With a massive amount of information about planned terrorist attacks in hand, how could the government have been caught by surprise on 9-11?
The CIA and FBI have known - since 1995 - about a terrorist plan to use civilian aircraft to attack the World Trade center and U.S. government installations. The plans to hijack a large number of American commercial passenger planes simultaneously and explode them in mid-flight or crash them into predetermined targets such as the World Trade Center have been well known by western intelligence agencies since 1995, according to a report in Die Welt, a leading German newspaper on Dec. 7.
The terrorist scenario that unfolded on Sept. 11 was neither new nor unexpected - and the American intelligence agencies, both the CIA and the FBI, have known of the plan to execute such an act for more than six years, Die Welt said.
The airline terror plan, code named "Project Bojinka," was first discovered in January 1995 during a police search of a Manila apartment in which a suspicious fire had occurred just days before Pope John Paul II was to travel nearby during his visit to the Philippines. A Philippines police investigation revealed that a three-man terrorist cell had occupied the apartment in the center of Manila and made preparations to assassinate the pope. The contents of the apartment included bombs made of liquid chemicals along with the garb of priests, Bibles, and religious paraphernalia meant to disguise the assassins.
The three terrorists who had occupied the apartment, Ramsi Ahmed Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, where allegedly affiliated with international terrorist networks. All three had attended pilot training schools in the Philippines. The Kuwaiti terrorists, Yousef and Murad, had developed undetectable liquid nitroglycerine bombs that could be hidden in contact lens bottles, and plotted to kill the pope and President Bill Clinton, according to the Guardian. Investigators say the Bojinka bombs are among the most sophisticated they have seen. Yousef and Murad planned to use liquid nitroglycerin, which is virtually undetectable by airport security screening. Although Yousef and Shah managed to escape after the fire, Murad was arrested when he returned to the apartment to retrieve his laptop computer.
Federal investigative sources have confirmed that Murad detailed an entire plot to dive bomb aircraft into the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Va. The plot was contained on the laptop computer he had tried to recover. On Murad's computer the police discovered "Project Bojinka," a plan to terrorize the United States by sabotaging 11 westbound civilian aircraft simultaneously with bombs, exploding them in mid-air as they approached the West Coast. Furthermore, "Project Bojinka" included plans to hijack and crash several commercial airplanes into civilian and government buildings simultaneously, precisely as it occurred on Sept. 11. Yousef independently boasted of the plot to U.S. Secret service agent Brian Parr and FBI agent Charles Stern on an extradition flight from Pakistan to the United States in February 1995. The agents later testified to that fact in court.
Philippine investigators say the plan targeted not only the CIA but other U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon. The Philippine police said that the World Trade Center and Sears Tower were specific targets in the plan. Shortly before the fire in Manila, at the end of 1994, Yosef conducted a Bojinka test run. Yousef boarded Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bound for Tokyo from Manila. He carried the volatile liquid onto the airliner in a plastic contact-lens solution bottle. Once airborne, Yousef went to the rest room to prepare the bomb. Using a Casio watch as a timer and batteries from children's toys, he assembled the bomb, which he placed under a passenger seat.
Yousef left the plane during a stop in the Philippine city of Cebu. The bomb exploded soon after the airliner left Cebu. One person was killed and several were injured, though the pilot was able to make an emergency landing.
British Chief of Staff Critical of War on Terror
December 19, 2001
Britain's top military officer warns that the "war on terrorism" will "radicalize" friendly states and lead to increased terrorism.
While Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Britain, the United State's closest ally in Afghanistan and only ally in Iraq, on the three-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror, significant differences surfaced on how to proceed with the "war on terrorism."
British Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce revealed a significant divergence between the allies' military and political branches on what to do after the defeat of the Taliban. Boyce said that America's determination to use military might in a wider war was certain to "radicalize" friendly states whose support Britain and other nations need.
Speculation is growing that the United States will attack Iraq as part of its "war." Powell will not rule out war against Iraq. An attack on Iraq would further destabilize the region, experts on the Middle East warn, drawing in neutral countries and stretching the allied coalition to the breaking point.
Britain will have to lay down "red lines" beyond which it would not go, Boyce said. Whatever is done must be legal, the admiral said, because to do otherwise would jeopardize its legitimacy. The alliance must beware of "exporting terrorism," which had been the experience of the United States in Colombia, Boyce said, where military operations against the guerrilla movement, FARC, had forced it into Mexico and Guatemala.
Boyce also warned of "excessive optimism" about successes against the Taliban because the war was not conventional and could not be measured in territory won. Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda network remained "a fielded, resourced, dedicated and essentially autonomous terrorist force, quite capable of atrocity on a comparable scale" to the Sept. 11 attacks, Boyce said.
Boyce criticized the massive U.S. bombing campaigns saying that lack of constraint and proportionality could simply "radicalize" opinion in the Islamic world in favor of al Qaeda. Terrorism could only be defeated by winning "hearts and minds," Boyce said. You cannot win the "war" by bombing and military action could have precisely the opposite effect to the one intended, he warned.
"Washington is making it quite plain that after bombing Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban, it wants to get out of the country as soon as Mullah Omar and Bin Laden are captured, or presumed dead, leaving others to clean up the mess," wrote Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian. Politicians and the media should take a longer-term view of events on the ground where the situation could often be tenuous, he said.
The international community must attack the causes, not the symptoms of terrorism, Boyce said. The enemy is not just Osama Bin Laden. This was not a "high-tech 21st century posse in the new Wild West," he said. Boyce, however, did not mention the presence of American bases in Saudi Arabia, or America's failure to apply pressure on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state—"absolutely central issues raised only in private by senior officials" in both the British military and political establishments, wrote Norton-Taylor.
Bin Laden Video: Smoking Gun or CIA Fake?
December 19, 2001
The latest videotape implicating Osama Bin Laden has been called the "smoking gun" — but critics of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan call it "smoke and mirrors" deception. The blurry 40-minute videotape released by the Pentagon on Dec. 13, purportedly showing Osama Bin Laden boasting of masterminding the terror attacks of 9-11, has raised more questions and doubts about its veracity than it has answered.
According to U.S. officials, the tape was found in a house in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, and handed to the Pentagon by an unnamed person or group. At first it was reported that the CIA found the tape. Later press reports said United Front soldiers discovered it. Unless the United States gives more information about how the tape was found or provides more technological details about it, doubts are bound to linger, the Guardian (U.K.) wrote.
One specialist in Islamic affairs, Hani Al Sibaei, described the videotape as "fabricated and a scandal for the greatest democratic country in the world." In a telephone call with the Arabic news network Al Jazeera from London, he noted the congratulatory wishes on the tape and Bin Laden's happy expression. He said that this segment was taken from a tape of Bin Laden being congratulated on the pre-arranged marriage of his child to the child of Aiman Al-Zawaheri — which took place four years ago.
Al Sibaei said it boggles the mind that an organization like al Qaeda would create such simple-minded videotapes and then leave them behind in a private home. He added that Bin Laden has twice denied involvement in the attacks and said that he had sworn to Mullah Mohamed Omar, leader of the Taliban movement, that the Al Qaeda organization pledged it would not plan attacks against other countries from inside Afghanistan.
In the video, Bin Laden, wearing a green military jacket and white headdress, claims to have known the attacks would take place five days in advance, and says the destruction of the twin towers exceeded his expectations. In the tape, which was broadcast with muffled sound accompanied by English translation, Bin Laden said that he believed that the fire from the jet fuel would result in a partial collapse of the iron infrastructure of the World Trade Center. The impact of the video may have been diluted to some extent by its poor quality and language difficulties. Many Arabs either had to accept the English translation on TV or strain to hear the words themselves.
Christopher Ross, a consultant hired by the State Department, told the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, that he had to replay the tape dozens of times in order to hear the conversation because the sound was so bad. Ross indicated that to improve the translation, he replayed the tape another 50 times with the translator. He confirmed that the translation is not literal, because of the poor quality of the original tape's sound.
Some legal experts found the tape damning, if it could ever be admitted into court. "It is the most powerful kind of evidence," said Donald B. Ayer, former deputy attorney general. "It is a virtual confession."
In an earlier interview with a Pakistani newspaper, Bin Laden said "I have already said that I am not involved in the Sept.11 attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act."
Prosecutors seeking to bring Bin Laden to justice would certainly be keen to produce the tape but might struggle to prove its authenticity. Henry Hingson, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said: "In this day and age of digital wizardry, many things can be done to alter its veracity."
The United States says the tape provides compelling evidence that Bin Laden was behind the attacks but the authenticity of the tape is doubted by many in the Muslim world and dismissed as unconvincing propaganda. For all his familiarity with the Sept. 11 events, Bin Laden did not explicitly take responsibility for directing the operation. He said he had received notification of the Tuesday attacks the previous Thursday, indicating that the timing, at least, might have been left to others.
In Jordan, Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of the Islamic Action Front said, "Do Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?"
"Of course it is fabricated," Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamic movements said, "If this is the kind of evidence that America has, then the blood of thousands who died and were injured in Afghanistan is on Bush's hands."
Riaz Durrani, a spokesman for Jamiat Ulema-e-Is lam, a pro-Taliban party in Pakistan, said: "This videotape is not authentic. The Americans made it up after failing to get any evidence against Osama."
President Bush, who hopes the video will bolster international support for the war on terrorism, challenged the critics calling the videotape a "devastating declaration of guilt for this evil person." Countering claims that the video was faked, Bush said it was "preposterous for anybody to think this tape was doctored," adding, "Those who contend it's a farce or a fake are hoping for the best about an evil man. This is Bin Laden unedited."
Sean Broughton, director of the London-based production company Smoke and Mirrors and one of Britain's leading experts on visual effects, said it would be relatively easy for a professional to fake a video of Bin Laden. But Broughton said to fool the top experts is much more difficult. "There are perhaps 20 people in America who would be good enough to fool everybody. To find someone that good and make sure they kept quiet would probably be pretty difficult."
Bob Crabtree, editor of Computer Video, said it is impossible to judge whether the video is a fake without more details of its source. "The U.S. seems simply to have asked the world to trust them that it is genuine," he said.
OLD OSAMA vs. NEW OSAMA
There are many problems with the videotape beginning with the appearance of Bin Laden. Bin Laden, who is reported to suffer from kidney problems and uses a cane, has appeared rather lean in previous videotapes, but suddenly seems to have gained weight and actually appears jolly in the latest video, supposedly made on Nov. 9, only weeks after his previous video. Bin Laden, who is of Yemenite parentage, has a characteristic long neck and long narrow head. The "new" Bin Laden appears to have a "husky" body and a smaller head in proportion to his body.
Some observers point out that in the latest video, Bin Laden appears to be wearing a ring on his right hand. In previous tapes Bin Laden wore no jewelry except a watch. Others have pointed out that in the latest videotape Bin Laden is "gesticulating excessively" with his right hand, while in the earlier tapes Bin Laden, who is left-handed, spoke in a slow and deliberate manner.
German Intelligence Experts: 9-11 is Hollywood Deception
December 12, 2001
European intelligence experts dismiss the Bush "war on terrorism" as deception and reveal the Realpolitik behind the bombing of Afghanistan.
BERLIN - In Germany, where war plans for Afghanistan were already being discussed in July 2001 and where several of the "Arab hijackers" lived and studied, intelligence experts say the terror attacks of Sept. 11 could not have been carried out without the support of a state secret service.
Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told this reporter that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks would have needed "years of planning." Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions."
Andreas von Bülow served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag (German parliament) from 1969 to 1994, and wrote a book Im Namen des Staates (In the Name of the State) on the criminal activities of secret services, including the CIA. In an interview with the author, Von Bülow said that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending.
"You don't get the higher echelons," von Bülow said, referring to the "architectural structure" which masterminds such terror attacks. At this level, he said, the organization doing the planning, such as Mossad, is primarily interested in affecting public opinion. The architectural level planners use corrupt "guns for hire" such as Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist who von Bülow called "an instrument of Mossad," high-ranking Stasi (former East German secret service) operatives, or Libyan agents who organize terror attacks using dedicated people, for example Palestinian and Arab "freedom fighters."
The terrorists who actually commit the crimes are what von Bülow calls "the working level," such as the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked the planes on Sept. 11. "The working level is part of the deception," he said. "Ninety-five percent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," von Bülow said, which is widely propagated in the mainstream media creating an accepted version of events. "Journalists don't even raise the simplest questions," he said, adding, "those who differ are labeled as crazy."
Both Werthebach and von Bülow said the lack of an open and official investigation, like congressional hearings, into the events of Sept. 11 was incomprehensible.
Horst Ehmke, who coordinated the German secret services directly under German Prime Minister Willi Brandt in the 70s, predicted a similar terrorist attack in his novel, Torches of Heaven, published last year, in which Turkish terrorists crash hijacked planes into Berlin. Although Ehmke had long expected "fundamentalist attacks" and when he saw the televised images from Sept.11, he said it looked like a "Hollywood production."
"Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service," Ehmke said, although he did not want to point to any particular agency. "The most important thing in the struggle against terrorists, who are abusing religion, is the battle for the soul of the people and the nations," Ehmke said. "If this isn't resolved successfully, the 21st century could be bloodier than the last."
A former Stasi agent who had warned the German secret service of terror attacks in America between Sept. 10-20 said that a high ranking Stasi chief named Jürgen Rogalla, who is "an airplane terror specialist," was probably involved in the attacks along with Abu Nidal. Both Nidal and Rogalla work with the Mossad, the former agent told me. Nidal, was said to be in Baghdad, and is a "leading officer for some Mossad agents."
The agent said that Nidal was "involved directly" in the events of 9-11 in preparation for a larger attack on the United States, which is part of "an old plan," the agent said. Based on prior knowledge of this plan, the agent said that more attacks are imminent and that aircraft carriers may be targeted. Rogalla was responsible for "turning NATO men" to spy for the East. One of the East's NATO spies, Reiner Rupp, known as "Topaz," provided Stasi and the Russians with the organization's highest secrets until he was discovered in 1993 by the BND, the German intelligence agency.
TERROR INVESTIGATION BLOCKED
Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the Bush administration blocked Secret Service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban to turn over Osama Bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.
In a recently published book, Bin Laden, la Verite Interdite (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth), the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the FBI's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July to protest official obstruction of his investigation of terrorism.
O'Neill had been in charge of national security in New York. While with the FBI, O'Neill led an investigation of Osama Bin Laden and had forecast the possibility of an organized attack by terrorists operating from within the country. O'Neill had investigated the USS Cole bombing in Yemen, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, FBI agents working under O'Neill captured Ramzi Yousef, a suspected lieutenant of Bin Laden, who was among those convicted for the World Trade Center bombing.
O'Neill was considered a top-notch investigator and was known for his pugnacity. He was barred by U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine from that country. That dispute reportedly involved a struggle between the State Department, which sought to preserve relations with Yemen, and the FBI, represented by O'Neill, who wanted access to Yemeni suspects.
O'Neill, 49, was hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center following a 25-year career with the FBI and died on Sept. 11, the first day of his new job. O'Neill reportedly died after re-entering the building to assist others.
Brisard said O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it."
Bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military strikes against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Wash ington, according to the Guardian (U.K.). The warnings to the Taliban originated at a four-day meeting of senior Americans, Russians, Iranians and Pakistanis at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July 2001. The meetings took place under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
The three Americans at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Karl "Rick" Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the State Department until 1997. There were other meetings arranged by Vendrell in which "representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present," according to the French authors. "Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table."
The Berlin conference was the third meeting since November 2000 arranged by Vendrell. As a UN meeting, its official agenda was supposedly confined to trying to find a negotiated solution to the civil war in Afghanistan, ending terrorism and heroin trafficking, and discussing humanitarian aid.
CARPET OF GOLD - OR BOMBS
The U.S. government's primary objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime in order to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, the French authors wrote. Until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia," from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean, they said.
"The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that," the book says. When the Taliban refused to accept U.S. conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military one."
"The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who attended the meetings. During the "6 plus 2" meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around "the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid," Naik said on French television. "And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come," he added.
Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the U.S. representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.' The words Simons used were 'a military operation,'" Naik said. "At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,' " Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
According to the book, the Bush government began to negotiate with the Taliban in February, soon after coming into power. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, as her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the CIA.
Constitutional Rights Fall to State Security
November 21, 2001
The federal government wants Americans to believe that the Constitution only applies when it says so. The actions taken by President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft in secretly detaining untold numbers of individuals and calling for secret military tribunals to handle captured Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners have been condemned as "a constitutional coup d'etat" which may lead to a "police state," according to experts on constitutional and international law. While most if not all the detainees "look Arab" now, experts warn, tomorrow's detainees could be blond, blue-eyed -- or you.
"What we've seen, since Sept. 11, if you add up every thing that Ashcroft, Bush and their coterie of federalist society lawyers have done here, is a coup d'etat against the United States Constitution," said Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. "When you add in the Ashcroft police state bill that was passed by Congress . . . that's really what we're seeing now.
"Since Sept. 11, we have seen one blow against the Constitution after another," Boyle said. "Recently, we've had Ashcroft saying that he had, unilaterally, instituted monitoring of attorney-client communications without even informing anyone—he just went ahead and did it, despite the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures without warrant and the Sixth Amendment right to representation by counsel."
The criminal investigation into the attacks, the largest in U.S. history, has netted about 1,200 detainees. But the Justice Department has failed to build a case against a single prime U.S. suspect in the terrorist attacks.
BAD EVIDENCE
Nine weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal authorities said on Nov. 15 that they had found no evidence indicating that any of the roughly 1,200 people detained in the United States played a role in the suicide hijacking plot. However, numerous legal protections, based on constitutional and international treaties, appear to have been ignored or violated in the case of the 1,200 detainees.
"We are becoming a banana republic here in the United States, with 'disappeared' people, which was the phenomenon that we all saw down in Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, with the support, by the way, of the United States Government," Boyle said. "We don't know where they are or the conditions under which they are being held. We have no idea whether they have access to attorneys. We do know one of them died, under highly suspicious circumstances, while in custody. There have been reports that he was tortured to death," he said.
The Constitution protects aliens in the United States, according to Boyle. "Clearly aliens here are entitled to the protections of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment , as well as to the Article III (Section 2, Clause 3) basic constitutional rights in criminal cases, including indictment, trial before a federal district judge or jury, [rights relating to] venue and things of that nature," Boyle said.
"I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an outcry," said Robert B. Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, about the long-term detentions and the administration's plans to monitor conversations be tween lawyers and terrorism suspects in federal custody. "The president is, by emergency decree, getting rid of rights that we assumed that anyone within our borders legally would have. We can find ourselves in a police state step-by-step without realizing that we have made these compromises along the way."
The foreign detainees are also protected by international law under treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. government is a party, affords basic due process protections to everyone here in the United States, irrespective of their citizenship, according to Boyle. The VCCR of 1963 calls for notification "without delay" of consular officials when one of their nationals has been arrested or "detained in any other manner."
Although Egypt, Pakistan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are party to the VCCR along with the United States, the Justice Department informed me that it is using an abbreviated list of nations, the Mandatory Notification Countries, which includes only one Middle Eastern nation, Kuwait. Spokesmen from the Justice and State Departments could not confirm that the United States was abiding by the terms of the VCCR and notifying the consulates of the detainees. However, Kareem Shora, legal adviser at the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that it had received at least 10 complaints that this was not the case.
The Justice Department is planning to "round up" and question some 5,000 men, mostly from Middle Eastern countries, who entered the U.S. legally within the past two years. "When will the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency start to turn these powers, that they have under the Ashcroft police state bill, against American citizens?" Boyle asks. "Clearly, that will be the next step."
BAD PRECEDENT
Concerning the executive order calling for military tribunals to try alleged al Qaeda members, or even former al Qaeda members, in Afghanistan, Boyle says there is an "even more serious problem."
"The third and fourth Geneva Conventions, of 1949, clearly apply to our conflict now with Afghanistan," Boyle says. "These alleged al Qaeda members would be protected either by the third Geneva Convention, if they are fighters incorporated into the army there in Afghanistan, or by the fourth Geneva Convention, if they are deemed to be civilians. Both conventions have very extensive procedural protections on trials that must be adhered to."
Although a trial can be held, there are extensive rules and protections and basic requirements of due process of law, set forth in these treaties that must be applied. Failures to apply these treaties would constitute war crimes, according to Boyle. The executive order calling for secret military tribunals is extremely dangerous because it invites reprisals by the Taliban, Boyle says. "What it is basically saying to the Taliban government and to al Qaeda is, 'We are not going to give you the protections of either the third or fourth Geneva Conventions' guarantees on trials.' What that means is that they could engage in reprisals against captured members of the United States Armed Forces. "It opens up our own armed forces to be denied prisoner-of-war treatment," he said. "So, what we're doing here is exposing them to a similar type of treatment, which would be a summary trial, in secret, subject to the death penalty."
Israeli 9-11 Terror Suspects Still Held
October 31, 2001
Among the hundreds of suspects being held in connection with the terror attacks of Sept. 11 are a number of Israelis who were seen rejoicing while photographing the burning World Trade Center. Five Israelis, suspected of being co-conspirators in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, arrested in New Jersey with box-cutters, multiple passports, and $4,000 cash on Sept. 11, remain in detention and may be held for another 90 days as the criminal investigation continues. They are among the more than 1,000 suspects who are being held in connection with the attacks whose detention is shrouded in secrecy.
The five men were on the roof of a moving company and the rooftop of their moving van, taking pictures of the burning buildings, some with themselves in the foreground smiling. In each location, according to the Jerusalem Post, the men, described in press reports as rugged and Middle Eastern-looking, had been reported "cheering" and shouting in "cries of mockery," which evoked the ire of neighbors, who called the police to report suspicious activity.
The Israelis: Sivan Kurzberg, his brother Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Gavriel Marmari, suspected of being intelligence agents with prior knowledge of the attacks, are all in their 20s and employees of an Israeli-owned moving company, Urban Moving Systems, based in New Jersey.
I spoke with a spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New York who said that "there have been more" Israelis detained in connection with the terror attacks, confirming press reports that numerous Israelis had been arrested, although he would not say how many. The spokesman said the five above-mentioned Israelis are being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn among the general population, although all had been held in solitary confinement until last week, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The mother of one of the detainees told the Israeli press that the suspects had been "tortured" during interrogation. However, the consular spokesman denied this, saying, "They haven't been tortured."
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has signed deportation orders for the five Israelis, but they can still be held for 90 days while the criminal investigation continues. The Israeli consul general in New York, Alon Pinkas, has visited the detainees several times, seeing them as recently as Oct. 29.
Katie Shmuel, the mother of Yaron, told the Israeli press, "He was allowed to talk to them only in English, and only from behind a glass partition. The consul told me that the boys are in a bad state and that they are being held under difficult conditions." The mother says that the original reports that they had been arrested while boisterously watching the disaster from a rooftop "are totally fabricated."
"For the first few days, the boys were held in an FBI dungeon, tied up, with no clothes and no food," she said. "The Americans are using them as pawns to pressure the Israeli government."
War Is Sell - Washington Elite Benefit from War
October 31, 2001
War has always been a profitable money machine for shrewd investors with foresight, but the extremely close connections of the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity investment firm and major war profiteer, to the Bush and Bin Laden families raise unavoidable questions of waging war for profit.
Established in 1987 the Carlyle Group was founded by David Rubenstein, a former staff member in the Jimmy Carter White House, and his two partners, Dan D'Aniello and Bill Conway. Today there are 18 partners in the firm and one outside investor. The Washington Post has described Carlyle as a "merchant banking firm" set up "to serve corporations and wealthy families." From the beginning the founders of Carlyle have recruited former politicians as consultants: former President George H. W. Bush is among them, along with a host of other Bush family cronies.
The Bush connection to the Carlyle Group is nothing short of a scandal, according to Larry Klayman, a notable government watchdog best known for pursuing the scandals of former President Bill Clinton. Now that the United States is bombing Afghanistan and allocating huge sums of money for defense, including $40 billion for the "war on terrorism" and more than $200 billion [1994 dollars] for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the conflict of interest is "direct," Klayman says. "President Bush should not ask but demand that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group." Carlyle owns many of the companies that will share in the $200 billion JSF deal.
"Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that. To me, that's a jaw-dropper."
The Carlyle Group, which claims to be the largest U.S. private-equity fund with some $14 billion in assets, makes money by investing in undervalued companies and reselling them at a profit, employing a host of former top-level government officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations, including former President Bush, in a global "money machine." The Washington Business Journal said in May that the Carlyle Group "seems to play by a different set of rules." Carlyle is a high-end business open only to the very rich. The Carlyle empire has investments around the world, owns numerous defense related companies outright, and has considerable business with the U.S. government. It owns so many companies that it is now one of the biggest U.S. defense contractors and a major force in global telecommunications. Carlyle also serves as financial adviser to the Saudi government.
Carlyle's directory reads like a Who's Who of high-profile Republicans going back to the Reagan administration. The chairman is Ronald Reagan's former defense secretary, Frank Carlucci. Former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Budget Director Richard Darman, and Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission through most of the Clinton administration, are all senior advisers to the firm.
"Nothing in recent history, however, seems to approach the success this group has had in the wholesale conversion of former high government rank to gigantic profits," Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of Scripps Howard News Service wrote in March 2001. "To use that influence at the highest levels to garner such enormous wealth and power presents an undeniably unsavory appearance.
"One of the underlying themes of the last election, rarely spoken but always present, was the need to restore dignity to the presidency. Now we discover that at the same time he was being held up as an example of how to be presidential, Bush senior was using his stature and entree everywhere to push the interests of himself and his cronies," Thomasson wrote.
The success of the relatively young Carlyle Group is hardly surprising given that it primarily buys companies that are regulated by government. Nearly two-thirds of its investments are in defense and telecommunications companies, which are affected by shifts in government spending and policy. Financial experts say the Carlyle Group's most profitable niche is buying military and aerospace supplies at discount prices and selling them for a lot more. With Carlucci as chairman, it's no surprise that Carlyle is drawn to defense firms. Carlyle owns numerous defense and aerospace firms such as United Defense Industries, which makes tanks, guided missiles, space vehicles, and weapons delivery systems. United States Marine Repair (USMR) is America's largest non-nuclear ship repair, modernization and conversion company and is another Carlyle company.
Carlucci's knowledge of the Pentagon's inner workings gives Carlyle an advantage when buying defense companies that have fallen in market value. "Because they have a good sense of the defense and aerospace business, they have an ability to project future earnings so they can calculate the true value," Philip Finnegan, a senior analyst with the Teal Group said. Carlucci, who is seen as largely responsible for Carlyle's success, said he met in February with his old college classmate, Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defense. He also met with Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a defense secretary under former President Bush, to talk about military matters-at a time when Carlyle has several billion-dollar defense projects under consideration.
Defense-related companies make up about 30 percent of the firm's portfolio, which also includes information technology, Internet companies, health care, real estate, and bottling companies. The French newspaper, Le Figaro, is another Carlyle asset.
"Carlyle has averaged annual gross returns of 34 percent since inception, par for the course among similar buyout firms. By comparison, funds offered by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. returned 30 percent. By the end of 2000 Carlyle had raised a total of $12.5 billion, which made it the fifth-largest private buyout firm in the U.S.," Bloomberg reported.
PUBLIC MONEY-PRIVATE EQUITY
Although the Carlyle Group is a "private equity fund" it has enriched itself using public and state pension funds from California, Texas and Connecticut. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CALPERS) has invested hundreds of millions with Carlyle and has at least a 5 percent stake in the firm.
The Texas teachers' pension fund, whose board was appointed when George W. Bush was governor, gave Carlyle $100 million to invest. In Connecticut, a scandal resulted when Wayne Berman, a Washington consultant and fund-raiser for George W. Bush's presidential campaign, received "a kickback" of more than $900,000 after the state treasurer, Paul J. Silvester, steered tens of millions of state pension fund dollars into a Carlyle Group investment fund.
BIN LADEN CUTS CARLYLE TIES
On Oct. 26, it was reported that Osama Bin Laden's family was cutting its financial ties with the Carlyle Group. The Bin Laden family reportedly sold its investment worth $2.02 million because of criticism in Saudi Arabia that the Bin Laden family, whose construction company is one of the largest in the Middle East, would profit from increased military spending in the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
The fact that President Bush's father and his former secretary of state, James Baker, serve as senior advisers to the company has raised red flags in Washington. Bush the Elder and Baker reportedly use their extensive government contacts to further their business interests as Carlyle Group representatives. From Carlyle's point of view, the involvement of Baker and the former president is invaluable. "It punches up the brand awareness for us globally," said Carlyle partner Dan D'Aniello. "We are greatly assisted by Baker and Bush. It shows that we are associated with people of the highest ethical standards." Baker's stake was estimated to be worth more than $180 million when the fund was valued at $3.5 billion; today it is worth much more.
Unlike Baker, Bush the Elder has no ownership stake in Carlyle. As an adviser and an investor, however, Bush is allowed to put the money he earns giving speeches, between $80,000 and $100,000 per speech, into Carlyle's investment funds.
In July 2000, Carlyle Group bought Northrop Grumman's aerostructures business group in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. The business was renamed Vought Aircraft Industries and remains based in Dallas. On Aug. 20, Vought announced that it had been selected by Northrop Grumman to manufacture the wing for the Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance system's air vehicle.
The corporate overlap between Carlyle and leading defense contractors can be seen in B. Edward Ewing, managing director and CEO of Dallas-based Carlyle Management Group (CMG). Ewing is also chairman and CEO of The Aerostructures Corporation (TAC), a leading worldwide designer and manufacturer of major components for commercial and military aircraft, and is CEO of USMR. Prior to joining Carlyle and leading USMR, Ewing served five years as vice president of operations for Lockheed Martin, the leading company on the JSF project.
The current White House occupant, George W. Bush, was a director of a Carlyle company named Caterair. From the beginning the founders have recruited former politicians as consultants. George Bush the Elder visited Saudi Arabia, home of the Bin Laden family, to open doors for Carlyle's fund-raisers. Carlyle won't disclose how much senior advisers like Bush earn but industry experts estimate their fees average about $1 million per year. "Mr. Bush gives us no advice on what do with the federal government. We've gone over backwards to make sure that we do no lobbying," Carlyle senior partner David Rubenstein said. "President Bush is not asking anybody for money. He speaks at lunches, dinners, and events on non-Carlyle matters and expresses his views on world events."
Rubenstein, who attended Barbara Bush's surprise 75th birthday party last summer in Kennebunkport, Me., says: "We don't do lobbying. We don't give to any politicians. We don't have a PAC [political action committee]. We try to be cleaner than Caesar's wife." Rubenstein may not know it, but Caesar's wife was not "above suspicion." He divorced her over allegations of infidelity.
U.S. Lacks Evidence against Taliban
October 24, 2001
International legal experts say that the Bush administration has yet to present evidence to substantiate its claim that the events of Sept. 11 constituted and act of war rather than a crime against humanity.
"Even if the Bush administration were to publicly provide clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Bin Laden and his organization were somehow behind the terrorist bombing in New York and Washington, the U.S. government would still have no valid justification or excuse for committing acts of war against Afghanistan," says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. International law requires a court hearing to determine the guilt or innocence of an individual accused of terrorist acts, such as Osama Bin Laden, Boyle says.
Boyle criticized Congress for not creating a panel with subpoena powers to fully investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. "We are not going to get that investigation," he said. "Yet we are waging a war on Afghanistan based on evidence that secretary of State Colin Powell said was not even circumstantial.
"Even the British government admitted the case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court and as a matter of fact it was routinely derided in the British press. There was nothing there," Boyle says. "Now I don't know myself who was behind the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. And it appears we are never going to find out. "Why? Because Congress in its wisdom has decided not to empanel a joint committee in Congress with subpoena power giving them access to whatever documents they want throughout any agency of the United states government including FBI, CIA, NSA, DAS. And to put these people under oath and testify as to what happened under penalty of perjury," he says.
Boyle, who helped resolve the dispute between the United States, the UK and Libya over the handling of the Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing case, says that the 1971 Montreal Sabotage Convention is directly relevant in the current crisis. This convention, he says, "provides a comprehensive framework for dealing with the current dispute between Afghanistan and the United States. The Bush administration decided to ignore the fact that the hijacking of civilian aircraft is dealt with under international treaties that deal with terrorism. "They rejected the entire approach and called it an act of war," Boyle said. "They invoked the rhetoric deliberately of Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. There was "a conscious decision to escalate the states," Boyle said. "An act of war has a formal meaning. It means an attack by one state against another state. Which, of course, is what happened on Dec. 7, 1941; but not on Sept. 11, 2001.
The military assault against Afghanistan was not prompted by the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11 according to Boyle. Muslim and non-Muslim countries around the world are condemning U.S. military actions because they are not justified under international law, Boyle said.
As I reported previously, the major impetus behind the military strikes against Afghanistan is to obtain extended access to oil and natural gas deposits in Central Asia. "The actions of the United States in Afghanistan constitute armed aggression and are illegal," Boyle said. "Clearly, what is going on in Afghanistan is not self-defense."
Boyle appeared on the Fox News Channel with Bill O'Reilly on Sept. 13 and argued for presentation of evidence, authorization from the Security Council, and adherence to the rule of law. Since the O'Reilly show, Boyle has not been invited to speak on any prime-time news programs. He said that attacks by the United States against Afghanistan will result in a "human catastrophe" and predicted that tens of thousands of people will die unless American citizens demand that the war end.
Statements by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz discussing the option of "ending states" is a form of genocidal hate-speech, Boyle said. "I could take that statement of the World Court and file it and prove it as genocidal intent by the United States government," he says. "So the longer we let this go on the more we are going to see our own civil rights and civil liberties taken away from us."
Survivors Witnessed Explosions Inside Twin Towers
October 17, 2001
The mainstream media is ignoring eyewitness accounts of bombs that exploded inside the World Trade Center before the collapse of the Twin Towers. Despite reports from numerous eyewitnesses and experts, including news reporters on the scene, who heard or saw explosions immediately before the collapse of the World Trade Center, there has been virtual silence in the mainstream media.
Television viewers watching the horrific events of Sept. 11 saw evidence of explosions before the towers collapsed. Televised images show what appears to be a huge explosion occurring near ground level, in the vicinity of the 47-story Salomon Brothers Building, known as WTC 7, prior to the collapse of the first tower.
Van Romero, an explosives expert and former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech, said on Sept. 11, "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The collapse of the structures resembled the controlled implosions used to demolish old structures and was "too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures," Romero told the Albuquerque Journal hours after the attack.
Implosions are violent collapses inwards, which are used to demolish buildings in areas of high density, to prevent damage to surrounding buildings. Precision-timed explosives are placed on strategic load-bearing columns and beams to cause the controlled collapse. Demolition experts say that towers are the most difficult buildings to bring down in a controlled manner. A tower tends to fall like a tree, unless the direction of its fall is controlled by directional charges. The WTC towers "smokestacked" neatly, falling within the boundaries of their foundations. Skeptics say this could not have happened coincidentally and it must have been caused by strategically placed and precisely timed internal charges. Videotape images may reveal these internal charges precipitating the controlled demolition of the towers and WTC 7.
Romero is vice president of research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures, and often assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.
After being hit by the aircraft, the twin towers appeared to be stable. Then without warning, at 9:58 a.m. the south tower imploded vertically downwards, 53 minutes after being hit. At 10:28, 88 minutes after being struck, the north tower collapsed. "It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that," Romero said. If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, "It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points," he said.
"One of the things terrorist events are noted for is a diversionary attack and secondary device," Romero said. Attackers detonate an initial, diversionary explosion, in this case the collision of the planes into the towers, which brings emergency personnel to the scene, then detonate a second explosion.
Ten days after the attack, following criticism of his initial remarks, Romero did an about-face in his analysis of the collapse, "Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail," he told the Albuquerque Journal on Sept. 21.
The twin towers were struck by Boeing 767's carrying approximately 23,000 gallons of fuel.
However, there is other information that lends credence to Romero's controversial original explanation of explosives being involved. I spoke with an eyewitness whose office is near the World Trade Center. He had been standing among a crowd of people on Church Street, about two-and-a-half blocks from the South Tower, when he saw "a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the building between floors 10 and 15." He saw about six of these brief flashes, accompanied by "a crackling sound" before the tower collapsed. Each tower had 47 central support columns.
One of the first firefighters in the stricken second tower, Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People magazine of Sept. 24: "I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there were bombs set in the building." Kim White, 32, an employee on the 80th floor, also reported hearing an explosion. "All of a sudden the building shook, then it started to sway. We didn't know what was going on," she told People. "We got all our people on the floor into the stairwell . . . at that time we all thought it was a fire . . .We got down as far as the 74th floor . . . then there was another explosion."
The accepted theory is that as the fires raged in the towers, the steel cores in each building were heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the support beams to buckle. A lead engineer who designed the World Trade Center Towers expressed shock that the towers collapsed after being hit by passenger jets. "I designed it for a 707 to hit it," Lee Robertson, the project's structural engineer said. The Boeing 707 has a fuel capacity of more than 23,000 gallons, comparable to the 767's 23,980-gallon fuel capacity.
Another architect of the WTC, Aaron Swirski, lives in Israel and spoke to Jerusalem Post Radio after the attack: "It was designed around that eventuality to survive this kind of attack," he said.
I spoke with Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering professor and the World Trade Center's construction manager. Brown had watched in confusion as the towers came down. "It was over-designed to withstand almost anything including hurricanes, high winds, bombings and an airplane hitting it," he said.
Brown said that although the buildings were designed to withstand "a 150-year storm" and the impact of a Boeing 707, he said the jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit weakened the steel. Brown explained that the south tower collapsed first as it was struck lower with more weight above the impact area. Brown said he "did not buy" the theory that the implosion was caused by the fires sucking the air out of the lower floors, which has been speculated.
The contractor who is reported to have been the first on the WTC collapse scene to cart away the rubble that remains is a company that specializes in the scientific demolition of large buildings, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Baltimore, headed by Mark Loizeaux. CDI is the same contractor that demolished and hauled away the shell of the bombed Oklahoma City Murrah building, actions that prevented independent investigators from pursuing evidence on leads suggesting that there were bombs set off inside the building.
In February 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Mark Loizeaux, Douglas Loizeaux and Controlled Demolition, Inc. on charges of falsely reporting campaign contributions made by family members and CDI employees who had been asked to donate to the campaign of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). The Baltimore Sun reported that the illegal contributions allegedly occurred between 1996 and 1998. The Loizeaux brothers and CDI were acquitted in September 2000. Cleaning up the estimated 1.2 million tons of rubble will reportedly cost $7 billion and take up to a year.
Removing the debris has also been controversial. The police said that some scrap metal has been diverted to mob-controlled businesses rather than the dump where investigators are examining rubble for clues and human remains.
The second plane nearly missed the South Tower, cutting through a corner. Most of its fuel burned in an outside explosion. However, this building collapsed first, long before the North Tower, into which a similar plane entered completely.
The Profiteers of 9-11
October 17, 2001
A Select Few Profited from Advance Knowledge of the Terror Attacks.
Sept. 11 marked a devastating loss for the nation, but shrewd financial speculators with ties to the highest levels of the CIA appear to have profited from the disaster, raising questions about exactly who had prior knowledge of the terrible tragedy. The day two passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center ended differently for different people. For some 10,000 children it meant the loss of a mother or father. For millions of Americans it marked the end of normality. For a select group of financial speculators it meant increased profits.
There have been numerous reports of unusual activity in financial markets around the world suggesting prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In Chicago, home of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the largest of the five options exchanges in the nation, brokers and speculators known as options traders wage bets daily about what a stock price will do. In options trades there are winners and losers regardless of the outcome. The catastrophic events of Sept. 11 were no different; the devastation at the World Trade Center resulted in some speculators winning millions of dollars from options purchased at the CBOE-while others lost their lives. A $2.5 million winning that resulted when the United Airlines share price fell after two of its planes crashed remains unclaimed more than six weeks after the tragedy.
Investigations into the unusually high number of "put" options, betting that the price of United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines shares would fall, have revealed that Alex Brown Inc., an investment banking firm, purchased many of these option contracts. Alex Brown Inc. was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now the executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. Krongard, 64, former head of Baltimore-based Alex Brown, America's oldest investment bank, joined the CIA three years ago as a counselor to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. Krongard switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex Brown and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock in the process.
President Bush appointed Krongard executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency on March 26. From February 1998 until March 2001, Krongard served as counselor to the director of central intelligence. Until 1997 Krongard was chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown, having previously worked in various capacities at Alex Brown. Krongard was quoted on the relationship between Wall Street and the CIA in a Washington Post article. If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, Krongard told the Post, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
OPTIONS SPIKES
Between Sept. 6 and 7, the CBOE saw a dramatic spike in the purchases of put options on United Airlines stock compared to call options. A "put" option increases in value when the stock price falls, while a "call" option increases if the share price rises. The ratio of "put" options to "call" options was 12 to 1, with 2,372 "put" options purchased, betting that UAL stock would fall compared with 198 "call" options. The winners on these options deals walked away with untold millions of dollars in profits.
On Sept. 10, speculators in Chicago purchased put options on American Airlines, the other airlines involved in the hijackings, at a ratio of 6 to 1 against "call" options. Traders bought 2,258 put options as compared with 374 "call" options the day before the crashes. There were similar spikes in "put" option contracts on the shares of the investment firms of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., major tenants of the World Trade Center, occupying 22 floors each, who were both devastated by the terror attacks.
In the three days of trading prior to Sept. 11, Morgan Stanley "put" options spiked dramatically. According to figures provided by Options Clearing Corp. of Chicago, during the two trading days before the attacks the total number of "put" options jumped to 7,647 compared with a daily average of 2,384 during the month of August. Morgan Stanley's shares fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Likewise, Merrill Lynch "put" options jumped to 64,445 in the three days before the attacks. On Sept. 10, 28,960 "put" options were purchased on Merrill Lynch compared with a daily average of 5,430 during the month of August. Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50.
What Does Bin Laden Really Want?
October 11, 2001
While the U.S. government and mainstream media refuse to discuss the foreign policies that breed resentment against America in the Islamic world, ignoring these fundamental issues can only perpetuate the conflict.
It was late on Sunday morning when President George W. Bush began his "war against terrorism" by launching 50 cruise missiles and bombing raids on Taliban targets in Afghanistan. Within hours, Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the terror attacks of Sept. 11, responded with an effective counter-offensive in the war of words. Bin Laden spoke to the world through a taped message broadcast by Al Jazeera, the most widely watched television news channel in the Arab world.
The American mass media portrays Bin Laden as "consumed by hatred for the West" and misrepresents his primary political goals of restoring integrity to Saudi Arabia and confronting American abuses in the Middle East. "Bush and Blair may tell the world they are going to win the 'war against terrorism' but in the Middle East, where Osama Bin Laden is acquiring almost mythic status among Arabs, they have already lost," Robert Fisk of The Independent said on Oct. 10. A resident of Cairo told Fisk that Arabs believe America "is trying to kill the one man ready to tell the truth."
Bin Laden, who "is hardly a madman," according to experts, despises the Saudi royal family, which he regards as corrupt surrogates of American rule. In 1998, Bin Laden said he expects "for the ruler of Riyadh the same fate as the shah of Iran." Because the Saudi royal family "sells the interests of its own people and betrays the nation," Bin Laden said, "They shall all be wiped out."
"The United States is committed to defending the House of Saud against any internal political movement that might want to get rid of it, or perhaps even reform it," Writes Said K. Aburish, author of The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. The American troops in Saudi Arabia are seen as protecting the royal family, which "is becoming less acceptable by the day," Aburish says. The House of Saud is not unlike the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to Aburish, "People still disappear in the middle of the night in Saudi Arabia; people are imprisoned without being charged; people have no voice in the running of the government, and they have squandered the country's wealth . . . the country is not only broke, they are heavily in debt.
"Saudi Arabia operates in very mysterious ways. . . . We are talking about a closed society ," he said. The royal family is dedicated to keeping the kingdom closed because "outside influences would include calls for human rights, equality, democracy and things of this sort that the House of Saud is not about to tolerate," Aburish said. The oppressive conditions in the country are causing massive unrest, although due to suppression by the government, Islamic fundamentalism provides the only vehicle for political reform movements-and these are becoming increasingly violent. "Osama Bin Laden is the prophet of these movements," Aburish says, whose "number one issue" is that American troops should leave Saudi Arabia, and secondly that "there should be a Muslim Jerusalem where Islamic holy places are protected."
Bin Laden has "developed a stunningly deceptive regional war calculus that stands a reasonable chance of success," according to Paul M. Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Washington. "His strongest belief is that Saudi Arabia can be brought to its knees, the House of Saud deposed," Wihbey says. His "overriding goal" is to return to Saudi Arabia in triumph and put an end to the existing regime.
Support for Bin Laden's political program to reform Saudi Arabia comes from all levels of society, Aburish says, including from members of the House of Saud who belong to Islamic fundamentalist groups. There is an ongoing power struggle between two competing factions in the Saudi royal family over how to deal with American requests to neutralize Bin Laden, Wihbey said. One week after the terror attacks it was reported that the ailing Saudi king, Fahd, had flown to Geneva with a massive entourage and is now in seclusion. If Bin Laden survives and returns to Saudi Arabia, his supporters will greet him as a Mahdi (messiah). This would mark "a dramatically new geopolitical landscape," Wihbey said.
Bin Laden today stands accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the kamikaze terror attacks in New York and Washington although evidence linking him to the crimes has not been presented to the public. "Neither I nor my organization Al-Qaida is involved in the attacks, and the U.S. has traced the attackers within America," Bin Laden told the Karachi daily Ummat. "The attackers could be anybody, people who are part of the American system yet rebel against it, or some group that wants to make this century a century of confrontation between Islam and Christianity."
Bin Laden has always carefully denied involvement in terror attacks such as the U.S. embassy bombings saying it is not his job to organize such attacks. His role is "to create awareness about the injustices done by the U.S. to Muslims." He rails against the "corrupting influence of the West" on the Muslim world. "What has the West given the world? A lust for power and a license to loot and plunder the poorer countries," he said in a recent interview with an Arab journalist, as reported in the Washington Times.
"We are against the American system but not the American people. Islam does not allow killing of innocent people, men, women and children even in the event of war," he said to Ummat. Although Bin Laden denied personal responsibility for the terror attacks, in the taped speech, broadcast as Bush began the bombing of Afghanistan, he accused the United States of hypocrisy, murder, and occupation of Islamic lands, articulating widely held grievances which resonate throughout the Islamic and Arab world. Bin Laden said that the suffering America is "tasting now" is insignificant compared to the humiliation and degradation the Islamic world has suffered for more than 80 years. "Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.
"Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins," Bin Laden said about the human toll of the 11 years of U.S.-led sanctions on Iraq. "Israeli tanks infest Palestine," Bin Laden said, "in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb.
"To America, I say only a few words to it and its people," Bin Laden concluded. "I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, peace be upon him.
"The enmity between us and the Jews," Bin Laden said in 1998, "goes far back in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between the two of us is inevitable. The leaders in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail," he said, "They have mobilized their people against Islam and against Muslims. Our mothers and daughters and sons are slaughtered every day with the approval of America and its support," he said. "And, while America blocks the entry of weapons into Islamic countries, it provides the Israelis with a continuous supply of arms allowing them thus to kill and massacre more Muslims.
"The American government is leading the country toward hell. We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests, not the interests of the Jews."
Al Jazeera, often called the CNN of the Arab world, reaches 35 million viewers and is the only news organization with a correspondent and direct satellite link in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to the emir of Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, to stop the flow of information the network was sending from Afghanistan. Al Jazeera resisted American censorship saying that in order to be seen as credible by its viewers it must show both sides of the conflict. Bin Laden is a party to the conflict and has a point of view that deserves to be heard, a spokesman for the network said. The Voice of America, however, pulled an interview with Mullah Omar Mohammed, the Taliban leader, following objections from the U.S. deputy secretary of state and senior officials of the National Security Council.
"America controls the governments of the Islamic countries . . . they are in the grip of the United States," Omar said. "America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. The U.S. should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries."
Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the American-led attack on Afghanistan as cruelty and a major mistake for the United States and Britain. The government of Iran is opposed to the Taliban but is not assisting in the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan. Khamenei said that it was not true that the strikes are part of a campaign against terrorism. "Their real purpose is to expand their [U.S. and U.K.] power and domination," he told a meeting of clerics in Tehran the day after the bombing began.
"What can justify this oppression that will lead to the killing and wounding of people and forcing many innocent Afghans to leave their homes? The Americans must know that they might be able to achieve their short-term goals with military strikes," he said. "But they will be hurt in the long run. Without doubt, their acts will bring instability for them."
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi condemned the attacks and expressed Iran's concerns that such military operation could "provoke extremist reactions." "We stressed from the beginning that terrorism cannot be eradicated through military actions," he said at a news conference the day after the bombing began. "Its causes must be identified and eliminated."
The Family Ties Between Bush and Bin Laden
October 3, 2001
The world now associates the Bin Laden name with Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect be hind the terror atrocities of Sept. 11. As President George W. Bush leads an intense international manhunt for Osama, few Americans realize that Osama's eldest brother, Salem, was one of Bush's first business partners. The unexplained death of Salem, Osama Bin Laden's oldest brother, in 1988, brought to an abrupt end a long and intriguing relationship between President Bush and the head of the Bin Laden family fortune.
A photograph from 1971 has been printed in English papers showing Osama, age 14, and his brother Salem, age 19, enjoying a summer holiday at the Astoria Hotel in Falun, Sweden. Christina Akerblad, the hotel owner, told the Daily Mail, "They were beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed. Everybody loved them."
Osama embraced Islamic fundamentalism and is now the world's most wanted man. "Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother," the Daily Mail's Peter Allen said. "In the 1970s, he and George W. Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr. Bush's home state of Texas." President Bush and the Bin Laden family have been connected through dubious business deals since 1977, when Salem, the head of the Bin Laden family business, one of the biggest construction companies in the world, invested in Bush's start-up oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc.
James R. Bath, a friend and neighbor, was used to funnel money from Osama Bin Laden's brother, Salem Bin Laden, to set up George W. Bush in the oil business, according to the Wall Street Journal and other reputable sources. Through a tangled web of Saudi multi-millionaires, Texas oilmen, and the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Bush was financially linked with the Bin Laden family until Salem met an untimely end in a freak flying accident near San Antonio in 1988. The infamous BCCI was shut down in 1991 with some $10 billion in losses.
In June 1977, George W. Bush formed his own oil drilling company, Arbusto Energy, in Midland, Texas. "Arbusto" actually means "shrub" in Spanish, but the Bush family interpreted it as "bush". Salem Bin Laden, a close friend of the Saudi King Fahd, had "invested heavily in Bush's first business venture," according to the Daily Mail (U.K.).
Arbusto later became Bush Exploration, when Bush's father became vice president. As the company neared financial collapse in September 1984, it was merged with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. in an effort to stay afloat. The 50 investors who propped up the Bush company with $4.7 million were "mainly friends of my uncle" who "did pretty good" in Bush's words, although they lost most of the money they invested in the company. Jon Bush, George's uncle, raised money for Arbusto from political supporters of the Reagan-Bush administration.
"These were all the Bush's pals," family friend Russell Reynolds told the Dallas Morning News in 1998. "This is the A-Team." The limited partners of the "A-Team" contributed $4.67 million to various Bush funds through 1984 but got only $1.55 million back in profit distributions, and $3.9 million in tax write-offs.
William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds, two staunch Reagan-Bush supporters, owned Spectrum 7. Despite his poor track record, the owners made Bush president of the company and gave him 13.6 percent of the parent company's stock.
SURPRISE DEAL
As the hard times continued, Spectrum merged with Harken Energy in 1986. In 1990, Harken received a contract from the government of Bahrain to drill for offshore oil although Harken Energy had never drilled a well overseas or anywhere in water. "Knowledgeable oil company sources believe that the Bahrain oil concession was indeed an oblique favor to the president of the United States but say that Saudi Arabia (home of Bin Laden) was behind the decision," according to The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of the BCCI, by Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne.
It raised oil-industry eyebrows when the Persian Gulf state announced it had chosen tiny Harken to explore an offshore site for gas and oil. Bahrain officials said they had no idea President Bush's son was associated with Harken, a claim oil-industry sources ridicule. The Bahrain deal was brokered in part by Arkansas investment banker David Edwards, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends. The Bahrain oil project resulted in two dry holes and Harken energy abandoned the project.
Two months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, on June 20, 1990, the younger Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock, 212,140 shares at $4 a share-for a total of $848,560. "That was $318,430 more than it was worth," Dr. Arthur F. Ide, author of George W. Bush: Portrait of a Compassionate Conservative, said. "George W. broke the law to do this since the transaction was an insider stock sale." Eight days later, Harken finished the second quarter with losses of $23 million and the stock went "into a nosedive" losing 75 percent of its value, finishing the year at a little over $1 a share.
"Like his father who made his fortune in the oil business with the money of others, George W. founded Arbusto with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath," said the late James Howard Hatfield, author of a "controversial biography," Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. Hatfield, 43, was found dead of an apparent prescription drug overdose in a hotel room in Springdale, Ark. on July 18, 2001. Police declined to investigate.
Bath became friends with George W. during their days together in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath "confided that he was an original investor in George Bush Jr.'s oil exploration company," according to The Outlaw Bank. Bath found investors for Arbusto and "made his fortune" by investing the money of two BCCI-connected Saudi sheiks, Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem Bin Laden. Mahfouz was one of the richest men in the world and a controlling shareholder in BCCI.
Bill White, a former real estate business partner of Bath, said: "He had put up $50,000 to help George, Jr., get started in oil business" at a time when "Bath had no substantial money of his own." Bath received a 5 percent interest in two Arbusto-related limited partnerships controlled by Bush, although Bush told the Houston Post in 1990 that he had "never done any business" with Bath. However, Bush said Bath was "a lot of fun."
Bath told White that he was in the CIA and that "he had been recruited by George Bush himself in 1976 when Bush was director of the agency . . . he said Bush wanted him involved with the Arabs, and to get into the aviation business." White contends that the Saudis were using Bath and their huge financial resources to influence U.S. policy during the Reagan and Bush administrations, according to the Houston Chronicle of June 4, 1992. Such representation by Bath would require that he be registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice, but he was not.
Shortly after Bush's father was appointed director of the CIA, Salem Bin Laden appointed Bath as his business representative in Texas. According to the Houston Chronicle, Salem Bin Laden, heir to one of the largest building companies in the Middle East, signed a trust agreement appointing Bath as his Houston representative in 1976. In 1978, Bath purchased Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Salem Bin Laden. When Bin Laden died in 1988, his interest in the airfield passed to bin Mahfouz. There was also a political aspect to Salem Bin Laden's financial activities, which played a role in U.S. operations in the Middle East and Central America during the 1980s, according to Public Broadcasting's Frontline report.
As head of Binladen Brothers Construction (now the Binladen Group), a company that later helped build U.S. airfields during Operation Desert Storm, Bin Laden was close to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and "a good friend of the U.S. government," a San Antonio attorney, Wayne Fagan, who represented Salem Bin Laden from 1982 to 1988, told the San Antonio Express-News. When the family patriarch, Sheik Mohammed Bin Laden, died in 1968, he left an industrial and financial empire and a progeny of 54 sons and daughters, the fruit of a number of wives. In 1972, Salem Bin Laden, the oldest son, took over the estate as his father's successor, with the assistance of several brothers.
With over 40,000 employees, the Bin Laden Group is represented in the major cities of Saudi Arabia and the Arab capitals of Beirut, Cairo, Amman, and Dubai. The company builds highways, housing units, factories, hangars, and military bases, some of which are part of the U.S.-Saudi "Peace Shield" agreement. The story of the Bush involvement with Bin Laden and the BCCI scandal involves "trails that branched, crossed one another, or came to unexpected dead ends," according to The Outlaw Bank.
FREAK ACCIDENT
Salem Bin Laden came to an "unexpected dead end" in a Texas pasture, 11 years after investing in Arbusto, when the ultra light aircraft he was flying crashed into power lines near San Antonio on Memorial Day, 1988. On the morning of May 29, 1988, almost immediately after takeoff, Salem Bin Laden's aircraft struck and became entangled in power lines 150 feet high before plunging to the ground.
"He was a very experienced pilot. He was a good pilot. We just can't understand why he decided to go right instead of left," recalled airstrip owner and former Marine Earl Mayfield, who cradled Bin Laden, bleeding from the ears.
That day, Bin Laden took off in a southeasterly direction into the wind. He surprised onlookers by turning west to ward power lines less than a quarter-mile away. "Nobody could figure out why he tried to fly over the power lines," said Gerry Auerbach, 77, of New Braunfels, a retired pilot. Bin Laden had more than 15,000 hours of flight experience. The police report concluded "freak accident."
The Great Game for the Oil & Gas of the Caspian Region
September 26, 2001
President Bush's "crusade" against the Taliban of Afghanistan has more to do with control of the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin than with "rooting our terrorism." Once again an American president from the Bush family is leading Americans down an oil-rich Middle Eastern warpath against "enemies of freedom and democracy."
The focus on religion-based terrorism serves to conceal important aspects of the Central Asian conflict. President Bush's noble rhetoric about fighting for justice and democracy is masking a less noble struggle for control of an estimated $5 trillion of oil and gas resources from the Caspian Basin.
One of the material results of the elder Bush's Desert Storm campaign in 1991 was to secure access to the huge Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq, which was accomplished by expanding the boundaries of Kuwait after the war. This allowed Kuwait, a former British protectorate where American and British oil companies are heavily invested, to double its prewar oil output.
The Trepca mine complex in Kosovo, one of the richest mines in Europe, was seized last year by front companies for George Soros and Bernard Kouchner, two members of the New World Order gang who devastated Serbia. A similar geopolitical strategy, influenced by Zionist planners, to control the valuable mineral resources of the Caspian Basin underlies the planned aggression against Afghanistan, a Central Asian nation that occupies a strategic position sandwiched between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
Central Asia has enormous quantities of undeveloped oil resources including 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, waiting to be exploited. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the two major gas producers in Central Asia. Today, the only existing export routes from the area lead through Russia. Investors in Caspian oil and gas are interested in building alternative pipelines to Turkey and Europe, and especially to the rapidly growing Asian markets. India, Iran, Russia and Israel are working on a plan to supply oil and gas to south and south-east Asia through India but instability in Afghanistan is raising a great threat to this effort.
Afghanistan lies squarely between Turkmenistan, home to the world's third largest natural gas reserves, and the lucrative markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan. A memorandum of understanding has been signed to build a 900-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, but the ongoing civil war and absence of a stable government in Afghanistan have delayed the project. Afghanistan was at the center of the so-called "Great Game" in the 19th century when Imperial Russia and the British Empire in India vied for influence. Today, its geographical position as a potential route for oil and natural gas pipelines makes Afghanistan extremely important to energy magnates seeking control of these precious resources.
Enron, a Texas-based gas and energy company, together with Amoco, British Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Unocal are all engaged in a multi-billion dollar frenzy to extract the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, the three newly independent Soviet republics that border on the Caspian Sea. An array of former cabinet members from the George H. Bush administration has been actively involved in negotiations with the former Soviet republics on behalf of the oil companies. The deal makers include James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu and, notably, Dick Cheney, now vice president.
THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are also closely allied with Israeli commercial interests and Israeli military intelligence. In Turkmenistan, a "former" Israeli intelligence agent, Yosef A. Maiman, president of Merhav Group of Israel, is the official negotiator and policy maker responsible for developing the energy resources of Turkmenistan.
"This is the Great Game all over," Maiman told the Wall Street Journal about his role in furthering the "geopolitical goals of both the U.S. and Israel" in Central Asia. "We are doing what U.S. and Israeli policy could not achieve - controlling the product," he said.
"Those who control the oil routes out of Central Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the distribution of revenues from new production," said energy expert James Dorian in Oil & Gas Journal on Sept. 10.
Foreign business in Turkmenistan is dominated by Maiman's Merhav Group, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). Maiman, who was made a citizen of Turkmenistan by presidential decree, serves as Turkmenistan's "official negotiator" for its gas pipeline, special ambassador, and "right-hand man" for the "authoritarian" President Saparmurad Atayevich Miyazov, a former Politburo member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Merhav Group of Israel officially represents the Turkmen government and has brokered all of the energy projects in Turkmenistan, contracts worth many billions of dollars. Merhav has been contracted to modernize existing natural gas infrastructure and will build new facilities in an oil refinery in the city of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea. Merhav refuses to disclose its sources of financing. In keeping with Israeli political interests, Maiman's planned pipelines bypass Iran and Russia. Maiman has said that he would have no objection to dealing with Iran, "when and if Israeli policy allows it."
Iran has accused the United States of trying to keep regional pipelines from passing through Iran. Creating a counterbalance to Iran's regional influence was a cornerstone of the Clinton administration, which was concerned that Iran could gain too much control over Caspian exports. "This is a common interest for the U.S. and Israel," said Dr. Nimrod Novik, vice president of Merhav. "The primary interest is to prevent the development of Turkish strategic dependence on Iran, given the unique emerging strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel."
Russia and Turkmenistan are in a battle to conquer the Turkish gas market, and the supplier that offers the best price will emerge as the winner. "This is a great race," Maiman says, "Whoever takes Turkey first wins. Whoever comes second will have lean years." Although the United States needs Russian assistance in its campaign against Afghanistan, when I asked Alex Chorine of Caspian Investor what kind of relationship existed between the Russian and Western/Israeli energy companies doing business in the Caspian Basin, Chorine said, "They act as enemies."
One of Maiman's proposed pipelines would bring Turkmenistan's gas and oil to Turkey via Azerbaijan and Georgia. Maiman's Merhav Group is also involved in a $100 million project that would reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey.
Israeli officials boast of having "excellent relations" with Azerbaijan, where an Israeli company, Magal Security Systems, has a contract to provide security at Baku airport. Magal is one of several Israeli companies that will "turn Israel into a major player in Azerbaijan" by providing security for the 1,200 mile pipeline taking oil from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.
Enron, the biggest contributor to the Bush campaign of 2000, conducted the feasibility study for a $2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline, which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan and two American companies, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services. Maiman acted as the intermediary between the Turkmenistan and the U.S. firms, but won't discuss "his cut" or whether he will receive a stake in the pipeline. The Merhav Group hired the Washington lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates and spent several million dollars to "encourage" U.S. officials to push for the trans-Caspian pipeline.
CRITICAL FOR WHOM?
During the Clinton administration, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson and "special adviser to the president" Richard Morningstan promoted the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, calling it "critical to the economic survival of Turkmenistan." The relationship between Israel, Turkey and the United States is the major factor for the selection of the Baku-Ceyhan route, which could be extended to bring oil directly to energy-deficient Israel. Energy experts, however, question the wisdom and expense of this route. Companies are under pressure from the United States and Israel to invest in east-west pipelines, although most companies would prefer cheaper north-south pipelines through Iranian territory, according to WRMEA.
The U.S. firm Unocal was leading a pipeline project to bring Turkmenistan's abundant natural gas through Afghanistan to the growing markets of Pakistan and India, until the turmoil in Afghanistan led them to withdraw from the project in 1998. The planned pipeline would carry gas from the Turkmen Dauletabad fields, among the world's largest, to Multan in Pakistan, with a planned extension to India. The line from Dauletabad through Afghanistan is planned to transport 15 billion cubic feet of gas per year for 30 years. This pipeline is on hold until the political and military situations in Afghanistan improve.
There is a second Unocal project to build a 1,030-mile oil pipeline called the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project, which would start at Chardzhou in Turkmenistan linking Russia's Siberian oil field pipelines to Pakistan's Arabian coast. This line could transport 1 million barrels a day of oil from other areas of the former Soviet Union. It would run parallel to the gas line route through Afghanistan and branch off in Pakistan to the Indian Ocean terminal in Ras Malan.
Before the sun set on the apocalyptic day that New York's gleaming twin towers collapsed, the U.S. government had already decided to blame the attack on Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born guerrilla leader, and the Taliban government of Afghanistan which harbored him. Although the U.S. government did not present evidence in support of its case against Bin Laden, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sept. 23, "I think in the near future, we will be able to put out a paper, a document, that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack."
When it was reported that the Taliban might turn Bin Laden over to face justice, the Bush administration said that surrendering Bin Laden would not prevent an American-led attack on Afghanistan. An international plan to remove the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban from power has been a subject of international diplomatic discussions for months and was reportedly raised by India during the Group of Eight summit in July in Genoa, Italy.
The Indian press reported in June that, "India and Iran will 'facilitate' U.S. and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime." The invasion plans described in the Indian press in June may come to pass in October: "Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong military back up of the U.S. and Russian. Vital Taliban installations and military assets will be targeted." The economic reasons for the multinational assault against the Taliban were explained: "Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are threatened by the Taliban that is aiming to control their vast oil, gas, and other resources by bringing Islamic fundamentalists into power."
Israeli Terror Suspects Captured by FBI
September 18, 2001
While the mainstream media has been quick to convict Osama Bin Laden for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, what the national press is not reporting is that at least 13 Israeli nationals have been detained by the FBI for possible involvement. At least three different groups of Israelis - some of whom may have ties to Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad - were taken into custody after eyewitnesses reported seeing them celebrating in several locations across the river from lower Manhattan in New Jersey. In two cases, the men were reportedly videotaping the initial kamikaze attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
When I spoke with a spokesman at the Embassy of Israel's situation room in Washington he said that at least 13 Israelis were being held in connection with the attacks. All of the detained Israelis are connected to Israeli-owned moving companies operating out of New York and New Jersey. No fewer than 13 of the 75 aliens who had been detained in the week after the attacks are Israeli nationals.
One group was reported to have been in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, another was seen in Liberty Park in Union City, and a third was apprehended on the roof of an Israeli-owned moving company. According to New Jersey and New York newspapers, two groups of Israelis were stopped in vans belonging to Urban Moving Systems - one group of three and one group of five. Eyewitnesses reported seeing similar groups in Union City and Jersey City, both of which have parks named Liberty - more than five miles apart.
Witnesses reported seeing a group of men, who turned out to be Israelis, celebrating the first attack on the world Trade Center earlier in the day in Union City. Angry witnesses reported the license plate to authorities. The plate was registered to Urban Moving Systems, a truck-rental company based in Weehawken, N.J., according to a FBI spokesperson. Business records show an "Urban Moving Systems" with offices on West 50th Street in Manhattan and on West 18th Street in Weehawken. When a local reporter called the moving company, a woman, who refused to give her name, said, "We have no comment."
On Sept, 13, FBI agents searched the Weehawken warehouse owned by Urban Moving Systems, which employed the men detained by federal officials. The FBI seized computer hard drives and other items.
Three men, seen filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers were struck, were described as "illegal immigrants from the Middle East," and were arrested in a white Chevy van hours after the attacks. Witnesses say they saw them "cheering" and "jumping up and down" in Liberty State Park in Jersey City after the attack and contacted police. In one report, Paulo Lima of the Bergen Record reported on Sept. 12 that five "Israeli tourists" had been arrested as suspected conspirators in the attacks. The five men, who were also stopped in a van on Route 3 in East Rutherford around 4:30 p.m., were being questioned by police but had not been charged.
The five "Israeli tourists" were arrested eight hours after the attacks by police in Bergen County, N.J., who said the men were found carrying maps linking them to the blasts. Sources close to the investigation said the men claimed to be "Israeli tourists" but police had not been able to confirm their identities. Authorities would not release their names. Sources close to the investigation said they found other evidence linking the Israelis to the bombing plot, according to the report. "There are maps of the city in the car with certain places highlighted," the source said. "It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park (Jersey City)."
Sources also said that bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing, authorities said. The van was stopped as it headed east on Route 3, between the Hackensack River bridge and the Sheraton hotel. As a precaution, police shut down Route 3 traffic in both directions after the stop and evacuated a small roadside motel near the Sheraton.
East Rutherford officers stopped the van after the FBI's Newark field office broadcast an alert asking surrounding police departments to look for a white Chevrolet van, police said. After grilling the men and searching the van in vain for explosives, the FBI reportedly turned them over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation.
In a separate incident, the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported on Sept. 18 that five Israelis, suspected of working for the Mossad, had been arrested for what the FBI described as "puzzling behavior" following the attack. The five Israelis, who are suspected to have been Mossad agents, were arrested four hours after the attack while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's building. It appears they were spotted by one of the neighbors shouting cries of "joy and mockery." The neighbors called the police and the FBI, according to Ha'aretz.
This gang of five worked for an Israeli-owned "moving company" based in New Jersey and the men are being held in U.S. prisons after being interrogated. The five Israelis were reported to have worked for the Israeli-owned moving company for between two months and two years. Seven FBI agents later stormed the apartment of one of the Israelis, searched it and questioned his roommate. The Israeli owner of the company, who has U.S. citizenship, was also questioned. Both men were subsequently released.
The families of the five, who asked that their names not be released, said that their sons had been questioned by the FBI for hours, had been kept in solitary confinement for three days, and had been humiliated, stripped of their clothes and blindfolded.
"When they finally let my son make a phone call for the first time to a friend in the United States two days ago, he told him that he had been tortured by the FBI in a basement," the mother of one of the suspects told Ha'aretz. "They thought that because he has citizenship of a European country as well as of Israel that he was working for the Mossad."
The five were transferred out of the FBI's facility on Saturday morning and are now being held in two prisons in New Jersey by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They are charged with illegally residing in the United States and working without permits. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had been informed by the consulate in New York that the FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling behavior." They are said to have been caught videotaping the disaster and shouting in what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery.
Witnesses took the license plate number and the FBI sent out a BOLO, (Be On Look Out) alert on Sept 11.
Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack. White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration with "Urban Moving Systems" sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J., at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center.
Port Authority police are reported to have nabbed the three as they drove along Rte. 3 in East Rutherford, N.J. In New Jersey, where officials believe the hijackers received assistance from an accomplice, Newark's FBI spokeswoman Sherri Evanina said five Israeli men were detained late Tuesday after their van was stopped. Kerry Gill, a spokesman for the immigration service in Newark, said the FBI turned over the individuals to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Wednesday. He said "they appeared to be Israeli citizens" and all five appear to be deportable.
Local sources have reported that one of the largest Israeli-owned moving companies in the area, Moishe's Moving Systems, in Jersey City, has "at least 100" young Israeli men, between the ages of 22 and 35, working in what is described as a "fortress" with covered windows and concertina wire surrounding the premises near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.
Senior officials from Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service came to Washington last month to warn the CIA and the FBI that a cell of up to 200 terrorists was planning a major operation in America, according to a report in the London-based Sunday Telegraph on Sept. 17. Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United States last month that large scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on American mainland were imminent. The Mossad has a long history of penetrating, infiltrating and often manipulating Middle Eastern terror cells to serve their own purposes.
Mossad in Germany and 9-11 Disinfo
November 9, 2009
Mossad Penetration of Germany
The Israeli military intelligence company that managed passenger screening and security operations at the key airports of 9-11 also operates one of Germany's largest ports on the Baltic Sea.
ICTS, the Israeli company responsible for passenger screening on 9-11, operates the German port of Rostock.
International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS International N.V.), the Israeli company headed by the Mossad veteran Menachem J. Atzmon, owns Huntleigh USA, the company that ran airport security and passenger screening operations at Boston's Logan and other critical airports on 9-11. Huntleigh, which is owned by the criminal-run outfit ICTS, is one of the main defendants in the 9-11 tort litigation, and has been protected by the Zionist judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, who has blocked all attempts for a trial to find those responsible. Atzmon, a convicted criminal of the Likud Party in Israel, owns and operates Seehafen Rostock, the largest cargo port of the former East Germany, a position he has held since January 1998. That an Israeli criminal has been allowed to operate one of Germany's largest ports illustrates the degree of Mossad influence in Germany. Israeli ownership of the port operations of Rostock is, however, just the tip of the Zionist iceberg that controls Germany.
The massive clouds of dust that accompanied the destruction of the three demolished towers on 9-11 presented a mystery that needed to be solved in order to understand what really happened during the explosive demolition of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, the three towers owned or leased by the Zionist Jew Larry Silverstein. Some 425,000 cubic meters of concrete from the 220 floors of the Twin Towers completely disintegrated before they hit the ground and formed the most substantial part of the immense pyroclastic clouds of hot dust that rolled down the streets of lower Manhattan on 9-11.
Larry Silverstein, a leading Zionist fund-raiser, owned or leased all three towers that were demolished on 9-11. Silverstein, along with President Bill Clinton and others, was accused of being part of a massive drug smuggling scheme in a lawsuit that was squashed.
Although the Zionist-controlled U.S. government and controlled media claim that the towers fell in non-explosive pancake-like collapses, no evidence of the 220 concrete floors or the metal pans that held them were to be seen in the pile of rubble. What really happened to these fundamental elements of the structures and what caused the pulverization of the concrete floors --and everything on them?
The concrete floors of the Twin Towers were pulverized into pyroclastic clouds. Large amounts of active super-thermite were found in the dust.
In November 2001, as the administration of George W. Bush began fighting the Israeli-designed "War on Terror" in Afghanistan, I decided to move my family to Germany. My early research of the available evidence and news reports strongly indicated that Israeli military intelligence had carried out 9-11 as a false-flag terror operation to be blamed on Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaida. The Zionist-controlled U.S. government and media pushed for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan based on this unproven version of events. The government and media were evidently involved in a criminal cover-up of what really happened. It didn't seem safe or prudent to pursue critical 9-11 research in the United States as the nation went to war based on an explanation I had already found to be a pack of lies.
In August 2006, after being tortured with a TASER and having my right elbow broken in a pre-planned undercover police action at my home, I realized that my instincts were right in 2001 and that the U.S. was still not a safe place to investigate 9-11.
Bollyn after being assaulted and TASERed by a three-man squad of undercover tactical police at his home in August 2006. The Bollyn family had been home for less than two weeks before the police attack.
At the end of November 2001, I was able to interview Andreas von Bülow, a former parliamentarian and an expert on intelligence matters at his home near Cologne. He and I saw eye-to-eye on the role played by Israeli intelligence in the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. I also spoke to other former senior officials of German intelligence agencies who provided me with valuable insights about the terror attacks that were allegedly partly engineered in Germany, as the official story goes. The pile at Ground Zero was still smoking in November and emitting huge amounts of nano-sized particles produced by the incredibly hot thermitic reactions in which iron was boiling beneath the rubble. It would be another month, until the end of the year, before the fires were put out and even longer before crews reached to the bottom of the pile where pools of molten iron were found, a discovery that led directly to the now proven thesis that Thermite was used to destroy the three towers.
The bluish smoke that rose from the pile of rubble was primarily composed of extremely toxic nano-sized particles created by fires hotter than the boiling temperature of iron. These fires were the result of large amounts of thermitic material reacting beneath the pile. The Zionist-controlled government and mass media refuse to deal with this evidence because it would reveal that the official version about 9-11 is nothing but a pack of lies.
Disinformation on Cause of Pulverized Towers
Shortly after arriving in Germany, I was introduced to a former East German intelligence agent, who I was told, was "Frau Marek". I don't know what her real name is. Frau Marek, I was told, had been one of the East German (DDR) "beautiful young swallows" of Markus Wolf, the German Jewish communist who co-founded and ran the DDR's Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), the foreign intelligence division of the Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, from 1953 until 1987.
Markus "Mischa" Wolf, the German Jewish spymaster who ran East German intelligence for 35 years
Markus Wolf was born in 1923 in the southern German town of Hechingen, the home of many influential Jewish families. Wolf, whose Jewish communist family spent the war in the Soviet Union, was sent from the Soviet Union to Berlin after the war with Walter Ulbricht, the founder of the totalitarian East German state, the DDR. Wolf worked as a journalist for a radio station in the Soviet Zone of occupation and was among the observers of the Nuremberg Trials.
Markus Wolf, the intelligence chief who helped create the DDR with Walter Ulbricht, at the Berlin Wall. Wolf died on November 9, 2006, the 17th anniversary of the fall of the wall.
Frau Marek, who I met on several occasions, had worked for several intelligence agencies including Israel's Mossad, by her own admission. As a "swallow" for Markus Wolf and the Stasi, I was told that Marek had worked to infiltrate NATO by seducing high-level officials. She had a background in physics and told me that she had information about a directed-energy infrared beam weapon that had been developed by the Soviet Union. This infrared beam weapon, she said, could have been used on 9-11 and, if so, could have been the cause of the pulverization of the concrete in the towers.
I subsequently wrote an article that discussed Frau Marek's supposed Russian deep infrared beam weapon that was published in the American Free Press in February 2002. The article, entitled "Laser Beam Weapons and the Collapse of the World Trade Center," was the first article that discussed the notion that a Buck Rogers-type energy weapon might have been used to pulverize the concrete of the World Trade Center.
As I wrote in the article:
Television viewers saw the immense amounts of dust, described by one observer "as if some high-energy disintegration beam or laser had been focused on the towers, and pulverized the concrete into minute particles of ash and dust."
Frau Marek told me that she was a former East German physicist and had studied Soviet infrared technology and plasmoids during the 1960s and 1970s. She described having been involved in the demonstration of a Soviet directed-energy beam weapon in 1991 for the U.S. Air Force in Weimar (DDR). She said there was evidence that a beam weapon using "deep infrared" radiation had been used to bring down the WTC. Although I thought Marek's theory was far-fetched, some people are still promoting this theory in spite of the published scientific evidence of super-thermite found by Dr. Steven E. Jones in the dust of the demolished towers.
The author and Professor Steven E. Jones looking at evidence of Thermite in March 2009. Both Bollyn and Jones suffered professional setbacks as a result of their research in the summer of 2009.
In the same article I wrote about U.S. and Israeli military efforts, since at least 1995, to develop an advanced infrared beam weapon under a joint "anti-missile" program known as the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) weapon. Although I found Frau Marek's theory interesting, it seemed far-fetched given the abundance of evidence of explosions in the demolition of the towers. Having seen how steel beams and debris were propelled hundreds of feet from the buildings it seemed clear that there had been powerful explosives placed in the towers. Marek's theory was interesting primarily because it was an attempt to explain the mysterious pulverization of the concrete in the floors of the towers. With the discovery of chips of a nano-composite super thermite in the dust, however, the precise cause of the pulverized concrete has now been revealed.
Chips of the active thermitic material found in the dust of the World Trade Center. Did Al Qaida put this extremely powerful nano-composite explosive in the Twin Towers? This layer of super-thermite was probably sprayed on the bottom of the floorpans. From the amount found in the dust, the scientists estimate that tens of tons of this material had been applied inside the towers.
While I had no interest in meeting Frau Marek afterwards, I have been told through our mutual acquaintance that she is always very interested to know where I am. Why, I wondered, would a former agent of the Stasi and the Mossad be interested to know where I am? And why had she provided me with the story about the infrared beam weapon in the first place?
Israeli intelligence has penetrated East Germany deeply since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the evidence suggests that this relationship probably goes back several decades if not all the way to the founding of the DDR in 1949. Wolf, according to an extensive article by Louis Rapoport, had deeply penetrated international terrorist groups. Abu Nidal, for example, a notorious Palestinian terrorist from the 1970s, was based in East Berlin, but who was really managing him -- and to what end?
Today, senior officers from the Israel's Mossad run the port of Rostock, the largest in the former DDR. The Mossad firm that operates the port is part of Menachem Atzmon's company, International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS), the same company that ran airport security and passenger screening operations at the key airports on 9-11 through their wholly-owned subsidiary, Huntleigh USA. Atzmon is an Israeli who was convicted of crimes related to illegal fund-raising for the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. He was co-treasurer of the Likud Party along with Ehud Olmert when the crimes were committed although Olmert was acquitted while Atzmon was convicted.
Why would the German state allow a foreign company headed by a convicted criminal to run the port operations at one of the country's biggest ports? What does this say about Israeli influence at the highest level of the German government? Why is Israeli intelligence interested in running a port on Germany's Baltic coast? What kind of weapons smuggling and other criminal operations is the Mossad running out of Rostock?
The fact that the Mossad runs one of the largest ports of Germany is just the tip of the Zionist and Israeli network that operates in the unified German state. Israeli intelligence owns scores of companies in Germany and has a great deal of influence in the politics of the nation. It is Frau Marek's connection with the Mossad, I suppose, that is behind her giving me the story about the Buck Rogers infrared energy beam and 9-11. Given the discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center, I can see that this story was an intentional attempt to mislead and confuse the issue about what really caused the pulverization of the World Trade Center, which is why I have not included it in my book, Solving 9-11: Exposing the Deception that Changed the World.
Prior to publishing Bollyn's research article that maps the Israeli intelligence network behind the false-flag attacks of 9-11, Eesti Ekspress had a professional fact-checker in Britain scrutinize the facts and statements made in the lengthy article for accuracy. The fact-checking, which was done during the winter, examined nearly 100 points and found each and every one to be correct. It should be noted that the fact-checker is not sympathetic to Bollyn's thesis and is of the opinion that Osama Bin Laden and his gang of 20 are the true perpetrators of the immensely destructive terrorism of 9-11. His analysis of the text can be read in the following article, "Bollyn Research Proved to be Without Error."
This is actually the first time that the information found in one of Bollyn's research articles detailing the role of Israeli intelligence in the events of 9-11 has been published in a mainstream news source. Eesti Ekspress has gone further than any U.S. magazine or newspaper and is ahead of every other mainstream media news outlet by allowing the reading public to read the facts and judge for themselves the merit of his arguments. CNN and FOX News have both interviewed Christopher Bollyn pretending to be interested in the evidence but never presenting any of his facts or evidence to the public. Both of these Zionist-controlled news outlets sought only to label Bollyn as an anti-Semite. Eesti Ekspress is a large format glossy news weekly that is found in all Estonian libraries, shops, and hotels, and which is read by the entire Estonian population, including the politicians, intelligence agencies, and Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia.
No Plane Hit the Pentagon - Maj. Gen. Stubblebine
July 6, 2009
U.S. Major General Stubblebine (ret.) says he is certain that "it was not an airplane" that hit the Pentagon on 9-11. See video and article here.
The Pentagon "crash" site did not look anything like a crash site of a large Boeing airliner. There was no debris from an airliner, no thick black smoke of burning jet fuel, and no holes in the wall where the 9 ft. wide jet engines would have penetrated.
Understanding the Use of Thermite on 9-11
July 14, 2009
The spectacular explosions that accompanied the impact of the planes provide evidence of having been created by Thermate containing barium nitrate which produced the light orange flame and white smoke. Understanding how Thermite works sheds new light on the photographic evidence of 9-11.
The discovery of Thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center is solid scientific proof that this steel-melting and steel-vaporizing explosive was used to demolish the twin towers on 9-11. The peer-reviewed scientific paper (2009, Niels Harrit, Steven E. Jones, et al) that presents the evidence of Super-Thermite (nano-sized Thermite compounds) in the dust of the twin towers is the result of years of investigation.
The white smoke and molten iron seen in this photo are evidence of Thermite causing the collapse of the tower.
Understanding the importance of this discovery and the evidence of the use of Thermite in the spectacles that unfolded on 9-11 is central to understanding how the towers were demolished, a heinous crime in which some three thousand people lost their lives. This is why, I believe, Dr. Steven E. Jones and I were both attacked in August-September 2006. During the spring and summer of 2006, Jones and I had worked closely on interpreting the evidence that pointed to the use of Thermite. I was attacked in the middle of August at my home by a team of unidentified thugs, which had been prowling around my house and who turned out to be an undercover police tactical unit connected to the Dept. of Homeland Security.
Professor Jones, on the other hand, was trapped by a wily NPR radio host who, with a team of Zionist Jews, ganged up on Jones and pressured BYU to suspend him for comments they maliciously misinterpreted and then deemed to be anti-Semitic. It was no coincidence that two 9-11 researchers who were investigating the use of Thermite were both attacked within three weeks. Because Jones' research was focused primarily on the use of Thermite at the World Trade Center and because I had worked closely with him, it certainly appears that a decision had been made during the summer of 2006 by the culprits of 9-11 to attack, vilify, and discredit both of us. The fact that the three people who led the attack on Jones were all Zionist Jews clearly reveals the nature of the group that was being protected.
Bollyn and Dr. Steven E. Jones discuss the evidence of Thermite in the spring of 2006.
After visiting Jones at the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah in the early spring of 2006, I went to the University of California at Davis where I met with Dr. Thomas Cahill, who had studied the particles in the smoke that rose from the pile of rubble at Ground Zero. The Davis DRUM, which measured the quantities and sizes of the particles from the smoke, found an extraordinarily large amount of extremely small particles and nano-size particles of many metals in the bluish smoke that rose from the pile. This hazy smoke rose from the pile until the fires burned themselves out in late December 2001. Such particles, Cahill said, could only be produced in fires hotter than the boiling point of the metals. This was scientific proof that beneath the rubble of the twin towers were extreme hot spots in which iron boiled for more than 15 weeks. That is a most unusual fire. Given the fact that these super-intense fires were raging in oxygen-starved conditions, it became clear that an aluminothermic reaction like Thermite was creating these hot spots.
The bluish smoke that rose from the pile contained large amounts of nanosized particles of metals created only in fires hotter than the boiling point of the metal. Neither the lack of air nor the continuous dousing with water affected these incredibly intense hot spots. This is evidence of thermite, which can be used underwater, cooking under the pile.
I returned to Provo with photocopies of the key chapters of USGS chemical survey of the dust. This survey contained several photos of tiny balls of iron found in the dust. These spheres were solid evidence that large amounts of molten iron accompanied the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This iron sphere in the dust of the WTC was a tiny drop of molten iron that solidified as it fell.
These spheroids of iron are one of the products of a Thermite reaction. When Thermite, a compound of aluminum and iron oxide, reacts, the products are aluminum oxide, a white smoke, and molten iron. The exothermic reaction releases a great deal of heat as well. The addition of a small amount of sulfur (2 percent) increases the effectiveness of the steel melting or steel vaporizing process (eutectic) while barium nitrate creates a light orange flame. The thermite compound with sulfur or barium nitrate is known as Thermate, an incendiary pyrotechnic composition that generates short bursts of exceedingly high temperatures. It should be noted that steel beams and columns were found to have been melted and vaporized in the remains of the three collapsed towers. The FEMA report about the collapsed twin towers noted the vaporized steel beams (Barnett) and said that the areas where this had occurred showed signs of sulfidation. None of this could be explained and the FEMA report presented evidence of steel that had been affected by Thermate without using the word.
The FEMA- sponsored Building Performance Study of 2002 contains evidence of Thermate-melted steel. This is found in the "Limited Metallurgical Examination" written by Professor Jonathan Barnett. Barnett examined two pieces of melted steel: one from the WTC 7, the other from the TwinTowers. About the first piece, Barnett wrote: "The thinning of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to the combination of oxidation and sulfidation." This was done by "a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel," he concluded.
Barnett found the same sulfidation in the piece of melted steel from the TwinTowers. "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event," Barnett wrote. "No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified." Professor Jones points to Thermate, with 2 percent sulfur, as being the most likely culprit. The oxidation and sulfidation of the steel requires the oxygen and sulfur being "intimately in contact with the metal at high temperature," Jones said.
Super-Thermite is a form of Thermite composed of nano-size particles which makes the reaction explosive.
The evidence is now clear. Large amounts of Thermite/Thermate were placed in the towers (WTC 1, 2 & 7) and were responsible for cutting the core columns, slicing the trusses and beams, and pulverizing the concrete in the floors.
The photo shows a core column that has been cut with Thermite.
The steel walls of the core columns were 4 inches thick at the base of the towers.
Thermate with barium nitrate was used as an "incendiary pyrotechnic" during the first explosions that accompanied the planes hitting the buildings, while nano-sized Super-Thermite was exploded during the demolition to pulverize the concrete in the 220 floor pans of the twin towers. Thermite cutting charges were also used to cut the core columns to initiate the collapses. The people who engineered the demolition of the World Trade Center clearly did not like the fact that their Thermite secret was being revealed in 2006 and decided to stifle the voices of those who were discussing the evidence. The people who reacted are connected to the people who placed the Thermite in the towers.
When one understands how Thermite and Thermate work, and that these violent reactions produce intense heat, white smoke, and molten iron, the visible evidence of thermitic reactions in the photographs and videos of 9-11 becomes quite obvious. The evidence of flowing molten metal preceded by pressure pulses of white smoke are clearly indicative of thermitic reactions, and can be seen in many videos and photos of the towers.
A large flow of molten iron could be seen falling from the 81st floor of WTC 2 five minutes before it collapsed. The light yellow color of the metal indicates that is is well over 1,000 degrees C. If this were aluminum, as some would argue, it would have melted at about 660 degrees C. and would appear silver-grey in daylight conditions.
The chips of Super-Thermite and balls of previously molten iron in the dust and rubble are solid evidence of the use of Thermite. When the use of Thermite/Thermate in the destruction of the World Trade Center is understood, the entire scam is revealed. The three towers did not fall due to airplane crashes caused by Islamic terrorists; they were demolished by Zionists working with the owners and lease-holders of the towers: Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy.
The following series of photographs of the explosions in the South Tower were take by Todd Rengel. Rengel is standing N.E. of the towers and is catching the view of the corner of WTC 2 from which the plane and its fuel are emerging after having crashed into the South side of the tower. In the first photo a great deal of white smoke and cascading molten metal can be seen in front of the exploding fuel fire.
The falling molten metal is clearly producing white smoke.
The area through which the molten metal fell is now full of white smoke, which disperses in the following photos.
"9-11 Planes Flew Into Secure Computer Rooms," January 12, 2007
"Who Put Thermate in the World Trade Center?" January 18, 2007
"Is this Thermate Exploding at the NorthTower?" January 25, 2007
"Thermate Fragment Shooting from the NorthTower?" January 25, 2007
An Inconvenient Witness - What Sonnenfeld Saw in WTC 6
June 24, 2009
Kurt Sonnenfeld, the FEMA videographer who, for 29 days after 9-11, filmed the crime scene at the World Trade Center, including the sub-basement levels of WTC 6, was recently inteviewed by the Voltaire Network. His comments from June 22 about WTC 7 and WTC 6 and how inconvenient witnesses like himself have been silenced are extremely important to understand how so many people who know or saw something have been effectively silenced in a nation that claims to promote honesty and free speech.
Among other things at the WTC, Sonnenfeld saw that the huge vault beneath WTC 6 had been emptied, most likely during the previous night. This information is essential to understand the crater that was found in the U.S. Customs House (WTC 6) during the demolition of the South Tower. It appears to have been a tremendous blast that originated in the sublevel vault of WTC 6. Why? Probably to hide the fact that the vault had been cleaned out the night before.
Sonnenfeld is currently living in exile in Argentina, like me, a victim of malicious prosecution. Sonnenfeld is "an inconvenient witness" -- an honest man who saw (and knows) too much. This is another major breakthrough in the struggle to find the truth about what really happened on 9-11.
Sonnenfeld filming the evidence at the demolished World Trade Center
Kurt Sonnenfeld released his book El Perseguido (The Persecuted) on May 8, 2009, at the 35th Annual Buenos Aires Book Fair in Argentina, where he lives in exile since 2003. Sonnenfeld's book tells the history of his persecution at the hands of U.S. authorities over the course of more than seven years after his official mission to Ground Zero as FEMA’s videographer ... an experience that turned him into an inconvenient witness. To read more about Sonnenfeld's book, see: "Kurt Sonnenfeld: an inconvenient 9/11 witness" at: http://www.voltairenet.org/article160666.html
A key extract about the explosion in the basement of WTC 6 follows:
Kurt Sonnenfeld: What happened with Building 7 is incredibly suspicious. I have video that shows how curiously small the rubble pile was, and how the buildings to either side were untouched by Building Seven when it collapsed. It had not been hit by an airplane; it had suffered only minor injuries when the Twin Towers collapsed, and there were only small fires on a couple of floors. There’s no way that building could have imploded the way it did without controlled demolition. Yet the collapse of Building 7 was hardly mentioned by the mainstream media and suspiciously ignored by the 911 Commission.
Voltaire: Reportedly, the underground levels of WTC7 contained sensitive and undoubtedly compromising archival material. Did you come across any of it?
Kurt Sonnenfeld: The Secret Service, the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Emergency Management’s “Crisis Center” occupied huge amounts of space there, spanning several floors of the building. Other federal agencies had offices there as well. After September 11, it was discovered that concealed within Building Seven was the largest clandestine domestic station of the Central Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, a base of operations from which to spy on diplomats of the United Nations and to conduct counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions.
There was no underground parking level at Seven World Trade Center. And there was no underground vault. Instead, the federal agencies at Building Seven stored their vehicles, documents and evidence in the building of their associates across the street. Beneath the plaza level of US Customs House (Building 6) was a large underground garage, separated off from the rest of the complex’s underground area and guarded under tight security. This was where the various government services parked their bomb-proofed cars and armored limousines, counterfeit taxi cabs and telephone company trucks used for undercover surveillance and covert operations, specialized vans and other vehicles. Also within that secured parking area was access to the sub-level vault of Building 6.
Sonnenfeld approaching the entrance to the sub-level areas of Building 6.
THE EMPTIED VAULT OF WTC 6
When the North Tower fell, the US Customs House (Building 6) was crushed and totally incinerated. Much of the underground levels beneath it were also destroyed. But there were voids. And it was into one of those voids, recently uncovered, that I descended with a special Task Force to investigate. It was there we found the security antechamber to the vault, badly damaged. At the far end of the security office was the wide steel door to the vault, a combination code keypad in the cinderblock wall beside it. But the wall was cracked and partially crumbled, and the door was sprung partially open. So we checked inside with our flashlights. Except for several rows of empty shelves, there was nothing in the vault but dust and debris. It had been emptied. Why was it empty? And when could it have been emptied?
Voltaire: Is this what set alarm bells ringing for you?
Kurt Sonnenfeld: Yes, but not immediately. With so much chaos, it was difficult to think. It was only after digesting everything that the “alarm bells” went off.
Building Six was evacuated within twelve minutes after the first airplane struck the North Tower. The streets were immediately clogged with fire trucks, police cars and blocked traffic, and the vault was large enough, 15 meters by 15 meters by my estimate, to necessitate at least a big truck to carry out its contents. And after the towers fell and destroyed most of the parking level, a mission to recover the contents of the vault would have been impossible. The vault had to have been emptied before the attack.
I’ve described all of this extensively in my book, and it’s apparent that things of importance were taken out of harm’s way before the attacks. For example, the CIA didn’t seem too concerned about their losses. After the existence of their clandestine office in Building Seven was discovered, an agency spokesman told the newspapers that a special team had been dispatched to scour the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports, though there were millions, if not billions of pages floating in the streets. Nevertheless, the spokesman was confident. “There shouldn’t be too much paper around,” he said.
The exploded remains of the destroyed U.S. Customs House (WTC 6)
And Customs at first claimed that everything was destroyed. That the heat was so intense that everything in the evidence safe had been baked to ash. But some months later, they announced that they had broken up a huge Colombian narco-trafficking and money-laundering ring after miraculously recovering crucial evidence from the safe, including surveillance photos and heat-sensitive cassette tapes of monitored calls. And when they moved in to their new building at 1 Penn Plaza in Manhattan, they proudly hung on the lobby wall their Commissioner’s Citation Plaque and their big round US Customs Service ensign, also miraculously recovered, in pristine condition, from their crushed and cremated former office building at the World Trade Center.
Kurt Sonnenfeld in the rubble of the WTC
Sonnenfeld's recently released book, The Persecuted
Elbit - The Hellerstein Connection to 9-11
August 3, 2009
We should have lost our memories as well as our voices, were it as easy to forget as to be silent. - Tacitus, Agricola
In response to my recent article asking, "Who put Super-Thermite in the Twin Towers?" I received an interesting tip from a scientist who has worked closely with the U.S. intelligence community. The information, which supports my thesis of Israelis being behind 9-11, points to the Israeli defense company Elbit, a company I have written about in connection with the electronic vote fraud of the Iowa caucus.
Elbit is an interesting Israeli military company that has many subsidiaries and does a frightful amount of business with the U.S. military and government. One of the more conspicuous and curious aspects of Elbit, at least as far as being a possible suspect in the 9-11 crime, is that one of the key people running this Israeli military company is named Hellerstein -- Ran Hellerstein. The judge who controls the 9-11 litigation, which after 8 years has yet to produce a trial, is also a Hellerstein -- Alvin K. Hellerstein. To the conspiracy-minded investigator, this is a coincidence that deserves investigation.
Alvin K. Hellerstein is devoted to protecting Israel and has obstructed a 9-11 trial for 8 years.
The Hellerstein (Gelerstein, Glersztejn, etc.) family is a devout orthodox Jewish family from the fecund Zionist swamps of Belarus. The Hellersteins come from the village of Selets, Belarus, and were evidently afflicted by the Zionist madness of the late 1800s. Some members of the family emigrated to Palestine while others went to America. The ones that went to Palestine later went to America, and vice-versa. The Hellerstein family is one of the founding families of the Zionist state. The fact that Alvin K. Hellerstein, who is currently ruling over the 9-11 litigation, is a dedicated Zionist with family members in the Israeli government should be an obvious reason to remove him from a trial in which one of the key defendants is a company owned by Israeli military intelligence (ICTS). This, however, has not yet happened and I have yet to hear a lawyer calling for his removal. When all is said and done it will probably not be the Zionist judge who is removed from the process, but the suffering plaintiffs, the Israeli defendants and all the incriminating evidence, because in the end there will probably never be a trial to find those responsible for the crime of the century, at least not as long as Judge Hellerstein is making the decisions.
WHO IS HELLERSTEIN?
Judge Hellerstein is a well known Zionist but who is Ran Hellerstein? He is an Israeli military designer, one of the key people running the Israeli military company Elbit. All of the key players of Elbit have been with the company since the 1980s. They don't change any of the people at the top. Here is what Elbit says about Ran:
Ran Hellerstein, age 58 Executive Vice President and Co-General Manager, Aerospace Division Elbit Systems Ltd. Haifa, Israel
Ran Hellerstein was appointed as Executive Vice President and Co-General Manager - Aerospace Division in April 2008 after serving as Corporate Vice President and Co-General Manager - Aircraft and Helmet Systems since 2003. Mr. Hellerstein served as Corporate Vice President and Co-General Manager - Aircraft and Helicopter Upgrades and Systems from 2000 until 2003. From 1996 until 2000, he served as Vice President - Development and Engineering Division, having served as Division Manager since 1993. Mr. Hellerstein joined Elbit Ltd. in 1978 and served in various management positions, including Manager of EDS' Engineering Division, department manager, technical manager and systems engineer. Mr. Hellerstein holds bachelor and master of science degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion.
Hellerstein is an unusual name and I have been looking into the family connections between Ran Hellerstein and Alvin K. Hellerstein. I have already written a great deal about the fact that Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein's sister and son both emigrated from America to Israel. Both moved to Israel where they lived on orthodox Zionist settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Hellerstein's sister Helene lived and died (in 1998) on Kfar Etzion, near Hebron on the West Bank. His son, Joseph, lives on the Modi'in settlement and has worked closely with the Israeli government on negotiations with the Palestinians, in Oslo, for example. There is a very good chance that the Hellersteins of Elbit and New York are cousins. It certainly looks like they are. A Jacob Hellerstein, son of Russian immigrants in Palestine, was one of the founders of the Palestine Bulletin, the paper that became the Jerusalem Post. Jacob came to America in 1927 with his wife Schoni Yoffe and only returned to Israel in the 1970s. His sister, Sara, was killed in the 1946 Zionist terror bombing of the King David Hotel.
In my research of the Hellersteins and Elbit, I came across a very interesting bit of news about the "Danish" anti-Islamic cartoon scandal caused by Flemming Rose. What I found was that Flemming Rose went to Israel in April of this year and spoke at a Hebrew University event hosted by the former head of the Mossad in a forum owned by the man who controls Elbit, i.e. Michael Federmann.
Michael Federmann of Elbit and Federmann Enterprises
The following Jerusalem Post note about Flemming Rose's recent speech in Israel reveals the true source and motivation of his anti-Islamic cartoons:
What are the limits of freedom of expression? Where do people draw red lines - or don't they?
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands Posten, who published the offensive cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that pushed the buttons of many believers in the Muslim world, will discuss the issue today, Wednesday, at 5 p.m., at a symposium in the Handler Auditorium of the Truman Institute on the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The program is provocatively titled: "Freedom of Expression - Victim of Religion?"
Other speakers are David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, and Michel Kishka, editorial cartoonist and lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Moderator will be former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, who is currently head of the Shasha Center for Strategic Studies at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University, which is sponsoring the event.
Efraim Halevy Efraim Halevy was head of Mossad from 1998-2002 and now works for Michael Federmann, owner of Federmann Enterprises and the largest shareholder of Elbit.
Source: Serving up the bread of affliction, The Jerusalem Post (Israel) - Wednesday, April 22, 2009, Greer Fay Cashman
Sources and recommended reading (Bollyn articles):
Eight and a half years after 9-11, we are finally able to view the photos taken by a photographer in a New York City Police Department helicopter hovering over the scene of the crime. Why has it taken so long for these photos of the crime of the century to be released? What do these newly released photos tell us?
There is certainly a great deal of evidence contained in these hundreds of photographs, which will take some time to analyze, but one thing is very clear. The Twin Towers were turned into dust. The concrete and steel frame towers were reduced to immense clouds of dust and this was not caused by the potential energy of the buildings being released as they fell. The towers were pulverized through the use of many tons of super-thermite, which was discovered in the dust by Professor Steven E. Jones. Looking at these photos, one can see that the towers were exploded and turned into dust in the same instant. The photos validate the thesis, now proven, that the Twin Towers - and the lives within them - were destroyed by demolition charges and tons of super-thermite which had been applied to the concrete floors, probably on the undersides of the floor pans.
Links to my articles on the evidence of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center are found at the bottom of this post.
The discovery of chips of highly-explosive super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center is an essential key to unraveling the entire 9-11 hoax. Understanding the lies about 9-11 reveals in turn the mass deception behind the wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq and the utterly fraudulent "War on Terror." One soon realizes that the whole anti-terrorism Zeitgeist of the past 8 years is nothing but a pack of lies.
The red-gray chips of active thermitic material found in the dust of the demolished towers
The discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the demolished towers opens up the whole can of 9-11 lies. Dr. Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University discovered unusual red-gray chips in the dust of the demolished twin towers and along with a team of other scientists published a peer-reviewed paper in March 2009 in which they prove that these chips are fragments from a thin layer of active thermite in the nano-size form, i.e. super-thermite. This is the powerful explosive that pulverized the towers. Osama Bin Laden certainly didn't put super-thermite in the twin towers, so who did? This is the question that demands to be answered.
Super-thermite is defined as a thermitic compound in which one of the two main components is in the nano-size range, i.e. less than one-tenth of a micron in size. The main components of Thermite are generally aluminum and ferrous or iron oxide. When these components are reduced to nano-size particles and mixed together, they form super-thermite, a highly energetic and explosive form of Thermite. Other components can be added to the mix to create other effects, such as to produce a gas to increase the pressure of the explosion when the super-thermite is detonated.
Because of the nano-size nature of the components of super-thermite, it is usually mixed and suspended in a solution that can be applied to a surface, such as the floors and walls of the World Trade Center, as a spray, film, or gel. The evidence of the super-thermite chips found in the 9-11 dust suggest that this highly explosive solution had been applied as a thin layer to surfaces of the twin towers as a spray. Who would have done that?
When it was applied it was certainly not known to all that it was super-thermite, but was probably applied under the guise of being a spray coating of paint, fire-proofing, or some kind of asbestos abatement. The people who applied the spray onto the surfaces of the World Trade Center certainly had no idea that what they were applying was actually a very powerful explosive film, although they were probably told not to smoke.
As the application of the super-thermite must have occurred during the months prior to 9-11, I have used FOIA and other means to try to find who could have been doing such work in the towers during 2000-2001. There was one significant clue at the very beginning. Two days after 9-11, Engineering News-Record (ENR) reported that an asbestos abatement and demolition company called LVI had done extensive asbestos abatement work in the World Trade Center:
AMEC Inc., Turner Corp. and Bovis Lend Lease were set to assume "lead roles" in the cleanup effort, says Lee Benish, AMEC vice president. "From the very beginning, we've been deeply involved with the city department of emergency services," he says. "They're sorting through who will be doing what." LVI Services Inc., New York City, which has done extensive asbestos abatement work on the towers in the past, is involved in similar work now as well as other cleanup efforts.
LVI was immediately a suspect because it does a great deal of pre-demolition work in which it prepares buildings for demolition. LVI has done several large demolition jobs with Controlled Demolition, Inc. of Maryland.
I called LVI and spoke with Burton T. Fried, the founder and CEO of the company, and asked him if his company had done extensive asbestos abatement work in the twin towers as reported in ENR. He immediately denied that his company had done the work saying that another company called AASI had, but he added that they had gone out of business. (NB -- One of the branch offices of LVI is named ASI.)
Burton Fried of LVI
I then contacted the authors of the original ENR article to see what they had based their statement on. Debra Rubin, one of the authors, confirmed the information in the article and told me that LVI, i.e. the company itself, had been the source of the information. This is quite interesting because ENR and LVI clearly have an on-going relationship in which any substantial error, especially of such importance, would be corrected. ENR's report is, after all, on the record that LVI did extensive asbestos abatement work in the now demolished twin towers. This is certainly a very significant error that would have to be corrected -- if it were false. Although Fried denied to me that his company had done extensive asbestos abatement work in the twin towers, he has not demanded a correction or retraction from the engineering magazine, a journal of record in the engineering industry. Furthermore, LVI has continued to do work at Ground Zero, where it has been involved recently in the pre-demolition clean-up of the Deutsche Bank building at the south end of the site.
We do know that a million-dollar contract for asbestos abatement in the twin towers had been put up for bids by contractors in the fall of 2000, exactly one year before 9-11:
Contract WTC-115.310 - The World Trade Center Removal and Disposal of Vinyl Asbestos Floor Tiles and Other Incidental Asbestos-Containing Building Materials Via Work Order Estimate Range: $1,000,000 annually Bids due Tuesday, October 17, 2000. (advertised by the PA on September 12, 2000)
So why would Burton Fried deny to me that his company had worked in the twin towers but not demand that ENR correct the record? During the past two months I have tried to reach Mr. Fried by phone and by email to clarify this matter and ask some questions about his company and the work they have done at the World Trade Center, before and after 9-11. Although Fried is listed as the company spokesman and person who answers questions for the press, he has not answered any of my emails. Why is he avoiding my questions?
I sent my first set of questions to Mr. Fried shortly after the Jones' paper on the discovery of super-thermite was published in March 2009. The key question was stated thusly:
The article from Engineering News-Record of September 13, 2001, says that LVI did extensive asbestos abatement work in the World Trade Center. Is this correct? Debra Rubin, one of the authors, told me that LVI had been the source of this information for the article. You previously told me that LVI had not done this work and that a company named AASI had done the work. Who was AASI and where were they from? Do you still stand by that statement that you told me that LVI had not done any asbestos abatement work in the twin towers?
R&D CONTRACTS WITH U.S. ARMY
Later, at the end of May, I sent a question to Mr. Fried about his company's million-dollar "research and development" work with the U.S. Army, particularly in 2000:
Dear Mr. Fried,
The LVI website says that questions from the media should be sent to you. I have a couple questions about the work LVI has done for the U.S. Army, especially about the millions of dollars of work done in Research and Development. These questions are for the purpose of an article to be published.
I would like to ask a few questions about the work LVI Group, Inc. did with the U.S. Army. In 2000, LVI did about $3 million in R&D work for the U.S. Army, which was the largest part of the total contract for $3.2 million that year. Fedspending.org records show that LVI did Applied Research and Exploratory Development (R&D) work for nearly $3 million that year.
What was the nature of the $3 million in R&D work that LVI did for the U.S. Army in 2000? Was any of it related to Thermite? Has LVI done any work of any sort with nano-composite thermite?
In 2001, LVI had a negative amount shown of some $2.8 million with the U.S. Air Force. Can you tell me what that was about? In 2002 and 2003, LVI did about $500,000 of R&D with the U.S. Army. What kind of R&D was LVI doing for the U.S. Army in those years?
Thank you for your consideration of my request for information about your company's business with the federal government and U.S. Dept. of Defense.
These questions were sent to Burton T. Fried, Chairman, LVI Services Inc., and to LVI's other press contact, Amy McGahan of Dix & Eaton. Neither Fried nor McGahan ever responded with one word to a single question. When I called, Fried was always out. That seemed very strange. This was a standard press inquiry. Here is a company that does a great deal of business with the U.S. military and government but refuses to answer any questions for the press about its reported work in the World Trade Center or the nature of its multi-million dollar research and development contracts with the U.S. Army.
Why would LVI not want to discuss its work in the twin towers or million dollar contracts with the U.S. military? To understand LVI, we need to understand the man who runs the company.
WHO IS BURTON FRIED?
Burton T. Fried is a lawyer who founded LVI Services Inc., as a part of LVI Group in 1986. Fried (born February 26, 1940, NYC) worked as a lawyer for 10 years before getting involved with LVI in 1974. He was executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of LVI Group from 1974-86; vice chairman, general counsel, director, 1985-91; and president of LVI Group Inc., 1991-93. After founding LVI Services in 1986, Fried was president and CEO of that company from 1986—2006. Since 2006, Fried has served as chairman of the board of LVI Services, which describes itself thusly:
LVI Services Inc. is the United States’ leading provider of a wide array of integrated facility services, including environmental remediation, demolition and related services for commercial, industrial, multi-family residential and governmental facilities. LVI focuses on projects involving asbestos, lead paint, mold, infection control, specialized environments, hazardous materials, emergency and disaster services, fireproofing and demolition. Founded in 1986, LVI has more than 30 offices across the United States, is licensed in every state, and is experienced in responding to natural and manmade disasters around the world. The company’s annual revenues exceed $380 million. For more information, visit www.lviservices.com.
THE FRIED FAMILY CONNECTION AT THE PORT AUTHORITY
Fried had a family member who probably helped him at the World Trade Center. His only brother-in-law, Gary M. Grossberg, was the Port Authority architect and project manager until 1995. The World Trade Center, which was leased to Larry Silverstein in late July 2001, was actually owned and operated by the Port Authority. Grossberg's obituary was published in the Star-Ledger of New Jersey on August 1, 2008. Grossberg was married 51 years to Fried's only sibling, his sister Estelle Fried.
LVI has a documented history of hiring illegal aliens to do the dirty and dangerous work. The Times Union of Albany (NY), for example, reported on June 5, 2004, that LVI asbestos workers had been arrested at a "General Electric Co. plant where, federal authorities said, they found evidence of significant asbestos-removal violations."
FRIED'S "ILLEGAL WORK FORCE"
The investigation is now focusing on the Manhattan-based cleanup company, LVI Environmental Services Inc., and whether it has properly vetted its employees. The eight men arrested on federal fraud charges are from Ecuador and allegedly used fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain asbestos removal licenses from the state of New York, according to the charges.
Several other workers scattered during the raid and were not caught, authorities said.
"What we're trying to do is figure out what this very large asbestos abatement company was doing utilizing an illegal work force,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig S. Benedict. "This wasn't an instance where one worker slipped through the cracks. Given their lack of English (speaking) skills, it is certainly hard to imagine how it could have escaped the attention of LVI officials.''
Sources close to the investigation said federal agents found evidence of asbestos violations that included having loads of dry asbestos -- which is supposed to be wet during removal to prevent it from becoming airborne.
Burton T. Fried, LVI 's president, said he was not aware of the arrests until told about the investigation by a reporter on Friday afternoon. He asked to review a copy of the U.S. Attorney's news release on the case but then declined to return a telephone call seeking additional comment.
There are many similar stories about LVI being caught employing illegal aliens around the nation and using unsafe practices. Several LVI employees, usually Hispanic workers, have been killed or badly injured on the job. The record clearly indicates that LVI is a company that has a long-standing practice of exploiting illegal aliens in very dangerous working conditions. These illegal practices don't seem to prevent the company from getting multi-million dollar federal contracts with the U.S. government and military. The demolition company has some very unusual "research and development" contracts with the U.S. military, such as the multi-million dollar R&D contract with the U.S. Army in 2000. What kind of R&D does a private demolition company do for the U.S. Army? Did any of these projects involve super-thermite in demolition?
Burton Fried is certainly not talking.
Sources:
"Industry Firms Pitch in for World Trade Cleanup While Others Account for Employees in Doomed Buildings," Engineering News-Record, September 13, 2001, Richard Korman, Debra Rubin, and Gary Tulac
A Primer on the Zionist Network Behind 9-11
An astute reader of my work on 9-11 has created on excellent on-line primer of the Zionists, Israelis and American Jews, behind the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 and the cover-up of the truth.
The article is titled "Israel did 9-11" and can be read on-line at:
Foreword to Solving 9-11 & the Mystery of Flight 93
November 11, 2009
Glen Stanish, a professional pilot who flew for American Airlines on 9-11, has contributed an excellent foreword for my book, Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World. Stanish puts the Israeli false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 into the historical context of the Middle East "peace process" and the radical Likud Party's agenda to prevent any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that would create an independent Palestinian state or allow the millions of refugees to return to their homes and land in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Stanish is also the author of an article about the lack of debris at the Shanksville "crash site" entitled "Where is the Wreckage of UAL 93?" and an excellent book entitled Uncle Sam's Christian Patriots that discusses my early research and writing about 9-11.
The book by the Christian pilot Glen Stanish can be ordered through Amazon by clicking on the following title:
It is simply not believable that a Boeing airliner could have disappeared into this small crater. Was this hole made by an air to ground missile to distract the public from the real debris field? If so, why? Did Flight 93 carry many of the missing 9-11 passengers, picked up in Cleveland, who were murdered in a shoot-down? Why was the debris site some 1,000 feet in the woods completely off limits? Stanish, a professional pilot who has studied many airliner crashes, simply could not believe the government claim that Flight 93 completely disappeared into a 24-foot wide hole leaving no wreckage of an Boeing 757. The F.B.I. took over the crash site by side-lining Wally Miller, the county coroner who was the legal custodian with an obligation to investigate the crash site.
Something very strange and sinister happened in Shanksville on 9-11. I have been there several times and met several people who have been told not to talk about what they saw on 9-11. Wally Miller, the coroner for Somerset County, is a key person who played an important role although he was actually put on the sidelines by the FBI, who asked him if he was going to be a team player and let them take over the accident site, which by Pennsylvania law belongs to the county coroner.
Early on, Wally said some very clear statements about the absence of wreckage and body parts. He has since tried to recant those statements. With the discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center, I am reviewing the Shanksville crash and the role played on Flight 11 by the Israeli veteran of the Sayeret Matkal, Daniel Lewin. Now that we have proof that the official version is a devious fabrication and are aware of the architect roles played in 9-11 by the Israeli politicians Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, both senior members of the elite Sayeret Matkal of the Israeli military, we have a much better idea of the kind of deception we are up against.
Wally Miller, Somerset county coroner: "There was no blood. You couldn't see any human remains."
New York Times, Sept. 22, 2001
What Wally Miller originally said he found at the 20-foot crater. The "crash" site is in a reclaimed mine that had been filled with old soda machines and other trash, which explains Miller's original observation.
The following video clips give some idea of Wally's changing story (to be reloaded)...
Sen. Bob Graham told the BBC that the government is withholding information and keeping secrets about what really happened on 9-11. Why is the Obama administration continuing to keep the American public in the dark about what happened on 9-11? When will these secrets be revealed?
Israel's Secret Super Thermite Lab
August 26, 2009
A recent photo of Barack Obama
The thesis of my book, Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World, is that a small gang of high-level Zionist extremists carried out 9-11. This group centers around the senior Israeli terrorist, Shimon Peres, who is currently president of Israel. This group includes other Israeli leaders, such as the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It also includes the Israeli minister of defense, Ehud Barak, and other less well known members of Israel's military intelligence establishment. Former Mossad officers, especially people like Arnon Milchan, who have been involved in building Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal with Shimon Peres, are also included.
Israel is run by a network of Zionist criminals like Ehud Olmert (seen here), Shimon Peres, and others. Olmert made a secret visit to New York City on September 10, 2001. All the security men in the world will be unable to protect Olmert and Peres when the evidence proves that 9-11 was a Zionist false-flag attack against the United States of America.
The crime of 9-11 is still very much at the center of the political stage. It is the real reason why the Zionist-controlled Barack Obama is president of the United States and why the 86-year-old Shimon Peres is president of Israel. The lie has to be defended to protect the real criminals. Shimon Peres, the father of Israel's nuclear arsenal, and the Zionist criminals who helped him build nuclear weapons in the Negev Desert are at the very center of the false-flag terrorism and deception of 9-11. Peres' friends and Mossad agents like Arnon Milchan, Rafi Eitan, Zvi Malkin, and Avraham Ben-Dor played crucial roles in both 9-11 and the creation of Israel's nukes. This is not merely coincidence.
These Zionist criminals are ruthless but they are not stupid. The most obvious questions are: Why did they do it? How did they think they could get away with it?
The main reason for 9-11 was to change the military equation in the Middle East and bring the United States and NATO into the region on a permanent basis to wage war against the foes of Israel. But how could they possibly think they would get away with such an audacious and heinous crime of false-flag terrorism?
Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, expressed the Israeli thinking when he told Shimon Peres, "We control America." The Israelis would not attempt such an outrageous crime without knowing that every aspect of the cover-up was under their control. As my book describes, the Zionists controlled every nodal point of the 9-11 cover-up. Michael Chertoff, an Israeli and the son of a Mossad agent, controlled the non-investigation and oversaw the destruction of the crucial evidence. The Zionist-owned media, particularly the New York media, Fox News, CNN/Time Warner, and the BBC have all participated in the cover-up and false interpretation of the events of 9-11. A devoted supporter of Israel, Alvin K. Hellerstein, has controlled all of the litigation that concerns the victims of 9-11. Lastly, Zionist agents control the White House and U.S. Congress. The Israelis figured that they had all the bases covered. Having staged many similar terror attacks in Israel, they figured they could get away with the big job in New York City on 9-11. They knew that most Americans would never suspect Israel of being behind such an outrageous crime.
What they didn't expect is that a few Americans would dig into the evidence and uncover every stone to find the real culprits. They certainly didn't expect that a careful and independent scientific analysis of the dust would reveal that a nano-composite form of super-thermite was used to pulverize the World Trade Center. We know that Osama Bin Laden did not have super-thermite, so who put tens of tons of the powerful nano-tech explosive in the Twin Towers? That is the crucial question that will reveal the true culprits of 9-11. The discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the pulverized Twin Towers exposes the hoax of 9-11. Whoever made this advanced nano-tech explosive film had access to the most advanced nano-technology in the world. It certainly was not a gang of Moslem terrorists.
Israel's Nuclear Research Center - Negev near Dimona develops super-thermite films like that found in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Israel's secret and super-secure nuclear lab is where the extremely powerful super-thermite of 9-11 was designed. The chief scientists involved in the manufacturing of the nano-composite used to pulverize the World Trade Center on 9-11 will be named in a forthcoming article in this space.
This is the extremely powerful nano-composite used to pulverize the World Trade Center on 9-11. This is a form of super-thermite that was applied as a highly energetic film to the interior surfaces of the Twin Towers.
The pyroclastic dust clouds of 9-11 looked very much like a nuclear blast. The super-thermite that pulverized the Twin Towers was designed at Israel's super-secret complex that manufactures nuclear weapons.
The Exploding Floors of 9-11
September 3, 2009
The Exploding Floors of 9-11
This newly released footage of the demolitions of WTC 7 and WTC 1 (North Tower) is very significant. There are several important aspects of the demolitions of 9-11 that are proven by these videos. The first is the incredible amount of pulverization of the concrete in WTC 7, which can be seen in the billowing pyroclastic clouds of dust rolling down the streets during its unexplained collapse at 5:25 p.m. on 9-11. Pyroclastic clouds are usually associated with volcanoes and are composed chiefly of rock fragments of explosive origin.
The pyroclastic clouds of dust were primarily composed of the concrete floors of the towers - and everything on them. This dust was not caused by a collapse but by a layer of super-thermite that had been applied directly to the floors, most likely on their undersides that were hidden from view - on the steel pans that held the lightweight concrete. The floor pans were exploded on 9-11 with most of the force of the blast directed downwards. There was no collapse. If the towers had collapsed or pancaked as the official report claims, there should have been a stack of 100 floor pans in the rubble, yet none were to be seen.
The dust clouds seen flowing down the street following the collapse of the 47-story Salomon Building, built and owned by Larry Silverstein, are identical to the pyroclastic clouds that accompanied the demolition and collapses of the Twin Towers, WTC 1 and 2. These dust clouds were caused by a super-explosive, a nano-composite form of thermite, fragments of which were found in the dust and identified by Dr. Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University and others.
Chips of the super-thermite that pulverized the World Trade Center. (Steven E. Jones et al, 2009)
This is the incredibly powerful explosive that evidently pulverized the 110 four-inch thick light-weight concrete floors of each tower. Besides reducing these concrete layers to pyroclastic dust, this super-thermite also destroyed everything on each floor and blew everything to smithereens and propelled the huge dust clouds of pulverized debris down the streets of lower Manhattan. The floors of the Twin Towers were exploded in a way that indicates that the super-thermite must have been in direct contact with the four-inch thick concrete floors or the metal pans the concrete was poured into. This is fairly obvious because these structures were primarily steel and glass towers with concrete floors. The only other surfaces would have been the temporary dry wall constructions on each floor, the suspended ceilings, plumbing, and elevator shafts. There was not much else in the way of surfaces that could have been applied with super-thermite.
This is why the newly-released video of the demolition of the North Tower is so important. It clearly shows that the floors and exterior walls were exploded first and that the crucial weight-bearing core columns of the tower were still standing! (NIST, please explain that and the absence of 110 floor pans stacked up in the rubble. How did 220 steel floor pans disappear?)
This is crucial evidence that helps explain how the towers were demolished. The floors and structures around the core were evidently exploded first - and then the core columns were cut with steel-cutting thermite charges, explosions that were shrouded by the dust and noise of the exploding floors. This is quite unlike the logical progression of a normal collapse even in the case of demolition. This is to say that the 47 weight-bearing core columns were not cut first leading to the collapses. The destruction of the Twin Towers were not really collapses although the demolition of WTC 7 resulted in a collapse that resembled a normal controlled demolition.
The 110 floors of each tower were simply exploded before, blowing downwards and away from the cores in a way that was designed to look like a collapse. There was one problem: the "collapses" fell faster than an object in free fall. This was the first solid piece of evidence that the towers had been demolished with explosives. The "collapses" occurred faster than the laws of physics allow -- because they were not natural collapses. If they had been natural collapses there would have been layers of concrete pancaked on top of each other in the rubble pile, which is what often happens to multi-level buildings in strong earthquakes. We would expect to find 110 slabs of concrete and their steel pans stacked on top of each other, yet there is no evidence that any of these floor pans were found in the rubble, much less 110 of them stacked up. Where did these 220 steel floor pans go? How could they have simply disappeared? The fact that they were not found stacked up in the rubble clearly disproves the official version (NIST) of the "collapses" of the Twin Towers.
Many tons of steel from the Twin Towers were melted instantly by the super-thermite bi-layered explosive material found by Dr. Steven E. Jones in the dust. This is proven by the iron spheres found in the dust, as this image from the USGS survey clearly shows. This sphere is a solidified droplet of molten iron, the product of a thermitic reaction. This is evidently what happened to the 220 steel floor pans. In the wink of an eye they were melted by the detonation of the layer of super-thermite, which had probably been sprayed on their undersides, and then pulverized by the layer of organic material which had been added to the nano-thermite to create the gas pressure and explosive effect.
As we know there were no such solid remains of floor pans or the concrete floors of the Twin Towers -- absolutely everything was reduced to dust, except for the structural steel that remained, although some of that was also vaporized. This is what the super-thermite did on 9-11. It exploded the concrete floors and everything on them. There was no so-called pancake collapse. This is certainly obvious to anyone who views these videos. Why have NIST and the media lied to the public that the demolitions were collapses caused by steel structures weakened by fire? This is pure rubbish.
Why is this video footage of the demolition of the North Tower so important? Because it suggests that the pulverizing super-thermite (a sol gel energetic bi-layer film) was applied directly to the acre-sized concrete floors surrounding the 47 core columns. That is to say that the super-thermite layer was evidently in direct contact with the floors in areas occupied by tenants, and not in the core area, which we can see remained standing for several seconds after the floors around it had been exploded away. So, how was this thermitic material applied to the floors? Was it sprayed to the undersides of the floor pans or was it applied to the floors themselves, perhaps disguised as a floor covering or as a layer beneath the floor covering? Perhaps it was applied to the floors in several ways.
One reader wrote to me after the show with Kevin Barrett with this interesting comment:
During the interview, you speculated that the nano thermite may have been sprayed on the floor during the asbestos abatement process while removing linoleum. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the asbestos abatement process would be removing the fireproofing from the floor trusses by accessing the trusses through the suspended ceiling located below. In other words, the sol jell could have been sprayed on the floor pans (which is 15-20 ga steel decking supported by the trusses that the concrete is poured in) and hidden by the ceiling tiles in the same day. No problem. Other areas of sol jell application would include the core columns located within the elevator shafts Ace Elevator was working on. If you think about it, as energetic as nano thermite is, relatively little sol jell would be needed for the exterior columns, and it would explain the shearing occurring at convenient truck size lengths.
It seems most likely that the undersides of the steel floor pans is where the super-thermite was applied. If the pans were sprayed with a layer of super-thermite disguised as a coating of rust-proofing for example, the force of the blast would be directed downwards. The steel pan and the concrete of the floor would be pulverized but the direction of the explosions would be downwards and outwards, which is what we see in the video. As each floor was detonated, the blast would be forced downwards by the steel and concrete above it. The blast would hit the floor below it and hasten the collapse. This is what seems to have occurred judging by the video evidence.
In my article, "Who Put Super-Thermite in the Twin Towers?" of July 20, 2009, I discuss how the super-thermite might have been put in the towers. One of the possible disguises for applying the thin layer of super-thermite could have been as a coating sprayed during asbestos abatement work in the towers, as the reader said in the comment above. As I wrote in this article:
We do know that a million-dollar contract for asbestos abatement in the twin towers had been put up for bids by contractors in the fall of 2000, exactly one year before 9-11:
Contract WTC-115.310 - The World Trade Center Removal and Disposal of Vinyl Asbestos Floor Tiles and Other Incidental Asbestos-Containing Building Materials Via Work Order Estimate Range: $1,000,000 annually Bids due Tuesday, October 17, 2000. (advertised by the PA on September 12, 2000)
Kevin Barrett asked me how I can say that the super-thermite was produced by the Zionists who I allege are behind 9-11? As I said in the interview, at this point I cannot say with absolute certainty that the nano-composite was made by Israeli scientists in the nuclear bomb factory near Dimona, but I suspect it was. It is a deduction I have made in the same way one solves an algebra problem. If we know the result of the equation and all of the factors except one we can determine the missing factor. This is what I have done. Every other aspect of this false-flag terror atrocity was done by Israelis or Zionists committed to Israel so I would conclude that Israelis were involved in the manufacture and application of the super-thermite in the World Trade Center towers that were demolished on 9-11, all three of them.
What we really need to find at this point is the names of the people who were responsible for placing the super-thermite in the towers and how it was done. When we have that information we will be able to determine who made the material and provided it. Then we will have the true culprits of 9-11. As we already know, this material was certainly not made by Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida or the Taliban. We can safely say that no Muslim or Arab state or entity was responsible for loading the Twin Towers and WTC 7 with this advanced form of super-thermite. The government and media interpretation of 9-11 is, therefore, nothing but a pack of lies. This means that the war in Afghanistan has nothing whatsoever to do with 9-11 -- except that it is being done on behalf of those who carried out the false-flag terror attacks.
We must remember that we really have nothing to fear but fear itself. The ones who are truly afraid are those who carried out 9-11 and those who have assisted in this massive hoax and cover-up. They, the real terrorists of 9-11, are trembling with fear and unable to sleep. We need to be dedicated, determined, and tenacious in finding the guilty parties and exposing them.
Ehud Barak - Architect of 9-11
September 11, 2009
Eight years after 9-11, the American people and the U.S. government are still woefully misinformed about what actually happened on September 11, 2001. The media version of events, accepted by most Americans, is based on a completely false understanding of the terror atrocity that changed America – and the world. This is, however, no accident. This is how Israeli false-flag terrorism is designed to work.
The terror attacks of 9-11 were planned and carried out by Zionist extremists with the intention that the blame would be assigned to Islamic terrorists based in Afghanistan. Israeli military leaders and the Zionist-controlled media were well prepared to interpret the attacks so that public opinion would blame Muslims and Arabs for the atrocity. Changing public opinion is the primary mission of the architects of false-flag terrorism.
The evidence, however, indicates that the terror atrocity of 9-11 was not carried out by Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaida, the Taliban, or any Muslim entity. The discovery of chips of nano-thermite in the dust of the demolished World Trade Center has fully exposed the official version, promoted by the controlled media for eight years, as nothing but a pack of lies. Whoever applied tons of super-thermite to the Twin Towers had unrestricted access to every floor of the buildings - and state of the art nano-technology explosives. This was certainly not Osama Bin Laden and his gang of twenty.
Thousands of American, Afghani, and Iraqi lives have been lost as a result of the false understanding of 9-11, and the map of the Middle East has been redrawn. This is intentional, of course, and the Zionist-controlled media has been the most important supporter of the lies that surround 9-11. In the United States, the false interpretation of 9-11 has been vigorously promoted by Rupert Murdoch's FOX News and News Corporation, CNN/Time Warner, the New York Times, and other Zionist-controlled news networks.
The lies about 9-11 were prepared in advance to kick-start a U.S.-led military campaign across the Middle East that would result in American troops being permanently based across the region to support the fortress state of Israel and its Zionist hegemony. This is what is called the "War on Terror," which has been the Israeli plan since the mid-1980s, as articulated by Israel's current prime minister from the far-right Likud party, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. This extreme Zionist strategy became U.S. policy in the aftermath of 9-11. It was planned that way, of course.
The invasion of Afghanistan, the response of President George W. Bush to 9-11, has been called "Obama's war" because of President Barack Obama's escalation of the nearly eight-year-old war of occupation. Despite the discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center, Obama continues to push the war in Afghanistan as a response to 9-11: "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and plot against us still," Obama said at the Pentagon's eighth anniversary ceremony. "In pursuit of al Qaeda and its extremist allies we will never falter," he said.
The war in Afghanistan, begun on 7 October 2001, cannot rightly be called Obama's war. It can, however, be called "Barak's war" if we mean Ehud Barak, the current Israeli defense minister and former prime minister. Barak was the first person to call for a U.S. war against Afghanistan and the chief architect of 9-11. By being the first to interpret the attacks and articulate the desired response, Barak revealed his role as a chief architect of 9-11.
The false-flag terrorist troika: Shimon Peres, Bibi Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak
The Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak were among the very first people to blame Osama Bin Laden for 9-11 and call for military action against the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan. The false-flag attacks were designed and then used by these Israeli leaders to start their long-planned "War on Terror," an Israeli military strategy pushed by Netanyahu for many years. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq allows Israel to carry out covert murderous false-flag terror operations in these beleaguered nations, acts that are effectively disguised as "sectarian" violence by the Zionist-controlled media.
It needs to be understood that Israel is, unlike any Western nation, a state that is run by the military. It is often said in Israel that while some of the Zionists wanted Athens, they got Sparta. The Israeli military/security establishment dominates the political affairs of the nation and has done so for decades. Seven of Israel's sixteen defense ministers, for example, were also serving as prime ministers. Four of them, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Shaul Mofaz, also served as Chief of Staff of the military. This is essential to understanding Ehud Barak's key role in 9-11.
Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, was both prime minister and defense minister of Israel from 1999 until March 2001. As defense minister, Barak led the criminal aggression known as Operation Cast Lead against the civilian population of Gaza from December 2008 through January 2009. Although Israeli forces under Barak's command committed egregious war crimes in Gaza, neither Israel nor Ehud Barak has been held accountable by the international community. The Israeli military, for example, flagrantly used banned white phosphorous bombs on the civilian population and intentionally bombed an American-run school and U.N. compound. The Israeli assault killed some 1,300 civilians.
Just this week, defense minister Barak approved the building of some 500 housing units on illegally occupied Palestinian land without a word of protest from the administration of Barack Obama, which has openly demanded an end to illegal Zionist construction in the occupied territories. The position taken by the Obama administration is, however, merely a false front meant to placate Arab states and public concerns about Israeli crimes in Palestine. In the same way, president-elect Obama said he would have plenty to say about Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza after he was inaugurated. He has, however, been completely silent about Israeli war crimes.
EHUD BARAK AND 9-11
Ehud Barak is a chief architect of 9-11. As Israel's highest military strategist in political office, his role in the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 was at the highest architectural level. As the Israeli prime minister and defense minister from 1999 through March 2001, Barak was at the top of Israel's political and military establishment when the false-flag terror attack was being prepared. Although Barak was replaced as prime minister by Ariel Sharon six months before 9-11, the project had been planned and was set to go before Barak left office. Barak was given a high-paying position with Electronic Data Systems, an American company, only hours before the 9-11 attacks. Israeli crimes like 9-11 and the murder of President John F. Kennedy are planned well in advance and compartmentalized for operation security.
Outside observers were surprised when the extremely hawkish right-wing Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu took Barak, head of the Labor party, as his defense minister. The key fact to be considered in this relationship is that Barak was Netanyahu's commanding officer when they were both active in Israel's elite commando force, the Sayeret Matkal.
Ehud Barak was Netanyahu's commanding officer in the Sayeret Matkal. Here they attend a June 2009 memorial ceremony for Netanyahu's brother who died in the Entebbe operation headed by Barak.
Barak is known for heading the military response to the 1972 hijacking of a Sabena Airlines jet, which was forced by four terrorists to land at Israel's Lod Airport outside Tel Aviv. Barak led a team of Sayeret commandos, dressed in mechanics' overalls, which approached the plane as if to refuel it and then stormed inside. Barak's commandos overpowered the hijackers and rescued the passengers. One of the men under Barak's command was Benjamin Netanyahu. "Bibi was a good young officer," Barak acknowledged to Serge Schmemann of the New York Times (May 21, 1996), referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. "I tried to convince him to stay in the army longer. He was good at that, but that does not make him an appropriate [person] to run the country."
Barak was the key architect of the June 1976 Operation Entebbe, another rescue mission to free the hostages of the Air France aircraft hijacked by terrorists and forced to land at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Netanyahu's brother, Yonatan, was killed in this raid. An Israeli school of terrorism was created in his name. The relationship between Barak, the commander, and Netanyahu, the soldier, is very close. These men have worked as a team for decades.
BARAK INTERPRETS 9-11
In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime/defense minister, was the first person to call for the U.S. to attack Afghanistan. On the very day of the attacks Barak told Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television that Western governments needed to make a concerted effort to combat terrorism: "Most obviously my guess is a bin Laden organization...We have to stand firm against such terrorism," Barak said. "We have to coordinate to launch the same kind of fight that our forefathers gave to the fight against piracy on the high seas - mainly terrorists should not be allowed to land at any port or airport," he said. Note Barak's use of the pronoun "our." Whose forefathers is he talking about?
"The leadership of the world should be able to take action. It is time for action. The world is not going to be the same place as before," Barak said.
"Bin Laden sits in Afghanistan," Barak said on 9-11. "We know where the terror sites are. It's time for action." Barak's comments were reported in the Washington Times of 12 September 2001.
Netanyahu and Barak are very close in planning top-secret operations.
Benjamin Netanyahu, another former Israeli prime minister, actually told the New York Times that the terror attacks were "very good" for U.S.-Israeli relations on 9-11. He also "called upon all democratic nations of the world to join an international coalition to crush the terrorist organizations and the regimes that sponsor them," according to the Jerusalem Post of 12 September 2001. This military response is the pre-planned Israeli strategy known as the "War on Terror," which Netanyahu has been pushing since 1986 in his books, articles, and speeches.
The Jerusalem Post of September 12, 2001, reported:
"We must build a coalition against terror today, when our power is unmatched, because tomorrow it could be matched," Netanyahu said in a news conference at Jerusalem's King David Hotel. "It's time to take on militant Islamic regimes with a great deal of strength. We should crush the terrorist infrastructure that threatens the entire free world."
Netanyahu predicted that yesterday would be a turning point in the history of the United States, similar to Pearl Harbor. He called upon the United States to lead the effort against "the Bin Ladens, Arafats, and Saddam Husseins of the world."
The former prime minister said he predicted massive attacks on the World Trade Center shortly after the last attack on the building, and in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism.
Barak was ready with an editorial entitled "Democratic unity is the only answer to terrorism," published in The Times of London on 13 September 2001:
Terrorism has declared war on the free world and the free world must unite to fight back. This is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the horror of Tuesday's attack. Just as the enlightened world mobilised in the past to combat challenges to its core values, so must such an international coalition be built today …
Let there be no illusions. This attack is an attack on everything that Western civilisation holds dear -- freedom, the rule of law, the sanctity of human life. It is an attack on the open manner in which business is conducted between people and nations and on the very fabric of human interaction as we know it.
And we know who the attackers are. Whether Osama bin Laden was involved directly or not, or whether it was another grouping, the world's governments know exactly who the terrorists are and exactly which rogue states support and promote their activity. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and North Korea have a proven track-record of sponsoring terrorism, while no one needs reminding of the carnage wrought by the terrorist thugs of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and even Yassir Arafat's own PLO. The lines of battle are clearly drawn.
Ehud Barak certainly knows who "the attackers are." He sees the chief architect of 9-11 every time he looks in the mirror.
As an architect of the terror atrocity of 9-11, Barak was well prepared to explain what happened to the Twin Towers.
My book, Solving 9-11, The Deception that Changed the World, is now available for Norwegian readers through BitTorrent and an easily downloadable pdf version of some 550 pages. The first few chapters have been translated into Norwegian, while the rest of the book is in English.
Torstein Viddal, the man behind the Norwegian translation wrote:
Everything going well here with Askehaug and your book, «9/11-koden». The book is spreading mainly through BitTorrent, but it's also acessible for web download:
The latter is downloaded at a rate of half a Gigabyte a day.
I am very glad to see that my book is available in Norwegian and that my thesis is reaching so many people in so many forms. Of course it will be wonderful to see my book in print and available in libraries and bookstores but there is a strong counter-force that makes that difficult. I hope to have my book published as soon as possible, but until that happens I am encouraged to see that the material is available for free via the Internet for those who are interested.
9-11 and the Jewish Predicament
New Year's Day 2010
I recently received a letter from a new supporter in California, who after posting an article about Israeli involvement in 9-11 on a website called "The Smirking Chimp" discovered that his post had been deleted and that he had been blocked from further posting. This is what he wrote:
By the way, for your information, I began reading at The Smirking Chimp about 6 months ago and liked the intellectual tone, so I registered and made a few comments about other posts. So one morning recently after I had read your article on 9-11, I posted the following: "If you want to read the most plausible explanation of who was responsible for 9-11, go to the website, "Israeli Connection to 9-11" and it came back as a post right away. However when I came back that afternoon, the post was gone and my user ID had been blocked and remains blocked.
What this reader experienced with The Smirking Chimp is actually fairly typical of how most American Jews react to the evidence of Israeli involvement in 9-11 – with angry denial and rejection. The Smirking Chimp, a leftish website owned and controlled by a foul-mouthed New Jersey Jew named Jeff Tiedrich, is a good example of this knee-jerk reaction.
Jeff Tiedrich, webmaster of "The Smirking Chimp"
One can easily see that Tiedrich uses extremely vulgar language on his site in response to comments made by critics of Zionist crimes and racism -- before banning them from posting on the site. Jeff is evidently unable to accept or respond to criticism of Israel or the racist nature of Zionism, which crops up among his readers. It isn't surprising that Tiedrich is unable to deal with the difficult questions surrounding Zionism. He is, after all, just a middle-class Jew from New Jersey who supports Zionism because of his tribal loyalty.
Tiedrich plays guitar in a Jewish band called "Alligator"
What I find disingenuous about Jeff Tiedrich's website is that he doesn't inform his readers that he is a Jew from a Zionist family. With Jewish mega criminals like Bernard Madoff and Maurice Greenberg - from his community and city - robbing the public and the U.S. taxpayer, and the Zionist-controlled media and shadow government ruining the United States, it seems very dishonest for Jeff not to be upfront with his readers about his ethnic background. Shouldn't readers know who controls and moderates the political websites they use to exchange information? I provide my readers with my background information and am often asked about my ties to Israel.
A check of the Dictionary of Jewish Surnames shows that Tiedrich is a Jewish name from Galicia in Eastern Europe. Galicia was a very poor and primitive region (on the Dniester River in what is today the western Ukraine) when many peasants and Jews migrated to the United States in the 1880s. Tiedrich's great grandfather Aaron, for example, came to America in 1882. Jeff grew up in Rockaway, New Jersey, the son of Warren and Joan Tiedrich, stalwart members of the Jewish synagogue Temple Beth Am of Parsippany, New Jersey. Jeff graduated from the Morris Hills High School in Rockaway in 1975 as his sister Ellen did in 1977.
Jeff's sister Ellen is a librarian
I am discussing Jeff Tiedrich's difficulties addressing the evidence of Israeli involvement in 9-11 because it is a good example of the predicament that faces every American Jew -- and Israeli. The Jewish community has a peculiar and distinct tribal dimension quite unlike nearly every other ethnic group in the United States. American Jews are raised with a tribal mentality that they should not openly criticize another Jew or complain about the problems within the Jewish community to a person from outside that community, i.e. a non-Jew. This tribal allegiance is, however, a dangerous two-edged sword. When the criminal behavior and misconduct of the Jews become intolerable for the host nation, the entire Jewish community is usually punished, often with expulsion, which has happened in virtually every European nation at least once.
JUDAH AT THE CROSSROADS
Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian Jewish author and Zionist pioneer in Palestine, wrote an interesting essay entitled "Judah at the Crossroads" about the Jewish dilemma caused by the creation of the Zionist (Jewish) state of Israel in 1948. A disenchanted Communist, Koestler wrote a powerful anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, in 1940. Koestler wrote about things he knew a great deal about and had personal experience of. His 1971 book The Thirteenth Tribe is about the Khazar origins of Eastern Europe's non-Semitic Ashkenazi Jews.
Arthur Koestler in 1948
The Budapest-born Koestler said Jews in the Diaspora faced a dilemma that required choosing between either assimilating into the nations in which they lived or going to Israel. Koestler said it is not right to raise Jewish children in exile with a sense of separation and longing for Jerusalem when Jews could simply move to Israel and live as fully realized Jews in the Jewish state. Koestler knew very well what he was talking about. He had lived in Palestine in the 1920s and experienced the rigors of being a Zionist pioneer. Koestler personally worked with Vladimir Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, the Irgun terror gang, and the Haganah, and even met with the Zionist arch-terrorist Menachem Begin, the head of the Irgun Gang in 1944 to try to persuade him to stop using terrorism. Koestler failed to persuade Begin to abandon terrorism and accept a two-state solution for Palestine. As he wrote in his memoirs: “When the meeting was over, I realized how naïve I had been to imagine that my arguments would have even the slightest influence.”
Koestler (fifth from right) on Kibbutz HaShofet in 1945. The kibbutz, founded in 1937, was named after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a devoted Zionist, and was the first kibbutz formed by American Jews.
The Zionists, however, are strongly opposed to Jewish assimilation in the Diaspora because it reduces the number and motivation of Jews to support or migrate to Israel. To be called an "assimilated Jew" by an Israeli leader is an insult to American and European Jews who have sought to integrate into the societies in which they live.
CNN SMEARS BOLLYN AND LIES TO GRIEVING JEWISH FATHER
I feel sorry for American Jews who are weighed down with the knowledge that Israeli military intelligence played a key role in the crimes of 9-11. The controlled media lies to the Jewish community and general public about the evidence of Israeli involvement in the false-flag terror attacks. A good example of this can be seen in the CNN hit piece that was done in an attempt to smear me as an anti-Semite in January 2007, which aired on the Paula Zahn show the night before my trial. The CNN editors dragged up the canard that 4,000 Jews had been forewarned prior to the attacks and cruelly presented it as evidence of anti-Semitic propaganda to Wilton Sexer, a Jewish man who had lost his son, Jason, at the World Trade Center.
CNN intentionally lied to Wilton Sexer, who lost his son on 9-11, about the report that 4,000 "Jews" had been warned to stay away from work. The actual report that 4,000 Israelis were expected to have been at the World Trade Center on 9-11 came from the Jerusalem Post Online based on information from the Israeli foreign ministry. The evidence of Israeli forewarning is based on reports that users of the Israeli instant messaging system Odigo had received accurate warnings of the attacks that were correct to the minute. CNN intentionally mixed up the facts to confuse the viewer.
By 2007, even the editors at CNN must have known that this report had originated with the Jerusalem Post Online, which had received the information directly from the Israeli government. The families of some 4,000 Israeli citizens expected to have been at work at the WTC or the Pentagon on 9-11 had contacted the Israeli Foreign Ministry asking about the whereabouts of their relatives. The editor of the Jerusalem Post later confirmed in writing in 2003 that the newspaper's report on this matter had been completely accurate, as I wrote in an article in April 2005:
The fact that only one Israeli died at the WTC, while 4,000 Israelis were thought to have been at the scene of the attacks on 9/11 naturally led to a widespread rumor, blamed on Arabic sources, that Israelis had been forewarned to stay away that day.
"Whether this story was the origin of the rumor," Bret Stephens, the Post's editor-in-chief wrote in 2003, "I cannot say. What I can say is that there was no mistake in our reporting."
It was CNN that intentionally confused the issue by mis-using the word Jews instead of Israelis and giving the grieving American Jewish father false information in the first place. This is an excellent example of how the Zionist-controlled media uses false information to control the thinking and emotions of American Jews and the general public. As Mark Twain said, "There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press."
American Jews face a predicament over 9-11 very similar to the one described by Koestler in "Judah at the Crossroads." Will they continue to meekly maintain the dictates of tribal loyalty and protect the criminal network in their community or will they bravely and openly address and confront the rampant criminality in the Jewish community? The welfare and future of the Jewish community in the United States depends on how American Jews respond to this predicament.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth Forum has posted an examination of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) supposedly from the Pentagon wreckage of American Airlines Flight 77 that suggests that the cockpit door was never opened during the flight. This discovery appears to be yet another piece of evidence disproving the official story about what happened at the Pentagon on 9-11. The data from the FDR comes from Warren Stutt’s website at: http://www.warrenstutt.com/AAL77FDRDecoder/index.html
Here is the key paragraph of the posting from the Pilots for 9/11 Truth Forum by Rob Balsamo:
On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 departed Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles at 8:20 am Eastern Time. According to reports and data, a hijacking took place between 08:50:54 and 08:54:11 in which the hijackers allegedly crashed the aircraft into the Pentagon at 09:37:45. Reported by CNN, according to Ted Olson, wife Barbara Olson had called him from the reported flight stating, "...all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers...". However, according to Flight Data provided by the NTSB, the Flight Deck Door was never opened in flight. How were the hijackers able to gain access to the cockpit, remove the pilots, and navigate the aircraft to the Pentagon if the Flight Deck Door remained closed?
Pilots for 9/11 Truth has reported that the data stream from the flight data recorder (FDR) for American Airlines flight 77, which allegedly struck the Pentagon on 9/11, shows that the cockpit door never opened during the entire 90 minute flight. The data was provided by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has refused to comment…
The official story about flight 77 is that five Muslim terrorists brandishing box cutters forced their way into the cockpit and herded two pilots, four flight attendants and all the passengers to the back of the plane. This story came into being via Ted Olson, US Solicitor General, who told CNN — that he received two phone calls from his wife Barbara Olson, a passenger on the doomed flight. Ted Olson’s story changed several times. Sometimes he claimed that the calls from his wife were made from seat back phones, other times that she used her cell phone….
It was the FBI that revealed the evidence that decisively disproves Ted Olson’s story. In the Zacarias Moussaoui trial in 2006, the FBI presented a report on the cell phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. Their report on AA77 shows that there was only one phone call from Barbara Olson, but that it was an unconnected call lasting zero seconds. So Ted Olson either lied about receiving calls from his wife or was deceived into believing he received calls from her….
This new evidence, showing that the cockpit door never opened during flight, is another nail in the coffin of the official story about flight 77. Clearly, if the cockpit door never opened, then hijackers did not storm the cockpit and herd the pilots to the back of the plane. The data, which originated from the government, does not support the government’s story.
Source: Casey, Sheila, "Flight 77 Cockpit Door Never Opened During 9/11 ‘Hijack’", Rock Creek Free Press, Washington, D.C., December 15, 2009
A group of active citizens led by Anthony Hmura of Worcester, Massachusetts, are working to bring Michael Goff's key role in the creation of PTECH (a "Trojan Horse" software company - created by Israeli military intelligence and suspected of being involved in the hijacking of critical U.S. computer systems on 9-11*) to the attention of the public and local law enforcement. Michael Goff is also from Worcester.
Michael Goff, a Zionist Jew and son of highest level B'nai B'rith Freemasons, worked for Guardium, an Israeli software company tied to the Mossad -- after helping set-up PTECH in 1994. PTECH was supposedly run by a Lebanese Muslim with ties to Saudi financiers of terrorism. How did Goff, a Jewish lawyer from Worcester, wind up running the company?
* Read more about Michael Goff and Ptech's role in hijacking FAA and other U.S. computer systems on 9-11 here:
The following is a letter I received on 15 January 2010 from Anthony Hmura's Anti-Zionist League of Worcester:
Dear Christopher,
Thanks for adding your voice to call for an investigation of Michael Goff, from Worcester, MA, where (as it happens) the Anti-Zionist League is also based. The AZL's efforts (based on evidence provided by top 9/11 journalist Christopher Bollyn and others) in Worcester, Massachusetts, may well be the only opportunity the 9/11 Truth movement has left to reach honest law enforcement and government.
Now, a new dimension has been added to this opportunity! Within days of the AZL's online efforts to inform Worcesterites of evidence suggesting that Worcester-born Michael S. Goff is a likely 9/11 Terrorist, a "sudden rash of anti-Semitic graffiti" cropped up in Worcester.
Very suspect. In this context, the AZL has made Worcester Police Chief Gemme aware of the "impeccable and very suspect timing of this graffiti", in addition to the small detail that State Representative Harriette Chandler, who is pushing for legislation in response to this grafitti (which may well be a "hate hoax"), is married to Michael Goff's former employer - Burton Chandler of Seder & Chandler law firm).
We would greatly appreciate if you would post a link to this "Open Letter to Worcester's Police Chief Gary Gemme", concerning Michael Goff, who worked at the 911-connected software company PTECH.
This post, which contains a link for the AZL's "Open Letter to Worcester Mayor O'Brien, " provides information on Michael Goff's local connections and the context, which is essential to any investigation of Michael Goff and PTECH:
Any activists, webmasters and forum members who see the value in honing in on this opportunity to expose Goff (and his potential Worcester connections, who may well have just pulled a hate hoax to protect Goff from AZL’s exposure) contact Anthony Hmura at: <polishflyer7@yahoo.com>
or by U.S.P.S. mail to 37 Canterbury St., Worcester, MA 01610
Thanks for your great research all of these years, Christopher, and if this is not an opportunity for the world-wide opposition to 9/11's Zionist crime network, then nothing is. Opportunities like this are not likely to come to us ever again. Given the fact that your work has so helped make this opportunity possible, Christopher Bollyn: hats off to you!
The Anti-Zionist League (TheAZL.com) Worcester, Massachusetts
Letters to the Media about the 9-11 Evidence of Super Thermite
I have sent the following letters to the New York Times, CNN and Time Warner, my representative in Congress, and the Guardian newspaper in Britain. Letters like these should be sent by concerned citizens across America and around the world to local politicians and media as well as the big networks and each and every member of Congress - and the White House. I would recommend that the letters be sent by email and also by post. Request a written response. A follow-up phone call would also help. Readers are taking similar actions in Canada and Australia. Citizens, now is the time to pile on the pressure. Feel free to use my links and text if you would like to. Let me know how it goes in your area. You can now contact me by clicking on the little envelope at the top right-hand side. Here are a few of my letters:
To: Mr. Clark Hoyt, Public Editor, The New York Times 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018 public@nytimes.com (212) 556-7652
An Open Letter to The New York Times from Christopher Bollyn April 21, 2009
Ignoring the Evidence of Super-Thermite from the World Trade Center
Dear Mr. Hoyt and Editors of The New York Times and International Herald Tribune:
How can the New York Times completely ignore the scientific evidence of nano-thermite, or super-thermite, found in the dust of the demolished and pulverized rubble of the World Trade Center? Do you consider this crucial scientific discovery irrelevant to the understanding of what happened on 9-11?
A recent study written by 9 scientists, including Dr. Steven E. Jones, has proven that chips of a highly-explosive thermitic material, "characterized as nano-thermite or super-thermite," were found in five different samples of dust from the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center. This paper, which passed a peer review and was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, is an historic breakthrough in the scientific investigation of the explosive collapses of the twin towers, yet not a single word about it has been published in the New York Times.
The silence of the New York Times about the evidence of super-thermite in the destruction of the twin towers is a perfect illustration of why newspapers are going out of business in the United States: a controlled press is simply not relevant. The American people want truthful information about the vital issues of the day, like 9-11. The New York Times, on the other hand, is a good example of the controlled press: the Times "failed the American public" in your reporting during the lead-up to the war in Iraq, according to your own bureau chief in Baghdad, John Burns. Previously, the Times spread blatantly false reports about that country's alleged weapons of mass destruction in order to create public support for an illegal war of aggression. Now, when we have solid scientific evidence that a highly-advanced nano-composite thermitic explosive known as super-thermite has been found in the dust of the World Trade Center, you are silent.
The discovery of active thermitic material in the dust of the World Trade Center is crucial to understanding what really happened on 9-11. This scientific discovery reveals that sophisticated demolition explosives had been placed in the twin towers long before the two planes struck them on 9-11. Although we have earlier seen evidence that the towers were demolished with explosives, this is the first time we have solid evidence of the explosives involved in the demolition of the three collapsed towers.
Clearly, the New York Times is unwilling to publish the most pertinent information about vital matters concerning the American people, such as the search for the truth about what really happened on 9-11. This makes the New York Times irrelevant. The Times is in the same boat as the controlled press of the former Soviet Union and many of the leading newspapers of the United States. The controlled press is a boat that is sinking and that deserves to sink.
I'm right behind you on this one. I've contacted news agencies in Australia and the UK to alert them to this issue, and I will not relent until a satisfactory outcome is achieved. I really appreciate your alerting me to the publication, and I absolutely agree that the tide is turning on the perpetrators of this crime.
- N.M. in Australia
* * *
To: The Board of Directors, Time Warner Inc. c/o Office of the Corporate Secretary
Edward Adler, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications Time Warner Inc. 1 Time Warner Center New York, NY 10019 letters@time.com ir@timewarner.com
Philip Kent, Chairman and CEO Turner Broadcasting Systems 1 CNN Center Atlanta, GA 30303
Ted Turner Turner Enterprises, Inc. Atlanta, GA 30303 info@tedturner.com jimmy.franco@hbgusa.com
An Open Letter to CNN and Time Warner from Christopher Bollyn April 28, 2009
Why is CNN & Time Warner Avoiding the Evidence of Super-Thermite in the Dust of the World Trade Center?
Re: "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Niels H. Harrit, Steven E. Jones, et al, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, February 13, 2009 (Date accepted)
Dear Sirs:
As one of the largest news networks in the United States, Time Warner's CNN is a source of information for millions of people. As a news network serving the public, CNN is expected to report honestly about the news and relevant developments connected to the important matters facing the nation. As the worst terror attack in U.S. history and the seminal event leading to the extremely costly "War on Terror," 9-11 remains a subject of great interest and importance to the American people – and the world.
CNN, however, has never shown any real interest in discussing the physical evidence of 9-11. When, for example, a CNN team came to Schaumburg, Illinois, in January 2007, to interview me as an independent journalist writing about 9-11, they showed absolutely no interest in discussing the evidence of explosives and steel-melting thermite in the destruction of the World Trade Center, although this was the key element of the research I had been writing about for the previous year or more. Rather than discuss the evidence of demolition, CNN seemed determined to frame me as an anti-Semite. I was repeatedly asked, "So, who did it?" To which I responded, "9-11 is an unsolved crime."
Failing to get me to say anything that could even be remotely construed as anti-Semitic, CNN relied on a video-editing trick in an obvious attempt to smear me. After I told CNN very clearly that I was not an anti-Semite, the video editors spliced in a clip of a woman from the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith (a secret organization of Jewish Freemasons) taken in another city at another time, that made it appear that she was responding to my comments. Fortunately, we had recorded the entire interview with CNN and were able to show how CNN was not at all interested in the evidence from 9-11 but wanted only to smear me as an anti-Semite. Why would CNN even have such an agenda to attack a truth seeker of 9-11?
Now, two years later, we have a scientific peer-reviewed paper that presents physical evidence of super-thermite (i.e. nano-thermite) found in the dust from the destroyed and pulverized World Trade Center. This is a crucial discovery because this is evidence of the extremely sophisticated and powerful explosive that pulverized the twin towers on 9-11. CNN, however, has yet to even report on this key discovery, which was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in March 2009. Why is CNN avoiding discussion of such crucial evidence of the explosives found in the dust of the destroyed twin towers? Is the scientific evidence explaining how the towers were destroyed of no importance to CNN?
How can CNN ignore the scientific evidence of large amounts of nano-thermite, or super-thermite, found in the pulverized rubble of the World Trade Center? A recent study written by 9 scientists, including Dr. Steven E. Jones of Provo, Utah, has proven the existence of a highly-explosive thermitic material, "characterized as nano-thermite or super-thermite," in five different samples of dust from the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center. This paper, published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, is an historic breakthrough in the scientific investigation of the explosive collapses of the twin towers, yet CNN has not even mentioned it.
The discovery of active thermitic material in the dust of the World Trade Center is crucial to understanding what really happened on 9-11. This scientific discovery reveals that sophisticated demolition explosives had been placed in the twin towers before the two planes struck them on 9-11. So, who put super-thermite in the WTC?
This is the first time we have solid evidence of the unusual explosives involved in the demolition of the three collapsed towers. One would think that CNN would find such a development to be newsworthy. CNN's refusal to discuss the crucial evidence of explosives in the World Trade Center reveals that CNN is both controlled and opposed to discussing the evidence of what really happened on 9-11.
Signed,
Christopher Bollyn www.bollyn.com
* * *
To: Rep. Melissa Bean 432 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Phone: 202-225-3711
April 28, 2009
An Open Letter to a Member of Congress Concerning the Evidence of Super-Thermite in the Dust of the World Trade Center
Re: "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Niels H. Harrit, Steven E. Jones, et al, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, February 13, 2009 (Date accepted)
As the worst terror attack in U.S. history and the seminal event leading to the extremely costly "War on Terror," 9-11 remains a subject of great interest and importance to the American people – and the world.
We now have a scientific peer-reviewed paper that presents physical evidence of super-thermite (i.e. nano-thermite) found in the dust from the destroyed and pulverized World Trade Center. This is a crucial discovery because this is evidence of the extremely sophisticated and powerful explosive that pulverized the twin towers on 9-11.
A recent study written by 9 scientists, including Dr. Steven E. Jones of Provo, Utah, has proven the existence of a highly-explosive thermitic material, "characterized as nano-thermite or super-thermite," in five different samples of dust from the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center. This paper, published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, is an historic breakthrough in the scientific investigation of the explosive collapses of the twin towers.
The discovery of active thermitic material in the dust of the World Trade Center is crucial to understanding what really happened on 9-11. This scientific discovery reveals that sophisticated demolition explosives had been placed in the twin towers before the two planes struck them on 9-11. So, who put super-thermite in the WTC?
This is the first time we have solid evidence of the unusual explosives involved in the demolition of the three collapsed towers. I would expect that this discovery would be of great interest to members of Congress. This evidence disproves the official version of events and indicates that the nation has been lied to about what really happened on 9-11.
I would like the information presented to Congress for discussion and entered into the Congressional record as a crucial scientific discovery about what has been found in the dust of the World Trade Center. Please inform me by email of your actions on this matter.
Eyewitnesses Saw Military Aircraft at Scene of Flight 93
Originally published: July 15, 2005
Eyewitness accounts from the area surrounding Shanksville, censored from the official version of events, indicate military aircraft were at the scene when Flight 93 went down and that federal agents have pressured local people not to talk about what they saw.
INDIAN LAKE, Pennsylvania - Eyewitness testimonies have generally been excluded from the official version of events of 9-11. In the Shanksville area, where many residents believe Flight 93 was shot down, there are scores of eyewitnesses whose testimonies have never even been heard. Some local residents are deeply offended by the official explanation of what supposedly happened to United Airlines Flight 93, calling it a patriotic pack of lies. Fearful of retribution from federal agents, many eyewitnesses who spoke with me asked that their names not be published.
While differing on some details of the plane said to be Flight 93, which passed over Lambertsville, eyewitnesses agree that unexplained military aircraft were in the immediate vicinity when a huge explosive "fireball" occurred at the reclaimed coal mine near Shanksville. Viola Saylor saw Flight 93 pass very low over her house in Lambertsville, which is a mile north of the official crash site. She was in her backyard when she heard a very loud noise and looked up to find herself "nose to nose" with Flight 93, which she says was flying "upside down" as it passed overhead. It was blue and silver, she said, and glistened in the sunlight.
It was so low that it rustled the leaves of her 100-foot maple tree in her yard. It flew southeastwards for about three more seconds and even gained elevation before it crashed over the hill with a "thud," she said. "It was real still for a second," she said. "Then all of a sudden" she saw a "very quiet" and low-flying white "military" plane coming from the area of the crash site, flying towards the northwest. "It was flying very fast, like it was trying to get out of here," she said. "A second or two" behind the "military" plane were two other planes, which Saylor described as "normal" planes.
Shown a photograph of a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II, a low-flying combat aircraft commonly referred to as a "Warthog," Saylor identified it as the military plane she had seen. She said she recognized the two engines on the rear and the distinctive shape of the cockpit and nose of the plane. Similar eyewitness reports of military planes over Shanksville on 9-11 remain censored by the U.S. corporate media, although they were reported in two leading British newspapers.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt over Shanksville before and after the "crash" of Flight 93.
Susan Mcelwain, a local teacher, also reported seeing a white "military" plane at the scene of the crash before witnessing an explosion. Mcelwain told the Daily Mirror (U.K.) what she saw:
It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50 feet above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was traveling real fast, but hardly made any sound.
Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialed 911 and told them what happened.
I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realized it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.
I didn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.
There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.
"It just had that look." Susan Mcelwain saw a Thunderbolt go over her van just before she heard an explosion but nobody wanted her story.
The plane Mcelwain describes sounds like the Warthog seen by Saylor over Lambertsville. "It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side," Mcelwain said. "I haven't found one like it on the Internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around. Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 feet up. But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40 feet above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."
The U.S. media has only reported what Bill Crowley, FBI spokesman from Pittsburgh, said about other planes in the area: "That two other airplanes were flying near the hijacked United Airlines jet when it crashed, but neither had anything to do with the airliner's fate."
In an apparent slip of the tongue, Crowley said one of the planes, "a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet" had been directed to the crash site to help rescuers. The Falcon 20, however, is made by Dassault of France while Fairchild made the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the plane described by Susan Mcelwain and identified by other eyewitnesses.
The Daily American of nearby Somerset did not want Mcelwain's story. In fact the local paper has never reported that at least 12 local residents saw several unexplained aircraft at the time of the crash. Asked why the paper has not mentioned these eyewitness reports, managing editor Brian P. Whipkey said, "They could not be substantiated."
THE SCREAMING THING
At the horse-shoe shaped Indian Lake, about a mile east of the official crash site, several eyewitnesses recalled hearing "a screaming thing" that "screeched" as it passed over the golf course and lakeside community immediately before a huge explosion shook the ground. Chris Smith, the groundskeeper at the golf course said something with a "very loud screeching sound" passed over in the immediate vicinity of the golf course before he heard a huge explosion. "It was like nothing I've ever heard before," Smith said. The explosion that followed sounded like a "sonic boom," he said. Smith and others said they felt the shock wave from the explosion. Smith said he was used to seeing a variety of military aircraft from the nearby Air National Guard bases in Johnstown and Cumberland, Maryland.
Another groundskeeper said he saw a silver plane pass overhead toward the crash site from the southeast after hearing the loud "screeching" sound. The large silver plane was at an elevation of several thousand feet, he said. A local veteran who flew combat helicopters in the Vietnam War said that the high-pitched screeching sound was indicative of a missile.
Shown a photo of an A-10 "Warthog," the groundskeeper identified it as the kind of plane that circled the crash site at a very low altitude three times before flying away. He recognized the two vertical fins on the rear of the plane. "Nobody was interested in what we saw," he said. "They didn't even ask us."
Mobile telephones and satellite televisions in the Indian Lake area did not work at the time of the crash, he said.
Paul Muro was in his yard in Lambertsville when Flight 93 passed overhead. Muro, who lives a half mile closer to the crash site than Saylor, said the plane was flying right-side up and normally, although it was very low. Muro said that he also saw a large silver plane approaching from the south, the opposite direction of Flight 93, above the crash site at the time of the explosion. The silver plane then turned and headed back in the direction from which it had come, he said.
Tom Spinelli works at the Indian Lake Marina. After 9-11, Spinelli told a Pittsburgh television news reporter about the unexplained aircraft he saw. "I saw the white plane," he said. "It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something," he said. "I saw it before and after the crash." I visited the marina and asked Spinelli about the planes he saw on 9-11. "I'm sorry," Spinelli said. "No comment is all I can say."
An Indian Lake resident said that federal agents had visited the marina after Spinelli had spoken to the Pittsburgh news channel [TV 4] and told him to stop talking about what he saw. Local firefighters were also told not to talk about what they had seen at the crash site.
Finis
The Hollywood Fantasy of Flight 93
This image of the crater indicates that it was not caused by the crash of a large Boeing airliner.
The crater in the reclaimed mine, measuring about 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep, is said to be the crash site of Flight 93. Do you see any indication that an airplane crashed here? A much larger debris field several hundred meters from this small crater was kept hidden from the public and the press. Why was this deception necessary?
The Hollywood version of what happened to United Flight 93 has "set the record straight," boasts the senior counsel for the 9-11 Commission, although news reports and evidence tell a very different story.
The crater, into which Flight 93 supposedly disappeared, appears much larger than it actually is because the men in the background are actually quite a distance behind the crater. The crater, which is part of the deception of what happened to Flight 93, is no larger than 20 feet across and 5 or 6 feet deep, according to eyewitness accounts. How does a Boeing 757 disappear into such a small crater without leaving any trace of itself?
The recently released Hollywood film titled United 93 by Universal Pictures is touted by John J. Farmer as being "closer to the truth than every account the government put out before the 9-11 Commission's investigation." Farmer was an attorney general of New Jersey and served as senior counsel for the 9-11 Commission. "The facts of Sept. 11 are as simple as they are grim," Farmer wrote. "The passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 really were alone. They were all that stood between the hijackers and the Capitol (or possibly the White House)," he wrote. "That is the core reality of that morning and United 93 gets it right."
But the facts about 9-11 are anything but simple and the egregious omissions and distortions of the politically appointed 9-11 Commission, which Farmer worked with, have only further complicated the story, as author David Ray Griffin points out in his analysis of the commission's seriously flawed report. News reports and eyewitness testimony depict a very different fate having befallen United Flight 93 than either of those portrayed in the Hollywood film fabrication or the 9-11 Commission report.
On the morning of 9-11, for example, the Associated Press reported that United 93 made an emergency landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. According to the official version, however, Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, shortly after 10 a.m. The AP story clearly reported that United had identified the plane that landed at Cleveland as Flight 93. Cleveland's Mayor Michael R. White reportedly said the plane had landed due to suspicion that it had a bomb aboard.
Michael R. White, mayor of Cleveland from 1990 to 2002
The most obvious problem with the official version that Flight 93 crashed at the site near Shanksville is that the photographs and eyewitness accounts describe a crater too small for such a large plane to have crashed into. The crater at the reclaimed mine was less than 24 feet across and about 6 feet deep. Yet the official version claims that into this crater a Boeing 757 airliner supposedly buried itself, the passengers, the cargo, and thousands of gallons of jet fuel.
Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, said she was the first person to reach the crater. Lensbouer said that the crater was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described the sound as "an explosion, like an atomic bomb" -- not a crash.
Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller, who was one of the first people to arrive at the crash site, said it looked as if someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch and dumped trash into it. Miller said there was nothing visible of human remains and that it was as if the plane had "stopped and let the passengers off before it crashed." He said that the most eerie thing about the site was that he hadn't seen a "single drop of blood." Miller said he was stunned at how small the crater was. "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes," Miller said, "because there were no bodies there."
I spoke with Bob Leverknight, correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, at the newspaper's office about how Flight 93 disappeared into the crater without leaving a trace. Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard, was assigned by the editor to handle my questions. His answers were quite incredible. About the disappearance of the plane, Leverknight said, "It [the ground] liquefied." One of the plane's massive engines, he said, "bounced" off the ground and was found at a very considerable distance -- in the woods.
A second plane, identified as Delta 1989, was also reported to have landed at the Cleveland airport due to fears of sabotage. At a news conference, Mayor White identified the plane as a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles. It may be more than coincidence that both of the flights that allegedly struck the World Trade Center also originated at Boston's Logan Airport.
The Akron Beacon Journal reported that the mayor had stated that 200 passengers had been released from the plane at 11:15 a.m. The airport in Cleveland had been evacuated at 10 a.m. "Airline passengers and crew members were walking onto the highway to find their rides as no cars were allowed into the passenger drop off and pick up areas," the Journal reported.
The following day, Sept. 12, the Journal reported that an eyewitness had watched the Delta plane sitting near the I-X Center, which is a facility at the southeast edge of the airfield. It also reported that 78 passengers "were taken to NASA Glenn Research Center to be interviewed by FBI agents." The NASA facility is at the extreme northwest end of the airfield.
I called the former mayor at his 45-acre alpaca ranch, Seven Pines Alpacas in Newcomerstown, Ohio, to inquire about the events at the Cleveland airport on 9-11. White, however, was unwilling to discuss anything and cut the conversation short saying, "I'm out of the interview business."
On August 17, 2005, White's business associate and close friend, Nate Gray, was convicted of 36 criminal counts relating to bribery of public officials in four cities. Two days after the Gray conviction, Brent Larkin, in an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote: "Now we know that, at the very least, White presided over a government that will forever be remembered as one of the most corrupt in the city's history."
Nate Gray was the "bagman" for Mayor White, collecting bribes for contracts. During a court hearing in September 2008, U.S District Judge James Gwin said Gray refused to testify "to protect some compatriot."
The central figure in the corruption of the White administration appears to be Samuel H. Miller, co-chairman of the board of directors and treasurer of Forest City Enterprises, Inc., a family-run company with extensive real estate holdings which it owns or manages. The Ratner family, which Miller married into, controls Forest City Enterprises. Ricardo Teamor, one of the co-defendants in the racketeering and extortion scheme with Nate Gray, told the FBI that Mayor White, Gray, and Miller had regular business dinners at the Ritz Carlton hotel for years. According to Teamor, Gray said that Miller controlled White and told the mayor what to do.
Sam Miller was the man behind Mayor White
Miller was White's biggest financial backer when, as a little-known state senator, White ran for mayor in 1989. Miller is also a national leader in Zionist and Jewish causes. He is, for example, the national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a past chairman of the Cleveland Jewish Welfare Fund and Israel Bonds, and a member of the board of trustees of the Jewish National Fund. Miller is also the father of Aaron David Miller, who served for two decades at the Department of State as senior adviser to six Secretaries of State, where he was involved in formulating U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process. Miller served as the Deputy Special Middle East Coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations and Senior Member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff.
Aaron David Miller, son of Sam, is a regular media commentator on the Middle East.
The UJA is the largest Zionist organization dedicated to raising money and support for Israel. Other individuals closely involved in 9-11, such as Larry Silverstein and Lewis Eisenberg have also held leadership positions in the UJA. Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, personally arranged the privatization of the World Trade Center property in 2001 and supervised the negotiations that delivered the 99-year lease to Silverstein only six weeks before the attack. Eisenberg was later appointed finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
I called Miller to ask what he knew about the events of 9-11 at the Cleveland airport. "Not a thing about it," Miller said. Asked about his relationship with Mayor White, Miller responded, "What business is that of yours?"
One of the noteworthy news events at the Cleveland airport is that 78 passengers were taken to the NASA Glenn Research Center, which had been evacuated, where they were interviewed by FBI agents. Why were the passengers taken to the NASA facility and why were FBI agents waiting for them there? The NASA administrator at the time was Daniel Saul Goldin, the longest-serving administrator in NASA history, who is also a Zionist with close ties to Israel. Goldin's career began at the same NASA facility at Cleveland's airport.
Daniel Saul Goldin was director of NASA from 1992 to 2001. He resigned shortly after 9-11.
Three weeks before 9-11, the Israeli cabinet discussed Goldin's recent visit to Israel during which he met with senior Israeli officials to discuss "the special relationship and cooperation between Israel and the United States in the field of space research." During his visit, Goldin promised NASA cooperation in fields that will promote Israeli industries and educational projects. Goldin resigned from NASA two months after 9-11.
I called the NASA Glenn Research Center to ask about the passengers that were taken to the facility on 9-11. "No one was brought here," said a puzzled NASA spokesperson, who was among those evacuated on 9-11.
Mary Ethridge, a journalist with the Akron Beacon Journal, however, stood by the paper's report that the passengers had been interviewed by the FBI in the evacuated NASA facility. The facts indicate that a leading Zionist controlled the corrupt mayor of Cleveland, who in turn controlled the airport where suspicious and secretive events occurred on 9-11 in an evacuated NASA facility. Furthermore, NASA was under the control of a Zionist, as was the FBI, which was under the control of Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff. Chertoff, as I discovered early on, is an Israeli national whose mother, Livia Eisen, was one of the first agents in Israel's military intelligence agency, the Mossad.
As with the dubious Apollo moon landings, the Zionist-controlled media and Hollywood play a key role in creating a fantasy version about 9-11 while suppressing the evidence that contradicts the illusion.
This section contains my earliest articles about 9-11, which were published in American Free Press. Because AFP issues are post-dated 11 days, the issue after 9-11 came out on Sept. 14 but is dated Sept. 24, 2001. The first article was written during the week after 9-11 and appeared in the issue dated October 1, 2001. I use the date the article was written when possible.
While the mainstream media has been quick to convict Osama Bin Laden for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, what the national press is not reporting is that at least 13 Israeli nationals have been detained by the FBI for possible involvement. At least three different groups of Israelis - some of whom may have ties to Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad - were taken into custody after eyewitnesses reported seeing them celebrating in several locations across the river from lower Manhattan in New Jersey. In two cases, the men were reportedly videotaping the initial kamikaze attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
When I spoke with a spokesman at the Embassy of Israel's situation room in Washington he said that at least 13 Israelis were being held in connection with the attacks. All of the detained Israelis are connected to Israeli-owned moving companies operating out of New York and New Jersey. No fewer than 13 of the 75 aliens who had been detained in the week after the attacks are Israeli nationals.
One group was reported to have been in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, another was seen in Liberty Park in Union City, and a third was apprehended on the roof of an Israeli-owned moving company. According to New Jersey and New York newspapers, two groups of Israelis were stopped in vans belonging to Urban Moving Systems - one group of three and one group of five. Eyewitnesses reported seeing similar groups in Union City and Jersey City, both of which have parks named Liberty - more than five miles apart.
Witnesses reported seeing a group of men, who turned out to be Israelis, celebrating the first attack on the world Trade Center earlier in the day in Union City. Angry witnesses reported the license plate to authorities. The plate was registered to Urban Moving Systems, a truck-rental company based in Weehawken, N.J., according to a FBI spokesperson. Business records show an "Urban Moving Systems" with offices on West 50th Street in Manhattan and on West 18th Street in Weehawken. When a local reporter called the moving company, a woman, who refused to give her name, said, "We have no comment."
On Sept, 13, FBI agents searched the Weehawken warehouse owned by Urban Moving Systems, which employed the men detained by federal officials. The FBI seized computer hard drives and other items.
Three men, seen filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers were struck, were described as "illegal immigrants from the Middle East," and were arrested in a white Chevy van hours after the attacks. Witnesses say they saw them "cheering" and "jumping up and down" in Liberty State Park in Jersey City after the attack and contacted police. In one report, Paulo Lima of the Bergen Record reported on Sept. 12 that five "Israeli tourists" had been arrested as suspected conspirators in the attacks. The five men, who were also stopped in a van on Route 3 in East Rutherford around 4:30 p.m., were being questioned by police but had not been charged.
The five "Israeli tourists" were arrested eight hours after the attacks by police in Bergen County, N.J., who said the men were found carrying maps linking them to the blasts. Sources close to the investigation said the men claimed to be "Israeli tourists" but police had not been able to confirm their identities. Authorities would not release their names. Sources close to the investigation said they found other evidence linking the Israelis to the bombing plot, according to the report. "There are maps of the city in the car with certain places highlighted," the source said. "It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park (Jersey City)."
Sources also said that bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing, authorities said. The van was stopped as it headed east on Route 3, between the Hackensack River bridge and the Sheraton hotel. As a precaution, police shut down Route 3 traffic in both directions after the stop and evacuated a small roadside motel near the Sheraton.
East Rutherford officers stopped the van after the FBI's Newark field office broadcast an alert asking surrounding police departments to look for a white Chevrolet van, police said. After grilling the men and searching the van in vain for explosives, the FBI reportedly turned them over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation.
In a separate incident, the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported on Sept. 18 that five Israelis, suspected of working for the Mossad, had been arrested for what the FBI described as "puzzling behavior" following the attack. The five Israelis, who are suspected to have been Mossad agents, were arrested four hours after the attack while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's building. It appears they were spotted by one of the neighbors shouting cries of "joy and mockery." The neighbors called the police and the FBI, according to Ha'aretz.
This gang of five worked for an Israeli-owned "moving company" based in New Jersey and the men are being held in U.S. prisons after being interrogated. The five Israelis were reported to have worked for the Israeli-owned moving company for between two months and two years. Seven FBI agents later stormed the apartment of one of the Israelis, searched it and questioned his roommate. The Israeli owner of the company, who has U.S. citizenship, was also questioned. Both men were subsequently released.
The families of the five, who asked that their names not be released, said that their sons had been questioned by the FBI for hours, had been kept in solitary confinement for three days, and had been humiliated, stripped of their clothes and blindfolded.
"When they finally let my son make a phone call for the first time to a friend in the United States two days ago, he told him that he had been tortured by the FBI in a basement," the mother of one of the suspects told Ha'aretz. "They thought that because he has citizenship of a European country as well as of Israel that he was working for the Mossad."
The five were transferred out of the FBI's facility on Saturday morning and are now being held in two prisons in New Jersey by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They are charged with illegally residing in the United States and working without permits. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had been informed by the consulate in New York that the FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling behavior." They are said to have been caught videotaping the disaster and shouting in what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery.
Witnesses took the license plate number and the FBI sent out a BOLO, (Be On Look Out) alert on Sept 11.
Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack. White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration with "Urban Moving Systems" sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J., at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center.
Port Authority police are reported to have nabbed the three as they drove along Rte. 3 in East Rutherford, N.J. In New Jersey, where officials believe the hijackers received assistance from an accomplice, Newark's FBI spokeswoman Sherri Evanina said five Israeli men were detained late Tuesday after their van was stopped. Kerry Gill, a spokesman for the immigration service in Newark, said the FBI turned over the individuals to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Wednesday. He said "they appeared to be Israeli citizens" and all five appear to be deportable.
Local sources have reported that one of the largest Israeli-owned moving companies in the area, Moishe's Moving Systems, in Jersey City, has "at least 100" young Israeli men, between the ages of 22 and 35, working in what is described as a "fortress" with covered windows and concertina wire surrounding the premises near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.
Senior officials from Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service came to Washington last month to warn the CIA and the FBI that a cell of up to 200 terrorists was planning a major operation in America, according to a report in the London-based Sunday Telegraph on Sept. 17. Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United States last month that large scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on American mainland were imminent. The Mossad has a long history of penetrating, infiltrating and often manipulating Middle Eastern terror cells to serve their own purposes.
President Bush's "crusade" against the Taliban of Afghanistan has more to do with control of the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin than with "rooting our terrorism." Once again an American president from the Bush family is leading Americans down an oil-rich Middle Eastern warpath against "enemies of freedom and democracy."
The focus on religion-based terrorism serves to conceal important aspects of the Central Asian conflict. President Bush's noble rhetoric about fighting for justice and democracy is masking a less noble struggle for control of an estimated $5 trillion of oil and gas resources from the Caspian Basin.
One of the material results of the elder Bush's Desert Storm campaign in 1991 was to secure access to the huge Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq, which was accomplished by expanding the boundaries of Kuwait after the war. This allowed Kuwait, a former British protectorate where American and British oil companies are heavily invested, to double its prewar oil output.
The Trepca mine complex in Kosovo, one of the richest mines in Europe, was seized last year by front companies for George Soros and Bernard Kouchner, two members of the New World Order gang who devastated Serbia. A similar geopolitical strategy, influenced by Zionist planners, to control the valuable mineral resources of the Caspian Basin underlies the planned aggression against Afghanistan, a Central Asian nation that occupies a strategic position sandwiched between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
Central Asia has enormous quantities of undeveloped oil resources including 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, waiting to be exploited. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the two major gas producers in Central Asia. Today, the only existing export routes from the area lead through Russia. Investors in Caspian oil and gas are interested in building alternative pipelines to Turkey and Europe, and especially to the rapidly growing Asian markets. India, Iran, Russia and Israel are working on a plan to supply oil and gas to south and south-east Asia through India but instability in Afghanistan is raising a great threat to this effort.
Afghanistan lies squarely between Turkmenistan, home to the world's third largest natural gas reserves, and the lucrative markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan. A memorandum of understanding has been signed to build a 900-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, but the ongoing civil war and absence of a stable government in Afghanistan have delayed the project. Afghanistan was at the center of the so-called "Great Game" in the 19th century when Imperial Russia and the British Empire in India vied for influence. Today, its geographical position as a potential route for oil and natural gas pipelines makes Afghanistan extremely important to energy magnates seeking control of these precious resources.
Enron, a Texas-based gas and energy company, together with Amoco, British Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Unocal are all engaged in a multi-billion dollar frenzy to extract the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, the three newly independent Soviet republics that border on the Caspian Sea. An array of former cabinet members from the George H. Bush administration has been actively involved in negotiations with the former Soviet republics on behalf of the oil companies. The deal makers include James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu and, notably, Dick Cheney, now vice president.
THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are also closely allied with Israeli commercial interests and Israeli military intelligence. In Turkmenistan, a "former" Israeli intelligence agent, Yosef A. Maiman, president of Merhav Group of Israel, is the official negotiator and policy maker responsible for developing the energy resources of Turkmenistan.
"This is the Great Game all over," Maiman told the Wall Street Journal about his role in furthering the "geopolitical goals of both the U.S. and Israel" in Central Asia. "We are doing what U.S. and Israeli policy could not achieve - controlling the product," he said.
"Those who control the oil routes out of Central Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the distribution of revenues from new production," said energy expert James Dorian in Oil & Gas Journal on Sept. 10.
Foreign business in Turkmenistan is dominated by Maiman's Merhav Group, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). Maiman, who was made a citizen of Turkmenistan by presidential decree, serves as Turkmenistan's "official negotiator" for its gas pipeline, special ambassador, and "right-hand man" for the "authoritarian" President Saparmurad Atayevich Miyazov, a former Politburo member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Merhav Group of Israel officially represents the Turkmen government and has brokered all of the energy projects in Turkmenistan, contracts worth many billions of dollars. Merhav has been contracted to modernize existing natural gas infrastructure and will build new facilities in an oil refinery in the city of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea. Merhav refuses to disclose its sources of financing. In keeping with Israeli political interests, Maiman's planned pipelines bypass Iran and Russia. Maiman has said that he would have no objection to dealing with Iran, "when and if Israeli policy allows it."
Iran has accused the United States of trying to keep regional pipelines from passing through Iran. Creating a counterbalance to Iran's regional influence was a cornerstone of the Clinton administration, which was concerned that Iran could gain too much control over Caspian exports. "This is a common interest for the U.S. and Israel," said Dr. Nimrod Novik, vice president of Merhav. "The primary interest is to prevent the development of Turkish strategic dependence on Iran, given the unique emerging strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel."
Russia and Turkmenistan are in a battle to conquer the Turkish gas market, and the supplier that offers the best price will emerge as the winner. "This is a great race," Maiman says, "Whoever takes Turkey first wins. Whoever comes second will have lean years." Although the United States needs Russian assistance in its campaign against Afghanistan, when I asked Alex Chorine of Caspian Investor what kind of relationship existed between the Russian and Western/Israeli energy companies doing business in the Caspian Basin, Chorine said, "They act as enemies."
One of Maiman's proposed pipelines would bring Turkmenistan's gas and oil to Turkey via Azerbaijan and Georgia. Maiman's Merhav Group is also involved in a $100 million project that would reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey.
Israeli officials boast of having "excellent relations" with Azerbaijan, where an Israeli company, Magal Security Systems, has a contract to provide security at Baku airport. Magal is one of several Israeli companies that will "turn Israel into a major player in Azerbaijan" by providing security for the 1,200 mile pipeline taking oil from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.
Enron, the biggest contributor to the Bush campaign of 2000, conducted the feasibility study for a $2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline, which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan and two American companies, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services. Maiman acted as the intermediary between the Turkmenistan and the U.S. firms, but won't discuss "his cut" or whether he will receive a stake in the pipeline. The Merhav Group hired the Washington lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates and spent several million dollars to "encourage" U.S. officials to push for the trans-Caspian pipeline.
CRITICAL FOR WHOM?
During the Clinton administration, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson and "special adviser to the president" Richard Morningstan promoted the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, calling it "critical to the economic survival of Turkmenistan." The relationship between Israel, Turkey and the United States is the major factor for the selection of the Baku-Ceyhan route, which could be extended to bring oil directly to energy-deficient Israel. Energy experts, however, question the wisdom and expense of this route. Companies are under pressure from the United States and Israel to invest in east-west pipelines, although most companies would prefer cheaper north-south pipelines through Iranian territory, according to WRMEA.
The U.S. firm Unocal was leading a pipeline project to bring Turkmenistan's abundant natural gas through Afghanistan to the growing markets of Pakistan and India, until the turmoil in Afghanistan led them to withdraw from the project in 1998. The planned pipeline would carry gas from the Turkmen Dauletabad fields, among the world's largest, to Multan in Pakistan, with a planned extension to India. The line from Dauletabad through Afghanistan is planned to transport 15 billion cubic feet of gas per year for 30 years. This pipeline is on hold until the political and military situations in Afghanistan improve.
There is a second Unocal project to build a 1,030-mile oil pipeline called the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project, which would start at Chardzhou in Turkmenistan linking Russia's Siberian oil field pipelines to Pakistan's Arabian coast. This line could transport 1 million barrels a day of oil from other areas of the former Soviet Union. It would run parallel to the gas line route through Afghanistan and branch off in Pakistan to the Indian Ocean terminal in Ras Malan.
Before the sun set on the apocalyptic day that New York's gleaming twin towers collapsed, the U.S. government had already decided to blame the attack on Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born guerrilla leader, and the Taliban government of Afghanistan which harbored him. Although the U.S. government did not present evidence in support of its case against Bin Laden, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sept. 23, "I think in the near future, we will be able to put out a paper, a document, that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack."
When it was reported that the Taliban might turn Bin Laden over to face justice, the Bush administration said that surrendering Bin Laden would not prevent an American-led attack on Afghanistan. An international plan to remove the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban from power has been a subject of international diplomatic discussions for months and was reportedly raised by India during the Group of Eight summit in July in Genoa, Italy.
The Indian press reported in June that, "India and Iran will 'facilitate' U.S. and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime." The invasion plans described in the Indian press in June may come to pass in October: "Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong military back up of the U.S. and Russian. Vital Taliban installations and military assets will be targeted." The economic reasons for the multinational assault against the Taliban were explained: "Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are threatened by the Taliban that is aiming to control their vast oil, gas, and other resources by bringing Islamic fundamentalists into power."
The world now associates the Bin Laden name with Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect be hind the terror atrocities of Sept. 11. As President George W. Bush leads an intense international manhunt for Osama, few Americans realize that Osama's eldest brother, Salem, was one of Bush's first business partners. The unexplained death of Salem, Osama Bin Laden's oldest brother, in 1988, brought to an abrupt end a long and intriguing relationship between President Bush and the head of the Bin Laden family fortune.
A photograph from 1971 has been printed in English papers showing Osama, age 14, and his brother Salem, age 19, enjoying a summer holiday at the Astoria Hotel in Falun, Sweden. Christina Akerblad, the hotel owner, told the Daily Mail, "They were beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed. Everybody loved them."
Osama embraced Islamic fundamentalism and is now the world's most wanted man. "Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother," the Daily Mail's Peter Allen said. "In the 1970s, he and George W. Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr. Bush's home state of Texas." President Bush and the Bin Laden family have been connected through dubious business deals since 1977, when Salem, the head of the Bin Laden family business, one of the biggest construction companies in the world, invested in Bush's start-up oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc.
James R. Bath, a friend and neighbor, was used to funnel money from Osama Bin Laden's brother, Salem Bin Laden, to set up George W. Bush in the oil business, according to the Wall Street Journal and other reputable sources. Through a tangled web of Saudi multi-millionaires, Texas oilmen, and the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Bush was financially linked with the Bin Laden family until Salem met an untimely end in a freak flying accident near San Antonio in 1988. The infamous BCCI was shut down in 1991 with some $10 billion in losses.
In June 1977, George W. Bush formed his own oil drilling company, Arbusto Energy, in Midland, Texas. "Arbusto" actually means "shrub" in Spanish, but the Bush family interpreted it as "bush". Salem Bin Laden, a close friend of the Saudi King Fahd, had "invested heavily in Bush's first business venture," according to the Daily Mail (U.K.).
Arbusto later became Bush Exploration, when Bush's father became vice president. As the company neared financial collapse in September 1984, it was merged with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. in an effort to stay afloat. The 50 investors who propped up the Bush company with $4.7 million were "mainly friends of my uncle" who "did pretty good" in Bush's words, although they lost most of the money they invested in the company. Jon Bush, George's uncle, raised money for Arbusto from political supporters of the Reagan-Bush administration.
"These were all the Bush's pals," family friend Russell Reynolds told the Dallas Morning News in 1998. "This is the A-Team." The limited partners of the "A-Team" contributed $4.67 million to various Bush funds through 1984 but got only $1.55 million back in profit distributions, and $3.9 million in tax write-offs.
William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds, two staunch Reagan-Bush supporters, owned Spectrum 7. Despite his poor track record, the owners made Bush president of the company and gave him 13.6 percent of the parent company's stock.
SURPRISE DEAL
As the hard times continued, Spectrum merged with Harken Energy in 1986. In 1990, Harken received a contract from the government of Bahrain to drill for offshore oil although Harken Energy had never drilled a well overseas or anywhere in water. "Knowledgeable oil company sources believe that the Bahrain oil concession was indeed an oblique favor to the president of the United States but say that Saudi Arabia (home of Bin Laden) was behind the decision," according to The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of the BCCI, by Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne.
It raised oil-industry eyebrows when the Persian Gulf state announced it had chosen tiny Harken to explore an offshore site for gas and oil. Bahrain officials said they had no idea President Bush's son was associated with Harken, a claim oil-industry sources ridicule. The Bahrain deal was brokered in part by Arkansas investment banker David Edwards, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends. The Bahrain oil project resulted in two dry holes and Harken energy abandoned the project.
Two months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, on June 20, 1990, the younger Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock, 212,140 shares at $4 a share-for a total of $848,560. "That was $318,430 more than it was worth," Dr. Arthur F. Ide, author of George W. Bush: Portrait of a Compassionate Conservative, said. "George W. broke the law to do this since the transaction was an insider stock sale." Eight days later, Harken finished the second quarter with losses of $23 million and the stock went "into a nosedive" losing 75 percent of its value, finishing the year at a little over $1 a share.
"Like his father who made his fortune in the oil business with the money of others, George W. founded Arbusto with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath," said the late James Howard Hatfield, author of a "controversial biography," Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. Hatfield, 43, was found dead of an apparent prescription drug overdose in a hotel room in Springdale, Ark. on July 18, 2001. Police declined to investigate.
Bath became friends with George W. during their days together in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath "confided that he was an original investor in George Bush Jr.'s oil exploration company," according to The Outlaw Bank. Bath found investors for Arbusto and "made his fortune" by investing the money of two BCCI-connected Saudi sheiks, Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem Bin Laden. Mahfouz was one of the richest men in the world and a controlling shareholder in BCCI.
Bill White, a former real estate business partner of Bath, said: "He had put up $50,000 to help George, Jr., get started in oil business" at a time when "Bath had no substantial money of his own." Bath received a 5 percent interest in two Arbusto-related limited partnerships controlled by Bush, although Bush told the Houston Post in 1990 that he had "never done any business" with Bath. However, Bush said Bath was "a lot of fun."
Bath told White that he was in the CIA and that "he had been recruited by George Bush himself in 1976 when Bush was director of the agency . . . he said Bush wanted him involved with the Arabs, and to get into the aviation business." White contends that the Saudis were using Bath and their huge financial resources to influence U.S. policy during the Reagan and Bush administrations, according to the Houston Chronicle of June 4, 1992. Such representation by Bath would require that he be registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice, but he was not.
Shortly after Bush's father was appointed director of the CIA, Salem Bin Laden appointed Bath as his business representative in Texas. According to the Houston Chronicle, Salem Bin Laden, heir to one of the largest building companies in the Middle East, signed a trust agreement appointing Bath as his Houston representative in 1976. In 1978, Bath purchased Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Salem Bin Laden. When Bin Laden died in 1988, his interest in the airfield passed to bin Mahfouz. There was also a political aspect to Salem Bin Laden's financial activities, which played a role in U.S. operations in the Middle East and Central America during the 1980s, according to Public Broadcasting's Frontline report.
As head of Binladen Brothers Construction (now the Binladen Group), a company that later helped build U.S. airfields during Operation Desert Storm, Bin Laden was close to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and "a good friend of the U.S. government," a San Antonio attorney, Wayne Fagan, who represented Salem Bin Laden from 1982 to 1988, told the San Antonio Express-News. When the family patriarch, Sheik Mohammed Bin Laden, died in 1968, he left an industrial and financial empire and a progeny of 54 sons and daughters, the fruit of a number of wives. In 1972, Salem Bin Laden, the oldest son, took over the estate as his father's successor, with the assistance of several brothers.
With over 40,000 employees, the Bin Laden Group is represented in the major cities of Saudi Arabia and the Arab capitals of Beirut, Cairo, Amman, and Dubai. The company builds highways, housing units, factories, hangars, and military bases, some of which are part of the U.S.-Saudi "Peace Shield" agreement. The story of the Bush involvement with Bin Laden and the BCCI scandal involves "trails that branched, crossed one another, or came to unexpected dead ends," according to The Outlaw Bank.
FREAK ACCIDENT
Salem Bin Laden came to an "unexpected dead end" in a Texas pasture, 11 years after investing in Arbusto, when the ultra light aircraft he was flying crashed into power lines near San Antonio on Memorial Day, 1988. On the morning of May 29, 1988, almost immediately after takeoff, Salem Bin Laden's aircraft struck and became entangled in power lines 150 feet high before plunging to the ground.
"He was a very experienced pilot. He was a good pilot. We just can't understand why he decided to go right instead of left," recalled airstrip owner and former Marine Earl Mayfield, who cradled Bin Laden, bleeding from the ears.
That day, Bin Laden took off in a southeasterly direction into the wind. He surprised onlookers by turning west to ward power lines less than a quarter-mile away. "Nobody could figure out why he tried to fly over the power lines," said Gerry Auerbach, 77, of New Braunfels, a retired pilot. Bin Laden had more than 15,000 hours of flight experience. The police report concluded "freak accident."
While the U.S. government and mainstream media refuse to discuss the foreign policies that breed resentment against America in the Islamic world, ignoring these fundamental issues can only perpetuate the conflict.
It was late on Sunday morning when President George W. Bush began his "war against terrorism" by launching 50 cruise missiles and bombing raids on Taliban targets in Afghanistan. Within hours, Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the terror attacks of Sept. 11, responded with an effective counter-offensive in the war of words. Bin Laden spoke to the world through a taped message broadcast by Al Jazeera, the most widely watched television news channel in the Arab world.
The American mass media portrays Bin Laden as "consumed by hatred for the West" and misrepresents his primary political goals of restoring integrity to Saudi Arabia and confronting American abuses in the Middle East. "Bush and Blair may tell the world they are going to win the 'war against terrorism' but in the Middle East, where Osama Bin Laden is acquiring almost mythic status among Arabs, they have already lost," Robert Fisk of The Independent said on Oct. 10. A resident of Cairo told Fisk that Arabs believe America "is trying to kill the one man ready to tell the truth."
Bin Laden, who "is hardly a madman," according to experts, despises the Saudi royal family, which he regards as corrupt surrogates of American rule. In 1998, Bin Laden said he expects "for the ruler of Riyadh the same fate as the shah of Iran." Because the Saudi royal family "sells the interests of its own people and betrays the nation," Bin Laden said, "They shall all be wiped out."
"The United States is committed to defending the House of Saud against any internal political movement that might want to get rid of it, or perhaps even reform it," Writes Said K. Aburish, author of The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. The American troops in Saudi Arabia are seen as protecting the royal family, which "is becoming less acceptable by the day," Aburish says. The House of Saud is not unlike the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to Aburish, "People still disappear in the middle of the night in Saudi Arabia; people are imprisoned without being charged; people have no voice in the running of the government, and they have squandered the country's wealth . . . the country is not only broke, they are heavily in debt.
"Saudi Arabia operates in very mysterious ways. . . . We are talking about a closed society ," he said. The royal family is dedicated to keeping the kingdom closed because "outside influences would include calls for human rights, equality, democracy and things of this sort that the House of Saud is not about to tolerate," Aburish said. The oppressive conditions in the country are causing massive unrest, although due to suppression by the government, Islamic fundamentalism provides the only vehicle for political reform movements-and these are becoming increasingly violent. "Osama Bin Laden is the prophet of these movements," Aburish says, whose "number one issue" is that American troops should leave Saudi Arabia, and secondly that "there should be a Muslim Jerusalem where Islamic holy places are protected."
Bin Laden has "developed a stunningly deceptive regional war calculus that stands a reasonable chance of success," according to Paul M. Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Washington. "His strongest belief is that Saudi Arabia can be brought to its knees, the House of Saud deposed," Wihbey says. His "overriding goal" is to return to Saudi Arabia in triumph and put an end to the existing regime.
Support for Bin Laden's political program to reform Saudi Arabia comes from all levels of society, Aburish says, including from members of the House of Saud who belong to Islamic fundamentalist groups. There is an ongoing power struggle between two competing factions in the Saudi royal family over how to deal with American requests to neutralize Bin Laden, Wihbey said. One week after the terror attacks it was reported that the ailing Saudi king, Fahd, had flown to Geneva with a massive entourage and is now in seclusion. If Bin Laden survives and returns to Saudi Arabia, his supporters will greet him as a Mahdi (messiah). This would mark "a dramatically new geopolitical landscape," Wihbey said.
Bin Laden today stands accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the kamikaze terror attacks in New York and Washington although evidence linking him to the crimes has not been presented to the public. "Neither I nor my organization Al-Qaida is involved in the attacks, and the U.S. has traced the attackers within America," Bin Laden told the Karachi daily Ummat. "The attackers could be anybody, people who are part of the American system yet rebel against it, or some group that wants to make this century a century of confrontation between Islam and Christianity."
Bin Laden has always carefully denied involvement in terror attacks such as the U.S. embassy bombings saying it is not his job to organize such attacks. His role is "to create awareness about the injustices done by the U.S. to Muslims." He rails against the "corrupting influence of the West" on the Muslim world. "What has the West given the world? A lust for power and a license to loot and plunder the poorer countries," he said in a recent interview with an Arab journalist, as reported in the Washington Times.
"We are against the American system but not the American people. Islam does not allow killing of innocent people, men, women and children even in the event of war," he said to Ummat. Although Bin Laden denied personal responsibility for the terror attacks, in the taped speech, broadcast as Bush began the bombing of Afghanistan, he accused the United States of hypocrisy, murder, and occupation of Islamic lands, articulating widely held grievances which resonate throughout the Islamic and Arab world. Bin Laden said that the suffering America is "tasting now" is insignificant compared to the humiliation and degradation the Islamic world has suffered for more than 80 years. "Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.
"Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins," Bin Laden said about the human toll of the 11 years of U.S.-led sanctions on Iraq. "Israeli tanks infest Palestine," Bin Laden said, "in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb.
"To America, I say only a few words to it and its people," Bin Laden concluded. "I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, peace be upon him.
"The enmity between us and the Jews," Bin Laden said in 1998, "goes far back in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between the two of us is inevitable. The leaders in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail," he said, "They have mobilized their people against Islam and against Muslims. Our mothers and daughters and sons are slaughtered every day with the approval of America and its support," he said. "And, while America blocks the entry of weapons into Islamic countries, it provides the Israelis with a continuous supply of arms allowing them thus to kill and massacre more Muslims.
"The American government is leading the country toward hell. We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests, not the interests of the Jews."
Al Jazeera, often called the CNN of the Arab world, reaches 35 million viewers and is the only news organization with a correspondent and direct satellite link in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to the emir of Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, to stop the flow of information the network was sending from Afghanistan. Al Jazeera resisted American censorship saying that in order to be seen as credible by its viewers it must show both sides of the conflict. Bin Laden is a party to the conflict and has a point of view that deserves to be heard, a spokesman for the network said. The Voice of America, however, pulled an interview with Mullah Omar Mohammed, the Taliban leader, following objections from the U.S. deputy secretary of state and senior officials of the National Security Council.
"America controls the governments of the Islamic countries . . . they are in the grip of the United States," Omar said. "America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. The U.S. should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries."
Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the American-led attack on Afghanistan as cruelty and a major mistake for the United States and Britain. The government of Iran is opposed to the Taliban but is not assisting in the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan. Khamenei said that it was not true that the strikes are part of a campaign against terrorism. "Their real purpose is to expand their [U.S. and U.K.] power and domination," he told a meeting of clerics in Tehran the day after the bombing began.
"What can justify this oppression that will lead to the killing and wounding of people and forcing many innocent Afghans to leave their homes? The Americans must know that they might be able to achieve their short-term goals with military strikes," he said. "But they will be hurt in the long run. Without doubt, their acts will bring instability for them."
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi condemned the attacks and expressed Iran's concerns that such military operation could "provoke extremist reactions." "We stressed from the beginning that terrorism cannot be eradicated through military actions," he said at a news conference the day after the bombing began. "Its causes must be identified and eliminated."
A Select Few Profited from Advance Knowledge of the Terror Attacks.
Sept. 11 marked a devastating loss for the nation, but shrewd financial speculators with ties to the highest levels of the CIA appear to have profited from the disaster, raising questions about exactly who had prior knowledge of the terrible tragedy. The day two passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center ended differently for different people. For some 10,000 children it meant the loss of a mother or father. For millions of Americans it marked the end of normality. For a select group of financial speculators it meant increased profits.
There have been numerous reports of unusual activity in financial markets around the world suggesting prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In Chicago, home of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the largest of the five options exchanges in the nation, brokers and speculators known as options traders wage bets daily about what a stock price will do. In options trades there are winners and losers regardless of the outcome. The catastrophic events of Sept. 11 were no different; the devastation at the World Trade Center resulted in some speculators winning millions of dollars from options purchased at the CBOE-while others lost their lives. A $2.5 million winning that resulted when the United Airlines share price fell after two of its planes crashed remains unclaimed more than six weeks after the tragedy.
Investigations into the unusually high number of "put" options, betting that the price of United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines shares would fall, have revealed that Alex Brown Inc., an investment banking firm, purchased many of these option contracts. Alex Brown Inc. was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now the executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. Krongard, 64, former head of Baltimore-based Alex Brown, America's oldest investment bank, joined the CIA three years ago as a counselor to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. Krongard switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex Brown and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock in the process.
President Bush appointed Krongard executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency on March 26. From February 1998 until March 2001, Krongard served as counselor to the director of central intelligence. Until 1997 Krongard was chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown, having previously worked in various capacities at Alex Brown. Krongard was quoted on the relationship between Wall Street and the CIA in a Washington Post article. If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, Krongard told the Post, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
OPTIONS SPIKES
Between Sept. 6 and 7, the CBOE saw a dramatic spike in the purchases of put options on United Airlines stock compared to call options. A "put" option increases in value when the stock price falls, while a "call" option increases if the share price rises. The ratio of "put" options to "call" options was 12 to 1, with 2,372 "put" options purchased, betting that UAL stock would fall compared with 198 "call" options. The winners on these options deals walked away with untold millions of dollars in profits.
On Sept. 10, speculators in Chicago purchased put options on American Airlines, the other airlines involved in the hijackings, at a ratio of 6 to 1 against "call" options. Traders bought 2,258 put options as compared with 374 "call" options the day before the crashes. There were similar spikes in "put" option contracts on the shares of the investment firms of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., major tenants of the World Trade Center, occupying 22 floors each, who were both devastated by the terror attacks.
In the three days of trading prior to Sept. 11, Morgan Stanley "put" options spiked dramatically. According to figures provided by Options Clearing Corp. of Chicago, during the two trading days before the attacks the total number of "put" options jumped to 7,647 compared with a daily average of 2,384 during the month of August. Morgan Stanley's shares fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Likewise, Merrill Lynch "put" options jumped to 64,445 in the three days before the attacks. On Sept. 10, 28,960 "put" options were purchased on Merrill Lynch compared with a daily average of 5,430 during the month of August. Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50.
The mainstream media is ignoring eyewitness accounts of bombs that exploded inside the World Trade Center before the collapse of the Twin Towers. Despite reports from numerous eyewitnesses and experts, including news reporters on the scene, who heard or saw explosions immediately before the collapse of the World Trade Center, there has been virtual silence in the mainstream media.
Television viewers watching the horrific events of Sept. 11 saw evidence of explosions before the towers collapsed. Televised images show what appears to be a huge explosion occurring near ground level, in the vicinity of the 47-story Salomon Brothers Building, known as WTC 7, prior to the collapse of the first tower.
Van Romero, an explosives expert and former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech, said on Sept. 11, "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The collapse of the structures resembled the controlled implosions used to demolish old structures and was "too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures," Romero told the Albuquerque Journal hours after the attack.
Implosions are violent collapses inwards, which are used to demolish buildings in areas of high density, to prevent damage to surrounding buildings. Precision-timed explosives are placed on strategic load-bearing columns and beams to cause the controlled collapse. Demolition experts say that towers are the most difficult buildings to bring down in a controlled manner. A tower tends to fall like a tree, unless the direction of its fall is controlled by directional charges. The WTC towers "smokestacked" neatly, falling within the boundaries of their foundations. Skeptics say this could not have happened coincidentally and it must have been caused by strategically placed and precisely timed internal charges. Videotape images may reveal these internal charges precipitating the controlled demolition of the towers and WTC 7.
Romero is vice president of research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures, and often assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.
After being hit by the aircraft, the twin towers appeared to be stable. Then without warning, at 9:58 a.m. the south tower imploded vertically downwards, 53 minutes after being hit. At 10:28, 88 minutes after being struck, the north tower collapsed. "It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that," Romero said. If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, "It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points," he said.
"One of the things terrorist events are noted for is a diversionary attack and secondary device," Romero said. Attackers detonate an initial, diversionary explosion, in this case the collision of the planes into the towers, which brings emergency personnel to the scene, then detonate a second explosion.
Ten days after the attack, following criticism of his initial remarks, Romero did an about-face in his analysis of the collapse, "Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail," he told the Albuquerque Journal on Sept. 21.
The twin towers were struck by Boeing 767's carrying approximately 23,000 gallons of fuel.
However, there is other information that lends credence to Romero's controversial original explanation of explosives being involved. I spoke with an eyewitness whose office is near the World Trade Center. He had been standing among a crowd of people on Church Street, about two-and-a-half blocks from the South Tower, when he saw "a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the building between floors 10 and 15." He saw about six of these brief flashes, accompanied by "a crackling sound" before the tower collapsed. Each tower had 47 central support columns.
One of the first firefighters in the stricken second tower, Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People magazine of Sept. 24: "I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there were bombs set in the building." Kim White, 32, an employee on the 80th floor, also reported hearing an explosion. "All of a sudden the building shook, then it started to sway. We didn't know what was going on," she told People. "We got all our people on the floor into the stairwell . . . at that time we all thought it was a fire . . .We got down as far as the 74th floor . . . then there was another explosion."
The accepted theory is that as the fires raged in the towers, the steel cores in each building were heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the support beams to buckle. A lead engineer who designed the World Trade Center Towers expressed shock that the towers collapsed after being hit by passenger jets. "I designed it for a 707 to hit it," Lee Robertson, the project's structural engineer said. The Boeing 707 has a fuel capacity of more than 23,000 gallons, comparable to the 767's 23,980-gallon fuel capacity.
Another architect of the WTC, Aaron Swirski, lives in Israel and spoke to Jerusalem Post Radio after the attack: "It was designed around that eventuality to survive this kind of attack," he said.
I spoke with Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering professor and the World Trade Center's construction manager. Brown had watched in confusion as the towers came down. "It was over-designed to withstand almost anything including hurricanes, high winds, bombings and an airplane hitting it," he said.
Brown said that although the buildings were designed to withstand "a 150-year storm" and the impact of a Boeing 707, he said the jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit weakened the steel. Brown explained that the south tower collapsed first as it was struck lower with more weight above the impact area. Brown said he "did not buy" the theory that the implosion was caused by the fires sucking the air out of the lower floors, which has been speculated.
The contractor who is reported to have been the first on the WTC collapse scene to cart away the rubble that remains is a company that specializes in the scientific demolition of large buildings, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Baltimore, headed by Mark Loizeaux. CDI is the same contractor that demolished and hauled away the shell of the bombed Oklahoma City Murrah building, actions that prevented independent investigators from pursuing evidence on leads suggesting that there were bombs set off inside the building.
In February 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Mark Loizeaux, Douglas Loizeaux and Controlled Demolition, Inc. on charges of falsely reporting campaign contributions made by family members and CDI employees who had been asked to donate to the campaign of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). The Baltimore Sun reported that the illegal contributions allegedly occurred between 1996 and 1998. The Loizeaux brothers and CDI were acquitted in September 2000. Cleaning up the estimated 1.2 million tons of rubble will reportedly cost $7 billion and take up to a year.
Removing the debris has also been controversial. The police said that some scrap metal has been diverted to mob-controlled businesses rather than the dump where investigators are examining rubble for clues and human remains.
The second plane nearly missed the South Tower, cutting through a corner. Most of its fuel burned in an outside explosion. However, this building collapsed first, long before the North Tower, into which a similar plane entered completely.
International legal experts say that the Bush administration has yet to present evidence to substantiate its claim that the events of Sept. 11 constituted and act of war rather than a crime against humanity.
"Even if the Bush administration were to publicly provide clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Bin Laden and his organization were somehow behind the terrorist bombing in New York and Washington, the U.S. government would still have no valid justification or excuse for committing acts of war against Afghanistan," says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. International law requires a court hearing to determine the guilt or innocence of an individual accused of terrorist acts, such as Osama Bin Laden, Boyle says.
Boyle criticized Congress for not creating a panel with subpoena powers to fully investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. "We are not going to get that investigation," he said. "Yet we are waging a war on Afghanistan based on evidence that secretary of State Colin Powell said was not even circumstantial.
"Even the British government admitted the case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court and as a matter of fact it was routinely derided in the British press. There was nothing there," Boyle says. "Now I don't know myself who was behind the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. And it appears we are never going to find out. "Why? Because Congress in its wisdom has decided not to empanel a joint committee in Congress with subpoena power giving them access to whatever documents they want throughout any agency of the United states government including FBI, CIA, NSA, DAS. And to put these people under oath and testify as to what happened under penalty of perjury," he says.
Boyle, who helped resolve the dispute between the United States, the UK and Libya over the handling of the Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing case, says that the 1971 Montreal Sabotage Convention is directly relevant in the current crisis. This convention, he says, "provides a comprehensive framework for dealing with the current dispute between Afghanistan and the United States. The Bush administration decided to ignore the fact that the hijacking of civilian aircraft is dealt with under international treaties that deal with terrorism. "They rejected the entire approach and called it an act of war," Boyle said. "They invoked the rhetoric deliberately of Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. There was "a conscious decision to escalate the states," Boyle said. "An act of war has a formal meaning. It means an attack by one state against another state. Which, of course, is what happened on Dec. 7, 1941; but not on Sept. 11, 2001.
The military assault against Afghanistan was not prompted by the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11 according to Boyle. Muslim and non-Muslim countries around the world are condemning U.S. military actions because they are not justified under international law, Boyle said.
As I reported previously, the major impetus behind the military strikes against Afghanistan is to obtain extended access to oil and natural gas deposits in Central Asia. "The actions of the United States in Afghanistan constitute armed aggression and are illegal," Boyle said. "Clearly, what is going on in Afghanistan is not self-defense."
Boyle appeared on the Fox News Channel with Bill O'Reilly on Sept. 13 and argued for presentation of evidence, authorization from the Security Council, and adherence to the rule of law. Since the O'Reilly show, Boyle has not been invited to speak on any prime-time news programs. He said that attacks by the United States against Afghanistan will result in a "human catastrophe" and predicted that tens of thousands of people will die unless American citizens demand that the war end.
Statements by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz discussing the option of "ending states" is a form of genocidal hate-speech, Boyle said. "I could take that statement of the World Court and file it and prove it as genocidal intent by the United States government," he says. "So the longer we let this go on the more we are going to see our own civil rights and civil liberties taken away from us."
War has always been a profitable money machine for shrewd investors with foresight, but the extremely close connections of the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity investment firm and major war profiteer, to the Bush and Bin Laden families raise unavoidable questions of waging war for profit.
Established in 1987 the Carlyle Group was founded by David Rubenstein, a former staff member in the Jimmy Carter White House, and his two partners, Dan D'Aniello and Bill Conway. Today there are 18 partners in the firm and one outside investor. The Washington Post has described Carlyle as a "merchant banking firm" set up "to serve corporations and wealthy families." From the beginning the founders of Carlyle have recruited former politicians as consultants: former President George H. W. Bush is among them, along with a host of other Bush family cronies.
The Bush connection to the Carlyle Group is nothing short of a scandal, according to Larry Klayman, a notable government watchdog best known for pursuing the scandals of former President Bill Clinton. Now that the United States is bombing Afghanistan and allocating huge sums of money for defense, including $40 billion for the "war on terrorism" and more than $200 billion [1994 dollars] for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the conflict of interest is "direct," Klayman says. "President Bush should not ask but demand that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group." Carlyle owns many of the companies that will share in the $200 billion JSF deal.
"Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that. To me, that's a jaw-dropper."
The Carlyle Group, which claims to be the largest U.S. private-equity fund with some $14 billion in assets, makes money by investing in undervalued companies and reselling them at a profit, employing a host of former top-level government officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations, including former President Bush, in a global "money machine." The Washington Business Journal said in May that the Carlyle Group "seems to play by a different set of rules." Carlyle is a high-end business open only to the very rich. The Carlyle empire has investments around the world, owns numerous defense related companies outright, and has considerable business with the U.S. government. It owns so many companies that it is now one of the biggest U.S. defense contractors and a major force in global telecommunications. Carlyle also serves as financial adviser to the Saudi government.
Carlyle's directory reads like a Who's Who of high-profile Republicans going back to the Reagan administration. The chairman is Ronald Reagan's former defense secretary, Frank Carlucci. Former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Budget Director Richard Darman, and Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission through most of the Clinton administration, are all senior advisers to the firm.
"Nothing in recent history, however, seems to approach the success this group has had in the wholesale conversion of former high government rank to gigantic profits," Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of Scripps Howard News Service wrote in March 2001. "To use that influence at the highest levels to garner such enormous wealth and power presents an undeniably unsavory appearance.
"One of the underlying themes of the last election, rarely spoken but always present, was the need to restore dignity to the presidency. Now we discover that at the same time he was being held up as an example of how to be presidential, Bush senior was using his stature and entree everywhere to push the interests of himself and his cronies," Thomasson wrote.
The success of the relatively young Carlyle Group is hardly surprising given that it primarily buys companies that are regulated by government. Nearly two-thirds of its investments are in defense and telecommunications companies, which are affected by shifts in government spending and policy. Financial experts say the Carlyle Group's most profitable niche is buying military and aerospace supplies at discount prices and selling them for a lot more. With Carlucci as chairman, it's no surprise that Carlyle is drawn to defense firms. Carlyle owns numerous defense and aerospace firms such as United Defense Industries, which makes tanks, guided missiles, space vehicles, and weapons delivery systems. United States Marine Repair (USMR) is America's largest non-nuclear ship repair, modernization and conversion company and is another Carlyle company.
Carlucci's knowledge of the Pentagon's inner workings gives Carlyle an advantage when buying defense companies that have fallen in market value. "Because they have a good sense of the defense and aerospace business, they have an ability to project future earnings so they can calculate the true value," Philip Finnegan, a senior analyst with the Teal Group said. Carlucci, who is seen as largely responsible for Carlyle's success, said he met in February with his old college classmate, Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defense. He also met with Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a defense secretary under former President Bush, to talk about military matters-at a time when Carlyle has several billion-dollar defense projects under consideration.
Defense-related companies make up about 30 percent of the firm's portfolio, which also includes information technology, Internet companies, health care, real estate, and bottling companies. The French newspaper, Le Figaro, is another Carlyle asset.
"Carlyle has averaged annual gross returns of 34 percent since inception, par for the course among similar buyout firms. By comparison, funds offered by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. returned 30 percent. By the end of 2000 Carlyle had raised a total of $12.5 billion, which made it the fifth-largest private buyout firm in the U.S.," Bloomberg reported.
PUBLIC MONEY-PRIVATE EQUITY
Although the Carlyle Group is a "private equity fund" it has enriched itself using public and state pension funds from California, Texas and Connecticut. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CALPERS) has invested hundreds of millions with Carlyle and has at least a 5 percent stake in the firm.
The Texas teachers' pension fund, whose board was appointed when George W. Bush was governor, gave Carlyle $100 million to invest. In Connecticut, a scandal resulted when Wayne Berman, a Washington consultant and fund-raiser for George W. Bush's presidential campaign, received "a kickback" of more than $900,000 after the state treasurer, Paul J. Silvester, steered tens of millions of state pension fund dollars into a Carlyle Group investment fund.
BIN LADEN CUTS CARLYLE TIES
On Oct. 26, it was reported that Osama Bin Laden's family was cutting its financial ties with the Carlyle Group. The Bin Laden family reportedly sold its investment worth $2.02 million because of criticism in Saudi Arabia that the Bin Laden family, whose construction company is one of the largest in the Middle East, would profit from increased military spending in the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
The fact that President Bush's father and his former secretary of state, James Baker, serve as senior advisers to the company has raised red flags in Washington. Bush the Elder and Baker reportedly use their extensive government contacts to further their business interests as Carlyle Group representatives. From Carlyle's point of view, the involvement of Baker and the former president is invaluable. "It punches up the brand awareness for us globally," said Carlyle partner Dan D'Aniello. "We are greatly assisted by Baker and Bush. It shows that we are associated with people of the highest ethical standards." Baker's stake was estimated to be worth more than $180 million when the fund was valued at $3.5 billion; today it is worth much more.
Unlike Baker, Bush the Elder has no ownership stake in Carlyle. As an adviser and an investor, however, Bush is allowed to put the money he earns giving speeches, between $80,000 and $100,000 per speech, into Carlyle's investment funds.
In July 2000, Carlyle Group bought Northrop Grumman's aerostructures business group in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. The business was renamed Vought Aircraft Industries and remains based in Dallas. On Aug. 20, Vought announced that it had been selected by Northrop Grumman to manufacture the wing for the Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance system's air vehicle.
The corporate overlap between Carlyle and leading defense contractors can be seen in B. Edward Ewing, managing director and CEO of Dallas-based Carlyle Management Group (CMG). Ewing is also chairman and CEO of The Aerostructures Corporation (TAC), a leading worldwide designer and manufacturer of major components for commercial and military aircraft, and is CEO of USMR. Prior to joining Carlyle and leading USMR, Ewing served five years as vice president of operations for Lockheed Martin, the leading company on the JSF project.
The current White House occupant, George W. Bush, was a director of a Carlyle company named Caterair. From the beginning the founders have recruited former politicians as consultants. George Bush the Elder visited Saudi Arabia, home of the Bin Laden family, to open doors for Carlyle's fund-raisers. Carlyle won't disclose how much senior advisers like Bush earn but industry experts estimate their fees average about $1 million per year. "Mr. Bush gives us no advice on what do with the federal government. We've gone over backwards to make sure that we do no lobbying," Carlyle senior partner David Rubenstein said. "President Bush is not asking anybody for money. He speaks at lunches, dinners, and events on non-Carlyle matters and expresses his views on world events."
Rubenstein, who attended Barbara Bush's surprise 75th birthday party last summer in Kennebunkport, Me., says: "We don't do lobbying. We don't give to any politicians. We don't have a PAC [political action committee]. We try to be cleaner than Caesar's wife." Rubenstein may not know it, but Caesar's wife was not "above suspicion." He divorced her over allegations of infidelity.
Among the hundreds of suspects being held in connection with the terror attacks of Sept. 11 are a number of Israelis who were seen rejoicing while photographing the burning World Trade Center. Five Israelis, suspected of being co-conspirators in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, arrested in New Jersey with box-cutters, multiple passports, and $4,000 cash on Sept. 11, remain in detention and may be held for another 90 days as the criminal investigation continues. They are among the more than 1,000 suspects who are being held in connection with the attacks whose detention is shrouded in secrecy.
The five men were on the roof of a moving company and the rooftop of their moving van, taking pictures of the burning buildings, some with themselves in the foreground smiling. In each location, according to the Jerusalem Post, the men, described in press reports as rugged and Middle Eastern-looking, had been reported "cheering" and shouting in "cries of mockery," which evoked the ire of neighbors, who called the police to report suspicious activity.
The Israelis: Sivan Kurzberg, his brother Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Gavriel Marmari, suspected of being intelligence agents with prior knowledge of the attacks, are all in their 20s and employees of an Israeli-owned moving company, Urban Moving Systems, based in New Jersey.
I spoke with a spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New York who said that "there have been more" Israelis detained in connection with the terror attacks, confirming press reports that numerous Israelis had been arrested, although he would not say how many. The spokesman said the five above-mentioned Israelis are being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn among the general population, although all had been held in solitary confinement until last week, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The mother of one of the detainees told the Israeli press that the suspects had been "tortured" during interrogation. However, the consular spokesman denied this, saying, "They haven't been tortured."
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has signed deportation orders for the five Israelis, but they can still be held for 90 days while the criminal investigation continues. The Israeli consul general in New York, Alon Pinkas, has visited the detainees several times, seeing them as recently as Oct. 29.
Katie Shmuel, the mother of Yaron, told the Israeli press, "He was allowed to talk to them only in English, and only from behind a glass partition. The consul told me that the boys are in a bad state and that they are being held under difficult conditions." The mother says that the original reports that they had been arrested while boisterously watching the disaster from a rooftop "are totally fabricated."
"For the first few days, the boys were held in an FBI dungeon, tied up, with no clothes and no food," she said. "The Americans are using them as pawns to pressure the Israeli government."
The federal government wants Americans to believe that the Constitution only applies when it says so. The actions taken by President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft in secretly detaining untold numbers of individuals and calling for secret military tribunals to handle captured Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners have been condemned as "a constitutional coup d'etat" which may lead to a "police state," according to experts on constitutional and international law. While most if not all the detainees "look Arab" now, experts warn, tomorrow's detainees could be blond, blue-eyed -- or you.
"What we've seen, since Sept. 11, if you add up every thing that Ashcroft, Bush and their coterie of federalist society lawyers have done here, is a coup d'etat against the United States Constitution," said Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. "When you add in the Ashcroft police state bill that was passed by Congress . . . that's really what we're seeing now.
"Since Sept. 11, we have seen one blow against the Constitution after another," Boyle said. "Recently, we've had Ashcroft saying that he had, unilaterally, instituted monitoring of attorney-client communications without even informing anyone—he just went ahead and did it, despite the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures without warrant and the Sixth Amendment right to representation by counsel."
The criminal investigation into the attacks, the largest in U.S. history, has netted about 1,200 detainees. But the Justice Department has failed to build a case against a single prime U.S. suspect in the terrorist attacks.
BAD EVIDENCE
Nine weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal authorities said on Nov. 15 that they had found no evidence indicating that any of the roughly 1,200 people detained in the United States played a role in the suicide hijacking plot. However, numerous legal protections, based on constitutional and international treaties, appear to have been ignored or violated in the case of the 1,200 detainees.
"We are becoming a banana republic here in the United States, with 'disappeared' people, which was the phenomenon that we all saw down in Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, with the support, by the way, of the United States Government," Boyle said. "We don't know where they are or the conditions under which they are being held. We have no idea whether they have access to attorneys. We do know one of them died, under highly suspicious circumstances, while in custody. There have been reports that he was tortured to death," he said.
The Constitution protects aliens in the United States, according to Boyle. "Clearly aliens here are entitled to the protections of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment , as well as to the Article III (Section 2, Clause 3) basic constitutional rights in criminal cases, including indictment, trial before a federal district judge or jury, [rights relating to] venue and things of that nature," Boyle said.
"I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an outcry," said Robert B. Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, about the long-term detentions and the administration's plans to monitor conversations be tween lawyers and terrorism suspects in federal custody. "The president is, by emergency decree, getting rid of rights that we assumed that anyone within our borders legally would have. We can find ourselves in a police state step-by-step without realizing that we have made these compromises along the way."
The foreign detainees are also protected by international law under treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. government is a party, affords basic due process protections to everyone here in the United States, irrespective of their citizenship, according to Boyle. The VCCR of 1963 calls for notification "without delay" of consular officials when one of their nationals has been arrested or "detained in any other manner."
Although Egypt, Pakistan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are party to the VCCR along with the United States, the Justice Department informed me that it is using an abbreviated list of nations, the Mandatory Notification Countries, which includes only one Middle Eastern nation, Kuwait. Spokesmen from the Justice and State Departments could not confirm that the United States was abiding by the terms of the VCCR and notifying the consulates of the detainees. However, Kareem Shora, legal adviser at the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that it had received at least 10 complaints that this was not the case.
The Justice Department is planning to "round up" and question some 5,000 men, mostly from Middle Eastern countries, who entered the U.S. legally within the past two years. "When will the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency start to turn these powers, that they have under the Ashcroft police state bill, against American citizens?" Boyle asks. "Clearly, that will be the next step."
BAD PRECEDENT
Concerning the executive order calling for military tribunals to try alleged al Qaeda members, or even former al Qaeda members, in Afghanistan, Boyle says there is an "even more serious problem."
"The third and fourth Geneva Conventions, of 1949, clearly apply to our conflict now with Afghanistan," Boyle says. "These alleged al Qaeda members would be protected either by the third Geneva Convention, if they are fighters incorporated into the army there in Afghanistan, or by the fourth Geneva Convention, if they are deemed to be civilians. Both conventions have very extensive procedural protections on trials that must be adhered to."
Although a trial can be held, there are extensive rules and protections and basic requirements of due process of law, set forth in these treaties that must be applied. Failures to apply these treaties would constitute war crimes, according to Boyle. The executive order calling for secret military tribunals is extremely dangerous because it invites reprisals by the Taliban, Boyle says. "What it is basically saying to the Taliban government and to al Qaeda is, 'We are not going to give you the protections of either the third or fourth Geneva Conventions' guarantees on trials.' What that means is that they could engage in reprisals against captured members of the United States Armed Forces. "It opens up our own armed forces to be denied prisoner-of-war treatment," he said. "So, what we're doing here is exposing them to a similar type of treatment, which would be a summary trial, in secret, subject to the death penalty."
European intelligence experts dismiss the Bush "war on terrorism" as deception and reveal the Realpolitik behind the bombing of Afghanistan.
BERLIN - In Germany, where war plans for Afghanistan were already being discussed in July 2001 and where several of the "Arab hijackers" lived and studied, intelligence experts say the terror attacks of Sept. 11 could not have been carried out without the support of a state secret service.
Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told this reporter that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks would have needed "years of planning." Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions."
Andreas von Bülow served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag (German parliament) from 1969 to 1994, and wrote a book Im Namen des Staates (In the Name of the State) on the criminal activities of secret services, including the CIA. In an interview with the author, Von Bülow said that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending.
"You don't get the higher echelons," von Bülow said, referring to the "architectural structure" which masterminds such terror attacks. At this level, he said, the organization doing the planning, such as Mossad, is primarily interested in affecting public opinion. The architectural level planners use corrupt "guns for hire" such as Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist who von Bülow called "an instrument of Mossad," high-ranking Stasi (former East German secret service) operatives, or Libyan agents who organize terror attacks using dedicated people, for example Palestinian and Arab "freedom fighters."
The terrorists who actually commit the crimes are what von Bülow calls "the working level," such as the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked the planes on Sept. 11. "The working level is part of the deception," he said. "Ninety-five percent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," von Bülow said, which is widely propagated in the mainstream media creating an accepted version of events. "Journalists don't even raise the simplest questions," he said, adding, "those who differ are labeled as crazy."
Both Werthebach and von Bülow said the lack of an open and official investigation, like congressional hearings, into the events of Sept. 11 was incomprehensible.
Horst Ehmke, who coordinated the German secret services directly under German Prime Minister Willi Brandt in the 70s, predicted a similar terrorist attack in his novel, Torches of Heaven, published last year, in which Turkish terrorists crash hijacked planes into Berlin. Although Ehmke had long expected "fundamentalist attacks" and when he saw the televised images from Sept.11, he said it looked like a "Hollywood production."
"Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service," Ehmke said, although he did not want to point to any particular agency. "The most important thing in the struggle against terrorists, who are abusing religion, is the battle for the soul of the people and the nations," Ehmke said. "If this isn't resolved successfully, the 21st century could be bloodier than the last."
A former Stasi agent who had warned the German secret service of terror attacks in America between Sept. 10-20 said that a high ranking Stasi chief named Jürgen Rogalla, who is "an airplane terror specialist," was probably involved in the attacks along with Abu Nidal. Both Nidal and Rogalla work with the Mossad, the former agent told me. Nidal, was said to be in Baghdad, and is a "leading officer for some Mossad agents."
The agent said that Nidal was "involved directly" in the events of 9-11 in preparation for a larger attack on the United States, which is part of "an old plan," the agent said. Based on prior knowledge of this plan, the agent said that more attacks are imminent and that aircraft carriers may be targeted. Rogalla was responsible for "turning NATO men" to spy for the East. One of the East's NATO spies, Reiner Rupp, known as "Topaz," provided Stasi and the Russians with the organization's highest secrets until he was discovered in 1993 by the BND, the German intelligence agency.
TERROR INVESTIGATION BLOCKED
Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the Bush administration blocked Secret Service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban to turn over Osama Bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.
In a recently published book, Bin Laden, la Verite Interdite (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth), the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the FBI's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July to protest official obstruction of his investigation of terrorism.
O'Neill had been in charge of national security in New York. While with the FBI, O'Neill led an investigation of Osama Bin Laden and had forecast the possibility of an organized attack by terrorists operating from within the country. O'Neill had investigated the USS Cole bombing in Yemen, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, FBI agents working under O'Neill captured Ramzi Yousef, a suspected lieutenant of Bin Laden, who was among those convicted for the World Trade Center bombing.
O'Neill was considered a top-notch investigator and was known for his pugnacity. He was barred by U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine from that country. That dispute reportedly involved a struggle between the State Department, which sought to preserve relations with Yemen, and the FBI, represented by O'Neill, who wanted access to Yemeni suspects.
O'Neill, 49, was hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center following a 25-year career with the FBI and died on Sept. 11, the first day of his new job. O'Neill reportedly died after re-entering the building to assist others.
Brisard said O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it."
Bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military strikes against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Wash ington, according to the Guardian (U.K.). The warnings to the Taliban originated at a four-day meeting of senior Americans, Russians, Iranians and Pakistanis at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July 2001. The meetings took place under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
The three Americans at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Karl "Rick" Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the State Department until 1997. There were other meetings arranged by Vendrell in which "representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present," according to the French authors. "Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table."
The Berlin conference was the third meeting since November 2000 arranged by Vendrell. As a UN meeting, its official agenda was supposedly confined to trying to find a negotiated solution to the civil war in Afghanistan, ending terrorism and heroin trafficking, and discussing humanitarian aid.
CARPET OF GOLD - OR BOMBS
The U.S. government's primary objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime in order to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, the French authors wrote. Until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia," from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean, they said.
"The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that," the book says. When the Taliban refused to accept U.S. conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military one."
"The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who attended the meetings. During the "6 plus 2" meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around "the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid," Naik said on French television. "And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come," he added.
Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the U.S. representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.' The words Simons used were 'a military operation,'" Naik said. "At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,' " Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
According to the book, the Bush government began to negotiate with the Taliban in February, soon after coming into power. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, as her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the CIA.
The latest videotape implicating Osama Bin Laden has been called the "smoking gun" — but critics of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan call it "smoke and mirrors" deception. The blurry 40-minute videotape released by the Pentagon on Dec. 13, purportedly showing Osama Bin Laden boasting of masterminding the terror attacks of 9-11, has raised more questions and doubts about its veracity than it has answered.
According to U.S. officials, the tape was found in a house in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, and handed to the Pentagon by an unnamed person or group. At first it was reported that the CIA found the tape. Later press reports said United Front soldiers discovered it. Unless the United States gives more information about how the tape was found or provides more technological details about it, doubts are bound to linger, the Guardian (U.K.) wrote.
One specialist in Islamic affairs, Hani Al Sibaei, described the videotape as "fabricated and a scandal for the greatest democratic country in the world." In a telephone call with the Arabic news network Al Jazeera from London, he noted the congratulatory wishes on the tape and Bin Laden's happy expression. He said that this segment was taken from a tape of Bin Laden being congratulated on the pre-arranged marriage of his child to the child of Aiman Al-Zawaheri — which took place four years ago.
Al Sibaei said it boggles the mind that an organization like al Qaeda would create such simple-minded videotapes and then leave them behind in a private home. He added that Bin Laden has twice denied involvement in the attacks and said that he had sworn to Mullah Mohamed Omar, leader of the Taliban movement, that the Al Qaeda organization pledged it would not plan attacks against other countries from inside Afghanistan.
In the video, Bin Laden, wearing a green military jacket and white headdress, claims to have known the attacks would take place five days in advance, and says the destruction of the twin towers exceeded his expectations. In the tape, which was broadcast with muffled sound accompanied by English translation, Bin Laden said that he believed that the fire from the jet fuel would result in a partial collapse of the iron infrastructure of the World Trade Center. The impact of the video may have been diluted to some extent by its poor quality and language difficulties. Many Arabs either had to accept the English translation on TV or strain to hear the words themselves.
Christopher Ross, a consultant hired by the State Department, told the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, that he had to replay the tape dozens of times in order to hear the conversation because the sound was so bad. Ross indicated that to improve the translation, he replayed the tape another 50 times with the translator. He confirmed that the translation is not literal, because of the poor quality of the original tape's sound.
Some legal experts found the tape damning, if it could ever be admitted into court. "It is the most powerful kind of evidence," said Donald B. Ayer, former deputy attorney general. "It is a virtual confession."
In an earlier interview with a Pakistani newspaper, Bin Laden said "I have already said that I am not involved in the Sept.11 attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act."
Prosecutors seeking to bring Bin Laden to justice would certainly be keen to produce the tape but might struggle to prove its authenticity. Henry Hingson, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said: "In this day and age of digital wizardry, many things can be done to alter its veracity."
The United States says the tape provides compelling evidence that Bin Laden was behind the attacks but the authenticity of the tape is doubted by many in the Muslim world and dismissed as unconvincing propaganda. For all his familiarity with the Sept. 11 events, Bin Laden did not explicitly take responsibility for directing the operation. He said he had received notification of the Tuesday attacks the previous Thursday, indicating that the timing, at least, might have been left to others.
In Jordan, Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of the Islamic Action Front said, "Do Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?"
"Of course it is fabricated," Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamic movements said, "If this is the kind of evidence that America has, then the blood of thousands who died and were injured in Afghanistan is on Bush's hands."
Riaz Durrani, a spokesman for Jamiat Ulema-e-Is lam, a pro-Taliban party in Pakistan, said: "This videotape is not authentic. The Americans made it up after failing to get any evidence against Osama."
President Bush, who hopes the video will bolster international support for the war on terrorism, challenged the critics calling the videotape a "devastating declaration of guilt for this evil person." Countering claims that the video was faked, Bush said it was "preposterous for anybody to think this tape was doctored," adding, "Those who contend it's a farce or a fake are hoping for the best about an evil man. This is Bin Laden unedited."
Sean Broughton, director of the London-based production company Smoke and Mirrors and one of Britain's leading experts on visual effects, said it would be relatively easy for a professional to fake a video of Bin Laden. But Broughton said to fool the top experts is much more difficult. "There are perhaps 20 people in America who would be good enough to fool everybody. To find someone that good and make sure they kept quiet would probably be pretty difficult."
Bob Crabtree, editor of Computer Video, said it is impossible to judge whether the video is a fake without more details of its source. "The U.S. seems simply to have asked the world to trust them that it is genuine," he said.
OLD OSAMA vs. NEW OSAMA
There are many problems with the videotape beginning with the appearance of Bin Laden. Bin Laden, who is reported to suffer from kidney problems and uses a cane, has appeared rather lean in previous videotapes, but suddenly seems to have gained weight and actually appears jolly in the latest video, supposedly made on Nov. 9, only weeks after his previous video. Bin Laden, who is of Yemenite parentage, has a characteristic long neck and long narrow head. The "new" Bin Laden appears to have a "husky" body and a smaller head in proportion to his body.
Some observers point out that in the latest video, Bin Laden appears to be wearing a ring on his right hand. In previous tapes Bin Laden wore no jewelry except a watch. Others have pointed out that in the latest videotape Bin Laden is "gesticulating excessively" with his right hand, while in the earlier tapes Bin Laden, who is left-handed, spoke in a slow and deliberate manner.
Britain's top military officer warns that the "war on terrorism" will "radicalize" friendly states and lead to increased terrorism.
While Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Britain, the United State's closest ally in Afghanistan and only ally in Iraq, on the three-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror, significant differences surfaced on how to proceed with the "war on terrorism."
British Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce revealed a significant divergence between the allies' military and political branches on what to do after the defeat of the Taliban. Boyce said that America's determination to use military might in a wider war was certain to "radicalize" friendly states whose support Britain and other nations need.
Speculation is growing that the United States will attack Iraq as part of its "war." Powell will not rule out war against Iraq. An attack on Iraq would further destabilize the region, experts on the Middle East warn, drawing in neutral countries and stretching the allied coalition to the breaking point.
Britain will have to lay down "red lines" beyond which it would not go, Boyce said. Whatever is done must be legal, the admiral said, because to do otherwise would jeopardize its legitimacy. The alliance must beware of "exporting terrorism," which had been the experience of the United States in Colombia, Boyce said, where military operations against the guerrilla movement, FARC, had forced it into Mexico and Guatemala.
Boyce also warned of "excessive optimism" about successes against the Taliban because the war was not conventional and could not be measured in territory won. Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda network remained "a fielded, resourced, dedicated and essentially autonomous terrorist force, quite capable of atrocity on a comparable scale" to the Sept. 11 attacks, Boyce said.
Boyce criticized the massive U.S. bombing campaigns saying that lack of constraint and proportionality could simply "radicalize" opinion in the Islamic world in favor of al Qaeda. Terrorism could only be defeated by winning "hearts and minds," Boyce said. You cannot win the "war" by bombing and military action could have precisely the opposite effect to the one intended, he warned.
"Washington is making it quite plain that after bombing Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban, it wants to get out of the country as soon as Mullah Omar and Bin Laden are captured, or presumed dead, leaving others to clean up the mess," wrote Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian. Politicians and the media should take a longer-term view of events on the ground where the situation could often be tenuous, he said.
The international community must attack the causes, not the symptoms of terrorism, Boyce said. The enemy is not just Osama Bin Laden. This was not a "high-tech 21st century posse in the new Wild West," he said. Boyce, however, did not mention the presence of American bases in Saudi Arabia, or America's failure to apply pressure on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state—"absolutely central issues raised only in private by senior officials" in both the British military and political establishments, wrote Norton-Taylor.
With a massive amount of information about planned terrorist attacks in hand, how could the government have been caught by surprise on 9-11?
The CIA and FBI have known - since 1995 - about a terrorist plan to use civilian aircraft to attack the World Trade center and U.S. government installations. The plans to hijack a large number of American commercial passenger planes simultaneously and explode them in mid-flight or crash them into predetermined targets such as the World Trade Center have been well known by western intelligence agencies since 1995, according to a report in Die Welt, a leading German newspaper on Dec. 7.
The terrorist scenario that unfolded on Sept. 11 was neither new nor unexpected - and the American intelligence agencies, both the CIA and the FBI, have known of the plan to execute such an act for more than six years, Die Welt said.
The airline terror plan, code named "Project Bojinka," was first discovered in January 1995 during a police search of a Manila apartment in which a suspicious fire had occurred just days before Pope John Paul II was to travel nearby during his visit to the Philippines. A Philippines police investigation revealed that a three-man terrorist cell had occupied the apartment in the center of Manila and made preparations to assassinate the pope. The contents of the apartment included bombs made of liquid chemicals along with the garb of priests, Bibles, and religious paraphernalia meant to disguise the assassins.
The three terrorists who had occupied the apartment, Ramsi Ahmed Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, where allegedly affiliated with international terrorist networks. All three had attended pilot training schools in the Philippines. The Kuwaiti terrorists, Yousef and Murad, had developed undetectable liquid nitroglycerine bombs that could be hidden in contact lens bottles, and plotted to kill the pope and President Bill Clinton, according to the Guardian. Investigators say the Bojinka bombs are among the most sophisticated they have seen. Yousef and Murad planned to use liquid nitroglycerin, which is virtually undetectable by airport security screening. Although Yousef and Shah managed to escape after the fire, Murad was arrested when he returned to the apartment to retrieve his laptop computer.
Federal investigative sources have confirmed that Murad detailed an entire plot to dive bomb aircraft into the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Va. The plot was contained on the laptop computer he had tried to recover.
On Murad's computer the police discovered "Project Bojinka," a plan to terrorize the United States by sabotaging 11 westbound civilian aircraft simultaneously with bombs, exploding them in mid-air as they approached the West Coast. Furthermore, "Project Bojinka" included plans to hijack and crash several commercial airplanes into civilian and government buildings simultaneously, precisely as it occurred on Sept. 11. Yousef independently boasted of the plot to U.S. Secret service agent Brian Parr and FBI agent Charles Stern on an extradition flight from Pakistan to the United States in February 1995. The agents later testified to that fact in court.
Philippine investigators say the plan targeted not only the CIA but other U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon. The Philippine police said that the World Trade Center and Sears Tower were specific targets in the plan. Shortly before the fire in Manila, at the end of 1994, Yosef conducted a Bojinka test run. Yousef boarded Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bound for Tokyo from Manila. He carried the volatile liquid onto the airliner in a plastic contact-lens solution bottle. Once airborne, Yousef went to the rest room to prepare the bomb. Using a Casio watch as a timer and batteries from children's toys, he assembled the bomb, which he placed under a passenger seat.
Yousef left the plane during a stop in the Philippine city of Cebu. The bomb exploded soon after the airliner left Cebu. One person was killed and several were injured, though the pilot was able to make an emergency landing.
Bollyn 9-11 Articles - 2002
Christopher Bollyn's Articles about 9-11 - 2002
The Spoils of War: The Minerals of Afghanistan Published in American Free Press of January 7, 2002; written in October 2001
As a nation, Afghanistan is poor. But there's a world of treasure beneath the surface of the landscape. Afghanistan has an extraordinary abundance of rare and strategic minerals—now all within easy reach of the global planners who installed a puppet government that they control and protect.
Pipelines transporting the immense gas and oil reserves of Central Asia and the Caspian basin to global markets will undoubtedly play an important role in Afghanistan's future, but the country's abundance of strategic minerals has the potential to greatly enrich the Afghans—if the wealth of the nation is not plundered.
Afghanistan has rich and extensive mineral resources including gold, silver, uranium, beryllium, copper, chrome, lead, zinc, manganese, iron and nickel. Lapis lazuli, amethyst, beryl, ruby, emerald, sapphire, alabaster, tourmaline, jade, and quartz are just some of the precious and semiprecious gemstones that have been mined in the country for centuries.
California-based geologist Bonita Chamberlin, who spent 25 years exploring the country, is convinced that Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits including oil and natural gas and gemstones could bring the nation great wealth. With Gary Bowersox, Chamberlin co-authored Gemstones of Afghanistan (1995) regarded as the most complete study of Afghanistan's gems and minerals.
Chamberlin told me that she had identified 91 minerals, metals, and gems at 1,407 documented potential mining sites in Afghanistan. These sites also contain solid combustible minerals, metallic and non-metallic minerals, rare metals, radioactive elements, precious metals and gemstones, salt and industrial minerals. Beryllium and uranium are among the minerals in Afghanistan of the greatest strategic value, Chamberlin said.
Chamberlin began surveying Afghanistan in the mid-1970s while working with companies cultivating cotton and grapes. The scope of her work changed during the Soviet invasion when heavy bombing uncovered significant deposits of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gemstones. Afghanistan has plentiful mineral wealth due to the collision of the Indian subcontinent with the Asian continent, which trapped and combined chemicals from ancient seas with those from the land under tremendous geologic pressures. This collision "formed minerals that exist in very few places in the world," Chamberlin said. Afghans are only lacking the infrastructure to exploit their nation's mineral wealth, she said. "The people just need the expertise and the direction." When the required infrastructure is developed, Afghans "could rule the world," Chamberlin told the Culver City Rock and Mineral Club in California.
BERYLLIUM
Beryllium is a strategic and essential material used in the aerospace, energy, defense, nuclear, automotive, medical, and electronics industries. A unique metal with properties unmatched by any other metal, beryllium is both extremely light and strong. It is one-third lighter than aluminum but six times stiffer than steel. It also has one of the highest melting points of the light metals.
Beryllium is used in the nuclear industry in fusion reactors and in the construction of nuclear devices for military applications. Beryllium alloys are essential structural materials for the production of high-speed aircraft, including the space shuttle and the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), missiles, surveillance and communication satellites. It is also used in Apache helicopters, tanks, and aircraft landing gear components.
Military electronic targeting and infrared countermeasure systems use high beryllium content components, as do advanced missile and radar navigation systems. Beryllium alloys are used in battery contacts and electronic connectors in cell phones. Beryllium-copper provides the high reliability and miniaturization needed in these applications. FM radio, high-definition and cable television and underwater fiber optic cable systems all depend on beryllium. Computer and laser technologies require beryllium. It is used in computers where lightness and stiffness are required. As computers get smaller, lighter, and faster, the beryllium-copper alloy is often the only material that meets the demands.
RUBIES & SAPPHIRES
Afghanistan possesses rich gem deposits, many of which are used in lasers and advanced weapons technologies. Rubies have been used in lasers since laser technology was first developed. Historical accounts indicate that the ruby mines of Badakhshan in Afghanistan were the source of many of the finest and largest rubies in gem collections around the world, such as those in the crown jewels of Iran, the collection in Istanbul's Topkapi, Russia's Kremlin, and England's Tower of London.
Sapphire is used in Lockheed Martin's latest laser targeting system, "Sniper," which is used on U.S. fighters. The Sniper has a sapphire window and will be used on the new Lockheed Martin JSF. Sniper's window is made of sapphire because it is extraordinarily durable and transmits a wide range of wavelengths. Tests have shown that the window was unharmed after being struck by a piece of granite traveling at 197 mph and a metal nut at 150 mph. The rock shattered and the nut was bent but Sniper's sapphire window suffered no damage.
OIL & GAS
Afghanistan has significant oil and gas deposits of its own. "Afghanistan has one of the largest, if not the largest, reserve of natural gas, which was already being tapped by the Soviets prior to their invasion," Chamberlin said. At its peak in the late 1970s, Afghanistan supplied 70 to 90 percent of its natural gas output to the Soviet Union's natural gas grid via a link through Uzbekistan. Although the Soviets estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves to be 5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and its oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels in the 1970s, current estimates range much higher.
Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (mcf/d) in the mid-1970s but output fell to about 220 mcf/d due to declining reserves from producing fields. In 1980 the Jorquduq field was brought online and was expected to boost the nation's natural gas output to 385 mcf/d by the early 1980s. Oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000 barrel per day refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion. Sabotage of infrastructure by the anti-Soviet mujahedeen fighters limited the country's total production to 290 mcf/d, an output level that held fairly steady until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. In February 1998, the Taliban announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which was abolished after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
U.S. OIL STRATEGY
Afghanistan occupies a central position in the U.S. strategy for the economic control of the oil and gas resources in the entire Middle East, according to experts. Current estimates indicate that, in addition to huge gas deposits, the Caspian basin may hold as much as 200 billion barrels of oil—33 times the estimated holdings of Alaska's North Slope.
V.R. Raghavan, a strategic analyst and former general in the Indian army, believes that the prospect of a western military presence in a region extending from Turkey to Tajikistan could not have escaped the geo-political strategists who waged the military campaign in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and replace it with a government they could control and protect—with a multinational army.
In 1998, the California-based petroleum giant UNOCAL, which held 46.5 percent stakes in Central Asia Gas (CentGas), a consortium that planned an ambitious gas pipeline across Afghanistan, withdrew in frustration after several fruitless years. The pipeline was to stretch 762 miles from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. An additional $600 million would have brought the pipeline to energy-hungry India.
Among the many advantages of the Afghanistan route, according to experts from the oil and gas industry, is that it would terminate in the Arabian Sea, close to key Asian markets. Vice President Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry, told oil industry executives in 1998, "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly, to become as strategically significant, as the Caspian."
(1289 words)* 6/17
The Manipulated Bin Laden Tape January 7, 2002
German experts say the "smoking gun" videotape of Osama Bin Laden has been rigged and is of no value as evidence of guilt. Independent Arabic translators say that the most important parts of the Pentagon's translation of the "smoking gun" video of Osama Bin Laden were translated incorrectly and that incriminating words have been put into his mouth.
Two independent translators and an expert on Arabic studies carefully analyzed the Pentagon's translation of the video, which President Bush called "a devastating declaration of guilt." The experts worked from the original Arabic soundtrack and found that the government's translation of the Arabic was not only inaccurate but even "manipulated." The Arabic language experts were interviewed on the German state television show, Monitor, which broadcast the analysis of the "smoking gun" video on Dec. 20, 2001. One of the Translators, Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini, said, "I have carefully examined the Pentagon's translation. This translation is very problematic, at the most important places which have been presented as proof of Bin Laden's guilt, the Pentagon translation does not agree with the Arabic heard on the video."
The Pentagon translation has Bin Laden saying, "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy..." Alami said, "The words 'in advance are not even heard on the tape. This translation is wrong. When we take the original Arabic from the tape there are no misunderstandings which allow us to read this into the original."
At another point, the government translation has Bin Laden saying: "We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place on that day is not heard in the original Arabic." The Pentagon's translation also mistranslated the sentence "We ordered each of them to go to America" in the active voice while the original Arabic is in the passive voice: they were ordered to go." The translation using "we" is wrong, Alami says.
Alami said that the following sentence that has been translated by the Pentagon, "they didn't know anything about the operation," is not understandable on the tape.
Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Hamburg said, "The American translators who listened and transcribed the tapes have apparently written a lot of things into the text that they wanted to hear, which are actually not heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it. "Regardless of whether Bin Laden or his organization was involved in the attacks or not, this tape is of such bad quality, is some places it cannot be understood at all, and those parts which can be understood are torn out of context so that the tape cannot be used as evidence to prove anything," Rotter said. Although the independent expert analysis has been widely reported in Germany, it has not been reported in the American mainstream media.
(476 words)* 6/17
German Intelligence Expert Refutes Bush Version of 9-11 January 9, 2002
A former German intelligence chief refutes the official version of what happened on Sept. 11, questioning why Congress hasn't called for a special inquiry to investigate what really occurred on that terrible day.
The German newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, recently interviewed Andreas von Bülow, the former head of the parliamentary commission that oversees the German secret services, about the terror attacks of Sept. 11. Von Bülow, who I interviewed in early December, said the provocative Tagesspiegel interview published on Jan. 13, was the first time the German press had asked him about the problems surrounding the attacks.
"The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement—to hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers," said von Bülow. "This is unthinkable, without years of support from state intelligence services."
This led the interviewer to call von Bülow "a conspiracy theorist."
"Yeah, yeah, that's the ridicule from those who prefer to follow the official, politically correct line," von Bülow responded. "Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts the official line is called crazy."
Despite the controversial content of von Bülow's recent comments, "there has been no response in the German press," von Bülow told me. "The media has to ask the questions," he said, "Ashcroft and Bush—they are the officials who have to answer the questions." Since Sept. 11, "public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong," von Bülow said. "I wonder why so many questions have not been asked. Normally, with such a terrible event, various leads and trails appear and are discussed by the investigators, the media and the government: 'Is there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible?' In this case, that is not happening at all."
Before a government goes to war, it must first establish who the enemy is, von Bülow said. "It has a duty to provide evidence. According to its own admission, it has not been able to present any evidence that would hold up in court." Concerning the video evidence, von Bülow said: "When one is dealing with intelligence services, one can imagine manipulations of the highest quality. Hollywood could provide these techniques. I consider the videos inappropriate as evidence."
Von Bülow, who controlled the budgets of German intelligence from 1969 to 1994, cannot understand why Congress has not opened a formal investigation into the attacks and the failure of American intelligence agencies to prevent them. "There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion, which were not able to prevent the attacks," von Bülow said. "Officially, there is nothing." he said. "They say that they didn't have any idea that this would happen." While four planes had been hijacked "for more than 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies kept the fighter planes on the ground," von Bülow said. "However, 48 hours later, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive.
"Why has the director of the FBI not taken a position regarding these contradictions? Where did the list come from, why it was false? If I were the chief investigator in such a case, I would go before the public on a regular basis, and provide information on which leads are valid and which are not," he said, "and what about the obscure stock transactions? In the week prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies, increased 1,200 percent. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must have known something. Who?"
ISRAEL KNEW?
Although von Bülow told me in December 2001 that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 attacks, he said such political discussion is beyond the pale in German journalism. When asked by Tagesspiegel who might have known about the attacks, von Bülow's comments about apparent Israeli culpability and the agenda of Israel's Ariel Sharon were deleted. Israel is protected in the German media, in which any criticism of the Jewish state is stifled. This is because of "the special relationship" between the two states. However, the Israeli agenda has advanced as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Don't believe the Arabs—they are foes," is the message behind the "brainwashing" being done by the U.S. government and the unquestioning mass media, said von Bülow. "With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies are being subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-communism doesn't work anymore; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism."
The image of the new enemy comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy, von Bülow said. "Already in the middle of the 1990s, Huntington believed, people in Europe and the U.S. needed someone they could hate—this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especially oil and gas. "In his analysis of political processes," von Bülow said, "a global map of civil wars and conflicts coincides with the locations of these strategic minerals. The same is the case with the third map: nodal points of the drug trade," he said.
The huge raw material reserves of the former Soviet Union, as well as the pipeline routes, are now at the disposal of the United States and Britain. The fact that the events of Sept. 11 "fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry, the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic complex," von Bülow says, is "conspicuous."
"What has gone on, and goes on, in the name of intelligence services, are true crimes," von Bülow said. He is the author of Im Namen des Staates, a book which documents some of the criminal activities of the CIA and the German intelligence services.
Von Bülow, told me that "95 percent of the work of intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," and pointed to the false leads that were apparently planted to incriminate Arab terrorists in the attacks. These leads, he said, were like tracks left behind by "a herd of stampeding elephants." The abundance of such obvious clues, such as Mohammed Atta's passport, which mysteriously survived the crash and explosion that allegedly destroyed the shock- and fire-proof cockpit recorders, were like the German children's' game Schnitzeljagd, or Schnitzel Hunt, in which small bits of paper are left behind as clues for the children, von Bülow said. Atta's passport, which he had reported as having been stolen long before Sept. 11, amazingly reappeared unburned and intact on top of a pile of rubble near the World Trade Center, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Atta, the suspected leader, allegedly left Portland for Boston on the morning of Sept. 11, in order to board the plane that later hit the World Trade Center. "If this Atta was the decisive man in the operation, it's really strange that he took such a risk of taking a plane that would reach Boston such a short time before the connecting flight. Had his flight been a few minutes late, he would not have been on the plane that was hijacked. Why should a sophisticated terrorist do this?" von Bülow said.
"They made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind a rented car with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fell into the hands of the FBI, because they were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed." Clues were left behind, like in Schnitzeljagd, which "were meant to be followed," he said.
Von Bülow compared Sept. 11 with first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. "In the middle was the bomb maker, a former Egyptian officer," von Bülow said. "He had pulled together some Muslims for the attack. They were sneaked into the country by the CIA, despite a State Department ban on their entry. At the same time, the leader of the band was an FBI informant. And he made a deal with the authorities: At the last minute, the dangerous explosive material would be replaced by a harmless powder. The FBI did not stick to the deal. The bomb exploded, so to speak, with the knowledge of the FBI. The official story of the crime was quickly found—the criminals were evil Muslims," von Bülow said.
When asked what he would do, von Bülow said: "My task is concluded by saying it could not have happened that way. Search for the truth."
(1493 words)* 6/18
U.S. Lies to Sell War on Terror February 20, 2002
The Pentagon has opened a new propaganda office that plans to blend fact with fiction and plant "disinformation" in media outlets in order to sell the "War on Terror" to foreign audiences. As part of a global effort to influence public opinion and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, the Pentagon is developing plans for a new information agency, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), to plant false news items in foreign media organizations.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reportedly loves to cite the celebrated dictum of the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "In wartime truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Claiming that foreign critics of the U.S.-led war on terrorism have been misinformed, Rumsfeld said that "we need to do a better job to make sure that people are not confused as to what this is about."
The Pentagon's OSI office, which was established shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was a response by the Bush administration to the widely acknowledged fact that the United states was losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries. Headed by Brigadier General Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, the OSI is circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive propaganda campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations. The OSI will reportedly employ disinformation techniques, used widely during World War II by Britain and the United States to spread false information within otherwise accurate news releases.
Worden envisions a broad mission ranging from "black" campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to "white" public affairs that rely on truthful news releases, Pentagon officials said. One proposal reportedly involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders e-mail messages that promote the administration's views or attack unfriendly governments. The messages would be distributed through outside Internet sources to conceal their origin. A senior Pentagon official told the New York Times: "the return address will probably be a dot-com, not a dot-mil," a reference to the military's Internet designation.
TARGET EUROPE
The OSI's main target for propaganda will be Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia, the campaign may also be directed at Western Europe, where the Bush administration's strategy to fight terrorism has been widely criticized. Although the military regularly engages in propaganda warfare against hostile nations during war, the OSI will expand the military's propaganda mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. Although the Pentagon and the CIA are barred by law from propaganda activities in the United States, disinformation planted in foreign media organizations, could end up being published or broadcast by American news organizations.
The new office "rolls up all the instruments within the Department of Defense (DOD) to influence foreign audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas A. Times, a former Army colonel and psychological operations officer, said at a conference. "DOD has not traditionally done these things."
There are misgivings within the Pentagon of venturing into an area traditionally the domain of the CIA and the State Department. The main fear is that by feeding slanted and possibly false information to foreign government officials and the international media, the OSI might undermine the credibility of the Pentagon's official press department. Several senior officials at the Pentagon have questioned whether the OSI's mission is too broad and possibly even illegal, according to the New York Times article. One Defense Department official said: "We shouldn't be in that business. Leave the propaganda leads to the CIA, the spooks. If we get the reputation for spreading false information, then what is anyone to believe and not believe that comes out of this building?" Other officials fear the initiative, once revealed might weaken support for the U.S. among its allies.
One of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the OSI is the Army's Psychological Operations Command. The command was involved in dropping millions of flyers and broadcasting scores of radio programs into Afghanistan encouraging Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers to surrender.
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Deceptive PR Firm Joins War Effort February 20, 2002
In Washington D.C., the name of the game is public relations and the Bush Administration has contracted some old pros to foist the ever widening war on terrorism onto the world. The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group (TRG), a powerful Washington public-relations firm run by John W. Rendon Jr., to "advise" the Pentagon's newly-formed disinformation agency, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI).
TRG reportedly had a four-month contract worth $397,000 to help the Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. TRG will supplement the efforts of the Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group, which is based at Fort Bragg and is now conducting operations in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. Rendon coordinated George McGovern's presidential campaign in Maine in the early 1970s and later worked for Michael Dukakis when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. After working on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1980, Rendon went to work for the Democratic National Committee, and eventually became its executive director.
TRG's biggest operations are reported to have been in support of the Pentagon and the CIA. In describing his work in a speech to the Air Force Academy in 1996, Rendon said, "I am a person who uses communications to meet public policy or corporate objectives. I am an information warrior and a perception manager. The group has been hired on several occasions to support U.S. military actions. During the past decade the firm has worked to shape public opinion during the conflicts in Panama, Haiti, Kuwait, and Iraq.
TRG's first national security assignment came in 1989, during Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama. After Manuel Noriega was overthrown, TRG offered "crisis management and operational support" to the new U.S.-backed government and "courted the international press and overseas radio stations to make the cause real to other governments and to give hope to Panamanians."
FABRICATED ATROCITIES
TRG's next assignment came the following year, when it supported the Kuwaiti government in exile after the Iraqi invasion. Rendon and his staffers set up a TV production house in London that specialized in fabricating atrocities carried out by Saddam Hussein's troops. The group has done extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal family, and the Iraqi National Congress - the opposition group seeking to oust Saddam.
Founded in 1981, TRG has offices in Boston and Washington and a staff of about two dozen people, including a number of former White House operatives and congressional staffers. TRG worked with Hill & Knowlton, who masterminded the pro-Kuwaiti propaganda campaign. And while Kuwait's activities directed at manipulating American public opinion should have been exposed as foreign propaganda under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Justice department chose not to enforce it.
In one of the most glaring examples of disinformation foisted on the American public, in November 1990, a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl testified before the Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers tossing premature babies onto the floor of a Kuwaiti hospital so their incubators could be sent to Iraq. Senators cited her testimony as a crucial factor in their decision to go to war with Iraq. It later turned out that the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and that her "testimony" had been arranged and scripted by Hill & Knowlton.
As a public-relations firm, Rendon has clients in 79 countries, including official trade agencies of the United States, Bulgaria, Russia, and Uzbekistan. One of Rendon's clients has been the al Sabah family, the royal family of Kuwait. TRG helped al Sabah create a sympathetic image in the United States during the Gulf War.
Rendon has worked with the CIA to build the Iraqi National Congress, the U.S.-backed group that is seeking to oust Saddam Hussein. In 1991, TRG "provided it with its name and more than $12 million in covert funding between 1992 and 1996," according to ABC News. TRG spent nearly $24 million in 1991 and 1992 to produce a media blitz against Saddam with comic books, videos, a traveling "atrocity exhibition" photo exhibit, and two "gray" clandestine radio stations. The stations Rendon designed and supervised were Radio Hurriah (Radio Freedom) and the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC). TRG also worked to build international support for continued economic sanctions against Iraq, even as reports of civilian suffering and mass starvation were beginning to attract widespread attention.
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Israel's Vast Spy Network of Fake Art Students March 20, 2002
Attorney General John Ashcroft's office said the explosive story of an Israeli spy network of bogus art students operating across the United States is an "urban myth," but other law enforcement officials say otherwise.
The important details of a massive Israeli spy ring that operated across the United States—employing Israeli intelligence agents posing as "art students" to gain access to sensitive U.S. government offices, defense companies, and the private homes of employees of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)—are starting to emerge. What has now become clear is that the agents and modus operandi of the ring were known by the highest levels of government and that policies were changed to counter the threat of Israeli surveillance through computer networks.
The explosive story of the Israeli spy ring, discovered operating in the United States last year, and the 61-page DEA task-force report that contained the details about this spy ring was first revealed in detail on March 4 by Intelligence Online (IO), a well-respected Internet news service based in Paris, France. IO's story elaborated in some respects on earlier findings by Carl Cameron of Fox News who referenced the "Israeli art students" as part of his much larger story. Like the Cameron report, the IO story was picked up by the leading French daily, Le Monde, and, in some respects, by the Associated Press, but was quickly dropped.
Referring to the reports, the March 15 issue of Forward, one of the oldest and most respected Jewish newspapers in America, commented that: "Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the Forward has learned." Forward commented smugly that: "Both the French and the Fox reports were dismissed by Israel and its supporters and received limited coverage in the American media."
LeMonde and Fox (as well as IO) suggested the likelihood that these Israeli operatives were spying on Arab terrorist cells operating in the United States and almost certainly had advance knowledge about the impending 9-11 attacks—a theory that inflamed Israel and its American supporters. The Associated Press was careful not to mention this aspect of the story.
A British intelligence and military analysis publication, Jane's Information Group, noted the peculiar absence of reporting in the American media on the "explosive story" of the huge network of Israeli spies that made headlines around the world:
It is rather strange that the U.S. media . . . seem to be ignoring what may well prove to be the most explosive story since the Sept. 11 attack, the alleged breakup of a major Israeli espionage operation in the United States which aimed to infiltrate both the Justice and Defense departments and which may also have been tracking al Qaeda terrorists before the aircraft hijackings took place.
Reports of Israeli "art students" calling on DEA employees across the country began as early as January 2000 and continued through June 2001. What is not clear is what the ring of more than 120 agents was up to and why some Israelis linked to the attacks in New York and Washington were allowed to flee or were sent back to Israel after Sept. 11 on visa violations rather than being charged and prosecuted.
The "art students" are reported to be active agents in electronic surveillance units of the Israeli military. The Israelis covered the country in "organized" teams of eight to 10 people, with each group having a team leader. The DEA document lists the Israelis' military and intelligence specialties as "special forces," "intelligence officer," "demolition/explosive ordnance specialist," "bodyguard to head of Israeli army," "electronic intercept operator," and "son of a two-star (Israeli) army general."
American intelligence services have become worried by the dominance of Israeli companies in sensitive areas of telecommunications. One Israeli company, Comverse Infosys (now called Verint) has provided law enforcement agencies with computer equipment for wiretapping. It is thought that the equipment came with "catch gates" that allowed the Israelis to listen in. Software made by Amdocs, another Israeli outfit records virtually every call placed through the 25 largest U.S. telephone companies. The relationship of these companies to the detained Israelis is detailed in the 60-page document.
The DEA document reveals that many of the Israeli operatives had addresses in San Diego, Little Rock, Irving (Tex.) and South Florida very close to the homes of Arabs suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The alleged hijacker, Mohammad Atta, lived at 3389 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Fla., while a few blocks away, at 4220 Sheridan, a group of the Israelis spies resided. Especially in Florida, where 10 of the 19 alleged Sept. 11 terrorists lived, the revelations about the Israeli activities bolster speculation that the Israelis had advance knowledge but did not pass intelligence on to the U.S.
A Justice Department official briefed on an ongoing multi-agency task force investigating the Israeli spy ring was quoted by newsweekly Insight as having said: "We think there is something quite sinister here but are unable at this time to put our finger on it." Another law-enforcement official said: "The higher-ups don't want to deal with this and neither does the FBI because it involves Israel."
The DEA report found that several military bases also had experienced unauthorized entries by the Israelis including two bases from which Stealth aircraft and other supersecret military units operate. Unauthorized photographing of military sites and civilian industrial complexes, such as petroleum-storage facilities, also was reported, the document confirms.
In great detail, the DEA document contains "scores of encounters" between federal agents and Israeli agents posing as art students. The seemingly innocuous cover was used to gain access to sensitive U.S. offices and military installations, such as MacDill Air Force Base in March 2001, and Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City one month later, where "a special alert" was issued because of the aggressive Israeli agents. Tinker houses AWACS surveillance planes and repairs B-1 bombers. The Oklahoman, prompted by the French revelations, recently reported that 10 months ago four of the Israeli agents carrying military IDs were detained at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
In virtually every incident reported by the DEA field-offices the Israelis used the same methods: Israelis would attempt to enter secure buildings, take photographs, follow federal agents when they left buildings, show up at their homes and circle their neighborhoods, visiting their houses and then departing. At a DEA agent's house in Chicago, the police were called because the Israelis were so aggressive.
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES
One report, titled "Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at DEA Facilities," lists more than 180 documented-incident cases. "The nature of the individuals' conduct, combined with intelligence information and historical information regarding past incidents involving Israeli organized crime, leads IS [DEA's Internal Security division] to believe the incidents may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity," said one classified document quoted by Insight. "This is very odd behavior under any situation," says a DEA official who had heard but not yet seen the reports until Insight shared them. "The patterns are clear and they pose a significant danger to our officers in the field."
When I spoke with Guillaume Dasquie, of IO, he told me he had solid evidence of the authenticity of the DEA document, and would reveal new evidence to counter claims made by the Department of Justice that there had been "no case of Israeli espionage" in the United States and that the matter was "an urban myth."
The Israeli spy ring was "examined at the highest levels of the Bush administration," Dasquie said. On March 13, IO was informed by an official at the Department of Justice that the report had been handed over to the department's Joint Terrorism Task Force. The same day, at a DEA press conference, the agency's administrator, Asa Hutchinson, said that he had passed the document along to "other agencies" working on the matter. On March 14, IO said it has a copy of a memorandum dated March 4 and signed by Robert Diegelman, assistant attorney general for administration. The memo was addressed to officials in charge of the Justice Department's information systems. It called on them to forbid information system access to all non-U.S. citizens and no longer use foreign-supplied computer and communication gear. The memo referred to a warning entitled Department of Justice Order 2640.2D Information Technology Security, dated 12 July 2001, which cautioned against using information technology sold by foreign firms. The warning of July 12 confirmed that the DEA's report was a security concern at the highest level.
The DEA task force issued an initial report in June of last year that listed the names of 125 Israeli nationals and described their activities in the United States. The document suggests that the ring had infiltrated federal buildings, according to IO, and that Israeli computer companies sell equipment to U.S. government departments. The DEA purchased $25 million worth of interception equipment from a number of Israeli companies named in the report in September 1997.
An AP report from Washington on March 9 confirmed that the DEA document had been the joint work of a task force. The AP report confirmed that several of the Israelis had never enrolled in the art colleges they claimed to attend in Israel. In addition, IO reported: "We've also obtained an internal document from the US Coast Guard, an Intelligence Bulletin dated Jan. 17, 2002. Reserved for security bosses in America's biggest companies, the bulletin regularly tracks all attempts to penetrate protected sites recorded by the US Coast Guard."
The Jan. 17 bulletin described the case of a man and woman "of Middle East origin" taking pictures of a refinery. When questioned they said they were "art students" even though they were able to discuss technical details concerning refineries. Other cases of suspicious activity were also reported.
A spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft initially attempted to dismiss the story as an "urban myth." However, the New York-based Forward effectively exposed Ashcroft's prevarication on March 15:
In March 2001, the federal National Counter intelligence Executive issued a warning urging employees to report all contact with people describing themselves as Israeli art students. It said some had gone to private residences of senior U.S. officials under the guise of selling art.
"These individuals have been described as aggressive," the warning said. However, the warning added that there may be two groups involved, one with an "apparently legitimate money-making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group." The idea that two such groups were operating at the same time (and that one may have been a "non-Israeli group" presumably posing as Israelis) should raise questions. Some might suggest that a group of Israelis operating in the United States were actually posing as Arabs.
Forward defended Israel saying that "far from pointing to Israeli spying against U.S. government and military facilities . . . the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism." Attempting to put a positive spin on the revelations, Forward contends that tensions between the United States and Israel arise not from the fact that the United States believed the Israelis were spying on Americans, but because the Israelis had failed to advise the United States that they were engaged in spying against Arabs on American soil.
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Fire Engineers Refute 9-11 Collapse Theory Published in AFP of May 27, 2002; written in January 2002.
A respected professional magazine read by fire fighters and engineers is calling the investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Towers a farce and a sham. Fire Engineering magazine, the 125-year old journal of record among America's fire engineers and firefighters, blasted the investigation being conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the collapsed World Trade Center as a "a half-baked farce.
Fire Engineering frequently publishes technical studies of major fires and is read in fire departments and schools of fire engineering across the nation. Fire Engineering's editor, William Manning, issued a "call to action" to America's firefighters and fire engineers in the January 2002 issue asking them to contact their representatives in Congress and officials in Washington to demand a blue ribbon panel to thoroughly investigate the collapse of the World Trade Center structures. Manning challenged the theory that the towers collapsed as a result of the crashed airliners and the subsequent fuel fires, saying, "Respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers."
No evidence has been produced to support the theory that the burning jet fuel and secondary fires "attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses," Manning wrote, adding that the collapses occurred "in an alarmingly short time." Manning visited the site shortly after the collapse and his photographs appeared in the October 2001 issue of Fire Engineering. None of the photos show the load-bearing central steel support columns standing or fallen, which raises the question, what caused these columns to disintegrate?
The steel from the site must be preserved to allow investigators to determine what caused the collapse, Manning said. "The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately. For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China," Manning said, "perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car."
"Such destruction of evidence," Manning wrote, "shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history." Nowhere in the national standard for fire investigation does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall, Manning said. "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully-resourced, forensic investigation is imperative. The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.
"Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World trade Center."
In a separate editorial, "WTC Investigation? A Call to Action," by the magazine's technical editor, Prof. Glenn Corbett of John Jay University in New York City, and two other expert fire engineers who specialize in high-rise buildings, The FEMA-led investigation was called "uncoordinated" and "superficial."
"The World Trade Center disaster demands the most comprehensive, detailed investigation possible," the writers said. "No event in our entire fire service history has ever come close to the magnitude of this incident." Given the magnitude of the disaster "you would think we would have the largest fire investigation in the world history," the editorial says. "You would be wrong. Instead, we have a series of unconnected and uncoordinated superficial inquiries. No comprehensive 'Presidential Blue Ribbon Commission.' No top-notch National Transportation Safety Board-like response. Ironically, we will probably gain more detailed information about the destruction of the planes than we will about the destruction of the towers. We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence."
A group of engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers, commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is reported to be studying "some aspects of the collapse," but not all, according to Manning and others. The engineers' investigation, they say, has not looked into all aspects of the disaster and has had limited access to documents and other evidence. "Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members - described by one close source as a "tourist trip" - no one's checking the evidence for anything," Manning said. "As things now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper and computer generated hypotheticals."
Engineers have also complained that they have been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them form examining the disaster site, interviewing witnesses and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to police and fire departments. "This is almost the dream team of engineers in the country working on this, and our hands are tied," one engineer who asked not to be identified told the New York Times. Members of the team of engineers have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press. "FEMA is controlling everything," the anonymous engineer complained.
"Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety," Manning said. "They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it? No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the 'official investigation' blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure," he wrote.
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Mass Media Avoids Questions about 9-11 June 12, 2002
Two events in Washington involving relatives of last fall's terror attacks have demanded an independent non-partisan investigation into the events of 9-11.
Nine months after the worst terrorist attack in American history, grass-roots organizations convened in Washington asking questions and calling for an independent investigation. Although the two events were both well publicized and held in high profile venues, the mass media stayed away – avoiding the serious questions being asked about the attacks.
A network of independent 9-11 researchers "seeking answers and accountability" held a three-hour press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on June 10 to bring attention to the many unanswered questions surrounding the attacks. The group has recently launched a web site dedicated to raising public awareness of these issues: UnansweredQuestions.org. On June 12, the question that ranked highest among voters on the web site was: "Why did C-SPAN suddenly decide not to air your press conference scheduled to be held on June 10, 2002, in lieu of coverage of Homeland Security?"
The high-powered press conference presented two panels of experts, which included researchers, former government officials, relatives of the victims, and lawyers representing the families. Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the Department of Transportation and author of Flying Blind, Flying Safe, spoke as a lawyer representing 32 passengers' families from the hijacked planes of Sept.11. The government is using a special fund "to silence the families of the victims," she said. Acceptance of the government compensation requires signing a no-fault agreement preventing the family from joining any future lawsuits.
The fund, which was established by Congress, is "unlimited" and although there are more than 3,000 victims from 9-11, only 10 families have received compensation, Schiavo told this reporter. The amount of compensation should be about $1.6 million per family although only one family received that amount, she said.
"We knew something was afoot," Schiavo said as she described numerous specific warnings of Middle Eastern terrorist threats against civilian aircraft received by the government and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the months before September 2001. Schiavo recalled the simultaneous hijacking and blowing up of four planes in Jordan by a group known as Islamic Jihad on Sept. 12, 1970. Schiavo presented a statistical analysis of the number of hijackings since 1972 showing that there had been 682 planes hijacked during the past 30 years. She is preparing a lawsuit to bring against the FAA and the airlines for failing to provide the security required in the face of repeated and specific warnings of precisely such a hijacking event.
"There are a lot of people who should have known," said Lorna Brett of the Nolan Law Group, which is representing 9-11 families from the hijacked United Airlines planes. "It's about accountability." The lack of an independent non-partisan investigative commission means that it falls upon journalists to investigate the questions surrounding the attacks. "It's the most patriotic thing we can do to demand answers to these unanswered questions," Brett said.
One such investigative journalist, Michael Ruppert, spoke of the prior warnings from various foreign intelligence agencies to President Bush. Russian president Vladimir Putin warned Bush of such an attack weeks before Sept.11, according to Ruppert. Claims of ignorance of these warnings by officials of the Bush administration are "absolutely false," Ruppert said.
Tom Flocco, an investigative journalist who has written extensively about the unusual insider trading prior to 9-11, raised questions about the real-time monitoring of trading by the CIA and other intelligence agencies around the world. Flocco discussed the unusual trades placed by a company tied to Buzzy Krongaard, the executive director of the CIA. He said that Enron had 20 active CIA agents on its payroll before its demise. Flocco added that the anti-anthrax drug Cipro was made available at the White House on Sept.11, before any anthrax incident occurred.
A 20-year veteran of the foreign service, J. Michael Springmann, described the strange events that he noticed during his two years spent in the visa section of the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 alleged terrorists obtained their U.S. visas at the consulate in Jeddah, according to Springmann. He recalled having repeatedly turned down visa requests from suspicious individuals only to see his denials inexplicably reversed by highly-placed officials from the CIA claiming "national security" reasons.
The link between weaknesses in the immigration system and terrorism was discussed by Dr. Steve Camarota of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies. Camarota pointed to "sloppy administration," lax standards, and lack of enforcement as contributing factors which make "life a lot easier for terrorists." Of 48 suspected al Qaeda terrorists arrested inside the United states, 22 had violated immigration laws prior to 9-11, Camarota said.
VICTIMS RALLY
On June 11, 300 relatives of victims of Sept.11 rallied in front of the Capitol in Washington to demand an independent non-partisan investigation. The rally was organized by three organizations of victims' relatives and The Skyscraper Safety Campaign. Several members of Congress including House Minority leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) addressed the rally, the first of its kind in Washington, in support of the families' demand for an independent commission. The organizations say that only an independent commission can conduct a proper and comprehensive investigation free from political pressure." The relatives want an independent commission to examine the role of Congress and to complement any congressional investigations.
I asked Gephardt why it had taken nine months to call for an independent and non-partisan investigation of the terrorist attack and if he agreed that the wholesale of destruction of the evidence from the World Trade Center would hinder any future investigation. Gephardt said he was optimistic that Congress would commission an investigation before next Sept.11.
MEDIA IGNORES QUESTIONS
Many Americans remain unaware of the questions surrounding the attacks and the reluctance of Congress and the administration to commission an independent investigation. The mass media has done little to bring these issues to the attention of the public. Despite the fact that the two 9-11 events were unprecedented and of great national and historical importance, the cable network C-SPAN failed to cover either of them.
I spoke with Terry Murphy, vice president for programming at C-SPAN and head of the editorial board. Murphy said he was responsible for the decision not to cover the 9-11 press conference or rally. While C-SPAN had considered covering the events and can field more than 10 crews in Washington, Murphy said the network 'can't do it all with its limited resources." His decision not to cover the events was "totally independent" of any political pressure and he did not regret it, he said.
I asked Robin Scullin, C-SPAN's media relations spokesperson, if the network considered the concerns of the families of the "seminal event" behind the war of terrorism to be less newsworthy than the events the network had covered on June 10 and 11. Scullin said that considering the attacks of Sept.11 as the "seminal event" was an opinion and abruptly terminated the call.
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The Zionists Who Gained from 9-11 June 19, 2002
Who benefitted when the World Trade Center towers collapsed? Who controlled access to the complex prior to 9-11? These burning questions continue to be ignored by the mainstream media.
Larry Silverstein, lease-holder of the World Trade Center, and Lewis Eisenberg, the man who negotiated the lease, are key supporters of Israel who have both held high positions in the largest Israeli fund-raising institution in the United States. Silverstein and his Australian-Israeli partner, Frank Lowy, are the real estate developers who obtained 99-year leases on the rental and retail spaces of the World Trade Center shortly before the catastrophe of 9-11. Although their leased property is destroyed, the leaseholders themselves stand to gain billions of dollars from insurance.
Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, personally arranged the privatization of the World Trade Center property and oversaw the negotiations that delivered the leases into the private hands of Silverstein and Lowy. Eisenberg was recently appointed finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
How did these well-known supporters of Israel come to control the property? What actually caused the buildings to collapse? There are two schools of thought.
There is the "official" theory that hijacked planes crashed into the towers and the subsequent fuel fires caused the twin towers to fall. The second theory, however, argues that other devices, such as explosive charges, were used to collapse the towers in a kind of controlled demolition for which the planes provided a useful distraction.
There remain significant amounts of eyewitness testimony and evidence to support the theory that explosives contributed to the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7, which fell for no apparent reason late in the afternoon of 9-11. WTC 7 was a 47-story building built by Silverstein on property leased from the Port Authority.
There are video recordings and photographs which appear to show explosions occurring at the base of the towers prior to and during the collapses. In a remarkable three-dimensional image published in the German magazine GEO EPOCHE, which dedicated the December 2001 issue to 9-11, there are five or six large and deep craters be seen beneath the rubble. At least four huge craters are seen where the twin towers stood and one is squarely at the center of WTC 6. Another photograph shows what appears to be a sand-colored blast originating at the base of one of the towers and growing into an immense cloud of dust.
If explosive charges were used to collapse the towers, the question of who had access to the buildings prior to 9-11 emerges. Silverstein controlled access to the towers from the end of July when he obtained the 99-year lease. Who Silverstein is and how he obtained these leases for a fraction of their value are questions that have been completely avoided by the mainstream media.
Silverstein is the New York City commercial landlord who built WTC 7 in 1987. Silverstein won, with Lowy's Westfield America, a 99-year right-to-lease of the World Trade center from Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on July 26, 2001. While Silverstein controlled the 10.6 million-square-foot office space in the WTC complex, Westfield leased the 427,000 square-foot retail mall.
Silverstein and Eisenberg have both held leadership positions with the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a billion dollar Zionist "charity" organization. Silverstein is a former chairman of United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc. This is an umbrella organization which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for its network of hundreds of member Zionist agencies in the United States and Israel.
Eisenberg, who was instrumental in obtaining the lease for Silverstein, sits on the Planning Board of UJA/United Jewish Federation. Eisenberg was the key person in negotiating the lease for Silverstein and Westfield, who were not the winners of the final bidding process on the 110-story towers. While the high bid came from Vornado Realty Trust, its path was blocked by demands to pay back taxes. In March 2001, Vornado pulled out after failing to reach a purchase agreement with Eisenberg, which opened the door for Silverstein and Lowy. Lowy obtained the retail lease in April while it took Silverstein until the end of July to obtain funding for the down payment.
One lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., accused Silverstein of misallocating insurance money paid out after the 9-11 attack. In a complaint filed on Jan. 14 in the State Supreme court in Manhattan, the lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., asserts that Silverstein used some insurance money to pay lobbyists in Albany and in Washington to try to limit his liability to the victims.
Eisenberg is a "New York moneyman" and a former Democrat who supports the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to "pro-choice" Republican candidates. The newly appointed finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, Eisenberg has also served as a vice president of the strong arm of the Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
When New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman appointed Eisenberg Chairman of the Port Authority in February 1996, Forbes magazine said the formerly disgraced Goldman Sachs partner "got real lucky."
"What a strange political appointment," the magazine said, "considering the part he played in the sex scandal that rocked Goldman Sachs after his secretary accused him of sexually harassing her. "The truth ended up being that, yes, they had a brief affair, but, no, she was never harassed," Forbes wrote, adding, "all charges were dismissed, though Eisenberg did resign."
Silverstein is engaged in a lawsuit to double his insurance pay-off and may win as much as $7.1 billion from the insurance companies by arguing that the destruction of the towers was two insured events instead of one. The property was insured for $3.55 billion. Silverstein Properties Inc. had asked the judge to rule on the one-loss-or-two issue in a lawsuit against 22 of the 22 insurers on the property. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. rejected a notion for summary judgment in June. A trial is scheduled Sept. 3, although a request for a delay by the insurers is under consideration. While Silverstein Properties, a family-owned business, is "disappointed that the issue was not decided at this time, they are confident that they will prevail at trial," said Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Silverstein.
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Israeli Agents Confess to 9-11 Mission June 28, 2002
The jubilant Israeli intelligence agents caught photographing the attacks on the World Trade Center were allowed to return to Israel where they divulged the purpose of their mission on a television program saying, "Our purpose was to document the event."
I first reported the explosive story of the 5 suspicious Israelis seen celebrating while filming the attacks on the World Trade Center shortly after September 11. ABC News recently reported on this story and added a comment that deserves attention.
The Forward, a respected Jewish newspaper in New York, reported that at least two of the men were Israeli intelligence (Mossad) agents. The Israeli agents were first seen filming the attack on the WTC while kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of a New Jersey apartment building across the river from lower Manhattan. "They seemed to be taking a movie," the resident who noticed them said. The men were taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background, she said. What struck her were the expressions on the men's faces. "They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange," she said.
She found the behavior so suspicious that she wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police. The FBI was soon on the scene and a statewide bulletin was issued on the van. The van belonged to a Mossad front company called Urban Moving Systems. Around 4 p.m. on Sept. 11, the van was pulled over, and five Israelis: Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari, all between 22 and 27 years old, were arrested at gunpoint. One had $4,700 in cash hidden in his sock while another carried two foreign passports. Box cutters were found in the van.
"WE ARE NOT YOUR PROBLEM"
According to the police report, one of the men said they had been on the West Side Highway, which borders the World Trade Center on the west, "during the incident" — referring to the World Trade Center attack. Sivan Kurzberg, the driver, said, "We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem."
The case was turned over to the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Section because the FBI believed Urban Moving Systems was a "cover for an Israeli intelligence operation," ABC reported. While the FBI searched the company's Weehawken, N.J., offices, removing boxes of documents and a dozen computer hard drives, the owner of the company, Dominic Suter, was allowed to flee the country. When FBI agents tried to interview Suter a second time they discovered that he had cleared out of his New Jersey home and fled to Israel. When ABC reporters visited Urban Moving Systems, "it looked as if it had been shut down in a big hurry. Cell phones were lying around; office phones were still connected; and the property of dozens of clients remained in the warehouse."
The Israelis had been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, for overstaying their tourist visas and working in the United States illegally. Two weeks after their arrest, an immigration judge ordered them to be deported, however, FBI and CIA officials in Washington put a hold on the case, according to ABC. The five men were held in detention for more than two months. Some of them were placed in solitary confinement for 40 days and given as many as seven lie-detector tests. One of them, Paul Kurzberg, refused to take a lie-detector test for 10 weeks and then failed it, according to his lawyer.
"OUR PURPOSE WAS TO DOCUMENT THE EVENT."
A deal was struck between Israeli and U.S. government officials after 71 days and the five Israelis were put on a plane, and deported to Israel. The detained Israelis discussed their experience in America on an Israeli television talk show after their return home. One of the men said: "The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."
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Video Evidence of 9-11 Explosions Censored June 28, 2002
Video footage and photographs from 9-11 have been suppressed to prevent Americans from seeing and hearing evidence of unexplained explosions at the World Trade Center.
Although the terror attacks in New York and Washington of 9-11 occurred in broad daylight and were seen by millions around the world via television, heavy-handed media censorship has suppressed video footage that challenged the official version of events. European news networks have video footage and photos that indicate explosions occurred within the twin towers of the World Trade Center before and during the collapses. This evidence, however, is being suppressed and ignored by the U.S. media and government agencies supposedly investigating the causes of the towers' structural failures.
Relatives and fire engineering experts recently acknowledged the censorship and called on the government to allow the investigators to "review" the "essential" video and photographic evidence during a public meeting. The meeting held in New York City on June 24, was to "gather comments and suggestions" as a preliminary step for the "fact-finding" investigation planned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
President George W. Bush asked NIST to conduct an investigation into the collapse of the WTC buildings. Dr. Arden Bement, Jr., appointed by the president in August 2001, directs NIST, a bureau of the Department of Commerce. Bement was previously head of Purdue University's School of Nuclear Engineering. Prior to joining Purdue in 1993, he was vice-president of science and technology for TRW, Inc. and served as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and within the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
NIST will report its findings to Secretary of Commerce Donald L. Evans through his deputy, Phillip Bond. Evans is "almost like a brother" to Bush, according to Karen Hughes, Bush's White House counselor. Evans raised some $100 million for Bush's presidential campaign as his national finance chairman.
Although NIST was chosen by Bush to investigate the collapses, the agency reportedly launched its two-year study "partly in response to the complaints of victims' groups." Victims' families and fire engineers have been especially critical of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report released April 30. The FEMA report was faulted for failing to include input from survivors of the attacks. NIST officials say they plan to interview survivors about the final moments before the tower collapses.
The 10-month delay in starting a forensic investigation was criticized by Glen Corbett, a professor in the fire-engineering department of New York's John Jay College. Corbett said that the proposed investigation "is the type of large-scale forensic inquiry that the federal government should have launched back in September."
During the public meeting, experts addressed inadequate fireproofing and other fire safety problems in high-rise buildings. "The fire service has seen a consistent weakening in fire safety," said Vincent Dunn, a retired New York City fire chief and fire safety consultant. He described climbing through buildings after fires and finding "nothing left up there but bent warped, twisted steel. There's no spray-on [fireproofing] left."
"After nine months, after knocking on the doors of elected officials...we are finally here today," said Sally Regenhard, founder of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign and mother of Christian Regenhard, one of the many firefighters who perished on 9-11. "Apparently the problem of inadequacy in fireproofing is not something new."
Victims' families said they hope to prevent others from suffering the same grief. "I can't tell you what it's like for a mother to see that building hit, knowing your child is in the building," Mary Fetchet told the Washington Post. "We're all at risk today....I do not want 3,000 people to lose their lives and have it be in vain." She lost her son Brad, 24, in the World Trade Center.
"The data obtained from people from videotape, and from phone calls is critical to the investigation. Please don't let this crucial information slip through our fingers," said Monica Gabrielle, on the founders of Skyscraper Safety Campaign. "We do not want a repeat of what happened to the WTC evidence." More than 90 percent of the physical evidence from the WTC site has reportedly been destroyed or recycled. I spoke with Matt Heyman, a NIST spokesman, who said the agency has only 70 pieces of steel to examine. Heyman added that the NIST investigation will be based on the FEMA report.
"Occupant accounts should be gathered on the fire and damage that was seen," said James Quintiere, from the Department of Fire Protection engineering at the University of Maryland. "That type of information is essential."
"Videos and photographs need to be reviewed. This is a very intensive effort that needs to be undertaken," said Quintiere, adding, "There is an allusion to a New York police helicopter that had videos, and I don't think anyone in this investigative effort has been privy to those yet."
VIDEO EVIDENCE CENSORED
Some of the essential video footage and photographs that have been kept from the American public and investigators are those made by European media outlets, which clearly point to explosions in the towers. Numerous survivors fleeing from the burning towers have described massive explosions on camera. Such firsthand reports are essential pieces of evidence that cannot be ignored.
There is footage from eyewitness interviews in which survivors describe explosions inside the buildings. Heyman said there had been "no" mention of any evidence of explosions during the meeting. When asked if NIST would investigate the alleged explosions, Heyman said the bureau would look at "anything that contributed to the collapse of the buildings."
"On the eighth floor we were blown back by a huge explosion," a black American in a dust-covered business suit told Denmark's DR-TV on 9-11. Another survivor wearing a red shirt told Germany's SAT1: "There was a big explosion creating a lot of panic, after that we calmed down, and got out of the towers." In another SAT1 interview, Tom Canaban tells the German journalist: "There was a big explosion but I managed to get out of the tower." Within seconds two FBI agents stepped in front of the TV camera, asked Canaban to stop the interview and escorted him away.
Several firefighters also reported explosions in the towers. One fireman on camera said he witnessed a "heavy duty explosion." Veteran firefighter Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People magazine: "I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there were bombs set in the building."
Oddly enough, this writer was criticized in November by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, a Zionist pressure group, for my article, "Eyewitness Reports Persist of Bombs at WTC Collapse" in which nothing was mentioned about Jews or Israel other than the fact that one of the WTC architects lives in Israel.
Careful analysis of the footage from the collapse of the first tower indicates explosive blasts occurring 5-10 stories below the collapsing section, as if timed detonations brought the tower down in a controlled demolition. These horizontal blasts, like those seen at the base of the towers, have not been explained.
An unexplained crater occurred in the center of WTC 6. WTC 7, which housed offices of the CIA, collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon of Sept. 11. Fire engineers are baffled about what caused steel beans in WTC 7 to vaporize and the 47-story building to collapse.
An amateur video of the second plane hitting the south tower, shown on Danish TV2's "22 Fokus" on 19 September 2001, shows a laser beam-like spot moving across the west facade of the tower immediately before the plane crashes into it. The spot, which some experts believe is evidence of a laser guidance system, moves from left to right before the plane strikes the tower slightly lower and to the right of the dot.
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BBC Reported "Series of Explosions" in Twin Towers on 9-11 June 28, 2002
The government investigators who will conduct an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings held a "public meeting" at the Eastside Marriott in New York City on June 24 to listen to experts and gather input on the planned forensic inquiry. The investigative body, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), whose director was appointed by President George W. Bush, was assigned by the president to conduct a "fact-finding" investigation into the causes of the collapse with a view to making high-rise buildings safer. The NIST investigators will report to Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, one of Bush's closest friends and his former campaign finance chairman.
One must wonder at the integrity of an investigation, which fails to even address one of the most obvious causes of structural degradation of the towers before the collapse: major explosions and even "series of explosions" witnessed by survivors from the towers. During the 8-hour NIST meeting there was not a single mention of the numerous eyewitness reports of "bombs," "heavy-duty explosions," or "series of explosions" prior to and during the collapse of the twin towers.
Fire fighters, workers, journalists, and people in the street all reported seeing explosions unrelated to the crashed planes in the upper parts of the towers, but this important evidence has been omitted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report which was released in April, and upon which the NIST investigation will be based. FEMA's failure to use eyewitness testimony has been severely criticized by the organizations of the relatives of the victims. FEMA's director, Joseph Allbaugh, is a close friend of the president as well. It was during the FEMA-run "investigation" that most of the physical evidence from the tower's was destroyed and recycled. Much of the structural steel was reportedly sent to China and "mob-run" junkyards, according to New York City police.
While eyewitness reports of bombs and explosions in the towers have evidently been censored within the American mass media, there was a flurry of reports from European news sources on September 11 that described major explosions occurring long after the buildings had been struck by the planes.
On September 11, eight hours after the towers were hit, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) interviewed one of its New York-based reporters, Steve Evans, who was in the second tower when it was hit. Evans was asked what he had seen: "Its more what I felt really," Evans said. "I was at the base of the 2nd tower, the second tower that was hit. There was an explosion – I didn't think it was an explosion – but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake … then when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions…" At this point the London news anchor cuts Evans off in mid-sentence with a question rather than listen to Evans continue to describe the "series of explosions" that he saw and felt. Evans' voice was turned down.
In a minute, however, Evans returns to the "series of explosions" that he witnessed: "We can only wonder at the kind of damage – the kind of human damage – which was caused by those explosions – those series of explosions," Evans said. Evans is a professional journalist and his observations of explosions in the second tower need to be taken into account by anybody looking into the cause of the catastrophe of September 11. Many eyewitnesses have reported similar explosions, but these reports, and what they suggest, are intentionally being censored and avoided by the very people who are supposed to be investigating the cause of the collapses.
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Video Evidence of Unexplained Explosion in WTC 6 July 2, 2002
Images of unidentified aircraft and missiles photographed during the attack on the World Trade Center suggest that 9-11 was the "highly planned, covert, special-operation," which some astute observers have claimed from the beginning.
The awful moment when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center is an event captured on film and videotape from many angles. Among the archive of photographic and video evidence are distinct images of unidentified aircraft and missiles that appear to have played significant roles in the attack. The fact that the leading federal agencies involved in the criminal investigation of 9-11 deny any knowledge of these photographs lends credence to those who maintain the attack was "a domestic, covert, special operation."
Although millions of people have watched on video the horrible spectacle of the second hijacked plane plunging into the smooth facade of the south tower, very few have seen the mysterious white aircraft that accompanied it on a nearby parallel path slightly to the north. While viewers' attention was focused on the crash and subsequent fireball, few noticed the missile streaking toward 6 and WTC 7 at the edge of the screen. The blurred streak that appeared from behind the smoking north tower disappeared in the wink of an eye into the lower right hand corner of the screen.
Frame-by-frame analysis of that video shows what appears to be an incredibly fast streaking missile, headed toward 6 or WTC 7, at the precise moment the plane exploded in the south tower. Six WTC was an 8-story building, which was left with a huge unexplained crater at its center while WTC 7 burned and collapsed late in the afternoon on 9-11, for no apparent reason. Fire engineers are baffled as to what caused the 47-story building, built by Larry Silverstein in 1987, to collapse.
"Even though Building 7 didn't get much attention in the media immediately, within the structural engineering community, it's considered to be much more important to understand," said William F. Baker, a partner in charge of structural engineering at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "They say, 'We know what happened at 1 and 2, but why did 7 come down?'"
"EVAPORATED" STEEL BEAMS
Sections of the steel beams in WTC 7 seem to have "evaporated", according to a New York Times article of November 29, 2001. "A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures, Dr. Jonathan Barnett said."
Engineers are investigating whether intensely hot fires resulted from thousands of gallons of diesel fuel stored in the building. While one tank held 6,000 gallons of fuel to power the mayor's command bunker on the 23rd floor, another set of four tanks held as much as 36,000 gallons just below ground level on the building's southwest side for emergency generators. "The fuel absolutely could be a factor," said Silvian Marcus, executive vice president for the Cantor Seinuk Group and a structural engineer involved in the original design of the building, which was completed in 1987. But he added, "The tanks may have accelerated the collapse, but did not cause the collapse."
Two firefighters, Deputy Chief James Jackson and Battalion Chief Blaich, said that the southwest corner of WTC 7 near the fuel tank was severely damaged and that the tanks might have been breached. Jackson said that about an hour before the building's collapse, heavy black smoke, consistent with a fuel fire of some sort, was coming from that part of the building.
DID A "BUNKER BUSTER" MISSILE HIT WTC 7?
The streaking missile seen in the video could have pierced the heavy masonry that protected the diesel storage tanks. The missile is obviously traveling extremely fast, at an estimated 5,000 feet per second (3,400 mph). The U.S. military has a LOSAT (line-of-sight anti-tank) missile that travels that fast with a range of 4 miles that can be guided by laser or Global Positioning technology. The LOSAT Kinetic Energy Missile uses its velocity rather than explosives to destroy tanks, buildings, and bunkers. No other military is known to have such a missile.
In the WTC video the black streaking object travels an estimated 1,000 feet in the space of 4 frames, each frame taking 1/30 of a second. Although a video might not capture an image of the missile, experts say the rapidly dissipating exhaust of a LOSAT can be captured on film if the lighting, angle and background conditions are suitable.
I asked Matthew Heyman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency investigating the structural collapses at the World Trade Center, if the investigation would examine the photographic evidence of a missile and the crater in 6-WTC. "Yes", Heyman said, but only if evidence of a missile is presented, adding that the 2-year investigation will only study the collapses of the twin towers and WTC 7.
Although numerous images of unidentified aircraft and missiles are accessible in the public archive of WTC video footage and have been scrutinized frame-by-frame by Internet sleuths, federal investigators and the mainstream media pretend to be completely ignorant of their existence. Spokesmen for the federal agencies engaged in the 9-11 investigation all feigned ignorance of the aforementioned video images when contacted by this reporter on
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