I've also been reading about this Larry Silverstein guy, he is seeking compensation for the collapse, he had only owned it for 7 weeks, sounds like an adequate amount of time to lace the building with explosives, anyone this article explains all.
The website i found this essay on has been erased.
"INTRODUCTION
In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our highest and most responsible military officers, proposed to commit acts of terrorism aimed against U.S. citizens, designed to look as though they had been the work of operatives of Fidel Castro. The object was to provide a pretext for an invasion of Cuba. Among many imaginative proposals, the Chiefs suggested:
"We could develop a communist cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington."
And further ...
"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba ... casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Although these plans were never carried out (they were rejected by President Kennedy), similar proposals WERE actually implemented a 1970's and 1980's in Europe by the CIA, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians. In one bombing of a busy train station in Bologna Italy in 1980, 86 people were killed and over 200 wounded. The bombings were designed to look like the work of communist extremists although they were in fact committed by right wing extremists working under the direction of the CIA. The aim of these operations was to whip up anticommunist sentiment among our european allies.
[Arthur E. Rowse: Gladio: The secret U.S. War to subvert Italian Democracy. Covert Action Quarterly No. 49, Summer 1994. http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html ]
Was September 11 a similar operation, mounted by elements of our own government in order to whip up public support for an all out war against the Arab states in the Middle East? The evidence strongly suggests that this is the case.
My aim here is to provide a brief introduction to some of this evidence with pointers for further reading.
I. The hijackers were not fanatical Islamic fundamentalists (far from it). A) They smoked and drank and partied hard. B) Several of the hijackers had training at secure military facilities in the United States C) The hijackers operated quite openly, as if they had powerful protectors in the U.S.
II. The hijackers were not capable of the feats of piloting that are attributed to them.
III. The hijackers lead back to Pakistan's ISI, and through the ISI, back to the CIA and the Bush administration. A) Funding for the hijackers came from ISI Director General Ahmad B) On September 11 Ahmad was in Washington meeting with key administration officials. C) On September 12 the administration announced Ahmad's agreement to collaborate in their "War on Terrorism". D) The ISI is not a tool of bin Laden - it's the very much the other way around.
IV. FBI investigations that could have prevented September 11 were deliberately sabotaged by FBI Headquarters. A) At least two FBI investigations were deliberately stopped that could have prevented September 11. B) The hijackers must have KNOWN that the FBI would not investigate - they operated quite openly, and even seemed to deliberately draw attention to themselves as potential terrorists.
V. The anthrax attacks A) No potential terrorists had access to the advanced, "weaponized" form of anthrax used. B) All suspects lead back to US or Israeli intelligence. C) The crude misspellings and appeals to Allah and Islam in the letters appear to be a hoax to blame this on Arab terrorists.
VI. The ultra-rightwing agenda already in place for a war against the Arab states.
VII. Conclusion - It appears that the September 11 attacks were covertly instigated and supported by elements of our own government to support an ultra-rightwing political and military agenda.
VIII. Epilog - How could this happen? Some historical context.
I. THE HIJACKERS WERE NOT FANATICAL ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS (FAR FROM IT).
The keystone of the "official story" on the events of September 11 is that the hijackers were fanatical Islamic fundamentalists, opposed to all products of Western culture. They are presented to us as pure warriors of Allah, prepared not only to kill, but to die for their religion. Their supposed austere and ascetic approach to life and death is presented us in the will and testament of their leader, Mohammed Atta. We find here a long list of severe admonitions including:
... 9. The person who will wash my body near my genitals must wear gloves on his hands so he won't touch my genitals. 10. I want the clothes I wear to consist of three white pieces of cloth, not to be made of silk or expensive material. 11. I don't want any women to go to my grave at all during my funeral or on any occasion thereafter. ... [ etc. etc. etc. ]
It could hardly be otherwise; who other than a totally dedicated religious fanatic would be capable of deliberately incinerating himself in such a horrific manner together with several of his closest comrades and thousands of innocent victims?
It was soon discovered that this image was completely false. In fact, most of the hijackers were thoroughly americanized and enjoyed quite wild, hedonistic lifestyles. Several of the them, including the leader and "suicide pilot" Mohammed Atta, were frequently seen out bar hopping, smoking and getting drunk. They sometimes engaged lap-dancers and prostitutes:
In Boston the night before the hijackings the WTC hijackers tried to engage some prostitutes, but then backed out because they decided it was too expensive:
These are not the actions of Islamic fanatics on their way to die for Allah! It certainly appears that the hijackers did not know that this was a suicide mission, and were not genuine Islamic fundamentalists.
15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, mostly from wealthy families. In fact, most of the hijackers are typical of the wealthy, high- rolling, hedonistic Saudis who turn up over and over again in covert operations sponsored by the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. and Jr. These scandals include Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan Scandal (by far the most massive financial rip-off in history), the massive money-laundering that led to the collapse of BCCI, a Pakistani bank with strong ties to the CIA, and, more recently, the Enron scandal. The connection to U.S. intelligence is more than speculative; several of the hijackers had training at secure military installations in the U.S. The locations where the hijackers received training include:
* The Pensacola Naval Station * Lackland Air Force Base * Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama * Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama * The Defense Language Institute in Monterey
There is further compelling evidence that the hijackers were in fact recruits of the CIA based on the manner in which they obtained their visas to live in the United States. The National Review has published a careful study of this question that concludes that the awarding of visas to these applicants is "inexplicable". This is the strong consensus opinion of several government officials with extensive hands-on experience with the process of issuing visas in this part of the world:
All six experts strongly agreed that even allowing for human error, no more than a handful of the visa applications should have managed to slip through the cracks. Making the visa lapses even more inexplicable, the State Department claims that at least 11 of the 15 were interviewed by consular officers. Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence."
The great majority of the hijackers' visas, 15 of them, were issued at the US consular office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, formerly the head US consular officer in Jeddah has shed light on how and why these visas were issued. According to Springman:
"In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence ...
"What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."
So it certainly appears that at least 15 of the 19 hijackers were CIA recruits, trained at secure military facilities in the United States, and operating here under the protection and sponsorship of the US government.
The hijackers' drinking and partying is certainly more typical of youthful westernized military recruits than devout fundamentalist Moslems. It is sometimes claimed that they were just pretending to be westernized in order to "blend in" and escape detection. This makes no sense at all. Even if they had been seen to be devout Muslims, that would hardly make them terrorists. And they made no attempt at all to hide their really suspicious activities, for example shopping around for crop dusting equipment!
In one incident Mohammed Atta applied for a loan from the Department of Agriculture to purchase a crop duster.
In the first place, it's odd that Atta bothered with a loan at all, since it's clear that the amount of the loan was pocket change to the people funding him. Atta used his real name, and made sure the interviewer spelled it correctly. During the interview, Atta praised bin Laden as "the world's greatest leader", discussed the possibility of blowing up U.S. landmarks, including the World Trade Center, and generally behaved like a raving lunatic. Nice blending in!
In another incident Atta spoke with James Lester of South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade, Florida regarding the purchase of crop dusting equipment. Again, Atta made sure that he would be remembered: "I recognized him [after September 11] because he stayed on my feet all the time. I just about had to push him away from me." [AP, 9/15/01]
Far from trying to blend in, Atta operated quite openly and even seems to have deliberately tried to draw attention to himself as a potential terrorist. He acted as though he wanted to build a "legend" as a terrorist, and as though he had guaranteed protection from high inside the U.S. government. Evidence that this was in fact the case will be discussed later.
II. THE HIJACKERS WERE NOT CAPABLE OF THE FEATS OF PILOTING THAT ARE ATTRIBUTED TO THEM.
According to a group of highly qualified professional pilots who got together to study this matter, the flying feats attributed to the hijackers are not believable. The pilots concluded that "Those birds either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control."
Regarding the possibility of flying commercial aircraft by remote control, the expert pilots have this to say:
In evidence given to the enquiry, Captain Kent Hill (retd.) of the US Air Force, and friend of Chic Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, stated that the US had on several occasions flown an unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, across the Pacific from Edwards Air Force base in California to South Australia. According to Hill it had flown on a pre programmed flight path under the control of a pilot in an outside station. Hill also quoted Bob Ayling, former British Airways boss, in an interview given to the London Economist on September 20th, 2001. Ayling admitted that it was now possible to control an aircraft in flight from either the ground or in the air. This was confirmed by expert witnesses at the inquiry who testified that airliners could be controlled by electro-magnetic pulse or radio frequency instrumentation from command and control platforms based either in the air or at ground level.
The credentials of the pilots involved in this study are impressive. In addition to Captain Hill there is an Air Force Colonel, and a third Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties during the Vietnam war. The group also includes professional civilian aircraft pilots. The reporter verified their conclusions with an independent expert:
THE NEWS, in an attempt to further substantiate the potential veracity of these findings, spoke to an Algarve-based airline pilot, who has more than 20 years of experience in flying passenger planes, to seek his views. Captain Colin McHattie, currently flying with Cathay Pacific, agreed with the independent commission's findings. However, he explained that while it is possible to fly a plane from the ground, the installation of the necessary equipment is a time-consuming process, and needs extensive planning.
On the other hand, there has been a published report of an interview with a professional pilot who argues that it would NOT have been too difficult for hijackers to fly the airliners.
It should be possible to resolve these questions conclusively in the context of a complete investigation of exactly what happened on September 11 and how such a thing could occur. Unfortunately, the US government is strongly resisting conducting any such investigation. In any event, the question remains that even if the hijackers COULD have flown those aircraft (an idea that most professional pilots who have expressed themselves on this issue reject), why WOULD they have done it? Given that the hijackers were certainly not fanatical Islamic fundamentalists, why would they accept a suicide mission, especially such a horrific one? The remote control theory, which no one disputes is a possiblity, provides an alternative explanation, that does not require that the hijackers were religious fanatics who knowingly volunteered for a suicide mission.
III. THE HIJACKERS LEAD BACK TO PAKISTAN'S ISI, AND THROUGH THE ISI, BACK TO THE US INTELLIGENCE ESTABLISHMENT.
There is no doubt about who the immediate sponsor of the 9/11 hijackers was. In at least one case they received their funding directly from the top man in the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency. The ISI has long been a heavily funded CIA client and one of our staunchest allies, first in the prolonged guerilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now in the so called "War on Terrorism". And yet we know now that in the summer of 2000 ISI Director General Mahmud Ahmad ordered his aide Saeed Sheikh to transfer ,000 to the leader of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and that this was done via two banks in Florida.
On the day of September 11 Director General Ahmad, Mohammed Atta's paymaster, was in Washington meeting with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Conveniently this allowed him to confer directly with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage the following day, and soon Secretary of State Colin Powell was announcing Pakistan's cooperation in our campaign to bring the perpetrators of the attacks to justice.
The fact that one of our foremost allies in the "War on Terrorism" was in fact the sponsor of the 9/11 terrorists was uncovered by Indian intelligence and confirmed by the FBI in early October, just a few weeks after the attacks.
At this point Ahmad quietly retired, and disappeared from the limelight. WHY HAS THE SPONSOR OF THE 9/11 HIJACKERS BEEN ALLOWED TO SLIP AWAY LIKE THIS? Where is the swift and terrible retribution promised us on so many occasions by our President? Why was Ahmad not immediately taken into custody and brought to the United States for intensive questioning to uncover further links in the chain? The answer is obvious and unavoidable to anyone reading this with an open mind. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DOES NOT *WANT* TO UNCOVER WHERE THIS MOST SIGNIFICANT LINK IN THE COMMAND CHAIN BEHIND THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11 LEADS.
Since the administrations of Reagan and George Bush Sr. the ISI has been a major CIA client and has acted on our behalf first to organize and command the Afghan resistance forces in the war with the Soviets, and later to set up the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was recruited by the ISI, because they wanted someone who represented the Saudi elite as part of their Afghan effort for public relations purposes. The ISI initially tried to find a member of the Saudi royal family, but they were happy to settle for a member of the bin Laden family, one of the richest in Saudi Arabia:
The total control that the ISI and the CIA exercised over bin Laden and their other surrogates in the Afghan conflict is witnessed, among many other things by the planning of the attack on Jalalabad, the most significant offensive for the guerillas in the entire war:
Typical of the war's overall conduct, the attack [on Jalalabad in March 1989] was planned at a meeting in Islamabad [Pakistan] attended by U.S. Ambassador Robert Oakley, senior Pakistani officials, and not a single Afghan.
["The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade", Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill Books, NY 1991, pg 452]
The pattern then is clear and has been well established for decades. The U.S. acting through the CIA sets the agenda and provides the money. The ISI acts as our agent in this part of the world, selecting local proxies and orchestrating the activities of the guerilla warlords. The guerilla leaders themselves, including Osama bin Laden, are merely pawns in the game. George Bush Sr. as Vice President personally traveled to Pakistan in 1984 to cement these relations ["The Outlaw Bank", Beaty & Gwynne, Random House, NY, 1993. pg. 317].
Bin Laden's dependence on the ISI is just as strong now as it ever was. According to Jane's Intelligence Digest in an article written shortly after the September 11 attacks, "both the Taliban and Al-Qa'eda would have found it difficult to have continued functioning - including the latter group's terrorist activities - without substantial aid and support from Islamabad."
Equally, the ISI's alliance with the CIA is as strong as ever. Milton Bearden, a former CIA. station chief in Pakistan who has worked closely with ISI recently defended the alliance, describing Pakistan as "the only country in South Asia that always did what we asked."
Therefore it is highly implausible that ISI Inspector General Ahmad was acting as an operative for bin Laden when he funded the September 11 hijackers; the chain of command works in the opposite direction. It is also highly implausible that Ahmad would have chosen on his own initiative to attack the United States, his own best ally and his primary source of funding and technology.
Anyone who seriously wants to see the perpetrators of September 11 tracked down and brought to justice should urgently petition their elected representatives to see that former ISI Director General Ahmad is arrested and brought to the United States for questioning by an independent investigative body. Clearly the Bush administration does not want to see this happen, because this, the most significant lead we have, does not seem to point to bin Laden, but rather to the Bush administration itself.
IV. FBI INVESTIGATIONS THAT COULD HAVE PREVENTED SEPTEMBER 11 WERE DELIBERATELY SABOTAGED BY FBI HEADQUARTERS.
I pointed out earlier that Atta and the other hijackers operated quite openly in the United States, as if they enjoyed guaranteed protection. It appears that this was in fact the case. We now have several detailed reports of crucial investigations of the September 11 hijackers, both before and after the fact, being sabotaged by high ranking government officials. Possibly the most vivid example of this is the way in which the investigation of the "twentieth hijacker", Zacarias Moussaoui, was sabotaged by FBI Headquarters.
In August 2001 Moussaoui enrolled in Pan American's International Flight School in Minneapolis. He aroused suspicions on his very first day. He paid a deposit for the course in cash in the amount of ,800 (the full price of the course is ,000). He had a heavy Middle Eastern accent, and waved off concerns about his lack of preparation for such a course, saying that he was not interested in professional certification. However, he showed great interest in learning how to work the airplane's doors and control panel.
It soon became clear the Moussaoui had lied about his personal background, and that he had no qualifications at all as a pilot. The potentially frightening implications of training this particular student were not lost on Pan Am's flying instructors, according to John Rosengren, director of operations at the school. In a faculty meeting the next day,
Soon one of the flight instructors was on the phone to the FBI:
"Do you realize how serious this is?" the instructor asked an FBI agent. "This man wants training on a 747. A 747 fully loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon!" [ http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/913687.html ]
The local FBI agents concurred. They checked out Moussaoui, and found out that he had overstayed his visa. They persuaded the INS to take him into custody and keep him there. If not for this good luck and prompt action Moussaoui would surely have participated in the attacks of September 11, because from that point on the investigation met determined opposition from high level FBI officials who did their best to completely shut it down.
The sickening story is spelled out in a long, agonized letter written after the events of September 11 by Coleen Rowley, one of the Field Agents in Minneapolis on the case. The letter was promptly declared to be classified by the Bureau, but portions have been leaked to the press:
Immediately after Moussaoui's arrest, the field agents in Minneapolis wanted to apply for a warrant to search his apartment and the hard drive of his computer. FBI headquarters however, denied that they had probable cause for such a search. Then within just a few days the field agents received information from the French Intelligence Service that "confirmed [Moussaoui's] affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups and activities connected to Osama Bin Laden". At this point the field agents "became desperate", but incredibly Headquarters continued to stonewall and deny the existence of probable cause for a search. Rowley, who has been an FBI division legal advisor for 12 years, and an FBI agent for 21 years, was at the time and remains today completely baffled by Headquarters' determination to stop the investigation. She flatly states that probable cause "was certainly established".
At that point Rowley tried another route. The FBI can apply for so called FISA warrants if their aim is to gather intelligence rather than evidence for a criminal proceeding. The granting of a FISA warrant is practically guaranteed; the FBI only has to ask for them. To her amazement, FBI Headquarters "continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant."
By this time the field agents were "in a frenzy ... absolutely convinced [Moussouai] was planning to do something with a plane." One agent speculated in a memo that that Moussouai had been planning with unidentified confederates to "fly something into the World Trade Center."
Coleen Rowley agonizes in her letter, searching for an explanation for the betrayal by FBI Headquarters. Were they simply too busy? Was it normal bureaucratic inertia? Ultimately, she is unable to accept these convenient but implausible explanations: "The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY [her emphasis]."
An almost identical story is coming out of the Phoenix FBI office which was similarly thwarted by FBI Headquarters in their attempt to investigate Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have crashed an airliner into the Pentagon on September 11.
Some of the field agents involved in these and still other similar cases have applied for whistleblower status, and are taking legal action to try to force the Bureau to declassify the relevant documents and come clean about their role in September 11. These agents are being represented by David Schippers, former Chief Investigative Counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and head prosecutor responsible for conducting the impeachment against former President Bill Clinton.
In the meantime Coleen Rowley notes in her letter that in the aftermath of September 11 the official most responsible for blocking her investigation of Moussaoui has received a promotion. That's not all. The FBI Department responsible for repeatedly blocking Rowley's desperate attempts to obtain authorization to search Moussouai's apartment and computer is the National Security Law Unit (NSLU). Just this month (December 2002) the head of the NSLU, Marion Bowman, received the most prestigious and generous award the Bureau could confer on him:
At a quiet little ceremony earlier this month, Marion (Spike) Bowman was one of nine people in the bureau to receive an award for "exceptional performance." The reward carries with it a cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of the recipient's salary and a framed certificate signed by the president. [ http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3547688.html ]
The President of the United States is showering praise and bonuses and promotions on those responsible for thwarting the investigations that could have prevented the horrific events of September 11.
And keep in mind Atta's bizarre behaviour when he applied for a Department of Agriculture loan to purchase crop-dusting equipment in May of 2000. Atta used his real name, and he made sure the interviewer (Johnelle Bryant) spelled it correctly. He told her that he wanted to buy a crop-duster and to "build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting." Atta then fixated on an aerial photo of Washington DC hanging on the office wall, and wanted to purchase it:
"He pulled out a wad of cash," she said, "and started throwing money on my desk. He wanted that picture really bad." Bryant indicated that the picture was not for sale, and he threw more money down.
"His look on his face became very bitter at that point," Bryant remembers. "I believe he said, 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it,' like the cities in his country had been destroyed?" ...
Atta also talked about life in his country. "He mentioned al Qaeda, he mentioned Osama bin Laden," ... He boasted about the role that they would one day play. "He said this man would someday be known as the world's greatest leader," she said.
Bryant, perhaps to provide us with some much needed comic relief, finishes her story by asking, "How could I have known [that this man was a terrorist]?"
The point is that Atta was operating completely openly, and even seems to be DELIBERATELY drawing attention to himself as a terrorist suspect. This makes sense if, as I believe, Atta was laying a false trail of evidence which he WANTED to be discovered after the attacks (more on this later). The attacks of September 11 were planned and carried out with impressive military discipline and efficiency. Atta is not exposing himself out of stupidity or carelessness. He must have expected that Bryant would immediately notify the FBI (although she did not). We now know that this would not have mattered - that any attempt to investigate would have been killed by FBI Headquarters. Clearly, at the time, Atta must have known this as well. The question of exactly why Atta would have wanted to incriminate himself in this way will be addressed in section VIII.
V. THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS.
So ... whoever perpetrated September 11 obviously has tons of money and a tight military organization. You would expect that this would not be an isolated event, but the start of a coordinated campaign. If this was the work of Islamic fundamentalists, then where is the Jihad? Where are the Holy Warriors who should have been positioned and ready to follow up on the opening shot of the war?
There was a second wave of attacks - the dissemination of anthrax letters to both random and carefully selected targets. However, everyone now acknowledges that this was an inside job - that the weapons grade anthrax used would only be available to a very limited number of scientists and military/intelligence officers working in the United States on highly classified projects.
In fact according to the leading expert on the anthrax attacks, professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the FBI has long known exactly who was behind these attacks - attacks that have so far have killed at least five american citizens - but the Bureau has decided to let the perpetrator off the hook, just as the sponsor of the September 11 hijackings has been let off the hook. Professor Rosenberg is a microbiologist and an expert on biological warfare who has served as a presidential advisor and testified before congress on this subject. She was selected by the Federation of American Scientists to investigate the anthrax attacks. Over one year ago, in January 2002, professor Rosenberg stated:
The FBI has surely known for several months that the anthrax attack was an inside job. A government estimate for the number of scientists involved in the US anthrax program over the last five years is 200 people. According to a former defense scientist the number of defense scientists with hands-on anthrax experience and the necessary access is smaller, under 50. The FBI has received short lists of specific suspects with credible motives from a number of knowledgeable inside sources, and has found or been given clues ... that could lead to incriminating evidence. By now the FBI must have a good idea of who the perpetrator is.
Another leading expert on biological warfare, professor Francis Boyle of Indiana University, concurs with Rosenberg's opinion. Professor Boyle is a renowned expert on international law who has testified before congress on legal issues concerning biological warfare. He was instrumental in drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. His analysis of the anthrax attacks has led him to the same conclusion reached by professor Rosenberg, which he states even more bluntly:
I believe that the FBI knows exactly who was behind these attacks and that they have concluded that the perpetrator was someone who was or is involved in illegal and criminal biological warfare research conducted by the US government (the Pentagon or the CIA) or by one of the government's civilian contractors. For that reason, the FBI is not going to apprehend and indict the perpetrator.
As with the investigation of the funding channel for the September 11 hijackers, the anthrax investigation started off fast and made great progress only to come to a screeching halt with the perpetrator within easy reach.
The most obvious pieces of evidence were the notes that accompanied the anthrax mailings. These contained crude misspellings and praised Allah while calling for the downfall of the United States. These notes were quickly recognized as a transparent hoax. As professor Rosenberg has stated:
Expert analysts for the FBI believe that the letters were written by a Westerner, not a Middle Easterner or Muslim, although the text was clearly intended to imply the latter.
The anthrax strain used was consistent in all letters. A detailed genetic analysis narrowed the search to a single laboratory: the US Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Further, the sophisticated weaponization process used to treat the spores, and the highly specialized expertise needed to store and handle the spores narrows the search even much further. This leaves us with just a handful of suspects involved in the Fort Detrick program:
With the field narrowed down so drastically, professor Rosenberg points us to what I believe is the key piece of evidence in identifying the perpetrator:
On Sept. 21, three days after the first anthrax mailing and before any letters or anthrax cases were in the news, an anonymous typed letter was mailed to Quantico accusing an Egyptian-American scientist, formerly of USAMRIID, of plotting biological terrorism. The accused scientist was quickly exonerated by the FBI. The letter's writer displayed familiarity with work at USAMRIID and claimed to have formerly worked with the accused scientist.
Obviously the anonymous accuser himself fits the profile of the actual perpetrator. Furthermore he was able to correctly anticipate that there would be an anthrax attack and that the strain of anthrax used would lead to Fort Detrick. The conclusion seems inescapable that the anonymous author of this false accusation was the author of the attack itself.
The falsely accused was an Egyptian born scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad who worked at USAMRIID during the 1990's. During his employment there he was the target of racist attacks from a Jewish coworker, Lt. Col. Philip Zack. In one incident Zack mailed Assaad a rubber camel with a huge model sexual appendage attached, together with an eight page poem that described Dr. Assaad among many other things as a "life form lower than yeast".
As a result of this and a string of similar racist attacks by Lt. Col. Zack, Assaad filed a harrassment suit and Zack was forced to resign his position at USAMRIID. However, Zack continued to have access to the lab illegally with the help of a personal friend there.
Certainly Lt. Col. Zack must be considered to be the prime candidate as the author of the letter falsely accusing Dr. Assad. In my view this also makes him the prime suspect in the attacks themselves - Especially when you take into account the fact that his illegal comings and goings at Fort Detrick occurred at the time when anthrax spores matching the genetic profile of those used in the attacks went missing there.
In any event, the suspects in this crucial investigation are certainly NOT fanatical Islamic fundamentalists. Everyone close to the investigation agrees that the perpetrator is a highly qualified bio-warfare expert who has worked on highly classified projects for the United States government. He has very specific and rare skills that in themselves narrow the field to a mere handful people, without even taking into account the evidence surrounding the mailings themselves. The postmarks provide a series of time stamps associated with specific locations. An investigation like this can stall when there are thousands of possible suspects; it cannot stall when there are a handful of suspects and abundant clues to resolve the perpetrator's identity. Professors Rosenberg and Boyle are quite correct; the FBI is deliberately shielding the perpetrator of these terrible crimes, which have taken the lives of five innocent american citizens and which attack the foundations of our free and open society.
But not everyone is going unprotected. With exceptional foresight so notably absent elsewhere in this case, Vice President Dick Cheney was able to anticipate that anthrax would become a problem in the Capitol. He and his staff started taking an anti-anthrax medication (Cipro) on the night of September 11, before the letters containing anthrax started to arrive.
Obtaining and preparing the anthrax will have been a difficult and lengthy process. The attacks, beginning just seven days after September 11, must have been prepared well in advance by a highly sophisticated government insider. Like the hijackers themselves and their sponsors in the ISI, the perpetrator clearly has powerful protectors high inside the U.S. government. The two attacks seem to have been perfectly coordinated to work towards the same objective. The ever incisive professor Rosenberg observes:
The perpetrator was probably ready before Sept. 11 and simply took advantage of the likelihood that Sept. 11 would throw suspicion on Muslim terrorists. Was the perpetrator trying to push the US toward some retaliatory military action?
VI. THE ULTRA-RIGHTWING AGENDA ALREADY IN PLACE FOR A WAR AGAINST THE ARAB STATES.
But why would our government WANT to whip up public support for an all out war against the Arab states? The answer is readily found in a series of position papers from the "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC) that are available on the web. PNAC is an ultra- righwing and militaristic think tank that developed around the most extreme hawks in Dick Cheney's Defense Department at the end of George Bush Sr's administration. To understand why an inner circle of presidential advisors including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, are pushing for a comprehensive attack on the Arab States, you should check out their website:
In particular, click on the link for "Defense and National Security", and then download "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (This is the first item listed. You'll need Acrobat Reader).
This paper lays out the plan to dominate the entire globe, starting with the Middle East and Central Asia. The authors figure that to support this we will need to beef up the military to the point where we will be able to support multiple simultaneous major wars together with occupations and police actions. All of this was in place years before September 11. This paper was published in September 2000. It's perfectly clear then that September 11 is simply being used as a pretext to implement an ultra-rightwing agenda that was put in place years before.
I want to emphasize that this has absolutely nothing to do with suppressing terrorism. In fact, this agenda will surely have exactly the opposite effect. In the lengthy and detailed document I have referenced you can search for the word "terrorism" and you will not find it at all. However if you search for the word "preeminence", as in "american preeminence", "geopolitical preeminence", "military preeminence" etc., you will find that word many times.
The plan to use our differences with Saddam Hussein as a pretext for initiating the campaign for an american global empire is explicitly stated:
"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein ... Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region."
The fanatical Zionism of some advisors, eg Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, is clearly a factor driving this policy. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has echoed elements of this planning paper, for example calling for an invasion of Iran "one day after" we subjugate Iraq [interview with the Times/UK, 5 Nov. 2002]. Other important players pushing this agenda, such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, appear to be motivated by a dangerously radical view towards the uses of US military power now that the US is the single, unchallenged superpower. In any case, it is safe to say that September 11 is simply being used as a pretext for an agenda that has been in place for years now.
The proposed military moves in the Middle East will not suppress terrorism. On the contrary, many thousands will flock to the cause of Islamic Jihad if we continue this way. And in the meantime, outrageously, the real leads we have on the perpetrators of September 11 are being allowed to dangle uninvestigated. I'm referring again to former ISI Director General Ahmad, the paymaster of the hijackers, who has been allowed to slip off into retirement, and the unpursued anthrax leads which can only point to a single cutting edge bio-warfare laboratory right here in the USA.
Why, Why, WHY???
VII. CONCLUSION
The horrific events of September 11 bear all the earmarks of a covert "pretext" operation designed to support a military agenda that could never have otherwise been set in motion. Investigations of both the hijackings and the subsequent anthrax attacks lead not to Islamic fundamentalists, but point to our own military and intelligence organizations, and, in the case of the hijackings, to their client and close ally, the ISI. Consequently our government has simply terminated these investigations. Similarly, crucial FBI investigations that could have prevented the attacks were "inexplicably" sabotaged by FBI Headquarters over the desperate objections of Field Agents who were fully aware of the terrifying implications of what they had uncovered. These Field Agents have now been forced to apply for "whistleblower" status for their own protection, while the officials who sabotaged the investigations are being richly rewarded with promotions, bonuses and presidential awards.
It appears that the purpose of this deliberate mass murder of thousands of innocent American citizens was to whip up public support for a comprehensive attack on the Arab states in the Middle East. The plans for these military moves have been in place for several years, but they could never have won public approval without this boost.
VIII. EPILOG - HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? SOME HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
In the introduction I discussed the Gladio operations carried out in Europe in the 1970's and 1980's. Among other things this involved a series of bombings in Italy in which hundreds of innocent civilians were killed. The bombings were designed to appear to be the work of communist subversives, but in fact were carried out by extreme right wing groups under the direction of the CIA.
[ Arthur E. Rowse: Gladio: The secret U.S. War to subvert Italian Democracy. Covert Action Quarterly No. 49, Summer 1994. http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html ]
The philosophy behind this kind of operation is spelled out in the top secret Supplement B to U.S. Army Field Manual FM 30-31, signed by General William Westmoreland in March 1970:
There may be times when HC [Host Country] governments show passivity or indecision in face of Communist or Communist-inspired subversion, and react with inadequate vigor to intelligence estimates transmitted by U.S. agencies ... In such cases, U.S. Army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince HC governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger and of the necessity of counteraction. To this end, U.S. Army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the more radical elements of the insurgency. When the kind of situation envisaged above arises, these groups, acting under U.S. Army intelligence control, should be used to launch violent or non-violent actions according to the nature of the case.
The aim of these operations then was to polarize the public and convince them that they were faced with violence and death from political extremists, WHEN NECESSARY MANUFACTURING THE VIOLENCE AND DEATH THAT WAS NEEDED TO PUSH PUBLIC OPINION IN THE DESIRED DIRECTION.
Now I agree that it's a step up from killing hundreds of innocent civilians in order to further your political agenda to, in the case of the attacks on September 11, killing thousands of innocents. But how big a step is this really? ... Especially when you consider how much greater the stakes are now (from the warped perspective of the extreme militarists). During the Cold War we were constantly fighting on the edges - trying to force geopolitical boundaries a little bit one way or the other. Now as the world's single great superpower we have a unique "opportunity" to dominate the entire globe and gain control of key resources - especially oil of course.
The evidence presented here (and much more that has been omitted in the interest of keeping this short) strongly suggests that September 11 was just such an operation, mounted by a radical group within the Bush administration - an alliance of extreme militarists and fanatical Zionists who are gaining increasing influence in our military and intelligence command structures.
The scenario prescribed by Westmoreland is a perfect fit for what we have observed. It would be very easy for the CIA to infiltrate "agents provocateur" among genuine Islamic fundamentalists using their loyal client, Pakistan's ISI, as the intermediary. With ISI support the provocateurs could quickly gain leadership status. Then all you need is the political clout to shut down any investigation by the CIA or FBI that might threaten the operation. Mohammed Atta is an obvious provocateur, operating very openly and deliberately leaving a trail of damning evidence. His strange double life as a zealous Islamic fundamentalist on the one hand and wild, fully westernized party animal on the other becomes completely coherent in this context.
Not only are there precedents for this general kind of "false flag" provocation - there are even precedents specifically for the framing of Arabs for terrorist attacks against the United States that in fact were perpetrated by Zionist extremists with the aim of poisoning US relations with the Arab states. The Lavon Affair involved a series of bombings of American and British institutions in Egypt in 1954. These terrorist attacks were ordered by the head of Israeli intelligence with the aim of making it appear that they were perpetrated by Egyptian nationalists. The idea was to damage relations between Egypt and the US and Britain. [See for example, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism", Livia Rokach, Chapter 7: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/rokach.html].
Of course, in the case of September 11, the Zionists could only have hoped to pull this off with very highly placed and determined assistance from within our own military and intelligence organizations. I believe that this was provided by the alliance of extreme militarists and fanatical Zionists surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney, as discussed above.
In considering this evidence it's important to recognize just how corrupt our intelligence establishment has become. One huge scandal that has never been addressed is narcotics trafficking and money laundering by the CIA. Agency involvement in large scale heroin trafficking started in Laos during the Vietnam war. This has been known for decades; a good reference is Professor William Chambliss' presidential address to the American Society of Criminology in 1988:
During the campaign in Afghanistan CIA heroin trafficking accelerated, and the United States was flooded with Afghan heroin. Alfred McCoy, Professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has discussed this problem, and the central role this played in the administration of George Bush Sr:
First of all, I think the Laos parallel is very strong in the Iran-Contra operation ... All the personnel that are involved in that operation are Laos veterans. Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, Oliver North, Richard Secord - they all served in Laos during thirteen-year war. They are all part of that policy of integrating narcotics and being complicitous in the narcotics trade in the furtherance of covert action. http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah3.html
[ See Also, "The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade", Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill Books, NY 1991 ]
The CIA also became very active in smuggling cocaine from Latin America during this period, and the proceeds were used among other things to fund the Contra guerillas in Nicauragua. ["Whiteout, The CIA Drugs and the Press", Cockburn & St. Clair, Verson, London 1998]
Notoriously, George Bush Jr. has surrounded himself with officials associated with the worst scandals involving covert operations of his father's administration, including the Iran-Contra scandal. These officials include men like Richard Armitage, Elliott Abrams (convicted of two misdemeanors), John Poindexter (convicted on five felony charges), and Richard Secord (convicted on six felony charges). (Unfortunately most of these convictions were later overturned on the technicality that they were contaminated by immunized testimony before congressional committees.) These men were active in formulating policy at the very time our government started to pump money into the ISI and to cultivate this agency as a client. Now they are choosing to simply ignore the fact that it is their own client and ally who funded the September 11 attacks. Noted historian Theodore Draper has written of Iran-Contra and the related pattern of criminal activity in the White House:
If ever the constitutional democracy of the United States States is overthrown, we now have a better idea of how this is likely to be done. During the course of the Iran- Contra affairs, from 1984 to 1986, something in the nature of a junta was at work inside the U.S. government. We usually think of a junta as plotting to overthrow a president; this junta came into being to overthrow an established constitutional rule of law with the help of a president. The main lesson from this experience is that the chief danger to our political system is from within, not from without.
[Theodore Draper, Foreword to "The Iran-Contra Scandal, The Declassified History", Kornbluh and Byrne eds., The New Press, 1993, NY, pg. xiii]
George Bush Sr. himself, a few months before he granted presidential pardons to his friends, put it even more graphically:
"If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched."
[George H.W. Bush, cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter]
The former President and father of the current President has put his finger on their own worst nightmare: the time tested ability of the american people to raise holy hell when their government abuses their trust.
The Pentagon blast was probably used to eliminate some liabilities once the mission was completed.
This thread contains some articles/facts deffinately worth reviewing for anyone interested in knowing more about 9/11, it's about 7 pages but it is a good read.
Everyone remember this, the black boxes from the planes were apparently destroyed in the heat, yet Atta's passport was recovered a few blocks away...hmmmm!