defeat "Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets" and "Agent Defeat Weapons" for attacking chemical and biological warfare sites, and to reduce collateral damage via improved accuracy and variable and reduced yields. * The NNSA is launching a program to enhance nuclear explosive test readiness at the Nevada Test Site by "replacing key underground-test-unique components," modernizing test diagnostic capabilities, augmenting key personnel, increasing their proficiency in underground test operations, conducting "test-related exercises of appropriate fidelity," and shortening the time required to show "regulatory and safety compliance." Spinning the Nuclear Posture Review While Violating U.S. Treaty Commitments Administration officials have sought to cast the NPR as a watershed step in breaking with the Cold War past. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated in the publicly released foreword: "First and foremost, the Nuclear Posture Review puts the Cold War practices related to planning for strategic forces behind us.... As a result of this review, the U.S. will no longer plan, size or sustain its forces as Russia presented merely a smaller version of the threat posed by the former Soviet Union." In fact, a fully informed analysis of the NPR suggests that far more has been retained than discarded from the Cold War's doctrine and practice regarding nuclear weapons, and the break is not nearly as clean as suggested. Moreover, a strong case can be made that the nuclear weapons policies and programs laid out in the NPR effectively preclude further U.S. "good faith" participation in international negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Good faith participation in such negotiations, leading to the achievement of "effective measures" (such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) "relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament," is a legal and political obligation of all parties under Article VI of the nearly universal nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that entered into force in 1970. The Bush administration posture of avoiding further binding legal constraints on the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while pursuing the reinvigoration of the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and the development of new nuclear weapons, will be viewed by many nations as a blatant breach of the "good faith" negotiating standard under the treaty, and tantamount to a U.S. "breakout" from the NPT. U.S. Nuclear Forces (2002-2012) Today there are an estimated 10,650 intact nuclear warheads in the U.S. stockpile (See Table 1). In addition, there are in storage at Pantex and Oak Ridge, respectively, approximately 5,000 plutonium pits and approximately the same number of canned subassemblies, i.e., thermonuclear secondaries, which are retained as a "strategic reserve."there are another 7,000 pits at Pantex that have been declared excess from warheads dismantled during the first Bush and Clinton administrations. The 10,650 intact warheads and the 5,000 "strategic reserve" pits so far have not been included in the Bush administration plans for nuclear reductions. What will change is how they are counted. The Departments of Defense and Energy characterize the intact nuclear warheads in the stockpile as either active or inactive. * Active warheads are maintained in a ready-for-use status with tritium and other limited life components installed. * Inactive warheads do not have limited life components installed, and may not have the latest warhead modifications. Currently there are approximately 8,000 active warheads and approximately 2,700 inactive warheads in the U.S. stockpile, according to NRDC estimates. The Pentagon also characterizes its nuclear forces as either strategic or non-strategic. The strategic forces comprise intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers -- the B-52s and B-2s. NRDC estimates that there are approximately 6,800 active strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal today and that there are about 1,160 active non-strategic warheads (See Table 1). With the issuance of the NPR some new terms have been introduced into this special lexicon that legislators and reporters should be sensitive to as they analyze this administration's policies and plans. The active warhead inventory is now broken down into deployed warheads, responsive force warheads, and spares. Deployed warheads consist of " operationally deployed warheads" and those associated with weapon systems in overhaul. "Responsive force warheads" consist of active warheads not on deployed systems. These are kept in secure storage, but are available to be returned to the operationally deployed force to meet some contingency. Depending on the particular weapon system this may take days, weeks, months, or as long as a year or more. For example, if Russia were to deploy forces that the United States determined to be hostile and aggressive, the option is there to reintroduce ICBM or SLBM warheads and/or bomber weapons back into service. Finally, there are a number of spare warheads that are part of the "active," but not "operational" inventory. While each weapon system and warhead type is different, we estimate that the number of spares is about 5 percent to 10 percent of the number of "operational" warheads. Unlike the counting rules agreed to in past SALT and START treaties, warheads removed from weapon systems in overhaul are not included in the projected level of ~3,800 in 2007 and the goal of 1,700 to 2,000 warheads by 2012. Only operationally deployed warheads are counted. The Bush administration's proposed stockpile "reductions" are to be implemented in two phases, the first by FY 2007 with "operationally deployed" warheads reduced to ~3,800, and a second step by 2012 to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads. The main actions are retirement of the MX/Peacekeeper, removal of four Trident submarines from strategic service, and the downloading of warheads on deployed ICBMs and SLBMs. Table 2 is our estimate of what an operationally deployed force of 3,800 warheads might look like with 1,400 warheads transferred to the responsive force and 1,000 to the inactive category. As can be seen by comparing Tables 1 and 2, the total number of warheads remains essentially the same. While there are no treaty requirements or bilateral agreements calling for the elimination of warheads, the U.S. Senate attached the following "condition" in July 1992 to its Resolution of Ratification for the START I Treaty: "Inasmuch as the prospect of a loss of control of nuclear weapons or fissile material in the former Soviet Union could pose a serious threat to the United States and to international peace and security, in connection with any further agreement reducing strategic offensive arms, the President shall seek an appropriate arrangement, including the use of reciprocal inspections, data exchanges, and other cooperative measures, to monitor -- (A) the numbers of nuclear stockpile weapons on the territory of the parties to this Treaty; and (B) the location and [fissile material] inventory of facilities on the territory of the parties to this treaty capable of producing or processing significant quantities of fissile materials. The Bush administration's plans as laid out in the NPR for further reductions in strategic arms, which the administration has said will be codified in some kind of formal "agreement" with Russia, make no provision for the measures mandated by the Senate in 1992, and would appear to contravene the so-called "Biden Condition," named after its primary sponsor, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden. Table 3 is our estimate of what an operationally deployed force of 2,200 warheads might look like in 2012. This was accomplished by further downloading SLBMs and shifting warheads to the responsive force and inactive warhead category. We conclude that under current plans there will be few, if any, real reductions in the size of the total stockpile of active and inactive warheads in the U.S. arsenal between 2002 and 2012 (compare Table 1 and 3). In a decade with only one warhead type scheduled for retirement (approximately 600 W62s), and with a modest new production capability planned, the number will not decrease significantly. The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Additional Downloadable Materials for the Press Table 1. Nuclear Forces (January 2002) in PDF format, 6k. Table 2. Nuclear Forces (end-FY 2006; conceptual) in PDF format, 6k. Table 3. Nuclear Forces (2012; Conceptual) in PDF format, 6k. ************************** Greg Mello Los Alamos Study Group 212 East Marcy Street, #10 Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-982-7747 voice 505-982-8502 fax gmello@lasg.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston Globe February 8, 2002 The elite's pure greed By Derrick Z. Jackson, 2/8/2002 KOFI ANNAN is to the Davos crowd what a busboy is on a cruise ship. If he is lucky, he might get a good tip. As for mingling in a tuxedo at the banquets or chatting at poolside, he might as well be Cinderella sweeping for her two sisters. He is to be tolerated as long as he knows his job is to pick up the crumbs. The elite met once again on how to stay elite at the World Economic Forum. To be completely accurate, they were forced by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to display a veneer of conscience. Financier George Soros said: ''We need a global society and not just a global economy. We need to address wealth disparities and inequalities.'' Bill Gates said: ''People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us.'' Even Horst Koehler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund said: ''Societies in the advanced countries are too selfish to give up their privileges.'' Beneath the soft veneer was hard, unvarnished greed. US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said not to even bother asking the United States to pull out its wallet to help out the world's poor, even though the United States gives out less foriegn aid per capita than any developed nation in the world. O'Neill said: ''Over the last 50 years, the developed world has spent trillions of dollars in the name of aid, and I would submit that we have precious little to show for it. How much money we spend is not the right issue. How fast we raise every human being's standard to our own, that's the question.'' O'Neill's argument is laughable on the face of it, since the American standard of living is possible only because our 5 or 6 percent of the world's population consumes about a quarter of the world's energy. The United States and the developed world comprise a quarter of the world's population but eat half its cereals and two-thirds of its meat. As for how the remaining 75 percent of the world is supposed to raise its standard of living while having access to only half the cereals and a third of the world's meat, O'Neill has no answer. Giving aid with precious little to show for it is the American way, from bloated Pentagon contracts to the current $15 billion bailout of shoddy airlines. O'Neill does not want to spend the money on the poor because a moment of fun cannot be missed on the cruise ship. The 3,000 participants at the World Economic Forum, which drifted through the hallways of the Waldorf, dropped $100 million on New York hotels, ballrooms, and restaurants, according to the New York City tourism board. That comes out to $33,333.33 per person. In five days in New York, each participant of the World Economic Forum spent on average what the average American makes in a year, four times what the average Mexican makes in a year, 14 times what the average person in India makes in a year, 22 times what the average person makes in Bangladesh, and 74 times than the average person makes in a year in Sierra Leone, according to United Nations figures. To that body, the world's spokesman for the globe's busboys and buswomen of cheap labor made his appeal. Annan asked for $50 billion annually in new aid to cut the most extreme of world poverty in half by 2015. That amount is quite small considering that it would still leave the developed world giving less than 1 percent of its gross national product to developing nations. In the United States alone, that is a puny figure, given what we will do for airlines alone. It is an eerie figure, given that President Bush just asked for an increase in military spending of nearly $50 billion despite the stark evidence at Ground Zero and in Israel that heavily armed militaries do not stop suicide bombers. Annan tried to turn the cruise ship into a ''small boat driven by a fierce gale through dark and unchartered waters, with more and more people crowded on board, hoping desperately to survive. None of us, I suggest, can afford to ignore the condition of our fellow passengers on this little boat. If they are sick, all of us risk infection. And if they are angry, all of us can easily get hurt.'' By their spending in New York only five months after Sept. 11, the elite have made it abundantly evident that they still consider themselves invulnerable to infection and in no need of an infirmary aboard their vessel. Annan was allowed to come topside at the World Economic Forum, but the rich showed him no tux, no pass to the pool, and certainly no invitation to step over the crumbs to get a taste at the banquet table. Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. Free Leonard Peltier Now! ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ :::::Awareness through Compassion::::: :::::{{Awar Comp}}::::: People of Middle Eastern & Asian Decent and Muslims Are Not Our Enemy, They Are Our Brothers and Sisters!!! ::::::Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat To Justice Everywhere:::::: When aid is subordinated to political objectives, it can no longer be called "humanitarian." ---Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontičres (MSF) People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) " 'tis all a checker-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with men for pieces plays One by one moves, checks and slays and then-- back in the closet lays." ---from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam "Never cease in the fight for peace, justice, and equality for all people. Be perisitent in all that you do and don't allow anyone to sway you from your conscience."---Leonard Peltier "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." ---Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) ::{{AwarComp}}::Open Membership---Any One May Join---Invite a friend! To subscribe to this group,send an email to: awarcomp-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: awarcomp-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. Such use is for nonprofit educational purposes Maluhia Me Ka Pono - Peace With Justice "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense."---Buddha ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "William Douglas, Jr." To: Cian9_11@hotmail.com Subject: Easier more Powerful 9-11 Action Kit. Empowers you the easy way. Kit Enclosed. Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 BRAND NEW POWERFUL AND “EASIER” 9-11 ACTIVIST KIT: A word to the wise. Do “not” let the thought of activism overwhelm you. Our goal is to make activism easy and convenient – so you can change the world without killing yourself. Use these resources in a way that works in your life. [We do most of the grunt work researching the following so that you can work changing the world into your hectic life. (See below for NEW contacts.)] - 2 easy steps -- 1) Save the “Appeal to Action” below, and then post it at the links below, “when you can.” 2) bulletin board links below. - Sign up at the bulletin boards, discussion groups below, and then send a few “Appeals to Action” out each day, or less or more often, whatever works. - Some action is better than paralysis. - We are all getting increasingly disturbing news, and IT IS NOT HEALTHY to load up without STRIKING OUT. ACTIVISM IS THE BEST THERAPY! - BUT, these Action Kits are not just “busy work.” They are a POWERFUL way for you to make a difference, getting the most effect with the least effort. - WE NEED TO KNOW WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE, THESE TIMES ARE TOO OVERWHELMING IF WE DON’T. WE MUST BECOME THE MEDIA!! This “wholly NEW Activist Kit” is designed to make it EASY and QUICK for you to CHANGE the WORLD!! As always PLEASE only use the below contact lists (ALL NEW) for the 9-11 issue. Just pop the Appeal for Action below out to a few bulletin boards, once a day, a week, whatever. If a few thousand of us do this (which tens of thousands now have kits) WE CHANGE THE WORLD – No Sweat!! [Once you sign up for a free chat/bulletin board group, book mark it in your favorite places so you can post to it regularly. Posts disappear after a few days OR HOURS.] THE PLACES TO POST/PUBLISH THE APPEAL TO ACTION AT: INDYMEDIA.ORG: Publish the “Disturbing Reports on 9-11” (below) regularly on ALL of the Indymedia publishing sites (URLs below): Main Indy Media Site: http://indymedia.org/ Nat’l & Int’l Indy Media Publishing Forms (below). Fill out the form, past in the message, and YOU ARE DONE!! (Quick and easy way to BLAST a demand for inquiry into 9-11 out WORLDWIDE! There, you’ve changed the world in about one hour. Do it weekly!) This is a Nat’l and Int’l Issue, so it needs to be posted to ALL Indymedia. http://indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://arizona.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://atlanta.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://austin.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php?function=publish http://boston.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://buffalo.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://chicago.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://cleveland.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://www.madhattersimc.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Publish&file=index http://dc.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://hawaii.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://houston.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://la.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://madison.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://maine.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://twincities.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://newjersey.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://newmexico.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://nyc.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://nycap.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://www.phillyimc.org/submit.pl http://portland.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://richmond.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://rockymountain.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://sdimc.org/webcast/publish.php3#form http://sf.indymedia.org/publish.php#publishform http://seattle.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://www.stlimc.org/publish.php3#form http://www.ucimc.org/publish.php3 http://utah.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://dc.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://adelaide.indymedia.org.au/publish.php3 http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://sydney.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://southafrica.indymedia.org/publish.php http://uk.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://alberta.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://hamilton.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://maritimes.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://montreal.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://ontario.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://vancouver.indymedia.org/publish.php3 http://victoria.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form http://windsor.indymedia.org/publish.php3#form Some Bulletin Boards you can post this to (please find others): * Black Entertainment (post under many topics – on all sites): http://betboards.bet.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi * Michael Moore’s Message Board: http://www.michaelmoore.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi E-graffiti: http://www.youthoutlook.org/cgi-bin/postings.cgi?action=newtopic&number=2&forum=Straight+Freestyle&DaysPrune=365&LastLogin= * MSNBC Newschat: http://www.msnbc.com/chat/signin.asp * CNN Community Message Boards: http://community.cnn.com/cgi-bin/WebX?29@178.MIk9eMI8ORJ^0@.ee6b280 Enron Politics: http://communities.msn.com/EnronPolitics/home.htm Long Term Solutions Politics: http://communities.msn.com/LongTermSolutionsPoliticsenvrnmntpeopletheworld/home.htm * 190 Yahoo Activist Discussion Groups YOU can join: http://search.messages.yahoo.com/search/messages?tag_M=activists&fname_M=txt_main WORLD WIDE Bulletin Board lists: http://www.prairienet.org/bbslist/ MSN Politics: http://communities.msn.com/Politics/home.htm MSN Real Politics: http://communities.msn.com/realpolitics/home.htm Teens in Politics: http://communities.msn.com/TEENSINPOLITICS/home.htm Political Science & Futurology: http://communities.msn.com/PoliticsEnd/messageboard.msnw Extreme Politics: http://communities.msn.com/ExtremePolitics/home.htm Political Regs: http://communities.msn.com/PoliticsRegs/home.htm UK Politics: http://communities.msn.com/UKPolitics/home.htm Political Chatters: http://communities.msn.com/PoliticsChatters/home.htm World Politics: http://communities.msn.com/WorldPolitics2/home.htm Hardball Politics: http://communities.msn.com/HardballPolitics/home.htm American Politics: http://communities.msn.com/AmericanPolitics/home.htm [The Appeal for Action to be posted] THE U.S. MEDIA HAS BETRAYED US IN “COMPLETELY IGNORING” THE BELOW DISTURBING REPORTS AROUND 9-11. PLEASE SPREAD THIS INFORMATION OUT AS FAR, WIDE, AND FAST AS YOU CAN!! BULLETIN BOARDS, DISCUSSION GROUPS, MESSAGE POSTS, ANYWHERE YOU CAN! 140 page report meticulously detailing this issue & the disturbing reports around it at: http://angelfire.lycos.com/retro/malcontentx An extraordinary story is unfolding that is being picked up and investigated by media worldwide . . . but not in the U.S. Canadian TV networks Vision TV's commentator SCALDED U.S. media for ignoring the below reports. Reports summarized below (with source URL's, and/or publication sourced). Thousands of activists are emailing perhaps tens of millions of these emerging reports to universities, institutions and media worldwide. ****************** U.S. Navy Lieutenant in Intelligence warned Canadian officials in a sealed envelope BEFORE 9/11 that NY and the Pentagon would be attacked!! ||| NICK PRON, TORONTO STAR - While jet fighters drop bombs on Afghanistan in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy and FBI agents search for the source of anthrax letters, an incredible tale has been unfolding in a Toronto courtroom. . . . The 35-year-old American claims to be a lieutenant in a U.S. Navy intelligence unit, a spy who says he knew in advance about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In his affidavit, he says he tried to warn Canadian intelligence about possible terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, . . . he wrote the warning on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and handed it to jail guards a month before the attacks. They opened the letter Sept. 14 and immediately forwarded the information to Ottawa. . . . According to court documents, Vreeland was 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1984. Two years later, Vreeland says in his affidavit, he joined a special unit investigating drug smuggling into the U.S. by naval personnel. . . . This event is not disputed by Canadian authorities. The letter specifically listed a number of targets including The Sears Towers, The World Trade Center, The White House, The Pentagon, . . . A chilling sentence follows the list of targets, "Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!" . . . TORONTO STAR http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Art ****************** - An interview with Michael Springman: Michael Springmann worked for the US government for 20 years with the foreign service and consulate. He just went public with the story of his involvement in a large scale CIA operation that brought hundreds of people from the middle east to the US, issued them passports and trained them to be terrorists. Springmann says that the CIA is working closely with Bin Laden and his operatives in Jeddah and has been since 1987. The most haunting implication from this interview is that all of the terrorist acts of late were planned and paid for by the CIA with US taxpayers money so that the US could legitimately bomb Afghanistan (possible rational for wanting to do so is explained in below reports). The interview is riveting, and I urge you to give it a listen. Hear the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) interview here. http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1267 ****************** - The Bush Administration forced the FBI to back off of the Bin Laden investigation months before 9-11. [BBC transcript BUSH – BIN LADEN HIDDEN AGENDA!!!] http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm ****************** - US Oil interests were well represented within the negotiating team, that apparently was the source of the threat to "bury Afghanistan in a carpet of bombs" (months before 9-11) unless they played ball in creating a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan. This threat was reportedly made several months before 9-11. - ENRON DID THE FEASABILITY STUDY FOR THIS MULTIBILLION DOLLAR PROJECT. - Reportedly the Bush Administration forced the FBI to "back off" on their investigations of terrorism in the Middle East. FBI Deputy Director O'Neill (killed in WTC on 9-11) reportedly resigned not long before 9-11 over this investigative obstruction, claiming that the main obstruction was the interests of American Oil Companies. (Source: Recently released French Book, "Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth) ****************** - Fire Engineering Magazine assails the incredible speed that the evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed. Never in the history of fire investigations has evidence been destroyed this fast before exhaustive investigations can be completed. ["We must try to find out why the twin towers fell" By James Quintiere,Baltimore Sun 1/3/01 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- op.towers03jan03.story -WTC "INVESTIGATION"?: A CALL TO ACTION from Fire Engineering Magazine] ****************** - "It is not a stretch to wonder if this White House is up to something that it doesn't want known 12 years from now or anytimethereafter. [A direct quote from the piece carried by Scripps Howard News Service, 11/5/2001. Re: Bush's sealing of presidential records for the first time in U.S. history] ****************** - Bush & Cheney urge Senate Leader to "limit" inquiries into 9-11: Senate perplexed by this. Don't go there: Bush Asks Daschle to Limit Sept. 11 Probes Date: Wednesday, January 30 @ 10:09:24 EST WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request. But, Daschle said, " . . . clearly, I think the American people are entitled to know what happened and why," he said. ****************** Bush reveals first thought: There's one terrible pilot Matthew Engel in Washington Wednesday December 5, 2001 The Guardian President George Bush added a new and bizarre twist last night to the folklore surrounding September 11 when he revealed his initial reaction to the first plane hitting the World Trade Centre. In answer to a question from an eight-year-old in Florida, he said his first thought was: "There's one terrible pilot." Mr Bush was back in the state where he spent that fateful morning, before being flown off on a zig-zag cross-country journey which finally took him back to Washington. This is not considered his finest hour, and the latest comment seems to be further evidence about the sluggishness of his immediate response. Mr Bush got the news outside a school classroom before going in to talk to the kids about a reading programme. He went in as planned but then Andrew Card, his chief of staff, came in and whispered the news of the second plane hitting the twin towers. He said yesterday: "I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was obviously on - and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'" Of the second strike, Mr Bush told the youngster: "I wasn't sure what to think at first. You know, I grew up in a period of time where the idea of America being under attack never entered my mind - just like your daddy and mother's mind probably. And I started thinking hard in that very brief period of time about what it meant to be under attack. I knew that when I got all the facts, there would be hell to pay for attacking America." The story that he was watching TV contradicts reports from correspondents at the time that he got the news in a phone call from his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It also adds further puzzles: why he was being made to wait; why he did not at least delay his entry into the classroom; and why is it obvious that an elementary school would have a TV set in the corridor? [Added note. No one saw the first plane hit the first tower at that time. It wasn't aired on television until later.] ************** Is it Outrageous to Consider that Elements of a Nations' Government Could Committ Terror on It's Own People for Political Reasons? - ABC News.com's May/2001 story resurfaces about how the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have in the past ACTUALLY DESIGNED a plan to committ domestic terror on Americans to whip them into a war hysteria, to support war efforts by the govt. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html [The National Security Archive has a PDF version of the Operation Northwoods plan, which author James Bamford says "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." It can be found at the following URL:] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/ ***************** [Standard FAA and DOD "intercept and shoot down procedures" were violated on 9-11 (see FAA and DOD procedures on "intercepts").] - It is a FACT that standard intercept procedures for dealing with these kinds of situations ARE TOTALLY ESTABLISHED, IN FORCE and ON- LINE in these United States 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. - Regarding rules governing IFR requirements, see FAA Order 7400.2E 'Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters,' Effective Date: December 7, 2000 (Includes Change 1, effective July 7, 2001), Chapter 14-1-2. Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIR/air1401.html#14-1-2FAA - Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures,' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001) Chapter 5-6-4 "Interception Signals" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html#5-6-4 - FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-2-5 "Emergency Situations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1002.html#10-2-5 - FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-1-1 "Emergency Determinations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1001.html#10-1-1 - FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 4, Section 5, "Air Defense Liaison Officers (ADLO's)" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch4/mil0405.html#Section%205 - FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 7, Section 1-2, "Escort of Hijacked Aircraft: Requests for Service" Full text posted at: http://faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/mil0701.html#7-1-2 - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1 June 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," 4. Policy (page 1) PDF available at: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf Backup at: http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf For a clear and detailed description of flight plans, fixes, and Air Traffic Control, see: 'Direct-To Requirements' by Gregory Dennis and Emina Torlak at: http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/atc/D2Requirements.htm Absolutely NO executive-level input of ANY KIND is required for standard intercepts to be scrambled. Yet, they weren't on 9-11. ****************** - San Francisco Chronicle reports, the anthrax strain produced in US University is destroyed on ok of FBI (they had studied this for years, some at university question the timing of the destruction of those anthrax spores . . . right now of all times (?)) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL ****************** Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S. The powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually indistinguishable from that produced by the United States military, according to federal scientists. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html?todaysheadlines ****************** -[Someone with considerable financial resources, and foreknowledge of the terrorist event, put stock options "against" the airlines that were to explode that week of 9-11. - INSIDER TRADING PROFITS from 9-11 were aggresively reported by the US media when they thought it was Arab terrorists . . . but then the story mysteriously died. Then the UK Independent revealed that it leads to a firm once chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA (and stranger still is that $2.5 million of the "winnings" are still unclaimed (see below for URL to entire story). http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html . Info confirmed by Independent Newspaper in UK: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=99402] [AGAIN, 140 page report meticulously detailing this issue & the disturbing reports around it is available at: http://angelfire.lycos.com/retro/malcontentx This report details the conflicting and dubious statements with timelines, and detailed reports on events of 9-11 including flights, passenger lists, and many other critical details that world media is scrutinizing while U.S. media continues to completely ignore.] Foreign Officials have powerful concerns over 9-11: FORMER GERMAN CABINET MINISTER ATTACKS OFFICIAL BRAINWASHING ON SEPTEMBER 11 ISSUE [Source: Tagesspiegel, Berlin, Jan. 13] PARTIAL TRANSLATION In a full-page interview with the Sunday edition (Jan. 13) of the Berlin Tagesspiegel daily, former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, said he does not buy any of the official theories that have been presented to date, on the events of September 11. Q: You seem so angry, really upset. Von Buelow: I can explain what's bothering me: I see that after the horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong. Q: What do you mean by that? Von Buelow: I wonder why many questions are not asked. Normally, with such a terrible thing, various leads and tracks appear that are then commented on, by the investigators, the media, the government: Is there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible? This time, this is not the case at all. It already began just hours after the attacks in New York and Washington and-- Q: In those hours, there was horror, and grief. Von Buelow: Right, but actually it was astounding: There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion-- Q: ...more than the German defense budget... Von Buelow: --which were not able to prevent the attacks. In fact, they didn't even have an inkling they would happen. For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground, 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within ten days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive. Q: What, please? Von Buelow: Yes, yes. And why did the FBI chief take no position regarding contradictions? Where the list came from, why it was false? If I were the chief investigator (state attorney) in such a case, I would regularly go to the public, and give information on which lead are valid and which not. Q: That sounds like-- Von Buelow: --like assailants who, in their preparations, leave tracks behind them like a herd of stampeding elephants? They made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fall into the hands of the FBI, because they were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left like behind like in a child's game of hide-and-seek, which were to be followed! There is also the theory of one British flight engineer: According to this, the steering of the planes was perhaps taken out of the pilots' hands, from outside. The Americans had developed a method in the 1970s, whereby they could rescue hijacked planes by intervening into the computer piloting [automatic pilot system]. This theory says, this technique was abused in this case. That's a theory.... Q: Which sounds really adventurous, and was never considered. Von Buelow: You see! I do not accept this theory, but I find it worth considering. And what about the obscure stock transactions? In the week prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies, increased 1,200%. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must have known something. Who? Q: Why don't you speculate on who it might have been. Von Buelow: With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-communism doesn't work any more; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism. Q: Brainwashing? That's a tough term. Von Buelow: Yes? But the idea of the enemy image doesn't come from me. It comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy. Already in the middle of the 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and the U.S. needed someone they could hate-- this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especially oil and gas. Q: You mean, the events of Sept. 11-- Von Buelow: --fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry, the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic complex. This is in fact conspicuous. The huge raw materials reserves of the former Soviet Union are now at their disposal, also the pipeline routes and-- Q: Erich Follach described that at length in Spiegel: ``It's a matter of military bases, drugs, oil and gas reserves.'' Von Buelow: I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry. Q: You are a conspiracy theorist! Von Buelow: Yeah, yeah. That's the ridicule heaped [on those raising these questions] by those who would prefer to follow the official, politically correct line. Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts that, doesn't have all his marbles! That is your accusation. Q: Your career actually speaks against the idea that you are not in your right mind. You were already in the 1970s, state secretary in the Defense Ministry; in 1993 you were the SPD [Social Democratic Party] speaker in the Schalk-Golodkowski investigation committee-- Von Buelow: And it all began there! Until that time, I did not have any great knowledge of the work of intelligence agencies. And now we had to take note of a great discrepancy: We shed light on the dealings of the Stasi and other East bloc intelligence agencies in the field of economic criminality, but as soon as we wanted to know something about the activities of the BND [German intelligence agency] or the CIA, it was mercilessly blocked. No information, no cooperation, nothing! That's when I was first taken aback. The Legacy: "On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism, of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the exception sometimes that proves the rule." - George Bush on Good Morning America. 01/28/87 "You f**king son of a bitch, I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this.", - George W. Bush shouted at writer & editor Al Hunt, & his 6 yr old son in a restaurant - 1988 .... --------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,636104,00.html Enron's new $5bn black hole Investigators extend probe to key firm at heart of energy giant's 3,000 subsidiaries Jamie Doward, deputy business editor Sunday January 20, 2002 | The Observer Investigators probing the accounts of collapsed energy giant Enron are examining what happened to more than $5 billion in loans and investments the company made to subsidiaries kept off its balance sheet. The scale of the black hole opening up looks as if it could dwarf previous estimates. Investigators are already examining a series of undeclared transactions between the US Company and two Cayman Islands firms - LJM1 and LJM2 - set up by the firm's former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow. Now it has emerged that by 31 December 2000 Enron had also invested, or loaned, $5.3bn to a number of companies in which it had stakes, according to papers filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These included two ailing firms that had been harming their parent's financial performance, water specialist Azurix and the Dabhol Power Company of India. The subsidiaries - part of a network of more than 3,000 firms linked to Enron - were claimed by the company to be 'unconsolidated affiliates', which do not have to be shown on balance sheets. Fastow's activities have already forced Enron to restate its accounts so that they show a $1.2bn reduction in shareholders' equity. And a special committee Enron established has concluded that further black holes may be found. Now investigators are believed to be turning their attention to one key 'unconsolidated' subsidiary, WhiteWing Associates, which itself has 75 subsidiaries. WhiteWing crops up throughout Enron's SEC filings. In 2000 and 1999, respectively, Enron sold '$632 million and $192m of investments and other assets to WhiteWing', the papers say. Enron refuses to discuss WhiteWing, which in turn was involved in several transactions with LJM1 and LJM2. WhiteWing lists an investment vehicle, Osprey Trust, as a limited partner. The trust is owned by a number of anonymous financial institutions - which suggests the investigators will have to cast their net far wider to understand the true complexities behind Enron's downfall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friendly Fire Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba By David Ruppe N E W Y O R K, May 1 — In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes. The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. "These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com. "The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants." Gunning for War The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford. The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show. Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]." The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores. The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it. "The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro. Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military — not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion. "That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford says. "The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing." 'Over the Edge' The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job. The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds. There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election. And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford. "Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge." Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963. One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war. "There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying," he says. After 40 Years Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy. As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination. The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents. Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained. "The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford. ----------------------------------------------------------- From _BODY OF SECRETS_, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following: scanned and edited by NY Transfer News. ...In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer's view, the country would be far better off if the generals could take over. [JFK assassination legend has it some general presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk] For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy administration's botched Bay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike," said one report at the time. "President Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a 'no-win' chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere." Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge. According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they 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. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war. The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president. Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade. The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn. As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere." Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines. One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]" This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war. Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out "within the time frame of the next few months." Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations." The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized." Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings: *"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government." *"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation." *"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba." Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight." Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception: An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident. Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place. In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff." At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba. Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime." Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required." Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty." By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.' Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm. Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed. With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods. Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known. Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning "pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba." Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation." The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation--was treason. In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots. One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest. Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades. In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war. It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit. Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit. Book epigram: "The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More at ... http://larouchepub.com/other/2001/2839operation_northwds.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story http://www.salon.com/books/review/2001/04/25/nsa http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoTimes/message/1141 http://www.larouchepub.com/other_eir.html http://www.11september.20m.com ------------------------------------------------------------ Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad Tue Feb 19, 9:00 AM ET By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said. The plans, which have not received final approval from the Bush administration, have stirred opposition among some Pentagon officials who say they might undermine the credibility of information that is openly distributed by the Defense Department's public affairs officers. The military has long engaged in information warfare against hostile nations for instance, by dropping leaflets and broadcasting messages into Afghanistan when it was still under Taliban rule. But it recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. The office would assume a role traditionally led by civilian agencies, mainly the State Department. The small but well-financed Pentagon office, which was established shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was a response to concerns in the administration that the United States was losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries. As part of the effort to counter the pronouncements of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and their supporters, the State Department has already hired a former advertising executive to run its public diplomacy office, and the White House has created a public information "war room" to coordinate the administration's daily message domestically and abroad. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, while broadly supportive of the new office, has not approved its specific proposals and has asked the Pentagon's top lawyer, William J. Haynes, to review them, senior Pentagon officials said. Little information is available about the Office of Strategic Influence, and even many senior Pentagon officials and Congressional military aides say they know almost nothing about its purpose and plans. Its multimillion dollar budget, drawn from a $10 billion emergency supplement to the Pentagon budget authorized by Congress in October, has not been disclosed. Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, the new office has begun circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations. The new office "rolls up all the instruments within D.O.D. to influence foreign audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas A. Timmes, a former Army colonel and psychological operations officer, said at a recent conference, referring to the Department of Defense. "D.O.D. has not traditionally done these things." One of the office's proposals calls for planting news items with foreign media organizations through outside concerns that might not have obvious ties to the Pentagon, officials familiar with the proposal said. General Worden envisions a broad mission ranging from "black" campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to "white" public affairs that rely on truthful news releases, Pentagon officials said. "It goes from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of white," a senior Pentagon official said. Another proposal involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders e-mail messages that promote American views or attack unfriendly governments, officials said. Asked if such e-mail would be identified as coming from the American military, a senior Pentagon official said that "the return address will probably be a dot-com, not a dot- mil," a reference to the military's Internet designation. To help the new office, the Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based international consulting firm run by John W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to President Jimmy Carter. The firm, which is being paid about $100,000 a month, has done extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal family and the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group seeking to oust President Saddam Hussein. Officials at the Rendon Group say terms of their contract forbid them to talk about their Pentagon work. But the firm is well known for running propaganda campaigns in Arab countries, including one denouncing atrocities by Iraq during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The firm has been hired as the Bush administration appears to have united around the goal of ousting Mr. Hussein. "Saddam Hussein has a charm offensive going on, and we haven't done anything to counteract it," a senior military official said. Proponents say the new Pentagon office will bring much-needed coordination to the military's efforts to influence views of the United States overseas, particularly as Washington broadens the war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan. But the new office has also stirred a sharp debate in the Pentagon, where several senior officials have questioned whether its mission is too broad and possibly even illegal. Those critics say they are disturbed that a single office might be authorized to use not only covert operations like computer network attacks, psychological activities and deception, but also the instruments and staff of the military's globe- spanning public affairs apparatus. Mingling the more surreptitious activities with the work of traditional public affairs would undermine the Pentagon's credibility with the media, the public and governments around the world, critics argue. "This breaks down the boundaries almost completely," a senior Pentagon official said. Moreover, critics say, disinformation planted in foreign media organizations, like Reuters or Agence France-Presse, could end up being published or broadcast by American news organizations. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency are barred by law from propaganda activities in the United States. In the mid-1970's, it was disclosed that some C.I.A. programs to plant false information in the foreign press had resulted in articles published by American news organizations. Critics of the new Pentagon office also argue that governments allied with the United States are likely to object strongly to any attempts by the American military to influence media within their borders. "Everybody understands using information operations to go after nonfriendlies," another senior Pentagon official said. "When people get uncomfortable is when people use the same tools and tactics on friendlies." Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public information, declined to discuss details of the new office. But she acknowledged that its mission was being carefully reviewed by the Pentagon. "Clearly the U.S. needs to be as effective as possible in all our communications," she said. "What we're trying to do now is make clear the distinction and appropriateness of who does what." General Worden, an astrophysicist who has specialized in space operations in his 27-year Air Force career, did not respond to several requests for an interview. General Worden has close ties to his new boss, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, that date back to the Reagan administration, military officials said. The general's staff of about 15 people reports to the office of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, which is under Mr. Feith. The Office for Strategic Influence also coordinates its work with the White House's new counterterrorism office, run by Wayne A. Downing, a retired general who was head of the Special Operations command, which oversees the military's covert information operations. Many administration officials worried that the United States was losing support in the Islamic world after American warplanes began bombing Afghanistan in October. Those concerns spurred the creation of the Office of Strategic Influence. In an interview in November, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained the Pentagon's desire to broaden its efforts to influence foreign audiences, saying: "Perhaps the most challenging piece of this is putting together what we call a strategic influence campaign quickly and with the right emphasis. That's everything from psychological operations to the public affairs piece to coordinating partners in this effort with us." One of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the Office of Strategic Influence is the Army's Psychological Operations Command. The command was involved in dropping millions of fliers and broadcasting scores of radio programs into Afghanistan encouraging Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers to surrender. In the 1980's, Army "psyop" units, as they are known, broadcast radio and television programs into Nicaragua intended to undermine the Sandinista government. In the 1990's, they tried to encourage public support for American peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. The Office of Strategic Influence will also oversee private companies that will be hired to help develop information programs and evaluate their effectiveness using the same techniques as American political campaigns, including scientific polling and focus groups, officials said. "O.S.I. still thinks the way to go is start a Defense Department Voice of America," a senior military official said. "When I get their briefings, it's scary." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- http://host.wallstreetcity.com/wsc2/Comtex_Government_Stories.html?Button=Get+Story&headline=153389071&nocache=152 Burton Threatens Bush With Contempt Charge By P. MITCHELL PROTHERO United Press International WASHINGTON, Feb 14, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton Thursday threatened to hold President Bush in contempt of Congress unless the administration releases several sets of subpoenaed Justice Department documents to his committee. The documents relate to a series of investigations the committee has held into possible campaign finance violations by the Clinton administration and into the misuse of informants by federal law enforcement. "Should I get about 30 Republicans and all of the House Democrats and vote to hold the president in contempt of Congress?" Burton, R-Ind., asked during Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bybee's testimony before the committee. "That's exactly what we're going to do if you don't give us those documents." Burton's committee has requested documents on three separate investigations. One is a long-running investigation by Burton and the committee into the improper use of informants by the FBI over a 30-year period of organized crime investigations in New England. The committee first informally requested 13 memos related to prosecution decisions and later subpoenaed them from the Justice Department. The committee also requested two documents related to separate campaign finance investigations under the Clinton administration. On Dec. 12, Bush announced that none of the materials would be supplied to Congress because they are deliberative in nature and, thus, fall under executive privilege. But Burton has repeatedly argued that the documents -- most of which deal with decisions made from 1967 to 1995 in the organized crime investigations -- are harmless to the current administration. He says they could shed light on a series of failures by the FBI that led to several innocent men spending decades in prison for crimes they did not commit -- despite clear evidence the FBI was aware of their innocence. They could also help explain the rise of two top FBI informants who leveraged their relationship with law enforcement against their competitors and expanded their criminal empire with the help of their handlers. "Our government put an innocent man in jail for 30 years, and you don't want us to know why," Burton said. "We want to find out if there are people in jail or that have been put to death by the Justice Department for crimes they did not commit. If I have to fight my own party (to get the contempt citation), I will. But I don't want to do this, so you people must be nuts." Thursday's hearing explored whether the FBI influenced the early 1970s murder trial of a top informant -- who at the time of the murder was in the witness protection program -- by providing testimony to the defense. Burton alleges that the FBI and Justice Department ignored the threat to the community posed by the informant because of his previous contributions to convicting mobsters. Joe "The Animal" Barboza eventually received a prison term of 5 years to life in 1971 for his 26th known murder. He was released after just three years from a minimum-security prison. Committee investigators are convinced that the FBI helped him avoid a longer sentence, despite having a famously violent criminal history, because of his previous value as an informant against organized crime. Bybee denied that the administration was refusing to help with the investigation, and said that both the White House and Justice were willing to work with the committee to determine which documents needed to be shared with investigators. "With respect to the documents, the administration will be happy to sit down with you and discuss your needs," he said. "That is our instruction from the president." But this answer did little to appease Burton, who first responded with the threat to hold the president in contempt. He also repeatedly said that his committee and its power of subpoena should have final say in which documents it needs to see while investigating abuses of power. Adding to the irritation of the committee members was the arrival on Wednesday night of thousands of pages of Justice Department documents -- which had been requested, but not subpoenaed by the committee -- for committee staff. This coincided with the administration allowing investigators to view, but not copy or release, one of the subpoenaed memos. Such arguments over the responsibility of the White House to provide documents to Congress are nothing new to the Bush administration, which is already embroiled in several fights with the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative body, and with Burton's Democratic counterpart on the committee, California Rep. Henry Waxman. The GAO has been demanding notes from meetings between Vice President Dick Cheney and energy industry officials during the deliberations that led to the formation of the Bush energy policy proposals last year. The White House has refused to provide them, and the GAO has threatened to sue the vice president to gain access to the notes. Waxman has also been vocal on the same issue, but so far, has been unable to convince Burton to issue subpoenas to administration officials over the energy policy talks. But a Republican committee source expressed frustration with the White House because these latest refusals are making it more difficult for Burton to deny Waxman's requests for a subpoena. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ More info on 9-11- How many times did we see the video clips of the planes hitting the World Trade Centre? http://www.movement.v21net.co.uk/Pentagon.htm Signs of a Cover-up at the PentagonFrank Levi, 2002How many times did we see the video clips of theplanes hitting the World Trade Centre? It was repeatedalmost like a loop on every channel until the horrorof the event was permanently burned into our memories.Yet what can be said of the plane crash at thePentagon – we heard about it soon enough, but very fewimages were forthcoming on the day, and the bulk ofwhat we saw afterwards were still photos of thecollapsed portion of the pentagon and a few picturesof fire-fighters attempting to extinguish the blaze.No sign of any video recordings, very few witnessreports and definitely nothing to show us the event asit happened. Have a look at the following two links – it appearsthe Pentagon’s security cameras failed to capture thecrash on CCTV, yet a nearby hotel and a gas stationhad security cameras which DID manage to capture thewhole event. Pretty poor security at the Pentagon –its just a wonder that no-one else is trying to attackthe world’s only superpower if the security cameras ontheir military command centre can’t manage to film aplane crashing into the building. The FBI came andconfiscated all the tapes without even having thecommon courtesy to give them to CNN so we could seethem 56 times a day.Were they worried that we might see pieces of paperwith state secrets on them flying out of the building?What exactly are they worried we might see? http://www.gertzfile.com/ring092101.html\ Video of attackThe electronic news media have broadcast repeatedlythe attack on the World Trade Centre. They are perhapsthe most dramatic news images since the explosion ofthe first atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Now word has reached us that federal investigators mayhave video footage of the deadly terrorist attack onthe Pentagon. A security camera atop a hotel close to the Pentagonmay have captured dramatic footage of the hijackedBoeing 757 airliner as it slammed into the westernwall of the Pentagon. Hotel employees sat watching thefilm in shock and horror several times before the FBIconfiscated the video as part of its investigation. It may be the only available video of the attack. ThePentagon has told broadcast news reporters that itssecurity cameras did not capture the crash. The attack occurred close to the Pentagon's heliport,an area that normally would be under 24-hour securitysurveillance, including video monitoring. http://www.google.co.uk/searchq=cache:cEYcct0w1g8C:www.militarymarket.com/+nex+gas+station+camera+pentagon&hl=enNEX camera captures Pentagon crashSecurity cameras at a NEXCOM-operated gas stationrecorded the Sept. 11 crash of a hijacked passengerairliner into the Pentagon, Navy sources have said.The security tape, which sources said clearly showsthe American Airlines jet ploughing into the buildingand exploding, was turned over to the FBI.The gas station is located on a hill south of thePentagon. Its security camera is aimed to record carscoming and going from the gas pumps. The angle of thecamera gives a clear view of the side of the Pentagonwhere the 757 jet hit, sources said.The tape’s existence has not been discussed publiclyby military officials or federal investigators. What exactly do they not want us to see?Here are two abstracts of articles taken from theDaily Press: 'HORRIFIC' IMAGE STILL HAUNTS SURRY WOMAN DISASTERVIEWED FROM ARLINGTON Daily Press; Newport News; Sep 14, 2001; TERRY SCANLONDaily Press; Abstract:Her brother, [Keith Wheelhouse], of Virginia Beach,spotted the planes first. The second plane lookedsimilar to a C- 130 transport plane, hesaid. Hebelieves it flew directly above the American Airlinesjet, as if to prevent two planes from appearing onradar while at the same time guiding the jet towardthe Pentagon.Wheelhouse's account of a second plane is unlikeeverything else that has been reported about theattack. Some initial reports on television said asecond airliner might be headed for the Pentagon, butauthorities later dismissed that. A Norfolk-based FBIagent interviewed Wheelhouse Wednesday evening.A possible explanation for the second plane could be aplane landing at nearby Ronald Reagan NationalAirport. The Pentagon is between the cemetery and theairport. But Wheelhouse insists he was not confused byother air traffic.HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN SAYS SHE, TOO, SAW PLANE FOLLOWINGJET THAT HIT PENTAGON Daily Press; Newport News; Sep 15, 2001; TERRY SCANLONDaily Press; Abstract:Kelly Knowles, a First Colonial High School alumnuswho now lives in an apartment a few miles from thePentagon, said some sort of plane followed the doomedAmerican Airlines jet toward the Pentagon, then veeredaway after the explosion.At the same time, [Keith Wheelhouse] and his sister,Pam Young, who lives in Surry, were preparing to leavea funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, which isless than a mile from the Pentagon, when they watchedthe jet approach and slam into the Pentagon. Both ofthem, as well as at least one other person at thefuneral, insist that there was another plane flyingnear the hijacked jet. A follow up article to these two can be seen at thislink. (From the Google cache)Over a month later Pentagon officials finally decideto deliver a convenient story that the mystery planeWAS in fact a c-130 that flew out of Andrews Air forcebase and just happened to see flight 77 on its way todestruction. It followed the plane on a request fromair traffic control. If this is true, surely you’dthink that a fighter from the same base could haveintercepted the plane instead of having to ask a c-130that just happened to be in the area to have a look? All of this certainly adds a lot of fuel to thepopular theories that the planes were being flown byremote control, especially now we have evidence tosuggest that an unknown plane or flying object hasbeen sighted at the WTC, flight 93 and now at thePentagon. WTC object caught on camera as plane hits: http://www2.justnet.ne.jp/~kiti/Ufo/wtc/wtc.htm Plenty of witnesses saw a small white plane near thecrash in Pennsylvania http://www.flight93crash.com Here are some links dealing with the remote controltheory: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/enemy http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/remotecontrol.htmlhttp://geocities.com/mknemesis/homerunhtml (lowbandwidth) There is plenty more if you look about – lots ofarguing for and against Here are the most well documented and convincingarticles showing government complicity in the attacks– why were the planes not intercepted? http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htmhttp://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htmhttp://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-3.html http://www.rense.com/general18/atcd.htm Back towww.movement.v21net.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------- DOUBLE CROSS *Double Cross* by Sam and Chuck Giancana. (New York: Warner Books, 1992) Either (a) Salvatore Momo "Mooney" Giancana was lying to his little brother Chuck when he told him these stories, or (b) little brother Chuck, co-author of this book, is lying to his readers, or (c) these stories are substantially correct. I opt for "c" -- these stories are substantially correct. The University of Illinois, besides its notoriety as home of "the Chief", a student who dresses in the supposed costume of an American Indian chief and does funny dances for beered-up sports fans, now has another claim to fame: it has its own connection to the *murder* of Marilyn Monroe. (Well, actually, it's the Chicago Circle branch of the University of Illinois that can add this to its resume.) "Mooney said the CIA and Outfit [Mafia] shared the talents of a University of Illinois chemist and researcher, a man whose lethal chemical concoctions had been utilized many times over the years by both organizations." But to understand the why of Monroe's murder, you have to understand the "double cross" done by the Kennedy clan to Giancana and other mobsters. It is fairly well-known that behind- the-scenes moneymen and others of influence will often back both candidates in an election. That way, whoever wins, the hidden backers still have control; the elected official will be "connected". "Being connected meant you did business with the Outfit [Mafia]. Leon Marcus was connected. Joe Kennedy was connected -- as were Abe Pritzker and Moe Annenberg. According to Mooney, all the Presidents of the United States since Teddy Roosevelt had been connected." Joe Kennedy, father of JFK, allegedly came to Giancana asking for the mob's help in getting his son elected. "[Joe] Kennedy's ties to the underworld intersected at a hundred points. Besides making a fortune in bootlegging [during Prohibition], Kennedy had made a financial killing in Hollywood in the twenties -- with the help of persuasive behind-the-scenes New York and Chicago muscle." In return for helping get his son elected, Joe Kennedy promised that federal watchdogs would be reined in and that Giancana and his pals would have things easy. And, according to authors Sam and Chuck Giancana, mobsters *did* pull out all the stops to help JFK become president. But here comes the "double cross": Once elected, Giancana and associates took it as a troubling sign that their hated nemesis, Robert F. Kennedy, was appointed Attorney General. This news came to Mooney "like a rabbit punch in the dark... It had occurred to Mooney that Joe Kennedy, 'the wily old bastard,' had had a brainstorm. By putting Bobby in charge of the Justice Department... Bobby would be utilized as henchman, with a virtual army of FBI agents at his disposal to destroy all those to whom the Kennedys owed favors." "'It's a brilliant move on Joe's part,' [Mooney Giancana] said ruefully. 'He'll have Bobby wipe us out to cover their own dirty tracks and it'll all be done in the name of the Kennedy . Brilliant. Just fuckin' brilliant.'" Marilyn Monroe, allegedly, had been exploited by both mobsters and the CIA to compromise world leaders. This would be accomplished, for example, by using surveillance of Monroe's liaisons with these leaders as material for subsequent blackmail. The authors claim that "Marilyn and the President had been connected romantically since the Democratic National Convention -- and that in March of 1962, Bobby Kennedy had become involved with her, as well." Monroe's career was languishing by June of 1962 and she had become increasingly troubled. "Later, Chuck would surmise that Marilyn Monroe's knowledge of CIA-Outfit collaborative efforts coupled with her increasingly severe emotional instability had become a dangerous combination. And that by July, thanks to a failing relationship with Bobby Kennedy, she had become not only expendable but -- when Mooney received reports of her threats to Bobby Kennedy to 'blow the lid off the whole damn thing' -- a frightening liability, as well." The CIA, claim the authors, asked Giancana and associates to eliminate Monroe. And Mooney saw this also as an opportunity to get back at the Kennedys: he apparently hoped to have RFK implicated by association in a faked "suicide" of Monroe. On August 4, 1962, Bobby Kennedy visited Monroe in California, accompanied by a man who may have been a doctor. Mobsters listening in on the meeting say that Monroe became more and more hysterical. Kennedy instructed the man with him to give Monroe a shot to "calm her down". RFK and his companion then left Monroe sedated in her home. The mob's assassins then moved in for the kill: sometime before midnight, they entered Marilyn's home. "She struggled at first, it was said, but already drugged by the injected sedative... their rubber-gloved hands easily forced her nude body to the bed. Calmly... they taped her mouth shut and proceeded to insert a specially 'doctored' Nembutal suppository into her anus. Then they waited." "The suppository... prepared by the same Chicago chemist who concocted the numerous chemical potions for the Castro hit, had been a brilliant choice. A lethal dosage of sedatives administered orally, and by force, would have been too risky, causing suspicious bruising during a likely struggle, as well as vomiting..." Mooney Giancana had hoped that a proper investigation would have unearthed Bobby Kennedy's visit to the starlet's home just prior to her death. "[It] might also be suspected that the attorney general, along with a confederate, had administered a lethal dose of sedatives into Marilyn Monroe's bloodstream." "Instead, the killers listened over their wiretaps in the hours following the murder as a series of phone calls alerted Bobby Kennedy to Marilyn's death and ultimately mobilized a team of FBI agents to avert the impending disaster..." What about the assassination of JFK? Was it the mob or the CIA? "Mooney leaned forward. 'Look, this is one of the Roman gods. This one has two faces... two sides. That's what we are, the Outfit and the CIA... two sides of the same coin. Sometimes our government can't do shit on the up-and-up. Sometimes they need a little trouble somewhere or maybe they need some bastard taken care of... Jesus, they can't get caught doin' shit like that. What if people found out? But we can. Guns, a hit, muscle... whatever dirty work needs to be done. We're on the same side, we're workin' for the same things... we just look different. So... we're two sides of the same coin... If you think we had Truman... let me tell you... we got this deal sewn up. Ike, all he does is play golf.'" "'So that's what you like about the guy,' Chuck teased." "'Shit, he's a pigeon... it's Nixon that's got the power. He's the one with the backing of the big money, like Hughes and the guys in California and the oilmen in Texas... Hump says Nixon's gonna call us if he needs a little hardball behind the scenes.'" "'From now on you can call me Sam Giancana, civil servant.'" --------------------------------------------------------------- Go to www.Google.com or www.yahoo.com and type the words: Operation Northwoods in to see why JFK may have been killed. ---------------------------------------------------------------- By Dan Morgan and Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, December 25, 2001; Page A01 During the administration of the first President George Bush, a new party fundraiser named Kenneth L. Lay was invited to spend the night at the White House. The sleepover was an early coup for the chairman of Enron Corp. and a harbinger of things to come. Over the following decade, Lay and Enron poured millions of dollars into U.S. politics, cultivating unequaled access and using the entree to lobby Congress, the White House and regulatory agencies for action that was critical to the energy company's spectacular growth. Now, with Enron's sudden bankruptcy, public attention has turned not only to the financial practices that brought the company down, but to what its far-flung political operations say about the country's campaign finance system. Some Democrats in Congress are spoiling for an opportunity to use Lay and Enron to embarrass the Republican Party, which received most of the company's largess over the years. They want to look into such things as Enron's relationship with Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), ranking minority member on the Senate Banking Committee and chairman of the committee at a time when his wife, Wendy L. Gramm, was serving on Enron's board. Last year, Gramm's committee approved legislation that included a key provision exempting parts of Enron's massive energy trading operation from federal oversight. "I think the Enron story is going to turn out to be an enormous political story," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking minority member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The ties of Lay to the White House and GOP leaders, he added, were so multilayered that Republicans are likely to be reluctant to pursue them. But he made clear that he intends to do so and expects the Democratic-controlled Senate to follow suit. Enron also cultivated relationships with Democrats, however. Lay played golf in Vail, Colo., with President Bill Clinton, and Enron gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaign committees and Democrats in the House and Senate, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Rep. Martin Frost (Tex.), the ranking minority member on the House Rules Committee. A Routine Cost for Some Advocates of campaign finance reform say the Enron case vividly illustrates the ties between politics and big money, though it's unclear that the company's political operations were radically different from others for whom political contributions have become a routine cost of doing business. "There are aspects of [the Enron case] that remind us of the savings and loan scandal, in the sense that a powerful institution used big money to buy influence and protect itself while ordinary citizens ended up losing their life savings," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington interest group, referring to a banking controversy in the 1980s. Enron's ties to Republicans and the present Bush administration were especially close. Lay raised large sums for George W. Bush's campaign. Enron, Lay and its employees have contributed $572,350 to him over his career, far more than any other company, according to the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Several top administration officials have been Enron advisers or stockholders. Enron, Lay and other senior executives contributed $1.7 million in soft-money donations to politicians in the 2000 election cycle, two-thirds of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Republicans clearly are sensitive to the potential political dangers. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently returned a $100,000 check collected from Enron in November, after deciding that "it was appropriate to give it back," spokesman Dan Allen said. The Republican Governors Association last week returned an Enron donation of $60,000. What was unique about Enron, competitors and allies agree, was a brash and sometimes counterproductive political style. Stories of Enron's hardball style are legion. In October 1999, for example, Jeffrey K. Skilling, then Enron's president, expressed his displeasure at Rep. Joe Barton's position on a deregulation bill pending in the energy subcommittee Barton chairs. The meeting grew "heated and awful," said one person who was present, until Barton (R-Tex.), a usually mild-mannered man who keeps a Bible on his desk, exploded. "Jeffrey Skilling, I may not have your millions of dollars, but I am not an idiot," one witness recalled Barton saying. The meeting ended without Enron getting the changes it wanted. "Skilling did not get Washington," the source added. "In their lobbying, they acted like the 800-pound gorilla they were," said Christopher Horner, a Washington lawyer who briefly directed Enron's government relations in 1997. Lay and Skilling declined interview requests, but Enron officials say they have no regrets about their use of money. "It got us name recognition," company spokesman Mark Palmer said. "Given the aggregation of our foes, we had to make sure that people knew what our argument was." Jump-Starting Deregulation Almost from its start in 1985 as a gas pipeline company, Enron needed help in Washington, and it got it in a series of actions by Congress and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that undermined the traditional monopoly of utility companies over power plants and transmission lines. Enron lobbied for several of the initial actions that set the stage for the era of a deregulated wholesale electricity market. It supported the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which opened the utility companies' wires to electricity merchants such as Enron. It also worked with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- then chaired by Wendy Gramm -- for a regulatory exemption for futures trading in energy derivatives, which later became Enron's most lucrative business. Soon after Gramm stepped down in 1993, she was appointed to Enron's board. Independent sources knowledgeable about these dealings, however, said Enron was not the main interested party. They said the lead was taken by several major oil companies, including British Petroleum Co. and Phillips Petroleum Co., which were concerned about the effect of CFTC regulation on their offshore trading in crude oil contracts. Wendy Gramm, an apostle of free markets, needed little convincing, the sources said. That same year, Lay served as chairman of the committee organizing the Republican National Convention in Houston. Hedging its bets, Enron made a major contribution to a "street fair" in honor of Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), a key energy policymaker, at the Democratic convention. Key orders by FERC in 1996 also supported Enron's transformation into a freewheeling trader of gas, electricity and more exotic products, such as telecommunications services and sulfur-dioxide emissions credits. The new rules ensured that Enron and other merchant companies could buy electricity from independent power plants and sell it to distant customers, using transmission lines borrowed from utility companies. Even Enron's harshest critics credit Lay with putting new issues -- such as electricity deregulation -- on the Washington agenda. Lay,a former Interior Department official with a PhD in economics, became "the ambassador" for deregulation, one former employee said. Throughout the 1990s, Enron's agenda was opposed by coal-burning utilities, especially ones in the Southeast, which viewed the emerging wholesale electricity market as a threat to their turf. Many of these, such as Atlanta-based Southern Co., had impressive political funding and connections of their own. But with the explosive growth of Enron and the GOP takeover of Congress in 1995, the company's soft-money donations -- unregulated and unlimited gifts to political parties and organizations -- jumped sharply. They went from about $136,000 in the 1993-94 election cycle, to $687,000 in 1996 and $1.7 million in 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frustrated by Washington For all its connections, sources say, Enron often found Washington frustratingly slowand unreliable. The company placed a substantial bet on federal support for limits on the greenhouse gases causing global warming. Enron officials hoped to exploit a new market in industry for carbon-emissions credits, similar to the one that developed for sulphur credits after clean-air legislation was enacted in 1990. Lay joined the Union of Concerned Scientists and environmental groups in calling for curbs on carbon in the atmosphere. The Clinton administration was supportive, but this year the Bush administration reneged on a campaign pledge to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-burning power plants. A multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign in Congress to secure legislation requiring states to institute retail electricity deregulation fared even worse. Enron hired former New York representative Bill Paxon, a leading conservative, to run Americans for Affordable Electricity, which commissioned studies and recruited business support for deregulation. But the legislation never made it out of a congressional subcommittee. At the same time, Enron was growing restive over the slow pace of deregulation in the wholesale electricity market, the core of its business. Large parts of the country, especially the Southeast, were still monopolized by regulated utilities that limited the opportunity for trading gas, electricity and energy derivatives. Political Pragmatism Enron's political pragmatism was demonstrated in the 1998 New York Senate election, when it dropped its support of the Republican incumbent, Alfonse M. D'Amato, after Democrat Schumer endorsed Enron's goal of wholesale deregulation, sources said. Lay reciprocated by hosting several fundraisers for Schumer, and Enron's political action committee contributed $7,500 to the Schumer campaign. The company's lobbying team expanded along with its political spending. It outgrew the two-person operation that existed in 1989 and began to reflect Enron's interest in everything from pipeline safety and derivatives trading to Overseas Private Investment Corp. loan guarantees. By last year, its lobbying expenses exceeded $2 million a year and covered a raft of big-name consultants, such as former Montana governor Marc F. Racicot, the new Republican National Committee chairman, and former top aides to House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) The hazards of Enron's efforts to connect with both parties were evident last year, when shortly before the November election, the company picked a Clinton administration Treasury official, Linda Robertson, to run its Washington office. A perturbed DeLay, whose campaign and related funds had received more than $100,000 from Enron and Lay, briefly "excommunicated" Enron, a House source said. Robertson was not invited to a series of meetings of electricity lobbyists held in DeLay's office last July, though an Enron official did finally attend the sessions. Enron had more success when Congress overwhelmingly approved legislation last year containing a provision precluding the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from regulating Enron's trading in energy derivatives. These instruments are traded largely between electricity dealers and big wholesale consumers, which use them to hedge against price swings that could adversely affect their businesses. The exemption, tucked into broader legislation that established the legality of unregulated derivatives trading by banks, was not supported by a Clinton administration working group, largely because of opposition from the CFTC. Since the departure of Wendy Gramm, some in the agency had lobbied for tighter control over the exploding energy derivatives market. The legislation passed through the Senate Banking Committee, then chaired by Phil Gramm, who has received $97,350 from Enron employees and its political action committee since 1989. A Gramm spokesman said the senator does not recall talking to his wife, an Enron director, about the energy provision and played "no role" in negotiating it. Wendy Gramm did not return phone calls seeking comment. Enron was a primary player, with Koch Industries Inc., a large, privately held oil and gas company based in Wichita, in pushing for the exemption, a source said. But the company's main effort was focused on the House Agriculture Committee, where the legislation originated. Its chairman and ranking Democrat, Texas Reps. Larry Combest (R) and Charles W. Stenholm (D), respectively, were among the top recipients of Enron campaign donations in the House since 1989. The CFTC objected strenuously to the initial draft marked up by the committee, but the Texas congressmen helped work out a compromise between Enron and the agency. The compromise was then offered by Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the home-state congressman of Koch Industries and a recipient of campaign donations from Enron and Koch in the last election cycle. Moran did not return a phone call seeking a comment. Early this year, Lay seemed to be at the height of his political power, getting a private meeting with Vice President Cheney to discuss the administration's energy policy proposals and weighing in on key nominations to FERC. Curtis Hebert Jr., FERC's chairman at the time, has reported that Lay called him and implied that Enron would urge the newly installed Bush administration to keep him in the job -- if he changed his views to support Enron's position for faster electricity deregulation. Lay contended that Hebert called him to ask for support. Hebert was not reappointed. He was replaced by Texas lawyer Pat Wood III, a strong advocate of deregulation who had the backing of Lay and Enron. Ironically, since Enron's fall, both FERC and Congress seem to be moving in the direction of the deregulated markets Lay and Enron lobbyists had pushed for. ---------------------------------------------------------- World Bank Former Chief Economist's Amazing Accusations By Greg Palast The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold The Observer - London Originally published 10-10-01 The World Bank's former Chief Economist's accusations are eye- popping - including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections "It has condemned people to death," the former apparatchik told me. This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old agent comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of a political ideology he now realizes has gone rotten. And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War spy. Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a great extent, the new world economic order was his theory come to life. I "debriefed" Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April 2001 during the big confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely behind the blue police cordons, the same as the nuns carrying a large wooden cross, the Bolivian union leaders, the parents of AIDS victims and the other 'anti- globalization' protesters. The ultimate insider was now on the outside. In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I'm told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz' having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style. Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV's Newsnight about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury. And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted," and "not otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization." Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance Strategy." There's an Assistance Strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's staff 'investigation' consists of close inspection of a nation's 5- star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre- drafted for his 'voluntary' signature (I have a selection of these). Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program. Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets. And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest 'briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian sell- off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re- elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign. Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet as Chairman of the President's council of economic advisors. Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation. After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is 'Capital Market Liberalization.' In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the "Hot Money" cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%. "The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the Hot Money tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries. At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market- Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, 'The IMF riot.' The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan. And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the States, BBC and The Observer obtained several documents from inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings, "confidential," "restricted," "not to be disclosed." Let's get back to one: the "Interim Country Assistance Strategy" for Ecuador, in it the Bank several times states - with cold accuracy - that they expected their plans to spark, "social unrest," to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames. That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line. The World Bank "Assistance" plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with, "political resolve" - and still higher prices. The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it's bright side - for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices. Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not heartless adherents to market economics. At the same time the IMF stopped Indonesia 'subsidizing' food purchases, "when the banks need a bail- out, intervention (in the market) is welcome." The IMF scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia's financiers and, by extension, the US and European banks from which they had borrowed. A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopia's new president in the nation's first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury's vault in Washington. Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank, Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the Opium Wars. "That too was about opening markets," he said. As in the 19th century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down the barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading our own markets against Third World agriculture. In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective - and sometimes just as deadly. Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO's intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has "condemned people to death" by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines. "They don't care," said the professor of the corporations and bank loans he worked with, "if people live or die." By the way, don't be confused by the mix in this discussion of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable masks of a single governance system. They have locked themselves together by what are unpleasantly called, "triggers." Taking a World Bank loan for a school 'triggers' a requirement to accept every 'conditionality' - they average 111 per nation - laid down by both the World Bank and IMF. In fact, said Stiglitz the IMF requires nations to accept trade policies more punitive than the official WTO rules. Stiglitz greatest concern is that World Bank plans, devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, are never open for discourse or dissent. Despite the West's push for elections throughout the developing world, the so-called Poverty Reduction Programs "undermine democracy." And they don't work. Black Africa's productivity under the guiding hand of IMF structural "assistance" has gone to hell in a handbag. Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, identifying Botswana. Their trick? "They told the IMF to go packing." So then I turned on Stiglitz. OK, Mr Smart-Guy Professor, how would you help developing nations? Stiglitz proposed radical land reform, an attack at the heart of "landlordism," on the usurious rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide, typically 50% of a tenant's crops. So I had to ask the professor: as you were top economist at the World Bank, why didn't the Bank follow your advice? "If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda." Apparently not. Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises - failures and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo. Every time their free market solutions failed, the IMF simply demanded more free market policies. "It's a little like the Middle Ages," the insider told me, "When the patient died they would say, 'well, he stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'" I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers. ___ A version of this was first published as "The IMF's Four Steps to Damnation" in The Observer (London) in April and another version in The Big Issue - that's the magazine that the homeless flog on platforms in the London Underground. Big Issue offered equal space to the IMF, whose "deputy chief media officer" wrote: "... I find it impossible to respond given the depth and breadth of hearsay and misinformation in [Palast's] report." Of course it was difficult for the Deputy Chief to respond. The information (and documents) came from the unhappy lot inside his agency and the World Bank. --------------------------------------------------- Aloha Kakou Please contact our congressional delegates and urge them to oppose this effort by the military to do an end run around environmental laws that protect community health and ecosystems. Mahalo, Brent ============== Hello all: Apologies for cross postings. This is the first of two emails requesting action to oppose a new Pentagon push for even more exemptions from environmental laws and demand that communities and states be part of the debate about these issues in Washington. This email is the action alert, and the next one provides more background on the issue. Please take a look and take action on this as soon as possible. Steve Steve Taylor National Organizer Military Toxics Project (207) 783-5091 (phone) (207) 783-5096 (fax) P.O. Box 558 Lewiston, ME 04243-0558 The Military Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is taking aim at these laws in a hearing on March 14: a.. RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) b.. CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act c.. Clean Water Act d.. Clean Air Act e.. Endangered Species Act f.. Marine Mammal Protection Act g.. Noise Act h.. Migratory Bird Treaty Act i.. Coastal Zone Management Act j.. Federal wilderness acts Only military and federal officials are being allowed to testify at the hearing. ~ Take Action ~ Contact your Representative today to demand that communities and states be allowed to tell our side of the story! The Military Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing March 14 about the impact of environmental laws and urban growth on military training and readiness. In reality, the hearing is being held to give the Pentagon and its allies in Congress an opportunity to push their agenda of gutting the few environmental laws that apply to the military without allowing communities or states to tell their side of the story. Take action now to demand that the hearings include community and state witnesses so that Congress can hear all sides of the story. Background For at least the past year, the Pentagon has used the buzzword "encroachment" to promote their argument that environmental laws that protect ecosystems and human health are slowly destroying the military's ability to fight. The Pentagon's allies in Congress held three hearings in early 2001 to allow military officials to attack environmental laws without any opposition. No community leaders, state governments, or regulatory officials were allowed to testify at these hearings. Despite the fact that the military is already completely or partially exempt from most environmental laws, and that the President can grant exemptions from most laws at any time for national security reasons, certain Committees arranged these hearings to help the Pentagon push its agenda of exemptions from the few laws that do protect com munities from military contamination and pollution. The Pentagon has been preparing a series of legal and regulatory changes to give the military even more exemptions from environmental laws than they already have. This process has accelerated under the Bush administration and especially since September 11. The Pentagon seems to think that the "war" on terrorism can be used as cover to allow them to ram through their anti-environmental agenda without full debate or significant opposition. The March 14 hearing just announced signals the beginning of a push to pass the Pentagon's new proposals for more exemptions. Communities affected by military contamination and pollution must stand together to demand that our voices be heard at the hearing on March 14 and throughout this debate. Please take action immediately to let Congress hear your voice. What's At Stake Nothing less than the health of ourselves and our families and the principle of one law for everyone is at stake. Environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act protect military neighbors from dangerous contamination. Existing military exemptions already make military neighbors less protected than neighbors of private sector facilities. The military is exempt from critical parts of the Oil Pollution Act, the Noise Act, and the statutes that govern nuclear energy. The Emergency Planning and Community Response Act only applies by executive order, which is not enforceable by federal agencies or states. EPA cannot enforce military compliance with the Clean Water Act. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) cannot be applied to the military in the same manner as private companies. The Secretary of Defense can unilaterally exempt military actions from provisions of the Endangered Species Act during the appeal process. There are other examples. The point is that the military is already exempt from many environmental laws or from enforcement of those laws (making them meaningless). What We Want The March 14 hearing and all Congressional hearings on this topic must include community and state representatives. We want our voices and our stories to be heard. We want equal time for community leaders and state officials that must confront the human cost of military contamination and pollution every day. Take Action a.. Call, fax, or email (or all three!) the majority and minority staff for the Military Readiness Subcommittee and ask that community leaders and states be allowed to testify on March 14. The fax number is (202) 225-7102. Pete Steffes is the majority (Republican) staff at (202) 225-6288 or and Dudley Tademy is the minority (Democrat) staff at (202) 226-2575 or b.. If you are represented by one of the members of the Military Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee (listed below), please contact them as soon as possible and ask them to ensure that community l eaders and state officials are allowed to testify on March 14. c.. If you are not represented by one the Subcommittee members, contact your Representative and ask them to write to the Subcommittee requesting that community leaders and state officials be allowed to testify. You can find out who your Representative and Senators are at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress (which provides phone number and email for your representatives). -------------------- Does the Pentagon Need Even More Exemptions from Environmental Laws? The Pentagon is claiming that environmental laws are hurting military readiness, despite the fact that the U.S. military is already completely or partially exempt from most of these laws. Here's what they aren't saying about existing military exemptions and the cost to the environment and community health. Why are communities and states being excluded from this debate? Last year, three Congressional committees or subcommittees held hearings on military readiness which served as platforms for military officials to launch their assault on environmental laws. Community leaders and state officials were excluded. The Military Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services committee will hold another hearing on this issue on March 14, again without any testimony from the communities and states impacted by military contamination and pollution. We welcome a debate about military exemptions from environmental laws and the human cost of those exemptions. But, so far there hasn't been a debate because communities and states have been cut out. The people impacted by military environmental practices and their state governments deserve a chance to tell their side of the story, and Congress deserves to have all the information on the table when it debates this issue. Isn't the military already exempt from most environmental laws? Yes. The military is exempt from critical parts of the Oil Pollution Act, the Noise Act, and the statutes that govern nuclear energy. The Emergency Pla nning and Community Response Act only applies by executive order, which is not enforceable by federal agencies or states. EPA cannot enforce military compliance with the Clean Water Act. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) cannot be applied to the military in the same manner as private companies. The Secretary of Defense can unilaterally exempt military actions from provisions of the Endangered Species Act during the appeal process. There are other examples. The point is that the military is already exempt from many environmental laws or from enforcement of those laws. Neighbors of military facilities already have less protection than neighbors of private facilities. Let's not make it worse. Are environmental laws and military training and readiness really incompatible? In a word: no. All major statutes allow the President or his agents to exempt any public or private entity from provisions of the law for reasons of national security or national interest. But our military shouldn't enjoy blanket exemptions from laws or enforcement that allow it to ignore the health of its neighbors. Before we can talk about military training needs, we have to recognize the immense human and environmental cost being forced on communities that host our military. We have to consider the size of our military in the 21st century, and what kind of training we need. New alternative training technologies and munitions are deployed every year. Many of them are already in use. U.S. Representative William Delahunt (D-MA) - who represents residents of Cape Cod who have had their sole source of drinking water contaminated by the military - confronted these issues directly in testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform last year, during a hearing on military training. Congressman Delahunt said: From no serious quarter is there any desire to undermine readiness. Or to pressure regulators into irresponsible enforcement. Or, as some even suggest, to expose our troops to increased hazards..When Pentagon officials bemoan costly "work-arounds" there is no mention of the hundreds of thousands of federal dollars in compensation to local cranberry farmers for crops poisoned by polluted plumes. Or of elevated breast cancer rates in towns surrounding the base. Congressman Delahunt also quoted two veterans who had spoken on the subject. One - a veteran of the D-Day invasion - stated that travelling five or six hours to train "may not be fun, but neither is combat." A Korean War veteran noted that "the Army Guard faces a personnel management problem - and it has alternatives. We have no alternative. This is our only water supply for the future." We heard the same predictions of doom from private industry when federal environmental laws were passed, and in most states regarding state environmental laws. Companies and trade associations promised mass job losses and bankruptcies due to the cost of compliance with environmental laws. It didn't happen. Private companies made cultural changes, invested in innovative technologies, and found new ways to do business. In fact, we have found that environmentally sustainable business is better for the bottom line. Military readiness and human health are not incompatible. In fact, our military exists specifically to protect our lives and health. We must find ways to make both possible while making sure we all follow the same rules. Military exemptions undermine public trust in our government and expose communities to unnecessary contamination. What's the cost of existing military exemptions? Past and current exemptions from environmental laws have allowed our military to become the largest polluter in the U.S. and produced a national environmental catastrophe. There are over 27,000 toxic hot spots on 8,500 military properties. There were 129 military sites on the National Priorities (Superfund) List in August 1995 (81% of all federal NPL sites, though DOD controls only 34% of federal facilities and only 3% of federal lands). DOD accounted for 71% of EPA enforcement actions against federal facilities in Fiscal Year 1997. The cost to cleanup DOD training ranges may already exceed $100 billion. The environmental, health, and monetary cost of existing military exemptions is already too high. We can't afford any more. Doesn't the military need exemptions because of its special mission? No. The President already has the authority to grant temporary exemptions in times of war or national crisis. Our military has proven it needs to be regulated to protect community health. We shouldn't poison communities in order to protect them. We shouldn't have to live in a democracy where our government is exempt from its own laws - the laws that the rest of us have to follow. Can't the military regulate itself? No. Polluters always say they don't need to be regulated - it's never true. You don't let the fox guard the hen house, and you don't let polluters regulate their own environmental performance. It hasn't worked with our military. Federal facilities are exempt from fines under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The number of federal facilities violating the CWA rose from under 6% in 1993 to over 40% in 1998. Over 40% of major defense facilities were in violation of the CWA in 1998. Conversely, the percentage of federal facilities in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act - which was amended to include federal facilities in 1992 - fell from 45% in 1993 to 12% by 1998. Is there public support for the equal regulation of the military? The U.S. public believes that our government should follow the same rules as the rest of us. There has been bipartisan support in Congress and from many mainstream organizations for past waivers of federal sovereign immunity under environmental laws. A poll conducted in San Diego found that two-thirds of residents supported holding the Navy to the same environmental laws as private companies. Where can I get more information about this issue? The Military Toxics Project can provide more background information. Our web site is at http://www.miltoxproj.org. You can also email Steve@miltoxproj.org or call (207) 783-5091. ------------------------------------------------------ George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane An Open Letter to George W. Bush from Michael Moore 01/29/2002 http://michaelmoore.com/2002_0129.html "George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane" An Open Letter to George W. Bush from Michael Moore Dear George, When it's all over in a couple months, and you're packing up your pretzels and Spot and heading back to Texas, what will be your biggest regret? Not getting out more often and seeing the sights around Rock Creek Park? Never once visiting the newly-renovated IKEA in Woodbridge, Virginia? Or buying your way to the White House with money from a company that committed the biggest corporate swindle in American history? I got a feeling you didn't miss much by not spending an entire Saturday afternoon assembling a Swedish bookcase -- but you should have known that there was no way you would ever finish your term by hopping into bed with Kenneth Lay. It's kind of sad when you think about it. Here you were -- the most popular president ever! -- the recipient of so much good will from your fellow Americans after September 11, and then you had to go and blow it. You just couldn't stay away from your old cowpoke friend from Texas, Kenneth Lay. Kenny has always been there for you. You needed a way to fly around to all the primaries and campaign stops in the 2000 election -- so Kenny gave you his corporate jet. Did you tell the voters when you arrived in each city that the bird you flew in on was from a billionaire who was secretly conspiring to give the bird to all his employees and investors? He flew you around America on the Enron company jet, and for that favor you touched down on tarmac after tarmac to tell your fellow citizens that you were "going to restore dignity to the White House, the people's house." You said this standing in front of an Enron jet! Man, you loved Lay so much, you not only affectionately referred to him as "Kenny Boy," you interrupted an important campaign trip in April, 2000, to fly back to Houston for the Astros opening day at the new Enron Field -- just so you could watch Kenny Boy Lay throw out the first pitch. How sentimental! I mean, you loved this man so intensely that, when you were awarded a set of keys the Supreme Court had made for you so you could live in the White House, you invited Kenny Boy to set up shop -- at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! He interviewed those who would hold high-level Energy Department positions in your administration. You not only let Kenny Boy decide who would head the regulatory agency that oversaw Enron, you let him hand-pick the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt -- a former lawyer for his accountant, Arthur Andersen! Kenny and the boys at Andersen also worked to make sure that accounting firms would be exempt from numerous regulations and would not be held liable for any "funny bookkeeping" (don't you wish you were this forward-thinking?). The rest of Kenny Boy's time was spent next door with his old buddy, Dick Cheney (Enron and Halliburton, as you'll recall, got the big contracts from your dad to "rebuild" Kuwait after the Gulf War). Lay and Dick formed an "energy task force" (Operation Enduring Graft) which put together the country's new "energy policy." This policy then went on to shut down every light bulb and juicer in the state of California. And guess who made out like bandits while "trading" the energy California was in desperate need of? Kenny Boy and Enron! No wonder Big Dick doesn't want to turn over the files about those special meetings with Lay! The only thing that surprises me more than all the Enron henchmen who ended up in your cabinet and administration is how our lazy media just rolled over and didn't report it. The list of Enron people on your payroll is impressive. Lawrence Lindsey, your chief economic advisor? A former advisor at Enron! Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill? Former CEO of Alcoa, whose lobbying firm, Vinson and Elkins, was the #3 contributor to the your campaign! Who is Vinson and Elkins? The law firm representing Enron! Who is Alcoa? The top polluter in Texas. Thomas White, the Secretary of the Army? A former vice-chair of Enron Energy! Robert Zoellick, your Federal Trade Representative? A former advisor at Enron! Karl Rove, your main man at the White House? He owned a quarter-million dollars of Enron stock. Then there's the Enron lawyer you have nominated to be a federal judge in Texas, the Enron lobbyist who is your chair of the Republican Party, the two Enron officials who now work for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the wife of Texas Senator Phil Gramm who sits on Enron's board. And there's the aforementioned Mr. Pitt, the former Arthur Andersen attorney whose job it is now as SEC head to oversee the stock markets. George, it never stops! My fingers are getting tired typing all this up -- and there's lots more. Don't get me wrong, George -- I do not think you're an evil man. You don't need any crap from people like me -- heck, you got mother-in-law problems! Now, I have a very good relationship with my mother-in-law, but then, I never told her to put $8,000 of her money into a company my administration knew was going belly-up. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Political Giving in Texas http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_other.asp Enron has been a prolific financial supporter of George W. Bush’s political career, beginning first with Bush’s successful bid for Texas governor in 1994. Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based non-profit research group, found in a January 2000 study that Enron was the biggest corporate supporter of Bush’s 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial campaigns in Texas, with its employees contributing more than $312,000 during the two races. Of that total, Enron chief Kenneth Lay contributed $100,000, making him one of the most generous individual contributors to Bush on the state level. Click here for TPJ's searchable database of contributors to Bush's state campaigns. National Conventions Enron has been a major supporter of the last three Republican National Conventions. In 1992, when the event was held in Houston (where the company is based), Enron chief Kenneth Lay served as chairman of the convention’s organizing committee, in charge of fund-raising and logistics. According to press reports, Enron contributed at least $250,000 to the event. Four years later, Enron gave at least $500,000 to the San Diego host committee, according to the Republican National Committee. In 2000, Enron donated $250,000 to the Philadelphia convention committee. However, none of the totals include the virtually undisclosed amounts of money Enron spent on parties and receptions at the conventions. For example, Enron in 2000 helped to throw a lavish luncheon in honor of then-vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney. And while the company didn’t contribute directly to any of the last three Democratic National Conventions, Enron did throw parties for some of its closest friends there. At the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, Enron sponsored fetes for Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) and Texas Democrats and was a major backer of several events sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Corporate Jets On top of its political contributions, Enron also made its company jet readily available to the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 1999-2000 election cycle at a greatly reduced price. An analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows that Bush-Cheney paid Enron roughly $60,000 for use of its jet during the campaign. Federal rules permit such use, as long as the campaigns reimburse the company for the cost of a first-class plane ticket—a major bargain, considering corporate jets cost at least $1,000 per flight hour, not including other charges. The Center analyzed Bush's corporate jet use in the Winter 2000 issue of Capital Eye. ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> You say you didn't know? Your bag man -- Don Evans, the man who squeezed all that money for you from Enron as your campaign finance chairman (and is now collecting his reward as your Commerce Secretary) -- has admitted that he got calls from Enron begging for help last year because they were going under. Didn't he tell you this? Then Paul O'Neill, your Treasury Secretary, admitted that Enron and Kenny Boy called him, too, for some special favors to save Enron. Didn't he mention this to you? They claim to have called your chief of staff, Andrew Card, and he said he didn't bother to inform you. What does your mother-in-law think about these boys her daughter's husband consorts with? I love watching the O'Neill and Evans show. What a couple of cut-ups! They're, like, all proud of themselves for "not doing Enron any favors." Actually, I think it's more like they didn't do your MOTHER-IN-LAW any favors. Enron got LOTS of favors. And why not? Kenny Boy has been your number one financial backer since you ran for governor. No other American or Saudi has given you more money than Kenny Boy and his gang at Enron. O'Neill, Evans, Cheney, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham -- ALL of them gave Lay and Enron special favors from day one. The New York Times last May was so concerned about how Kenny had the run of the place (1600 Pennsylvania Ave.), they referred to Lay as the "shadow advisor to the president." And what advice! Who was it that wanted you to deregulate the energy industry further? Kenny Boy! Who was it that convinced you to explore the sick idea of PRIVATIZING our water supply and then allow private corporations to "trade" it in the future? Kenny Boy! Who was it that wanted Social Security to be tied to the stock market? Yup, Kenny Boy! (Imagine, if you will, what would have happened to our precious Social Security funds had they been invested in Enron stocks as you, George, suggested be done during your campaign as yuppies everywhere clucked along in agreement over that genius idea.) O'Neill's and Evans's admission that they "did nothing" when Enron told them of the company's shell game and impending collapse is reason enough for you and yours to hit the Beltway and never return to that sacred trust we call Our American Government. They are proud of "doing nothing?" By doing nothing, millions of Americans have been swindled. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs. Thousands more have lost their savings and their retirement. Yet your cabinet secretaries gloat over what a "good job" you and they did by "doing nothing." Let me ask you this: If someone was setting a house on fire, and they called you to help them set it on fire, and you said no you wouldn't help them -- BUT then you also DIDN'T call 911 and inform the police that someone was going to burn down a house, do you think you would have committed a crime? Of course you would have! You had prior knowledge and then you knowingly and purposefully HID this information from the authorities and the people living in the house! You only admitted that you knew a house was going to be torched when you were confronted by the police. Are you complicit? Yes! Are you an accessory? Yes! Who would even think of going around boasting, "Hey, look what a great guy I am -- a friend of mine told me he was going to commit an act of arson, and then I decided NOT to tell ANYONE about it!! WHOO-HOO!!" Enron and Kenny Boy bought your silence and the silence of your cabinet members. You yourself didn't have to actually raid the 401(k) accounts of those poor people in Houston (many of whom probably voted for you every time your name was on a ballot). All you had to do was remain silent, change the government regulations that let them get away with it, and install their hand-picked cronies to sit on the "oversight" boards which were supposed to be keeping an eye on them. While doing all this, you told the American people that these rich friends of yours were not getting any special breaks -- when, in fact, Enron had already scammed their way out of paying NO taxes in four out of the last five years. Your economic "stimulus" bill that you got the House to pass after 9-11 had a section that would give Enron a gift of $250 million of our tax money. You were pushing this bill in November and December, long after your administration knew that Enron was raiding the vault and screwing its workers and investors. You and your Republican friends are quick to point out that Enron had their claws into the Democrats as well. Yes, they did, and thank you for making the case why we not only need an alternative to the current make-up of the Democratic Party, we need private money removed from our electoral process ASAP. But, George, let's be real -- the Democrats only got a pittance from Enron compared to the millions you and the Republicans received. Democrats just don't have the killer instinct to do anything right, and they certainly don't know much about making money the old-fashioned way, one off-shore tax shelter at a time. I would expect nothing less from a Party that couldn't even put their candidate in the White House after he had already won the election. The Democrats are like a Yugo -- you know it won't last long or work well, but it will occasionally get the job done. Fat cats know they can buy the Democrats at discount prices, and so they do. Anyone who tries to deflect this scandal away from you, George, or away from the Republicans, or away from the whole dirty way we elect our leaders, is someone who is desperately trying to cling to what's left of a very crooked system that has to go and go now. The saddest part of this whole affair was the day the scandal was revealed -- and you denied that you even knew your good friend, Kenneth Lay. "Ken who?" you said. Oh, he's just some businessman from Texas. "Heck, he backed my opponent for governor, Ann Richards!" was your way of trying to deflect the truth that was hitting you like a Mack truck. You knew that he, in fact, endorsed YOU and gave you THREE times the money Ann Richards ever saw from him. I hardly ever talk to the guy, you said. You were like Peter outside the walls of Herod after they grabbed J.C. from the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times he denied he knew Jesus, and three times the cock crowed. But Peter, unlike you, felt shame and wept, and then ran away. What shame do you feel tonight, George, for the lies you have told? What shame do you feel using the dead of 9-11 as a cover for your actions, hoping that our sorrow for those lost souls and our fear of being killed by terrorists would distract us from what your boys and Kenny Boy were up to during those horrific weeks in September and October? It was during those very days, while the rest of us were in shock and sadness, that the executives at Enron were selling off their stock and shifting assets to their 900 phony partnerships overseas. Did they notice the remains of the dead being pulled from the rubble while they were downloading their millions, or were their eyes glued only to the bottom third of the TV screen as the stock ticker with the rigged Enron price crawled across the images of firemen desperate, in tears, to find their fallen brothers? The country was behind you when you said you were fighting the evildoers who did this. In fact, all the while, the real fight your friends at Enron were conducting was the fight against the clock, to see how fast they could transfer all the loot to their personal accounts and run away. Those were the evildoers, George, and you knew it. And because you, by design or negligence, allowed this to happen, it is time for you to resign. The cock has crowed for the last time. At the very least, your mother-in-law deserves better. Yours, Michael Moore American Son-in-Law Owner of 7th LARGEST COMPANY IN AMERICA! (revised ranking) mmflint@aol.com http://www.michaelmoore.com ------------------------------------------------------------- *By Thad Dunning & Leslie Wirpsa * Source: Americas.org [justice] The public face of U.S. policy toward Colombia has long been the war on drugs. Colombia, according to widely reported CIA estimates, produces 90 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply and 65 percent of U.S. heroin imports. U.S. officials say the aim of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion aid package signed by President Clinton last year, is fighting "narco-guerrillas" and eradicating coca crops. But that's just part of the agenda. Plan Colombia is also about oil. Colombia's petroleum production today rivals Kuwait's on the eve of the Gulf War. The United States imports more oil from Colombia and its neighbors Venezuela and Ecuador than from all Persian Gulf countries combined. And, last June, Colombia announced its largest oil discovery since the 1980s. The Colombian government and transnational oil companies are eager to secure their exploration and production activities with U.S. military might. Some U.S. military officials harbor no illusions about their role in Colombia. Stan Goff, a former U.S. Special Forces intelligence sergeant, retired in 1996 from the unit that trains Colombian anti-narcotics battalions. Plan Colombia's purpose is "defending the operations of Occidental, British Petroleum and Texas Petroleum and securing control of future Colombian fields," said Goff, quoted in October by the Bogotá daily El Espectador. "The main interest of the United States is oil." Colombia's two major guerrilla groups condemn foreign control of the nation's petroleum even as they rely on the oil companies for ransoms and extortion payments. The guerrillas face competition from rightist death squads known as paramilitaries, many with documented links to Bogotá's army and some with alleged ties to the oil firms. In recent months, the violence has begun to spread beyond the nation's borders. To the south, the Colombian war is further destabilizing Ecuador, a country wracked for decades by political upheaval, including a military coup during an indigenous revolt a year ago. To the north, the war is heightening tensions in Venezuela, where populist President Hugo Chávez has helped drive up world oil prices by reviving the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Critics of U.S. policy in Colombia have likened it to past interventions in Vietnam and El Salvador. But with world oil prices stuck at all-time highs, with U.S. oil consumption expected to rise 25 percent over the next two decades, and with Middle East producers increasingly unreliable, another important comparison is the U.S. war against Iraq. One question is whether U.S. military aid will help keep the Colombian oil flowing--whether it will enhance or erode the security of oil operations. More troubling questions surround the human cost of further militarizing a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Colombians and displaced almost 2 million since 1985. Black Gold: Colombia's known oil reserves amount to 2.6 billion barrels, far fewer than those of the world's major oil powers. But only about 20 percent of the country's potential oil territory has been explored, due to the violence. Desperate for more investment, President Andrés Pastrana's administration sweetened the terms a year ago, allowing foreign companies a larger share of profit from Colombian oil operations. As a result, the state's Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos (Ecopetrol) awarded a record 13 new exploration and production contracts last year. Colombia's biggest foreign investor is BP Amoco, formed when British Petroleum merged with Chicago-based Amoco in 1998. The London-based giant controls Colombia's largest oilfield, a 1.5-billion-barrel trove called Cusiana-Cupiagua in the northeastern province of Casanare (see MAP). A 444-mile pipeline called Ocensa carries BP Amoco oil to the Caribbean port of Coveńas for export. Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum helps operate the nation's second-largest oilfield, Cańo Limón, holding 1 billion barrels in Arauca, a province just north of Casanare. Occidental pumps away its share through a 485-mile duct to Coveńas. The June announcement confirmed a deposit about 55 miles southwest of Bogotá. An international consortium led by Canadian Occidental Petroleum expects as much as 300 million barrels from the oilfield, called Boquerón, making it the nation's third-largest deposit. Other major investors in Colombian oil have included Exxon, Shell and Elf Aquitane. The transnationals have helped boost the nation's oil production almost 80 percent over the last decade. Most of the exports have gone to the United States, putting Colombia among the top eight U.S. oil suppliers. Many of these companies have led the fight for U.S. military aid to Colombia, the world's third-largest recipient of U.S. security assistance. In 1996, BP Amoco and Occidental joined Enron Corporation, a Houston-based energy firm, and other corporations to form the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership. Since then, backed by hefty oil-industry donations to political candidates, the partnership has lobbied hard for increased aid. Lawrence P. Meriage, Occidental's public-affairs vice president, not only pushed for Plan Colombia last year but urged a House subcommittee to extend military aid to the nation's north to "augment security for oil development operations." The firms have allies in the U.S. national-security apparatus. In 1998, Gen. Charles Wilhelm, then head of the U.S. Southern Command, told Congress that oil discoveries had increased Colombia's "strategic importance." Last April, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida) and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft warned in a Los Angeles Times editorial that Colombia's reserves would "remain untapped unless stability is restored." Petroleum companies say their presence in Colombia creates employment alternatives for coca farmers, adds muscle to counterinsurgency efforts and, ultimately, promotes peace and stability. In 1996, British Petroleum, Occidental and Royal Dutch/Shell co-sponsored a full-page ad about Colombia in the Houston Chronicle, touting "a powerful new weapon . . . in the war against drugs." The ad pictured the nozzle of a gas pump. Petroviolence: Numerous studies suggest that transnational extraction of natural resources from the Third World promotes not economic and political stability, but violence and lawlessness. From Indonesia to Nigeria to Colombia, mining and oil drilling have spurred the growth of rightist militias, criminal gangs and leftist insurgencies. Political scientists call this the "resource curse." Since 1986, according to Colombian government sources, the country's guerrilla groups have bombed oil pipelines more than 1,000 times and have kidnapped hundreds of oil-company executives and employees. Using these operations as leverage, the guerrillas have generated roughly $140 million per year in ransoms and extortion payments. They also squeeze "taxes" from local contractors working for the companies. In all, the oil revenue rivals conservative estimates of guerrilla earnings from the cocaine and heroin trades. During construction of the Cańo Limón pipeline in the 1980s, contractors for the German company Mannesmann reportedly paid about $4 million to the National Liberation Army (ELN) for the release of four kidnapped engineers. Such payments enabled the ELN, verging on collapse, to regroup and rearm. Today the ELN, with 7,000 members, is the nation's second largest guerrilla army. The 17,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group, has adopted similar tactics, even consenting to oil drilling opposed by local indigenous people. Guerrilla violence around the oil industry has intensified since July 13, when President Clinton signed Plan Colombia. Decrying "North American intervention," ELN guerrillas bombed the Cańo Limón pipeline 23 times between July and September, forcing Occidental to declare force majeure for 45 days. The pipeline was knocked out at least 97 times last year, exceeding a record 79 outages from rebel attacks in 1999. Recently, after a January 20 bombing west of Cańo Limón, the duct was closed for three days. FARC rebels, meanwhile, bombed Ecopetrol's southern pipeline 31 times in September, forcing Ecuador's state oil company, Petroecuador, which uses the line to export 45,000 barrels a day, to suspend its obligations. The paramilitaries, for their part, have moved into oil-rich provinces such as Casanare and, along the southern border, Putumayo. In the central city of Barrancabermeja (see MAP), home to the country's largest oil refinery, paramilitaries intensified a campaign of murdering civilians in January. "Here we pump out all the energy we need," said Lt. Col. Hernán Moreno, head of the army's New Granada Battalion in Barrancabermeja, quoted in the New York Times. "The takeover of power is thus of prime importance to these armed groups." And paramilitaries target organizers such as Workers Trade Union leader Alvaro Remolina, who has called attention to the labor practices of Texaco and Occidental in Colombia. On January 11 last year, his nephew was murdered near the city of Bucaramanga, while his brother and a friend disappeared in the nearby town of Girón. He lost another brother to assassins in 1996, and soldiers killed his sister-in-law in 1999. One human rights report on oil and security in Colombia says paramilitaries have received $2 million for protecting a Colombian pipeline. El Espectador, the London daily Guardian and the BBC, additionally, have documented paramilitary links to British Petroleum. A top BP official admitted that a British security contractor for the oil giant supplied night-vision goggles to an army brigade accused of killing civilians and committing other abuses. The contractor also hired former army commander Gen. Hernán Guzmán Rodríguez, a 1969 graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. In a 1992 report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights linked Guzmán to a paramilitary group responsible for 149 murders from 1987 to 1990. Colombia's official armed forces have their own stake in oil. Since 1992, a "war tax" of more than $1 per barrel on foreign oil corporations has helped Bogotá devote a quarter of its army to defending oil installations. And government forces often sell security services directly to the companies. Occidental, which earmarks roughly 10 percent of its in-country budget to security, has made direct payments to the army. The oil violence weighs heaviest on local civilians. Disasters resulting from pipeline attacks have killed people and wreaked environmental destruction. In 1998, 73 people died after an ELN bombing of Ocensa, the BP Amoco pipeline. The blast set ablaze the northwestern village of Machuca, Antioquia. Such violence has prompted communities to resist oil projects. The 7,000-member U'wa indigenous community in northeastern Colombia has opposed attempts by Occidental and Ecopetrol to drill in its ancestral land. Occidental is betting it could extract 1.4 billion barrels from the area. Last February, when government security forces broke up an indigenous roadblock against the project, three children drowned in a river during the melee. In November, some 2,000 government agents escorted Occidental rigs to drill an exploratory well in the land. The project has brought violence from guerrillas too. In 1999, FARC members kidnapped and murdered U.S. citizens Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and La'he Enae Gay, who were visiting to set up U'wa education projects. Despite the upheaval, oil remains Colombia's largest export, with earnings totaling $3.7 billion in 1999. Ecopetrol diverts most of this profit to federal and local governments, but average Colombians see little benefit. Officials face pressure from guerrillas and paramilitaries alike to invest the payments in their favor. And many officials simply steal or squander the money. Arauca, a boomtown about 25 miles from the Cańo Limón oilfield, has received millions of dollars annually in oil royalties but is ringed by shantytowns. In a petroleum-rich central valley known as the Middle Magdalena, more than 70 percent of the 750,000 inhabitants live in poverty and nearly 40 percent are unemployed, double the official nationwide rate. Slick Borders: Petroleum is playing an important role as the war expands beyond Colombia. Both the FARC and ELN have a growing presence in southern Venezuela. Guerrillas there are using extortion and kidnapping to generate revenue from ranchers and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the government oil company, according to a January 24 Financial Times report. Chávez, the Venezuelan president, says his government is not taking sides in the Colombian conflict. Venezuelan military officials say the guerrilla influx worries them less than a Plan Colombia provision to equip Bogotá's army with 60 Blackhawk helicopters. Under Chávez, who took office in 1999, Venezuela has barred U.S. "counternarcotics" flights over its airspace, calling them a violation of national sovereignty. And some Venezuelan military equipment has found its way into FARC hands. Venezuelan oil weighs heavy in U.S. strategy for the region. The third-largest U.S. oil supplier and the hemisphere's sole OPEC member, Venezuela has 77 billion barrels in proven reserves--the most of any country outside the Middle East. The Chávez government convinced OPEC members to cut production, a move that has lifted oil prices to more than $30 a barrel, their highest level in a decade. Chávez's nationalist leanings and his pledges to prevent PDVSA's privatization have fueled worries among some U.S. policymakers about U.S. reliance on the Venezuelan crude. In August, adding to these worries, Chávez became the world's first democratically elected head of state since the Gulf War to visit Saddam Hussein, the leader of fellow OPEC member Iraq. And, in October, Chávez agreed to provide Cuba with inexpensive oil. In other countries, the spillover violence from Colombia has begun to menace petroleum production. Just across the San Miguel River from Putumayo, the Colombian province, conflict pervades the town of Lago Agrio (see MAP), the Ecuadoran oil hub. The area has long been a site of rest and relaxation for FARC guerrillas. But the mood has changed since U.S.-backed counterinsurgency and coca eradication caused a larger influx of farmers, other displaced Colombians, guerrillas and paramilitaries. Local police say violence in December killed 20 people, including 15 who perished in clashes between Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries and five in a bombing of Ecuador's only oil pipeline. (The duct carries crude to a Pacific port for export. Occidental is part of an international consortium vying to build a second Ecuadoran pipeline, a $750 million project.) Such turmoil has led to militarization, threatening to turn Colombia's oil violence into a regional scourge. Brazil, Peru and Ecuador all host oil drilling near Colombia, and all are responding to guerrilla and paramilitary incursions by sending in military personnel and equipment. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the former U.N. secretary general serving as Peru's interim prime minister, said in January that he supported Plan Colombia, marking a reversal from the policy of former President Alberto Fujimori, who resigned in November. "We are guarding our borders for possible infiltration, not only from Colombia but from Ecuador," said Pérez de Cuéllar, quoted by Reuters in January. "The violence is serious." Ecuadoran President Gustavo Noboa, who took office after a January 2000 military coup, has strengthened border security and threatened to declare a state of emergency there. His foreign minister, Heinz Moeller, has asked the United States for $160 million to supplement the $20 million for Ecuador under Plan Colombia. Moeller said he expects to receive the aid because Washington, which already bases its Andean military operations in the Ecuadoran coastal town of Manta, wants to protect U.S. "investments" in Colombia. Moeller said the increased aid was necessary to protect an "economic buffer zone" between his country and Colombia, adding that the protection will require helicopters, speedboats and reconnaissance equipment. Goff, the former Special Forces sergeant, says U.S. military operations in the Andes go beyond their stated purpose of fighting drugs. "We never mentioned the words coca or narco-trafficker in our training," he said. "The objective of our operations was not the Colombians but the Americans who pay taxes for the investment made in Colombia. The objective continues to be oil. Look where American forces are--Iraq, the Caspian Sea, Colombia--places where we expect to find petroleum reserves." Prospectors: Oil will remain a U.S. military priority under President George W. Bush if his campaign donors and cabinet appointees have any influence. The top source of cash for his presidential and Texas gubernatorial bids was Enron and its employees, including CEO Kenneth L. Lay, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Enron, one of the companies that led lobbying for Plan Colombia, owns Centragas, a 357-mile natural gas distribution system in northern Colombia. The cabinet includes Vice President Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton Company, a Dallas-based oil services leader; Commerce Secretary Don Evans, former chairman of the Denver-based oil firm Tom Brown, Inc.; and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a former board member of San Francisco-based Chevron Corporation. Bush appointed John Maisto as National Security Council adviser for inter-American affairs, his top adviser on the region. Maisto was ambassador to Nicaragua during the U.S.-backed guerrilla war against the Sandinista government and chargé d'affaires in Panama during the 1989 U.S. invasion that ousted Gen. Manuel Noriega. Under Clinton, he was ambassador to Venezuela and, later, an adviser to the U.S. military's Southern Command. Bush's roster and the widening violence even before Plan Colombia hits stride are portents of what the United States holds in store for the region. Complete Title: Oil Rigged: There's Something Slippery About The U.S. Drug War in Colombia NewsHawk: Dr. Ethan Russo Source: Americas.org Author: Thad Dunning & Leslie Wirpsa Published: February 16, 2001 Ph: (612) 276-0788 Fax: (612) 276-0898 Address: 3019 Minnehaha Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55406 Copyright: 2001 Resource Center of the Americas Website: http://www.americas.org/ US Seeks To Help Colombian Troops Defend Pipeline February 05, 2002 at 20:06:42 PT By Jason Webb Source: Reuters The United States wants to train and equip Colombian troops to defend a key oil pipeline, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, unveiling plans to turn U.S. aid more directly against rebels fighting a 38-year-old war. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman said the Bush administration would ask Congress for $98 million to strengthen a Colombian army brigade to guard the 490-mile Cano Limon pipeline, whose oil field is operated by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum Corp. Read More... http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11926.shtml ----------------------------------------------------- URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/deception.htm Feel free to re-post our material, but please quote our words rather than paraphrasing, credit the author(s)and give the article's Web address so people can check the documentation. www.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes] ======================================= CANADIAN TV AIRS EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' EVIDENCE! by John Flaherty [Posted 5 February 2001] ======================================= For the first time material from Emperor's Clothes series 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' has appeared on a network TV show. The program was "The Great Deception". (1) It aired Jan. 28 on the Insight Mediafile at Vision TV, a network with 2 million distinct viewers a week. Vision programs are seen across Canada and can reach from 100 to 150,000 people. Hosted by Barrie Zwicker, the program used research and material from 'GUILTY FOR 9-11, Section 1', the 'Update to Section 1, and 'Section 2' or 'Cheney's Cover Story.' (1a) After watching the program, Emperor's Clothes Editor Chris Black contacted Barrie Zwicker to congratulate him for taking this brave step. Mr. Zwicker wrote back: [Letter begins here] Dear Christopher Black: What a joyful surprise to receive your e-mail. Amidst the avalanche of e-mail I'm trying to cope with, I want to respond immediately to yours. I discovered www.emperors-clothes.com I don't know how long, maybe well over a year, ago. I learned to trust it. I have been educated and nurtured by it. And increasingly, inspired. So for me to receive your e-mail was a complete and genuine and gratifying surprise. I do not consider myself to be in your league as to investigative journalism. I was suspicious about the 9/11 thing from the outset. For me to be the first, apparently, to ask these questions on air is ridiculous. Big media should have done it already. [Regarding the information on Andrews Air Force base] really, there must be thousands of people who have first- or second-hand knowledge of complicity. Just take the number of people who live on Andrews AFB who know their interceptors stayed put until too late. I don't think they can keep the lid on this for much longer. Thank you, Christopher, Israel and the rest, for your wonderful work all along. Gotta run. I hope to be in touch again. In peace and networking for light. Barrie Zwicker, A producer and host The MediaFile [LETTER ENDS HERE] Here's the transcript of the part of the TV show based on Emperor's Clothes research: [START EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT] (2) "For large scheduled aircraft, tracked throughout on radar, to depart extravagantly from their flight paths, would trigger numerous calls to the military, especially after two have hit the World Trade Centre and now one is speeding toward Washington, D.C. "It flies over the White House, turns sharply and heads toward the Pentagon. Everyone - and I mean everyone - now knows these planes are very bad news. It's been reported on all TV networks for more than half an hour that this is a terrorist attack. "Now, Andrews Air Force Base is a huge installation. It's home to Air Force One, the President's plane. It's home base for two combat-ready squadrons of jet interceptors mandated to ensure the safety of the U.S. capital. Andrews is only 12 miles from the White House. (3) "On September 11th the squadrons there were: The 121st Fighter Squadron of the 113th Fighter Wing, equipped with F-16s The 321st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron of the 49th Marine Air Group, Detachment A, equipped F/A-18s (4) "This information was on the website of the base on September 11th. On September 12th, Andrews chose to update its website. I find it odd that after the update there's no mention of the F-16 and F-18 fighters. The base becomes, according to the website, home to a transport squadron only. (5) "Yet at 6:30 the evening of September 11th NBC Nightly News, along with many outlets, reported: "'It was after the attack on the Pentagon that the Air Force then decided to scramble F-16s out of the DC National Guard Andrews Air Force Base to fly ... a protective cover over Washington, D.C.' (5a) "Throughout the northeastern United States are many air bases. But that morning no interceptors respond in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which have the longest lead time and are 12 miles from the White House. "Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory." Incompetence usually earns reprimands. "This causes me to ask - and other media need to ask - if there were 'stand down' orders." [END EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT] Elsewhere in the show, Mr. Zwicker talked about the Payne Stewart tragedy. As you may recall, Mr. Stewart's small business jet ceased to respond to Air Traffic Controllers. The plane continued flying on autopilot. Here is how Mr. Zwicker describes what happened: "9:19 a.m.: the flight departs 9:24: The Learjet's pilot responds to an instruction from air traffic control 9:33: The controller radios another instruction. No response from the pilot. For 4 1/2 minutes the controller tries to establish contact. 9:38: Having failed, the controller calls in the military. Note that he did not seek, nor did he require, the approval of the President of the United States, or indeed anyone. It's standard procedure, followed routinely, to call in the Air Force when radio contact with a commercial passenger jet is lost, or the plane departs from its flight path, or anything along those lines occurs. 9:54 - 16 minutes later -- the F-16 reaches the Learjet at 46,000 feet and conducts a visual inspection. Total elapsed time: 21 minutes." [END EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT] There appears to be an error here. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the Payne Stewart tragedy (6) does not state when the military was contacted. Other reports indicate that it took half an hour for the FAA to notify the military. (7) Several sources state that planes from Tyndall Air Force Base were the first ones sent to intercept the failing jet. (8) But the Tyndall planes don't even figure in the NTSB report. (It also appears that the NTSB report does not state when the military was notified.) Moreover, the NTSB switches from Eastern Time to Central Time in mid-report. Barrie Zwicker reported a lapse of 16 minutes from the time Stewart's plane stopped responding to radio communication to the time interceptors actually reached the Lear Jet. But given the switch from Eastern to Central Time in the NTSB report, this apparently took over an hour. Again, this is a bit murky; it is possible that planes from the Tyndall Air Force base were dispatched and then recalled, and this is just not mentioned in the NTSB report. Emperor's Clothes made a similar mistake in 'Cheney's Cover Story.' (9) In the initial post, we stated that when Stewart's plane went off course, the FAA 'immediately' contacted the military. It's fine to make undocumented statements in general argument, but in a Summary of Evidence one needs to document matters of time as much as possible. Since it is difficult to be sure of the exact timing of events in the Payne Stewart case, we have cut out the word 'immediately.' In any case, the question of how quickly the FAA contacted the Military about the Payne Stewart jet is not worth a lot of research time. Regarding 9-11, the important thing is that the Payne Stewart case shows that, contrary to Vice President Cheney's assertions on MEET THE PRESS, intercepting planes does not means shooting them down. And as Barrie Zwicker pointed out, it does not require presidential approval to intercept a plane, again contrary to Mr. Cheney. These are the key points. The question of how long it took the military to respond has to be put in context. This was a small business jet plane flying on autopilot towards a low-population area. It was not a hijacked jumbo jet, one of four airliners hijacked on 9-11, of which two had already crashed into the biggest buildings in New York. And it was not the third hijacked airliner, which turned around in Ohio and was flying back to Washington, DC. Clearly on 9-11 the FAA went on emergency footing. Vice President Cheney says that after the first airliner hit the World Trade Center, the FAA had open lines to the Secret Service. Newsday reports that by 9:06 the FAA had ordered the entire air corridor from Cleveland to Washington, DC shut down. That is, the FAA shut down the route which, we are told, American Flight 77 took heading back to the Pentagon. (10) It is one thing if the FAA or the military was slow responding to a small business jet on autopilot flying over unpopulated areas, and it is another thing for those in charge of Andrews Air Force Base not to scramble fighter jets when there was an obvious deadly threat to key US military and government installations, not to mention that Flight 77 was heading for an urban area inhabited by several million souls. -- John Flaherty ======================= Further Reading: ======================= (1) 'The Great Deception' http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/Deception.htm (1a) The sections of 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' aired on Canadian TV: * Section 1: 'Why Were None of the Hijacked Planes Intercepted?' [Posted 14 November 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm * Update to GUILTY FOR 9-11 Section 1: [Posted 18 November 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indictupdate.htm * Section 2: 'Mr. Cheney's Cover Story' [Posted 20 November 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm (2) 'Great Deception' Transcript http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/mediafile_Jan28.htm (3) http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm#b (4) http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm#k (5) 'Update to GUILTY FOR 9-11 - Section 1' http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indictupdate.htm (5a) 'NBC Nightly News,' "Attack on America," (6:30 PM ET) 11 September 2001, "Tuesday President Bush returns to White House on Marine One," Anchor: Tom Brokaw, Jim Miklaszewski reporting. See transcript at: http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nbc911cover.htm (6) NTSB Report Accident No.: DCA00MA005 Operator or Flight Number: Sunjet Aviation Aircraft and Registration: Learjet Model 35, N47BA Location: Aberdeen, South Dakota Date: October 25, 1999 http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/aab0001.htm (7) AP Chronology on Payne Stewart Crash http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/stewart/stewfs13.htm (8) http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/plane102599.html (9) * Section 2: 'Mr. Cheney's Cover Story' [Posted 20 November 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm (10) 'Newsday' 23 September 2001, "Air Attack on Pentagon Indicates Weaknesses" by Sylvia Adcock, Brian Donovan and Craig Gordon Web version (does not link direct to part of article with reference to closing of air corridor) : http://www.newsday.com/ny-uspent232380681sep23.story Backup with direct link to reference to closing of air corridor is at: http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nd923.htm#a 'Map & Timetable for American Airlines Flight 77' [Posted 8 December 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/images/maptime.htm 'Map of Andrews Air Force Base' [Posted 20 November 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/andrewsmap.htm Frequently Asked Questions on 9-11 http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/faq.htm Includes: 'FAQ #1 - Nobody was prepared for 9-11' and 'FAQ #2 - Planes did scramble on 9-11. They just arrived late.' 'Reader Says Emperor's Clothes Wrong on bin Laden, 9-11' A very interesting debate. [Posted 28 September 2001] http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/wrong.htmEmperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA 02461-0321. (USA) Or make a donation by phone at the donation line, (U.S.) 617 916-1705. We can now accept donations through e-gold. Our account # is 444982. Note: If you mail a donation or make one by secure server, please let us know by email at emperors1000@aol.com to make sure we receive it. Thanks! Thank you for reading Emperor's Clothes. www.emperors-clothes.com or www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] This Website is mirrored at http://emperor.vwh.net/ and at http://globalresistance.com ----------------------------------------------------------- The Bombshell !! Bush Urges Daschle to Limit 9-11 Investigations !! WAKE UP CALL [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] [input] EVIDENCE BUILDS - ACT NOW TO PREVENT A COVER UP & WAR: There are now 12 Congressional Committees planning to investigate 9- 11, and how it was allowed to occur. Bush & Cheney have taken the unprecedented step of urging the Senate to "limit" inquiries into 9- 11. Read the below reports and you may understand "why" Bush and Cheney don't want this in the light of day. [Also, Canadian Television Program SCALDS mainstream US media for completely ignoring the below disturbing reports.] It is CRITICAL THAT YOU SPREAD THIS INFORMATION OUT AND DEMAND THAT WORLD MEDIA AND THE CONGRESS FULLY INVESTIGATE THIS. Cheney has spoken of a list of 40 to 50 nations where US military strikes may occur. If another major terrorist strike occurs in the US, we may very well lose our civil rights completely. As this begins to come out there may be some desperate people in our government that will do desperate things. We must act now, while we still have freedom to act. For a freely emailed Activist Kit, reply to findtruth40@hotmail.com with "Send Kit" in the subject line. Does all this sound too bizarre? I'm sure pre-war Germans had the same skepticism in the 30's. After seeing the "Superbowl-Neuremburg Rally" on Sunday, any conscious person should begin to be worried. CALL TALK SHOWS, WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ASKING, "WHY DOESN'T BUSH WANT A FULL INVESTIGATION OF 9-11?" and "WHY ARE ONLY FORIEGN MEDIA LOOKING INTO THE BELOW REPORTS?" We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation. --Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002 What do we know of 9-11 that should be investigated? Pre 9-11 Intelligence Breakdowns: - Reportedly the Bush Administration forced the FBI to "back off" on their investigations of terrorism in the Middle East. FBI Deputy Director O'Neill (killed in WTC on 9-11) reportedly resigned not long before 9-11 over this investigative obstruction, claiming that the main obstruction was the interests of American Oil Companies. (Source: Recently released French Book, "Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth) - US Oil interests were well represented within the negotiating team, that apparently was the source of the threat to "bury Afghanistan in a carpet of bombs" unless they played ball in creating a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan. This threat was reportedly made several months before 9-11. (Bush's family has a strong oil background. So do some of his top aides. -U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was until the end of last year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry; -National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron; -Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant. [ BBC interview on the above issue: - The Bush Administration forced the FBI to back off of the Bin Laden investigation months before 9- 11. Source: BBC transcript BUSH ? BIN LADEN HIDDEN AGENDA! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/16455 27.stm] - CIA Station Chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden only 7 weeks before 9- 11 took place, yet they did not try to apprehend him, only met with him. - The CIA station chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden 7 weeks before 9-11, and at a time when Bin Laden was supposedly "wanted" by the CIA. http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html· (English) (German Trans.) http://www.orf.at/orfon/011031-44569/index.html - US government agent claims the CIA has been dealing with Bin Laden since 1987, and he suggests in his interview that the terrorist acts of late may well have been planned and paid for by the CIA with US taxpayers money to enable the Bush Administration to "legitimately" bomb Afghanistan into submission. An interview with Michael Springman exposes the CIA's links with the terrorist attacks on September 11 [Michael Springman worked for the US government for 20 years with the foreign service and consulate. He just went public with the story of his involvement in a large scale CIA operation that brought hundreds of people from the middle east to the US, issued them passports and trained them to be terrorists. Hear the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) interview here. http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1267] -Insider Trading profits off the 9-11 terror don't lead to Osama Bin Laden, but to AB Brown Trust, until recently chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA. -[Someone with considerable financial resources, and foreknowledge of the terrorist event, put stock options "against" the airlines that were to explode that week of 9-11. - INSIDER TRADING PROFITS from 9- 11 were reported by the US media when they thought it was Arab terrorists . . . but then the story mysteriously died. Then the UK Independent revealed that it leads to a firm chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA (and stranger still is that $2.5 million of the "winnings" are still unclaimed (see below for URL to entire story). http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html . Info confirmed by Independent Newspaper in UK: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=99402] [Standard FAA and DOD "intercept and shoot down procedures" were violated on 9-11 (see FAA and DOD procedures on "intercepts").] It is a FACT that standard intercept procedures for dealing with these kinds of situations ARE TOTALLY ESTABLISHED, IN FORCE and ON- LINE in these United States 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Regarding rules governing IFR requirements, see FAA Order 7400.2E - 'Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters,' Effective Date: December 7, 2000 (Includes Change 1, effective July 7, 2001), Chapter 14-1-2. Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIR/air1401.html#14-1-2FAA - Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures,' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001) Chapter 5- 6-4 "Interception Signals" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html#5-6-4 - FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-2-5 "Emergency Situations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1002.html#10-2-5 - FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-1-1 "Emergency Determinations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1001.html#10-1-1 - FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: > November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 4, Section 5, "Air Defense Liaison Officers (ADLO's)" > Full text posted at: > http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch4/mil0405.html#Section%205 - FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 7, Section 1-2, "Escort of Hijacked Aircraft: Requests for Service" > Full text posted at: > http://faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/mil0701.html#7-1-2 - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1 June 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," 4. Policy (page 1) > PDF available at: > http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf > Backup at: > http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf For a clear and detailed description of flight plans, fixes, and Air Traffic Control, see: 'Direct-To Requirements' by Gregory Dennis and Emina Torlak at: http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/atc/D2Requirements.htm Absolutely NO executive-level input of ANY KIND is required for standard intercepts to be scrambled. WHY DID BUSH'S STAFF NOT FOLLOW NORMAL PROCEDURES IN THE CASE OF A NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON 9-11? DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? The UK Independent Newspaper has questioned how Bush, who claimed in two public appearances to have seen the first plane hit the first tower on television the morning of 9-11, before the 2nd tower got hit? The significance of this is that no one in the world saw that first tower get hit, at that time, on television. They also question why Bush continued to sit with elementary school students after the 2nd tower was hit and he was informed, "America is under attack." Standard procedure for such a situation is to whisk the President away, if not for his safety, for the safety of the students. Unless he knew something more than we did that morning. The Independent asks, "what television station was HE watching?" Is it Outrageous to Consider that Elements of a Nations' Government Could Committ Terror on It's Own People for Political Reasons? - ABC News.com's May/2001 story resurfaces about how the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have in the past ACTUALLY DESIGNED a plan to committ domestic terror on Americans to whip them into a war hysteria, to support war efforts by the govt. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html [The National Security Archive has a PDF version of the Operation Northwoods plan, which author James Bamford says "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." It can be found at the following URL:] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/ After 9-11 Oddities: Anthrax sent to top Democrat Daschle and to the U.S. media (NBC & The National Inquirer) had the effect of "uniting the nation behind the Bush Administration's war effort," and literally shutting down Congress in many ways. Oddities exist when the anthrax issue is looked at closely: - New Science Journal says Anthrax sent to Daschle is NOT Russian or Iraqi, but likely US military strain. - San Francisco Chronicle reports, the anthrax strain produced in US University is destroyed on ok of FBI (they had studied this for years, some at university question the timing of the destruction of those anthrax spores . . . right now of all times (?)) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S. The powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually indistinguishable from that produced by the United States military, according to federal scientists. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html?todaysheadlines After 9-11 Administration Damage Control Efforts: Fire Engineering Magazine assails the incredible speed that the evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed. Never in the history of fire investigations has evidence been destroyed this fast before exhaustive investigations can be completed. ["We must try to find out why the twin towers fell" By James Quintiere,Baltimore Sun 1/3/01 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- op.towers03jan03.story -WTC "INVESTIGATION"?: A CALL TO ACTION from Fire Engineering Magazine] - - Bush Admin. declares they will "seal the records of presidents beginning with Father Bush/Reagans (an act never before done in US presidential history)." - "It is not a stretch to wonder if this White House is up to something that it doesn't want known 12 years from now or anytimethereafter. [A direct quote from the piece carried by Scripps Howard News Service, 11/5/2001. Re: Bush's sealing of presidential records for the first time in U.S. history] - Bush & Cheney urge Senate Leader to "limit" inquiries into 9-11: Senate perplexed by this. Don't go there: Bush Asks Daschle to Limit Sept. 11 Probes Date: Wednesday, January 30 @ 10:09:24 EST WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN. The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request. "The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters. But, Daschle said, he has not agreed to limit the investigation. "I acknowledged that concern, and it is for that reason that the Intelligence Committee is going to begin this effort, trying to limit the scope and the overall review of what happened," said Daschle, D- South Dakota. "But clearly, I think the American people are entitled to know what happened and why," he said. Foreign Officials have powerful concerns over 9-11: FORMER GERMAN CABINET MINISTER ATTACKS OFFICIAL BRAINWASHING ON SEPTEMBER 11 ISSUE [Source: Tagesspiegel, Berlin, Jan. 13] PARTIAL TRANSLATION In a full-page interview with the Sunday edition (Jan. 13) of the Berlin Tagesspiegel daily, former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, said he does not buy any of the official theories that have been presented to date, on the events of September 11. Q: You seem so angry, really upset. Von Buelow: I can explain what's bothering me: I see that after the horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong. Q: What do you mean by that? Von Buelow: I wonder why many questions are not asked. Normally, with such a terrible thing, various leads and tracks appear that are then commented on, by the investigators, the media, the government: Is there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible? This time, this is not the case at all. It already began just hours after the attacks in New York and Washington and-- Q: In those hours, there was horror, and grief. Von Buelow: Right, but actually it was astounding: There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion-- Q: ...more than the German defense budget... Von Buelow: --which were not able to prevent the attacks. In fact, they didn't even have an inkling they would happen. For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground, 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within ten days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive. Q: What, please? Von Buelow: Yes, yes. And why did the FBI chief take no position regarding contradictions? Where the list came from, why it was false? If I were the chief investigator (state attorney) in such a case, I would regularly go to the public, and give information on which lead are valid and which not. Q: That sounds like-- Von Buelow: --like assailants who, in their preparations, leave tracks behind them like a herd of stampeding elephants? They made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fall into the hands of the FBI, because they were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left like behind like in a child's game of hide-and-seek, which were to be followed! There is also the theory of one British flight engineer: According to this, the steering of the planes was perhaps taken out of the pilots' hands, from outside. The Americans had developed a method in the 1970s, whereby they could rescue hijacked planes by intervening into the computer piloting [automatic pilot system]. This theory says, this technique was abused in this case. That's a theory.... Q: Which sounds really adventurous, and was never considered. Von Buelow: You see! I do not accept this theory, but I find it worth considering. And what about the obscure stock transactions? In the week prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies, increased 1,200%. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must have known something. Who? Q: Why don't you speculate on who it might have been. Von Buelow: With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti- communism doesn't work any more; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism. Q: Brainwashing? That's a tough term. Von Buelow: Yes? But the idea of the enemy image doesn't come from me. It comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy. Already in the middle of the 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and the U.S. needed someone they could hate-- this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especially oil and gas. Q: You mean, the events of Sept. 11-- Von Buelow: --fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry, the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic complex. This is in fact conspicuous. The huge raw materials reserves of the former Soviet Union are now at their disposal, also the pipeline routes and-- Q: Erich Follach described that at length in Spiegel: ``It's a matter of military bases, drugs, oil and gas reserves.'' Von Buelow: I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry. Q: You are a conspiracy theorist! Von Buelow: Yeah, yeah. That's the ridicule heaped [on those raising these questions] by those who would prefer to follow the official, politically correct line. Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts that, doesn't have all his marbles! That is your accusation. Q: Your career actually speaks against the idea that you are not in your right mind. You were already in the 1970s, state secretary in the Defense Ministry; in 1993 you were the SPD [Social Democratic Party] speaker in the Schalk-Golodkowski investigation committee-- Von Buelow: And it all began there! Until that time, I did not have any great knowledge of the work of intelligence agencies. And now we had to take note of a great discrepancy: We shed light on the dealings of the Stasi and other East bloc intelligence agencies in the field of economic criminality, but as soon as we wanted to know something about the activities of the BND [German intelligence agency] or the CIA, it was mercilessly blocked. No information, no cooperation, nothing! That's when I was first taken aback. The Legacy: "On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism, of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the exception sometimes that proves the rule." - George Bush on Good Morning America. 01/28/87 "You f**king son of a bitch, I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this.", - George W. Bush shouted at writer & editor Al Hunt, & his 6 yr old son in a restaurant - 1988 .... IF YOU WOULD LIKE AN ACTIVIST KIT TO GET INVOLVED URGING A FULL PUBLIC INVESTIGATION OF 9-11 AND ITS AFTERMATH, REPLY to findtruth40@hotmail.com WITH "SEND KIT" and it will be freely sent to you. "OUR LIVES BEGIN TO END THE DAY WE BECOME SILENT ABOUT THINGS THAT MATTER" -- Martin Luther King We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation. --Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002 1) Enron Investigation Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/ddc22/petition.html 2) 9/11 Investigation Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -please send the following to ALL senators, personalizing the letter with your name, etc. See below, and urge all you know to do the same! Senate Dem.s fax & email contacts at bottom.- WIDEN THE 9-11 INQUIRIES!! WIDEN ENRON PROBE! Was ENRON "Directing" US FOREIGN POLICY, too??!!! Was Enron the reason the Bush Administration flew Taliban representatives to Texas to discuss a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan, and then threaten the Taliban with "a carpet of bombs" when the deal went sour shortly before 9-11?? PLEASE read the disturbing reports in the following memorandum -all sourced from respected mainstream media. ENRON – 9-11 CONNECTION !! Before the American people -and the world - are led to mass war over this critical point in human history, DON'T YOU THINK THEY DESERVE A FEW ANSWERS ABOUT "HOW IT ALL HAPPENED?" CONGRESSMAN, YOU OWE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A FULL INQUIRY. * The Enron Corp. did the feasability study on the oil pipeline that Bush Admin was negotiating with Taliban. According to the French reporter's new book the Bush Admin threatened the Taliban with a choice between "a carpet of gold . . . or a carpet of bombs." - meaning play ball with the pipeline or else.- Bin Laden, The Forbidden Truth, Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite. * U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer tried to warn Canadian officials BEFORE 9-11 of the 9-11 strikes in NY and DC. HOW DID HE KNOW? Toronto Star Article Below. * FBI Deputy Director O'Neill -who was killed in the WTC on 9-11 - quit just before 9-11 over the Bush admin's obstruction of their terrorist investigations, because of what O'Neill called, "oil interests." * Two Star General, Donald Kerrick, told the Washington Post, "Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop Bin Laden and Al Qaida. I didn't detect that kind of focus from the Bush Administration." Urls to the FAA and DOD standard "plane intercept" procedures ALL violated on 9-11, available upon request. Many other disturbing facts like that the CIA station chief met in Dubai with Osama Bin Laden only 7 WEEKS before 9-11 -and did not arrest him at a time when he was on our most wanted list. PLEASE form a full Congressional inquiry before you allow our children to fight, die, and kill in these endless wars. Cheney has a list of 40 nations to strike. YOUR NAME: ADDRESS: PHONE: Simple questions that need to be asked: - President Bush, did your administration hamper the FBI inquiries into Bin Laden - and/or Al Quida? - Did FBI Agent O'Neill who was killed in 9-11 quit over frustration of investigations aforementioned? - Did he mention that US oil interests were the source of the problem? - Did Enron create a feasibility study for a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan? - Did your administration threaten the Taliban months BEFORE 9- 11 with a "carpet of bombs?" - Mr. President, did you see the 1st jet hit the 1st tower on television as you have said repeatedly in public apprearances, and if so, WHAT television station WERE YOU watching? - Air traffic controller so-n-so, did you alert anyone the jets were off course? - Who did you notify? - Why were standard FAA and DOD "intercept" procedures NOT followed on 9-11? - Why were planes not scrambled after the 1st tower was hit? Why were'nt they scrambled when planes first went off course as normal procedures mandate? - Mr. President why did your FEMA office allow the rapid destruction of the steel girders from the WTC before a thorough inquiry could be done, as called for by Fire Engineering Magazine. - Mr. President how could the FBI and CIA not have a clue that 9-11 would occur and then only hours after the blasts know EXACTLY who was responsible, even with ID's and photographs? - Mr. President, were there any Arab names on the flight logs on 9-11? If not how did you know who did it, who was on the plane, etc.? - Mr. President, Mr. CIA Station Chief in Dubai, "DID YOU MEET WITH OSAMA BIN LADEN 7 WEEKS PRIOR TO 9-11?" - Mr. Reporter for La Figero -a major French newspaper that reported the above meeting, how did you find that the CIA station chief met with Bin Laden 7 weeks prior to 9-11? - Mr. President did your adminstration and/or Enron officials meet with Taliban officials in Texas in months leading up to 9-11 to discuss a major oil pipeline project? - Did Enron do the feasibility study for this? - Was this entire MASSIVE military campaign thrown together AFTER 9-11, or were these plans made PRIOR to 9-11? I am not an investigator, an ordinary citizen. I'm sure a trained investigator would see a thousand more unanswered questions that beg to be asked before we launch WORLD WARS based on the 9-11 incident. Senator, I ask you in all honesty, was this massive agenda of domestic liberty restrictions, limitations on inquiry into presidential records, massive defense increases, etc. etc. that came in an avalanche AFTER 9-11, all come into being AFTER 9-11, or were these plans discussed BEFORE 9-11? a myriad of witness could be called in around this. Why are Bush & Cheney urging the Senate to "limit" inquiries into 9- 11? Why should YOU demand that those inquiries be full and open to the public? What do we know of 9-11 that should be investigated? Pre 9-11 Intelligence Breakdowns: - Reportedly the Bush Administration forced the FBI to "back off" on their investigations of terrorism in the Middle East. FBI Deputy Director O'Neill (killed in WTC on 9-11) reportedly resigned not long before 9-11 over this investigative obstruction, claiming that the main obstruction was the interests of American Oil Companies. (Source: Recently released French Book, "Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite" -Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth - US Oil interests were well represented within the negotiating team, that apparently was the source of the threat to "bury Afghanistan in a carpet of bombs" unless they played ball in creating a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan. This threat was reportedly made several months before 9-11. -Bush's family has a strong oil background. So are some of his top aides. - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was until the end of last year president of o Halliburton a company that provides services for oil industry; - National Security Council Condoleeza Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron; - Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant. [ BBC interview on the above issue: - The Bush Administration forced the FBI to back off of the Bin Laden investigation months before 9- 11. BBC transcript BUSH – BIN LADEN HIDDEN AGENDA!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/16455 27.stm] and now --you knew it was coming, didn't you?-- Enron and 9-11: "Is Enron Behind The War In Afghanistan?" From Robert Lederman 2-5-2 collection of links to articles ..."Enron ... conducted the feasibility study for a US$2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services." ..."as the two star general Donald Kerrick told the Washington Post, reflecting on his service to both President Clinton and President Bush: Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop bin Laden and al Qaeda. "I didn't detect that kind of focus" from the Bush Administration. http://www.rense.com/general19/lend.htm also http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/115642.php - CIA Station Chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden only 7 weeks before 9- 11 took place, yet they did not try to apprehend him, only met with him. - The CIA station chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden 7 weeks before 9-11, and at a time when Bin Laden was supposedly "wanted" by the CIA. http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html·- English German Trans. http://www.orf.at/orfon/011031-44569/index.html - US government agent claims the CIA has been dealing with Bin Laden since 1987, and he suggests in his interview that the terrorists acts of late may well have been planned and paid for by the CIA with US taxpayers money to enable the Bush Administration to "legitimately" bomb Afghanistan into submission. An interview with Michael Springman exposes the CIA's links with the terrorist attacks on September 11 -Michael Springmann worked for the US government for 20 years with the foreign service and consulate. He just went public with the story of his involvement in a large scale CIA operation that brought hundreds of people from the middle east to the US, issued them passports and trained them to be terrorists. Hear the CBC -Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview here. http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1267] Toronto Star -- U.S. Navy Lieutenant in Intelligence warned Canadian officials in a sealed envelope BEFORE 9/11 that NY and the Pentagon would be attacked!! SEPTEMBER 11 ||| NICK PRON, TORONTO STAR - While jet fighters drop bombs on Afghanistan in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy and FBI agents search for the source of anthrax letters, an incredible tale has been unfolding in a Toronto courtroom. It draws together the threads of a narrative some describe as "stunning and fantastic," while others wonder if it isn't just the ravings of a lunatic. The man telling the tale in sworn court affidavits is Delmart Edward Vreeland, who faces credit fraud charges in Canada and in the United States, where officials are attempting to extradite him. The 35-year-old American claims to be a lieutenant in a U.S. Navy intelligence unit â€" a spy who says he knew in advance about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In his affidavit, he says he tried to warn Canadian intelligence about possible terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, along with targets in Ottawa and Toronto, but was written off as a petty criminal. So he wrote the warning on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and handed it to jail guards a month before the attacks. They opened the letter Sept. 14 and immediately forwarded the information to Ottawa. His lawyers, Rocco Galati and Paul Slansky, are fighting extradition, telling the court he could face treason charges and the death penalty in the U.S. In the first stage of hearings, federal prosecutor Kevin Wilson yesterday told Mr. Justice Archie Campbell of the Superior Court of Justice that he was skeptical of Vreeland's claims.. . . According to court documents, Vreeland was 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1984. Two years later, Vreeland says in his affidavit, he joined a special unit investigating drug smuggling into the U.S. by naval personnel. But the navy says Vreeland was "unsatisfactorily discharged" in 1986. . . ||| MICHAEL C. RUPPERT, FROM THE WILDERNESS - On August 11 or 12 of 2001, the date is uncertain, after trying to verbally alert his Canadian jailers to the coming World Trade Center attacks, [Vreeland] wrote down key information and sealed it in an envelope which he then had placed in jailers’ custody. This event is not disputed by Canadian authorities. The letter specifically listed a number of targets including The Sears Towers, The World Trade Center, The White House, The Pentagon, The World Bank, The Canadian parliament building in Ottawa and the Royal Bank in Toronto. A chilling sentence follows the list of targets, "Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!" . . . TORONTO STAR http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer? pagename=thestar/Layout/Art - Insider Trading profits off the 9-11 terror don't lead to Osama Bin Laden, but to AB Brown Trust, until recently chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA. - Someone with considerable financial resources, and foreknowledge of the terrorist event, put stock options "against" the airlines that were to explode that week of 9-11. - INSIDER TRADING PROFITS off of 9-11 were frenzied over by the US media when they thought it was Arab terrorists . . . but then the story mysteriously died. Until, the UK Independent reveals that it leads to a firm chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA and stranger still is that $2.5 million of the "winnings" are still unclaimed -see below for URL to entire story. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html . Info confirmed by Independent Newspaper in UK: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp? story=99402 Is it Outrageous to Consider that Elements of a Nations' Government Could Committ Terror on It's Own People for Political Reasons? - ABC News.com's May/2001 story resurfaces about how the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have in the past ACTUALLY DESIGNED a plan to committ domestic terror on Americans to whip them into a war hysteria, to support war efforts by the govt. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html The National Security Archive has a PDF version of the Operation Northwoods plan, which author James Bamford says "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." It can be found at the following URL: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/ - MANY FAA & DOD "STANDARD PROCEDURES" FOR FLIGHT INTERCEPTS WERE VIOLATED ON 9-11, FOR URL'S LEADING TO FAA AND DOD SITES WHERE YOU CAN REVIEW THEM EMAIL FINDTRUTH40@HOTMAIL.COM After 9-11 Oddities: Anthrax sent to top Democrat Daschle and to the U.S. media -NBC & The National Inquirer- had the effect of "uniting the nation behind the Bush Administration's war effort," and literally shutting down Congress in many ways. Oddities exist when the anthrax issue is looked at closely: - New Science Journal says Anthrax sent to Daschle is NOT Russian or Iraqi, but likely US military strain. - San Francisco Chronicle reports, the anthrax strain produced in US University is destroyed on ok of FBI -they had studied this for years, some at university question the timing of the destruction of those anthrax spores . . . right now of all times ? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S. The powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually indistinguishable from that produced by the United States military, according to federal scientists. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html?todaysheadlines After 9-11 Administration Damage Control Efforts: Fire Engineering Magazine assails the incredible speed that the evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed by Gullianne. Never in the history of fire investigations has evidence been destroyed this fast before exhausting investigations can be completed. -"We must try to find out why the twin towers fell" By James Quintiere, Baltimore Sun 1/3/01 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- op.towers03jan03.story - WTC "INVESTIGATION"?: A CALL TO ACTION from Fire Engineering Magazine - - Bush Admin. declares they will "seal the records of presidents beginning with Father Bush/Reagans -an act never before done in US presidential history." - "It is not a stretch to wonder if this White House is up to something that it doesn't want known 12 years from now or anytime thereafter. -A direct quote from the piece carried by Scripps Howard News Service, 11/5/2001. Re: Bush's sealing of presidential records for the first time in U.S. history - Bush & Cheney urge Senate Leader to "limit" inquiries into 9-11: Senate perplexed by this. Don't go there: Bush Asks Daschle to Limit Sept. 11 Probes Date: Wednesday, January 30 @ 10:09:24 EST WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN. The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request. "The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters. But, Daschle said, he has not agreed to limit the investigation. "I acknowledged that concern, and it is for that reason that the Intelligence Committee is going to begin this effort, trying to limit the scope and the overall review of what happened," said Daschle, D- South Dakota. "But clearly, I think the American people are entitled to know what happened and why," he said. Foreign Officials have powerful concerns over 9-11: FORMER GERMAN CABINET MINISTER ATTACKS OFFICIAL BRAINWASHING ON SEPTEMBER 11 ISSUE [Source: Tagesspiegel, Berlin, Jan. 13] PARTIAL TRANSLATION In a full-page interview with the Sunday edition (Jan. 13) of the Berlin Tagesspiegel daily, former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, said he does not buy any of the official theories that have been presented to date, on the events of September 11. Q: You seem so angry, really upset. Von Buelow: I can explain what's bothering me: I see that after the horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong. Q: What do you mean by that? Von Buelow: I wonder why many questions are not asked. Normally, with such a terrible thing, various leads and tracks appear that are then commented on, by the investigators, the media, the government: Is there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible? This time, this is not the case at all. It already began just hours after the attacks in New York and Washington and-- Q: In those hours, there was horror, and grief. Von Buelow: Right, but actually it was astounding: There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion-- Q: ...more than the German defense budget... Von Buelow: --which were not able to prevent the attacks. In fact, they didn't even have an inkling they would happen. For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground, 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within ten days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive. Q: What, please? Von Buelow: Yes, yes. And why did the FBI chief take no position regarding contradictions? Where the list came from, why it was false? If I were the chief investigator (state attorney) in such a case, I would regularly go to the public, and give information on which leadsare valid and which not. Q: That sounds like-- Von Buelow: --like assailants who, in their preparations, leave tracks behind them like a herd of stampeding elephants? They made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fall into the hands of the FBI, because they were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left like behind like in a child's game of hide-and-seek, which were to be followed! There is also the theory of one British flight engineer: According to this, the steering of the planes was perhaps taken out ofthe pilots' hands, from outside. The Americans had developed a method in the 1970s, whereby they could rescue hijacked planes by intervening into the computer piloting [automatic pilot system]. This theory says, this technique was abusedin this case. That's a theory.... Q: Which sounds really adventurous, and was never considered. Von Buelow: You see! I do not accept this theory, but I find it worth considering. And what about the obscure stock transactions? In theweek prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies, increased 1,200%. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must have known something. Who? Q: Why don't you speculate on who it might have been. Von Buelow: With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti- communism doesn't work any more; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism. Q: Brainwashing? That's a tough term. Von Buelow: Yes? But the idea of the enemy image doesn't come from me. It comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy. Already in the middle of he 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and theU.S. needed someone they could hate-- this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especiallyoil and gas. Q: You mean, the events of Sept. 11-- Von Buelow: --fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry, the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic complex. This is in fact conspicuous. The huge raw materials reserves of the former Soviet Union are now at their disposal, also the pipeline routes and-- Q: Erich Follach described that at length in Spiegel: ``It's amatter of military bases, drugs, oil and gas reserves.'' Von Buelow: I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry. Q: You are a conspiracy theorist! Von Buelow: Yeah, yeah. That's the ridicule heaped [on those raising these questions] by those who would prefer to follow the official, politically correct line. Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts that, doesn't have all his marbles! That is your accusation. Q: Your career actually speaks against the idea that you are not in your right mind. You were already in the 1970s, state secretary in theDefense Ministry; in 1993 you were the SPD [Social Democratic Party] speaker in the Schalk-Golodkowski investigation committee-- Von Buelow: And it all began there! Until that time, I did not have any great knowledge of the work of intelligence agencies. And now we had to take note of a great discrepancy: We shed light on the dealings of the Stasi and other East bloc intelligence agencies in the field of economic criminality, but as soon as we wanted to know something about the activities of the BND [German intelligence agency] or the CIA, it was mercilessly blocked. No information, no cooperation, nothing! That's when I was first taken aback. "On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism, of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the exception sometimes that proves the rule." - George Bush on Good Morning America. 01/28/87 "You f**king son of a bitch, I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this.", - George W. Bush shouted at writer & editor Al Hunt, & his 6 yr old son in a restaurant - 1988 .... We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation. --Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002 SENATE FAX NUMBERS BELOW (ALL DEMS. EXCEPT MCCAIN): 305-536-5991 850-942-8450 407-872-7165 813-225-7050 202-228-0012 402-476-8753 402-391-4725 402-476-8753 202-224-4680 401-464-6837 775-883-1980 702-388-5030 775-686-5757 202-224-7327 202-224-7665 304-347-5371 304-253-3578 304-367-0822 304-262-9288 856-933-2711 973-639-0418 202-224-8438 651-645-0704 218-741-8544 320-231-0006 808-541-2549 808-961-5163 808-242-7233 808-560-3385 808-246-9515 605-332-2824 202-228-5765 605-341-2207 605-226-2439 202-224-2417 617-248-3870 508-677-0275 413-736-1049 202-228-1371 501-375-7064 410-962-4760 410-263-5949 301-345-7573 301-797-2241 410-546-9324 202-224-8858 202-228-2090 404-347-2243 706-379-4053 973-645-0502 202-228-2197 856-546-1526 202-228-1374 202-224-9369 501-284-4937 563-322-0417 319-365-4683 563-582-2342 712-252-1638 229-985-8018 912-747-0762 912-238-1240 202-224-0238 206-553-0891 425-259-7152 202-228-2862 480-897-8389 602-952-8702 520-670-6637 509-624-9561 360-696-7798 509-452-7731 SENATE EMAILS (ALL DEM. EXCEPT MCCAIN): John_McCain@McCain.senate.gov, senator@akaka.senate.gov, senator@biden.senate.gov, senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov, senator@breaux.senate.gov, senator_byrd@byrd.senate.gov, senator_carnahan@carnahan.senate.gov, senator@clinton.senate.gov, senator@conrad.senate.gov, senator@dodd.senate.gov, senator@dorgan.senate.gov, dick@durbin.senate.gov, russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov, senator@feinstein.senate.gov, bob_graham@graham.senate.gov, tom_harkin@harkin.senate.gov, vermont@jeffords.senate.gov, tim@johnson.senate.gov, senator@kennedy.senate.gov, john_kerry@kerry.senate.gov, senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov, senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov, senator@levin.senate.gov, blanche_lincoln@lincoln.senate.gov, senator@mikulski.senate.gov, senator_murray@murray.senate.gov, senator@billnelson.senate.gov, jack@reed.senate.gov, senator@rockefeller.senate.gov, senator@schumer.senate.gov, senator@stabenow.senate.gov, senator_torricelli@torricelli.senate.gov ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Business 101 */*Today's Corporate Primer: BANKRUPTCY! */*by Steve Young* Feb. 5, 2002 -- LOS ANGELES (APJP) Bankruptcy is bad, It means you have more debt than assets. When you work for an energy company like Enron it also means you lost your job, And your retirement plan, And your medical benefits, And probably your house, UNLESS... You are an Enron officer. Then you only lose your reputation, And then all you have left is a couple hundred million, Which is bad when you're used to having a few hundred million. When you are a shareholder of Enron it means you lost your life savings, But talking heads say that's really your fault . Didn't you ever hear of diversification? If you are the CEO of Enron bankruptcy means you've lost "everything," So says your wife. After all, all you have left is $15 million worth of homes in Aspen, And your $7 million home in Houston, And at least ten more properties in Texas, And a few hundred million in stock sales, "Stock sales" are what you do when your investments are in trouble, Unless you are an employee. Then stock sales are what you're not allowed to make. It's a technical thing, but "for your own protection." Kenneth Lay's wife says that there are many things he did not know. Kind of like that Arthur Anderson guy who took the "Fifth." She says Ken is "ultimately responsible" for Enron's playful accounting, But not liable. "Liable" is what puts you in jail, If you don't have money for Johnny Cochran. Will Kenneth Lay go to jail? Can you say, "If he's got the dough, Then let Lay go"? Bankruptcy can come from "partnerships." "Partnerships" are what CFO's like Andrew Fastow developed. "Partnerships" helped Enron hide $1 billion in losses. I wish I had a partner like that. I wish I had $1 billion to lose. Sometimes bankruptcy is caused by fraud. "Fraud" is when you lie about what you know to be the truth. And then you will have to stand in front of Congress, And if you don't tell the truth, You will go to jail. Then again... Can you say "Nicotine isn't addictive?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Larry Chin Enron: Ultimate agent of the American empire Thu Feb 7 17:57:31 2002 68.3.132.0 Enron: Ultimate agent of the American empire Part II: Enron, the Bush administration, and the Central Asian war By Larry Chin Online Journal Contributing Editor February 7, 2002--Most experts agree that the Caspian Basin and Central Asia are the keys to energy in the 21st century. Said energy expert James Dorian (Oil & Gas Journal, 9/10/01), "Those who control the oil routes out of Central Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the distribution of revenues from new production." America wants the region under total US domination. The Caspian Basin has an estimated $5 trillion of oil and gas resources, and Central Asia has 6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 10 billion barrels of undeveloped oil reserves. Interconnecting pipelines are the key to accessing and distributing oil and gas to European, Chinese and Russian markets. Policy planners have devoted years to this agenda. A report published in September 2001 detailing a conference held at the Brookings Institution in May 2001 provides clear evidence that the exploitation of Caspian Basin and Asian energy markets was an urgent priority for the Bush administration, and the centerpiece of its energy policy. The report states that "the administration's report warned that 'growth in international oil demand will exert increasing pressure on global oil availability' and that developing Asian economies and populations--particularly in China and India---will be major contributors to this increased demand" and that "options for constructing gas pipelines east to Asia from the Caspian have been discussed for the last decade." For years, Enron (along with Unocal, BP Amoco, Exxon, Mobil, Pennzoil, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Texaco, and other oil companies) has been involved in a multi-billion dollar frenzy to extract the reserves of the three former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. According to Project Underground (11/7/99), former Soviet, KGB and Politburo members are profiting from oil riches, along with "a formidable array of former top Western Cold Warriors, drawn principally from the cabinet of George [H.W.] Bush." The dealmakers include James Baker, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, and John Sununu. Also cashing in on the deals are former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen (close friend of Ken Lay and longtime recipient of Enron funding) and Zbigniew Brezezinski. Brezezinski, a leading member of the Council on Foreign Relations and arguably the most influential policy planner in the world, spearheaded the American effort to destabilize the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1970s. He is a consultant to BP Amoco. His recent book, "The Grand Chessboard" is a virtual blue print for a war and balkanization of Central Asia. According to Alexander's Oil & Gas Connections (10/12/98), Enron signed a contract in 1996, giving it rights to explore 11 gas fields in Uzbekistan, a project costing $1.3 billion. The goal was to sell gas to the Russian markets, and link to Unocal's southern export pipeline crossing Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Turkmenistan (where Enron's project was based) and Azerbaijan are closely allied with Israeli military intelligence. Yosef Maiman, a former Israeli intelligence agent, is the official negotiator for energy development projects in Turkmenistan. Enron recently conducted feasibility studies for a $2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline to be built jointly with General Electric and Bechtel. Enron's goal was to link this pipeline to another line through Afghanistan. As described in many accounts, notably the recently published "Osama Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" by Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique, a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) consortium led by Unocal had plans for a 1,005 mile oil pipeline and a 918 mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. This project stalled because of the political instability in Afghanistan. In August 2001, George W. Bush revived negotiations with the Taliban. Writer William Rivers Pitt notes that, "intense scrutiny has shaken loose two e-mails sent by Enron's Ken Lay to his employees in August of last year. In them, Lay waxes optimistic about the strength and stability of his company, and exhorts his employees to buy into the company's stock program." Pitt believes that, "while many observers view this as the gasping lies of a drowning criminal," Lay's messages must be considered in light of the timing: His last e-mail was sent on August 27, about the same time as the final Taliban meeting with the Bush administration. Was Kenneth Lay anticipating a piece of a new pipeline deal, and an Enron contract, courtesy of George W. Bush? After the Taliban refused the Bush administration's "carpet of gold," America dropped its "carpet of bombs" on Afghanistan, allegedly in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Was Ken Lay also anticipating a war, and a way to profit from it? Former Unocal lobbyist Hamid Karzai now heads a bombed and gutted Afghanistan. Bush's US envoy is Zalmay Khalizad, another former Unocal representative, who helped draw up the plans for the original CentGas pipeline. The US has established four new permanent military bases, throughout the region, including a new one in Afghanistan. Recently, Uzbekistan, hosted dozens of members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate. The region will remain a zone of perpetual violence and conflict, and plunder. If Enron had not made the mistake of collapsing, Kenneth Lay and his team would be in the thick of it. Enron, Halliburton, Bush . . . bin Laden? At the web site Rumor Mill News ( http://www.RumorMillNews.com), a journalist named "Phoenix" has laid out business links that tie Enron to the bin Laden family. These connections, which have been independently verified by Michael Ruppert ( http://www.copvcia.com), play out as follows: 1. Osama bin Laden's family business, the Saudi Binladin Group, is a major construction company. Saudi Binladin Group was an investor in the Carlyle Group. Carlyle's directors include George H.W. Bush, and James Baker. George W. Bush's firm Arbusto Energy was funded by an investment from Texas investment banker James Bath, who was also the investment counselor for the bin Laden family. Bath had connections to the CIA, and was involved with the Iran-Contra, savings and loan, and BCCI scandals. 2. One of Saudi Binladen's joint venture partners is H.C. Price Company. 3. H.C. Price is a major builder of pipelines, and is involved in large projects, including two projects for Enron: the Florida Gas Pipeline and the Northern Border Pipeline running from the US/Canadian border from Montana to Illinois. 4. In 1996, Dresser Industries and Shaw Industries merged their pipecoating businesses to form Bredaro-Shaw Group. H.C. Price became part of Bredaro-Shaw. 5. Halliburton acquired Dresser in 1998. George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott, was the managing director of Brown Brothers Harriman, which previously owned Dresser. Dresser Industries gave George H.W. Bush his first job in 1948. 6. Dick Cheney orchestrated the Dresser and Bredaro-Shaw acquisitions. 7. Both Halliburton, and its subsidiary Brown & Root, have deep ties to the CIA and the military. The company has been involved in US military conflicts in Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Chechnya, Pakistan, Colombia and Rwanda. Brown & Root builds oil rigs, pipelines, wells, and nuclear reactors. It does not appear to be a simple case of coincidence that Saudi Binladin, a long time business partner with the Bush family, also has a partnership with a Dick Cheney-affiliated Halliburton that works with Enron. The cover-up begins In their book The Outlaw Bank, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne wrote of BCCI, "It was a conspiratorialist's conspiracy, a plot so byzantine, so thoroughly corrupt, so exquisitely private, reaching so deeply into the political and intelligence establishments of so many countries, that it seemed to have its only precedent in the more hallucinogenic fiction of Ian Fleming, Kurt Vonnegut or Thomas Pynchon. As tales of its global predations were splattered across headlines all over the world, its apparent influence reached almost absurd proportions." The scope of Enron's influence has reached well into the absurd, if not beyond. And there are many more Enrons out there, waiting to be blow open. In describing the system that breeds Enrons, professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa (CovertAction, Fall 1996) wrote: "Global crime has become an integral part of an economic system, with far reaching social, economic and geopolitical ramifications . . . the relationship among criminals, politicians, and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions . . . this system of global trade and finance has fostered an unprecedented accumulation of private wealth alongside the impoverishment of large sectors of the world population, and the prospects for change are dim. Meanwhile, the international community turns a blind eye until some scandal momentarily breaks through the gilded surface." In light of congressional "investigations" headed exclusively by committee chairmen who have received Enron monies, weeks of FBI foot-dragging, continued White House secrecy, no independent counsel, and media complicity in White House damage control efforts, the Enron trail has already begun to grow cold. The American corporate media has done its best to look the other way. This is no surprise, since Enron dumped handsome sums into the pockets of media moguls, and conservative journalists such as Lawrence Kudlow, Peggy Noonan, William Kristol and others. Cronies and cohorts are meeting. Patsies and fall guys have been designated. Lies are being fabricated. Fifth Amendment mantras will be repeated. As was the case with Watergate, BCCI, Iran-Contra, and the savings and loan scandals, it is not too cynical to expect the Enron hearings to expose only enough malfeasance to silence the public, while leaving the massive system intact. The masterminds and the largest beneficiaries are about to slip into the shadows. The American empire is built on a thousand Enrons. It will exhaust every means to avoid implicating itself, even as it drowns in the cesspool of its own creation, dragging thousands of innocent people Need space to store images? -- Server.com Sponsor "FBI/DOJ EMAIL MANAGED BY ENRON'S "PUG" WINOKUR'S DYNCORP" -- APFN, Thu Feb 7 19:43 Enron Center Of Legislative Squabbles -- APFN, Fri Feb 8 01:34 Investigator Faults Enron Executives -- PETE YOST, Thu Feb 7 18:58 ENRON: Baxter death looks a lot like Foster's -- Reed Irvine, Thu Feb 7 21:32 disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- POWER POLITICS: Oil, Terror and the War Against Afghanistan PIPELINE POLITICS Oil Interests: Bush Obstructed FBI Investigation By V.K.Shashikumar http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_fr ench_book.htm U.S. Agents Told: Back Off the bin Ladens From the Sydney Morning Herald http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_more_o n_carlyle.htm U.S.-Taliban Relations: Friend Turns Fiend By Ishtiaq Ahmad, Lecturer, International Relations, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_us _taliban_relations.htm U.S. statement when the Talibhan took Kabul, 1996 By Glyn Davies, U.S. State Department spokesperson http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/us_terror_afghan_hi story_hajibullah.htm The New Great Game: Oil Politics in Central Asia By Ted Rall, social commentator, cartoonist and columnist. http://www. ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_rall.htm The Strategic Importance of Central Asian Oil Quotations from: Dick Cheney, Doug Bereutter, Mortimer Zuckerman, Bill Richardson, Richard Perle, Center for Security Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_quotes .htm Strange Bedfellows: The Bush and bin Laden Families.12 By the Intelligence Newsletter http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/bin_laden_ties_to_b ush.htm The Carlyle Group From various sources http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_carlyl e_group.htm Bush League: Mixing Oil, Big Money and Politics From various sources http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_bu sh_cabinet.htm Unocal Testimony on U.S. Interests in Afghanistan By John Maresca, Vice President, International Relations, Unocal Corp. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazin e/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_unocal_short.htm Unocal links to U.S. military and CIA By Oregon Peaceworks http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_oil_un ocal_links.htm HYPOCRISY and STATE TERROR Hidden Agendas of State Terror By John Pilger, Former chief foreign correspondent, UK Mirror. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_us_ter ror_pilger.htm Northern Alliance By Human Rights Watch http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/real_reasons_northe rn_alliance.htm Who is Osama Bin Laden By Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/bin_laden_chossudov sky.htm U.S. Provoked the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/us_terror_afghan_hi story_brzezinski.htm Hatch would Arm bin Laden Again By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair, co-authors, Whiteout: CIA, Drugs and the Press. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/bin_laden_orrin_hat ch%20quote.htm IMPUNITY from INTERNATIONAL LAW Above the Law: U.S.-sponsored Terrorism By Peter Dale Scott, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/us_terror_afghanist an_scott.htm Why the War Against Afghanistan is Illegal By Arnold J.Chien, Associate Researcher, Institute for Health and Social Justice. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_civilian_t oll.htm I.C.C.: Impunity for U.S. Soldiers? By Adam Porter http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_us_and_icc .htm Military Courts: Part of a Constitutional Coup By Professor Francis Boyle, Professor, International Law, University of Illinois College of Law. http://www.ncf. ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_us_police_state_boyle.htm Federalist Society By the Institute of Democratic Studies http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_us_police_ state_fed_soc.htm Assaulting the U.S. Constitution By Matthew Rothschild, Editor, The Progressive magazine. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_us_police_ state_rothschild.htm The History of Bioterrorism in America By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, COAT. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/history_of_biowarfa re_in_usa.htm Bill C-35: Diplomatic Immunity for Terrorists By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, COAT. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/legality_bill_c35.h tm CALL for NONVIOLENCE "Vigil for Nonviolence," Ottawa, Oct. 6 By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, COAT. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_intro.htm 135 NGO Endorsements for Vigil ht tp://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/135_ngos_endorsment.h tm We are all Iraqis and Afghanis now! By Carolyn Langdon, Co-Chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_langdon.h tm Linking Peace and Anti-Corporate Globalization By Mel Watkins, President, Science for Peace. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_watkins.h tm The New Cold War and State Terrorism By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, COAT. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_richard.h tm Resistance is Growing By Terry Wolfwood, Board member, Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_wolfwood. htm Vieques: Big Resistance from a Small Island By Moraima Rivera, a native, farmer and activist from Puerto Rico. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_rivera.ht m Cry for Action to Oppose Cold, Corporate Fascism By Lazar Puhalo, Archbishop, Canadian Orthodox Archdiocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_archbisho p_lazar.htm Resisting Canada's Space War Research in Ottawa By Laurel Smith, Homes Not Bombs, Toronto. http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_laurel_sm ith.htm Every Life Counts By Radmila Swann, President, Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue46/articles/coat_oct6_radmila.h tm =+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+===+= Previous online issues: Taking Over the World: Militarism and Corporate Globalization http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue45/issue45.htm Canada's Military Exports: Fuelling wars and abusing international human/labour rights http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue44/issue44.htm A People's History of the CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue43/issue43.htm Nonviolent Resistance to War and Injustice http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue42/issue42.htm Building a Culture of Peace http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue41/issue41.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 77 System Stripped -- Spooks Shaft Hero: CIA frames WWII Vet to avert "energy revolution"? Why is the US terrorizing its best inventors? Seventy-five year old retired mining engineer Bob Lantz of the Reno, Nevada area, fought for the United States as a Navy pilot in WWII, but Monday the US Government is determined to imprison him, to "die in prison" according to his "public defenders", in an apparent scheme to suppress his New-Energy invention to replace nuclear and fossil fuel power. Perhaps paralleling the case of Horst Joestzai, jailed for years in a bogus fraud conviction set up by wired funds transferred by "Dr." Frederick Von Bodungen years after Joestzai introduced him to Lantz as a CIA agent, and the case of San Francisco investigative journalist George Williamson who identified Bodungen to Lantz as a CIA operative previously involved in smuggling drugs into the US via oil rigs in the Gulf. Williamson was latter named in a 1998 lawsuit by Mohamed Al Fayed against the CIA and other government intelligence agencies regarding purported CIA documents Williamson proffered to Al Fayed linking the Agency with the death of Princess Diana. With this backdrop what is one to think of the phone call Lantz received at 8:55am on January 16th from an anonymous caller saying "You had better back off. We can do worse than just a window", after a rock was thrown through his car window during the night of January 9th, the same day Lantz filed a million dollar civil suit against the prosecutor of his case, James Mead. Lantz reports Monday, February 11th at 1:30pm, to the court of Judge Edward C. Reed, Jr., Senior US District Judge, in Reno for a custody surrender hearing after his sentencing almost a yearago to 5years imprisonment for a fraud in fact perpetrated without his knowledge by Norbert Vogler of Colorado who forged investment certificates with Lantz' signature notarized by his friend who later acknowledged that Lantz was not present when the forged signatures were notarized -- among 237 lies that Lantz has documented by Federal prosecutors in his trial after the government put him into poverty by illegally confiscating over $250,000 from him after a raid in 1994. Why would anyone want to put an old man in jail who is so scrupulously law abiding that he never even got a speeding ticket, someone who accepted the government secrecy order suppressing the Papp Engine and therefore cancelled his contract to make Papp's protoype, someone who even calmly accepted the multimillion dollar loss in business due to US government denial of his permit application to export his water purification Sonofloc System 77 to the government of Egypt for seawater desalination? Could it be that powerful people within the US government are implementing covert policies to keep new energy inventions suppressed that would threaten the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries? Copious evidence says yes and that Lantz' troubles unknowingly started after he began making New-Energy System prototypes for other inventors in 1977 culminating with his 1989 discovery of an "overunity" energy generation system which combines his System77 with an ultracentrifuge so the overall device not only purifies any kind of water but also produces sufficient heat to generate multi-megawatts of electricity without any fuel at all, perhaps by "tapping the zero-point energy" (ZPE) with a kind of device the DOE in 1998 called "the holy Grail of energy research". How else could it be possible for this bogus fraud case to even be prosecuted after expiration of statute of limitations, with falsified evidence and the apparent collusion of prosecutors who lied and and public defenders who refused to contest the lies and offer available documentation of innocence? Why else would Bodungen have brought this "gold certificate scheme" to Lantz as a funding mechanism for his invention? The G.I. Bill provided Lantz with the University education necessary to finally develop this Lantz Water and Power System first tested in 1989 which can help solve our global energy and water quality problems and what does he get for it? An unacceptable "deal" offered by prosecutors and pushed by two successive public defenders who each claimed he "would die in jail" unless he took the plea bargain acknowledging guilt and forfeiting his assets (over $100k of which confiscated was not even in his name), a "raw deal" which this courageous War Veteran refuses to accept. Are we to sit by and let this happen or will concerned citizens and media bring his story out so he can get the legal help he needs to get his bogus conviction reversed, his name cleared and his money back so he can pursue development of his New-Energy System? Former US Patent Examiner Thomas Valone, fired for producing a conference in Washington DC on these New-Energy Technologies, claims that there is a vault at the US Patent Office containing over 4,000 patents ordered secret by the government, confiscated from the inventors who are threatened with jail if they even thereafter discuss their inventions as per "dual-use" secrecy law uncovered under Freedom of Information Act and reprinted on p.162 of Jeane Manning's book "The Coming Energy Revolution" overviewing various New-Energy tech inventors. Lantz' situation seems simlar to the blatently illegal 1996 laboratory destruction and confiscations by US Marshals victimizing inventors David Farnsworth (whose father helped invent television) and Adam Trombly (who was sent to Kuwait to oversee extinguishing of Sadam's oil well infernos) over their successful fuel-less solid-state oscillating electromagnetic system overunity ZPE electricity generator. Isn't it about time we did something to take this situation under public investigation and control, especially motivated by the current Enron fiasco exemplifying the "ethics" of the fossil fuel industry and government complicity in "rigging" the energy industry? Can we help Bob Lantz become a hero of this coming energy revolution instead of another casualty of America's War of Terror against its own best inventors? Certainly our surviving WWII veterans deserve better treatment from our country that they love and fought and died for. Bob Lantz can be reached at 775-246-0143 US Senate briefing on New-Energy Technologies http://www.senate.gov/~epw/loder.htm Research by former LAPD officer on CIA drugtrade, related issues http://www.copvcia.com Articles, lawsuit, mentioning George Williamson http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/message/30075 David Crockett Williams, General Agency Services 661-822-3309 Science and Technology in Society and Public Policy http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dcwilliams This (above) email/document posted at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/an-american-peace- -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've added a few url's from oil industry websites to this forwarded email as further evidence of Enron's involvement in the motivation for the war in Afghanistan. Reading this material will allow you to see the Enron scandal and its ties to Bush-Cheney in a whole new light. To find thousands of other energy industry website articles on this do a GOOGLE search http://www.google.com using these keywords: Pipeline Enron Uzbekistan Cheney Halliburton -RL Enron and the oil pipeline deal http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntc85031.htm "Enron/Uzbek Oil and Gas: Represented a multinational energy company in connection with its joint venture to develop an oil and gas deposit in Uzbekistan." http://www.mbpprojectfinance.com/transactions/s_oilgas.html http://www.advancenet.net/~k_a/uzbekistan/companies.htm "The one serious drawback companies have faced is getting the supplies to the right market, the energy-hungry Asian Pacific economies. Afghanistan -- the only Central Asian country with very little oil -- is by far the best route to transport the oil to Asia. Enron, the biggest contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign of 2000, conducted the feasibility study for a US$2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services." http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/6_08/1.html "UZBEKISTAN - The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) has agreed to provide $400 million in financing for a joint venture of Uzbekneftegaz and Enron oil and Gas Co. (Houston) to develop a clutch of gas fields in Uzbekistan. It is the largest OPIC commitment in Central Asia thus far." http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/0801/96080107.html Here's an email I recieved this morning. You may already know about the oil pipeline deal in Afghanistan and the Bush threats to the Taliban to invade BEFORE 9/11 but these links show how Enron and the new Afghan leader we just installed are all directly connected to Bush, to the so-called war, Cheney refusing to reveal who he met with and the supression of the 9/11 investigation Bush has threatened Congress with. -------------------------------------------------- FORWARD: From: The Daily Brew: http://www.thedailybrew.com/ The Motive For years, US oil interests have been trying to build a pipeline across Afghanistan to access the oil and gas around the Caspian Sea; efforts that have continued past the 9-11 attacks. Source http://www.wluml.org/english/new-archives/wtc/at-stake/unocal.htm Enron was a key player in this game. Way back in 1996, Enron had cut a deal with the president of Uzbekistan for joint development of the nation's natural gas fields. Source Houston Chronicle Date: TUE 06/25/96 Section: Business Page: 4 Edition: 3 STAR (sorry, no link) Enron had also done the feasibility study for the pipeline. Source http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html For a time, the Taliban appeared to be a potential partner. They had even visited Sugarland, Texas to talk things over. Source http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/west_asia/newsid_37000/37021.st m The Crime Unfortunately, the talks broke down, and by late last summer, the US Government was threatening to commence war against Afghanistan (an attack which would have violated every precept of international law). Sources http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm ***** (Inserted by Jack) BBC Audio of report on US intentions to invade Afghanistan BEFORE Sept 11th http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1550000/audio/_1550366_afghan01_arney.ram ***** At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold the regime responsible for an al Qaeda attack. But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Cheney, the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action. Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8734-2002Jan19.html Simultaneous with making, but not following through on these threats, Bush took a number of actions to make the US decidedly more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. He ordered the Naval strike force, which Clinton placed in the Indian Ocean on 24 hour alert so he could hit Osama as soon as he had solid intelligence, to stand down. Bush threatened to veto the Defense Appropriations Bill after Democrats tried to move $600 million out of Star Wars and into anti-terror defense. Bush opposed Clinton's anti-money-laundering efforts, which were designed to stop al Qaeda's money. Bush abandoned Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, or as the two star general Donald Kerrick told the Washington Post, reflecting on his service to both President Clinton and President Bush: Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop bin Laden and al Qaeda. "I didn't detect that kind of focus" from the Bush Administration. Source http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5714 I don't have to tell you what happened next. The Cover Up Dick Cheney is openly breaking the law by defying GAO requests to turn over his records of meetings with Enron. Source http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020201.html At the same time that Cheney has refused to turn over his records, Enron and its accountants have shredded millions of pages of documents. Source http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/30/business/30SHRE.html The Bush's themselves may have destroyed evidence. When the Justice Department instructed the Bush administration to preserve any documents related to Enron Corporation, a senior administration official said that until now, "the White House had not been making any formal effort to preserve or catalogue information about Enron contacts." Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10918-2002Feb1.html While all of this law breaking, stalling, and destruction of evidence has gone on, Bush has asked Daschle to limit Congressional probes into Sept. 11. Source http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/inv.terror.probe/index.html Note that the supposedly "liberal press" has so far failed to put all of these pieces together. They are too busy giving Bernard Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly the airtime to sell a canard called "Bias." -- The Daily Brew: http://www.thedailybrew.com/ http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html Centre for Research on Globalisation [ home ] Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team by Wayne Madsen democrats.com, January 2002 Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 23 January 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources. When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table. Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline. Meanwhile, President Bush says that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul. Far from being engaged in Afghan peacekeeping -- the Europeans are doing much of that -- our troops will effectively be guarding pipeline construction personnel that will soon be flooding into the country. Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate. When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late. Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq's journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq. While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice. Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project. Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army. A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court. Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms' base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river. Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost. While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush's accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post last October, "We never heard what they were trying to say... We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' " There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998." Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime's responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden's anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch. The Clinton administration made numerous attempts to kill Bin Laden. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up several U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan's ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan's government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf's ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden. . The CIA's connections to the ISI in the months before September 11 and the weeks after are also worthy of a full-blown investigation. The CIA continues to maintain an unhealthy alliance with the ISI, the organization that groomed bin Laden and the Taliban. Last September, the head of the ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed, was fired by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his pro-Taliban leanings and reportedly after the U.S. government presented Musharraf with disturbing intelligence linking the general to the terrorist hijackers. General Ahmed was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. When the FBI traced calls made between General Ahmed and Sheik's cellular phone - the number having been supplied by Indian intelligence to the FBI - a pattern linking the general with Sheik clearly emerged. According to The Times of India, the revelation that General Ahmed was involved in the Sheik-Atta money transfer was more than enough for a nervous and embarrassed Bush administration. It pressed Musharraf to dump General Ahmed. Musharraf mealy-mouthed the announcement of his general's dismissal by stating Ahmed "requested" early retirement. Sheik was well known to the Indian police. He was arrested in New Delhi in 1994 for plotting to kidnap four foreigners, including an American citizen. Sheik was released by the Indians in 1999 in a swap for passengers on board New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines flight 814, hijacked by Islamic militants from Kathmandu, Nepal to Kandahar, Afghanistan. India continues to believe the ISI played a part in the hijacking since the hijackers were affiliated with the pro-bin Laden Kashmiri terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, a group only recently and quite belatedly placed on the State Department's terrorist list. The ISI and bin Laden's Al Qaeda reportedly assists the group in its operations against Indian government targets in Kashmir. The FBI, which assisted its Indian counterpart in the investigation of the Indian Airlines hijacking, says it wants information leading to the arrest of those involved in the terrorist attacks. Yet, no move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government. General Ahmed's terrorist-supporting activities - and the U.S. government officials who tolerated those activities - need to be investigated. The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan's pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia. According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed "Kandahar Rose" by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar. The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition. The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics. UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban." The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline, not about fighting terrorism. The Democrats, who control the Senate and its investigation agenda, should investigate the secretive deals between Big Oil, Bush, and the Taliban ----------------------------------------------------------- In Speech, Bush Calls Iraq, Iran and North Korea 'Axis of Evil" --N.Y. Times, 1/30/02 Cuba, Sudan, Serbia Form Axis of Somewhat Evil; Other Nations Start Own Clubs Beijing (SatireWire.com) ‹ Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," Libya, China, and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be way eviler than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of his State of the Union address. Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "Right. They are Just as Evil... in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. "Everybody knows we're the best evils... best at being evil... we're the best." Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. "They told us it was full," said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "An Axis can't have more than three countries," explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So you can only have three. And a secret handshake. Ours is wicked cool." THE AXIS PANDEMIC International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what became a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan, and Serbia said they had formed the Axis of Somewhat Evil, forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the Axis of Occasionally Evil, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the Axis of Not So Much Evil Really As Just Generally Disagreeable. With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the Axis of Countries That Aren't the Worst But Certainly Won't Be Asked to Host the Olympics; Canada, Mexico, and Australia formed the Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly Have Nasty Thoughts About America, while Spain, Scotland, and New Zealand established the Axis of Countries That Be Allowed to Ask Sheep to Wear Lipstick. "That's not a threat, really, just something we like to do," said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell. While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axes, although he rejected the establishment of the Axis of Countries Whose Names End in "Guay," accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges. Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn't want to join any Axis, but privately, world leaders said that's only because no one asked them. ----------------------------------------------------------------