Difference between revisions of "Document:911 JFK and War"
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− | + | {{Document | |
− | + | |publication_date=2007-08-18 | |
− | + | |type=essay | |
− | + | |source_URL=http://www.peterdalescott.net | |
− | + | |source_name=Peter Dale Scott's web site | |
− | + | |subjects=9/11, JFK Assassination, War | |
− | + | |local=File:911 JFK and War.pdf | |
− | + | |authors=Peter Dale Scott | |
− | + | }} | |
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==9/11, JFK, and War:== | ==9/11, JFK, and War:== | ||
'''Recurring Patterns in America’s Deep Events''' | '''Recurring Patterns in America’s Deep Events''' | ||
− | In American history there are two types of events. There are ordinary events which the information systems of the country can understand and transmit. There are also deep | + | In American history there are two types of events. There are ordinary events which the information systems of the country can understand and transmit. There are also [[deep event]]s, or meta-events, which the mainstream information systems of the country cannot digest. I mean by a “deep event” one in which it is clear from the outset that there are aspects which will not be dealt with in the mainstream media, and will be studied only by those so-called “[[conspiracy theorist]]s” who specialize in deep history. The events I shall discuss today exhibit continuities with each other and with other deep events, notably the [[Iran-Contra]] affair of the mid [[1980s]] and the [[Oklahoma City bombing]] of 1995. But the two I shall discuss today – the [[JFK assassination]] and [[9/11]] – are outstanding in this respect: that while they were attributed to insignificant and very marginal people, they had momentous impact, far more than most daily events by more important people, in redirecting American history. |
− | If history is what is recorded, then deep history is the sum of events which tend to be officially obscured or even suppressed in traditional books and media. Important recent deep events include the political assassinations of the 1960s, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and now 9/11. All these deep events have involved what I call the deep state, that part of the state which is not publicly accountable, and pursues its goals by means which will not be approved by a public examination. The CIA (with its on-going relationships to drug-traffickers) is an obvious aspect of the deep state, but not the only one, perhaps not even the dirtiest. | + | If history is what is recorded, then deep history is the sum of events which tend to be officially obscured or even suppressed in traditional books and media. Important recent deep events include the political assassinations of the 1960s, [[Watergate]], Iran-Contra, and now 9/11. All these deep events have involved what I call the deep state, that part of the state which is not publicly accountable, and pursues its goals by means which will not be approved by a public examination. The CIA (with its on-going relationships to drug-traffickers) is an obvious aspect of the [[deep state]], but not the only one, perhaps not even the dirtiest. |
− | When I talk of a deep state, this term (as opposed to others, like deep politics), is not my own invention. It is a translation of the Turkish gizli devlet, or derin devlet, a term used to describe the networks revealed by the so-called Susurluk incident of 1996, when the victims traveling together in what became a deadly car crash were identified as "an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli.” The giveaway was that “Catli, a heroin trafficker on Interpol's wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.” <ref>1 Adrian Gatton, “The Susurluk Legacy,” http://adriangatton.com/archive/1990_01_01_archive.html. Both Catli and the terrorist Grey Wolves | + | When I talk of a [[deep state]], this term (as opposed to others, like deep politics), is not my own invention. It is a translation of the Turkish gizli devlet, or derin devlet, a term used to describe the networks revealed by the so-called [[Susurluk incident]] of 1996, when the victims traveling together in what became a deadly car crash were identified as "an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called [[Abdullah Catli]].” The giveaway was that “Catli, a heroin trafficker on [[Interpol]]'s wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.” <ref>1 Adrian Gatton, “The Susurluk Legacy,” http://adriangatton.com/archive/1990_01_01_archive.html. Both Catli and the terrorist [[Grey Wolves]] network from which he emerged had global intelligence connections. In 1978 “Catli linked up with notorious Italian right-wing terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and together they traveled to Latin America and the United States” ([[Daniele Ganser]], NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe [London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005], 237-38.</ref> He was carrying narcotics with him at the time of the crash.<ref> Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, |
− | network from which he emerged had global intelligence connections. In 1978 “Catli linked up with | ||
− | notorious Italian right-wing terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and together they traveled to Latin America and the | ||
− | United States” (Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western | ||
− | Europe [London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005], 237-38.</ref> He was carrying narcotics with him at the time of the crash.<ref> Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, | ||
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.</ref> | http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.</ref> | ||
− | The study of these deep events has slowly become more respectable in the almost half-century since the JFK assassination. A major reason has been the emergence of the Internet and other forms of new media, where the same deep events tend to get far more extensive treatment. <ref>Even the vocabularies of the old and new media diverge. A Lexis Nexis search in December 2006 for the word | + | The study of these deep events has slowly become more respectable in the almost half-century since the [[JFK assassination]]. A major reason has been the emergence of the Internet and other forms of new media, where the same deep events tend to get far more extensive treatment. <ref>Even the vocabularies of the old and new media diverge. A Lexis Nexis search in December 2006 for the word “[[parapolitics]]” in major newspapers yielded five entries, only two of them from the United States. The same search on Google yielded 86,100 hits. Meanings of “parapolitics”: 1) “A system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished” (Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy [New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1972], 171). 2) interactions between public states and other forms of organized violence; 3) |
− | the intellectual study of parapolitical interactions between public states and other forms of organized violence. See Robert Cribb and Peter Dale Scott, “Introduction,” in Eric Wilson and Tim Lindsey (eds.), Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty (London: Pluto, 2007).</ref> If the new media come in time to prevail over the priorities of the old, it is possible that we will see a paradigm shift with respect to what is appropriate for serious public discourse. What I have learned over the years is that it is helpful to look at all these deep events together. This is true for both external reasons (how the nation and its media handle deep history) and for internal reasons (the content of deep events themselves). What is particularly disturbing, in the case of the JFK assassination (henceforward referred to as “JFK”) and 9/11, is the number of similarities that might seem to indicate a recurring modus operandi or scenario. | + | the intellectual study of parapolitical interactions between public states and other forms of organized violence. See [[Robert Cribb]] and [[Peter Dale Scott]], “Introduction,” in Eric Wilson and Tim Lindsey (eds.), Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty (London: Pluto, 2007).</ref> If the new media come in time to prevail over the priorities of the old, it is possible that we will see a paradigm shift with respect to what is appropriate for serious public discourse. What I have learned over the years is that it is helpful to look at all these deep events together. This is true for both external reasons (how the nation and its media handle deep history) and for internal reasons (the content of deep events themselves). What is particularly disturbing, in the case of the JFK assassination (henceforward referred to as “JFK”) and [[9/11]], is the number of similarities that might seem to indicate a recurring modus operandi or scenario. |
While I myself am still open-minded as to how seriously we should interpret these similarities, we should also open our minds to the alternative: that it was not by chance that two major events were soon followed, first in 1965 and again in 2003, by America’s longest military involvements in the nation’s history. | While I myself am still open-minded as to how seriously we should interpret these similarities, we should also open our minds to the alternative: that it was not by chance that two major events were soon followed, first in 1965 and again in 2003, by America’s longest military involvements in the nation’s history. | ||
− | ===JFK and 9/ | + | ===JFK and 9/11: Possibly Innocent Similarities=== |
I will begin with three similarities which could possibly, especially in the case of the first, be marginal or irrelevant to how the events themselves unfolded. | I will begin with three similarities which could possibly, especially in the case of the first, be marginal or irrelevant to how the events themselves unfolded. | ||
====1) Stock market speculation:==== | ====1) Stock market speculation:==== | ||
− | By this I am not referring to the dip and recovery that followed both events, which is common after any unsettling news. <ref> The dip and recovery of the stock market on November 22, 1963 were given prominent attention in Lincoln Lawrence, Were We Controlled? (University Books, 1967).</ref> I am referring to the dealings in special stocks which suggested, in both cases, prior knowledge of what was to come. In early November 1963, David Harold (“Dry Hole”) Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, bought $2 million worth of stock (132,600 shares) in Ling-Temco Vought (LTV), their own defense company. Then in February 1964 LTV received from the Navy the first major LBJ prime defense contract – for a fighter plane to be used in limited wars like Vietnam. <ref> New York Times, February 12, 1964. The Times estimated that the contract “could run into more than a billion dollars.”</ref> I have calculated that this $2.5 million insiders’ purchase was worth $26 million by the end of 1967. Moreover the prescient purchase was about one hundred times the size of any other insider purchase in aerospace issues in the same period. <ref>Peter Dale Scott, “The Dallas Conspiracy” (unpublished ms., 1973), Ch. III, 36. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.</ref> | + | By this I am not referring to the dip and recovery that followed both events, which is common after any unsettling news. <ref> The dip and recovery of the stock market on November 22, 1963 were given prominent attention in Lincoln Lawrence, Were We Controlled? (University Books, 1967).</ref> I am referring to the dealings in special stocks which suggested, in both cases, prior knowledge of what was to come. In early November 1963, [[David Harold Byrd|David Harold (“Dry Hole”) Byrd]] and his investment partner, [[James Ling]], bought $2 million worth of stock (132,600 shares) in Ling-Temco Vought (LTV), their own defense company. Then in February 1964 LTV received from the Navy the first major LBJ prime defense contract – for a fighter plane to be used in limited wars like Vietnam. <ref>[[New York Times]], February 12, 1964. The Times estimated that the contract “could run into more than a billion dollars.”</ref> I have calculated that this $2.5 million insiders’ purchase was worth $26 million by the end of 1967. Moreover the prescient purchase was about one hundred times the size of any other insider purchase in aerospace issues in the same period. <ref>Peter Dale Scott, “The Dallas Conspiracy” (unpublished ms., 1973), Ch. III, 36. Cf. [[Joan Mellen]], “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.</ref> |
− | This does not prove that Byrd and Ling were directly involved in the Kennedy assassination, but it is likely that Byrd may have had inklings of what was going to happen. For Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building, where Oswald had been hired as an employee in October 1963. I have hypothesized that Oswald thought he was there on a surveillance assignment, to report on a fellow worker who was under investigation by the Dallas Police. <ref>7 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 242-47.</ref> Byrd may have been privy to this arrangement, and have suspected more. | + | This does not prove that Byrd and Ling were directly involved in the Kennedy assassination, but it is likely that Byrd may have had inklings of what was going to happen. For Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building, where [[Lee Harvey Oswald|Oswald]] had been hired as an employee in October 1963. I have hypothesized that Oswald thought he was there on a surveillance assignment, to report on a fellow worker who was under investigation by the Dallas Police. <ref>7 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 242-47.</ref> Byrd may have been privy to this arrangement, and have suspected more. |
− | This stock purchase is comparable to the notorious | + | This stock purchase is comparable to the notorious “[[9-11/Insider Trading|put option purchases]]” just before 9/11 in 2001, in the stock of United Airlines and American Airlines. <ref>Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute (NewYork: HarperCollins/Regan Books, 2004), 59-60; http://www.cooperativeresearch.orgtimeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=insiderTrading: “In the weeks and days leading up to 9/11, highly irregular stock trading transactions took place, involving stocks in United Airlines, American Airlines, and a few of the largest WTC tenants. There appear to have been even bigger trades in gold, oil, and U.S. Treasury bonds. Stock trading irregularities occurred not just in the U.S., but in European and Pacific region stock markets as well. While the FBI has concluded that there was no insider trading, German investigators found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading.” (Miami Herald, 9/24/01)”</ref> Here too the advance purchases suggest special knowledge, but here too the purchasers and the perpetrators need not have been the same, especially if we accept the indications that many widely scattered people and agencies had prior indications of the event about to occur. <ref>Thompson, Terror Timeline, 35-53.</ref> |
− | There were scattered indications that a few people had advance knowledge of the Kennedy assassination, a fact hard to reconcile with the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald, a disgruntled loner, acted on his own. The most significant case was that of a Southern racist and activist, Joseph Milteer, who correctly predicted to a Miami police informant, that Kennedy would be shot "from an office building with a high-powered rifle." <ref>Intercepted conversation between Joseph Milteer and Miami Police informant William Somersett. Text in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations, 124ss; 3 AH 448. Later Milteer also correctly predicted that there would be “a propaganda campaign put on how to prove to the Christian people of the world that the Jews, the Zionist Jews, had murdered Kennedy” (Somersett report of Milteer interview, 11/23/63, as transcribed by Intelligence Unit of Miami Police Department, 11/26/63; quoted in Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much [New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992], 551). Soon after rightwing members of Milteer’s milieu, notably Admiral John Crommelin (The Thunderbolt, January 1964, p.1) and Revilo P. Oliver (American Opinion, February 1964, March 1964) made the anti-Semitic charges that Milteer had predicted. After 9/11 there was a similar campaign, especially in Muslim countries and Europe, to blame the 9/11 disaster on the Jews and Israel. See Anti-Defamation League, “Unraveling Anti- Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories,” September 2, 2003, [http://www.adl.organti_semitism/9-11conspiracytheories.pdf].</ref> But Milteer was not unique. <ref>Michael Parenti has written that “Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: `This is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like “We got the bastard.”'." (Dirty Truths [San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996], 172-91, | + | There were scattered indications that a few people had advance knowledge of the Kennedy assassination, a fact hard to reconcile with the [[Warren Commission]] conclusion that Oswald, a [[lone nut|disgruntled loner]], acted on his own. The most significant case was that of a Southern racist and activist, [Joseph Milteer]], who correctly predicted to a Miami police informant, that Kennedy would be shot "from an office building with a high-powered rifle." <ref>Intercepted conversation between Joseph Milteer and Miami Police informant [[William Somersett]]. Text in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations, 124ss; 3 AH 448. Later Milteer also correctly predicted that there would be “a propaganda campaign put on how to prove to the Christian people of the world that the [[Jews]], the [[Zionist]] Jews, had murdered Kennedy” (Somersett report of Milteer interview, 11/23/63, as transcribed by Intelligence Unit of Miami Police Department, 11/26/63; quoted in Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much [New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992], 551). Soon after rightwing members of Milteer’s milieu, notably Admiral John Crommelin (The Thunderbolt, January 1964, p.1) and Revilo P. Oliver (American Opinion, February 1964, March 1964) made the anti-Semitic charges that Milteer had predicted. After 9/11 there was a similar campaign, especially in Muslim countries and Europe, to blame the 9/11 disaster on the Jews and Israel. See Anti-Defamation League, “Unraveling Anti- Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories,” September 2, 2003, [http://www.adl.organti_semitism/9-11conspiracytheories.pdf].</ref> But Milteer was not unique. <ref>[[Michael Parenti]] has written that “Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: `This is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like “We got the bastard.”'." (Dirty Truths [San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996], 172-91, |
http://www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/conspiracyphobia.html). </ref> There were also pre-9/11 indications and warnings, far too numerous to enumerate here, of knowledge about an impending attack using hijacked airplanes. <ref>12 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 35-53. Particularly disturbing were the reports, some of them from other nations’ intelligence agencies, that the U.S. apparently failed to follow up on (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 42, 43 (2), 44, 45 (2), 48,</ref> | http://www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/conspiracyphobia.html). </ref> There were also pre-9/11 indications and warnings, far too numerous to enumerate here, of knowledge about an impending attack using hijacked airplanes. <ref>12 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 35-53. Particularly disturbing were the reports, some of them from other nations’ intelligence agencies, that the U.S. apparently failed to follow up on (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 42, 43 (2), 44, 45 (2), 48,</ref> | ||
====2) A number of senior officers were out of the country, including the Secretary of State==== | ====2) A number of senior officers were out of the country, including the Secretary of State==== | ||
− | On November 22, 1963, six out of ten cabinet members were on their way to Japan, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Labor Secretary W.W. Wirtz.<ref>"We believe it was by design that Secretary of State (Dean) Rusk, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Labor Secretary W.W. Wirtz, as well as other administration officials like White House Press Secretary (Pierre) Salinger, were trapped in an airplane over the Pacific Ocean at such a critical time" (J. Gary Shaw, with Larry R. Harris, Cover-Up [Austin, TX: Collector's Editions, 1992], 199). The other two Cabinet members aboard were Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman. (http://four.fsphost.com/crevmore/acretoky.htm)</ref> | + | On November 22, 1963, six out of ten cabinet members were on their way to Japan, including [[Secretary of State]] [[Dean Rusk]], [[Treasury Secretary]] [[Douglas Dillon]], [[Interior Secretary]] [[Stewart Udall]] and [[Labor Secretary]] [[W. W. Wirtz]].<ref>"We believe it was by design that [[Secretary of State]] [[(Dean) Rusk]], [[Treasury Secretary]] [[Douglas Dillon]], [[Interior Secretary]] [[Stewart Udall]] and [[Labor Secretary]] [[W. W. Wirtz]], as well as other administration officials like [[White House Press Secretary]] [[(Pierre) Salinger]], were trapped in an airplane over the [[Pacific Ocean]] at such a critical time" (J. Gary Shaw, with Larry R. Harris, Cover-Up [Austin, TX: Collector's Editions, 1992], 199). The other two Cabinet members aboard were [[Secretary of Commerce]] [[Luther Hodges]] and [[Secretary of Agriculture]] [[Orville Freeman]]. (http://four.fsphost.com/crevmore/acretoky.htm)</ref> |
− | On September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell and CJCS Henry Shelton were traveling outside the country, while Attorney General John Ashcroft was also traveling.<ref>Thompson, Terror Timeline, 400.</ref>Powell and Shelton were leading opponents of the Iraq War, and were eventually ousted, along with Ashcroft. <ref>Both Shelton and Ashcroft had tangled unhappily with Rumsfeld and Cheney before 9/11 (Bob Woodward, State of Denial [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006], 18-19 [Shelton], Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy [New York: Little Brown, 2007], 77-78 [Ashcroft]).</ref> | + | On September 11, 2001, Secretary of State [[Colin Powell]] and CJCS [[Henry Shelton]] were traveling outside the country, while [[Attorney General]] [[John Ashcroft]] was also traveling.<ref>Thompson, Terror Timeline, 400.</ref>Powell and Shelton were leading opponents of the [[Iraq War]], and were eventually ousted, along with Ashcroft. <ref>Both Shelton and Ashcroft had tangled unhappily with [[Rumsfeld]] and [[Cheney]] before 9/11 ([[Bob Woodward]], State of Denial [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006], 18-19 [Shelton], [[Charlie Savage]], Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy [New York: Little Brown, 2007], 77-78 [Ashcroft]).</ref> |
====3) Commission recommendations to increase power of intelligence agencies, or deep state==== | ====3) Commission recommendations to increase power of intelligence agencies, or deep state==== | ||
− | It is worth pointing out that the Commission Reports prepared with respect to both JFK and 9/11 were tightly controlled and produced the same recommendation: that the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies should be increased. This was quite | + | It is worth pointing out that the Commission Reports prepared with respect to both JFK and 9/11 were tightly controlled and produced the same recommendation: that the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies should be increased. This was quite paradoxical in the case of the [[Warren Report]], which concluded both that [[Lee Harvey Oswald|Oswald]] was a loner and that the CIA should have greater powers to conduct surveillance of organized groups. It was hardly less paradoxical in the case of the [[9/11 Report]], which concluded its survey of repeated intelligence failures and Pakistani intrigues with recommendations for increased intelligence budgets and maintenance of current aid to [[Pakistan]]. (In June 2007 Ahmed Rashid blamed the current Pakistani political crisis on the “bad deal” and “blind bargain” that Washington had made with Musharraf after 9/11.) <ref>Ahmed Rashid, “America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames,” Washington Post, 17 June 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502073.html :“The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the [[Taliban]]'s main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on [[al-Qaeda]] and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.”</ref> |
− | paradoxical in the case of the Warren Report, which concluded both that Oswald was a loner and that the CIA should have greater powers to conduct surveillance of organized groups. It was hardly less paradoxical in the case of the 9/11 Report, which concluded its survey of repeated intelligence failures and Pakistani intrigues with recommendations for increased intelligence budgets and maintenance of current aid to Pakistan. (In June 2007 Ahmed Rashid blamed the current Pakistani political crisis on the “bad deal” and “blind bargain” that Washington had made with Musharraf after 9/11.) <ref>Ahmed Rashid, “America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames,” Washington Post, 17 June 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502073.html :“The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban's main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.”</ref> | ||
− | A truly independent investigation of each event could, and indeed should, have been highly embarrassing to the CIA. Even in 2007 the CIA is still in non-compliance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, and withholding documents with respect to an officer, George Joannides, who supervised the Cuban Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE) which had recurring contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald. The CIA shared nothing with the Warren Commission about its contacts with the DRE (which may have involved Oswald). Nor did the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) learn anything of significance in 1978, when the CIA assigned Joannides to be its Principal Coordinating Officer working with the House Committee. <ref>Jefferson Morley, Salon, December 17, 2003, http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/17/joannides/index.html; David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), 386-88.</ref> | + | A truly independent investigation of each event could, and indeed should, have been highly embarrassing to the CIA. Even in 2007 the CIA is still in non-compliance with the [[JFK Assassination Records Collection Act]], and withholding documents with respect to an officer, [[George Joannides]], who supervised the Cuban Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE) which had recurring contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald. The CIA shared nothing with the Warren Commission about its contacts with the DRE (which may have involved Oswald). Nor did the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (HSCA) learn anything of significance in 1978, when the CIA assigned Joannides to be its Principal Coordinating Officer working with the House Committee. <ref>Jefferson Morley, Salon, December 17, 2003, http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/17/joannides/index.html; David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), 386-88.</ref> |
− | Similarly in 2001 the 9/11 Commission learned nothing about why, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) were aloft in a National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP), or so-called “Doomsday Plane.” <ref>Mark H. Gaffney, “The 911 Mystery Plane,” http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm; citing U.S. Department of Defense, News Transcript, "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the Washington Post,"January 9, 2002, posted at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t02052002_t0109wp.html; Joe Dejka, "Inside STRATCOM on September 11: Offutt exercise took real-life twist," Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002. Mark Gaffney has since revised his paper, to suggest that the airborne group was not PFIAB but a Rumsfeld advisory committee (http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/Gaffney_911Mystery%20Plane.pdf).</ref> Neither in 1964 nor in 2003 was there any chance for such revelations. In 1964 the work of the Warren Commission was carefully constrained by former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who had been fired by President Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco). <ref>Assistant Attorney-General Nicholas Katzenbach later testified that he was “astounded” that Dulles did not at least share with the other commissioners what he knew about the CIA’s involvement in relevant assassination plots at the time (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Richard Todd/Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 552; citing House Select Committee on Assassinations, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vol. 3, 699-71.</ref> In 2003 the work of the 9/11 Commission, and later the writing of the 9/11 Report, were tightly controlled by Philip Zelikow, who in October 2001, prior to becoming the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, had been appointed by President George W. Bush to PFIAB. <ref>University of Virginia News, October 8, 2001, http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2001/zelikowoct-8-2001.html. </ref> It is at least suggestive that both commission investigations were dominated and restricted by personalities with overt leadership roles in the U.S. intelligence community. | + | Similarly in 2001 the [[9/11 Commission]] learned nothing about why, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, members of the [[President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board]] (PFIAB) were aloft in a National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP), or so-called “Doomsday Plane.” <ref>Mark H. Gaffney, “The 911 Mystery Plane,” http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm; citing U.S. Department of Defense, News Transcript, "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the Washington Post,"January 9, 2002, posted at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t02052002_t0109wp.html; Joe Dejka, "Inside STRATCOM on September 11: Offutt exercise took real-life twist," Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002. Mark Gaffney has since revised his paper, to suggest that the airborne group was not PFIAB but a Rumsfeld advisory committee (http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/Gaffney_911Mystery%20Plane.pdf).</ref> Neither in 1964 nor in 2003 was there any chance for such revelations. In 1964 the work of the Warren Commission was carefully constrained by former CIA Director [[Allen Dulles]] (who had been fired by President Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco). <ref>Assistant Attorney-General Nicholas Katzenbach later testified that he was “astounded” that Dulles did not at least share with the other commissioners what he knew about the CIA’s involvement in relevant assassination plots at the time (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Richard Todd/Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 552; citing [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]], Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vol. 3, 699-71.</ref> In 2003 the work of the 9/11 Commission, and later the writing of the 9/11 Report, were tightly controlled by [[Philip Zelikow]], who in October 2001, prior to becoming the Executive Director of the [[9/11 Commission]], had been appointed by President [[George W. Bush]] to PFIAB. <ref>University of Virginia News, October 8, 2001, http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2001/zelikowoct-8-2001.html. </ref> It is at least suggestive that both commission investigations were dominated and restricted by personalities with overt leadership roles in the U.S. intelligence community. |
===Similarities Suggestive of a Common Modus Operandi=== | ===Similarities Suggestive of a Common Modus Operandi=== | ||
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====4) Instant Identification of the Culprits:==== | ====4) Instant Identification of the Culprits:==== | ||
− | In the case of Oswald, within fifteen minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, the Dallas police put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer – 5’10”, 165 pounds. <ref>21 Warren Report 5, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 397 (Transcript of Dallas Police Channel One, before 12:45 PM, 11/22/63).</ref> This exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswald’s FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him. <ref>E.g. CIA Cable 74830 of 10 Oct 63 to Mexico City, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewershowDoc.do?docId=30335&relPageId=2; reproduced in John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 512.</ref> | + | In the case of Oswald, within fifteen minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, the Dallas [[police]] put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer – 5’10”, 165 pounds. <ref>21 Warren Report 5, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 397 (Transcript of Dallas Police Channel One, before 12:45 PM, 11/22/63).</ref> This exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswald’s FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him. <ref>E.g. CIA Cable 74830 of 10 Oct 63 to Mexico City, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewershowDoc.do?docId=30335&relPageId=2; reproduced in John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 512.</ref> |
− | This identification did not match the actual height and weight of the Lee Harvey Oswald who was picked up in Dallas and charged, which was five foot nine and 140 pounds. <ref>Manning Clements FBI FD-302 of 11/23/63; in Warren Report, 614.</ref> The 5’10” measurement was also suspect because it was attributed to Howard Brennan, who saw allegedly someone in the sixth floor window, but only from the waist up. Brennan subsequently failed to pick out Oswald in a police line-up. <ref>24 Warren Report 5; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2006), 10-13, 78n. After seeing Oswald twice on television, Brennan picked out Oswald in a second lineup (Warren Report, 143). </ref> One concludes that intelligence files rather than direct observation may have been responsible for the rapid decision to search for a killer with the exact measurement of 5’ 10”, 165 pounds. It appears that someone had already determined that Oswald would be the designated culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime. | + | This identification did not match the actual height and weight of the Lee Harvey Oswald who was picked up in Dallas and charged, which was five foot nine and 140 pounds. <ref>Manning Clements FBI FD-302 of 11/23/63; in Warren Report, 614.</ref> The 5’10” measurement was also suspect because it was attributed to [[Howard Brennan]], who saw allegedly someone in the sixth floor window, but only from the waist up. Brennan subsequently failed to pick out Oswald in a police line-up. <ref>24 Warren Report 5; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2006), 10-13, 78n. After seeing Oswald twice on television, Brennan picked out Oswald in a second lineup (Warren Report, 143). </ref> One concludes that intelligence files rather than direct observation may have been responsible for the rapid decision to search for a killer with the exact measurement of 5’ 10”, 165 pounds. It appears that someone had already determined that Oswald would be the designated culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime. |
− | Meanwhile, according to counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, on 9/11 the FBI already had a list of alleged hijackers by 9:59 am on September 11, when the south tower collapsed. <ref>25 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 13-14.</ref> 9:59 AM was at least four minutes before Flight United 93 had hit the ground. | + | Meanwhile, according to [[counter-terrorism]] coordinator [[Richard Clarke]], on 9/11 the FBI already had a list of alleged hijackers by 9:59 am on September 11, when the south tower collapsed. <ref>25 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 13-14.</ref> 9:59 AM was at least four minutes before [[Flight United 93]] had hit the ground. |
− | Even before this, shortly after 9:03 AM, Clarke himself had denoted the organization that would ultimately be blamed, telling Richard Cheney in the White House that in his opinion “It’s an al Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” <ref>Clarke, Against All Enemies, 2. Paul Thompson erroneously records that Cheney said this to Clarke (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 396).</ref> This naming of a responsible foreign party corresponds to the press conference on November 22, 1963, arranged by the Cuban exile group contacted earlier by Lee Harvey Oswald (the Directorio Revolucionario, or DRE). This press conference reportedly combined accurate secret information about Oswald with the wild claim that he “allegedly lived [in Moscow] in home Sov[iet] foreign minister for two months.” <ref> CIA cable, WAVE 8049 from Miami, 22 Nov. 1963, 222242Z (7:42 PM EST). The cable reported that the press conference was called for “circa 1300 hours;” this is presumably a typo for “2300 hours,” or 11 PM EST. Strikingly, the CIA reported it had withheld this info from the FBI, to allow the DRE to release it first.</ref> (We shall see that, just as the identification of al Qaeda soon led to the invasion of Afghanistan, so that alleged Oswald-Soviet relationship led to talk of response against the Soviet Union. The risk of a nuclear war became Lyndon | + | Even before this, shortly after 9:03 AM, Clarke himself had denoted the organization that would ultimately be blamed, telling [[Richard Cheney]] in the White House that in his opinion “It’s an al Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” <ref>Clarke, Against All Enemies, 2. [[Paul Thompson]] erroneously records that Cheney said this to Clarke (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 396).</ref> This naming of a responsible foreign party corresponds to the press conference on November 22, 1963, arranged by the Cuban exile group contacted earlier by Lee Harvey Oswald (the Directorio Revolucionario, or DRE). This press conference reportedly combined accurate secret information about Oswald with the wild claim that he “allegedly lived [in Moscow] in home Sov[iet] foreign minister for two months.” <ref> CIA cable, WAVE 8049 from Miami, 22 Nov. 1963, 222242Z (7:42 PM EST). The cable reported that the press conference was called for “circa 1300 hours;” this is presumably a typo for “2300 hours,” or 11 PM EST. Strikingly, the CIA reported it had withheld this info from the FBI, to allow the DRE to release it first.</ref> (We shall see that, just as the identification of al Qaeda soon led to the invasion of Afghanistan, so that alleged Oswald-Soviet relationship led to talk of response against the Soviet Union. The risk of a nuclear war became [[Lyndon Johnson]]’s chief talking point in recruiting Earl Warren and others to serve on the Warren Commission.) |
− | With respect to the FBI’s list of hijackers on 9/11, there were, even within the bureaucracy, suspicions that the FBI was drawing on pre-9/11 files for its identifications. | + | With respect to the FBI’s list of hijackers on 9/11, there were, even within the [[bureaucracy]], suspicions that the FBI was drawing on pre-9/11 files for its identifications. |
:''"I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming," a former FBI official with extensive counter-terrorism experience has since said. "Within 24 hours [of the attack] the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and somebody was sitting on it."'' <ref>28 William Norman Grigg, “Did We Know What Was Coming?” New American, 3/11/02, http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-11-2002/vo18no05_didweknow.htm.</ref> | :''"I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming," a former FBI official with extensive counter-terrorism experience has since said. "Within 24 hours [of the attack] the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and somebody was sitting on it."'' <ref>28 William Norman Grigg, “Did We Know What Was Coming?” New American, 3/11/02, http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-11-2002/vo18no05_didweknow.htm.</ref> | ||
− | Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Pentagon Able Danger had a similar reaction: | + | Lt. Col. [[Anthony Shaffer]] of the Pentagon [[Able Danger]] had a similar reaction: |
− | :''"We were amazed at how quickly the FBI produced the name and pictures of all 19 hijackers. But then again, we were surprised at how quickly they’d made the arrests after the first World Trade Center bombing. Only later did we find out that the FBI had been watching some of these people for months prior to both incidents.”'' <ref>29 Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 2006), 383.</ref> | + | :''"We were amazed at how quickly the FBI produced the name and pictures of all 19 hijackers. But then again, we were surprised at how quickly they’d made the arrests after the first [[World Trade Center bombing]]. Only later did we find out that the FBI had been watching some of these people for months prior to both incidents.”'' <ref>29 Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 2006), 383.</ref> |
− | In this context of suspicion a former federal prosecutor and another former FBI agent, Warren Flagg, came forward in 2006 with an alternative explanation – that “the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections” were in the car left behind at Logan Airport in Boston by Mohamed Atta and his associates. <ref>30 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The claim that the hijackers had cooperatively supplied their “al-Qaida connections” seems particularly dubious. After 9/11 Washington was put under considerable pressure by its allies in the war on terrorism, particularly by Pakistan, to produce evidence showing the involvement of al- Qaeda in 9/11. At the time “Powell promised to publish such a document, but this did not happen” (Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamic Terrorism and Global Response [London and New York: Routledge, 2002], 318).</ref> It is of course possible that an instantaneous investigation of Atta’s effects would explain how the FBI could tell Richard Clarke that they had a list of suspected hijackers by 9:59 AM on September 11. But this would imply that the FBI had the names of all nineteen hijackers by then, including the four on Flight 93 which had not yet crashed. Flagg’s claim also drew attention to another striking similarity between JFK and 9/11. In both JFK and 9/11, we are asked to believe that the designated suspects – Oswald and the hijackers – facilitated their own detection by implausibly laying paper trails which led unambiguously to themselves. | + | In this context of suspicion a former federal prosecutor and another former FBI agent, [[Warren Flagg]], came forward in 2006 with an alternative explanation – that “the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections” were in the car left behind at Logan Airport in Boston by [[Mohamed Atta]] and his associates. <ref>30 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The claim that the hijackers had cooperatively supplied their “al-Qaida connections” seems particularly dubious. After 9/11 Washington was put under considerable pressure by its allies in the war on terrorism, particularly by Pakistan, to produce evidence showing the involvement of al- Qaeda in 9/11. At the time “Powell promised to publish such a document, but this did not happen” (Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamic Terrorism and Global Response [London and New York: Routledge, 2002], 318).</ref> It is of course possible that an instantaneous investigation of Atta’s effects would explain how the FBI could tell Richard Clarke that they had a list of suspected hijackers by 9:59 AM on September 11. But this would imply that the FBI had the names of all nineteen hijackers by then, including the four on Flight 93 which had not yet crashed. Flagg’s claim also drew attention to another striking similarity between JFK and 9/11. In both JFK and 9/11, we are asked to believe that the designated suspects – Oswald and the hijackers – facilitated their own detection by implausibly laying paper trails which led unambiguously to themselves. |
====5) Paper trails laid by the designated suspects to facilitate their identification:==== | ====5) Paper trails laid by the designated suspects to facilitate their identification:==== | ||
− | Oswald is supposed in March 1963 to have purchased by mail order, using the name A. Hidell, the notorious Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was said to have assassinated President Kennedy. This was needlessly self-incriminating, when in Dallas he could have bought a rifle anonymously by walking a few blocks to a gun shop. <ref>31 Scott, Deep Politics, 249.</ref> In August he asked to be interviewed by an FBI agent, to whom he showed a Fair Play for Cuba Committee card with the name A.J. Hidell, which he had already shown to a New Orleans police lieutenant. The information was transmitted to the local Office of Naval Intelligence and to the 112th Army Military Intelligence Group. On November 22, the name of Hidell in the 112th MIG file was instrumental, perhaps crucial, in clinching the superficial case against Oswald as an assassin. <ref>32 Scott, Deep Politics, 258; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), 237.</ref> | + | Oswald is supposed in March 1963 to have purchased by mail order, using the name A. Hidell, the notorious Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was said to have assassinated President Kennedy. This was needlessly self-incriminating, when in Dallas he could have bought a rifle anonymously by walking a few blocks to a gun shop. <ref>31 Scott, Deep Politics, 249.</ref> In August he asked to be interviewed by an FBI agent, to whom he showed a Fair Play for Cuba Committee card with the name A.J. Hidell, which he had already shown to a [[New Orleans]] police lieutenant. The information was transmitted to the local Office of Naval Intelligence and to the 112th Army Military Intelligence Group. On November 22, the name of Hidell in the 112th MIG file was instrumental, perhaps crucial, in clinching the superficial case against Oswald as an assassin. <ref>32 Scott, Deep Politics, 258; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), 237.</ref> |
− | This irrational self-incrimination via paper trail was allegedly repeated in 2001 by Mohamed Atta, the principal alleged hijacker. In 2006, “a former FBI agent [Warren Flagg] and a former federal prosecutor … told Newsday that one bag found in Boston contained far more than what the commission report cited, including the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections.” The former prosecutor added, "These guys left behind a paper trail…. They had bank accounts. They rented cars. They had to show what they were doing in the United States.” <ref>Newsday, April 17, 2006, | + | This irrational self-incrimination via paper trail was allegedly repeated in 2001 by [[Mohamed Atta]], the principal alleged hijacker. In 2006, “a former FBI agent [Warren Flagg] and a former federal prosecutor … told Newsday that one bag found in Boston contained far more than what the commission report cited, including the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections.” The former prosecutor added, "These guys left behind a paper trail…. They had bank accounts. They rented cars. They had to show what they were doing in the United States.” <ref>Newsday, April 17, 2006, |
− | http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uslugg0417,0,3743892.story?coll=ny-homepagebigpix2005.</ref> Atta’s trove of information allegedly “provided the Rosetta stone enabling FBI agents to swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them.” <ref>34 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The belated airing of the Flagg story in 2006 has aroused suspicions that it was invented to allay the many earlier questions raised about how the FBI learned the names of the alleged hijackers so quickly (see next section). FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Commonwealth Club of California on April 19, 2002 that "The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot” (http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech041902.htm). But CNN had reported on September 28, 2001, that “among [Atta’s] belongings they also found the names and phone numbers of possible associates;” | + | http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uslugg0417,0,3743892.story?coll=ny-homepagebigpix2005.</ref> Atta’s trove of information allegedly “provided the Rosetta stone enabling FBI agents to swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them.” <ref>34 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The belated airing of the Flagg story in 2006 has aroused suspicions that it was invented to allay the many earlier questions raised about how the [[FBI]] learned the names of the alleged hijackers so quickly (see next section). FBI Director [[Robert Mueller]] told the Commonwealth Club of California on April 19, 2002 that "The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot” (http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech041902.htm). But CNN had reported on September 28, 2001, that “among [Atta’s] belongings they also found the names and phone numbers of possible associates;” |
(http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.01.html); and that this “information compliments the release of photos of the suspected hijackers” (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.15.html). I am grateful to Jon Gold for bringing these matters to my attention.</ref> | (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.01.html); and that this “information compliments the release of photos of the suspected hijackers” (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.15.html). I am grateful to Jon Gold for bringing these matters to my attention.</ref> | ||
− | The belated appearance in 2006 of the Flagg story has caused some to question it. However, official allegations point precisely to other instances of paper trails left by the hijackers. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (532n188), the FBI found an Express Mail receipt in Nawaf al-Hazmi’s car at Dulles Airport, which led to a package addressed to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi of al-Qaeda. <ref>35 This was not the only incriminating evidence that was discovered: “Shortly after September 11, the FBI arrested a Burns employee from the Washington, D.C. area named Mohammed Abdi. . . . When the FBI found the car left behind [by] the five 9/11 hijackers [including Nawaf al-Hazmi ] who departed from Dulles airport near Washington, they discovered a map of the D.C. area with Abdi’s name and phone number written with a yellow highlighter. . . . Investigators discovered Abdi had removed five Burns security jackets from his workplace before September 11. He attempted to give them to the Salvation Army three days after the attack. . . . [Yet] Abdi was never convicted of any crime related to terrorism.” (J.M. Berger, ed., Ali Mohamed: An Intelwire Sourcebook (Intelwire Press, 2006), 18–20, 32).</ref> As if this might not be enough, Atta also is said to have left in his motel a FedEx waybill for another package; and the federal indictment of Moussaoui strongly implied that this package was also collected by al-Hawsawi.<ref>36 United States of America vs. Zacarias Moussaoui, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, www.usdoj.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm, items 88, 92.</ref> The details are given in Newsweek, November 19, 2001: | + | The belated appearance in 2006 of the Flagg story has caused some to question it. However, official allegations point precisely to other instances of paper trails left by the hijackers. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (532n188), the FBI found an Express Mail receipt in Nawaf al-Hazmi’s car at Dulles Airport, which led to a package addressed to [[Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi]] of [[al-Qaeda]]. <ref>35 This was not the only incriminating evidence that was discovered: “Shortly after September 11, the FBI arrested a Burns employee from the Washington, D.C. area named Mohammed Abdi. . . . When the FBI found the car left behind [by] the five 9/11 hijackers [including Nawaf al-Hazmi ] who departed from Dulles airport near Washington, they discovered a map of the D.C. area with Abdi’s name and phone number written with a yellow highlighter. . . . Investigators discovered Abdi had removed five Burns security jackets from his workplace before September 11. He attempted to give them to the Salvation Army three days after the attack. . . . [Yet] Abdi was never convicted of any crime related to terrorism.” (J.M. Berger, ed., Ali Mohamed: An Intelwire Sourcebook (Intelwire Press, 2006), 18–20, 32).</ref> As if this might not be enough, Atta also is said to have left in his motel a FedEx waybill for another package; and the federal indictment of Moussaoui strongly implied that this package was also collected by al-Hawsawi.<ref>36 United States of America vs. Zacarias Moussaoui, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, www.usdoj.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm, items 88, 92.</ref> The details are given in Newsweek, November 19, 2001: |
− | :The paper trail that first led investigators into Ahmed's shadowy financial world began at the bottom of a motel trash can. On the night of Sept. 10, Atta hunkered down in room 233 at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. The next morning he would take a flight to Boston's Logan airport. At the motel, Atta tore up a FedEx Air Waybill and threw it away. Days later, federal agents searching the motel found the receipt, from a package mailed in Florida, where Atta and several other hijackers had lived until days before the bombing. It was addressed to `Almohtaram,’ Arabic for `The Respected One’ | + | :The paper trail that first led investigators into Ahmed's shadowy financial world began at the bottom of a motel trash can. On the night of Sept. 10, Atta hunkered down in room 233 at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. The next morning he would take a flight to Boston's Logan airport. At the motel, Atta tore up a FedEx Air Waybill and threw it away. Days later, federal agents searching the motel found the receipt, from a package mailed in Florida, where Atta and several other hijackers had lived until days before the bombing. It was addressed to `Almohtaram,’ Arabic for `The Respected One’ — the honorific the terrorists gave to Ahmed [al-Hawsawi]. Investigators believe they sealed the connection when they got hold of the video of Ahmed picking up the package. |
Thus the paper trails laid by both Oswald and the hijackers were crucial to the first striking similarity I mentioned: the speedy identification of the alleged (or designated) culprits. | Thus the paper trails laid by both Oswald and the hijackers were crucial to the first striking similarity I mentioned: the speedy identification of the alleged (or designated) culprits. | ||
Line 96: | Line 88: | ||
For years researchers have drawn attention to the existence of different weights and heights in government files on Lee Harvey Oswald (see above), and also to the fact that the FBI maintained separate files on “Lee Harvey Oswald” and “Harvey Lee Oswald.” <ref>Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files, 1994-1995 (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2007), 2, 88-89, 129, 142-49.</ref> Then in the 1990s, John Armstrong presented a 1022-page case that two different young men (“Harvey” and “Lee”) shared the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald, for the benefit of U.S. intelligence. <ref>John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA framed Oswald (Arlington, Texas: Quasar Press, 2003), 1022 pages.</ref> Although not everyone will be persuaded by the whole of Armstrong’s argument, it is safe to say that both evidence and testimony have been altered to conceal the anomalies which Armstrong dealt with. <ref>Scott, Deep Politics II, 143, 145-46; “HARVEY AND LEE: John Armstrong's Documented Study of Two Oswalds,” http://home.wi.rr.com/harveyandlee/.</ref> Needless to say, there was no discussion of these anomalies in the Warren Report. | For years researchers have drawn attention to the existence of different weights and heights in government files on Lee Harvey Oswald (see above), and also to the fact that the FBI maintained separate files on “Lee Harvey Oswald” and “Harvey Lee Oswald.” <ref>Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files, 1994-1995 (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2007), 2, 88-89, 129, 142-49.</ref> Then in the 1990s, John Armstrong presented a 1022-page case that two different young men (“Harvey” and “Lee”) shared the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald, for the benefit of U.S. intelligence. <ref>John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA framed Oswald (Arlington, Texas: Quasar Press, 2003), 1022 pages.</ref> Although not everyone will be persuaded by the whole of Armstrong’s argument, it is safe to say that both evidence and testimony have been altered to conceal the anomalies which Armstrong dealt with. <ref>Scott, Deep Politics II, 143, 145-46; “HARVEY AND LEE: John Armstrong's Documented Study of Two Oswalds,” http://home.wi.rr.com/harveyandlee/.</ref> Needless to say, there was no discussion of these anomalies in the Warren Report. | ||
− | Within two weeks of 9/11, the identities of at least six of the hijackers identified by the FBI were unclear; men in Arab countries with the same names and histories (and in at least one case the same photograph) were protesting that they were alive and innocent. <ref>The mainstream U.S. press, such as the New York Times, later attributed the confusion about the hijackers’ identity to the number of different Arabs sharing the same names. But at least five men shared histories as well as names with the alleged hijackers. Waleed al-Shehri told the BBC “that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in September last year, became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines and is currently on a further training course in Morocco” (BBC, September 23, 2001). Saeed al-Ghamdi, alive and flying planes in Tunisia, also studied at Florida flight schools, as late as 2001. According to the London Telegraph (David Harrison, “Revealed: The Men with Stolen Identities,” September 23, 2001), CNN used his photograph in describing the hijacker with his name. Abdulaziz al-Omari acknowledged the same date of birth as the accused hijacker al-Omari but claimed his passport was stolen when he was living in Denver, Colorado (London Telegraph, September 23, 2001; Thompson, Terror Timeline, 497).</ref> In response to these protests, FBI director Robert Mueller acknowledged on September 20, 2001, that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers was in doubt. <ref>“Hijack ‘Suspects’ Alive and Well,” BBC, September 23, 2001. The editor of BBC News Online has since partially retracted the original BBC article (Steve Herrman, “9/11 Conspiracy Theory,” October 27, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/911_conspiracy_theory_1.html).</ref> But there is no trace of this doubt, or any discussion whatsoever of the problem, in the detailed treatment of the alleged hijackers in the 9/11 Commission Report. <ref> 9/11 Commission Report, 1–14, 215–42. Discussion in Griffin, 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 19–23.</ref> | + | Within two weeks of 9/11, the identities of at least six of the hijackers identified by the FBI were unclear; men in Arab countries with the same names and histories (and in at least one case the same photograph) were protesting that they were alive and innocent. <ref>The mainstream U.S. press, such as the New York Times, later attributed the confusion about the hijackers’ identity to the number of different Arabs sharing the same names. But at least five men shared histories as well as names with the alleged hijackers. [[Waleed al-Shehri]] told the [[BBC]] “that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in September last year, became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines and is currently on a further training course in Morocco” (BBC, September 23, 2001). Saeed al-Ghamdi, alive and flying planes in Tunisia, also studied at Florida flight schools, as late as 2001. According to the London Telegraph (David Harrison, “Revealed: The Men with Stolen Identities,” September 23, 2001), CNN used his photograph in describing the hijacker with his name. Abdulaziz al-Omari acknowledged the same date of birth as the accused hijacker al-Omari but claimed his passport was stolen when he was living in Denver, Colorado (London Telegraph, September 23, 2001; Thompson, Terror Timeline, 497).</ref> In response to these protests, [[FBI director]] [[Robert Mueller]] acknowledged on September 20, 2001, that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers was in doubt. <ref>“Hijack ‘Suspects’ Alive and Well,” BBC, September 23, 2001. The editor of [[BBC]] News Online has since partially retracted the original BBC article (Steve Herrman, “9/11 Conspiracy Theory,” October 27, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/911_conspiracy_theory_1.html).</ref> But there is no trace of this doubt, or any discussion whatsoever of the problem, in the detailed treatment of the alleged hijackers in the 9/11 Commission Report. <ref> 9/11 Commission Report, 1–14, 215–42. Discussion in Griffin, 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 19–23.</ref> |
====7) Prior investigations of the eventual suspects were suspended or impeded:==== | ====7) Prior investigations of the eventual suspects were suspended or impeded:==== | ||
− | Oswald, who had been on the FBI’s watch list since his travel to the Soviet Union in 1959, was inexplicably taken off the watch list on October 9, 1963, just after his arrest in New Orleans and his alleged trip to Mexico City would have made him a candidate for increased surveillance. <ref>FBI HQ Supervisor W. Marvin Gheesling was censured and transferred to Detroit “for removing stop on Oswald in Ident on 10/9/63” (NARA RIF #124-10371-10033; FBI file 62-117290-Admin Folder-V3, Response to SSC re Gayle Memo 9/30/64, 21, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123). Cf. John Newman, “Oswald and the Mexico City Tapes,” JFK Lancer Conference, Dallas, November 19, 1999, 3, http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_3.html: “Now, the day before the Mexico City story</ref> October 9, the day before the CIA reported to the FBI on Oswald’s Soviet contact in Mexico City, was the day CIA HQ itself received the news. This is comparable to the obstruction by the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI Headquarters of the Minneapolis FBI’s efforts to interview the so-called twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, especially after Moussaoui’s arrest on August 15, 2001. <ref>For details see Terrorist Timeline under “Maltbie,” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie: “RFU chief Dave Frasca stops the | + | Oswald, who had been on the FBI’s watch list since his travel to the Soviet Union in 1959, was inexplicably taken off the watch list on October 9, 1963, just after his arrest in [[New Orleans]] and his alleged trip to Mexico City would have made him a candidate for increased surveillance. <ref>FBI HQ Supervisor W. Marvin Gheesling was censured and transferred to Detroit “for removing stop on Oswald in Ident on 10/9/63” (NARA RIF #124-10371-10033; FBI file 62-117290-Admin Folder-V3, Response to SSC re Gayle Memo 9/30/64, 21, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123). Cf. John Newman, “Oswald and the Mexico City Tapes,” JFK Lancer Conference, Dallas, November 19, 1999, 3, http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_3.html: “Now, the day before the Mexico City story</ref> October 9, the day before the CIA reported to the FBI on Oswald’s Soviet contact in Mexico City, was the day CIA HQ itself received the news. This is comparable to the obstruction by the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI Headquarters of the Minneapolis FBI’s efforts to interview the so-called twentieth hijacker, [[Zacarias Moussaoui]], especially after Moussaoui’s arrest on August 15, 2001. <ref>For details see Terrorist Timeline under “Maltbie,” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie: “RFU chief Dave Frasca stops the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant (see August 21, 2001); When French authorities discover that Moussaoui is connected to the Chechen rebels, RFU agent Mike Maltbie insists that the FBI representative in Paris go through all telephone directories in France to see how many Zacarias Moussaouis live there (see August 22, 2001); When RFU agent Rita Flack, who is working on the Moussaoui case, reads the [[Phoenix memo]] suggesting that [[bin Laden]] is sending pilots to the US for training, she apparently does not tell her colleagues about it, even though it was addressed to several of them including Frasca (see July 10, 2001 and August 22, 2001); The RFU does not provide the relevant documentation to attorneys consulted about the request. In particular, Flack does not tell them about the Phoenix memo, even though one of the attorneys will later say she asked Flack if anyone is sending radical Islamists to the US to learn to fly (see August 22-28, 2001).”</ref> Moussaoui knew most of the other nineteen alleged hijackers who were named in the hijackings, and an interview of him, if not impeded, could have led to the detention of the nineteen. A Minnesota Special Agent, [[Harry Samit]], later testified that he wrote FBI headquarters about seventy memos on Moussaoui between August 16 and September 11, all to no avail. <ref>48 Newsday, March 21, 2006, |
− | Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant (see August 21, 2001); When French authorities discover that Moussaoui is connected to the Chechen rebels, RFU agent Mike Maltbie insists that the FBI representative in Paris go through all telephone directories in France to see how many Zacarias Moussaouis live there (see August 22, 2001); When RFU agent Rita Flack, who is working on the Moussaoui case, reads the Phoenix memo suggesting that bin Laden is sending pilots to the US for training, she apparently does not tell her colleagues about it, even though it was addressed to several of them including Frasca (see July 10, 2001 and August 22, 2001); The RFU does not provide the relevant documentation to attorneys consulted about the request. In particular, Flack does not tell them about the Phoenix memo, even though one of the attorneys will later say she asked Flack if anyone is sending radical Islamists to the US to learn to fly (see August 22-28, 2001).”</ref> Moussaoui knew most of the other nineteen alleged hijackers who were named in the hijackings, and an interview of him, if not impeded, could have led to the detention of the nineteen. A Minnesota Special Agent, Harry Samit, later testified that he wrote FBI headquarters about seventy memos on Moussaoui between August 16 and September 11, all to no avail. <ref>48 Newsday, March 21, 2006, | ||
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-mous214670355mar21,0,2844591.story.</ref> | http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-mous214670355mar21,0,2844591.story.</ref> | ||
− | Similarly the CIA failed to tell the FBI that two of the terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were in the United States. <ref>9/11 Commission Report, 269-72; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 339-44.</ref> The blocking of the Moussaoui investigation, and the withholding of the CIA’s information, have both been blamed on Janet Reno’s so-called Wall memorandum of 1995. But the Wall memo was renewed on August 6, 2001, by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. <ref>Thompson, Terror Timeline, 101.</ref> Another example of such obstruction was the curtailment of the Army intelligence investigation of al-Qaeda through its Able Danger program. According to Paul Thompson’s Terror Timeline, military lawyers on three occasions forced members of Able Danger to cancel scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute. Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer later complained that “critical counterterrorism information [was] never passed from SOCOM [Special Operations Command] to the FBI before 9/11; this information included the original data regarding Atta and the terrorist cells in New York and the DC area.” Rep. Curt Weldon (R), who in 2005 helped bring to light the existence of the program, commented, “Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred.” <ref>http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1299surprisingpresence; citing Shaffer testimony to US Congress, 2/15/2006. Government Security News, August 2005.</ref> hits the FBI they cancel the flash on Oswald. This is an example of what I'm talking about, dimming the switches.” | + | Similarly the CIA failed to tell the FBI that two of the terrorists, [[Khalid al-Mihdar]] and [[Nawaf al-Hazmi]], were in the United States. <ref>9/11 Commission Report, 269-72; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 339-44.</ref> The blocking of the Moussaoui investigation, and the withholding of the CIA’s information, have both been blamed on Janet Reno’s so-called Wall memorandum of 1995. But the Wall memo was renewed on August 6, 2001, by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. <ref>Thompson, Terror Timeline, 101.</ref> Another example of such obstruction was the curtailment of the Army intelligence investigation of al-Qaeda through its Able Danger program. According to Paul Thompson’s Terror Timeline, military lawyers on three occasions forced members of Able Danger to cancel scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute. Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer later complained that “critical counterterrorism information [was] never passed from SOCOM [Special Operations Command] to the FBI before 9/11; this information included the original data regarding Atta and the terrorist cells in New York and the DC area.” Rep. Curt Weldon (R), who in 2005 helped bring to light the existence of the program, commented, “Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred.” <ref>http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1299surprisingpresence; citing Shaffer testimony to US Congress, 2/15/2006. Government Security News, August 2005.</ref> hits the FBI they cancel the flash on Oswald. This is an example of what I'm talking about, dimming the switches.” |
Students of the John F. Kennedy assassination have speculated that Oswald’s name, with or without his knowledge and/or participation, was being used by the CIA in Mexico as part of a complex operation against Fidel Castro. <ref>52 E.g. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), esp. 141-42; John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 318-419; Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006), 531-46.</ref> If true, the removal of his name from the FBI watch list would not be absurd, but understandable, to prevent an accidental law enforcement interruption of a CIA operation. In like manner the obstructions of the FBI’s RFU would be understandable if Atta and Moussaoui or their names were being used as part of a contemporary intelligence operation. In this case what looks outwardly like senseless and incompetent behavior would actually be the result of FBI-CIA coordination. <ref>53 Particularly suggestive in this respect is RFU Agent Michael Maltbie’s weakening of a proposed FISA application by editing it and removing a statement by a CIA officer that Chechen rebel leader Ibn Khattab was closely connected to Osama bin Laden (Salon, March 3, 2003; “Michael Maltbie,” Terror Timeline, | Students of the John F. Kennedy assassination have speculated that Oswald’s name, with or without his knowledge and/or participation, was being used by the CIA in Mexico as part of a complex operation against Fidel Castro. <ref>52 E.g. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), esp. 141-42; John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 318-419; Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006), 531-46.</ref> If true, the removal of his name from the FBI watch list would not be absurd, but understandable, to prevent an accidental law enforcement interruption of a CIA operation. In like manner the obstructions of the FBI’s RFU would be understandable if Atta and Moussaoui or their names were being used as part of a contemporary intelligence operation. In this case what looks outwardly like senseless and incompetent behavior would actually be the result of FBI-CIA coordination. <ref>53 Particularly suggestive in this respect is RFU Agent Michael Maltbie’s weakening of a proposed FISA application by editing it and removing a statement by a CIA officer that Chechen rebel leader Ibn Khattab was closely connected to Osama bin Laden (Salon, March 3, 2003; “Michael Maltbie,” Terror Timeline, | ||
August 28, 2001, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie).</ref> | August 28, 2001, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie).</ref> | ||
− | A superficial distinction between the relevant events of 1963 and 2001 actually reinforces this possibility. Marvin Gheesling, the FBI Supervisor responsible for removing the stop on Oswald’s name, was later censured by Hoover for his action. <ref>Memorandum of September 30, 1964, from J.H. Gale to Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123.</ref> Dave Frasca, the RFU chief who stopped the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant against Moussaoui, was later promoted. <ref>Coleen Rowley Report, 5; quoted in Steve Moore, “The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington D.C.,” Global Research, August 18, 2002, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html.</ref> The difference is attributable to Hoover’s personal hostility to the CIA and his irritation with members of William C. Sullivan’s Intelligence Division of FBI (which included Gheesling) who in his eyes were too cooperative with it. This situation changed with Hoover’s death. | + | A superficial distinction between the relevant events of 1963 and 2001 actually reinforces this possibility. [[Marvin Gheesling]], the FBI Supervisor responsible for removing the stop on Oswald’s name, was later censured by [[J Edgar Hoover|Hoover]] for his action. <ref>Memorandum of September 30, 1964, from [[J.H. Gale]] to [[Associate FBI Director]] [[Clyde Tolson]], http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123.</ref> [[Dave Frasca]], the RFU chief who stopped the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant against Moussaoui, was later promoted. <ref>Coleen Rowley Report, 5; quoted in Steve Moore, “The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington D.C.,” Global Research, August 18, 2002, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html.</ref> The difference is attributable to Hoover’s personal hostility to the CIA and his irritation with members of William C. Sullivan’s Intelligence Division of FBI (which included Gheesling) who in his eyes were too cooperative with it. This situation changed with Hoover’s death. |
====8) The Role of Double Agents: Lee Harvey Oswald and Ali Mohamed==== | ====8) The Role of Double Agents: Lee Harvey Oswald and Ali Mohamed==== | ||
The last similarity strengthens a hypothesis that would begin to make sense of the preceding extraordinary similarities between the two cases. It is that surveillance was suspended because the designated culprits – Oswald and the hijackers – had to be protected from any law enforcement action that would impede their role in the events that would be attributed to them. There are two versions of this hypothesis. The first, less conspiratorial, is that those designated to be culprits had no relation to those in power on the two disastrous days. | The last similarity strengthens a hypothesis that would begin to make sense of the preceding extraordinary similarities between the two cases. It is that surveillance was suspended because the designated culprits – Oswald and the hijackers – had to be protected from any law enforcement action that would impede their role in the events that would be attributed to them. There are two versions of this hypothesis. The first, less conspiratorial, is that those designated to be culprits had no relation to those in power on the two disastrous days. | ||
− | A more likely and sinister version is that they were double agents being directed by those in power, even if they had no idea of the fate that had been determined for them. In this case the U.S. deep state would have a motive for limiting the investigation, to prevent disclosure of the operation with which the double agents were involved. Fifteen years ago I made the complicated case that Lee Harvey Oswald was just such a double agent. I hope to demonstrate below that the al-Qaeda trainer for the hijackings, Ali Mohamed, was also an important U.S. double agent, and that this role had already resulted in an earlier al- Qaeda conspiracy – the murder in 1990 of the Jewish racist Meir Kahane – being dismissed, familiarly, consciously, and wrongly, as the work of a “lone deranged gunman.” <ref> Newsday, November 8, 1990; discussion in Scott, Road to 9/11, 155-56.</ref> | + | A more likely and sinister version is that they were double agents being directed by those in power, even if they had no idea of the fate that had been determined for them. In this case the U.S. deep state would have a motive for limiting the investigation, to prevent disclosure of the operation with which the double agents were involved. Fifteen years ago I made the complicated case that [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] was just such a double agent. I hope to demonstrate below that the al-Qaeda trainer for the hijackings, Ali Mohamed, was also an important U.S. double agent, and that this role had already resulted in an earlier al- Qaeda conspiracy – the murder in 1990 of the Jewish racist [[Meir Kahane]] – being dismissed, familiarly, consciously, and wrongly, as the work of a “lone deranged gunman.”<ref> Newsday, November 8, 1990; discussion in Scott, Road to 9/11, 155-56.</ref> |
− | In Deep Politics (written in 1992) I explored at some length the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was a possible “double | + | In Deep Politics (written in 1992) I explored at some length the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was a possible “double agent... trying to infiltrate the Dallas Cuban refugee group.” <ref>57 Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 252; quoting Lucille Connell, 26 Warren Commission Hearings 738.</ref> I went on to make observations about Oswald as a double agent, observations that I now consider applicable to 9/11: |
:The preceding chapter considered the possibility that Oswald was associated with anti-Kennedy Cubans in order to investigate them on behalf of a federal agency. But we saw it alleged that Oswald was a double agent collaborating with some of these groups, either (as I suspect) because he or his handlers shared their goals [that is, anti-Kennedy goals], or possibly because he or his handlers had been “turned” by those they were supposed to investigate. Such a possibility was particularly likely with targets, like Alpha 66, about which the government itself was conflicted, of two minds.<ref>Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 257.</ref> | :The preceding chapter considered the possibility that Oswald was associated with anti-Kennedy Cubans in order to investigate them on behalf of a federal agency. But we saw it alleged that Oswald was a double agent collaborating with some of these groups, either (as I suspect) because he or his handlers shared their goals [that is, anti-Kennedy goals], or possibly because he or his handlers had been “turned” by those they were supposed to investigate. Such a possibility was particularly likely with targets, like Alpha 66, about which the government itself was conflicted, of two minds.<ref>Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 257.</ref> | ||
− | It is necessary to recall that Alpha 66 in early 1963 conducted a series of raids, not just against Cuba, but against Soviet ships in Cuba. It was obviously trying to shipwreck the US-Soviet understanding on Cuba, thus to torpedo the whole Kennedy policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Unambiguously the raids met with the total disapproval of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department (which cracked down on them and made a public announcement that they had to cease). At the same time there continued to be support for Alpha 66 from the CIA. <ref>Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), 173-76. Cf. Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (Southlake TX: JFK Lancer, 2006), 177-78.</ref> | + | It is necessary to recall that Alpha 66 in early 1963 conducted a series of raids, not just against Cuba, but against Soviet ships in Cuba. It was obviously trying to shipwreck the US-Soviet understanding on Cuba, thus to torpedo the whole Kennedy policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Unambiguously the raids met with the total disapproval of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department (which cracked down on them and made a public announcement that they had to cease). At the same time there continued to be support for Alpha 66 from the CIA. <ref>[[Warren Hinckle]] and William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), 173-76. Cf. Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (Southlake TX: JFK Lancer, 2006), 177-78.</ref> |
Double agents frequently become the stars both of the groups they penetrate and the government agencies to whom they report. Recently I have written about Ali Mohamed, who was Washington’s star double agent inside al-Qaeda, and also a chief al-Qaeda trainer for aircraft hijackings. <ref>60 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 151-59.</ref> (Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally,” and also “knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston’s Logan airport.”) <ref>J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html; quoted in Scott, The Road to 9/11, 158.</ref> Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, confirms that Ali Mohamed, one of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes, was an informant for the FBI, a one-time asset of the CIA, and for four years a member of the US Army. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, xxvii, etc.</ref> This special status explains why one of his protégés, El Sayyid Nosair, was able to commit the first al-Qaeda crime in America, back in 1990, be caught along with his co-conspirators, and yet be dismissed by the police and FBI as (and these are actual quotes) a “lone deranged gunman” who “acted alone.” <ref>63 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge (New York: Regan Books/ Harper Collins, 2003), 35; New York Times, 12/16/90.</ref> | Double agents frequently become the stars both of the groups they penetrate and the government agencies to whom they report. Recently I have written about Ali Mohamed, who was Washington’s star double agent inside al-Qaeda, and also a chief al-Qaeda trainer for aircraft hijackings. <ref>60 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 151-59.</ref> (Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally,” and also “knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston’s Logan airport.”) <ref>J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html; quoted in Scott, The Road to 9/11, 158.</ref> Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, confirms that Ali Mohamed, one of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes, was an informant for the FBI, a one-time asset of the CIA, and for four years a member of the US Army. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, xxvii, etc.</ref> This special status explains why one of his protégés, El Sayyid Nosair, was able to commit the first al-Qaeda crime in America, back in 1990, be caught along with his co-conspirators, and yet be dismissed by the police and FBI as (and these are actual quotes) a “lone deranged gunman” who “acted alone.” <ref>63 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge (New York: Regan Books/ Harper Collins, 2003), 35; New York Times, 12/16/90.</ref> | ||
− | In fact, the FBI was aware back in 1990 that Mohamed had engaged in terrorist training on Long Island; yet it acted to protect Mohamed from arrest, even after one of his trainees had moved beyond training to an actual assassination. <ref>Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-37.</ref> Three years later, in 1993, Mohamed was actually detained in Canada by the RCMP. But he gave the RCMP the telephone number of his FBI handler in San Francisco, and after a brief call the RCMP released him. <ref>65 Lance, Triple Cross, 123-25.</ref> This enabled Mohamed to fly later in the year to Nairobi, and begin to organize the eventual al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Africa. | + | In fact, the FBI was aware back in 1990 that Mohamed had engaged in terrorist training on Long Island; yet it acted to protect Mohamed from arrest, even after one of his trainees had moved beyond training to an actual assassination. <ref>Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-37.</ref> Three years later, in 1993, Mohamed was actually detained in Canada by the [[RCMP]]. But he gave the RCMP the telephone number of his FBI handler in San Francisco, and after a brief call the RCMP released him. <ref>65 Lance, Triple Cross, 123-25.</ref> This enabled Mohamed to fly later in the year to Nairobi, and begin to organize the eventual al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Africa. |
− | Mohamed’s trainees were all members of the Al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, which served as the main American recruiting center for the Makhtab-al-Khidimat, the “Services Center” network that after the Afghan war became known as al-Qaeda. <ref>66 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2005), 278; John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 87-88; Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-31; Independent, 11/1/98.</ref> The Al-Kifah Center was headed in 1990 by the blind Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who like Ali Mohamed had been admitted to the United States, despite being on a State Department Watch List. <ref>Rahman was issued two visas, one of them “by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan” (Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [New York: Free Press, 2001], 67). FBI consultant Paul Williams writes that Ali Mohamed “settled in America on a visa program controlled by the CIA” (Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror [[Upper Saddle River, NJ]: Alpha/ Pearson Education, 2002], 117). Others allegedly admitted, despite being on the State Department watch list, were Mohamed Atta and possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri | + | Mohamed’s trainees were all members of the [[Al-Kifah Center]] in Brooklyn, which served as the main American recruiting center for the [[Makhtab-al-Khidimat]], the “Services Center” network that after the Afghan war became known as al-Qaeda. <ref>66 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2005), 278; John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 87-88; Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-31; Independent, 11/1/98.</ref> The Al-Kifah Center was headed in 1990 by the blind Egyptian Sheikh [[Omar Abdel Rahman]], who like Ali Mohamed had been admitted to the United States, despite being on a State Department Watch List. <ref>Rahman was issued two visas, one of them “by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan” (Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [New York: Free Press, 2001], 67). FBI consultant Paul Williams writes that Ali Mohamed “settled in America on a visa program controlled by the CIA” (Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror [[Upper Saddle River, NJ]: Alpha/ Pearson Education, 2002], 117). Others allegedly admitted, despite being on the State Department watch list, were Mohamed Atta and possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri |
(Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism [Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005], 205, 46).</ref> As he had done earlier in Egypt, the sheikh “issued a fatwa in America that permitted his followers to rob banks and kill Jews.”<ref>Wright, The Looming Tower, 177.</ref> It would be wrong to think that Ali Mohamed was training Nosair and his fellow Islamists to fight Russians in Afghanistan. Nosair’s defense attorney argued this vigorously in a second trial of Nosair, the so-called New York landmarks case of 1995. <ref>69 United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., S5 93 Cr. 181 (MBM), 19122; in Berger, Ali Mohamed, 205. 217.</ref> However the Soviets had totally withdrawn from Afghanistan by February 1989, and Mohamed was training Nosair in July 1989, at a time when the U.S. government, to paraphrase what was just said about 1963, was of two minds about what to do in Afghanistan. | (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism [Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005], 205, 46).</ref> As he had done earlier in Egypt, the sheikh “issued a fatwa in America that permitted his followers to rob banks and kill Jews.”<ref>Wright, The Looming Tower, 177.</ref> It would be wrong to think that Ali Mohamed was training Nosair and his fellow Islamists to fight Russians in Afghanistan. Nosair’s defense attorney argued this vigorously in a second trial of Nosair, the so-called New York landmarks case of 1995. <ref>69 United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., S5 93 Cr. 181 (MBM), 19122; in Berger, Ali Mohamed, 205. 217.</ref> However the Soviets had totally withdrawn from Afghanistan by February 1989, and Mohamed was training Nosair in July 1989, at a time when the U.S. government, to paraphrase what was just said about 1963, was of two minds about what to do in Afghanistan. | ||
− | The CIA was backing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a major heroin trafficker with his own heroin labs, as part of the | + | The CIA was backing [[Gulbuddin Hekmatyar]], a major heroin trafficker with his own [[heroin]] labs, as part of the [[ISI]]’s puppet alternative to the secular, anti-Islamist government in Kabul, which the Russians left behind. <ref>70 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 195. In retrospect, the decision to back Hekmatyar against Najibullah appears to have been disastrous. As Ahmed Rashid predicted accurately in 1990, “If Afghanistan fragments into warlordism, the West can expect a flood of cheap heroin that will be impossible to stop …Afghanistan's President Najibullah has skillfully played on Western fears of a drugs epidemic by repeatedly offering co-operation with the [[DEA]] and other anti- narcotic agencies, but the West, which still insists on his downfall, has refused. If President [George Herbert Walker] Bush and Margaret Thatcher continue to reject a peace process, they must prepare for an invasion of Afghan-grown heroin in Washington and London” (Ahmed Rashid, “Afghanistan heroin set to flood West,” Independent (London), 3/25/90: “In early 1988 the State Department negotiators had been preparing to accept an end to CIA assistance.” They then reversed themselves and held out for a matching of Soviet and CIA support to the two factions. Apparently the policy shift was motivated by an unscripted remark by Reagan to a television interviewer (Coll, Ghost Wars, 176-77).</ref> Meanwhile a State Department official, Edmund McWilliams, with middle-level backing in Washington, objected that “Pakistani intelligence and Hekmatyar were dangerous allies,” and that the United States was making an important mistake by endorsing ISI’s puppet Afghan government. <ref>Coll, Ghost Wars, 196; cf. 197-202; Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 251. McWilliams’ argument found support among mid-level State Department officials in Washington; “Still, the more State Department officials mouthed the McWilliams line, the more Langley argued the contrary” (Coll, Ghost Wars, 197).</ref> But Ali Mohamed’s training, both in Afghanistan and later around New York, was precisely designed to strengthen the Arab Afghans in Brooklyn who were allied with Hekmatyar. <ref>Cf. Lance, Triple Cross, 20, 66.</ref> |
− | Ali Mohamed’s trainees became involved in terrorist activities in other parts of the world. One of them, Anas al-Liby, became a leader in a plot against Libyan president Mu’ammar Ghadafi. Anas al-Liby was later given political asylum in Great Britain, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, 104-05. In May 2000 al-Liby’s house in Britain was raided; and the police discovered an al-Qaeda terror manual which was largely written and translated by Ali Mohamed.</ref> As the French authors Brisard and Dasquié point out, | + | Ali Mohamed’s trainees became involved in terrorist activities in other parts of the world. One of them, Anas al-Liby, became a leader in a plot against Libyan president Mu’ammar Ghadafi. Anas al-Liby was later given political asylum in Great Britain, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, 104-05. In May 2000 al-Liby’s house in Britain was raided; and the police discovered an al-Qaeda terror manual which was largely written and translated by [[Ali Mohamed]].</ref> As the French authors Brisard and Dasquié point out, [[Ghadafi]]’s [[Libya]] in 1998 was the first government to ask [[Interpol]] to issue an arrest warrant for [[Osama bin Laden]]. They argue that Osama and al-Qaeda elements were collaborating with the British MI-5 in an anti- Ghadafi assassination plot. <ref>Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2002), 97-102, 155-59. Anas al-Liby was trained in terrorism by the triple agent Ali Mohamed, while Mohamed was still on the payroll of the U.S. Army (Peter Lance, Triple Cross: How Bin Laden's Chief Security Adviser Penetrated the CIA, the FBI, and the Green Berets [New York: Regan, 2006], 104; see also Chapter IX). 75 United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., Federal Court, SDNY, 15629-30, 15634-35, 15654, 15667-68, 15671, 15673; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad, 72-74; J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited</ref> |
Another of Ali Mohamed’s trainees, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, accepted money from the Saudi Embassy in Washington to recruit Muslim warriors for Bosnia. <ref>United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., Federal Court, SDNY, 15629-30, 15634-35, 15654, 15667-68, 15671, 15673; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad, 72-74; J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited U.S. Servicemen: Testimony Links Plot To Saudi Gov't,” Intelwire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/hamptonel010604.html.</ref> He was also allowed to go to Fort Belvoir, where an Army major gave him a list of Muslims in the US Army whom he could recruit. Fort Belvoir was the site of the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA), whose Information Dominance Center was “full of army intelligence `geeks’” targeting Islamic jihadists. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, 331.</ref> | Another of Ali Mohamed’s trainees, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, accepted money from the Saudi Embassy in Washington to recruit Muslim warriors for Bosnia. <ref>United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., Federal Court, SDNY, 15629-30, 15634-35, 15654, 15667-68, 15671, 15673; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad, 72-74; J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited U.S. Servicemen: Testimony Links Plot To Saudi Gov't,” Intelwire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/hamptonel010604.html.</ref> He was also allowed to go to Fort Belvoir, where an Army major gave him a list of Muslims in the US Army whom he could recruit. Fort Belvoir was the site of the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA), whose Information Dominance Center was “full of army intelligence `geeks’” targeting Islamic jihadists. <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, 331.</ref> | ||
− | Hampton-El’s recruiting for Bosnia was part of a larger operation. Numbers of Arab Afghans were trained for Bosnia, and later for the Kosovo Liberation Army, by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top associate of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda, and also a close ally of his fellow Egyptian, Ali Mohamed. <ref>Marcia Christoff Kurop, “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” Wall Street Journal, 11/1/01: “For the past 10 | + | Hampton-El’s recruiting for Bosnia was part of a larger operation. Numbers of Arab Afghans were trained for [[Bosnia]], and later for the [[Kosovo Liberation Army]], by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top associate of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda, and also a close ally of his fellow Egyptian, Ali Mohamed. <ref>Marcia Christoff Kurop, “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” Wall Street Journal, 11/1/01: “For the past 10 years... [[Ayman al-Zawahiri]] has operated terrorist training camps [and] weapons of mass destruction factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.”</ref> (Ali Mohamed had sworn allegiance to al-Zawahiri in 1984 while still in Egypt, and he twice arranged for al-Zawahiri to come to stay with him in California for fund-raising purposes.) <ref>79 Lance, Triple Cross, 11, 194-98.</ref> Meanwhile US intelligence veterans like Richard Secord helped bring Arab Afghans recruited by Hekmatyar to Azerbaijan, in order to consolidate a pro-western government there. <ref>80 Peter Dale Scott, “The Background of 9/11: Drugs, Oil, and U.S. Covert Operations,” in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (eds.), 9/11 & American Empire, 75-76. 81 Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (Roseville: Prima, 2001), 298, 397-98.</ref> And in 1998 the US began bombing Kosovo in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, some of whose cadres were both trained and supported in the field by al-Qaeda’s “Arab Afghans.” |
− | So Ali | + | So [[Ali Mohammad]]’s activities intersected with US covert operations, and this fact appears to have earned him protection. <ref> Cf. Robert Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93: “In the aftermath of the bombing, many are wondering why there wasn't a comprehensive, wide-ranging investigation of [[Meir Kahane]]'s murder. One possible explanation is offered by a counterterrorism expert for the [[FBI]]. At a meeting in a Denny's coffee shop in Los Angeles a week after the Kahane assassination, the 20-year veteran field agent met with one of his top undercover operatives, a burly 33-year-old FBI contract employee who had been a premier bomber for a domestic terrorist group before being `turned’ and becoming a government informant. `Why aren't we going after the sheikh [Abdel Rahman]?’ demanded the undercover man. `It's hands-off,’ answered the agent. `Why?’ asked the operative. `It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he's still in the country,’ replied the agent, visibly upset. `He's here under the banner of [[national security]], the [[State Department]], the [[NSA]] [National Security Agency], and the [[CIA]].’"</ref> Jack Blum, former special investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented that One of the big problems here is that many suspects in the [1993] World Trade Center bombing were associated with the Mujahedeen. And there are components of our government that are absolutely disinterested in following that path because it leads back to people we supported in the Afghan war. <ref>Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93.</ref> |
What agency would have been interested in protecting Mohamed? The CIA claimed to have ceased using him as an operative back in 1984. <ref>84 Lance, Triple Cross, 16.</ref> Yet in 1988 Ali Mohamed flew from Fort Bragg to Afghanistan and fought there, while he was on the US Army payroll. His commanding officer didn’t like it, but Mohammad was apparently being directed by another agency. <ref>85 Lance, Triple Cross, 43: “Ali Mohamed defied his commanding officer and prepared to go [to Afghanistan] anyway. At that point, it seems clear that he was serving two sets of masters at Bragg.”</ref> Ten years later, in 1998, a confidential CIA internal survey concluded that it was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, carried out by some of Ali Mohamed’s trainees. <ref>86 Andrew Marshall, Independent, 11/1/98.</ref> After a plea bargain, Ali Mohamed eventually pleaded guilty in 2000 to having organized the bombings of US embassies in Africa, but as of 2006 he had still not yet been sentenced. <ref>87 Lance, Triple Cross, 3, 7. The CIA has shown through the years the lengths it will go to, to prevent having its sometime assets testify in open court. Cf. Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 36; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Contras and the CIA: Government Policies and the Cocaine Economy. An Analysis of Media and Government Response to the Gary Webb Stories in the San Jose Mercury News (1996-2000) (Los Angeles: From the Wilderness Publications, 2000), 39-40, etc.</ref> | What agency would have been interested in protecting Mohamed? The CIA claimed to have ceased using him as an operative back in 1984. <ref>84 Lance, Triple Cross, 16.</ref> Yet in 1988 Ali Mohamed flew from Fort Bragg to Afghanistan and fought there, while he was on the US Army payroll. His commanding officer didn’t like it, but Mohammad was apparently being directed by another agency. <ref>85 Lance, Triple Cross, 43: “Ali Mohamed defied his commanding officer and prepared to go [to Afghanistan] anyway. At that point, it seems clear that he was serving two sets of masters at Bragg.”</ref> Ten years later, in 1998, a confidential CIA internal survey concluded that it was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, carried out by some of Ali Mohamed’s trainees. <ref>86 Andrew Marshall, Independent, 11/1/98.</ref> After a plea bargain, Ali Mohamed eventually pleaded guilty in 2000 to having organized the bombings of US embassies in Africa, but as of 2006 he had still not yet been sentenced. <ref>87 Lance, Triple Cross, 3, 7. The CIA has shown through the years the lengths it will go to, to prevent having its sometime assets testify in open court. Cf. Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 36; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Contras and the CIA: Government Policies and the Cocaine Economy. An Analysis of Media and Government Response to the Gary Webb Stories in the San Jose Mercury News (1996-2000) (Los Angeles: From the Wilderness Publications, 2000), 39-40, etc.</ref> | ||
====9) The Cover-Up Modus Operandi: The Culprit “Acted Alone”==== | ====9) The Cover-Up Modus Operandi: The Culprit “Acted Alone”==== | ||
− | Unambiguously Mohamed’s trainees became involved, almost immediately, in terrorism on US soil. In November 1990, three of Mohamed’s trainees conspired together to kill Meir Kahane, the racist founder of the Jewish Defense League. The actual killer, El Sayyid Nosair, was caught by accident almost immediately; and by luck the police soon found his two co-conspirators, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh, waiting at Nosair’s apartment. They found much more: | + | Unambiguously Mohamed’s trainees became involved, almost immediately, in terrorism on US soil. In November 1990, three of Mohamed’s trainees conspired together to kill Meir Kahane, the racist founder of the [[Jewish Defense League]]. The actual killer, [[El Sayyid Nosair]], was caught by accident almost immediately; and by luck the police soon found his two co-conspirators, [[Mahmoud Abouhalima]] and [[Mohammed Salameh]], waiting at Nosair’s apartment. They found much more: |
− | :There were formulas for bomb making, 1,440 rounds of ammunition, and manuals [supplied by Ali Mohamed] from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg marked “Top Secret for Training,” along with classified documents belonging to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The police found maps and drawings of New York City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, Times Square – and the World Trade Center. The forty-seven boxes of evidence they collected also included the collected sermons of blind Sheikh Omar, in which he exhorted his followers to “destroy the edifices of capitalism.” <ref>88 Lance, 1000 Years, </ref> | + | :There were formulas for bomb making, 1,440 rounds of ammunition, and manuals [supplied by Ali Mohamed] from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg marked “Top Secret for Training,” along with classified documents belonging to the U.S. [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]]. The police found maps and drawings of New York City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, Times Square – and the World Trade Center. The forty-seven boxes of evidence they collected also included the collected sermons of blind Sheikh Omar, in which he exhorted his followers to “destroy the edifices of capitalism.” <ref>88 Lance, 1000 Years, </ref> |
− | All three had been trained by Ali Mohamed back in July 1989 at a rifle range, where the FBI had photographed them, before terminating this surveillance later in the same month. <ref>Lance, 1000 Years, 31-32; Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding about the War on Terror (New York: Regan Books/ HarperCollins, 2004), 25.</ref> The U.S. Government was thus in an excellent position to arrest, indict, and convict all of the terrorists involved, including Mohamed. Yet only hours after the killing, Joseph Borelli, Chief of NYPD detectives, struck a familiar American note and pronounced Nosair a “lone deranged gunman.” <ref>90 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Lance, 1000 Years, 35.</ref> Some time later, he actually told the press that “There was nothing [at Nosair’s house] that would stir your imagination…..Nothing has transpired that changes our opinion that he acted alone.” <ref>New York Times, 11/8/90; Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93.</ref> | + | All three had been trained by Ali Mohamed back in July 1989 at a rifle range, where the FBI had photographed them, before terminating this surveillance later in the same month. <ref>Lance, 1000 Years, 31-32; Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding about the War on Terror (New York: Regan Books/ HarperCollins, 2004), 25.</ref> The U.S. Government was thus in an excellent position to arrest, indict, and convict all of the terrorists involved, including Mohamed. Yet only hours after the killing, [[Joseph Borelli]], Chief of NYPD detectives, struck a familiar American note and pronounced Nosair a “lone deranged gunman.” <ref>90 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Lance, 1000 Years, 35.</ref> Some time later, he actually told the press that “There was nothing [at Nosair’s house] that would stir your imagination…..Nothing has transpired that changes our opinion that he acted alone.” <ref>New York Times, 11/8/90; Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93.</ref> |
Borelli was not a lone deranged official in this matter. His position was also that of the FBI, who said they too believed “that Mr. Nosair had acted alone in shooting Rabbi Kahane.” “The bottom line is that we can't connect anyone else to the Kahane shooting," an F.B.I. agent said.” <ref>New York Times, 12/16/90.</ref> | Borelli was not a lone deranged official in this matter. His position was also that of the FBI, who said they too believed “that Mr. Nosair had acted alone in shooting Rabbi Kahane.” “The bottom line is that we can't connect anyone else to the Kahane shooting," an F.B.I. agent said.” <ref>New York Times, 12/16/90.</ref> | ||
− | The initial reaction of the NYPD had been that Nosair was part of a conspiracy.<ref>93 “Nosair, the NYPD had already learned, had apparently not acted alone…Lieutenant Eddie | + | The initial reaction of the NYPD had been that Nosair was part of a conspiracy.<ref>93 “Nosair, the NYPD had already learned, had apparently not acted alone…Lieutenant [[Eddie Norris]]... seemed to be looking at a conspiracy involving three and possibly more assassins.” (John Miller and Michael Stone, with Chris Mitchell, The Cell [New York: Hyperion, 2003], 43].</ref> This impression was strengthened when a detective discovered that Borelli’s car had been moved after Nosair was arrested. As a result, according to the District Attorney prosecutor on the case, William Greenbaum, “We sensed a much bigger conspiracy, and we were sure that more than one person was involved.” <ref>94 Lance, Triple Cross, 59.</ref> How then to explain the ultimate assurances that Nosair was a lone assassin? John Miller, who went on to be the assistant director of public affairs for the FBI, <ref>Lance, Triple Cross, 115.</ref> blamed the culture of the NYPD: “The prevailing theory in the NYPD was, `Don’t make waves.’…So in the Nosair case, when Chief Borelli turned a blind eye to the obvious, he was merely remaining true to the culture of the NYPD.” <ref>Miller et al., The Cell, 44-45.</ref> Miller’s unlikely explanation suppressed the relevant fact that the FBI, and eventually the District Attorney’s office which prosecuted the case, turned a blind eye to the obvious as well. |
In the light of those 47 boxes of incriminating evidence, it is more likely that the US law enforcement system has a standard cover-up modus operandi or MO for dealing with a suspect who is marginally attached to intelligence operations, covert operations, even controversial operations which are opposed by other elements of the US government. It is to tell the public (as they did earlier in the case of Oswald) that the suspect “acted alone.” | In the light of those 47 boxes of incriminating evidence, it is more likely that the US law enforcement system has a standard cover-up modus operandi or MO for dealing with a suspect who is marginally attached to intelligence operations, covert operations, even controversial operations which are opposed by other elements of the US government. It is to tell the public (as they did earlier in the case of Oswald) that the suspect “acted alone.” | ||
− | In thus limiting the case, the police and FBI were in effect protecting Nosair’s two Arab co-conspirators in the murder of a U.S. citizen. Both of them were ultimately convicted in connection with the first WTC bombing, along with another Mohamed trainee, Nidal Ayyad. The 9/11 Report, summarizing the convictions of Salameh, Ayyad, Abouhalima, and the blind Sheikh for the WTC bombing and New York landmarks plots, called it “this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort.” <ref>9/11 Report, 72.</ref> It said nothing about the suppressed evidence found in Nosair’s house, including “maps and drawings of New York City landmarks,” which if pursued should have prevented both plots from developing. In short the 9/11 Commission continued the pre-existing cover-up. And proper surveillance of this circle might have led investigators to the developing 9/11 plot as well. “Lance pinpoints how, in 1991, the FBI, knowing of a New Jersey mail box store with direct links to al-Qaida, failed to keep it under watch. Just six years later, two of the 9/11 hijackers got their fake IDs at the same location.” <ref>Toronto Sun, 11/19/06.</ref> In addition, Ali Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally.” <ref>J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html.</ref> | + | In thus limiting the case, the police and FBI were in effect protecting Nosair’s two Arab co-conspirators in the murder of a U.S. citizen. Both of them were ultimately convicted in connection with the [[first WTC bombing]], along with another Mohamed trainee, Nidal Ayyad. The 9/11 Report, summarizing the convictions of Salameh, Ayyad, Abouhalima, and the blind Sheikh for the WTC bombing and [[New York landmarks plots]], called it “this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort.” <ref>9/11 Report, 72.</ref> It said nothing about the suppressed evidence found in Nosair’s house, including “maps and drawings of New York City landmarks,” which if pursued should have prevented both plots from developing. In short the 9/11 Commission continued the pre-existing cover-up. And proper surveillance of this circle might have led investigators to the developing 9/11 plot as well. “Lance pinpoints how, in 1991, the FBI, knowing of a New Jersey mail box store with direct links to al-Qaida, failed to keep it under watch. Just six years later, two of the 9/11 hijackers got their fake IDs at the same location.” <ref>Toronto Sun, 11/19/06.</ref> In addition, Ali Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally.” <ref>J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html.</ref> |
===Summary: The Repeated Modus Operandi for Cover-up=== | ===Summary: The Repeated Modus Operandi for Cover-up=== | ||
− | There is a repeated cover-up MO here which is observed in both the JFK assassination and the two WTC attacks. These deep events were not properly solved, because the designated principals in them could not be properly investigated. The preselected candidates were ones about whom the truth did not emerge, because of the candidates’ controversial involvement in previous covered-up operations. This ensured that an institutional cover-up, already in place, was extended to cover the new crime, even though it was a major one. Oswald was one such pre-selected candidate. Those conspiratorially involved with Ali Mohamed and with 9/11 would also seem to fit the same description. That is what struck me most when I went back to compare the killings of Kennedy and of Meir Kahane. Both Oswald and Nosair were quickly declared “lone” assassins, to protect someone or something else. <ref>Another man about whom the whole truth never emerged was Howard Hunt in Watergate, of whom President said to his aide Haldeman, “Hunt…will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things.” This became the key to the cover-up that eventually cost Nixon his presidency. Fear of the Hunt “scab” apparently induced both Nixon and Helms to collude in ordering the FBI to suspend its interviews (Emery, Watergate, 193. Helms denied strenuously that he had ordered the FBI to suspend its interviews, and testified under oath that he had no knowledge of any CIA exposure by Hunt’s activities. Yet unmistakably he sent a memo to Vernon Walters, the CIA Deputy Director, repeating that the FBI should “confine themselves to the persons already arrested or directly under suspicion and…desist from expanding this investigation”).</ref> | + | There is a repeated cover-up MO here which is observed in both the JFK assassination and the two WTC attacks. These deep events were not properly solved, because the designated principals in them could not be properly investigated. The preselected candidates were ones about whom the truth did not emerge, because of the candidates’ controversial involvement in previous covered-up operations. This ensured that an institutional cover-up, already in place, was extended to cover the new crime, even though it was a major one. Oswald was one such pre-selected candidate. Those conspiratorially involved with Ali Mohamed and with 9/11 would also seem to fit the same description. That is what struck me most when I went back to compare the killings of Kennedy and of [[Meir Kahane]]. Both Oswald and Nosair were quickly declared “lone” assassins, to protect someone or something else. <ref>Another man about whom the whole truth never emerged was [[Howard Hunt]] in [[Watergate]], of whom President said to his aide Haldeman, “Hunt…will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things.” This became the key to the cover-up that eventually cost [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] his presidency. Fear of the Hunt “scab” apparently induced both Nixon and Helms to collude in ordering the FBI to suspend its interviews (Emery, Watergate, 193. Helms denied strenuously that he had ordered the FBI to suspend its interviews, and testified under oath that he had no knowledge of any CIA exposure by Hunt’s activities. Yet unmistakably he sent a memo to [[Vernon Walters]], the [[CIA Deputy Director]], repeating that the FBI should “confine themselves to the persons already arrested or directly under suspicion and…desist from expanding this investigation”).</ref> |
− | The similarity between the cover-up of Oswald in 1963 and Nosair in 1990 is striking. In both cases the truth about the predesignated culprit was unpursuable, because he was part of an operation too embarrassing to disclose. In the case of the Ali Mohamed trainees, this is a major scandal. These people could have been stopped back in 1990, before they attacked the World Trade Center. And they weren’t. I should make clear that with respect to 9/11, I have certain knowledge of only one fact: that there has been and continues to be a massive cover-up. I have not yet properly integrated the earlier cover-up in 1990 of Mosair’s associates, including Ali Mohamed, into my theory of what happened in 2001. I do however believe that the earlier cover-up is relevant to the later one, as exemplified by the strange treatment of the first WTC attack in the 9/11 Commission Report. I conclude from this that it is a matter of paramount importance to learn more about these meta-events and their cover-ups. Because when we can understand what has happened before, we will be more able to deal with such a meta-event when it happens again. As I have said so many times, to understand any of these events in real depth, you have to look at what is on-going in all of them. The traditional media seem determined, predictably, not to help in this matter. In November 2006, six weeks after Lance’s Triple Cross was released, Lexis Nexis recorded only one post-publication reference to it or to Ali Mohamed | + | The similarity between the cover-up of Oswald in 1963 and Nosair in 1990 is striking. In both cases the truth about the predesignated culprit was unpursuable, because he was part of an operation too embarrassing to disclose. In the case of the Ali Mohamed trainees, this is a major scandal. These people could have been stopped back in 1990, before they attacked the World Trade Center. And they weren’t. I should make clear that with respect to 9/11, I have certain knowledge of only one fact: that there has been and continues to be a massive cover-up. I have not yet properly integrated the earlier cover-up in 1990 of Mosair’s associates, including Ali Mohamed, into my theory of what happened in 2001. I do however believe that the earlier cover-up is relevant to the later one, as exemplified by the strange treatment of the first WTC attack in the [[9/11 Commission]] Report. I conclude from this that it is a matter of paramount importance to learn more about these meta-events and their cover-ups. Because when we can understand what has happened before, we will be more able to deal with such a meta-event when it happens again. As I have said so many times, to understand any of these events in real depth, you have to look at what is on-going in all of them. The traditional media seem determined, predictably, not to help in this matter. In November 2006, six weeks after Lance’s Triple Cross was released, Lexis Nexis recorded only one post-publication reference to it or to [[Ali Mohamed]] — the Toronto Sun of 11/19/06. <ref>The ''[[New York Times]]'' (8/28/06) did cover, albeit disparagingly, an earlier National Geographic TV special in August 2006, which drew selectively from Lance’s work.</ref> But there is no lack of interest on the Internet, where at the same time there were 43,600 hits on Triple Cross.) <ref>The silence of the US press about Triple Cross was broken very slightly on 12/19/06, with the following bland reference in the New York Times in the wake of the firing by News Corp of the book’s publisher, [[Judith Regan]]: “Peter Lance, the author of `Triple Cross,’ an investigative work about the F.B.I. and the terror network of [[Osama Bin Laden]], said Ms. Regan abandoned his book, released in late November, when the media storm erupted over the O. J. Simpson project, even canceling a scheduled interview with him on her own radio program.”</ref> The gravity of the Ali Mohamed matter is compounded by the context of the drug traffic. To get to the level where we can cope and deal with these recurring problems in our country, we will have to understand the continuity, and deal with it every time it surfaces. Some of the similarities noted here are probably extrinsic to the events described. But others point to a strong common denominator between JFK and 9/11. We can mention in particular the following features of a common modus operandi: |
#The prior designation of a suspect or suspects. These had a past intelligence involvement, which obstructed proper investigation of them, and of the deep events attributed to them. In both cases the suspects either were or involved double agents, with life stories or legends on two different levels. | #The prior designation of a suspect or suspects. These had a past intelligence involvement, which obstructed proper investigation of them, and of the deep events attributed to them. In both cases the suspects either were or involved double agents, with life stories or legends on two different levels. | ||
#The laying of a paper trail. This was strong enough to ensure that investigation would lead promptly to the designated suspects. | #The laying of a paper trail. This was strong enough to ensure that investigation would lead promptly to the designated suspects. | ||
#The immediate attribution of the deep event to the designated suspects. | #The immediate attribution of the deep event to the designated suspects. | ||
− | #The announcement that the suspect or suspects acted alone, even when there was clear evidence to show this was not true. <ref>In the case of 9/11, the restriction was not confined to the nineteen hijackers, but to al-Qaeda as an | + | #The announcement that the suspect or suspects acted alone, even when there was clear evidence to show this was not true. <ref>In the case of 9/11, the restriction was not confined to the nineteen hijackers, but to al-Qaeda as an organization.</ref> |
− | organization.</ref> | ||
#Both deep events involved experienced criminals, drawn from the world of organized drug trafficking, as I show below. | #Both deep events involved experienced criminals, drawn from the world of organized drug trafficking, as I show below. | ||
====10) Drug-Traffickers and Deep Events, from the JFK Assassination to 9/11==== | ====10) Drug-Traffickers and Deep Events, from the JFK Assassination to 9/11==== | ||
− | Pulling back now and looking at all four biggest “deep events” of the last four decades – the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-ins, Contragate, and now 9/11 – we see that their common denominator is drug-trafficking. Why is this? In the first three the deep state worked with assets or proxies outside civil society and beyond the rule of law. This raises the possibility that in 9/11 the same thing happened again, extending the instances of U.S.-Al-Qaeda collaboration which occurred in the 1990s. The pattern moreover is that exhibited by the gizli devlet or deep state in Turkey, where a Parliamentary Investigation into the Susurluk Report concluded that the deep state had used the drug-trafficking Grey Wolves and fomented conflicts in the 1970s between the Turkish right and left. <ref>Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT): Annual Report 1997; Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.</ref> The alliance between the deep state and drug traffickers has surfaced in other countries as well, including France, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Pakistan, Taiwan | + | Pulling back now and looking at all four biggest “deep events” of the last four decades – the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-ins, Contragate, and now 9/11 – we see that their common denominator is [[drug-trafficking]]. Why is this? In the first three the deep state worked with assets or proxies outside civil society and beyond the rule of law. This raises the possibility that in 9/11 the same thing happened again, extending the instances of U.S.-Al-Qaeda collaboration which occurred in the 1990s. The pattern moreover is that exhibited by the gizli devlet or deep state in Turkey, where a Parliamentary Investigation into the Susurluk Report concluded that the deep state had used the drug-trafficking Grey Wolves and fomented conflicts in the [[1970s]] between the Turkish right and left. <ref>Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT): Annual Report 1997; Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.</ref> The alliance between the deep state and drug traffickers has surfaced in other countries as well, including [[France]], [[Italy]], [[Mexico]], [[Panama]], [[Pakistan]], [[Taiwan]] and [[Japan]]. |
− | Let me stress that, at the time, the drug connections to JFK and 9/11 were vigorously suppressed and denied. But they have since become clear. I will give a few examples. The Warren Report argued that Jack Ruby “was not involved with Chicago’s criminal element.” <ref>Warren Report, 785.</ref> But in 1979 the House Assassinations Committee assembled a report of over 1000 pages on his organized crime connections in Chicago and elsewhere. It heard from a close Ruby associate, Lewis McWillie, that in 1959 he and Ruby had visited the Trescornia camp in Cuba, and the “primary reason” for the visit was to meet Giuseppe deGeorge. DeGeorge was (though McWillie did not say this) one of the two top heroin couriers between Europe and Cuba. <ref>Scott, Deep Politics, 180-81</ref> | + | Let me stress that, at the time, the drug connections to JFK and 9/11 were vigorously suppressed and denied. But they have since become clear. I will give a few examples. The Warren Report argued that [[Jack Ruby]] “was not involved with Chicago’s criminal element.” <ref>Warren Report, 785.</ref> But in 1979 the House Assassinations Committee assembled a report of over 1000 pages on his organized crime connections in Chicago and elsewhere. It heard from a close Ruby associate, [[Lewis McWillie]], that in 1959 he and Ruby had visited the Trescornia camp in Cuba, and the “primary reason” for the visit was to meet Giuseppe deGeorge. DeGeorge was (though McWillie did not say this) one of the two top heroin couriers between Europe and Cuba. <ref>Scott, Deep Politics, 180-81</ref> |
− | In Deep Politics, and especially my recently reissued book Deep Politics II, I discuss the importance of the drug traffic, as a unifying factor in the JFK case. It is a key, I have argued, to Jack Ruby’s special status with the Dallas Police Department. <ref>Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 70-71, 132, 136-38.</ref> When we look at those who in Mexico manipulated false Oswald stories | + | In Deep Politics, and especially my recently reissued book Deep Politics II, I discuss the importance of the drug traffic, as a unifying factor in the JFK case. It is a key, I have argued, to Jack Ruby’s special status with the Dallas Police Department. <ref>Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 70-71, 132, 136-38.</ref> When we look at those who in Mexico manipulated false Oswald stories — to suggest that Oswald had been talking about assassination there — we again run into people with drug backgrounds. <ref>Scott, Deep Politics Two, 130-36.</ref> A key example is Gilberto Alvarado, a Nicaraguan, whose story about Oswald and assassination was so serious that we know FBI Director Hoover discussed it on November 29 with [[Lyndon Johnson]]. <ref>109 Michael Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (New York:Simon & Schuster, 1997), 53. In a memorandum of the same day Hoover noted that it was Johnson, not |
Hoover, who initiated the call (3 AH 476). The call logs of the LBJ Library (available on its website) indicate that the call was from Hoover to Johnson.</ref> We now know that Alvarado, the source, reported "directly to General Gustavo Montiel, Chief of the intelligence Service of the Nicaraguan Army." <ref>110 Attachment to CIA Memo of 12 December 1963 from DDP to FBI, "Mexican Interrogation of Gilberto Alvarado;" NARA #104-10018-10043.</ref> Montiel was later denounced as a principal in a "massive car theft ring" run by Norwin Meneses, described in other CIA cables as "the kingpin of narcotics traffickers in Nicaragua." <ref>Webb, Dark Alliance, 55-56 (Montiel); Scott, Drugs, Contras, and the CIA, 15 ("kingpin”).</ref> (Stolen cars and drugs, like arms and drugs, are a good fit in illicit trafficking: one commodity pays for the other, and both directions of a trip are utilized.) | Hoover, who initiated the call (3 AH 476). The call logs of the LBJ Library (available on its website) indicate that the call was from Hoover to Johnson.</ref> We now know that Alvarado, the source, reported "directly to General Gustavo Montiel, Chief of the intelligence Service of the Nicaraguan Army." <ref>110 Attachment to CIA Memo of 12 December 1963 from DDP to FBI, "Mexican Interrogation of Gilberto Alvarado;" NARA #104-10018-10043.</ref> Montiel was later denounced as a principal in a "massive car theft ring" run by Norwin Meneses, described in other CIA cables as "the kingpin of narcotics traffickers in Nicaragua." <ref>Webb, Dark Alliance, 55-56 (Montiel); Scott, Drugs, Contras, and the CIA, 15 ("kingpin”).</ref> (Stolen cars and drugs, like arms and drugs, are a good fit in illicit trafficking: one commodity pays for the other, and both directions of a trip are utilized.) | ||
− | There are similar indications that the Watergate burglars assembled by Howard Hunt, all but one Cubans, included at least two men with drug connections, and that they were being used under White House direction to restructure the drug traffic by eliminating, possibly even assassinating, old-time drug-traffickers who formed part of the so-called “French connection.” According to Edward J. Epstein, Hunt contacted a number of Cuban exiles and explained “that he had been authorized by the White House to recruit Cuban exiles into `hit teams’ which would be used ostensibly to assassinate narcotics dealers.” <ref>Edward J. Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (New York: G.P.Putnam’s, 1977), 205.</ref> Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, after his arrest, said that in 1971 he too had joined Hunt in investigating the drug traffic that was entering the U.S. from Mexico, Paraguay, and Panama. <ref>113 Scott, Hoch, Stetler, The Assassinations, 402.</ref> Sturgis claimed “that he undertook several missions for Hunt involving tracking narcotics, and he assumed that this was the nucleus of a new supranational police force that would be expanded after Nixon’s reelection.” <ref>Epstein, Agency of Fear, 205n.</ref> | + | There are similar indications that the [[Watergate burglars]] assembled by [[Howard Hunt]], all but one Cubans, included at least two men with drug connections, and that they were being used under White House direction to restructure the drug traffic by eliminating, possibly even assassinating, old-time drug-traffickers who formed part of the so-called “French connection.” According to Edward J. Epstein, Hunt contacted a number of Cuban exiles and explained “that he had been authorized by the White House to recruit Cuban exiles into `hit teams’ which would be used ostensibly to assassinate narcotics dealers.” <ref>Edward J. Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (New York: G.P.Putnam’s, 1977), 205.</ref> Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, after his arrest, said that in 1971 he too had joined Hunt in investigating the drug traffic that was entering the U.S. from Mexico, Paraguay, and Panama. <ref>113 Scott, Hoch, Stetler, The Assassinations, 402.</ref> Sturgis claimed “that he undertook several missions for Hunt involving tracking narcotics, and he assumed that this was the nucleus of a new supranational police force that would be expanded after Nixon’s reelection.” <ref>Epstein, Agency of Fear, 205n.</ref> |
− | Then in the 1980s we encounter the involvement in drug-trafficking of some of the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, and more importantly of those who were supplying them with arms. This was emphatically denied at the time, and the two AP reporters who first broke the story both lost their jobs. But after two full-length books on the topic (Cocaine Politics, by myself and Jonathan Marshall, and Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb), the CIA Inspector-General was commissioned to investigate the matter. As the House Intelligence Committee later reported, “Volume II of the CIA IG report explains in detail the knowledge the CIA had that some contras had been, were alleged to be or were in fact involved or somehow associated with drug trafficking or drug traffickers.” <ref>House Select Committee on Intelligence, Report of CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, quoted in Robert Parry, “CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s,” ConsortiumNews.com, 8 June 2000, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html.</ref> We need to stand back and consider the implications of this recurring phenomenon. In deep events the drug connection is at first vociferously denied; then it is belatedly admitted, but only after reporting journalists like Gary Webb have been driven from their profession. As a result, the role of drug-trafficking in deep events is like the elephant in the American political living room, rarely captured on film, and even more rarely discussed in polite discourse. If the parallels with previous deep events hold true, then 9/11 will prove to be a collaboration between elements in the deep state and outside drug traffickers – in this case elements of al-Qaeda. Such a thought is unthinkable if we know only what is in the mainstream media. It looks less unlikely when we look at past U.S. alliances with al-Qaeda-trained Islamists in Azerbaijan and Kosovo. Symptomatic of such collaboration is the strange and gratuitous denial by the 9/11 Commission Report of al-Qaeda’s drug connections: | + | Then in the [[1980s]] we encounter the involvement in drug-trafficking of some of the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, and more importantly of those who were supplying them with arms. This was emphatically denied at the time, and the two AP reporters who first broke the story both lost their jobs. But after two full-length books on the topic (Cocaine Politics, by myself and [[Jonathan Marshall]], and Dark Alliance, by [[Gary Webb]]), the [[CIA Inspector-General]] was commissioned to investigate the matter. As the [[House Intelligence Committee]] later reported, “Volume II of the CIA IG report explains in detail the knowledge the CIA had that some contras had been, were alleged to be or were in fact involved or somehow associated with drug trafficking or drug traffickers.” <ref>House Select Committee on Intelligence, Report of CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, quoted in Robert Parry, “CIA Admits Tolerating Contra-Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s,” ConsortiumNews.com, 8 June 2000, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html.</ref> We need to stand back and consider the implications of this recurring phenomenon. In deep events the drug connection is at first vociferously denied; then it is belatedly admitted, but only after reporting journalists like Gary Webb have been driven from their profession. As a result, the role of drug-trafficking in deep events is like the elephant in the American political living room, rarely captured on film, and even more rarely discussed in polite discourse. If the parallels with previous deep events hold true, then 9/11 will prove to be a collaboration between elements in the deep state and outside drug traffickers – in this case elements of al-Qaeda. Such a thought is unthinkable if we know only what is in the mainstream media. It looks less unlikely when we look at past U.S. alliances with al-Qaeda-trained Islamists in [[Azerbaijan]] and [[Kosovo]]. Symptomatic of such collaboration is the strange and gratuitous denial by the 9/11 Commission Report of al-Qaeda’s drug connections: |
− | While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking. <ref>9/11 Report, 171. I find this statement one-sided and misleading, but less so than the opposite claim of Yossef Bodansky: “The annual income of the Taliban from the drug trade is estimated at $8 billion. Bin Laden administers and manages these funds – laundering them through the Russian mafia… (Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America [New York: Random House/Prima, 2001], 315).</ref> Most sources disagree. The British Parliament was told on October 4, 2001, that “al-Qaeda’s activity includes substantial exploitation of the drug trade from Afghanistan.” <ref>"Evidence Presented to the British Parliament, 4th October 2001," Los Angeles Times, 10/4/01. Cf. e.g. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/30/01; Asia Times, 12/8/01; New York Times, 10/4/01, 10/11/01; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01. For further documentation, see Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003),32, 36.</ref> | + | While the drug trade was a source of income for the [[Taliban]], it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking. <ref>9/11 Report, 171. I find this statement one-sided and misleading, but less so than the opposite claim of [[Yossef Bodansky]]: “The annual income of the Taliban from the drug trade is estimated at $8 billion. Bin Laden administers and manages these funds – laundering them through the Russian mafia… (Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America [New York: Random House/Prima, 2001], 315).</ref> Most sources disagree. The British Parliament was told on October 4, 2001, that “al-Qaeda’s activity includes substantial exploitation of the drug trade from Afghanistan.” <ref>"Evidence Presented to the British Parliament, 4th October 2001," Los Angeles Times, 10/4/01. Cf. e.g. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/30/01; Asia Times, 12/8/01; New York Times, 10/4/01, 10/11/01; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01. For further documentation, see Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003),32, 36.</ref> |
− | Only two weeks after the release of the 9/11 Report, on August 2, 2004, Time magazine ran a major story about Haji Juma Khan …the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western anti-narcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. | + | Only two weeks after the release of the 9/11 Report, on August 2, 2004, ''Time'' magazine ran a major story about [[Haji Juma Khan]] …the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western anti-narcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. |
This was after US Central Command reported that in December 2003 a dhow (an Arab sailing vessel) was intercepted near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying almost two tons of hashish valued at up to $10 million. There were "clear ties" between the shipment and al-Qaeda, the Centcom statement said.” <ref>"US `seizes al-Qaeda drugs ship'," BBC News, 12/19/03.</ref> A few days later, on New Year's Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel in the Arabian Sea “stopped a small fishing boat that was carrying no fish. After a search, [said] a Western antinarcotics official, `they found several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs.’” <ref>Time, August 2, 2004.</ref> | This was after US Central Command reported that in December 2003 a dhow (an Arab sailing vessel) was intercepted near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying almost two tons of hashish valued at up to $10 million. There were "clear ties" between the shipment and al-Qaeda, the Centcom statement said.” <ref>"US `seizes al-Qaeda drugs ship'," BBC News, 12/19/03.</ref> A few days later, on New Year's Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel in the Arabian Sea “stopped a small fishing boat that was carrying no fish. After a search, [said] a Western antinarcotics official, `they found several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs.’” <ref>Time, August 2, 2004.</ref> | ||
− | ====11 | + | ====11) JFK and 9/11 as Gateways to Already-Intended Wars==== |
As I prepared this list of similarities for a June 2007 lecture in Vancouver, I had to recognize in myself a profound resistance to acknowledging this pattern. I didn’t want to believe that there might be a hidden force intervening to affect our history so profoundly at least twice over a forty-year period. | As I prepared this list of similarities for a June 2007 lecture in Vancouver, I had to recognize in myself a profound resistance to acknowledging this pattern. I didn’t want to believe that there might be a hidden force intervening to affect our history so profoundly at least twice over a forty-year period. | ||
− | So after the lecture I laid this paper to one side. I shared it only with a few intimate correspondents for their opinions, hoping that they would persuade me to discount the pattern. And then, six weeks later, it struck me that I had suppressed, even to myself, what should have been for me the most obvious and relevant similarities of all between JFK and 9/11: Both events opened the path to major wars (Vietnam in 1964-65, Afghanistan in 2001, followed by Iraq in 2003), upon which a small but powerful group were already intent. | + | So after the lecture I laid this paper to one side. I shared it only with a few intimate correspondents for their opinions, hoping that they would persuade me to discount the pattern. And then, six weeks later, it struck me that I had suppressed, even to myself, what should have been for me the most obvious and relevant similarities of all between JFK and 9/11: Both events opened the path to major wars ([[Vietnam War|Vietnam]] in 1964-65, [[Afghanistan war 2001|Afghanistan]] in 2001, followed by [[Iraq war 2003|Iraq]] in 2003), upon which a small but powerful group were already intent. |
− | In The War Conspiracy I suggested that “the Kennedy assassination was itself an important, perhaps a crucial, event in the history of the Indochina war conspiracy.” My argument looked in part at the difference between Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 of October 1963, which encapsulated Kennedy’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, and Johnson’s NSAM 273 of November 26, 1963, which authorized planning to begin for graduated offensive operations against North Vietnam. A preliminary draft of this plan, later known as OPLAN 34A, had been approved by General Maxwell Taylor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at a Pentagon conference on November 20 in Honolulu. But it had never been seen by Kennedy, and according to James Galbraith, “it had not been shown to McNamara.” <ref>James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam,”Boston Review, October/November 2003, http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html.</ref> But with the Tonkin Gulf incidents, the 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one half years had resisted.” <ref>Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.</ref> | + | In ''[[The War Conspiracy]]'' I suggested that “the Kennedy assassination was itself an important, perhaps a crucial, event in the history of the Indochina war conspiracy.” My argument looked in part at the difference between Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 of October 1963, which encapsulated Kennedy’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, and Johnson’s NSAM 273 of November 26, 1963, which authorized planning to begin for graduated offensive operations against North Vietnam. A preliminary draft of this plan, later known as OPLAN 34A, had been approved by General Maxwell Taylor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at a Pentagon conference on November 20 in Honolulu. But it had never been seen by Kennedy, and according to James Galbraith, “it had not been shown to McNamara.” <ref>James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam,”Boston Review, October/November 2003, http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html.</ref> But with the Tonkin Gulf incidents, the 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one half years had resisted.” <ref>Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.</ref> |
− | Today I believe there is consensus that Kennedy did order a public announcement of his plans to withdraw the bulk of US troops from Vietnam by 1965, and that these plans were overridden by quite different plans for a wider war of which he was ignorant. <ref>See the discussion in Galbraith, “Exit Strategy;” also Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).Debate continues to rage, but over hypothetical questions, above all whether Kennedy would have maintained his withdrawal plans as the political situation in Saigon continued to deteriorate. But, to quote Galbraith quoting Jones, “Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones writes, `unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events that did not necessitate a victory.’”</ref> There is still major resistance to the idea, made popular by Oliver | + | Today I believe there is consensus that Kennedy did order a public announcement of his plans to withdraw the bulk of US troops from Vietnam by 1965, and that these plans were overridden by quite different plans for a wider war of which he was ignorant. <ref>See the discussion in Galbraith, “Exit Strategy;” also Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).Debate continues to rage, but over hypothetical questions, above all whether Kennedy would have maintained his withdrawal plans as the political situation in Saigon continued to deteriorate. But, to quote Galbraith quoting Jones, “Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones writes, `unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events that did not necessitate a victory.’”</ref> There is still major resistance to the idea, made popular by [[Oliver Stone]]’s movie “JFK,” that the Kennedy’s assassination had more than accidental relevance to Vietnam. But I think [[James Galbraith]] has correctly linked one suppressed issue – how Kennedy’s death was followed immediately by presidential authorization for planning operations against North Vietnam – to another suppressed issue – the desire in 1963 of some in the Pentagon to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against the Soviet Union: |
− | The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext. <ref> [[Galbraith footnote:] “Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled `Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?’ [It is available on line at http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/jg/archive/1994/STRIKEF2.pdf.]. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: `Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?’”</ref> There were those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would come at the end of 1963. And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of the time. Was it also a deadly secret? Did LBJ have reason to fear, on the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup d’etat? <ref>“There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union.” [Galbraith footnote]</ref> Similar questions have | + | The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext. <ref> [[Galbraith footnote:] “Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled `Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?’ [It is available on line at http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/jg/archive/1994/STRIKEF2.pdf.]. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: `Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?’”</ref> There were those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would come at the end of 1963. And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of the time. Was it also a deadly secret? Did [[LBJ]] have reason to fear, on the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup d’etat? <ref>“There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to [[Earl Warren]] and [[Richard Russell]] (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the [[Soviet Union]].” [Galbraith footnote]</ref> Similar questions have engendered scorn for 40 years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to quit Vietnam. <ref>Galbraith, “Exit Strategy.”</ref> |
− | engendered scorn for 40 years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to quit Vietnam. <ref>Galbraith, “Exit Strategy.”</ref> | ||
Kennedy’s advisers, including civilian as well as military, had urged upon him the possible use of nuclear weapons from the first year of his presidency, in response to the crises in Berlin and Laos. <ref>Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), 459-62, 757-58; Talbot, Brothers, 51, 69-70.</ref> As is well known, Kennedy’s negotiated settlement to the Cuban missile crisis was bitterly opposed by Admiral George Anderson and particularly General Curtis LeMay, who called it "the greatest defeat in our history." Daniel Ellsberg, consulting with Air Force generals at the time, recalled their “fury” at the settlement: “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.” <ref>Talbot, Brothers, 172,</ref> | Kennedy’s advisers, including civilian as well as military, had urged upon him the possible use of nuclear weapons from the first year of his presidency, in response to the crises in Berlin and Laos. <ref>Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), 459-62, 757-58; Talbot, Brothers, 51, 69-70.</ref> As is well known, Kennedy’s negotiated settlement to the Cuban missile crisis was bitterly opposed by Admiral George Anderson and particularly General Curtis LeMay, who called it "the greatest defeat in our history." Daniel Ellsberg, consulting with Air Force generals at the time, recalled their “fury” at the settlement: “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.” <ref>Talbot, Brothers, 172,</ref> | ||
Line 203: | Line 192: | ||
In the case of Vietnam, so-called OPLAN 34A plans for gradually escalating the war against North Vietnam were already approved at a DOD/CIA Conference in Honolulu on November 20, 1963, even though Kennedy had never seen these plans and would in all probability (I believe) not have approved them. <ref>Scott, The War Conspiracy, 53-55, 66, 162-63.</ref>(The 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one-half years had resisted.” <ref>Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.</ref> In October 1963 Kennedy was moving in a very different direction, having set in motion plans to withdraw the bulk of U.S troops from Vietnam by late 1965. <ref>See Scott, Deep Politics, 24-37; "Exit Strategy: In 1963, Kennedy ordered a Complete Withdrawal from Vietnam," by James K. Galbraith (Boston Review, Oct.-Nov. 2003).</ref> McNamara’s plans to do this were authorized by NSAM 263 of October 11, 1963.) | In the case of Vietnam, so-called OPLAN 34A plans for gradually escalating the war against North Vietnam were already approved at a DOD/CIA Conference in Honolulu on November 20, 1963, even though Kennedy had never seen these plans and would in all probability (I believe) not have approved them. <ref>Scott, The War Conspiracy, 53-55, 66, 162-63.</ref>(The 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one-half years had resisted.” <ref>Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.</ref> In October 1963 Kennedy was moving in a very different direction, having set in motion plans to withdraw the bulk of U.S troops from Vietnam by late 1965. <ref>See Scott, Deep Politics, 24-37; "Exit Strategy: In 1963, Kennedy ordered a Complete Withdrawal from Vietnam," by James K. Galbraith (Boston Review, Oct.-Nov. 2003).</ref> McNamara’s plans to do this were authorized by NSAM 263 of October 11, 1963.) | ||
− | Right after 9/11, a former Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, told the BBC that senior American officials had told him in mid-July 2001 that military action against Afghanistan was likely to go ahead “before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” <ref>133 BBC News, September 18, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm. Naik accurately predicted to BBC not only the timing of the October U.S. attack, but its source in Tajikistan. Cf. Abid Ullah Jan, Afghanistan: The Genesis of the Final Crusade (BookSurge Publishing, 2007), 27; John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2003), 109; Richard D. Mahoney, Getting Away with Murder (Arcade, 2004), 176.</ref> | + | Right after 9/11, a former Pakistani diplomat, [[Niaz Naik]], told the BBC that senior American officials had told him in mid-July 2001 that military action against Afghanistan was likely to go ahead “before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” <ref>133 BBC News, September 18, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm. Naik accurately predicted to BBC not only the timing of the October U.S. attack, but its source in Tajikistan. Cf. Abid Ullah Jan, Afghanistan: The Genesis of the Final Crusade (BookSurge Publishing, 2007), 27; John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2003), 109; Richard D. Mahoney, Getting Away with Murder (Arcade, 2004), 176.</ref> |
If this fundamental similarity is recognized, two more follow: | If this fundamental similarity is recognized, two more follow: | ||
====12) Both wars were followed by explosive increases in opium and heroin production.==== | ====12) Both wars were followed by explosive increases in opium and heroin production.==== | ||
− | Thanks in large part to CIA assistance in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s, opium production in the Golden Triangle was boosted from about 80 tons in the early 1950s, to a peak of 3,300 tons a year by 1989. <ref>McCoy, Politics of Heroin, 162, 191.</ref> The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, accomplished with the aid of professional drug traffickers, has seen an increase in Afghan opium production from 3,276 metric tonnes of opium in 2000, and 185 tonnes in 2001 (the year of the Taliban prohibition) to a new record high of 6,610 metric tonnes in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005. <ref>International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2007, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/18/asia/AS-GENAfghanistan.php .</ref> As a result Afghanistan’s share of global opium production increased from 70 percent in 2000 to 82 percent in 2006. <ref>United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, 2003, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf; World Drug Report, 2007, 195, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/wdr07/WDR_2007_3.1.1_afghanistan.pdf.</ref> U.N. figures to be released in September 2007 are expected to show that Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop. <ref>Matthew Lee, “Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, August 4, 2007, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan.</ref> | + | Thanks in large part to CIA assistance in the [[1950s]] and the [[Vietnam War]] in the 1960s, opium production in the [[Golden Triangle]] was boosted from about 80 tons in the early 1950s, to a peak of 3,300 tons a year by 1989. <ref>McCoy, Politics of Heroin, 162, 191.</ref> The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, accomplished with the aid of professional drug traffickers, has seen an increase in Afghan opium production from 3,276 metric tonnes of opium in 2000, and 185 tonnes in 2001 (the year of the Taliban prohibition) to a new record high of 6,610 metric tonnes in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005. <ref>International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2007, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/18/asia/AS-GENAfghanistan.php .</ref> As a result Afghanistan’s share of global opium production increased from 70 percent in 2000 to 82 percent in 2006. <ref>United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, 2003, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf; World Drug Report, 2007, 195, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/wdr07/WDR_2007_3.1.1_afghanistan.pdf.</ref> U.N. figures to be released in September 2007 are expected to show that Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop. <ref>Matthew Lee, “Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, August 4, 2007, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan.</ref> |
====13) Both wars served the interests of international oil companies, and prior to the relevant deep events had been actively lobbied for by them.==== | ====13) Both wars served the interests of international oil companies, and prior to the relevant deep events had been actively lobbied for by them.==== | ||
− | In 1963 William Henderson, an adviser to the Socony Mobil oil company, made a public appeal for a “final commitment” to Southeast Asia, meaning “that we must be prepared to fight . . . at a minimum.” <ref>William Henderson, “Some Reflections on United States Policy in Southeast Asia,” in William Henderson, ed., Southeast Asia: Problems of United States Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), 253–63. In addition to being an adviser on international affairs to Socony Mobil, Henderson was an officer of American Friends of Vietnam.</ref> In other words he called for the kind of overt U.S. intervention in Vietnam affairs that began a year later, after the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem and John F. Kennedy. | + | In 1963 [[William Henderson]], an adviser to the Socony Mobil oil company, made a public appeal for a “final commitment” to Southeast Asia, meaning “that we must be prepared to fight... at a minimum.” <ref>William Henderson, “Some Reflections on United States Policy in Southeast Asia,” in William Henderson, ed., Southeast Asia: Problems of United States Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), 253–63. In addition to being an adviser on international affairs to Socony Mobil, Henderson was an officer of American Friends of Vietnam.</ref> In other words he called for the kind of overt U.S. intervention in Vietnam affairs that began a year later, after the assassinations of [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] and [[John F. Kennedy]]. |
− | According to Taliban Foreign Minister Niaz Naik, the U.S. delivered threats to the Taliban before 9/11, in support of | + | According to Taliban Foreign Minister Niaz Naik, the U.S. delivered threats to the Taliban before 9/11, in support of [[Unocal]]’s desire to build oil and gas pipelines through the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. <ref>Brisard and Dasquié, Forbidden Truth, 41-44; Scott, Road to 9/11, 166-67.</ref> As [[Chalmers Johnson]] has commented, “Support for this enterprise [the dual oil and gas pipelines] appears to have been a major consideration in the Bush administration’s decision to attack Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.” <ref>Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2004), 176.</ref> Political commentator Kevin Phillips has agreed that “plans were discussed in the spring and summer of 2001—well before the events of September—for hamstringing Iraq and convincing the Taliban in Afghanistan to accept construction of an American (Unocal) pipeline from Turkmenistan through Kabul to Karachi, Pakistan.” <ref> Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006), 83. Cf. Pepe Escobar, “The War for Pipelineistan,” Asian Times, January 26, 2002.</ref> |
− | Elsewhere I have looked at these recurring overlapping patterns of drugs, oil, and war, in a book of the same name. It is a tribute to the force of psychological denial that, even having written about them previously, I so long repressed their relevance to the subject now being discussed: why certain aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy replicated themselves in the events of 9/11. | + | Elsewhere I have looked at these recurring overlapping patterns of drugs, oil, and war, in a book of the same name. It is a tribute to the force of psychological denial that, even having written about them previously, I so long repressed their relevance to the subject now being discussed: why certain aspects of the [[JFK/Assassination|assassination of John F. Kennedy]] replicated themselves in the events of 9/11. |
===Conclusion: The Permanent War Lobby=== | ===Conclusion: The Permanent War Lobby=== | ||
But as we have already seen, oil was not the only common denominator in the forces behind both events. Perhaps even more important was the continuous drive through the years of some figures, both civilian and military, for the doctrine of (to use the language of a 2000 Pentagon blueprint) “full-spectrum dominance.” <ref>“Joint Vision 2020,” the May 2000 U.S. Department of Defense blueprint for the future: “The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full-spectrum dominance—the ability of U.S. forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations” (http://www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jv2020.doc).</ref> For thoseengaged in what Richard Falk has called the American “global domination project,” the wars in Vietnam and Iraq were not just ends in themselves; they were also steppingstones to higher and higher levels of mobilization for a world-wide U.S. military presence. <ref>“Resisting the Global Domination Project: An Interview with Prof. Richard Falk,” Frontline 20, no. 8 (April 12–25, 2003); Richard Falk, “Global Ambitions and Geopolitical Wars,” in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (co-editors), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2006), 117–27.</ref> “Full-spectrum dominance” is now a U.S. military reality, however fatal it may be in the long run to preserving America’s competitive civilian economy and constitutional form of government. | But as we have already seen, oil was not the only common denominator in the forces behind both events. Perhaps even more important was the continuous drive through the years of some figures, both civilian and military, for the doctrine of (to use the language of a 2000 Pentagon blueprint) “full-spectrum dominance.” <ref>“Joint Vision 2020,” the May 2000 U.S. Department of Defense blueprint for the future: “The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full-spectrum dominance—the ability of U.S. forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations” (http://www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jv2020.doc).</ref> For thoseengaged in what Richard Falk has called the American “global domination project,” the wars in Vietnam and Iraq were not just ends in themselves; they were also steppingstones to higher and higher levels of mobilization for a world-wide U.S. military presence. <ref>“Resisting the Global Domination Project: An Interview with Prof. Richard Falk,” Frontline 20, no. 8 (April 12–25, 2003); Richard Falk, “Global Ambitions and Geopolitical Wars,” in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (co-editors), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2006), 117–27.</ref> “Full-spectrum dominance” is now a U.S. military reality, however fatal it may be in the long run to preserving America’s competitive civilian economy and constitutional form of government. | ||
− | The forces lobbying permanently for increased militarization are too many to be enumerated. Perhaps the grandfather of them all is the American Security Council, which in various manifestations has lobbied aggressively for every U.S. military offensive action and preparation from Vietnam in the 1960s to Iraq in the 2000s, and now Iran. <ref>American Security Council Foundation, “Indicators of Iranian Interference in Iraq,” February 13, 2007, http://www.ascfusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=73. See also Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (Boston: South End Press, 1991), 29ss; Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), Chapter 2.</ref> Its continuous lobbying activity is only one symptom of the incessant drumbeat for military mobilization over the last half-century. Other related groups include the American Society for Industrial Security, representing the security industry in which Ali Mohamed was certainly employed, and possibly Lee Harvey Oswald also. <ref>Scott, Road to 9/11, 153 (Mohamed); Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 243-46, 276-77 | + | The forces lobbying permanently for increased militarization are too many to be enumerated. Perhaps the grandfather of them all is the American Security Council, which in various manifestations has lobbied aggressively for every U.S. military offensive action and preparation from Vietnam in the [[1960s]] to Iraq in the 2000s, and now Iran. <ref>American Security Council Foundation, “Indicators of Iranian Interference in Iraq,” February 13, 2007, http://www.ascfusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=73. See also Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (Boston: South End Press, 1991), 29ss; Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), Chapter 2.</ref> Its continuous lobbying activity is only one symptom of the incessant drumbeat for military mobilization over the last half-century. Other related groups include the American Society for Industrial Security, representing the security industry in which Ali Mohamed was certainly employed, and possibly Lee Harvey Oswald also. <ref>Scott, Road to 9/11, 153 (Mohamed); Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 243-46, 276-77 |
(Oswald).</ref> | (Oswald).</ref> | ||
− | The difference between 1963 and 2001 was in the White House. Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson successfully contained the desires of their hawks to defeat and destroy the Soviet Union. But Bush and Cheney have maneuvered America into a war on terrorism. That war threatens to become a permanent justification for curtailing the U.S. constitution’s elaborate checks and balances, and its guarantees of America’s traditional liberties. | + | The difference between 1963 and 2001 was in the White House. [[Dwight Eisenhower|Eisenhower]], [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] and [Lyndom B. Johnson|Johnson]] successfully contained the desires of their hawks to defeat and destroy the Soviet Union. But [[George W Bush|Bush]] and [[Richard Cheney|Cheney]] have maneuvered America into a [[war on terrorism]]. That war threatens to become a permanent justification for curtailing the U.S. constitution’s elaborate checks and balances, and its guarantees of America’s traditional liberties. |
Dilip Hiro observed in 2002 that America’s unilateralist war on terror is nothing less than a formula for permanent mobilization for permanent war: | Dilip Hiro observed in 2002 that America’s unilateralist war on terror is nothing less than a formula for permanent mobilization for permanent war: |
Latest revision as of 10:17, 6 July 2019
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Subjects: 9/11, JFK Assassination, War
Source: Peter Dale Scott's web site (Link)
Local copy: File:911 JFK and War.pdf
★ Start a Discussion about this document
Contents
- 1 9/11, JFK, and War:
- 1.1 JFK and 9/11: Possibly Innocent Similarities
- 1.2 Similarities Suggestive of a Common Modus Operandi
- 1.2.1 4) Instant Identification of the Culprits:
- 1.2.2 5) Paper trails laid by the designated suspects to facilitate their identification:
- 1.2.3 6) There were and remain problems about the identity of the designated culprits:
- 1.2.4 7) Prior investigations of the eventual suspects were suspended or impeded:
- 1.2.5 8) The Role of Double Agents: Lee Harvey Oswald and Ali Mohamed
- 1.2.6 9) The Cover-Up Modus Operandi: The Culprit “Acted Alone”
- 1.3 Summary: The Repeated Modus Operandi for Cover-up
- 1.3.1 10) Drug-Traffickers and Deep Events, from the JFK Assassination to 9/11
- 1.3.2 11) JFK and 9/11 as Gateways to Already-Intended Wars
- 1.3.3 12) Both wars were followed by explosive increases in opium and heroin production.
- 1.3.4 13) Both wars served the interests of international oil companies, and prior to the relevant deep events had been actively lobbied for by them.
- 1.4 Conclusion: The Permanent War Lobby
- 2 References
9/11, JFK, and War:
Recurring Patterns in America’s Deep Events
In American history there are two types of events. There are ordinary events which the information systems of the country can understand and transmit. There are also deep events, or meta-events, which the mainstream information systems of the country cannot digest. I mean by a “deep event” one in which it is clear from the outset that there are aspects which will not be dealt with in the mainstream media, and will be studied only by those so-called “conspiracy theorists” who specialize in deep history. The events I shall discuss today exhibit continuities with each other and with other deep events, notably the Iran-Contra affair of the mid 1980s and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. But the two I shall discuss today – the JFK assassination and 9/11 – are outstanding in this respect: that while they were attributed to insignificant and very marginal people, they had momentous impact, far more than most daily events by more important people, in redirecting American history.
If history is what is recorded, then deep history is the sum of events which tend to be officially obscured or even suppressed in traditional books and media. Important recent deep events include the political assassinations of the 1960s, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and now 9/11. All these deep events have involved what I call the deep state, that part of the state which is not publicly accountable, and pursues its goals by means which will not be approved by a public examination. The CIA (with its on-going relationships to drug-traffickers) is an obvious aspect of the deep state, but not the only one, perhaps not even the dirtiest.
When I talk of a deep state, this term (as opposed to others, like deep politics), is not my own invention. It is a translation of the Turkish gizli devlet, or derin devlet, a term used to describe the networks revealed by the so-called Susurluk incident of 1996, when the victims traveling together in what became a deadly car crash were identified as "an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli.” The giveaway was that “Catli, a heroin trafficker on Interpol's wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.” [1] He was carrying narcotics with him at the time of the crash.[2]
The study of these deep events has slowly become more respectable in the almost half-century since the JFK assassination. A major reason has been the emergence of the Internet and other forms of new media, where the same deep events tend to get far more extensive treatment. [3] If the new media come in time to prevail over the priorities of the old, it is possible that we will see a paradigm shift with respect to what is appropriate for serious public discourse. What I have learned over the years is that it is helpful to look at all these deep events together. This is true for both external reasons (how the nation and its media handle deep history) and for internal reasons (the content of deep events themselves). What is particularly disturbing, in the case of the JFK assassination (henceforward referred to as “JFK”) and 9/11, is the number of similarities that might seem to indicate a recurring modus operandi or scenario.
While I myself am still open-minded as to how seriously we should interpret these similarities, we should also open our minds to the alternative: that it was not by chance that two major events were soon followed, first in 1965 and again in 2003, by America’s longest military involvements in the nation’s history.
JFK and 9/11: Possibly Innocent Similarities
I will begin with three similarities which could possibly, especially in the case of the first, be marginal or irrelevant to how the events themselves unfolded.
1) Stock market speculation:
By this I am not referring to the dip and recovery that followed both events, which is common after any unsettling news. [4] I am referring to the dealings in special stocks which suggested, in both cases, prior knowledge of what was to come. In early November 1963, David Harold (“Dry Hole”) Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, bought $2 million worth of stock (132,600 shares) in Ling-Temco Vought (LTV), their own defense company. Then in February 1964 LTV received from the Navy the first major LBJ prime defense contract – for a fighter plane to be used in limited wars like Vietnam. [5] I have calculated that this $2.5 million insiders’ purchase was worth $26 million by the end of 1967. Moreover the prescient purchase was about one hundred times the size of any other insider purchase in aerospace issues in the same period. [6]
This does not prove that Byrd and Ling were directly involved in the Kennedy assassination, but it is likely that Byrd may have had inklings of what was going to happen. For Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building, where Oswald had been hired as an employee in October 1963. I have hypothesized that Oswald thought he was there on a surveillance assignment, to report on a fellow worker who was under investigation by the Dallas Police. [7] Byrd may have been privy to this arrangement, and have suspected more.
This stock purchase is comparable to the notorious “put option purchases” just before 9/11 in 2001, in the stock of United Airlines and American Airlines. [8] Here too the advance purchases suggest special knowledge, but here too the purchasers and the perpetrators need not have been the same, especially if we accept the indications that many widely scattered people and agencies had prior indications of the event about to occur. [9]
There were scattered indications that a few people had advance knowledge of the Kennedy assassination, a fact hard to reconcile with the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald, a disgruntled loner, acted on his own. The most significant case was that of a Southern racist and activist, [Joseph Milteer]], who correctly predicted to a Miami police informant, that Kennedy would be shot "from an office building with a high-powered rifle." [10] But Milteer was not unique. [11] There were also pre-9/11 indications and warnings, far too numerous to enumerate here, of knowledge about an impending attack using hijacked airplanes. [12]
2) A number of senior officers were out of the country, including the Secretary of State
On November 22, 1963, six out of ten cabinet members were on their way to Japan, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Labor Secretary W. W. Wirtz.[13]
On September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell and CJCS Henry Shelton were traveling outside the country, while Attorney General John Ashcroft was also traveling.[14]Powell and Shelton were leading opponents of the Iraq War, and were eventually ousted, along with Ashcroft. [15]
3) Commission recommendations to increase power of intelligence agencies, or deep state
It is worth pointing out that the Commission Reports prepared with respect to both JFK and 9/11 were tightly controlled and produced the same recommendation: that the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies should be increased. This was quite paradoxical in the case of the Warren Report, which concluded both that Oswald was a loner and that the CIA should have greater powers to conduct surveillance of organized groups. It was hardly less paradoxical in the case of the 9/11 Report, which concluded its survey of repeated intelligence failures and Pakistani intrigues with recommendations for increased intelligence budgets and maintenance of current aid to Pakistan. (In June 2007 Ahmed Rashid blamed the current Pakistani political crisis on the “bad deal” and “blind bargain” that Washington had made with Musharraf after 9/11.) [16]
A truly independent investigation of each event could, and indeed should, have been highly embarrassing to the CIA. Even in 2007 the CIA is still in non-compliance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, and withholding documents with respect to an officer, George Joannides, who supervised the Cuban Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE) which had recurring contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald. The CIA shared nothing with the Warren Commission about its contacts with the DRE (which may have involved Oswald). Nor did the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) learn anything of significance in 1978, when the CIA assigned Joannides to be its Principal Coordinating Officer working with the House Committee. [17]
Similarly in 2001 the 9/11 Commission learned nothing about why, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) were aloft in a National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP), or so-called “Doomsday Plane.” [18] Neither in 1964 nor in 2003 was there any chance for such revelations. In 1964 the work of the Warren Commission was carefully constrained by former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who had been fired by President Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco). [19] In 2003 the work of the 9/11 Commission, and later the writing of the 9/11 Report, were tightly controlled by Philip Zelikow, who in October 2001, prior to becoming the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, had been appointed by President George W. Bush to PFIAB. [20] It is at least suggestive that both commission investigations were dominated and restricted by personalities with overt leadership roles in the U.S. intelligence community.
Similarities Suggestive of a Common Modus Operandi
Now we come to similarities, some of them very specific, suggesting that key stages of both events were pre-designed to a common scenario.
4) Instant Identification of the Culprits:
In the case of Oswald, within fifteen minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, the Dallas police put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer – 5’10”, 165 pounds. [21] This exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswald’s FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him. [22]
This identification did not match the actual height and weight of the Lee Harvey Oswald who was picked up in Dallas and charged, which was five foot nine and 140 pounds. [23] The 5’10” measurement was also suspect because it was attributed to Howard Brennan, who saw allegedly someone in the sixth floor window, but only from the waist up. Brennan subsequently failed to pick out Oswald in a police line-up. [24] One concludes that intelligence files rather than direct observation may have been responsible for the rapid decision to search for a killer with the exact measurement of 5’ 10”, 165 pounds. It appears that someone had already determined that Oswald would be the designated culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime.
Meanwhile, according to counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, on 9/11 the FBI already had a list of alleged hijackers by 9:59 am on September 11, when the south tower collapsed. [25] 9:59 AM was at least four minutes before Flight United 93 had hit the ground.
Even before this, shortly after 9:03 AM, Clarke himself had denoted the organization that would ultimately be blamed, telling Richard Cheney in the White House that in his opinion “It’s an al Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” [26] This naming of a responsible foreign party corresponds to the press conference on November 22, 1963, arranged by the Cuban exile group contacted earlier by Lee Harvey Oswald (the Directorio Revolucionario, or DRE). This press conference reportedly combined accurate secret information about Oswald with the wild claim that he “allegedly lived [in Moscow] in home Sov[iet] foreign minister for two months.” [27] (We shall see that, just as the identification of al Qaeda soon led to the invasion of Afghanistan, so that alleged Oswald-Soviet relationship led to talk of response against the Soviet Union. The risk of a nuclear war became Lyndon Johnson’s chief talking point in recruiting Earl Warren and others to serve on the Warren Commission.)
With respect to the FBI’s list of hijackers on 9/11, there were, even within the bureaucracy, suspicions that the FBI was drawing on pre-9/11 files for its identifications.
- "I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming," a former FBI official with extensive counter-terrorism experience has since said. "Within 24 hours [of the attack] the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and somebody was sitting on it." [28]
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Pentagon Able Danger had a similar reaction:
- "We were amazed at how quickly the FBI produced the name and pictures of all 19 hijackers. But then again, we were surprised at how quickly they’d made the arrests after the first World Trade Center bombing. Only later did we find out that the FBI had been watching some of these people for months prior to both incidents.” [29]
In this context of suspicion a former federal prosecutor and another former FBI agent, Warren Flagg, came forward in 2006 with an alternative explanation – that “the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections” were in the car left behind at Logan Airport in Boston by Mohamed Atta and his associates. [30] It is of course possible that an instantaneous investigation of Atta’s effects would explain how the FBI could tell Richard Clarke that they had a list of suspected hijackers by 9:59 AM on September 11. But this would imply that the FBI had the names of all nineteen hijackers by then, including the four on Flight 93 which had not yet crashed. Flagg’s claim also drew attention to another striking similarity between JFK and 9/11. In both JFK and 9/11, we are asked to believe that the designated suspects – Oswald and the hijackers – facilitated their own detection by implausibly laying paper trails which led unambiguously to themselves.
5) Paper trails laid by the designated suspects to facilitate their identification:
Oswald is supposed in March 1963 to have purchased by mail order, using the name A. Hidell, the notorious Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was said to have assassinated President Kennedy. This was needlessly self-incriminating, when in Dallas he could have bought a rifle anonymously by walking a few blocks to a gun shop. [31] In August he asked to be interviewed by an FBI agent, to whom he showed a Fair Play for Cuba Committee card with the name A.J. Hidell, which he had already shown to a New Orleans police lieutenant. The information was transmitted to the local Office of Naval Intelligence and to the 112th Army Military Intelligence Group. On November 22, the name of Hidell in the 112th MIG file was instrumental, perhaps crucial, in clinching the superficial case against Oswald as an assassin. [32]
This irrational self-incrimination via paper trail was allegedly repeated in 2001 by Mohamed Atta, the principal alleged hijacker. In 2006, “a former FBI agent [Warren Flagg] and a former federal prosecutor … told Newsday that one bag found in Boston contained far more than what the commission report cited, including the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections.” The former prosecutor added, "These guys left behind a paper trail…. They had bank accounts. They rented cars. They had to show what they were doing in the United States.” [33] Atta’s trove of information allegedly “provided the Rosetta stone enabling FBI agents to swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them.” [34]
The belated appearance in 2006 of the Flagg story has caused some to question it. However, official allegations point precisely to other instances of paper trails left by the hijackers. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (532n188), the FBI found an Express Mail receipt in Nawaf al-Hazmi’s car at Dulles Airport, which led to a package addressed to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi of al-Qaeda. [35] As if this might not be enough, Atta also is said to have left in his motel a FedEx waybill for another package; and the federal indictment of Moussaoui strongly implied that this package was also collected by al-Hawsawi.[36] The details are given in Newsweek, November 19, 2001:
- The paper trail that first led investigators into Ahmed's shadowy financial world began at the bottom of a motel trash can. On the night of Sept. 10, Atta hunkered down in room 233 at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. The next morning he would take a flight to Boston's Logan airport. At the motel, Atta tore up a FedEx Air Waybill and threw it away. Days later, federal agents searching the motel found the receipt, from a package mailed in Florida, where Atta and several other hijackers had lived until days before the bombing. It was addressed to `Almohtaram,’ Arabic for `The Respected One’ — the honorific the terrorists gave to Ahmed [al-Hawsawi]. Investigators believe they sealed the connection when they got hold of the video of Ahmed picking up the package.
Thus the paper trails laid by both Oswald and the hijackers were crucial to the first striking similarity I mentioned: the speedy identification of the alleged (or designated) culprits.
In addition to these documented pre-event paper trails, one’s attention is drawn to additional dubious evidence discovered ex post facto. In the JFK case, one can cite the forged bus manifest supplied by the Mexican secret police with Oswald’s name on it, to show how he returned to the United States (the manifest had been falsified, apparently by a member of the Mexican President’s staff).[37] In the case of 9/11, the passport of one of the hijackers, Satam al Suqami, was reportedly discovered that day a few blocks from the World Trade Center. [38] (There is no reference to this discovery of a passport, later said to be Mohamed Atta’s, in the 9/11 Commission Report.) [39]
6) There were and remain problems about the identity of the designated culprits:
For years researchers have drawn attention to the existence of different weights and heights in government files on Lee Harvey Oswald (see above), and also to the fact that the FBI maintained separate files on “Lee Harvey Oswald” and “Harvey Lee Oswald.” [40] Then in the 1990s, John Armstrong presented a 1022-page case that two different young men (“Harvey” and “Lee”) shared the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald, for the benefit of U.S. intelligence. [41] Although not everyone will be persuaded by the whole of Armstrong’s argument, it is safe to say that both evidence and testimony have been altered to conceal the anomalies which Armstrong dealt with. [42] Needless to say, there was no discussion of these anomalies in the Warren Report.
Within two weeks of 9/11, the identities of at least six of the hijackers identified by the FBI were unclear; men in Arab countries with the same names and histories (and in at least one case the same photograph) were protesting that they were alive and innocent. [43] In response to these protests, FBI director Robert Mueller acknowledged on September 20, 2001, that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers was in doubt. [44] But there is no trace of this doubt, or any discussion whatsoever of the problem, in the detailed treatment of the alleged hijackers in the 9/11 Commission Report. [45]
7) Prior investigations of the eventual suspects were suspended or impeded:
Oswald, who had been on the FBI’s watch list since his travel to the Soviet Union in 1959, was inexplicably taken off the watch list on October 9, 1963, just after his arrest in New Orleans and his alleged trip to Mexico City would have made him a candidate for increased surveillance. [46] October 9, the day before the CIA reported to the FBI on Oswald’s Soviet contact in Mexico City, was the day CIA HQ itself received the news. This is comparable to the obstruction by the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI Headquarters of the Minneapolis FBI’s efforts to interview the so-called twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, especially after Moussaoui’s arrest on August 15, 2001. [47] Moussaoui knew most of the other nineteen alleged hijackers who were named in the hijackings, and an interview of him, if not impeded, could have led to the detention of the nineteen. A Minnesota Special Agent, Harry Samit, later testified that he wrote FBI headquarters about seventy memos on Moussaoui between August 16 and September 11, all to no avail. [48]
Similarly the CIA failed to tell the FBI that two of the terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were in the United States. [49] The blocking of the Moussaoui investigation, and the withholding of the CIA’s information, have both been blamed on Janet Reno’s so-called Wall memorandum of 1995. But the Wall memo was renewed on August 6, 2001, by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. [50] Another example of such obstruction was the curtailment of the Army intelligence investigation of al-Qaeda through its Able Danger program. According to Paul Thompson’s Terror Timeline, military lawyers on three occasions forced members of Able Danger to cancel scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute. Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer later complained that “critical counterterrorism information [was] never passed from SOCOM [Special Operations Command] to the FBI before 9/11; this information included the original data regarding Atta and the terrorist cells in New York and the DC area.” Rep. Curt Weldon (R), who in 2005 helped bring to light the existence of the program, commented, “Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred.” [51] hits the FBI they cancel the flash on Oswald. This is an example of what I'm talking about, dimming the switches.”
Students of the John F. Kennedy assassination have speculated that Oswald’s name, with or without his knowledge and/or participation, was being used by the CIA in Mexico as part of a complex operation against Fidel Castro. [52] If true, the removal of his name from the FBI watch list would not be absurd, but understandable, to prevent an accidental law enforcement interruption of a CIA operation. In like manner the obstructions of the FBI’s RFU would be understandable if Atta and Moussaoui or their names were being used as part of a contemporary intelligence operation. In this case what looks outwardly like senseless and incompetent behavior would actually be the result of FBI-CIA coordination. [53]
A superficial distinction between the relevant events of 1963 and 2001 actually reinforces this possibility. Marvin Gheesling, the FBI Supervisor responsible for removing the stop on Oswald’s name, was later censured by Hoover for his action. [54] Dave Frasca, the RFU chief who stopped the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant against Moussaoui, was later promoted. [55] The difference is attributable to Hoover’s personal hostility to the CIA and his irritation with members of William C. Sullivan’s Intelligence Division of FBI (which included Gheesling) who in his eyes were too cooperative with it. This situation changed with Hoover’s death.
8) The Role of Double Agents: Lee Harvey Oswald and Ali Mohamed
The last similarity strengthens a hypothesis that would begin to make sense of the preceding extraordinary similarities between the two cases. It is that surveillance was suspended because the designated culprits – Oswald and the hijackers – had to be protected from any law enforcement action that would impede their role in the events that would be attributed to them. There are two versions of this hypothesis. The first, less conspiratorial, is that those designated to be culprits had no relation to those in power on the two disastrous days.
A more likely and sinister version is that they were double agents being directed by those in power, even if they had no idea of the fate that had been determined for them. In this case the U.S. deep state would have a motive for limiting the investigation, to prevent disclosure of the operation with which the double agents were involved. Fifteen years ago I made the complicated case that Lee Harvey Oswald was just such a double agent. I hope to demonstrate below that the al-Qaeda trainer for the hijackings, Ali Mohamed, was also an important U.S. double agent, and that this role had already resulted in an earlier al- Qaeda conspiracy – the murder in 1990 of the Jewish racist Meir Kahane – being dismissed, familiarly, consciously, and wrongly, as the work of a “lone deranged gunman.”[56]
In Deep Politics (written in 1992) I explored at some length the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was a possible “double agent... trying to infiltrate the Dallas Cuban refugee group.” [57] I went on to make observations about Oswald as a double agent, observations that I now consider applicable to 9/11:
- The preceding chapter considered the possibility that Oswald was associated with anti-Kennedy Cubans in order to investigate them on behalf of a federal agency. But we saw it alleged that Oswald was a double agent collaborating with some of these groups, either (as I suspect) because he or his handlers shared their goals [that is, anti-Kennedy goals], or possibly because he or his handlers had been “turned” by those they were supposed to investigate. Such a possibility was particularly likely with targets, like Alpha 66, about which the government itself was conflicted, of two minds.[58]
It is necessary to recall that Alpha 66 in early 1963 conducted a series of raids, not just against Cuba, but against Soviet ships in Cuba. It was obviously trying to shipwreck the US-Soviet understanding on Cuba, thus to torpedo the whole Kennedy policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Unambiguously the raids met with the total disapproval of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department (which cracked down on them and made a public announcement that they had to cease). At the same time there continued to be support for Alpha 66 from the CIA. [59]
Double agents frequently become the stars both of the groups they penetrate and the government agencies to whom they report. Recently I have written about Ali Mohamed, who was Washington’s star double agent inside al-Qaeda, and also a chief al-Qaeda trainer for aircraft hijackings. [60] (Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally,” and also “knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston’s Logan airport.”) [61] Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, confirms that Ali Mohamed, one of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes, was an informant for the FBI, a one-time asset of the CIA, and for four years a member of the US Army. [62] This special status explains why one of his protégés, El Sayyid Nosair, was able to commit the first al-Qaeda crime in America, back in 1990, be caught along with his co-conspirators, and yet be dismissed by the police and FBI as (and these are actual quotes) a “lone deranged gunman” who “acted alone.” [63]
In fact, the FBI was aware back in 1990 that Mohamed had engaged in terrorist training on Long Island; yet it acted to protect Mohamed from arrest, even after one of his trainees had moved beyond training to an actual assassination. [64] Three years later, in 1993, Mohamed was actually detained in Canada by the RCMP. But he gave the RCMP the telephone number of his FBI handler in San Francisco, and after a brief call the RCMP released him. [65] This enabled Mohamed to fly later in the year to Nairobi, and begin to organize the eventual al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Africa.
Mohamed’s trainees were all members of the Al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, which served as the main American recruiting center for the Makhtab-al-Khidimat, the “Services Center” network that after the Afghan war became known as al-Qaeda. [66] The Al-Kifah Center was headed in 1990 by the blind Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who like Ali Mohamed had been admitted to the United States, despite being on a State Department Watch List. [67] As he had done earlier in Egypt, the sheikh “issued a fatwa in America that permitted his followers to rob banks and kill Jews.”[68] It would be wrong to think that Ali Mohamed was training Nosair and his fellow Islamists to fight Russians in Afghanistan. Nosair’s defense attorney argued this vigorously in a second trial of Nosair, the so-called New York landmarks case of 1995. [69] However the Soviets had totally withdrawn from Afghanistan by February 1989, and Mohamed was training Nosair in July 1989, at a time when the U.S. government, to paraphrase what was just said about 1963, was of two minds about what to do in Afghanistan.
The CIA was backing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a major heroin trafficker with his own heroin labs, as part of the ISI’s puppet alternative to the secular, anti-Islamist government in Kabul, which the Russians left behind. [70] Meanwhile a State Department official, Edmund McWilliams, with middle-level backing in Washington, objected that “Pakistani intelligence and Hekmatyar were dangerous allies,” and that the United States was making an important mistake by endorsing ISI’s puppet Afghan government. [71] But Ali Mohamed’s training, both in Afghanistan and later around New York, was precisely designed to strengthen the Arab Afghans in Brooklyn who were allied with Hekmatyar. [72]
Ali Mohamed’s trainees became involved in terrorist activities in other parts of the world. One of them, Anas al-Liby, became a leader in a plot against Libyan president Mu’ammar Ghadafi. Anas al-Liby was later given political asylum in Great Britain, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative. [73] As the French authors Brisard and Dasquié point out, Ghadafi’s Libya in 1998 was the first government to ask Interpol to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. They argue that Osama and al-Qaeda elements were collaborating with the British MI-5 in an anti- Ghadafi assassination plot. [74]
Another of Ali Mohamed’s trainees, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, accepted money from the Saudi Embassy in Washington to recruit Muslim warriors for Bosnia. [75] He was also allowed to go to Fort Belvoir, where an Army major gave him a list of Muslims in the US Army whom he could recruit. Fort Belvoir was the site of the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA), whose Information Dominance Center was “full of army intelligence `geeks’” targeting Islamic jihadists. [76]
Hampton-El’s recruiting for Bosnia was part of a larger operation. Numbers of Arab Afghans were trained for Bosnia, and later for the Kosovo Liberation Army, by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top associate of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda, and also a close ally of his fellow Egyptian, Ali Mohamed. [77] (Ali Mohamed had sworn allegiance to al-Zawahiri in 1984 while still in Egypt, and he twice arranged for al-Zawahiri to come to stay with him in California for fund-raising purposes.) [78] Meanwhile US intelligence veterans like Richard Secord helped bring Arab Afghans recruited by Hekmatyar to Azerbaijan, in order to consolidate a pro-western government there. [79] And in 1998 the US began bombing Kosovo in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, some of whose cadres were both trained and supported in the field by al-Qaeda’s “Arab Afghans.”
So Ali Mohammad’s activities intersected with US covert operations, and this fact appears to have earned him protection. [80] Jack Blum, former special investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented that One of the big problems here is that many suspects in the [1993] World Trade Center bombing were associated with the Mujahedeen. And there are components of our government that are absolutely disinterested in following that path because it leads back to people we supported in the Afghan war. [81]
What agency would have been interested in protecting Mohamed? The CIA claimed to have ceased using him as an operative back in 1984. [82] Yet in 1988 Ali Mohamed flew from Fort Bragg to Afghanistan and fought there, while he was on the US Army payroll. His commanding officer didn’t like it, but Mohammad was apparently being directed by another agency. [83] Ten years later, in 1998, a confidential CIA internal survey concluded that it was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, carried out by some of Ali Mohamed’s trainees. [84] After a plea bargain, Ali Mohamed eventually pleaded guilty in 2000 to having organized the bombings of US embassies in Africa, but as of 2006 he had still not yet been sentenced. [85]
9) The Cover-Up Modus Operandi: The Culprit “Acted Alone”
Unambiguously Mohamed’s trainees became involved, almost immediately, in terrorism on US soil. In November 1990, three of Mohamed’s trainees conspired together to kill Meir Kahane, the racist founder of the Jewish Defense League. The actual killer, El Sayyid Nosair, was caught by accident almost immediately; and by luck the police soon found his two co-conspirators, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh, waiting at Nosair’s apartment. They found much more:
- There were formulas for bomb making, 1,440 rounds of ammunition, and manuals [supplied by Ali Mohamed] from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg marked “Top Secret for Training,” along with classified documents belonging to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The police found maps and drawings of New York City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, Times Square – and the World Trade Center. The forty-seven boxes of evidence they collected also included the collected sermons of blind Sheikh Omar, in which he exhorted his followers to “destroy the edifices of capitalism.” [86]
All three had been trained by Ali Mohamed back in July 1989 at a rifle range, where the FBI had photographed them, before terminating this surveillance later in the same month. [87] The U.S. Government was thus in an excellent position to arrest, indict, and convict all of the terrorists involved, including Mohamed. Yet only hours after the killing, Joseph Borelli, Chief of NYPD detectives, struck a familiar American note and pronounced Nosair a “lone deranged gunman.” [88] Some time later, he actually told the press that “There was nothing [at Nosair’s house] that would stir your imagination…..Nothing has transpired that changes our opinion that he acted alone.” [89]
Borelli was not a lone deranged official in this matter. His position was also that of the FBI, who said they too believed “that Mr. Nosair had acted alone in shooting Rabbi Kahane.” “The bottom line is that we can't connect anyone else to the Kahane shooting," an F.B.I. agent said.” [90]
The initial reaction of the NYPD had been that Nosair was part of a conspiracy.[91] This impression was strengthened when a detective discovered that Borelli’s car had been moved after Nosair was arrested. As a result, according to the District Attorney prosecutor on the case, William Greenbaum, “We sensed a much bigger conspiracy, and we were sure that more than one person was involved.” [92] How then to explain the ultimate assurances that Nosair was a lone assassin? John Miller, who went on to be the assistant director of public affairs for the FBI, [93] blamed the culture of the NYPD: “The prevailing theory in the NYPD was, `Don’t make waves.’…So in the Nosair case, when Chief Borelli turned a blind eye to the obvious, he was merely remaining true to the culture of the NYPD.” [94] Miller’s unlikely explanation suppressed the relevant fact that the FBI, and eventually the District Attorney’s office which prosecuted the case, turned a blind eye to the obvious as well.
In the light of those 47 boxes of incriminating evidence, it is more likely that the US law enforcement system has a standard cover-up modus operandi or MO for dealing with a suspect who is marginally attached to intelligence operations, covert operations, even controversial operations which are opposed by other elements of the US government. It is to tell the public (as they did earlier in the case of Oswald) that the suspect “acted alone.”
In thus limiting the case, the police and FBI were in effect protecting Nosair’s two Arab co-conspirators in the murder of a U.S. citizen. Both of them were ultimately convicted in connection with the first WTC bombing, along with another Mohamed trainee, Nidal Ayyad. The 9/11 Report, summarizing the convictions of Salameh, Ayyad, Abouhalima, and the blind Sheikh for the WTC bombing and New York landmarks plots, called it “this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort.” [95] It said nothing about the suppressed evidence found in Nosair’s house, including “maps and drawings of New York City landmarks,” which if pursued should have prevented both plots from developing. In short the 9/11 Commission continued the pre-existing cover-up. And proper surveillance of this circle might have led investigators to the developing 9/11 plot as well. “Lance pinpoints how, in 1991, the FBI, knowing of a New Jersey mail box store with direct links to al-Qaida, failed to keep it under watch. Just six years later, two of the 9/11 hijackers got their fake IDs at the same location.” [96] In addition, Ali Mohamed “knew at least three terrorist pilots personally.” [97]
Summary: The Repeated Modus Operandi for Cover-up
There is a repeated cover-up MO here which is observed in both the JFK assassination and the two WTC attacks. These deep events were not properly solved, because the designated principals in them could not be properly investigated. The preselected candidates were ones about whom the truth did not emerge, because of the candidates’ controversial involvement in previous covered-up operations. This ensured that an institutional cover-up, already in place, was extended to cover the new crime, even though it was a major one. Oswald was one such pre-selected candidate. Those conspiratorially involved with Ali Mohamed and with 9/11 would also seem to fit the same description. That is what struck me most when I went back to compare the killings of Kennedy and of Meir Kahane. Both Oswald and Nosair were quickly declared “lone” assassins, to protect someone or something else. [98]
The similarity between the cover-up of Oswald in 1963 and Nosair in 1990 is striking. In both cases the truth about the predesignated culprit was unpursuable, because he was part of an operation too embarrassing to disclose. In the case of the Ali Mohamed trainees, this is a major scandal. These people could have been stopped back in 1990, before they attacked the World Trade Center. And they weren’t. I should make clear that with respect to 9/11, I have certain knowledge of only one fact: that there has been and continues to be a massive cover-up. I have not yet properly integrated the earlier cover-up in 1990 of Mosair’s associates, including Ali Mohamed, into my theory of what happened in 2001. I do however believe that the earlier cover-up is relevant to the later one, as exemplified by the strange treatment of the first WTC attack in the 9/11 Commission Report. I conclude from this that it is a matter of paramount importance to learn more about these meta-events and their cover-ups. Because when we can understand what has happened before, we will be more able to deal with such a meta-event when it happens again. As I have said so many times, to understand any of these events in real depth, you have to look at what is on-going in all of them. The traditional media seem determined, predictably, not to help in this matter. In November 2006, six weeks after Lance’s Triple Cross was released, Lexis Nexis recorded only one post-publication reference to it or to Ali Mohamed — the Toronto Sun of 11/19/06. [99] But there is no lack of interest on the Internet, where at the same time there were 43,600 hits on Triple Cross.) [100] The gravity of the Ali Mohamed matter is compounded by the context of the drug traffic. To get to the level where we can cope and deal with these recurring problems in our country, we will have to understand the continuity, and deal with it every time it surfaces. Some of the similarities noted here are probably extrinsic to the events described. But others point to a strong common denominator between JFK and 9/11. We can mention in particular the following features of a common modus operandi:
- The prior designation of a suspect or suspects. These had a past intelligence involvement, which obstructed proper investigation of them, and of the deep events attributed to them. In both cases the suspects either were or involved double agents, with life stories or legends on two different levels.
- The laying of a paper trail. This was strong enough to ensure that investigation would lead promptly to the designated suspects.
- The immediate attribution of the deep event to the designated suspects.
- The announcement that the suspect or suspects acted alone, even when there was clear evidence to show this was not true. [101]
- Both deep events involved experienced criminals, drawn from the world of organized drug trafficking, as I show below.
10) Drug-Traffickers and Deep Events, from the JFK Assassination to 9/11
Pulling back now and looking at all four biggest “deep events” of the last four decades – the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-ins, Contragate, and now 9/11 – we see that their common denominator is drug-trafficking. Why is this? In the first three the deep state worked with assets or proxies outside civil society and beyond the rule of law. This raises the possibility that in 9/11 the same thing happened again, extending the instances of U.S.-Al-Qaeda collaboration which occurred in the 1990s. The pattern moreover is that exhibited by the gizli devlet or deep state in Turkey, where a Parliamentary Investigation into the Susurluk Report concluded that the deep state had used the drug-trafficking Grey Wolves and fomented conflicts in the 1970s between the Turkish right and left. [102] The alliance between the deep state and drug traffickers has surfaced in other countries as well, including France, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Pakistan, Taiwan and Japan.
Let me stress that, at the time, the drug connections to JFK and 9/11 were vigorously suppressed and denied. But they have since become clear. I will give a few examples. The Warren Report argued that Jack Ruby “was not involved with Chicago’s criminal element.” [103] But in 1979 the House Assassinations Committee assembled a report of over 1000 pages on his organized crime connections in Chicago and elsewhere. It heard from a close Ruby associate, Lewis McWillie, that in 1959 he and Ruby had visited the Trescornia camp in Cuba, and the “primary reason” for the visit was to meet Giuseppe deGeorge. DeGeorge was (though McWillie did not say this) one of the two top heroin couriers between Europe and Cuba. [104]
In Deep Politics, and especially my recently reissued book Deep Politics II, I discuss the importance of the drug traffic, as a unifying factor in the JFK case. It is a key, I have argued, to Jack Ruby’s special status with the Dallas Police Department. [105] When we look at those who in Mexico manipulated false Oswald stories — to suggest that Oswald had been talking about assassination there — we again run into people with drug backgrounds. [106] A key example is Gilberto Alvarado, a Nicaraguan, whose story about Oswald and assassination was so serious that we know FBI Director Hoover discussed it on November 29 with Lyndon Johnson. [107] We now know that Alvarado, the source, reported "directly to General Gustavo Montiel, Chief of the intelligence Service of the Nicaraguan Army." [108] Montiel was later denounced as a principal in a "massive car theft ring" run by Norwin Meneses, described in other CIA cables as "the kingpin of narcotics traffickers in Nicaragua." [109] (Stolen cars and drugs, like arms and drugs, are a good fit in illicit trafficking: one commodity pays for the other, and both directions of a trip are utilized.)
There are similar indications that the Watergate burglars assembled by Howard Hunt, all but one Cubans, included at least two men with drug connections, and that they were being used under White House direction to restructure the drug traffic by eliminating, possibly even assassinating, old-time drug-traffickers who formed part of the so-called “French connection.” According to Edward J. Epstein, Hunt contacted a number of Cuban exiles and explained “that he had been authorized by the White House to recruit Cuban exiles into `hit teams’ which would be used ostensibly to assassinate narcotics dealers.” [110] Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, after his arrest, said that in 1971 he too had joined Hunt in investigating the drug traffic that was entering the U.S. from Mexico, Paraguay, and Panama. [111] Sturgis claimed “that he undertook several missions for Hunt involving tracking narcotics, and he assumed that this was the nucleus of a new supranational police force that would be expanded after Nixon’s reelection.” [112]
Then in the 1980s we encounter the involvement in drug-trafficking of some of the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, and more importantly of those who were supplying them with arms. This was emphatically denied at the time, and the two AP reporters who first broke the story both lost their jobs. But after two full-length books on the topic (Cocaine Politics, by myself and Jonathan Marshall, and Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb), the CIA Inspector-General was commissioned to investigate the matter. As the House Intelligence Committee later reported, “Volume II of the CIA IG report explains in detail the knowledge the CIA had that some contras had been, were alleged to be or were in fact involved or somehow associated with drug trafficking or drug traffickers.” [113] We need to stand back and consider the implications of this recurring phenomenon. In deep events the drug connection is at first vociferously denied; then it is belatedly admitted, but only after reporting journalists like Gary Webb have been driven from their profession. As a result, the role of drug-trafficking in deep events is like the elephant in the American political living room, rarely captured on film, and even more rarely discussed in polite discourse. If the parallels with previous deep events hold true, then 9/11 will prove to be a collaboration between elements in the deep state and outside drug traffickers – in this case elements of al-Qaeda. Such a thought is unthinkable if we know only what is in the mainstream media. It looks less unlikely when we look at past U.S. alliances with al-Qaeda-trained Islamists in Azerbaijan and Kosovo. Symptomatic of such collaboration is the strange and gratuitous denial by the 9/11 Commission Report of al-Qaeda’s drug connections:
While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking. [114] Most sources disagree. The British Parliament was told on October 4, 2001, that “al-Qaeda’s activity includes substantial exploitation of the drug trade from Afghanistan.” [115]
Only two weeks after the release of the 9/11 Report, on August 2, 2004, Time magazine ran a major story about Haji Juma Khan …the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western anti-narcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives.
This was after US Central Command reported that in December 2003 a dhow (an Arab sailing vessel) was intercepted near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying almost two tons of hashish valued at up to $10 million. There were "clear ties" between the shipment and al-Qaeda, the Centcom statement said.” [116] A few days later, on New Year's Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel in the Arabian Sea “stopped a small fishing boat that was carrying no fish. After a search, [said] a Western antinarcotics official, `they found several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs.’” [117]
11) JFK and 9/11 as Gateways to Already-Intended Wars
As I prepared this list of similarities for a June 2007 lecture in Vancouver, I had to recognize in myself a profound resistance to acknowledging this pattern. I didn’t want to believe that there might be a hidden force intervening to affect our history so profoundly at least twice over a forty-year period.
So after the lecture I laid this paper to one side. I shared it only with a few intimate correspondents for their opinions, hoping that they would persuade me to discount the pattern. And then, six weeks later, it struck me that I had suppressed, even to myself, what should have been for me the most obvious and relevant similarities of all between JFK and 9/11: Both events opened the path to major wars (Vietnam in 1964-65, Afghanistan in 2001, followed by Iraq in 2003), upon which a small but powerful group were already intent.
In The War Conspiracy I suggested that “the Kennedy assassination was itself an important, perhaps a crucial, event in the history of the Indochina war conspiracy.” My argument looked in part at the difference between Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 of October 1963, which encapsulated Kennedy’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, and Johnson’s NSAM 273 of November 26, 1963, which authorized planning to begin for graduated offensive operations against North Vietnam. A preliminary draft of this plan, later known as OPLAN 34A, had been approved by General Maxwell Taylor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at a Pentagon conference on November 20 in Honolulu. But it had never been seen by Kennedy, and according to James Galbraith, “it had not been shown to McNamara.” [118] But with the Tonkin Gulf incidents, the 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one half years had resisted.” [119]
Today I believe there is consensus that Kennedy did order a public announcement of his plans to withdraw the bulk of US troops from Vietnam by 1965, and that these plans were overridden by quite different plans for a wider war of which he was ignorant. [120] There is still major resistance to the idea, made popular by Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” that the Kennedy’s assassination had more than accidental relevance to Vietnam. But I think James Galbraith has correctly linked one suppressed issue – how Kennedy’s death was followed immediately by presidential authorization for planning operations against North Vietnam – to another suppressed issue – the desire in 1963 of some in the Pentagon to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against the Soviet Union:
The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext. [121] There were those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would come at the end of 1963. And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of the time. Was it also a deadly secret? Did LBJ have reason to fear, on the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup d’etat? [122] Similar questions have engendered scorn for 40 years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to quit Vietnam. [123]
Kennedy’s advisers, including civilian as well as military, had urged upon him the possible use of nuclear weapons from the first year of his presidency, in response to the crises in Berlin and Laos. [124] As is well known, Kennedy’s negotiated settlement to the Cuban missile crisis was bitterly opposed by Admiral George Anderson and particularly General Curtis LeMay, who called it "the greatest defeat in our history." Daniel Ellsberg, consulting with Air Force generals at the time, recalled their “fury” at the settlement: “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.” [125]
If Galbraith is right to place the JFK assassination in the context of the Pentagon’s nuclear ambitions, then the assassination in 1963 can be seen as eerily similar to the critical moment of 9/11 in 2001. In contemporary language, both crises occurred at a time when an inside group were determined to establish and maintain unilateral U.S. military dominance in the world. The phrase “preventive war fought over a pretext” is uncannily apt with respect to Iraq in 2003. A big difference is that in 2001 the unilateralist drive came from the White House, not the military. In Galbraith’s scenario, 1963 was the reverse: LBJ was not at all the co-conspirator that Stone’s movie made him out to be, but a nervous president reluctantly acceding to a land war in Vietnam, to head off the Joint Chiefs’ push for a nuclear alternative. It is relevant that, in what I have called “Phase One” of the JFK assassination investigation, false evidence surfaced linking Lee Harvey Oswald to both Cuba and the Soviet KGB. LBJ responded by creating the Warren Commission to market the Phase Two alternative, that Lee Harvey Oswald “acted alone.” [126] As he said in persuading Senator Richard Russell to serve on the Commission, “We've got to be taking this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour...". [127]
In the case of Vietnam, so-called OPLAN 34A plans for gradually escalating the war against North Vietnam were already approved at a DOD/CIA Conference in Honolulu on November 20, 1963, even though Kennedy had never seen these plans and would in all probability (I believe) not have approved them. [128](The 34A Operations led in August 1964 to the first bombing of North Vietnam with U.S. planes, something which “President Kennedy for two and one-half years had resisted.” [129] In October 1963 Kennedy was moving in a very different direction, having set in motion plans to withdraw the bulk of U.S troops from Vietnam by late 1965. [130] McNamara’s plans to do this were authorized by NSAM 263 of October 11, 1963.)
Right after 9/11, a former Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, told the BBC that senior American officials had told him in mid-July 2001 that military action against Afghanistan was likely to go ahead “before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” [131]
If this fundamental similarity is recognized, two more follow:
12) Both wars were followed by explosive increases in opium and heroin production.
Thanks in large part to CIA assistance in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s, opium production in the Golden Triangle was boosted from about 80 tons in the early 1950s, to a peak of 3,300 tons a year by 1989. [132] The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, accomplished with the aid of professional drug traffickers, has seen an increase in Afghan opium production from 3,276 metric tonnes of opium in 2000, and 185 tonnes in 2001 (the year of the Taliban prohibition) to a new record high of 6,610 metric tonnes in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005. [133] As a result Afghanistan’s share of global opium production increased from 70 percent in 2000 to 82 percent in 2006. [134] U.N. figures to be released in September 2007 are expected to show that Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop. [135]
13) Both wars served the interests of international oil companies, and prior to the relevant deep events had been actively lobbied for by them.
In 1963 William Henderson, an adviser to the Socony Mobil oil company, made a public appeal for a “final commitment” to Southeast Asia, meaning “that we must be prepared to fight... at a minimum.” [136] In other words he called for the kind of overt U.S. intervention in Vietnam affairs that began a year later, after the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem and John F. Kennedy.
According to Taliban Foreign Minister Niaz Naik, the U.S. delivered threats to the Taliban before 9/11, in support of Unocal’s desire to build oil and gas pipelines through the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. [137] As Chalmers Johnson has commented, “Support for this enterprise [the dual oil and gas pipelines] appears to have been a major consideration in the Bush administration’s decision to attack Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.” [138] Political commentator Kevin Phillips has agreed that “plans were discussed in the spring and summer of 2001—well before the events of September—for hamstringing Iraq and convincing the Taliban in Afghanistan to accept construction of an American (Unocal) pipeline from Turkmenistan through Kabul to Karachi, Pakistan.” [139]
Elsewhere I have looked at these recurring overlapping patterns of drugs, oil, and war, in a book of the same name. It is a tribute to the force of psychological denial that, even having written about them previously, I so long repressed their relevance to the subject now being discussed: why certain aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy replicated themselves in the events of 9/11.
Conclusion: The Permanent War Lobby
But as we have already seen, oil was not the only common denominator in the forces behind both events. Perhaps even more important was the continuous drive through the years of some figures, both civilian and military, for the doctrine of (to use the language of a 2000 Pentagon blueprint) “full-spectrum dominance.” [140] For thoseengaged in what Richard Falk has called the American “global domination project,” the wars in Vietnam and Iraq were not just ends in themselves; they were also steppingstones to higher and higher levels of mobilization for a world-wide U.S. military presence. [141] “Full-spectrum dominance” is now a U.S. military reality, however fatal it may be in the long run to preserving America’s competitive civilian economy and constitutional form of government.
The forces lobbying permanently for increased militarization are too many to be enumerated. Perhaps the grandfather of them all is the American Security Council, which in various manifestations has lobbied aggressively for every U.S. military offensive action and preparation from Vietnam in the 1960s to Iraq in the 2000s, and now Iran. [142] Its continuous lobbying activity is only one symptom of the incessant drumbeat for military mobilization over the last half-century. Other related groups include the American Society for Industrial Security, representing the security industry in which Ali Mohamed was certainly employed, and possibly Lee Harvey Oswald also. [143]
The difference between 1963 and 2001 was in the White House. Eisenhower, Kennedy and [Lyndom B. Johnson|Johnson]] successfully contained the desires of their hawks to defeat and destroy the Soviet Union. But Bush and Cheney have maneuvered America into a war on terrorism. That war threatens to become a permanent justification for curtailing the U.S. constitution’s elaborate checks and balances, and its guarantees of America’s traditional liberties.
Dilip Hiro observed in 2002 that America’s unilateralist war on terror is nothing less than a formula for permanent mobilization for permanent war:
Now, by continuing to turn a deaf ear to the plea of the Arab and Muslim leaders, starting with President Mubarak, a loyal ally of Washington, and ending with the ICO [Islamic Conference Organization, an institution for cooperation between Muslim states, headquartered in Saudi Arabia] in April 2001, to convene an international conference under the UN auspices to formulate “a joint organized response of the international community to terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” the Bush administration is failing to live up to the expectations of people around the world that America, the sole superpower, would spearhead a multilateral campaign against the scourge of terrorism based upon a commonly agreed platform, and stop indulging in unilateralist interpretations and actions to fight terror, which would set it on an inexorable course of war without end. [144]
This course seems likely to endure, until America’s approach to terrorism is radically redefined by popular demand. And the surest way to liberate ourselves from the siege mentality underlying it will be to finally understand the conspiracies that have brought us here.
References
- ↑ 1 Adrian Gatton, “The Susurluk Legacy,” http://adriangatton.com/archive/1990_01_01_archive.html. Both Catli and the terrorist Grey Wolves network from which he emerged had global intelligence connections. In 1978 “Catli linked up with notorious Italian right-wing terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and together they traveled to Latin America and the United States” (Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe [London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005], 237-38.
- ↑ Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.
- ↑ Even the vocabularies of the old and new media diverge. A Lexis Nexis search in December 2006 for the word “parapolitics” in major newspapers yielded five entries, only two of them from the United States. The same search on Google yielded 86,100 hits. Meanings of “parapolitics”: 1) “A system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished” (Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy [New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1972], 171). 2) interactions between public states and other forms of organized violence; 3) the intellectual study of parapolitical interactions between public states and other forms of organized violence. See Robert Cribb and Peter Dale Scott, “Introduction,” in Eric Wilson and Tim Lindsey (eds.), Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty (London: Pluto, 2007).
- ↑ The dip and recovery of the stock market on November 22, 1963 were given prominent attention in Lincoln Lawrence, Were We Controlled? (University Books, 1967).
- ↑ New York Times, February 12, 1964. The Times estimated that the contract “could run into more than a billion dollars.”
- ↑ Peter Dale Scott, “The Dallas Conspiracy” (unpublished ms., 1973), Ch. III, 36. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.
- ↑ 7 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 242-47.
- ↑ Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute (NewYork: HarperCollins/Regan Books, 2004), 59-60; http://www.cooperativeresearch.orgtimeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=insiderTrading: “In the weeks and days leading up to 9/11, highly irregular stock trading transactions took place, involving stocks in United Airlines, American Airlines, and a few of the largest WTC tenants. There appear to have been even bigger trades in gold, oil, and U.S. Treasury bonds. Stock trading irregularities occurred not just in the U.S., but in European and Pacific region stock markets as well. While the FBI has concluded that there was no insider trading, German investigators found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading.” (Miami Herald, 9/24/01)”
- ↑ Thompson, Terror Timeline, 35-53.
- ↑ Intercepted conversation between Joseph Milteer and Miami Police informant William Somersett. Text in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations, 124ss; 3 AH 448. Later Milteer also correctly predicted that there would be “a propaganda campaign put on how to prove to the Christian people of the world that the Jews, the Zionist Jews, had murdered Kennedy” (Somersett report of Milteer interview, 11/23/63, as transcribed by Intelligence Unit of Miami Police Department, 11/26/63; quoted in Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much [New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992], 551). Soon after rightwing members of Milteer’s milieu, notably Admiral John Crommelin (The Thunderbolt, January 1964, p.1) and Revilo P. Oliver (American Opinion, February 1964, March 1964) made the anti-Semitic charges that Milteer had predicted. After 9/11 there was a similar campaign, especially in Muslim countries and Europe, to blame the 9/11 disaster on the Jews and Israel. See Anti-Defamation League, “Unraveling Anti- Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories,” September 2, 2003, [1].
- ↑ Michael Parenti has written that “Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: `This is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like “We got the bastard.”'." (Dirty Truths [San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996], 172-91, http://www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/conspiracyphobia.html).
- ↑ 12 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 35-53. Particularly disturbing were the reports, some of them from other nations’ intelligence agencies, that the U.S. apparently failed to follow up on (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 42, 43 (2), 44, 45 (2), 48,
- ↑ "We believe it was by design that Secretary of State (Dean) Rusk, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Labor Secretary W. W. Wirtz, as well as other administration officials like White House Press Secretary (Pierre) Salinger, were trapped in an airplane over the Pacific Ocean at such a critical time" (J. Gary Shaw, with Larry R. Harris, Cover-Up [Austin, TX: Collector's Editions, 1992], 199). The other two Cabinet members aboard were Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman. (http://four.fsphost.com/crevmore/acretoky.htm)
- ↑ Thompson, Terror Timeline, 400.
- ↑ Both Shelton and Ashcroft had tangled unhappily with Rumsfeld and Cheney before 9/11 (Bob Woodward, State of Denial [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006], 18-19 [Shelton], Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy [New York: Little Brown, 2007], 77-78 [Ashcroft]).
- ↑ Ahmed Rashid, “America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames,” Washington Post, 17 June 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502073.html :“The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban's main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.”
- ↑ Jefferson Morley, Salon, December 17, 2003, http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/17/joannides/index.html; David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), 386-88.
- ↑ Mark H. Gaffney, “The 911 Mystery Plane,” http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm; citing U.S. Department of Defense, News Transcript, "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the Washington Post,"January 9, 2002, posted at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t02052002_t0109wp.html; Joe Dejka, "Inside STRATCOM on September 11: Offutt exercise took real-life twist," Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002. Mark Gaffney has since revised his paper, to suggest that the airborne group was not PFIAB but a Rumsfeld advisory committee (http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/Gaffney_911Mystery%20Plane.pdf).
- ↑ Assistant Attorney-General Nicholas Katzenbach later testified that he was “astounded” that Dulles did not at least share with the other commissioners what he knew about the CIA’s involvement in relevant assassination plots at the time (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Richard Todd/Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 552; citing House Select Committee on Assassinations, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vol. 3, 699-71.
- ↑ University of Virginia News, October 8, 2001, http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2001/zelikowoct-8-2001.html.
- ↑ 21 Warren Report 5, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 397 (Transcript of Dallas Police Channel One, before 12:45 PM, 11/22/63).
- ↑ E.g. CIA Cable 74830 of 10 Oct 63 to Mexico City, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewershowDoc.do?docId=30335&relPageId=2; reproduced in John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 512.
- ↑ Manning Clements FBI FD-302 of 11/23/63; in Warren Report, 614.
- ↑ 24 Warren Report 5; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2006), 10-13, 78n. After seeing Oswald twice on television, Brennan picked out Oswald in a second lineup (Warren Report, 143).
- ↑ 25 Thompson, Terror Timeline, 13-14.
- ↑ Clarke, Against All Enemies, 2. Paul Thompson erroneously records that Cheney said this to Clarke (Thompson, Terror Timeline, 396).
- ↑ CIA cable, WAVE 8049 from Miami, 22 Nov. 1963, 222242Z (7:42 PM EST). The cable reported that the press conference was called for “circa 1300 hours;” this is presumably a typo for “2300 hours,” or 11 PM EST. Strikingly, the CIA reported it had withheld this info from the FBI, to allow the DRE to release it first.
- ↑ 28 William Norman Grigg, “Did We Know What Was Coming?” New American, 3/11/02, http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-11-2002/vo18no05_didweknow.htm.
- ↑ 29 Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 2006), 383.
- ↑ 30 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The claim that the hijackers had cooperatively supplied their “al-Qaida connections” seems particularly dubious. After 9/11 Washington was put under considerable pressure by its allies in the war on terrorism, particularly by Pakistan, to produce evidence showing the involvement of al- Qaeda in 9/11. At the time “Powell promised to publish such a document, but this did not happen” (Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamic Terrorism and Global Response [London and New York: Routledge, 2002], 318).
- ↑ 31 Scott, Deep Politics, 249.
- ↑ 32 Scott, Deep Politics, 258; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), 237.
- ↑ Newsday, April 17, 2006, http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uslugg0417,0,3743892.story?coll=ny-homepagebigpix2005.
- ↑ 34 Newsday, April 17, 2006. The belated airing of the Flagg story in 2006 has aroused suspicions that it was invented to allay the many earlier questions raised about how the FBI learned the names of the alleged hijackers so quickly (see next section). FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Commonwealth Club of California on April 19, 2002 that "The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot” (http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech041902.htm). But CNN had reported on September 28, 2001, that “among [Atta’s] belongings they also found the names and phone numbers of possible associates;” (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.01.html); and that this “information compliments the release of photos of the suspected hijackers” (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.15.html). I am grateful to Jon Gold for bringing these matters to my attention.
- ↑ 35 This was not the only incriminating evidence that was discovered: “Shortly after September 11, the FBI arrested a Burns employee from the Washington, D.C. area named Mohammed Abdi. . . . When the FBI found the car left behind [by] the five 9/11 hijackers [including Nawaf al-Hazmi ] who departed from Dulles airport near Washington, they discovered a map of the D.C. area with Abdi’s name and phone number written with a yellow highlighter. . . . Investigators discovered Abdi had removed five Burns security jackets from his workplace before September 11. He attempted to give them to the Salvation Army three days after the attack. . . . [Yet] Abdi was never convicted of any crime related to terrorism.” (J.M. Berger, ed., Ali Mohamed: An Intelwire Sourcebook (Intelwire Press, 2006), 18–20, 32).
- ↑ 36 United States of America vs. Zacarias Moussaoui, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, www.usdoj.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm, items 88, 92.
- ↑ Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 25, 599; Warren Report, 736; Scott, Deep Politics, 105. Later, on the basis of a mint bus ticket, the Warren Commission determined that Oswald had returned from Mexico on a different bus. The ticket was allegedly “discovered” by Marina Oswald in August 1964, one month before the Report was completed and printed (Warren Report, 736; Warren Commission Hearings, 11, 221; 25, 682).
- ↑ ABC News, 9/12/01; Associated Press, 9/16/01; Thompson, Terror Timeline, 492. The Guardian later commented that "the idea that Atta's [sic] passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism." (Guardian, March 19, 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,669961,00.html).
- ↑ However an interesting footnote (563n32) refers to “fraudulent features” in al Suqami’s passport, and distinguishes it from other hijackers’ passports which “have not been found.”
- ↑ Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files, 1994-1995 (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2007), 2, 88-89, 129, 142-49.
- ↑ John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA framed Oswald (Arlington, Texas: Quasar Press, 2003), 1022 pages.
- ↑ Scott, Deep Politics II, 143, 145-46; “HARVEY AND LEE: John Armstrong's Documented Study of Two Oswalds,” http://home.wi.rr.com/harveyandlee/.
- ↑ The mainstream U.S. press, such as the New York Times, later attributed the confusion about the hijackers’ identity to the number of different Arabs sharing the same names. But at least five men shared histories as well as names with the alleged hijackers. Waleed al-Shehri told the BBC “that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in September last year, became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines and is currently on a further training course in Morocco” (BBC, September 23, 2001). Saeed al-Ghamdi, alive and flying planes in Tunisia, also studied at Florida flight schools, as late as 2001. According to the London Telegraph (David Harrison, “Revealed: The Men with Stolen Identities,” September 23, 2001), CNN used his photograph in describing the hijacker with his name. Abdulaziz al-Omari acknowledged the same date of birth as the accused hijacker al-Omari but claimed his passport was stolen when he was living in Denver, Colorado (London Telegraph, September 23, 2001; Thompson, Terror Timeline, 497).
- ↑ “Hijack ‘Suspects’ Alive and Well,” BBC, September 23, 2001. The editor of BBC News Online has since partially retracted the original BBC article (Steve Herrman, “9/11 Conspiracy Theory,” October 27, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/911_conspiracy_theory_1.html).
- ↑ 9/11 Commission Report, 1–14, 215–42. Discussion in Griffin, 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 19–23.
- ↑ FBI HQ Supervisor W. Marvin Gheesling was censured and transferred to Detroit “for removing stop on Oswald in Ident on 10/9/63” (NARA RIF #124-10371-10033; FBI file 62-117290-Admin Folder-V3, Response to SSC re Gayle Memo 9/30/64, 21, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123). Cf. John Newman, “Oswald and the Mexico City Tapes,” JFK Lancer Conference, Dallas, November 19, 1999, 3, http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_3.html: “Now, the day before the Mexico City story
- ↑ For details see Terrorist Timeline under “Maltbie,” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie: “RFU chief Dave Frasca stops the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant (see August 21, 2001); When French authorities discover that Moussaoui is connected to the Chechen rebels, RFU agent Mike Maltbie insists that the FBI representative in Paris go through all telephone directories in France to see how many Zacarias Moussaouis live there (see August 22, 2001); When RFU agent Rita Flack, who is working on the Moussaoui case, reads the Phoenix memo suggesting that bin Laden is sending pilots to the US for training, she apparently does not tell her colleagues about it, even though it was addressed to several of them including Frasca (see July 10, 2001 and August 22, 2001); The RFU does not provide the relevant documentation to attorneys consulted about the request. In particular, Flack does not tell them about the Phoenix memo, even though one of the attorneys will later say she asked Flack if anyone is sending radical Islamists to the US to learn to fly (see August 22-28, 2001).”
- ↑ 48 Newsday, March 21, 2006, http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-mous214670355mar21,0,2844591.story.
- ↑ 9/11 Commission Report, 269-72; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 339-44.
- ↑ Thompson, Terror Timeline, 101.
- ↑ http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1299surprisingpresence; citing Shaffer testimony to US Congress, 2/15/2006. Government Security News, August 2005.
- ↑ 52 E.g. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), esp. 141-42; John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 318-419; Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006), 531-46.
- ↑ 53 Particularly suggestive in this respect is RFU Agent Michael Maltbie’s weakening of a proposed FISA application by editing it and removing a statement by a CIA officer that Chechen rebel leader Ibn Khattab was closely connected to Osama bin Laden (Salon, March 3, 2003; “Michael Maltbie,” Terror Timeline, August 28, 2001, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_maltbie).
- ↑ Memorandum of September 30, 1964, from J.H. Gale to Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=300123.
- ↑ Coleen Rowley Report, 5; quoted in Steve Moore, “The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington D.C.,” Global Research, August 18, 2002, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html.
- ↑ Newsday, November 8, 1990; discussion in Scott, Road to 9/11, 155-56.
- ↑ 57 Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 252; quoting Lucille Connell, 26 Warren Commission Hearings 738.
- ↑ Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 257.
- ↑ Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), 173-76. Cf. Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (Southlake TX: JFK Lancer, 2006), 177-78.
- ↑ 60 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 151-59.
- ↑ J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html; quoted in Scott, The Road to 9/11, 158.
- ↑ Lance, Triple Cross, xxvii, etc.
- ↑ 63 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge (New York: Regan Books/ Harper Collins, 2003), 35; New York Times, 12/16/90.
- ↑ Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-37.
- ↑ 65 Lance, Triple Cross, 123-25.
- ↑ 66 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2005), 278; John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 87-88; Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, 29-31; Independent, 11/1/98.
- ↑ Rahman was issued two visas, one of them “by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan” (Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [New York: Free Press, 2001], 67). FBI consultant Paul Williams writes that Ali Mohamed “settled in America on a visa program controlled by the CIA” (Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror [[Upper Saddle River, NJ]: Alpha/ Pearson Education, 2002], 117). Others allegedly admitted, despite being on the State Department watch list, were Mohamed Atta and possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism [Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005], 205, 46).
- ↑ Wright, The Looming Tower, 177.
- ↑ 69 United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., S5 93 Cr. 181 (MBM), 19122; in Berger, Ali Mohamed, 205. 217.
- ↑ 70 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 195. In retrospect, the decision to back Hekmatyar against Najibullah appears to have been disastrous. As Ahmed Rashid predicted accurately in 1990, “If Afghanistan fragments into warlordism, the West can expect a flood of cheap heroin that will be impossible to stop …Afghanistan's President Najibullah has skillfully played on Western fears of a drugs epidemic by repeatedly offering co-operation with the DEA and other anti- narcotic agencies, but the West, which still insists on his downfall, has refused. If President [George Herbert Walker] Bush and Margaret Thatcher continue to reject a peace process, they must prepare for an invasion of Afghan-grown heroin in Washington and London” (Ahmed Rashid, “Afghanistan heroin set to flood West,” Independent (London), 3/25/90: “In early 1988 the State Department negotiators had been preparing to accept an end to CIA assistance.” They then reversed themselves and held out for a matching of Soviet and CIA support to the two factions. Apparently the policy shift was motivated by an unscripted remark by Reagan to a television interviewer (Coll, Ghost Wars, 176-77).
- ↑ Coll, Ghost Wars, 196; cf. 197-202; Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 251. McWilliams’ argument found support among mid-level State Department officials in Washington; “Still, the more State Department officials mouthed the McWilliams line, the more Langley argued the contrary” (Coll, Ghost Wars, 197).
- ↑ Cf. Lance, Triple Cross, 20, 66.
- ↑ Lance, Triple Cross, 104-05. In May 2000 al-Liby’s house in Britain was raided; and the police discovered an al-Qaeda terror manual which was largely written and translated by Ali Mohamed.
- ↑ Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2002), 97-102, 155-59. Anas al-Liby was trained in terrorism by the triple agent Ali Mohamed, while Mohamed was still on the payroll of the U.S. Army (Peter Lance, Triple Cross: How Bin Laden's Chief Security Adviser Penetrated the CIA, the FBI, and the Green Berets [New York: Regan, 2006], 104; see also Chapter IX). 75 United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., Federal Court, SDNY, 15629-30, 15634-35, 15654, 15667-68, 15671, 15673; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad, 72-74; J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited
- ↑ United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., Federal Court, SDNY, 15629-30, 15634-35, 15654, 15667-68, 15671, 15673; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad, 72-74; J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited U.S. Servicemen: Testimony Links Plot To Saudi Gov't,” Intelwire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/hamptonel010604.html.
- ↑ Lance, Triple Cross, 331.
- ↑ Marcia Christoff Kurop, “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” Wall Street Journal, 11/1/01: “For the past 10 years... Ayman al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps [and] weapons of mass destruction factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.”
- ↑ 79 Lance, Triple Cross, 11, 194-98.
- ↑ 80 Peter Dale Scott, “The Background of 9/11: Drugs, Oil, and U.S. Covert Operations,” in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (eds.), 9/11 & American Empire, 75-76. 81 Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (Roseville: Prima, 2001), 298, 397-98.
- ↑ Cf. Robert Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93: “In the aftermath of the bombing, many are wondering why there wasn't a comprehensive, wide-ranging investigation of Meir Kahane's murder. One possible explanation is offered by a counterterrorism expert for the FBI. At a meeting in a Denny's coffee shop in Los Angeles a week after the Kahane assassination, the 20-year veteran field agent met with one of his top undercover operatives, a burly 33-year-old FBI contract employee who had been a premier bomber for a domestic terrorist group before being `turned’ and becoming a government informant. `Why aren't we going after the sheikh [Abdel Rahman]?’ demanded the undercover man. `It's hands-off,’ answered the agent. `Why?’ asked the operative. `It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he's still in the country,’ replied the agent, visibly upset. `He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA [National Security Agency], and the CIA.’"
- ↑ Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93.
- ↑ 84 Lance, Triple Cross, 16.
- ↑ 85 Lance, Triple Cross, 43: “Ali Mohamed defied his commanding officer and prepared to go [to Afghanistan] anyway. At that point, it seems clear that he was serving two sets of masters at Bragg.”
- ↑ 86 Andrew Marshall, Independent, 11/1/98.
- ↑ 87 Lance, Triple Cross, 3, 7. The CIA has shown through the years the lengths it will go to, to prevent having its sometime assets testify in open court. Cf. Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 36; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Contras and the CIA: Government Policies and the Cocaine Economy. An Analysis of Media and Government Response to the Gary Webb Stories in the San Jose Mercury News (1996-2000) (Los Angeles: From the Wilderness Publications, 2000), 39-40, etc.
- ↑ 88 Lance, 1000 Years,
- ↑ Lance, 1000 Years, 31-32; Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding about the War on Terror (New York: Regan Books/ HarperCollins, 2004), 25.
- ↑ 90 Newsday, 11/8/90; quoted in Lance, 1000 Years, 35.
- ↑ New York Times, 11/8/90; Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, 3/30/93.
- ↑ New York Times, 12/16/90.
- ↑ 93 “Nosair, the NYPD had already learned, had apparently not acted alone…Lieutenant Eddie Norris... seemed to be looking at a conspiracy involving three and possibly more assassins.” (John Miller and Michael Stone, with Chris Mitchell, The Cell [New York: Hyperion, 2003], 43].
- ↑ 94 Lance, Triple Cross, 59.
- ↑ Lance, Triple Cross, 115.
- ↑ Miller et al., The Cell, 44-45.
- ↑ 9/11 Report, 72.
- ↑ Toronto Sun, 11/19/06.
- ↑ J. M. Berger, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” IntelWire.com, http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html.
- ↑ Another man about whom the whole truth never emerged was Howard Hunt in Watergate, of whom President said to his aide Haldeman, “Hunt…will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things.” This became the key to the cover-up that eventually cost Nixon his presidency. Fear of the Hunt “scab” apparently induced both Nixon and Helms to collude in ordering the FBI to suspend its interviews (Emery, Watergate, 193. Helms denied strenuously that he had ordered the FBI to suspend its interviews, and testified under oath that he had no knowledge of any CIA exposure by Hunt’s activities. Yet unmistakably he sent a memo to Vernon Walters, the CIA Deputy Director, repeating that the FBI should “confine themselves to the persons already arrested or directly under suspicion and…desist from expanding this investigation”).
- ↑ The New York Times (8/28/06) did cover, albeit disparagingly, an earlier National Geographic TV special in August 2006, which drew selectively from Lance’s work.
- ↑ The silence of the US press about Triple Cross was broken very slightly on 12/19/06, with the following bland reference in the New York Times in the wake of the firing by News Corp of the book’s publisher, Judith Regan: “Peter Lance, the author of `Triple Cross,’ an investigative work about the F.B.I. and the terror network of Osama Bin Laden, said Ms. Regan abandoned his book, released in late November, when the media storm erupted over the O. J. Simpson project, even canceling a scheduled interview with him on her own radio program.”
- ↑ In the case of 9/11, the restriction was not confined to the nineteen hijackers, but to al-Qaeda as an organization.
- ↑ Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT): Annual Report 1997; Martin A. Lee, “On the Trail of Turkey's Terrorist Grey Wolves,” ConsortiumNews, 1997, http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story33.html.
- ↑ Warren Report, 785.
- ↑ Scott, Deep Politics, 180-81
- ↑ Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 70-71, 132, 136-38.
- ↑ Scott, Deep Politics Two, 130-36.
- ↑ 109 Michael Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (New York:Simon & Schuster, 1997), 53. In a memorandum of the same day Hoover noted that it was Johnson, not Hoover, who initiated the call (3 AH 476). The call logs of the LBJ Library (available on its website) indicate that the call was from Hoover to Johnson.
- ↑ 110 Attachment to CIA Memo of 12 December 1963 from DDP to FBI, "Mexican Interrogation of Gilberto Alvarado;" NARA #104-10018-10043.
- ↑ Webb, Dark Alliance, 55-56 (Montiel); Scott, Drugs, Contras, and the CIA, 15 ("kingpin”).
- ↑ Edward J. Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (New York: G.P.Putnam’s, 1977), 205.
- ↑ 113 Scott, Hoch, Stetler, The Assassinations, 402.
- ↑ Epstein, Agency of Fear, 205n.
- ↑ House Select Committee on Intelligence, Report of CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, quoted in Robert Parry, “CIA Admits Tolerating Contra-Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s,” ConsortiumNews.com, 8 June 2000, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html.
- ↑ 9/11 Report, 171. I find this statement one-sided and misleading, but less so than the opposite claim of Yossef Bodansky: “The annual income of the Taliban from the drug trade is estimated at $8 billion. Bin Laden administers and manages these funds – laundering them through the Russian mafia… (Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America [New York: Random House/Prima, 2001], 315).
- ↑ "Evidence Presented to the British Parliament, 4th October 2001," Los Angeles Times, 10/4/01. Cf. e.g. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/30/01; Asia Times, 12/8/01; New York Times, 10/4/01, 10/11/01; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01. For further documentation, see Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003),32, 36.
- ↑ "US `seizes al-Qaeda drugs ship'," BBC News, 12/19/03.
- ↑ Time, August 2, 2004.
- ↑ James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam,”Boston Review, October/November 2003, http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html.
- ↑ Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.
- ↑ See the discussion in Galbraith, “Exit Strategy;” also Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).Debate continues to rage, but over hypothetical questions, above all whether Kennedy would have maintained his withdrawal plans as the political situation in Saigon continued to deteriorate. But, to quote Galbraith quoting Jones, “Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones writes, `unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events that did not necessitate a victory.’”
- ↑ [[Galbraith footnote:] “Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled `Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?’ [It is available on line at http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/jg/archive/1994/STRIKEF2.pdf.]. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: `Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?’”
- ↑ “There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union.” [Galbraith footnote]
- ↑ Galbraith, “Exit Strategy.”
- ↑ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), 459-62, 757-58; Talbot, Brothers, 51, 69-70.
- ↑ Talbot, Brothers, 172,
- ↑ Scott, Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files, 1994-1995, 19; quoting Earl Warren, Memoirs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 357-58: “The gravity of the situation was such that it might lead us into war, [Johnson] said, and if so, it might be a nuclear war.”
- ↑ Johnson-Russell telephone call, November 29, 1963, http://historymatters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0310a.htm.
- ↑ Scott, The War Conspiracy, 53-55, 66, 162-63.
- ↑ Kaiser, American Tragedy, 211.
- ↑ See Scott, Deep Politics, 24-37; "Exit Strategy: In 1963, Kennedy ordered a Complete Withdrawal from Vietnam," by James K. Galbraith (Boston Review, Oct.-Nov. 2003).
- ↑ 133 BBC News, September 18, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm. Naik accurately predicted to BBC not only the timing of the October U.S. attack, but its source in Tajikistan. Cf. Abid Ullah Jan, Afghanistan: The Genesis of the Final Crusade (BookSurge Publishing, 2007), 27; John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2003), 109; Richard D. Mahoney, Getting Away with Murder (Arcade, 2004), 176.
- ↑ McCoy, Politics of Heroin, 162, 191.
- ↑ International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2007, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/18/asia/AS-GENAfghanistan.php .
- ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, 2003, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf; World Drug Report, 2007, 195, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/wdr07/WDR_2007_3.1.1_afghanistan.pdf.
- ↑ Matthew Lee, “Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, August 4, 2007, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan.
- ↑ William Henderson, “Some Reflections on United States Policy in Southeast Asia,” in William Henderson, ed., Southeast Asia: Problems of United States Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), 253–63. In addition to being an adviser on international affairs to Socony Mobil, Henderson was an officer of American Friends of Vietnam.
- ↑ Brisard and Dasquié, Forbidden Truth, 41-44; Scott, Road to 9/11, 166-67.
- ↑ Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2004), 176.
- ↑ Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006), 83. Cf. Pepe Escobar, “The War for Pipelineistan,” Asian Times, January 26, 2002.
- ↑ “Joint Vision 2020,” the May 2000 U.S. Department of Defense blueprint for the future: “The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full-spectrum dominance—the ability of U.S. forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations” (http://www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jv2020.doc).
- ↑ “Resisting the Global Domination Project: An Interview with Prof. Richard Falk,” Frontline 20, no. 8 (April 12–25, 2003); Richard Falk, “Global Ambitions and Geopolitical Wars,” in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (co-editors), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2006), 117–27.
- ↑ American Security Council Foundation, “Indicators of Iranian Interference in Iraq,” February 13, 2007, http://www.ascfusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=73. See also Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (Boston: South End Press, 1991), 29ss; Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), Chapter 2.
- ↑ Scott, Road to 9/11, 153 (Mohamed); Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 243-46, 276-77 (Oswald).
- ↑ Hiro, War Without End, 421, cf. 307-08; quoting from International Herald Tribune, April 3, 2002.