The U.S. Congress created the Department of War in 1789.  One hundred and sixty years later, in 1949, it became the Department of Defense.  The various factors involved in the name change likely included fatigue with death and destruction after World War II.  But these factors may also have included salesmanship among the dogs of war, soft-selling their wares.  Two years after the name change, President Truman and friends took the nation to war with the newly named Department of Defense, albeit without a formal declaration of war by Congress.  He called Korea a “police action.” History has taken him to task on that one, and it is now commonly called the “Korean War.”  We’ve had lots of wars since then, as well, but not a single formal declaration of war since World War II.

In November 2002, a new entity arrived when the Department of Homeland Security was established.  The DHS had seemingly laudable goals, on the surface.  But the question arises — if we already had a Department of Defense, why did we need a Department of Homeland Security?  Back in 2003, I asked this question of a top political historian, and he responded “Bill, don’t be silly.  We need the Department of Defense to protect our troops overseas!”

Speaking of defense and wars and the like, there is another entity with an inward-looking name and a broader set of goals.  In 1849, the Department of the Interior was created.  Its responsibilities have been described in terms of land and resource management and conservation, and the Department manages millions of acres of federal lands and dams.  But “land and resource management” can also be a broad ambition, depending on how you define those terms.

In 1879, an act of Congress established the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  This organization did a lot of mapping and energy exploration support services as the U.S. frontier moved west.  During World War I, the USGS intensified its efforts supporting energy and mineral exploration, and in collaboration with the War Department.

Today, the USGS remains within the Department of the Interior — and tied not to the War Department, but to the Defense Department.  This ‘Interior’ department conducts many studies of energy and mineral resources internationally, like these studies for Afghanistan.  Considering Afghanistan a responsibility of the Interior Department, well, it gives a little cause for pause. Afghanistan might be an interior responsibility, one imagines, given that the most direct way to get there is through the interior of the earth.

The pause may get a little longer given that the USGS released an appraisal of Afghanistan in the summer of 2001.  This appraisal included a review of the country’s mineral resources, as well as respect for the country’s location within the “Interior.”

Afghanistan has additional economic potential because of its strategic geographical position as a transit route for Central Asian hydrocarbons to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multibillion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through the country.

U.S. negotiations over energy issues with Afghanistan were intensifying at this time, and reportedly soured, with military threats from the U.S., soon before 9/11.  We will survey this area of our interior history more closely in future articles. Meanwhile we may need to rename the Defense Department the War Department.  This could make things a little more honest, as well as constitutional.  In turn, maybe we should rename the “Department of the Interior,” and call it the “Department of the Interior and Exterior,” if it is to retain its global mission.

# # # #
 

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Last year investigative journalist David Boyajian wrote two exposés on Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center, revealing how the center has been violating its Congressional mandate and been up to its neck in tainted corporate cash. You can read Boyajian’s exposés here and here. Many agreed with Boyajian’s damning assessment, including a prominent journalist who called the WWC “a global joke.” I too wrote a follow up article on WWC with a special focus on its ‘oily’ President, Mr. Lee Hamilton. By oily, I mean ‘glisteningly greasy.’ I am sure you recognize his name from his highly publicized position and face as one of the 9/11 Commissioners, but his possibly pay-off position with WWC was not the lone factor for his glistening status in my report. Here are a few excerpts from my piece to illustrate what I mean:

Fortunately one independent reporter researched and reported on one such case, call it ‘chased the egg,’ on one of the 9/11 Commissioners, a Former Representative, Mr. Lee Hamilton, which I happened to come across yesterday. It was truly interesting to see how many ‘honorary’ positions Mr. Hamilton has been given, handed, by our government alone, just check out a few here:

-Co-chair of the Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future with Brent Scowcroft

-Serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board & the FBI Director’s Advisory Board,

-Serves on the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force

- Serves on the CIA External Advisory Board

The White House, the CIA, and the FBI must have been extremely well-served by Hamilton’s performance as the commissioner to grant him this many prestigious quasi positions. No? For me, the most interesting aspect which was covered by CounterCurrents.Org had to do with Hamilton’s position with and current salary from the Woodrow Wilson Center, and his questionable corporate ties, particularly with BAE Systems, the main sponsor of his forthcoming gala dinner…

You can read my entire article ‘9/11 Commissioner’s Turkey Baste: Chicken or the Egg?’ here. Now back to the focus of this post.

On Friday, December 16, Boyajian wrote another damning exposé on WWC in Foreign Policy Journal which went, of course, largely underreported. This time, the focus of the article was on the new president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center (WWC), another oily persona, another woman with a past, another representative: Jane Harman. I am sure you remember her massive scandal involving espionage-AIPAC-Israel that was quickly covered up and forgotten by the US mainstream media. No?   

How about Harman’s role as ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee in failing to protest when briefed on the Bush administration’s illegal wiretap program and voting for the Iraq war authorization? Come on, even Dick Cheney confirmed that Harman knew about and approved of the program. We all know she got where she got by being good at being a lap dog and an oily one. Let’s add ‘savvy’ to the list of Harman’s adjectives; by that I mean savvy in being damningly oily. The woman knows how to redirect or turn off spotlights to hide her glistening parts: have some control of the spotlights switch. She sits on the board of Newsweek, and maintains intimate relationships with the media puppeteers.

All right, this time let’s go back to Boyajian’s exposé and just stay there. Enough detours. The title of the exposé alone is revealing: “The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman & the Woodrow Wilson Center”.

Several months ago, this Congressionally-created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder. It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D–CA) to be its president, replacingLee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.

Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond. Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years. Let’s take a closer look at Harman and the Wilson Center to see why they’re the marriage from hell.

Oh yes. Boyajian unabashedly puts this glistening woman and WWC under a magnifying class damningly and invites readers to join and see for themselves. I’ll list a few damning excerpts, and then let you go read the entire piece. Here is Harman and her AIPAC scandal:

Harman would persuade the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, AIPAC and its influential supporters would persuade then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint the unpopular Harman as top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.Harman apparently promised the “Israeli agent” to “waddle into” the AIPAC scandal “if you think it’ll make a difference.” Harman ended the exchange with “this conversation doesn’t exist.”

The Justice Department and CIA wanted to prosecute Harman. But Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s Attorney General, reportedly refused because – ironically – he “needed Jane” to support the government’s ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.

…

Part of why the WWC has all but ignored Wilson’s record on Turkey and the Caucasus is undoubtedly that many major donors (present and past members of its elite “Wilson Alliance”) have lobbied for, or been members of trade organizations that have lobbied for, Turkey and against the Armenian resolution. These include Alcoa, BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, Bombardier, Chevron, Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil and Honeywell.

In fact, Harman’s predecessor, Lee Hamilton, engaged in a clear conflict of interest during his tenure by sitting on the board of BAE Systems, a defense giant which does lots of business with Turkey. Last year a Federal judge slapped BAE’s parent corporation with a $400 million criminal fine for “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law … on an enormous scale. “Too bad the judge didn’t also look into the Wilson Center.

Hamilton also sat on the board of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “global strategy firm” headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Hamilton’s WWC bio, incredibly, was dead silent about his corporate affiliations. This same Lee Hamilton co-chaired the official National Commission on the 9/11 attacks, whose report has been widely criticized as incomplete and biased. Hamilton and Harman, you see, can be counted on not to rock the corporate establishment’s boat.

…

In the following ‘damning’ paragraph Boyajian mentions another familiar glistening character, Marc Grossman

The WWC is rife with other questionable characters, including those with deep ties to Turkey, such as former board member and present Wilson Council member Ignacio Sanchez, a lobbyist employed by DLA Piper, which is a registered foreign agent for Turkey. And former “Wilson Public Policy Scholar” Marc Grossman, ex-US ambassador to Turkey and DLA Piper bigwig. “Coincidentally,” Sanchez and Grossman were both on the WWC Search Committee that hired Harman.

…

I encourage you to read this damning exposé on our nation’s plentiful damnable figureheads and public servants-turned master. While you are reading think about Victor Hugo’s le Miserable; think about those poor suckers in jail for the possession of 5 ounces of dry weeds; think about the mega charlatans, mega corporate criminals, mega representatives-turned-mega foreign lobbyists selling our nation’s soul-shrunken wealth to the highest bidders …Think about us the people, the biggest suckers of all in all this.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

This is Part 5 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here: Part I, Part II, Part III , and Part IV.

Richard Moore shares with us his unique perspective on the working of the political world at the highest levels, the matrix of a fabricated collective illusion, how this matrix of unreality is formed for us, and his proposals for escaping it. He discusses consensus reality, as generated by official rhetoric and amplified by mass media, and how this perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left and right, bears very little relationship to actual reality, and remain as a fabricated collective illusion. Mr. Moore further discusses the new post World War II paradigm which was designed and planned in a series of meetings, by a handful of people selected from the Council on Foreign Relations, to specifically serve the interests of central bankers. He talks about the recent rise in collective activism energy such as the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy Movement, and various protests in Europe, the left and right as illusions foisted on us to keep us divided, the importance of localism and inclusiveness in pursuit of real changes, and more!

Richard K Moore, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, retired and moved to Ireland in 1994 to begin his ‘real work’ – trying to understand how the world works, and how we can make it better. Many years of researching and writing culminated in his widely acclaimed book Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Change the World (The Cyberjournal Project, 2005). His Cyberjournal email list has been going since 1994 (cyberjournal.org). The book’s website is http://escapingthematrix.org, and his website is http://cyberjournal.org. He can be contacted via email at rkm@quaylargo.com.

Here is our guest Richard Moore unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

A question asked by many shocked observers today both inside and outside of the United States is “what has become of the America I knew and loved?”

Beginning in the late 1930s as an overt propaganda campaign against fascist Germany and Imperial Japan, the world was treated to a Hollywood version of America as a democratic society that despite its flaws managed to maintain the egalitarian principles of its founding fathers and continued to press forward as a beacon of liberty, individualism and human rights.

As a romanticized ideal, the narrative of that America was of a “great melting pot” for all races where upward mobility, modernism and economic and religious freedom promised a better life for all those willing to make it work. And for millions it once did.

With a manufacturing and farm economy the envy of the world, a burgeoning middle-class and a huge military establishment garrisoning the world, the ideal was temporarily sustainable. But as the years wore on, the economy and political system constricted and the Pentagon grew to gargantuan proportions, the yawing schism between the real America and the illusory bygone America of Hollywood’s imagination began to take on a frightening dimension.

We have illustrated in our two multi-part series, 9/11, Psychological Warfare and the American Narrative and House of Mirrors that whatever America once appeared to be, at least since World War II and the beginning of the Cold War up to 9/11, it never was the country we thought it to be.  

Although still theoretically governed by rules, democratic laws and financial regulations, the real America of today has come to be controlled by the private and personal agendas of a handful of people and the vast majority of the American public disapproves of it. Over the years, organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg group and the Club of Rome are known to have exerted a decisive role over government policies and mass media. We have been warned of the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Rothschilds and their desires for political control of the world through financial manipulation. Yet, despite their monopolistic and anti-democratic efforts their power and their money continue to fuel popular allure. We have written of secret intelligence organizations such as Le Cercle, the Safari Club and the 61 which at the behest of international business cartels both legal and illegal have secretly undermined democratic elections, overthrown governments and generally subverted the will of the people for the benefit of a chosen few.

But who are these few, and what are their plans for our country and the world? Where are we headed and most of all, what principles are guiding what increasingly resembles an international governmental, financial and geopolitical shipwreck brought on by years of Laissez-faire fiscal abuse, corporate greed and political delusion?

Our personal understanding of the present dilemma starts with another shipwreck, this one off the coast of Ireland in the year 1577. That was the year a notorious English pirate and slave trader named Martin Frobisher smashed a schooner filled with what was thought to be gold bullion onto the isolated, rocky, western coast of Ireland at a place known as Smerwick. According to one account, Frobisher’s mission was intended to find the fabled Northwest Passage to China as part of a “Protestant adventure that would rival the Catholic quest as well as enrich the queen’s [Elizabeth I] treasury.” The “gold”—which was soon revealed to be nothing more than iron pyrites (fools gold)—spilled from the broken ship’s hull, littering the base of the cliffs.

An Irish rebel-captain by the name of James Fitzmaurice raised a fort at the summit of the cliffs and named it Fort Del Oro, (Fort of Gold) to mock Queen Elizabeth’s greed and her vain quest to challenge Rome for wealth and power. Fitzmaurice’s family, the Fitzgeralds had been in conflict with London over land and authority since initiating the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century at the behest of their lord, Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke.

Chafing under the rule of King Henry II of England, Strongbow pictured himself as the King of Ireland and his marriage to the daughter of Irish King Dermot MacMurrough was intended to seal the agreement. But fate and the driving ambitions of Henry II soon scuttled the plan and upon Strongbow’s death a short time later, the equally ambitious Fitzgeralds assumed his mission.  

Known for their loyalty to a Catholic Rome, their embrace of Ireland’s Celtic culture and their fierce desire to establish their control over Ireland, the next four hundred years found the family drawn deeply into English as well as European politics with numerous Geraldines (the family name) interned in the Tower of London. The coming of the Reformation to England in the 16^th century turned four hundred years of border disputes and jurisdictional feuding into holy war. And in 1580, the Holy See in Rome sent an army of Italians and Spaniards to help the Geraldines under the authority drafted by the “Just War Doctrine,”to help in the fight against Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant forces.

Dubbed by author Richard Berleth as the “Twilight Lords” for their role as the last doomed, feudal barons of Ireland, the Fitzgeralds and their struggle to fight off the Elizabethans and the Renaissance Neoplatonism of men such as Edmund Spencer and Walter Raleigh offers a glimpse into more than just another stale moment in history. It offers a revelation into a secret esoteric struggle between the spiritual forces of London, Rome, Moscow, Washington and Berlin that exploded openly into war numerous times during the 20^th century and whose ominous final confrontation looms over today’s geopolitical arena like a sword of Damocles.

Allegorized by the Elizabethans as evil and representative of the darkness in Spencer’s Faerie Queene, the Fitzgeralds came to embody the “Other” in the English propaganda of the day, while Elizabeth as both the Faerie Queene and Britomart and her knights embodied only the most chaste and blessed in the tradition of the Arthurian Round Table.

Far from being only a war over ecclesiastical principles, this “holy war” fought between the Catholic Geraldines and their Protestant others was also a war against economic domination and colonization from London. From London’s perspective, the war was a just war because it was a struggle to the death against the Papal forces of the Counter Reformation, which were encircling it militarily and economically and rolling back Protestant reforms. In the end, the war depopulated the Irish countryside, shifted the balance of power from local landowners to mercantilists in London and instilled a lasting fear and anger between Protestants and Catholics. As an experiment in colonization, Ireland set the standards of behavior that marked the beginnings of Britain’s empire that live on as much today in the neighborhoods of Kabul, Kandahar and Peshawar as they do in Derry and Belfast. But it also marked a turning point in the Holy Roman Empire’s ability to control events through military force and a shift from the ecclesiastically sanctioned violence of “just war” to the secular/state sanctioned violence of “just war.”

When in 1980 Colin Gray and Keith Payne attempted to stretch that concept of just war to justify nuclear war-fighting by transforming immorality into morality, it came as a cruel awakening to us that despite the gulf of four hundred years little had changed in the need to bend reality to justify war.

But in the thirty years since, the savage carnival of endless war with its attendant think tanks and lobbyists has only made the darkness blacker. In fact, the spiritual inspiration that propels today’s Washington/London/Berlin/Paris alliance and its so called humanitarian interventions could be considered nothing less than diabolic in which – as stated in the opening chapter to this series – America has turned from the light into its very opposite as it seeks to emulate “the dark matter… the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.”

In battling the Elizabethans, the Fitzgeralds exhausted the very idea of Just War by plunging themselves and their hopeless cause into darkness. We can only hope as the U.S. continues to wander through the many facets of darkness contained within this House of Mirrors that someday soon, it will heed the lessons of history and find its way back to the clarity and sanity of the light.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

As financial markets struggle with repeated failures by our central planners in ‘managing’ the crisis in the Eurozone, a recent statement by President Barack Obama is worth highlighting.  On September 13, 2011, in a speech addressing criticism of his jobs plan, Obama stated in part:

“I get fed up with that kind of game plan, and we’ve been seen it for too long.  Too long.  We’re in a national emergency.” 

Granted, this has been the worst recession, and worst jobs recovery from a recession, since the Great Depression.  But a national emergency?  Are we talking nuclear attacks, poison in the water supply, or a new and unstoppable infectious disease?

What is a ‘national emergency,’ anyway?  Might those words carry legal meaning?

In fact, they do, and speaking of the Great Depression and financial markets, well, history matters.

When Obama was giving his speech back in early September, the flare-up in the crisis in the Eurozone was just getting started.   Stock prices for large financial services firms in the US exposed to their counterparts in Europe were falling anew, while the CBOE “VIX” index (a volatility index, also called the ‘market fear index’) was spiking sharply higher.   Money market funds in the US were also exposed, with European investments comprising a surprisingly large share of their assets. 

Was this financial backdrop one component of Obama’s ‘national emergency?’  Correlation is not necessarily causation, the saying goes in econometrics.  In other words, it could have just been a coincidence.

But it is worth recognizing as well the tinderbox underneath that phase.  There is a very important area of constitutional law called ‘national emergency powers.’  The area deals with assertions of extraordinary Presidential and executive branch authority during a crisis, including any formally declared state of national emergency or a ‘time of war.’ 

For example, back in 1933, 48 hours after taking office amid a financial crisis, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a national emergency and effectively ordered the closure of all the banks in the United States.   At the time, the source of authority cited for this action was, quite questionably, the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917. 

After several decades of statutory evolution, a broader range of questionable but statutory authority for sweeping executive branch power over financial markets remains on the books today.  In fact, one such current font of authority, 12 U.S.C. 95a, dates to the Trading With The Enemy Act.   Another was developed soon after FDR took his extraordinary action.  This statute, 12 U.S.C. 95(a), differs from the former on a few dimensions, not just the parentheses.  It is the current product of the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1934. 

Do the safeguards promoting limited government envisioned by the authors of the United States Constitution bend and sway with the whims of central authorities during crises?  Can emergency powers be abused by special interest groups at general expense?   We will have more to discuss about this important area down the road.  For now, interested readers are referred to a thorough, excellent paper by Congressional Research Service scholar Harold Relyea, a 2007 CRS report titled simply National Emergency Powers. 

(p.s. Thanks to Ed Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, for flagging that Obama quote in a recent talk Crane gave in Chicago)

# # # # 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Authors and investigative journalists Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald join us to discuss their ground-breaking exclusive series ‘House of Mirrors’ on how America’s full blown surge into personal and private holy war caused the U.S. to slip into a crisis of identity. They explore the little-analyzed facts and mystical covert agendas that the United States continues to press on with into the 21st century, what those agendas may mean to America’s new role as the dark force that orders the universe, the prevailing motives that drive American national security policy today, and its de-evolution of rational defense policy and its immersion into the mystical. Gould-Fitzgerald talk about the top secret military operation known as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which views itself as a ‘dark force,’ Mystical Imperialism traced to both Britain and Russia’s 19th century efforts to establish dominion through a mix of imperialism and Christian zeal, and more!

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story , Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their website here.

Listen to the preview Here

Here are our guest Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

More than one policy pundit has scratched their head at the strange, increasingly irrational nature of what guides American and European foreign policy. In November of 2010, commentator William Pfaff resorted to the term “medieval mysticism” to describe the “the cloud of unknowing” surrounding the run up to the all important NATO summit in Lisbon. He marveled that only by invoking the mystical past could one contemplate what was in store as the West pondered a dark future.

As odd as it may seem to modern audiences, medieval mysticism and its attendant priesthoods are not as far beneath the surface of present day policy as one might think. In fact following the crisis brought about by the failure of advanced technology to defeat Communism in Vietnam, America’s premier defense intellectuals were quick to fall back on the Middle Ages for answers to what seemed eternal and imponderable questions. 

One vivid example came from future Reagan administration officials Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne in the summer 1980 edition of Foreign Policy magazine who declared in an article titled “Victory is Possible” that: “Nuclear War is possible. But unlike Armageddon, the apocalyptic war prophesied to end history, nuclear war can have a wide range of options… If American nuclear power is to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.”

Having come of age at a time when the U.S. enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear advantage and unquestioned technological superiority, America’s plunge into military defeat in Vietnam and a rough nuclear parity with the USSR was cause for a deep philosophical reassessment. The “new right” embodied in groups like Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger and the American Security Council needed to undo the debilitating effects caused by their own failures and discrediting the strategic doctrine implemented by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara known as Mutual Assured Destruction or (MAD) topped a long list.

These former government insiders and harsh critics of détente believed that the constraints on nuclear war fighting posed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks I and II (SALT), were predicated on a false assumption that nuclear weapons were too horrible to ever be used again. Neoconservative defense intellectuals viewed this restraint as a form of suicide and vowed to break free of it utilizing some pre-enlightenment thinking that challenged the very nature of modern reality.

The ideological cold war against Communism had never relied on facts. No one on the left or right could predict with any certainty where or when a nuclear war would stop if one ever broke out. Regardless of the kind or size of nuclear weapons used, with the enemy leadership decapitated and communications destroyed, there’d be no one left who could stop it. That’s what made nuclear war irrational. Anti-Communism was a matter of faith in which the political right and the political left shared the same goals but differed only in tactics. But the political right’s accommodation of the political left was never more than an elaborate game of deception played in a house of mirrors. In fact, according to the CIA’s own documents, “the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism” for the first twenty years of the Cold War relied completely on the manipulation and control of the so called progressive, liberal, non-Communist left.

Blamed by the neoconservative right for the failure in Vietnam and the relative decline in America’s nuclear posture, this faux left’s legitimacy as a valid political factor in American politics began to crumble. With the left’s policy of nuclear restraint now dismissed as irrational what possible justification could be found to wage a nuclear war in which tens of millions of innocent Russians and Americans as well as millions of others would be killed? 

By the late 1970s, those obscure strategic analysts who had formulated America’s nuclear policies had attained the status of religious figures. With their wisdom “worshipped as gospel truth,” and their insight raised to “an almost mystical level and accepted as dogma” the high priests of the new right stood ready to displace not only the left but traditional conservatives as well. By the summer of 1980 (6 months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan)  two of those high priests were willing to take the dogma one step further by reinterpreting the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church to justify what reality, reason and common sense had forbad the U.S. from doing since the final days of World War II. 

“Ironically, it is commonplace to assert that war-survival theories affront the crucial test of political and moral acceptability” wrote Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne that summer. “Surely no one can be comfortable with the claim that a strategy that would kill tens of millions of U.S. citizens would be politically and morally acceptable. However it is worth recalling the six guidelines for the use of force provided by the “just war” doctrine of the Catholic Church…”

Carefully sidestepping the principle that war can only be “just” when used as a last resort and that targeting innocents is strictly forbidden, Gray and Payne would go on to claim that based on the most ancient rules of the game, not only did U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence toward the Soviet Union (MAD) fail to qualify for “just war,” but that in failing to plan to actually fight a nuclear war, “U.S. nuclear strategy is immoral.”

In other words, since neoconservative hawks could not use a rational scientific process to achieve victory through nuclear weapons or to find hard evidence to support their claims that the Soviets assumed they could achieve victory through theirs, they devised a new process that simply viewed the empirical evidence as a lie and whatever they could imagine as truth, based on precepts evolved by medieval monks.

The idea of justly killing one’s fellow humans had presented a moral dilemma since the origins of Christianity. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) originated the Just War theory which was later refined and expanded by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). But murdering in the name of Christ was tricky business and subject to self-serving and often conflicting interpretations. Far from the romantic notions of chivalry presented by today’s popular mythology, medieval knights were viewed by the Catholic Church at the time as lawless thugs engaged in an illicit business whose behavior was clearly “unjust.” The idea that a monk would engage in the plunder and murder of innocents, much less warfare that would bring about widespread death and destruction was anathema to church teaching.

The powerful Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux weighed in with a different opinion in his famous twelfth-century treatise De Laude Novae Militiae (In Praise of the new Knighthood) by redefining the very nature of murder itself in support of his friend Hugues de Payens, Grand Master of the warrior monks known as the Knights Templar.

 “The soldier of Christ kills safely and dies the more safely… He is the instrument of God for the punishment of malefactors and for the defense of the just. Indeed, when he kills a malefactor this is not homicide but malicide, and he is accounted Christ’s legal executioner against evildoers.”

Like Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne’s “Victory is Possible,” Clairvaux’s treatise was propaganda intended to bend the rules for the uses of acceptable violence. It opened the floodgates of recruits for the Crusades, established the legal authority of powerful, wealthy Catholic military orders and put the power of the feudal machine under Church control, at least temporarily. 

Following the publication of Gray and Payne’s 1980 treatise we became drawn to the history of just war. After three years working as the host of a public affairs program for an affiliate of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network in Boston (remember the Fairness Doctrine?) we bore witness to an aggressive underground rightwing/Christian political movement merging into the American mainstream. Some basic assumptions about America’s secular democracy and defense policy were being challenged on the basis of faith, not facts. But the idea that some medieval religious precepts could or would be called upon to justify a nuclear war-fighting doctrine was staggering.

What we didn’t know at the time was that the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church had been invoked by the Papal Nuncio for the Fitzgerald family in Ireland during the 1570s. As a Fitzgerald I knew something of my family’s history. A terrible war, brought on the Fitzgeralds by the English had destroyed much of the family’s power and depopulated the Irish countryside.

Because of the Just War Doctrine, history had suddenly become personal and as it led us into the past we began to see behind the cover story into a hidden history of events ranging from the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the events of 9/11.

Join us as we explore the journey that took us from the emerging Christian Reconstructionism of the 1970s back in time to the 12^th century Norman invasion of Ireland and what it means to the upcoming Presidential elections of 2012 in our next installment titled The Twilight Lords. 

House of Mirrors Part I

House of Mirrors Part II

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story  ,  Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

This is Part II of our interview series on the New World Order. For the Part I interview with Andrew Gavin Marshall click here.

William Engdahl joins us to discuss the geopolitics behind the phony US war in Afghanistan, how the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured, and the crucial importance of restoration and control of the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and heroin’s use as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. He talks about Washington orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process referred to as “creative destruction,” Libya’s role in Washington’s greater Middle East project, the major players in the New World Order such as the Rockefellers, Soros, Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy, the New Silk Road project and pipeline politics, and more!

F. William Engdahl is an American-German freelance journalist, historian, and economic researcher. He has a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, and has been working as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and in Europe. Mr. Engdahl is the author of several books including A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order, and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

Listen to the preview Here

Here is our guest William Engdahl unplugged! (Subscribers only)

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, numerous commentators from across a broad spectrum of opinion focused their alarm not so much on the horror of events in lower Manhattan ten years before, but on what America has become in the aftermath of that horror. Ten years on, the United States desperately expands what appears to be an increasingly irrational, corrosive and ultimately self-destructive national security mandate around the globe and here at home.

In the darkening gloom of  the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections as the U.S. builds up its forces in the Middle East and returns its attention to Asia’s Pacific rim, the CIA’s focus is no longer on analyzing intelligence on terrorists, but simply killing those perceived as a threat to its existence or perhaps more cynically, its livelihood. In the hardened fortresses of endless war, American soldiers walled off from human society claim their own lives in record numbers while in beltway foreign policy circles “Peace” has become a dirty word. In the darkening gloom, robot Predator drones target those thought to be “terrorists” or those suspected of being terrorists. Those unfortunate enough to be standing nearby are targeted as well and will one day be the target of drones piloted by computer software and facial recognition, making the machine-killing completely autonomous.

In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand.

Openly and unashamedly, “national security” now pervades all aspects of American life from the grocery store to academia to hotel check-ins to manufacturing to religion. This militarization of American society has helped to polarize the political process, dwarf diplomacy as a tool of American interests overseas and slowly and inexorably change the way Americans think about their country and behave towards each other.

Its hypnotic pull on the young (and not so young) through online electronic video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare whose most recent release pulled in a staggering $400 million on the first day of British and American sales, continues to astonish even professional observers. This celebration of modern warfare as a “game” after ten years of budget-busting real war and only two days before the November 11, Veterans Day commemoration was a cruel reminder of the Orwellian illogic of life on the other side of the mirror. But the deeper and more troubling problem now surfacing is that real war and the imagined war played out on the video screens of America now appear to have merged into one stark unreality.

Apart from the moral implications, the future of society and the very nature of who we are as human beings have been fundamentally altered by such technology. Recent studies indicate that heavy gaming may structurally alter the brain in ways comparable to a behavioral addiction.

The altered states of awareness traditionally offered by drugs and mysticism, religion and meditation have been replaced by technology of all kinds and through technology real war and fantasy war have exchanged places. But as this narcotic enticement spreads into the public sphere of politics and business, this new altered state of mind threatens to permanently upend the very nature of reality.

The tyranny of illogical thinking evidenced by the U.S. in its War on Terror can be traced most recently to the Cold War where it became necessary to throw out the burden of proof and invert the rules of logic in order to defeat Communism.

We were personally subjected to this illogic in 1982. In response to our PBS documentary on Afghanistan, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds we were informed by Karen McKay, a former U.S. army officer and spokesperson for the right-wing Washington-based propaganda outfit Committee for a Free Afghanistan,  that the Soviet’s use of poison gas in that war didn’t require proof because “we know they’re guilty.”

Such faith-based assumptions were more the realm of medieval theologians than rational analysts and the late Senator J. William Fulbright said so in his 1972 New Yorker article titled, Reflections: In Thrall To Fear.

“The truly remarkable thing about this Cold War psychology,” he wrote, “is the totally illogical transfer of the burden of proof from those who make charges to those who question them… The Cold Warriors, instead of having to say how they knew that Vietnam was part of a plan for the Communization of the world, so manipulated the terms of public discussion as to be able to demand that the skeptics prove that it was not.”

Fulbright realized that “Rational men could not deal with each other on this basis,” and arrive at anything resembling “truth.” But this understanding quickly evaporated as the Vietnam era ended and the U.S. drifted into a realm governed by irrational men unable to accept that God might not forever be on America’s side. Powered by an ideology freed from logic as well as the reality that Vietnam had overwhelmingly disproved their theories of war and their rationales for using them, America’s defense intellectuals lapsed deeper into a distorted mirror of illogic.

Guided by old ideologues who’d helped to create the Cold War like Paul Nitze, Leo Cherne, William Casey and General Danny Graham and leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Harvard professor Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, their group known as Team B guided the restructuring of American military policy towards the Soviet Union not on the basis of fact or proof, but only on what their minds could imagine in their wildest fantasies.

In fact, Team B accused the CIA’s analysts of “Mirror imaging,” their own intentions once again as President Kennedy’s science advisor Jerome Wiesner had claimed back in the 1960s. Only this time (in a further twist of logic) they claimed the mirror image was of American weakness and not strength reflected in the mirror of the Soviets’ steely eyes.

The idea that the Soviet Union could or should be judged solely based on an ideological perspective was rejected by Washington’s more rational elite. “I would say that all of it was fantasy,” said Anne Hessing Cahn who worked on the staff of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1982 to 1988. “They looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said ‘this is a laser beam weapon’ when in fact it was nothing of the sort… And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems and you examine them one by one, they were all wrong… I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.”

So what is true about the prevailing motives that drive American national security policy today?  In the summer of 1980 we got a major clue to the thinking behind the neoconservative’ s aggressive plotting to overturn the U.S. government’s rational policy regarding nuclear weapons (Mutual Assured Destruction) by replacing it with a faith-based policy that would justify fighting nuclear wars.

Join us next as we unravel the de-evolution of rational defense policy and its immersion into the mystical as we explore the radical 1980 re-interpretation of  the 4^th century Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church and it perennial advocates.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story  ,  Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice.  Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

 In his recent book The Black Banners, former FBI agent Ali Soufan portrays a key 9/11 Commission staff member, Doug MacEachin, as believing the CIA deliberately withheld information from the FBI in January 2001. This is in contrast with the Commission’s final report, which states that the CIA failed to pass on intelligence to the FBI on multiple occasions, but puts it down to honest failings.

MacEachin was one of the best-known of the Commission’s staffers before its formation. He was a career CIA officer and even served as Deputy Director for Intelligence between 1993 and 1996.

According to Soufan, MacEachin believed that the CIA purposefully withheld information placing al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash at the Malaysia summit, a gathering of top al-Qaeda figures in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 that was monitored by the CIA. This intelligence was especially significant because it linked bin Attash, then known to be a mastermind of the October 2000 USS Cole bombing, to future Flight 77 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

Had the FBI learned what the CIA knew of the Malaysia summit at this time, its Cole investigators would have focused on Almihdhar and Alhazmi eight months before 9/11, giving them plenty of opportunity to stop the plot.

In his book, Soufan describes a meeting between himself and some Commission staffers, evidently Soufan’s second interview with the Commission on September 15, 2003.

Soufan says he started the interview by discussing a source inside al-Qaeda that he and his partner Steve Bongardt had helped recruit some time before the Cole bombing. In late 2000, the source had been shown a passport photo provided by the Yemeni authorities of a person the FBI thought to be bin Attash, and had identified him as such to a CIA officer known only as “Chris” and FBI agent Michael Dorris. This was another plank in the case being built against bin Attash for the Cole bombing.

Shortly after, in murky circumstances Soufan does not discuss, the CIA sent pictures of Almihdhar and Alhazmi taken at the Malaysia summit for the source to try to identify. While Dorris was out of the room, Chris showed the pictures to the source, who said he did not know Almihdhar, but identified the photo of Alhazmi as bin Attash; the two men had similar facial features.

Although the photo was not actually of bin Attash, it simply caused the CIA to believe something that was, in fact, true. Bin Attash had been at the Malaysia meeting, the agency had photos of him there; it simply omitted to show them to the source.

Whereas Chris had had the previous identification, of bin Attash in the Yemeni-provided photograph, repeated for Dorris’ benefit, this second identification of bin Attash was not repeated. In fact, Chris kept completely silent about it.

Soufan quotes himself as telling the Commission:

After 9/11 we learned that the CIA went behind our backs and showed the pictures of the Malaysia summit meeting—the pictures they wouldn’t share with us—to the source. They didn’t tell us that they had shown him the pictures, nor did they share with us what he told them about the pictures. He didn’t know that the CIA wasn’t sharing information with the FBI; nor was he told why these pictures were important. …

… This shows that the CIA knew the significance of Malaysia, Khallad, and Mihdhar but actively went out of their way to withhold the information from us. It’s not a case of just not passing on information. This is information the FBI representative working with the source should have been told about. It was a legal requirement. Instead we were deliberately kept out of the loop.

A Commission staffer then interjected that the CIA claimed it had shared the information, and Soufan responded by asking whether the Commission had checked the “regular cables,” meaning general reporting of the debriefing of the source, including information that would be shared with the FBI and the wider intelligence community. The staffer replied that they had. As later reported, the regular cables contained no mention of the key fact that that the mastermind of the Cole bombing had attended a summit of al-Qaeda leaders in Malaysia. Soufan then asked whether the Commission had checked the “operational traffic,” where mention of the source’s identification of bin Attash was later found. At this point MacEachin exclaimed, “That must be it,” although Soufan judged that the other Commission staffers in the room had not understood his point.

Soufan explains what MacEachin had grasped:

Operational traffic refers to cables sent during an operation. The officer will list procedures, leaving a record in case something goes wrong or something needs to be referred to. Because these cables are strictly procedural and not related to intelligence, they would not be sent to the FBI. If someone wanted to hide something from the FBI, that’s where he would put it. Because Doug had worked for the CIA, he knew what operational cables were, while other members of the team might not have.

This clearly indicates MacEachin had come round to Soufan’s way of thinking, at least on this point. However, the Commission’s final report did not find that this information about bin Attash—or indeed any information—was deliberately withheld by the CIA. In fact, the final report calls this incident “an example of how day-to-day gaps in information sharing can emerge even when there is mutual goodwill.”

Chris subsequently met with the source again, in the presence of Dorris and other FBI agents, and they repeated the first identification of the Yemeni-provided photograph of bin Attash for formal use in legal proceedings. However, Chris did not mention that bin Attash had attended the Malaysia summit. Chris also reported the identification of bin Attash to the CIA station in Yemen, which failed to pass it on to the FBI Cole investigators there. Finally, Chris also asked the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center to bring the FBI up to speed with what was going on, but they also failed to tell their colleagues bin Attash had been identified in a Malaysia photograph.

Soufan later refers to MacEachin as a “supporter of mine,” indicating that there was some disagreement inside the Commission. As we can see from the final report, the opinion that the failure to pass on information was not deliberate prevailed.

Nevertheless, there are still questions. In the recently released audio documentary Who Is Rich Blee? 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean disagreed with his own report’s conclusions, stating of the CIA’s failure to pass on information: “[I]t wasn’t careless oversight. It was purposeful. No question about that in mind. It was purposeful.” Does MacEachin, agreeing with his former boss, still believe that information about bin Attash was deliberately withheld from the FBI? Also, what other information does he think was withheld—the interview of the source in Islamabad was only one piece of a larger mosaic? Finally, what happened in the discussions of this issue within the Commission—if MacEachin was a “supporter” of Soufan, who were his opponents?

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

On November 1, the Chicago Tribune reported how the City of Chicago’s “Corporation Counsel,” Stephen Patton, responded to a question about a dispute over the authority of the City Inspector General, Joseph Ferguson.  Ferguson has faced noncompliance with subpoenas he has issued to the city.  New mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Corporation Counsel has argued to the State Supreme Court that the city has the authority to enforce these subpoenas, not the inspector general alone, and the city also holds sole authority to hire outside counsel in matters at issue. 

This article did not identify any of the specific cases for which subpoena demands had been rebuffed.  But the fact that the City Inspector General has been issuing them is alone room for optimism. 

Our founders gave us a federal republic.  As corrupt as it can be, the division of powers can still lead to a form of competition allowing individual autonomy to open doors that freshen the air, and start shining lights.  And convictions at lower levels can lead to information valuable for proceeding up the staircase.  Consider the origins of the suppressed but ultimately revealed Watergate affair, when five burglars were caught by local police officials. 

For those concerned whether corruption in the state judiciary might undercut Chicago’s City Inspector General while issuing subpoenas that are challenged by the administration of the City of Chicago, consider Operation Greylord.  Back in the 1980s, the conviction of a Cook County traffic clerk was followed by a train of convictions of higher Chicago-area public officials, including judges, in a prosecution led by federal criminal authorities and the IRS.  The Illinois judiciary, while not above suspicion, is not what it was back then.

And Patrick Fitzgerald & Company haven’t been idle.  On November 1, the same day the Chicago Tribune reported the story about the City Inspector General, the news broke that a Republican Illinois political consultant, William Cellini, was found guilty of two felony counts — conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting the solicitation of a bribe.  This was the latest conviction is what has been labeled “Operation Board Games,” in a case with very curious examples of cooperation among Democrats and Republicans. Back in June, Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts of corruption.  Quoted in the Tribune later in the day, Fitzgerald stated:

In the quiet corridors in Chicago and Cook County and Springfield, a lot of backroom deals take place, and the fact that Bill Cellini was convicted today sends a very, very loud message.

The next day, an editorial in the Chicago Tribune praised the conviction and emphasized the bargaining power it left with prosecutors that can lead to information underlying future possible cases.  If Fitzgerald and Company are still on the hunt, we could be on a slow but ultimately revealing path.  And in part due to the federal nature of our republic, which includes a measure of autonomy for local federal criminal prosecutors within the federal branch.

Why might these two developments – the spat over subpoena authority for the inspector general in Chicago and the felony convictions of an Illinois power broker – actually matter for things like international drug-running and the events of 9/11?

The inspector general for the City of Chicago is no flunky, at least on the surface.  His appointment by previous Mayor Daley and his confirmation by unanimous vote in the Chicago City Council might argue for some skepticism.  But Joseph Ferguson has a very interesting resume.  He came to the job after 15 years in the United States Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois — Patrick Fitzgerald’s office.  Ferguson’s bio states that from 2000 to 2009 his work included drug trafficking, terrorist financing, and public corruption cases, and one of his titles included Terrorist Financing Coordinator.   And he has taught courses titled “National Security Law.”

Isn’t this interesting, for a local city inspector general?

The 2000 to 2009 interval certainly had its share of shocking developments in these areas, including such things as pervasive terrorism warnings delivered to high-level government officials before 9/11, reports of negotiations over the invasion of Iraq including Turkish officials that were underway four months before 9/11, assertions of support for ‘bin Ladens’ up to 9/11, the events of 9/11 themselves, the subsequent invasion of opium poppy and energy-rich Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, FBI investigations of Turkish organizations in Chicago, and the resignation of former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert from Congress in 2007 and his subsequent work as a lobbyist for Turkey.

And now, there is a legal battle over subpoena power in Chicago, pitting the City against an inspector general versed in terrorist financing and national security law.  A city now led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Speaking of resumes, Mayor Emanuel’s will be a topic in the next article in this series.

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

In the first two parts of this series we saw how a group of officers at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, concealed information about al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit from their FBI colleagues in January 2000. In particular they hid information about a US visa in the possession of Flight 77 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar. We also saw how this protection of Almihdhar, his partner Nawaf Alhazmi and al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash continued even after the involvement of Almihdhar and bin Attash in the October 2000 USS Cole bombing became known to the US intelligence community. Concealing information about terrorists involved in seventeen homicides was bad enough, but things were about to get much worse.

Shortly after the CIA had failed to respond truthfully to a second formal request for information about the Cole bombing from FBI agent Ali Soufan in April 2001, the cables the CIA drafted about the Malaysia summit were reviewed at Alec Station. The review was conducted by Tom Wilshire, the station’s deputy chief and one of the key figures in the withholding of the information, and a female CIA officer whose name is not known. The two of them re-read cables from the previous year that said Almihdhar had a US visa and that Alhazmi had flown to Los Angeles with a companion, but neither of them took the appropriate action—watchlisting the Malaysia attendees and alerting the FBI.

After this review, Wilshire ordered another review of the same information. The review was to be carried out by Margaret Gillespie, a CIA detailee to Alec Station whose alleged memory loss regarding the events of January 2000 makes one suspicious of her motives. Wilshire believed, correctly as it turns out, that the cables contained the key to preventing the next major al-Qaeda attack—had they been handled properly, 9/11 would never have happened.

Three weeks before the attacks, Gillespie allegedly discovered a key cable, and this led her to tell the FBI about Almihdhar and Alhazmi. As you know, the FBI hunt for Almihdhar and Alhazmi was unsuccessful and this, as you probably don’t know, was largely due to Wilshire. Nevertheless, Wilshire received substantial praise from the post-attack investigations for getting Gillespie to do the review. Plenty of his other actions cast suspicion on him, but this review seemed to put him in the clear—if he really was trying to hide the information, why start a review?

If we look at how Wilshire started the review, two things stand out. First, Wilshire told Gillespie that the review was not urgent and that she should do it in her free time. There were obviously other things to do at the time, but figuring out the location of the next major al-Qaeda attack should have been fairly high on the Counterterrorist Center’s to-do list. Second, the reason it allegedly took Gillespie three months to review a handful of relatively short documents is reportedly that she could not find them in the CIA’s database. However, Wilshire had the cables when the review started, but simply failed to give them to Gillespie. Had he done so, the review would have lasted closer to a couple of hours than three months. As we will see, Gillespie says she discovered the key cable that led her to alert the Bureau shortly after the 9/11 hijackers finalised the date of the attack.

After the above facts are taken into consideration, we can come up with a theory about why Wilshire started the second review: after the first review by Wilshire and the unnamed CIA officer, it was obvious that action should be taken; specifically, the FBI and INS should be contacted and told what Alec Station knew, which would have prevented Almihdhar re-entering the US late in the year, or enabled the FBI to follow him when he did. In order to prevent the unknown officer from doing this, Wilshire suggested a second review, which he may have represented as being, for example, more complete, thorough, wide-ranging, etc. Initiating such a review was the only way he could come up with to stop this officer from doing what she knew she should do.

Shortly after this, Wilshire moved to the FBI, where he became deputy chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section. He also initiated a series of events that led to the FBI’s Cole investigators being shown photos of Almihdhar and Alhazmi, although all information about the two men continued to be withheld.

First, Wilshire initiated a discussion with a CIA analyst named Clark Shannon in which a group of three surveillance photos taken at al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit were mentioned. In this discussion, Wilshire committed a slip, suggesting that the photo of Alhazmi that, based on the January 4 meeting with “Omar” discussed in part two of this series, the CIA believed showed bin Attash did not actually show bin Attash at all. “Someone saw something that wasn’t there,” he wrote to Shannon. Given that Wilshire claims he had not even read the cable reporting on the January 4 identification of bin Attash, this is surprising to say the least. Wilshire was, in fact, correct and the photo showed Alhazmi, not bin Attash, but Wilshire appeared to know al-Qaeda operatives better than one of the US’s top sources inside the organization. The explanation for this seems clear: Wilshire knew well who Alhazmi was, and he knew bin Attash too.

After e-mailing with Wilshire, Shannon mentioned the photos to Dina Corsi, an FBI headquarters analyst who worked closely with Wilshire and will go on to play a key role in the story. Wilshire then printed the photos off for Corsi, who was to show them to the Cole agents. Naturally, Wilshire forgot to mention that bin Attash, the mastermind of the attack they were all investigating, had been in Malaysia with Almihdhar in January 2000. Corsi also obtained information from the NSA about the Malaysia meeting.

On June 11, 2001, Shannon, Corsi and Gillespie went to meet with the Cole agents, in particular Steve Bongardt and Russell Fincher, at the FBI’s New York office. After a presentation by the Bureau about the state of the investigation, Shannon told Corsi to take the photos out and show them to her FBI colleagues. Bongardt was immediately curious and asked some basic questions about the photos, such as who was in them and what was going on. The “Wilshire” side of the table mostly refused to answer them. There was an argument, a “shouting match,” which continued between Bongardt and Corsi when the meeting broke up.

It is hard to sustain a good-faith explanation for this meeting, which represents another opportunity to interdict Almihdhar, Alhazmi and the whole 9/11 plot. The claimed reason for showing the photos was that the CIA wanted to know if any of them showed Fahad al-Quso, one of the Cole plotters who was in Yemeni custody and had been interviewed by the FBI. However, one of the photos showed Almihdhar. Wilshire identified him as such when he gave Corsi the photos and she even wrote Almihdhar’s name on the back of the photo. How was the FBI supposed to identify al-Quso in a photo of Khalid Almihdhar? Another photo showed Alhazmi, who looked nothing like al-Quso. Also, Shannon provided conflicting accounts of the meeting afterwards, and his claim that he went to an information-sharing meeting without any information to share is both bizarre and contradicted by Corsi’s notes, which show he did disclose that Almihdhar was travelling on a Saudi passport in January 2000.

Corsi’s refusal to provide the Cole investigators with the NSA information is also incredible. She claimed she could not do so because of an offshoot of the “wall” regulations, which primarily governed the sharing of information between FBI intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors. However, the regulations did not apply to one of the New York agents at the meeting, who was a designated intelligence agent. In addition, it would have taken Corsi one day to get permission to pass the information to the other agents, who were on the criminal side, from the NSA’s general counsel.

When the events of the meetings and what preceded it are weighed up, the following conclusion seems inescapable: the meeting was not a good faith attempt to share information, but a ruse—orchestrated by Wilshire—to learn whether the Cole agents recognised Alhazmi and Almihdhar.

When this meeting is compared to the January 4, 2001 meeting with “Omar” referenced in part two of this series, there is a striking similarity: photos of Almihdhar and Alhazmi are passed under the pretext that they show other people, and information just happens not to be shared. Meanwhile, the group around Wilshire learns whether the people recognise Almihdhar and Alhazmi or not.

Another significance of the June 11 meeting is that it shows us that whatever the CIA was doing with Almihdhar and Alhazmi was still very much ongoing. The two men had not been forgotten, they were at the front of the minds of Wilshire and his now-former boss, Richard Blee. As we will see in part 4 of the series, both men were highly aware of the drumbeat of threat reporting in the summer of 2001 and Wilshire even linked Almihdhar to the forthcoming major al-Qaeda attack in a highly incriminating e-mail.

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds discuss the meaning of true alternative media, the role of corporate-foundations in mainstreaming the so-called alternative news, the shameful state of mainstream media as the mouthpiece for the government steered by mega corporations, the joint pseudo alternative-mainstream media black-outs on information pertaining to 9/11, government whistleblowers, secrecy, and the falsification of the truth by tentacles of our shadow government. We go on record with examples of establishment alternatives in disguise and real cases of operatives who sabotage true alternatives like Boiling Frogs Post. We talk about Boiling Frogs Post, our partners and team members, our goals, our pledge to complete independence from the corporates and their foundations, our stand on partisanship, and more!

Here are Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds unplugged & on Fire!

This is the final week of our Boiling Frogs Post subscription drive. As always I want to thank all our subscribers who believe in us; have faith in what we are doing, and have shown their support in action. We want to thank every single one of you who recognize, appreciate and support a true alternative without corporate or foundation ties.

We are entering the final week of our BFP Subscription Drive. We need 176 new subscribers to keep this home reachable to all. Please help us keep this ‘true alternative’ alive and kicking with your subscription. Without a single penny from corporate and their foundations we solely depend on you. Thank you!

Bill Bergman joins us to discuss compelling financial irregularities and cases involving pre-9/11 money transfers, suspicious activity reporting, and informed securities trading, all of which remain uninvestigated and unanswered to date. He provides us with his analyses of the extraordinary surge in currency shipments and significant increase in the number of suspicious activity reports filed by financial institutions in the summer of 2001, the long history of currency shipments in U.S. covert operations, documented false statements and conclusions by the 9/11 Commission regarding the National Money Laundering Strategy Report from the Department of the Treasury in 2001, and the performance of the ‘market fear index’ in the weeks before 9/11. Mr. Bergman discusses obstacles and climate of fear faced by public servants, the city of Chicago as the major hub for money laundering, narcotics and corruption, and more!

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. His research work at the Fed included writing the Chicago Fed contribution to the Federal Reserve “beige book.” Some recent issue areas he has worked on include the implications national emergency and war powers pose for the Federal Reserve, money laundering, and wholesale payment system design, risk, performance and pricing. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

Here is our guest Bill Bergman unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Peter B Collins: Our guest today is Paul Thompson, he is the author of the Terror Timeline, he is an alumnus, a graduate of Stanford university, and he has been researching 9/11 and related issues for many years. Paul Thompson, welcome to the Boiling Frogs.

Paul Thomspon: Hey, thanks for having me.

PC: I just wanted to mention as we delve into the complex issues of the events of September 11, 2001, that there were 2 key bits that prompted me to become skeptical or curious, and follow your lead in many respects to question the official story and seek the truth about 9/11. The first was when a friend who was a medical doctor and a private pilot came to me and talked to me about the disconnect between the Federal Aviation Agency and NORAD on 9/11. We may get into those details but, suffice to say, it was a sad comedy of errors and it piqued my interest. But it wasn’t until I saw the timelines that were developed by people like you, and there was some others who did similar work, that really showed the glaring inconsistencies in the official narrative and led to ask questions about the role of some of the individuals in the Bush administration, and the level of honesty, or of lack of it that we have had to encounter, including the way 9/11 Commission was used to “firm up”, the myth that had been launched right after the 9/11 attacks. Now, Paul Thompson, in recent weeks Richard Clarke, who was a key counterterrorism advisor to George W. Bush in the Bush White House, was the subject of an interview that was actually conducted a couple of years ago, but was broadcast on a public television station in Colorado. And it includes some very interesting new allegations from Clarke, essentially that he was kept in the dark on one specific piece of information regarding two of the individuals who were later alleged to have been hijackers on 9/11. Why don’t you recap for our listeners what Clarke said, and why it makes news about these issues.

PT: Well, I recommend people go check out the interview with Clarke for themselves. It’s at secrecykills.com, and it’s about 12 minutes long, so it’s not too much information to take in, and I think the whole thing was very interesting. But in short, he was the ‘counterterrorism czar’ at the time of 9/11 and for a few years before that, and that means he was the highest counterterrorism official in the United States. So he really was the top dog, and all information, all important information, was supposed to come through him, to get to his desk. And, so in this interview he says, ‘you know, there were these two hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, and it looks now in retrospect, that for a long time, people in the CIA knew a lot about those guys, those two hijackers, and that information did not come across my desk.’ He says he was in contact with Tenet, talking to him on the phone, three, four times a day, any time there was any little bit of information, he would get a phone call from Tenet. He was receiving over 100 CIA reports a day and looking them over. There was a steady flow of information and it’s hard to think before 9/11, what would be a bigger red flag than having 2 known al-Qaeda operatives actually inside the United States? And for all of this time, nobody told him that, he claims. And so he’s quite shocked about this and quite dismayed, and he ends up coming up with a theory to explain why that happened.

PC: And his theory essentially is that the CIA was trying to work with these two Saudis, and convert them to CIA assets. And in order to ‘flip’ them, they kept this very tightly held. The other theory that surfaces for me though, Paul, is that as you mentioned Richard Clarke had served in the Clinton administration and was a holdover into the Bush White House, one of the few.

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: And my sense is that he was not entrusted with the darkest secrets of the Republican inner circle that arrived determined to attack Iraq and Afghanistan.

PT: Well, I think to some extent that’s true, he was certainly kind of demoted, allowed to keep his job but sort of not in the inner circle. He wasn’t meeting with the principals anymore, meaning cabinet-level people like he had been in the Clinton administration. But you have to remember also that George Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton administration and he

PC: Yep.

PT: he was the head of the CIA all the way back to 1997, and this is really a lot about Tenet and the CIA hiding this information. So, you’ve got two Clinton holdovers really, who are at the center of this.

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: And to some extent he was privy to some of this stuff that the Bush administration was doing. I had heard this interview with Richard Clarke and I was driving down the road, and I practically drove off the road I was so shocked, this was a few years ago, where he mentioned in an interview with NPR radio that around, I think it was around April, May 2001…basically, top Bush people were sitting around a table and discussing ways to have some kind of provocation to go to war with Iraq. And they were kind of brainstorming different ideas on ways to have a casus belli

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: you know, some sort of excuse for the war. They talked about things like flying an airplane over Iraq and making sure it got shot down by the Iraqi forces, so they could use that as an excuse. So that’s some pretty wild stuff that most of the American public has never heard about and people

PC: That particular idea that was floated by, apparently, George W. Bush was in a conversation with Tony Blair. And it was British, I believe, Sir David Manning, the British Ambassador to Washington who ultimately revealed that.

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: And it does show that they were looking for a pretext and possibly it wasn’t the first one that they had thought about or activated.

PT: Right.

PC: So Paul, as we heard this interview with Richard Clarke, many other questions come up because he does make a very precise allegation, which is, on September 4th of 2001, there was a principals meeting in the White House, and, he was not told, the principals were not told, that the CIA had informed the FBI about the presence in the united states of Alhazmi and Almidhar. And he says, ‘if they had told us, we would have found those assholes’, and he talks about what they would have done first to launching an investigation into malfeasance by the CIA for not sharing this information and secondly, that he said, ‘we would have put it out on the Associated Press and found those guys.’

PT: Mm-hmm. Well, I’d kind of like to go the whole way back to the beginning and talk about the whole story of these two guys. I think their story has not really been understood or appreciated by the American people as the importance that it really needs to have. But to just kind of mention just a little bit about what you were saying…that very day that that meeting happened, which was September 4th, one week before the 9/11 attacks; There’s a very strange mystery because there was, in the couple weeks right before 9/11 there was some information about these 2 hijackers that was finally given to the FBI after they had, the CIA, had known about these guys for 2 years.
And there was this very inexperienced FBI agent by the name of Robert Fuller, who was given the job of finding these two hijackers. The hijackers, these 2 guys, were not living under cover, using aliases, using all kinds of clever spy tactics…they were living completely openly in the United States. One of them even had his name in the San Diego phone book for crying out loud. They had bank accounts, they had credit cards, they had car registrations, they had traffic tickets…all down the line, everything in their own name. So, at that time, the United States had developed over the years a lot of databases. For instance, you can look up police database that would have anybody’s traffic tickets or arrests in there, and Alhazmi had actually been arrested a couple times for minor things. You can look up credit checks, you can look up the motor vehicle index, they have all these great, sort of private companies collecting incredible amounts of information about people, like Choicepoint was one of these. They had the hijackers’ names and addresses in that. So, he had all of these databases to look at, something like ten different databases, and he supposedly he didn’t find the names of these 2 hijackers in any of the databases which just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Immediately after 9/11, other people did checks and they found these names in pretty much all of these databases. And interestingly enough, we have a mention that says that he asked permission from someone else, from a higher up, to search the credit card database for the names of these 2 people and he was told that was not advisable, ‘not prudent, to do so at this time.’ So, you can see, there’s something very strange going on there, why on earth would they not want to be looking at databases to see if these people are in the United States. What would be the possible excuse to be telling this agent not to do that? So I would like to go all the way back to the beginning and kind of tell the whole story about these 2 hijackers.
PC: Well, go right ahead, we are all ears. So how far back would you like to go?

PT: I want to go all the way back. I think another really great, untold story, in which I have to sort of give the highlights of, is how much the United States intelligence community knew about al Quaeda before 9/11. I just want to mention something that I found, it was from a report, about 6 months after 9/11 that shows just how jaw dropping this was. And this was from a Washington Post article that talked about the capture of Abu Zubayda who supposedly is an al Quaeda big wig and he was arrested early in 2002. And I’ll quote from the article, “‘When agents found Zubaydas laptop computer’, a senior law enforcement source said, ‘They discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under Visa warrants or international spying efforts.’ ‘Finally we got some comfort that surveillance efforts are working’, said a government official familiar with Zubaydas arrest.” So this is quite remarkable because there’s been a lot of controversy about Zubayda; was he really some important al Quaeda guy or not?

Some people think he was mentally ill. But there’s no doubt that he was sort of like a travel agent and he was in communication with a vast number of people. One of the people who said he was kind of crazy and not as important as people say, an FBI agent by the name of Dan Coleman, he said that even though he was crazy, he was constantly on the telephone talking to people all around the world. He was kind of being used, perhaps as someone who is expendable if they got caught, because he did have these mental issues. So, all around the world, all these al Quaeda operatives, we find that the vast majority of them were actually under surveillance at this time, just a short time after 9/11. So, to me, that’s a story that’s never been told, how is that al Quaeda has been able to operate as successfully as they were when they were being monitored so closely?
PC: Well, that’s a lingering question that we are going to have to deal with. So, take us back to Alhazmi and Almidhar first became evident, or, we first became aware of them as we look back forensically.

PT: Right, well, I think we have to go even further back than that. If you go all the way back to the early 1990′s, you have Osama bin Laden living in Sudan rather openly. And we know that way back then, the US intelligence community already started monitoring his satellite phone. In fact, according to one report, even way back then, they developed a technology that they got enough of his vocal recognition, so that if he called on any telephone, they would be able to go through their incredible NSA database and match that phone call with his voice. So he didn’t even have to be using his phone, any voice they’d be able to figure out that was an Osama bin Laden call.

So anyway, so he’s living there and around 2006 (1996?), this other al Quaeda operative, who’s a long time close personal friend of Osama bin Laden, starts this hub in Yemen, and this is going to play a very important role in the story of Alhazmi and Almidhar. And what was happening was that a lot of the countries where al Quaeda was operating like Afghanistan, Egypt, Somalia, different countries, the governments there, they were trying to prevent phone calls being made by militants from one country to another. So for instance, Egypt didn’t allow anybody in Egypt to call Afghanistan. They would block all those calls that they could. There was a lot of these blockages, so what a lot of the al Quaeda operatives around the world did was they used this Yemen hub as basically an al Quaeda switchboard.
They would call that hub and say, ‘I’m looking for so-and-so somewhere, and my friend’s over in Europe’, and connect me with that person. So this was just of incredible importance, this hub. Osama bin Laden himself called the hub many, many times. And what happened was the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, they all realized the great importance of this hub. So much so, that they not only monitored phone calls from the hub, but they actually physically planted bugs inside the building, and they even had a satellite in the sky that was dedicated to the hub, that would take satellite photos of anybody coming and going from the building.
This goes way back to the 1990s when they were doing this. What they also did was they had a big map of the world that they put on the wall somewhere, some FBI agents, and every time there would be a call from that hub to somewhere in the world, they would put a pin in the location to where that call was going. And so over time, they were able to map al Quaedas operations all around the world.
So you can start to see why, from this Washington Post article, they were able to say that they had the vast majority of all al Quaeda operatives around the world under surveillance. It was mostly because of this hub.

So now lets get to the Alhazmi-Almidhar part of this. It turns out that the person who owned this building and ran that hub, was actually the father in law of Khalid Almidhar, one of the hijackers. And so, Khalid Almidhar lived in the hub, his wife lived in the hub. Of course he would be off doing various operations, but he would come back from time to time, visit his wife and his extended family which was all pretty much living in that hub. And everyone in that family was pretty much al Quaeda. One report says that practically half of all of the really dangerous operatives in Yemen were all related to this one family. So, this was just like a laser being shone on this hub, on these phone calls and people in the hub, it just couldn’t be any more important. And then, at the end of, well actually all through 1999, Khalid Almidhar was coming and going, NSA was recording phone calls, the fact that he was living there. They got his name, they got the name of his good friend Nawaf Alhazmi, and then it reached a climax at the end of 2009 (1999?) when there was a series of phone calls, basically another high ranking al Quaeda leader named Khalad bin Attash, called up at the hub, called Khalid Almidhar there, and said ‘there’s an important meeting coming up in Malaysia, we want you to attend’. And he said ‘OK’. And there was also a call to Nawaf Alhazmi saying the same thing, ‘Come to the meeting in Malaysia’, and there was a call also to Salem Alhazmi, Nawafs’ brother who’s another 9/11 hijacker. He was also told to come to the meeting. All of these calls are all being recorded by the NSA. And so, they realized with the other US intelligence agencies ‘something really important is happening in Malaysia. Let’s track these guys to the meeting, record the meeting, find out what’s going on there. And that’s exactly what they do. On the way to the meeting Khalid Almidhar stops by in Dubai in the middle east and his passport, his photograph, secretly, might have been by some local people there, might have been some people breaking into this hotel room and photographing it, but for whatever reason they got his passport and it revealed that he had a Visa to come to the United States; and this is huge. Can’t get any more important information than that, because they’ve never really had any solid link of al Quaeda doing something, planning some kind of attack in the United States. This was the first really big break. So, this brings us all the way up to the Malaysia Summit.
PC: And before we go there, Paul, can I just ask you a couple of things about this hub in Yemen? Because Michael Scheuer, who was heading the Alec station, that was the al Quaeda desk, and it was named for his son Alec. He told me, and I believe he also told James Bamford that he tried to get the NSA to share transcripts of these intercepted satellite phone calls that were coming into the hub in Sanaa, in Yemen

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: and that the NSA refused. And apparently CIA was able to get one portion of the call. Let’s just say that it’s the part originating from Yemen going up to the bird. And he even made a transcript of the one side of the call that CIA was able to intercept, sent it over to NSA and said, ‘well now will you please give us the rest of it?’, and they declined. So some of this in fighting between intelligence agencies on the US side is of interest to me, because it once again suggests, as Richard Clarke has, that the top CIA officials were keeping some information about key al Quaeda operatives very, very tightly held.

PT: Right. Well, I’d say that, sort of the main explanation that people give when they talk about this kind of thing, is they talk about the infighting between these various agencies and, ‘isn’t a shame that there was so much infighting, and that’s really what prevented US intelligence from stopping the 9/11 attacks’, and certainly there was a tremendous amount of infighting that was going on. And what Richard Clarke said is that the infighting excuse is not enough; it wasn’t simply that FBI and CIA couldn’t play ball together and so forth, that there is such an egregious amount of hiding of information about these 2 hijackers that that alone doesn’t explain it. And I think that’s what I’m going to try to argue here, as we go along, is that yes there was this infighting but that alone does not explain what’s going on here. And certainly with the Yemen hub there’s a tremendous amount of hoarding of information. The NSA hardly shared anything that they were getting about this.

So, what’s interesting is that all 3 of those agencies, NSA, CIA, FBI, they realized how important this hub was, and they pretty much independently created their own ways of getting information about the hub so they wouldn’t have to rely on the other agencies. I think the CIA actually went so far as to build their own satellite antenna in the Indian ocean so that they could get the information from this hub. So, we follow that about not sharing of information, but we have to be mindful that in a way that doesn’t really apply to things, because they were gathering their own information independently of each other.
PC: Mm-hmm. And I think I may have misstated his name, it was Scheuer, Michael Scheuer. Ok, so with that said, continue your narrative and let’s go to Malaysia.

PT: I’d also like to point out that Scheuer, he left the CIA bin Laden Unit in the middle of 1999, so he is not really privy to what happens afterwards.

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: Which is, we’re getting at the very end of ’99. So they’ve tracked these 2 people, Alhazmi and Almidhar, to the Malaysia summit. It’s not really clear if Salem Alhazmi ever attended or not, although he did go on to participate in the 9/11 attacks. Malaysia was a great place to meet because the Malaysian government, wanting to be friendly with middle eastern governments, didn’t even require a Visa from most countries to come to that country, so people could just drift in very easily. And what seems to have happened was it was kind of like an ‘al Quaeda all-star team’ arrived at this summit, and there’s some dispute over exactly who attended, and I think there’s been a deliberate obfuscation all the way until today about just who was at that meeting, but I believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “9/11 mastermind” was at that summit.

For instance, there’s a lot of newspaper reports to that effect, and recently I came across some Wikileaks documents that came out that indicated that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lived for a whole week with Alhazmi and Almidhar in Malaysia at that time, which would seem to confirm that he was there. Then you’ve got Hambali, who’s sort of al Quaedas biggest man in Southeast Asia. He worked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on the Bojinka plot in 1995 which was kind of an early version of the 9/11 attacks which could have killed up to 4,000 people. Very major terrorist; he was known to be a major terrorist by the time of the summit. Then you’ve got Ramzi bin Alshibh; now he’s a very interesting case because he was a member of the Hamburg cell with Mohammed Atta, and some of the other 9/11 pilots who seem to have come to this summit. German intelligence says they have credit cards of him being in Malaysia at the time, there were photographs of him taken at the summit. So that’s a big ‘what if?’. How is it that he goes to the summit and that doesn’t somehow lead to the Hamburg cell in Germany being wrapped up? Because the summit is being very heavily monitored by intelligence agencies. We’ll get back to that. But anyways, so then you’ve got him, you’ve got Alhazmi and Almidhar, the host of the summit is a person named Yazid Sufaat, who’s seemingly head of al Quaedas biological weapons program; it’s being held in his apartment. You’ve got Khalad bin Attash who’s a major operational planner, you’ve got another guy al-Nashiri, major operational planner, about a dozen guys in all. Very, very important, I don’t think there was probably ever a time before 9/11 where there was such a collection of individuals outside of Afghanistan. It was just an unparalleled intelligence opportunity.

So all these guys are gathering at this apartment of Yazid Sufaat, and what the CIA did apparently was instead of monitoring these summit attendees themselves, they had the Malaysian Special Branch, their intelligence agency in Malaysia, do the monitoring. And so the Malaysian Special Branch took photographs, the first day they actually recorded a lot of video footage, but the story is they never got into the apartment where the summit was held. They never had any audio recordings, they were only taking pictures of these people as they wandered around town, they were staying at hotels, they were going to restaurants visiting internet cafes, so on and so on. But they never actually knew what going on in the summit. Now, I don’t know if I believe that, but be that as it may, they’ve got this recording of all this going on, and at the time it was considered so important that people at the cabinet-level in the United States were being updated on a daily basis. The head of the FBI, George Tenet, head of the CIA, the National Security Advisor; it doesn’t seem it actually got all the way up to the level of president Clinton, but certainly very top level people were being told on a daily basis as this summit went on. It was a 4 day meeting. Every day they would be getting updates on what was happening at that summit. And another very important point is that this is at the very time where fear about al Quaeda was hitting a peak, because this summit just happened a few days after January 1 2000, and there was a great fear that there would be millennium attacks, to be timed at the start of the new millennium. There had been an al Quaeda operative captured as he tried to enter the US in Seattle just a couple weeks before. And so there was this great fear that al Quaeda might be planning some attacks to happen very soon in the United States. So you have this incredible worry and focus and you have all these al Quaeda big wigs all meeting right there in Yemen (Malaysia?) So, you would think that after all that, 2 of the 9/11 hijackers attending, the 9/11 mastermind attending…how is it possible that they don’t just wrap up the whole 9/11 plot based on the surveillance of the summit? That’s one of the big mysteries that’s never been explained.
PC: And so, without asking you to form some hardened conclusion, as you recite these things, is it your suspicion that the Bush administration allowed it to happen, or was some way involved in orchestrating it with these characters that they certainly had under surveillance?

PT: Well, you know, I don’t like to speculate along those lines, I don’t even think speculation is necessary, because I think as we go into more details of this Malaysia summit and these hijackers and so forth, you can put forward 3 theories: you can say there was some sort of incompetence; people dropped the ball, that there was an al Quaeda operation going forward and the Bush administration let it happen, or that they actually helped make it happen. But I think the least worst of those would be the incompetence, obviously. When you really look at this, it would have to be such a level of incompetence where you just have this right in your face over and over and over again, that that would have to be criminal incompetence, which should lead to jail terms in my opinion.

So you’re kind of, those different theories, it’s almost a moot point where you’re kind of arguing just how long do these people go to jail, you know? I kind of put it, I like to think of it in terms of a bank robbery.

Where you can think, OK, you can have a person standing there as a security guard, and the bank robber runs down the street runs into the bank; so what is the security guards role? He could be working to help the person rob the bank, it could be part of the team, or, he could be just letting it happen because he wants to see that bank robbed. Or, he could be totally incompetent and do nothing while massive amount of time goes by, and the bank gets robbed. And that’s just as bad as the other two pretty much! I mean, wouldn’t that security guard be locked up for a long time if he just waited an hour knowing that the bank is being robbed and he didn’t do anything about it? Didn’t tell anybody about it? To me, it’s just as bad, really.
PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: So, I see it as kind of– you can’t really know, you can’t really go inside these people’s heads, we don’t have enough data to really know everything, but we know enough that I think if there were to be, to this to actually come to the US courts, that people would go to jail for something. Because there’s no good excuse for why these various attacks were allowed to go forward.

Sibel Edmonds: Well, actually it even gets more confusing and complex than that, and that’s the fact that both the CIA and the State Department, because a lot of these operatives at the CIA, they worked under State Department titles. And a study from 1995, 1996, these same actors were working with, back then they were not called al Quaeda, at least not by the FBIs’ definition or the wiretaps collected at the scene, –foreign targets of the State Department. But, the same actors that we are talking about, our government people within the State Department and the CIA, this is during the Clinton years, were working with these people in Chechnya, in the Balkans, in the central Asian Caucasus. And I’m talking about working together.

PT: Right, well

SE: OK, and so the question that comes up is, they are our partners, they were our partners, in the Balkans, you know, with the conflict in Bosnia, and also in Kosovo. They were our partners with what we did with Chechnya, with Russia. They were our partners with some of the assassinations and the plots they were carrying out in places like Azerbaijan. The same people, bin Laden, Zawahiri, even some of the actors involved in this
PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: And yet, we were also monitoring them as terrorists while we were actually working with them. That’s

PT: Yeah, it’s sort of crazy when you think about it. I mean, I think that if you really start looking at the Machiavellian workings of what the US government and other governments were doing, they kind of saw things in terms of “good terrorists” and “bad terrorists”. Where you have terrorists who for whatever reason, these people are somehow doing our bidding, they are helping us out, they’re helping us achieve our goals, either wittingly or unwittingly.
A good example would be Chechnya, where, for a long time the US had a great quagmire in Viet Nam, and they liked to sort of think of Chechnya as Russia’s’ Viet Nam, and this is a big quagmire for them. They’ve got to be dealing with these Islamist militants and fighting there constantly, year after year, sapping their economy.
SE: Exactly.

PT: They’re a traditional enemy of the United States, so the more Chechnya can sap them, the more the American foreign policy experts and officials are saying, ‘hey this is a really good thing, so why would we want to stop any potential Islamist militant from going to Chechnya and fight there? Hey, instead of stopping them, let’s pretty much give them the plane tickets, have them go there, because that’s helping us out, right?’

SE: Exactly. Right.

PT: And so that’s not just with Chechnya, but that happened in a lot of other places around the world. So, you have this idea where one man’s terrorist is another persons freedom fighter, right? It’s all these labels you throw on these people, these very loaded words, I try not to use words like ‘terrorists’ if I can, because you never know exactly who really these people are, who they’re working for, really what’s going on there? It often turns out there’s double agents and all kinds of intrigue going on, like some sort of exciting spy novel. But anyways, you’ve got these good terrorists, you’ve got these bad terrorists, and it’s clear to me that there were a lot of people before 9/11 who were ‘good terrorists’ in the eyes of the United States because they were doing something that the United States thought was helpful.

In fact there’s a famous quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski, if I can get his name right, who’s the National Security Advisor way back under Carter, and he was asked in 1998 about starting the whole war in Afghanistan way back in the 1970s, because really, it looks now that the CIA kind of goaded the Soviets into attacking by putting some operatives in there, and kind of stirring people up and creating a lot of chaos. So he said, let’s see if I can find his quote here, what he said…I can’t find his exact quote offhand, but it was something to the effect of ‘what’s more important, defeating the Soviet Union or a few stirred up Muslims?’ So the idea is that in a very Machiavellian way, thinking that ‘I’m using these people to get at the Soviets and to achieve our foreign policy goals, so we certainly don’t want to stop these people, we actually want to help them, fund them, train them in some cases…
SE: Exactly.

PT: And we could go way back and look at a long history of US covert support for Islamist militants around the world.

SE: Right! And let’s say just in the 1990s, starting from the mid-1990s to 2000, and we are talking about during the Clinton administration, and we are talking about the 2 guys who are left over from that administration. We are talking about Tenet, and we are talking about Clarke. And Tenet and Clarke were also aware, not only aware, they were involved, both through the diplomatic; working through State Department, but also through these ‘black ops’ and operations in Central Asia and the Balkans. So we have those 2 guys involved in that.

PT: Mm-hmm, yea. These two people particular people, Alhazmi and Almidhar, they have a very long history of working with al Quaeda, and it goes all the way back to the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s,

SE: Exactly.

PT: it appears that they were involved n that. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also appears to have fought in Bosnia in the early 1990′s, and then it appears that later on that they made attempts at least and probably went to fight in Chechnya as well, these two: Alhazmi and Almidhar.

SE: Mm-hmm.

PT: So it could be that they might have had linkages you know, there’s a whole other story about US support working with al Qaeda

SE: They were not even called al Qaeda, at least not in the FBI. This is one of the things I kept emphasizing during my testimony with the 9/11 Commission. The Arabic unit that worked, and that includes the bombing in Nairobi, because some of the translators, with FBI agents actually went in there, I’m not going to get too deep into the details of those, but they did not even emphasize a title, the name al Qaeda.

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: So this is the interesting from the FBI side: you mean al Qaeda did not, even though we have this stuff, yea, al Quaeda came up again in 1997, FBI didn’t even have an al Quaeda unit. And these cases, the filings for these cases were not even under ‘al Quaeda.’

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: The al Quaeda became popular after 9/11.

PT: Right.

SE: Became a brand, it was not even being used as a title for this group, or these groups. And that’s another interesting point, at least for the FBI.

PT: Well, I don’t think the title is so important. Obviously bin Laden, he didn’t really like al Quaeda, he came up with some other long winded names for his group that he wanted to use, and eventually he kind of got, just had to acknowledge that the media was using around the world ‘al Quaeda’ so much,

SE: Exactly, US media made it like (inaudible)

PT: he said, ‘OK, we’re al Quaeda’, but that was pretty much after 9/11. It’s not really so much important what these people are called, is what they were doing and who they’re working with, in my opinion. And you can see these 2 hijackers in particular, have a long history going way back to the 1990s. I don’t want to get too much into the Bosnian conflict, but there’s good evidence the US was working hand in hand with Osama bin Laden and his supporters in Bosnia at that time. So these guys may well have had some sort of contacts with that, going way back. So when Richard Clarke in his interview says, ‘maybe they were trying to turn them’, maybe they thought that they’d already turned them, or maybe they thought that, ‘well these guys, we know them, we know all about them, these are great candidates to turn.’ I don’t know, we can just kind of speculate. (laughs) So anyways, to kind of get back to the thread of what happened at the Malaysia summit and so forth…So what’s really interesting is that, sort of the bombshell out of this, all of the summit stuff, was the fact that Khalid Almidhar had a Visa to come to the United States. And actually, Nawaf Alhazmi did too, but apparently they didn’t know about that right at that point in time. Even as the summit was going on, there were efforts to prevent the FBI from knowing about that.

SE: Before you go further, one question, because I don’t have that information. Do you know where the Visa was obtained, which embassy, where?

PT: I’m pretty sure it was in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, if I remember.

SE: OK, thank you.

PT: Which is kind of a whole other story, because that, at least historically had been used in the Afghan war to have the Mujahedeen who were fighting in Afghanistan, to get Visas for them to come to the Unites States to be secretly trained and supported over there. So, it’s, (laughs) the more you dig into this stuff, the more interesting it gets.

SE: Right, because I have a State Department whistleblower, he hasn’t been really that public and vocal, but he worked, he was actually in charge of the Visa office in Jeddah.

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: Until, I believe 2000-2001, and he also went to the Commission and he spoke a little bit about this stuff. He still hasn’t gotten into the names, but he actually filed complaints about people who actually they knew were confirmed terrorists, candidates, lists. Because many of these CIA operatives worked through the embassy there in Jeddah. Every time they brought it up, they would be overridden by the CIA guys in the embassy of there in Jeddah.

PT: Right.

SE: That was why I was asking.

PT: Right, so anyway you get these hijackers at the summit, then the summit starts to break up, and these people start to be scattered to the four winds. At that time, it would make sense that, normally, the CIA would normally say, ‘OK, FBI, you’re interested in what’s going on in the United States. We have information that one of these people at the summit, Khalid Almidhar, he has a Visa to come to the United States. He’s almost certainly going to use it and probably be involved in some sort of attack there.’ They knew for instance, he was involved in the embassy bombings and some other big attacks already.

That does not happen. In fact, there is somebody who drafts a cable to be sent to the FBI saying just that, that he has this Visa. His superior over rid him and basically said, ‘you can’t send that cable, you’re not allowed to send it.’ He tried later, another week or two later again and told, ‘you’re not allowed to send it.’ That same superior who told him not to send the cable turned around and sent a cable within the CIA telling everybody that the FBI had been told. You can see right there, you really see some duplicity. It goes even further than just the FBI and the CIA not getting along. We have evidence, for instance, of the CIA branch in Thailand, because these guys Alhazmi and Almidhar, they went from the Malaysian meeting, they went to Thailand. The CIA branch in Malaysia kind of asked the Thai branch, ‘what’s going on with these guys? Do you know what happened to them there in Thailand?’ And the Thai branch said, ‘we’ll have to get back to you, we don’t know what’s going on.’ Where at that point we know that the Thai was aware about this US Visa. So even within the United States, within the CIA, one branch is lying to the other branch about what they knew about these 2 particular hijackers. It’s not just a FBI/CIA turf battle kind of thing that’s going on here.

So anyway, so after about a week after the summit, these 2 hijackers, they’re from Thailand, they get on a plane, and they fly to the United States, and they immediately start living in San Diego. And Nawaf Alhazmi at least, he spends the next 2 years, basically he never leaves the United States from that point on. He just lives openly in San Diego, he’s got his number in the phone book and everything. It would be so easy to find him. Khalid Almidhar after a while, he leaves, and he actually –because as I’ve said, his father-in-law was a person who runs that Yemen hub, he actually goes back to the Yemen hub where his wife is, and he lives there for at least a month. Now remember that that hub is so monitored, anybody coming and going their picture is taken, there’s bugs inside the house, there’s so much that has not been revealed. How is it possible for Khalid Almidhar to back to that hub and live there for an entire month? He thinks that he’s with fellow al Quaeda people that he can trust. Would he not be talking about his time in the United States and what he is doing there, and the whole 9/11 plot that he’s a part of, in this very building that is a focus point of US intelligence collection efforts? How is it possible that this 9/11 plot isn’t discovered? And then you’ve got the fact that Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they’re living in San Diego, they’re making calls back and forth to this hub all the time. And they’re making other calls around, but you know, at least those calls are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. Again, how is it possible that some people don’t say, ‘hey, these 2 people are living in the United States, and probably up to no good there.’
PC: And Paul, what was the source of the funding that paid for their housing, paid for their expenses, while they were living in San Diego?

PT: (laughs) Yea, again there are just so many threads to this. I think what happens is that it’s such a complicated story that people kind of lose the thread after a while, because there’s so many tangents and things. But, it turns out that while those 2 hijackers were living in San Diego, there seems to have been a lot of money coming through the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. into sort of the wife of a friend, and it seems to have increased right when the hijackers got there. A lot of people believe that that money was actually helping to pay their living expenses, and there’s a tremendous amount of other information about these hijackers having ties with the Saudis while they were there, and by Saudis I don’t just mean Saudi citizens, I mean Saudi intelligence agents. They went to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, you know, hooked up with people there, some of whom were very radical, militant minded themselves, who were working at that consulate.

There was one particular guy named Omar al-Bayoumi, who’s a very important figure, because he was living in San Diego, and he really seems to have been some sort of Saudi intelligence agent. He had no visible means of support, yet he had some ghost job with some Saudi government kind of related company, and he was being paid a tremendous amount of money for doing no work. And he had this habit of wandering around the mosques and places where Saudis were living in the United States congregate. You have the video camera and a microphone on the camera, and he’d just be recording people willy nilly, and talking into the microphone making his observations about all the things that he was recording. Everybody in town who was in that Saudi community had basically knew that he was a Saudi government agent, and his job pretty much –you would think that the Saudi government has always been very worried about radical Islamics who come along who want to overthrow the Saudi government.

People like Osama bin Laden, who’s said all kinds of things about how they want to overthrow the Saudi royalty. So, in sort of most towns, they would have somebody like Omar al-Bayoumi, who was keeping an eye to make sure that there weren’t anti-Saudi government insurrections going on amongst Saudi students who were scattered all over the world. So, this guy, and when you go back to the Richard Clarke interview, he puts forth the theory, and he says, ‘well maybe when Alhazmi and Almidhar were living in the United States, maybe the CIA kind of handed off surveillance of these 2 people to the Saudis, and so somebody like Omar al-Bayoumi running around with his video camera would be a likely person to be keeping close eyes on these guys.
He did have all kinds of ties with these 2 people, they even lived at his place for a couple weeks when they first got there. I’ve found that there’s good evidence that Alhazmi knew that al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence agent and he disliked him and tried to stay away from him, and sort of was very wise to what this al-Bayoumi guy was doing. If the CIA was trusting monitoring these 2 incredibly important al Quaeda operatives to some guy who’s just wandering around openly known as a Saudi intelligence agent, walking around with a video camera all the time, I mean that just doesn’t seem to make any sense. Why would you do that? How could you learn any secrets about these people when you’re so openly advertising yourself as a Saudi intelligence agent?
PC: Well, and Paul, it begs the question about the role of Saudi Arabia and the royal family in funding al Quaeda, supporting their efforts. We know that the bulk of the alleged hijackers were Saudi citizens, and yet, the Bush administration gave Saudi Arabia a virtual complete pass

PT: Right.

PC: in any investigation into these events. We went into Afghanistan to distract people from Saudi Arabia.

PT: You know, there’s so many different threads in this story, and one thing that I’ve always been interested in is not only the possible whatever role the United States government and other western governments had in linkages with al Quaeda and so forth, but also, there were a lot of supporters of groups like al Quaeda in the Muslim world. People, even higher ups, billionaires in Saudi Arabia and other countries were very kind of ideological, same thinking as Osama bin Laden, and so they would be supporting these groups with a lot of money and other kinds of support. You see all along that Osama bin Laden would never have been able to keep up, even though he had some money from his inheritance from his big, rich family. It was estimated that al Quaeda cost about 30 million dollars to run every year. Not so much all these operatives running around, but sort of the training camps and there’s a whole sort of network you have to have, before you can even have any operative taking part in everything. You have to be recruiting people and so forth. So you sort of have this big operation that costs 30 million dollars a year, he would have run out of money pretty quickly. He had all these rich Sheiks living in the Middle East who were giving him a lot of money. So the question is, may have some of these Saudi contacts been aware of the 9/11 plot? May have they actually been funding some of the 9/11 hijackers? That’s a very interesting story, but I think it’s kind of a tangential story to the other story we’re talking about today, which is why doesn’t the CIA do something about these guys. What do they know about these guys and why don’t they do something about them?

One of the things about the Saudis is that the CIA knew way back that the Saudi intelligence agency had been very compromised by their support for al Quaeda. There was some people from another intelligence agency, I think the Jordanian intelligence agency one day went into the headquarters of the Saudi intelligence agency and looked around, and they saw on the computers a lot of the people actually had pictures of bin Laden as their screensavers on their computers because they were big supporters of bin Laden.
SE: Now here is another contradiction Paul, because all this time we keep hearing from the both from the media, but also from various supposed speeches by bin Laden, that he was actually a threat to the Saudi establishment, that he was absolutely feared and hated by the Saudis, and basically his number one goal was to basically get rid of the US bases from Saudi Arabia, and also the kingdom. So how do they work together? I mean you’re looking at two now almost contradictory concepts here in terms of the relationship between bin Laden and the Saudis.

PT: Well it’s so complicated, and it’s a very parallel situation in Pakistan, where you see tremendous support from Pakistan, even from the Pakistani intelligence agency to al Quaeda and related groups. And at the same time, these groups are often attacking Pakistani government buildings, and killing lots of people in Pakistan. In Saudi Arabia, it seems even royal members, high ranking members of the royal family are supporting bin Laden and al Quaeda, and Osama bin Laden’s saying, ‘down with the royal family.’ So I think a lot of this kind of ends up being intrigues and politics, where for instance you might have one faction of the Saudi royal family who thinks, ‘I would like to be king one day, and if I can use the fact that there are a huge number of people in Saudi Arabia who are supportive of bin Laden and bin Laden-type extremists, Wahabist religious beliefs, and ally with that whole faction, then that could help me get to power.’
And the same kind of thing happening in Pakistan, where you have various playing off against each other and using these militant groups as a way to get an edge. In fact, in Pakistan there are times where one faction would actually hire people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, his nephew for instance, to kill –there was an attempt where those guys tried to kill Benazir Bhutto back in the 1990s. So they’re very much involved in the intrigues and the politics of these countries which get very complicated, and people working sometimes at cross purposes, or trying to kill each other and so forth.
SE: That makes a lot of sense, especially with what you said with the divided kingdom, as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned. And I think one of the dividers there is the attitude or the stand when it comes to Israel, because where you have the old timers, you have the top layer, that actually behind the scenes, they do have good relationship with Israel. Then you have the segment there within the Saudi kingdom who are absolutely against Zionism and what’s happening in Israel. So that itself is just one other example of how divided they are within their own kingdom.

PT: Right. So to kind of keep trying make sure we stay on the focus of these Alhazmi and Almidhar characters…Richard Clarke, he’s saying that these guys may have been monitored by Saudi Arabia, but to get back to the point that I made a minute ago, that the CIA was so leery of the support that a lot of people in the Saudi intelligence agency had for al Quaeda, that they had put out a notice a couple years prior to all these events saying basically, ‘don’t trust the Saudi intelligence agency about anything having to do with bin Laden.’ So how could they then turn around and say, ‘oh, let’s just leave these 2, the first 2 al Quaeda people we ever really knew who were living in the United States, we’ll just trust the Saudi intelligence agency to keep an eye on them. I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t buy Richard Clarkes’ theory there. So, if you don’t buy that theory, then that leaves a gaping hole. Well, who’s looking after these 2 people when they’re living for 2 years in the United States? Did they just drop the ball so badly that they just said, ‘oh, I wonder whatever happened to those guys.’ (laughs) No one checked on them for 2 years. I don’t buy that.

SE: Neither do I.

PC: Well, at this point, I’m going to pause here and conclude part 1 of our conversation with Paul Thompson, and this’ll make it easier for our listeners to listen to and absorb, and we will continue in part 2, which will be released in short order after part 1, so that you can get all this information and listen to them at your convenience.

Warrick’s book, The Triple Agent, focuses on Jennifer Matthews, the CIA station chief at forward base Chapman who was among those killed by a Jordanian suicide bomber.  In discussing the role of Matthews in the CIA’s withholding of critical pre-9/11 intelligence from the FBI and counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, Collins asked if Jennifer Matthews had connections to Alfreda Frances Bikowsky—the CIA officer recently identified here at Boiling Frogs Post. Warrick responded:

“There is a group of very, shall we say, strong personalities within the counterterrorism division, you’ve named 2 of them, they were good friends, they worked together on these cases, and the list of people the IG has identified as potentially deserving of disciplinary review for their actions before 9/11 never been published, but we know from multiple counts that Jennifer Matthews had been on that list…”

In this response, Warrick directly confirms the role of Bikowsky in the pre-9/11 intelligence debacle, as well as her presence at the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydeh, which was being directed by Matthews.  And without explicitly naming Bikowsky, he confirms that she was a friend and colleague of Matthews and that they worked together on counterterrorism at CIA. 

Warrick also asserts that he knows of the Inspector General’s list of some 60 CIA employees proposed for investigation over the pre-9/11 intelligence suppression, and that he has been able to get multiple confirmations that Matthews was on that list. But it appears that The Post has acquiesced to the CIA, and its editors believe that the public is not interested in learning the truth and seeking accountability on these matters.

“We’d still love to get that list. And we tried at the time to get the names of the individuals. It was decided at a high level, this was back during the Bush administration, when Porter Goss was CIA Director that these names would never be published, as far as the CIA was concerned, and there is not much of a process to force the CIA to retreat from that decision….and no one in either the Bush or Obama administration has pushed for further disclosure, they’d like for this thing pretty much to be put to rest and forgotten about.

There is nothing that makes officials here want to change the subject more quickly than those kinds of questions; politicians and certainly the intelligence people would just rather see it go away…and there just doesn’t seem to be much public interest, either, that we’ve detected….there are certainly pockets of it, but in terms of getting people excited and interested in this again, it’s been a real struggle.”

These comments raise serious questions about the integrity and independence of The Washington Post, as Warrick says his newspaper has had this information for years but appears to take editorial direction from the CIA and the White House.  The failure of The Post and the 9/11 Commission to fully investigate the CIA for its actions prior to 9/11 and explore the Malaysia summit and visas issued to al-Hazmi and al-Midhar are part of an obvious cover-up, and suggest widespread obstruction of justice. 

In addition, the Washington Post and more recently the Associated Press  refrained from reporting the complete story and Bikowsky’s involvement in the German citizen el-Masri’s rendition and torture, in compliance with the CIA pressure. The well-known New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer also complied with CIA’s unofficial request and withheld certain facts and the identities of the CIA employees and contractors involved in rendition and barbaric cases in her book The Dark Side.

Boiling Frogs Post broke the story and identified Alfreda Frances Bikowsky for the first time a week ago on September 21, 2011. Although the CIA had threatened producers Nowosielski and Duffy, and had prevented them from identifying the two CIA officers Bikowsky and Michael Anne Casey, the agency did not threaten or request redaction when asked for confirmation by the alternative news site Gawker. Despite Boiling Frogs Post’s exposé as the first alternative news site to publish the story, complete coverage by Cryptome, the video report by independent investigative journalist James Corbett at Corbett Report, and the subsequent coverage and analyses by Gawker, the mainstream media and the so-called independent outlets have so far readily complied with the establishment’s no-no rule and have abstained from covering this significant report involving obstruction of justice, cover up, lying to Congress, rendition and torture.

Here is the relevant portion of the audio interview of Joby Warrick by Peter B Collins:

To listen to the entire show visit Peter B Collins’ website: here.

We have so far identified and confirmed three CIA officers, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, Jennifer Matthews and  Michael Anne Casey, who were involved in the intentional cover up of significant pre 9/11 intelligence, subsequent cover up during the quasi 9/11 investigations, and the CIA’s rendition and torture cases. As we can see, the partnership between the government, mainstream media, pseudo alternative media, and Congress makes sure the facts pertaining to these crimes and criminals remain untouched and buried.

*For additional more background check out the following links:

BFP Breaking News: Confirmed Identity of the CIA Official behind 9/11, Rendition & Torture Cases is Revealed 

Boiling Frogs Breaking News: CIA Goes After Producers Nowosielski & Duffy

The Still Developing Story of the Recently Issued CIA Threats to Producers Nowosielski & Duffy

Podcast: The Boiling Frogs Presents Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy

As you can see we are doing our share as one of the very few true alternatives. Please do your share and help us continue our operation by subscribing to Boiling Frogs Post. Thank you.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Click here for the transcript at Corbett Report: TRANSCRIPT

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Author and researcher Kevin Fenton joins us to discuss the recent case involving the CIA’s withholding of the release of audio documentary “Who is Richard Blee?” and the extensive research and findings which have resulted in the unmasking of three former top CIA officials and their role in withholding intelligence on two key 9/11 hijackers and subsequent cover-ups. He details the findings on the two key CIA analysts who were instrumental in this cover up – who were recently identified and exposed as Alfreda Frances Bikowsky and Michael Anne Casey. Mr. Fenton discusses the CIA’s Alec Station, and questions the notion of incompetence versus intentional when it comes to the events leading to and making the terrorist attacks possible on 9/11.

Kevin Fenton is an independent researcher and the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

Here is our guest Kevin Fenton unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

For tons of brilliant and truly independent podcast, video and interviews visit our partner James Corbett’s own website here at: http://www.corbettreport.com/

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Earlier this month, the public was overwhelmed with saturation coverage of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What is not being reported on with anything near the same zeal, however, is that this September 18th marked another solemn milestone, the 10th anniversary of the start of the anthrax attacks that paralyzed an already fear-stricken nation and actually shut down the US House of Representatives, three Senate buildings, and the Supreme Court.

That the government and the media are largely silent on this anniversary is hardly surprising. Rather than reinforcing the war on terror narrative, the anthrax investigation leads directly back to the heart of the US military-industrial complex, and a secretive biowarfare program that most Americans never knew existed.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

The producers Nowosielski and Duffy have now made both names available [link removed] at their website. They also identify the second CIA culprit as M. A. C. We have not been able to obtain confirmation by other sources on this person yet, but we are still working on it.

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky is the person described in New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side as having flown in to watch the waterboarding of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammad without being assigned to do so. “Its not supposed to be entertainment,” superiors were said to have told her.  She was also at the center of “the el-Masri incident,” in which an innocent German citizen was kidnapped by the CIA in 2003 and held under terrible conditions without charges for five months in a secret Afghan prison. The AP characterized it as “one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the U.S. war on terrorism.”

Both the previous and current administrations appear to have deemed Alfreda Frances Bikowsky’s direct involvement in intentional obstruction of justice, intentional cover up, lying to Congress, and overseeing rendition-kidnapping-torture practices as qualifying factors to have kept promoting her. She now leads the CIA’s Global Jihad Unit and is a close advisor to the President.

*For more background check out the following links:

Boiling Frogs Breaking News: CIA Goes After Producers Nowosielski & Duffy

The Still Developing Story of the Recently Issued CIA Threats to Producers Nowosielski & Duffy

Podcast: The Boiling Frogs Presents Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

September 11^th Advocates:

Patty Casazza

Monica Gabrielle

Mindy Kleinberg

Lorie Van Aucken

*For more background check out the following links:

Boiling Frogs Breaking News: CIA Goes After Producers Nowosielski & Duffy 

The Still Developing Story of the Recently Issued CIA Threats to Producers Nowosielski & Duffy

Podcast: The Boiling Frogs Presents Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.” – Eugene Debs

International Newsworthy

Pakistan May Bank on Survival without IMF 

Prisons Grow as Rebel Pursue Their Enemies & Questions Arise About the Missing 

NATO Bombing of Sirte: The New Guernica

Evidence Grows of Blair-Gaddafi Link 

China Warns the US against Vetoing Palestinian’s UN Request 

Intense US Pressure to Block Palestinian’s UN Membership

Harper Rejects Palestinian Statehood Bid 

Turkish Warplanes Strike Northern Iraq 

US Keeping Mum on Military Aid to Uzbekistan

Former Columbian Secret Police Chief Convicted of Murder 

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

SEC Chair Shapiro Retains a Lawyer 

Want to Sue the FBI for Spying on Your Mosque? Sorry, that’s Secret! 

CIA Pitches Scripts to Hollywood 

Obama Pressured General on Testimony to Benefit his Corporate Donor 

9/11: The Article “Not to Publish” World

Government Ignores Law Limiting Executive Salaries of Contractors

Solyndra’s Whorehouse Lender

U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium-Plutonium

Senior House Democrat Opposes Obama’s Decision on Taiwan F-16s

Broadband Pitted Against GPS

Congress Wanting to End Local TV Station, Creates National Control over Media 

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Philip Giraldi: Tapping the Israeli Embassy

Does the American Government Consider Economic Rivalry to be a Justification for War

America to the World: We Want Everything …If you Stand in the Way we’ll Kill you

World Bank Policies “Enabling” African Land Grab

NATO’s War on Libya is an Attack on African Development

A Dud from “Darth”

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“After saying the jobs bill is paid for, President Obama now says that it will be paid for by raising taxes over 10 years. I can’t figure out if he’s the kind of guy who makes infomercials, or the kind of guy who falls for infomercials.” –Jay Leno

Distressed Nation Turns To Poet Laureate for Solace

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video-Audio Potpourri 

Video 1: Thousands March on Wall Street

Video 2: James Corbett- Our Nuclear World

Video 3: CEO Compensation Hearing

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder…The master class has always declared the war; the subject class has always fought the battles.” - Eugene Debs

International Newsworthy

Bangladesh Farmers Cash in on Kidneys 

The West’s Red Bogeyman in Libya 

Pentagon Admits Again: Contract Funds still is Going to Taliban 

Pakistan Takes Rap for Taliban’s Kabul Attack 

Pakistan Slams US Remarks 

US Claims Another “Al-Qaeda Leader Kill” in Pakistan 

Saudi Arabia Sends War Tanks to Yemen

NATO Troop Ready to Act in Kosovo

Major Jewish Groups Won’t Rally Against Palestinian Statehood Bid

Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek Will Try to Follow the Pentagon’s Money

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

Philip Zelikow Appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

Obama Extends National Emergency Regarding Iran

Obama’s Cold War? Raytheon Missiles on Russia’s Boarder by 2018

Bank of America’s Backdoor Bailout

John Brennan Ex-Board Chairman of INSA Spies

Neocons Warn Against Losing Iraq Peace

US House Democrats to European Leaders: Oppose Palestinian Statehood Bid

Columbia University Warned Over Students’ Dinner with Ahmadinejad

Top Media Ethics Expert: Times’ Ethan Bronner is in ‘Very Dicey Ethical Territory’

GOP Demands Investigation into LightSquared Contacts White House

The Crisis of the “Gentry Presidency”

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

A Crack in the Great Wall

America’s Sham War on Terrorism

Pepe Escobar: To King Sarkozy, the Spoils

9/11 & “the Years of Shame”: Media Lies vs. “Moral Conscience”

Perry and the HPV Vaccine

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“Italy is asking China to help bail them out of their debt crisis. Doesn’t that make you mad? Hey Italy, China is our sugar daddy.” –Jay Leno

FBI Probing Johansson Phone Hack

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video-Audio Potpourri 

Video 1: Congressman Who Created the TSA  Wants it Abolished Now

Video 2: James Corbett Weekly Report

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

This is Part 3 of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss one of the most blacked-out and censored aspects of Al-Qaeda-CIA connections: The partnership and alliance between the CIA and Al Qaeda and their joint operations in Central Asia, Balkans and Caucasus throughout the 1990’s. Mr. Thompson talks about Al-Qaeda’s Balkans operations, running training camps, money-laundering, and drug running networks in the region, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and his residence in Bulgaria in order to help manage the Al Qaeda effort in nearby Bosnia, the Al Qaeda cells in Chechnya and Azerbaijan, BCCI and more!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

 ”A Terrorist is Someone Who Has a Bomb But Doesn’t Have an Air Force” - William Blum

International Newsworthy

The Suicide Bomb Capital of the World 

Red Cross: At Least 13 Mass Graves Found in Libya 

Russia: Al Qaeda may Have Gotten Anti-Aircraft Missiles in the Aftermath of Libyan Civil War 

Turkey Joins NATO’s Missile Defense Shield

Jordanian Protesters Demand Closing of US Embassy 

Kyrgyzstan: Political Elite Caught Up in Murder Scandal 

Azerbaijani Drone Shot Down in Nagorno Karabakh 

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

California Legislature Passes Bill to Study State-Owned Banks 

Mortgage Industry Whistleblower Wins Case 

Private Contractors Cost more than Government Employees 

The Real Wives of Wall Street 

MIC Intensifies Lobby Against Defense Cuts 

Even TSA Employees are Scamming

TSA’s Napolitano: TSA to Grope Children Less Often

FBI Teaching Counter-Terror Agents Fear of Muslims

Vaccines & Corporate Influence

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Uncle Sam Doesn’t Want You

When Mistaken Identity Leads to Torture

Edward Gibbon at America’s Grave

US Response to 9/11 Plunged Pakistan into Chaos

The Economic Terror of 9/11

India Eyes Latin America

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“President Obama described himself as an eternal optimist. He then explained that he’s the kind of person that sees the country as ‘half employed.”- Conan O’Brian

US Economic Recovery Resting on Man Currently Perusing Sears Power Tool Section!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video-Audio Potpourri 

Video 1: Did Fannie just Bailout Bank of America?!

Video 2: Good Will Hunting Got it Right 14 Years Ago

Transcript: Corbett Report: Usrael vs. Palestine- A Two-Faced Rejection of a Two State Solution

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

I asked Mr. Nowosielski how the CIA was informed about the schedule and the content of their upcoming segment, and he provided us with the following details:

We emailed CIA Public Affairs on Thursday morning telling them of our intention to name two current agents in our journalism piece and explained the context of their use — the things they were accused of. We also explained that their names had been deduced through open-source materials and that our sources had told us they were working from headquarters.

As for the CIA’s reaction and response Mr. Nowosielski recounted the following:

Their media spokesperson called back almost immediately. After a brief discussion, we emailed him the script for official reply. We also requested an interview with the two to ensure that we were telling the full story accurately. The reply email began “This is off the record:” and then informed us that we may be violating federal law by including those two names. When we asked him to cite the law, we were told it was the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. This and follow up calls occurred on Thurs, Fri, and Sat, until we explained that we were not recognizing “off the record” in our official interactions with the Agency. We have heard nothing further since.

My own immediate response to the way in which CIA responded to the producers can be summed up in three questions:

1- Is this one of those fairly common cases where the government agency tries its ‘bluffing tactic’ to see whether that suffices to intimidate and stop the whistleblower or reporter in question?

Because the threat is issued by e-mail, and ludicrously, it starts off by stating ‘off the record.’ When confident and on solid ground the agencies come after the targets armed with official- legal letters or even court orders. In my days, in my own case as a government whistleblower, and later as the director of NSWBC dealing with many intelligence agencies whistleblowers and  also reporters, I have experienced the government agency ‘Bluffing Tactic’ more than a few times. For example, the FBI tried to stop my interview with CBS-60 Minutes and later attempted to stop the airing of the segment, but when challenged and invited to go ahead and take legal action, they changed their mind; they went away.

2- Is this an attempt by the CIA to buy needed time to take further action against the producers through the Department of Justice?

One thing I know is that government bureaucracy takes time. It takes time to get ‘things done’ when it comes to the government. In this case, the CIA would have to bring and make the case to the Justice Department. The DOJ then would have  to go through its own bureaucracy and reviews to decide whether it could turn this into a legal action via the courts. Thus, this could possibly be a case of the CIA trying to buy more time to translate its ludicrous ‘off the record’ threat issued by a casual e-mail into a real threat with some teeth. If so, wouldn’t that mean a window of opportunity for the producers to release the information? Or not?

3- What are the real legal liabilities facing the Producers, since the names of the two culprit CIA analysts are already out in public records? Further, with other sources in addition to the public records ‘outing’ the names of the analysts who happen to be involved in possible criminal actions, what level of threat are the producers faced with?

Again, based on my own experience and the experiences of many government intelligence agencies whistleblowers, the CIA would have to first classify the already public information-documents out there revealing the identities of the two CIA analysts; classification after the fact. Next, they would have to legally pursue the other involved sources who have either confirmed or released those names. The CIA hasn’t done that. At least not yet. And what does this mean? Does it mean the producers still have the burden of abiding by the casually issued ‘off the record’ e-mail by the CIA? Or not?

We are still waiting for further analysis by our legal experts and other intelligence sources. Meanwhile I asked our media advisor Kristina Borjesson to give us her take and expert analysis on this case. Internationally acclaimed for her work, Ms. Borjesson has produced for major American and European television networks and published two groundbreaking books on problems of the U.S. press: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press and Feet to the Fire: the Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak out. Her awards include an Emmy and Murrow Award in TV, the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse award for Media Criticism, and two Independent Publishers Awards for her books.

Here is the analysis of this case by Ms. Borjesson for Boiling Frogs Post:

The Pitfalls of Due Diligence for Deep Journalism

When independent filmmakers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy interviewed Richard Clarke in 2009, the former counterterrorism czar dropped a bomb on camera.  Clarke accused former CIA head George Tenet and two other CIA officials, Cofer Black and Richard Blee of withholding critical intelligence from the FBI, DOD, White House and Immigration on the presence in the US of two alleged 9/11 hijackers well before 9/11.  In their film, “Who is Richard Blee?” Nowosielski and Duffy also identify two CIA analysts who participated in the cover-up.

After interviewing Clarke, the filmmakers tried for more than a year to interest media outlets in their bombshell information. “We pitched everywhere and were told no,” says Nowosielski, “We always held out hope to get funding for it to be a real documentary, which we thought [the subject] deserved.” Finally, the filmmakers settled on putting the film out as a podcast.

The CIA is now holding up the release of the recording as a result of the filmmakers doing due diligence as reporters.  It is a standard practice of good journalism to get in touch with subjects that other subjects in a print or TV news piece are talking about if the talked-about subjects are being accused of malfeasance or illegal or unethical behavior.  It is only fair to allow accused subjects to answer and/or defend themselves. It is also then incumbent upon the reporter to get to the bottom of who exactly is telling the truth—the accuser or the accused.

In this case, the filmmakers contacted CIA public affairs to give the two CIA analysts a chance to defend themselves. They followed proper procedure in contacting the CIA public affairs people, because public affairs (not the analysts) are authorized to decide whether to speak on behalf of the analysts or to allow the analysts to speak for themselves.  

Nowosielski and Duffy went one step further in their due diligence.  They sent their entire script to CIA public affairs. “We sent the full piece because we wanted them to know these people were going to be outed. So if they’d been sent in some deep cover thing, we wanted to give them time to pull those people out of those positions.  We thought maybe they would be compelled to defend themselves, because people from the 9/11 commission, the FBI…even Tony Shaffer from Able danger [were] piling on, so we thought maybe we’re misinterpreting this story or they need to defend themselves.”

No doubt the producers did all their digging and proof-gathering into what the CIA analysts allegedly did before calling CIA public affairs. You call public affairs AFTER you have the goods on their employees, not before getting the goods or to get the goods. It’s an ethical protocol, but usually one that is done after it’s too late for public affairs to shut down sources or otherwise interfere in the reporting process.  In this case, contacting CIA public affairs kept the producers on the straight and narrow journalistically, which is a good place to be at all times when reporting on highly sensitive issues.

CIA public affairs responded with an emailed threat. “Off the record,” the CIA’s spokesperson wrote, Nowosielski and Duffy might be violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by outing their analysts. The penalty for outing CIA agents without using classified sources includes fines and/or prison time. The spokesperson’s use of the “off the record” line is a ploy.   When journalists go off the record, it is usually a mutually agreed upon pre-arrangement.  The CIA’s public affairs person’s attempt to silence Nowosielski and Duffy didn’t work but it has given them pause.

The filmmakers are withholding the release of “Who is Richard Blee?” so the threat, even though it has no legal force, has for now had the desired effect. But the story probably won’t end there. Nowosielski and Duffy are currently in assessment mode.  The question they are asking themselves, says Nowosielski, is “Are we in a position that we want to face the heat involved in that? We’re in no rush; we want to make a good decision.”  Meanwhile, they’re getting advice from a number of friendly legal quarters. 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“We seem to be a long way off from the kind of Fascism which we behold in Italy today, but we are not so far from the kind of Fascism which Mussolini preached in Italy before he assumed power, and we are slowly approaching the conditions which made Fascism there possible.”- John T. Flynn 
 

International Newsworthy

Empty Village Raises Concerns about Fate of Black Libyans 

UN Panel Report: Israel’s Blockade of Gaza Violates International Law 

Gaza Children in Israeli Hospital after Drone Attack 

UN Calls on Yemen to Halt Attacks on Civilians 

Iran Set to Release Hikers 

Total Finds Bulks Up Baku’s Local Standing

Turkmenistan: Cables Provide Details on US-Turkmen Cooperation

Europe: Into the End Game

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

Gusher of Outside Money: Outside Money Floods into Congressional Campaigns

Anita Perry’s Salary Comes Indirectly from Governor’s Backers

TSA Officers Charged in Drug Trafficking Case

GE Dumps Offshore Wind-Power Plant after Collecting $150 Million in Stimulus from Taxpayers 

Nearly 1 in 6 Americans in Poverty, Census Says

Cryptome: FBI Psychological Profiles of Anonymous Leadership

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

The Military Industrial Complex’s War on Defense Cuts

The Arab Uprising Expose “the Real Israeli Defense Force”: The Arab Regimes Themselves

Africa’s Shame: NATO-Serving Uncle Toms

Paul Craig Roberts: The Critics of 9/11 “Revisionism”

Solyndra: Uncle Sam Plays Venture Capitalist?

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“President Obama introduced his $447 billion jobs plan. A lot of economists say it could work — if we had $447 billion.” – Jay Leno

Law Gives All Mistreated Americans Right to Open Casino

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video-Audio Potpourri 

Video 1: Why the Eurozone Must Fail

Video 2: Why They Hate Us

Podcast 1: Corbett Report Interviews Joe Lauria: Palestinian State

Podcast 2: Peter B Collins Show- Searching for Answers about Google?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Last Tuesday, following his visit to ground zero, Obama’s New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned the public of upcoming 9/11-like terrorist attacks. After a decade of war with Al Qaeda, the potential for another devastating terrorist assault “remains very real,” Panetta said, and added that the nature of the terrorist threat has evolved to the point that Al Qaeda “nodes” outside Afghanistan and Pakistan are now the most dangerous, before delivering the most significant part of his fear mongering propaganda-speech: “Yemen has risen to the top of the list.”

Panetta has been laying the groundwork for the next attack-Yemen- since the early days of his confirmation. Two months ago, on July 9, he stated the following:

Panetta said that it was from Yemen — not Pakistan — that the U.S. faces the most potent threat of future terrorist attacks, from an Al Qaeda offshoot known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Is it me or do you sense that troubling and nudging déjà vu feeling? I keep seeing Cheney and Rumsfeld. I hear the echoes of the past involving the imaginary Iraq WMD and Saddam-9/11 connections…I am reading the exact same lines of lies delivered by the exact same kind of liars. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, but let me refresh the memories of those who may have already forgotten.

The following is a direct quote from the previous regime’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq- Donald Rumsfeld, testimony to Congress, Sept. 19, 2002

So is this one:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

And here are a few related news clips from the then Vice President, Dick Cheney:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

“There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming.” Cheney said he had seen proof that Saddam Hussein had provided “training” to al Qaeda operatives and all but called Russert a liar, saying he had personally told Russert that significant evidence existed of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda.

In 2007, years after all the carefully-planned propaganda was debunked and exposed as nothing but intentional lies,  41% of Americans still answered ‘Yes‘ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”

Yes
Now
41%
4/2003
53%

When it comes to Obama’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s latest propaganda you don’t have to read between the lines. Just read the lines: “Yemen has risen to the top of the list.” You see, the groundwork for the next US offensive is being completed.

It didn’t take too much effort to have Americans swallow the Iraq-9/11 ties. Given that even now, a decade later, many still believe in the Saddam-WMD-9/11 fable, will it take much for the current regime to sell Yemen-Al Qaeda-Next 9/11 propaganda? Unfortunately, I don’t think so.

The Bush administration dragged our nation into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama regime picked up where Bush left off, expanded our wars into Pakistan and Libya, and now are laying the groundwork for the next war-Yemen. Coming next, probably for our next to-be-elected president, will be Syria, and the ultimate nation to be devoured-Iran. Amazing parallels and incredible sameness that apply to both the propagators and the public.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.” - Gore Vidal 

International Newsworthy

Human Rights Watch Report: US-Supported Afghan Militias Rape, Torture & Steal 

Pentagon Blames Haqqanis for Afghan Base Bombing 

Biden Demands “Unreliable Ally” Pakistan Do More for War 

Libya’s New Leader Calls for State Based on Sharia Law 

Libyan Rebel Coalition Splinters 

Erdogan Stokes the Flames in Egypt 

Israel ‘Declares War’ on Bedouin, Plans to Relocate 30,000 People from their Homes 

Yemen Intelligence Officer Gunned Down in Aden 

Russia Rejects Call for UN Action against Syria 

Serbs will Block North if Kosovo Takes Control 

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

LIoyd’s Sues Members of Saudi Royal Family for Funding Al Qaeda in 9/11 Attacks 

Dick Cheney’s Torture Tour 

AIPAC Should Stop Stealing US Secrets 

Karl-Rove Linked Crossroads has more than Doubled its Earlier Fundraising Goal of $120 Million 

Orwell’s Big Brother will have his Day at the Supreme Court 

“Operation Fast & Furious” Cover Up: Not Unique

Obama’s Economists: “Stimulus” has Cost $278,000 Per Job

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Turkey Under Fire for Hosting NATO Radar Protecting…Israel?

An Institutionalization of Terror at Home & Abroad

Jihadis in Syria: Myth or Reality?

War: Stimulus of Last Resort?

Pakistan Energy Crisis & U.S. Interests

Philip Giraldi: A Ten Year Reckoning

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“Actually, history was made at the Reagan Library last night. I believe it was the first time Michele Bachmann has ever been in a library.” –Jay Leno

US Commemorates 9/11 by Toasting Stable Afghan Government from Top of Freedom Tower

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Bank-Funded Senator Blocking CFPB Nominee

Video 2: a-Nabi Saleh: demonstration dispersed before it begins

Video 3:  War profiteers escalate their war on jobs

Video 4: Taxpayer Funded Mortgage Fraud 101

Podcast 1: Corbett Report: Interview with Pepe Escobar

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.” - Andrew Jackson

International Newsworthy

Libya: Torture Inflicted at the Hands of the Rebels 

NATO Warplanes Back to Bombing Libya Again

US Drones Kill 5 more in Pakistan

Musharraf Vows Return to Pakistan

Abducted Afghan Contractors Found Dead

Threat of Emergency Law after Cairo Riot

US Told Egypt It Must Quash Dissent & Rescue Israeli Embassy or Suffer Consequences

Kurdish Region Stops All Crude Oil Exports

Turkish President Calls Israel ‘Ungrateful Burden’

 Kyrgyz Rail Link Hopes Rise

UK Secretly Arrested Libyans at Gaddafi’s Behest

Europe May Need to Bailout, Nationalize Some Banks

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

Court Pleadings Point to CIA Role in Alleged “Cartel” Immunity Deal

House Turns to FY 2012 Intelligence Authorization Act

Intelligence Community Wants to Monitor Social Media

Rumsfeld: Attack Imminent if Congress Cuts Defense!

10 Years after 9/11, Suspected Al-Qaeda Figure Still Eludes FBI

Solyndra Investigation Widens

Senate Republicans Continue to Block ATF Director Nominee

Bachmann: 9/11 was a “New Beginning” for US

DailyKos Bans another Strong Palestinian Voice, Simone Daud

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

The Essence of Modern America in Somalia’s Blood-Drenched Soil

What if the “Lion” Had Not Been Slain?

5 Corporate Brands Making a ‘Killing’ on America’s Wars

Imperial Delusions

9/11 & the National Security Scam

9/11: The Day we Lost our Privacy & Power

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Rumsfeld on 9/11 Anniversary

Video 2: Corbett Report: 9/11-A Conspiracy Theory

Video 3: Remembering 9/11: Life, Liberty, Truth

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

In the first part of this series we saw how, in January 2000, the CIA learned that Flight 77 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar had a US visa, but kept this secret from the FBI. At the time, concealing a terrorist or two from the FBI may have been wrong, but it was nothing to get that excited about. However, the withholding of the information took on a new meaning on October 12, 2000, when al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen.

Although there is no stone-cold proof of Almihdhar’s involvement in the bombing, there is a small hill of circumstantial evidence linking him to it. For example, he was in Yemen at the time, reportedly with one of the masterminds of the attack, Khallad bin Attash, and the bombers called his phone number in Sana’a, Yemen, although this was an al-Qaeda communications hub and they could have been talking to somebody else there. In addition, one day after al-Qaeda’s previous ship-bombing attempt in Yemen, he had left the country and gone to meet with other people suspected of involvement in the operation. Also, he worked on another al-Qaeda ship-bombing plot, to be carried out in Singapore.

The team that went to Yemen to investigate the bombings was mostly from the FBI, although there were also Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents, and the CIA station in Yemen was supposed to co-operate. The team was led by FBI managers John O’Neill, who died on 9/11, and Ali Soufan, who later became famous due to his opposition to torture by the CIA and US military.

They quickly found evidence linking the bombing to al-Qaeda. This was both through the calls to the communications hub where Almihdhar lived and through evidence linking the attack to bin Attash and another al-Qaeda leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Both bin Attash and al-Nashiri were known to the US intelligence community. Indeed, the number of core bin Laden operatives was so small that both had also played a part in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, something already known to US authorities in 2000.

Investigating bin Attash, Soufan picked up hints of an al-Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia around January 2000. Thinking this might be significant; in November 2000 he sent a formal request to the CIA asking whether the Agency knew anything about such meeting. The reply that came back was that it knew nothing. This was not true, as the CIA was highly aware of the meeting, having followed the participants around Kuala Lumpur for several days.

It is hard to comprehend how the CIA could simply have forgotten it knew about Malaysia. It is even harder when one learns that Soufan sent not one such request, but three, the latter two coming in the spring and summer of 2001. Each request was more specific than the last. In the end, Soufan even linked the Cole operation to a pay phone used by the militants outside the condominium in Kuala Lumpur where al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit was held and asked the CIA about this pay phone. The Agency had watched the attendees coming out of the building, walking round the block and then making calls from the pay phone, but they were determined not to tell Soufan any of this before 9/11.

Soufan’s requests were first made public in a New York Times piece by James Risen in April 2004, a few months before the 9/11 Commission and Justice Department inspector general, which investigated the FBI’s pre-9/11 performance, reported. Yet, there is not a single mention of these three requests in either of these two reports. Neither is there any mention of them in what remained unredacted of the 2002 Congressional Inquiry report or the executive summary of the CIA inspector general’s report into that agency’s failings. Soufan was interviewed three times by the 9/11 Commission, which also looked at documentation from the Cole bombing enquiry. There was a plan to have Soufan testify publicly at a 9/11 Commission hearing, but it never came to fruition.

Working the bin Attash angle, Soufan received a photo of a person thought to be bin Attash from the Yemeni authorities on November 22. He sent it to the US embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, via the CIA, to check that it was the same Khallad a joint FBI-CIA source inside al-Qaeda who was handled out of Islamabad had previously reported on. On December 16, an FBI agent known as “Michael D.” and a CIA officer known as “Chris” took the photo to the source, who we will call “Omar.” Chris showed the photo to Omar while Michael D., who could not speak any of the source’s languages, was out of the room. When Michael D. came back, Chris showed the photo again, and Omar identified it again as bin Attash in front of Michael D. The news that Omar said the photo showed the Khallad bin Attash he knew was passed along. This might seem less glamorous than assassinating someone with a missile, but it is real police work.

Shortly after this, an unknown CIA official drafted a cable containing some information about bin Attash and some information not about bin Attash. The cable instructed officers to share the information not about bin Attash with the Bureau, but contained no such order regarding the information about bin Attash. Again, this seems to be part of a plan to withhold evidence about certain terrorists from the FBI, although it is unclear whether the center of attention is bin Attash, Almihdhar or someone else.

The CIA alleges that it then somehow convinced itself that Almihdhar may in fact be bin Attash. This despite the fact that it had photos of the two men and they have remarkably different facial features. The idea led the agency to send one of the Malaysia photos showing Almihdhar to Islamabad for Chris and Michael D. to show Omar. However, when the photo arrived in Islamabad it was accompanied by another one; it showed Alhazmi and was also taken in Kuala Lumpur.

Chris and Michel D. went to meet Omar on January 4, 2001. While Michael D. was out of the room, Chris showed Omar the photos of Alhazmi and Almihdhar. Omar did not recognize Almihdhar, but said that the photo of Alhazmi actually showed bin Attash. Although this might sound odd, the two men actually have similar facial features. Unlike on the previous occasion, when Michael D. came back into the room Chris did not have the identification repeated for his benefit. In fact, he never mentioned it to Michael D. at all. He then drafted three cables about the meeting. Two of them, crucially including one disseminated to the wider intelligence community, made no mention of the identification of bin Attash. The one that mentioned his identification was sent only to the CIA.

However, this was very significant information for the Agency, as it now officially believed a senior al-Qaeda operative, one who had just masterminded an operation that cost 17 American lives, had been at the Malaysia summit. The CIA claims it did not know this before—even though it is hard to credit these protestations of ignorance.

Chris sent the information that the photo showed bin Attash and that he had therefore been at the Malaysia summit to the CIA station in Sana’s, Yemen. That station was supposed to be working closely with the FBI on the Cole investigation. The day Sana’a station received the news bin Attash had been at the Malaysia summit, it failed to tell the FBI. It also failed to do so the next day, and the next, and so on, right up until 9/11. The 9/11 Commission knew the information had been sent to the CIA station in Sana’a, but omitted this from its report. It is hard to imagine what good-faith explanation could be advanced for such error.

The same as the station in Sana’a, Alec Station also failed to pass on the information to its FBI colleagues, this despite the fact that in mid-January 2001 Chris asked his Alec Station counterparts to contact FBI headquarters and tell it about recent developments.

Two of the Cole agents, apparently including Soufan, then flew out to Islamabad to have Omar formally identify the first bin Attash photograph for possible use in a criminal proceeding against bin Attash. When they met with Omar, on February 1, 2001, Chris was present. He made no mention of the fact that just four weeks previously Omar had seen bin Attash in a Malaysia meeting photograph. In fact, like all other CIA agents, he made no reference to the Malaysia summit at all.

This is perhaps the most confusing episode of the pre-9/11 intelligence failures, so some explanations are in order. When one views the facts as set out above, something seems to be missing, the whole episode is a series of loose ends and unanswered questions. Why would the CIA think Almihdhar and bin Attash were the same person? Why send the additional photo, showing Alhazmi, to Islamabad? And what happened between the meeting when Omar identified bin Attash in the Yemeni photograph, when everything went swimmingly, and the subsequent one, when Chris had evidently gone over to the dark side?

The explanation that best fits the facts is this: nobody involved in the withholding of the Malaysia information from the FBI realized any danger when Soufan sent the first photo to Islamabad, so Chris did his job the way the taxpayers pay him to do it. However, one of the coterie of officials who was withholding information from the FBI subsequently realized that, as Omar had identified bin Attash and bin Attash was an associate of Almihdhar and Alhazmi, then Omar might also identify these two men as well, if shown photos from the FBI. Therefore, it was necessary to ascertain to what extent this danger was real. The speculation that Almihdhar and bin Attash were the same person was then simply a ruse under which a photo could quickly be transmitted to Islamabad to be shown to Omar. The reason the Alhazmi photo arrived unannounced was that there was concern Omar might identify Alhazmi to the FBI as well. The reason neither Chris nor anyone else mentioned the apparent identification of bin Attash to the Bureau is that, well, this was information the CIA had been working hard to keep from the Bureau for a year, why tell it to them now?

It has become a truism that intelligence operations that go on for a long time get screwed up, often for the strangest reasons, and this is a perfect example of that. Nobody could have anticipated that Omar would look at the photo of Alhazmi and say it was bin Attash, but it had happened. Now Alec Station was forced to withhold crucial information about the USS Cole bombing mastermind and tied itself up in knots about how it had failed to pass this information along after 9/11. The tale of incompetence in withholding the information about Almihdhar, Alhazmi and bin Attash had been stretched well beyond breaking point, but much more, and much worse, was to come in the late spring and summer of 2001. These events will be the subject of part 3 of this series.

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Money matters provide some of most compelling unanswered questions regarding the events of September 11, 2001.   These questions point to possible darker truths, in part because of the incomplete and/or misleading treatments in official investigations to date. Pressing questions remain in at least three issue areas, including money transfers, suspicious activity reporting, and informed securities trading.  In turn, cursory and misleading conclusions among relevant investigatory parties suggest a cover-up consistent with the possibility that the crimes of 9/11 were allowed to happen, or worse.

9/11-Money Transfers

In early October 2001, director of Pakistani intelligence services Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed was forced out of his position in the wake of published reports linking him to wire transfers totaling $100,000 into the bank account of alleged lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in Florida before 9/11.  Ahmed was actually in Washington having breakfast with leaders of the U.S. Congressional intelligence committees on the morning of 9/11. 

Ahmed’s removal and the possible link to Atta’s financing were reported in U.S. as well as foreign media sources in late 2001.  But the issue went unmentioned in the 9/11 Commission report.  And on p. 172 of its final report the Commission apparently washed our hands of further investigative responsibility while concluding that “To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks.  Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.  Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding.”  This shocking conclusion reeks of irresponsibility, at best, and its possible motivation is reflected in the Commission’s similar treatment of issues relating to possible informed/insider trading (see below).

And there were far higher suspect amounts of money moving outside the electronic realm.  Specifically, there was an extraordinary surge in currency shipments, billions of dollars of $100 bills, in July and August 2001.  After a significantly above-average increase in July, the currency component of the M1 money aggregate (currency circulating outside of banks) rose in August 2001 at the then third-fastest monthly rate in the 650 months since World War II, trailing only December 1999 and January 1991.   December 1999 was notable not only for pre-Y2K anxiety about bank accounts but also the millennium terrorist threat, while January 1991 was notable for the onset of U.S. military action in Iraq in Gulf War I as well as an important enforcement month in the B.C.C.I money laundering scandal.  (The then-fifth-fastest growing month was, quite curiously, November 1980). 

The August 2001 surge in currency shipments might be more innocently explained, at least in part, by a flowering banking crisis in Argentina, where demand for physical dollars arose among savers concerned for their bank accounts.  But that crisis does not foreclose the possibility of two other very suspicious alternative reasons: precautionary pre-9/11 ‘wartime hoarding,’ and the possible use of currency in covert operations in Central Asia.

Under money laundering and other laws, banking assets can be frozen and seized in a time of war or national emergency.  The United States had frozen Iranian assets in the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, for example, and used the same powers in responding to the African embassy bombings in 1998.  In late 1999, too, the U.S. had blocked Taliban assets, and in October 1999, after the State Department designated al Qaeda as a terrorist organization, U.S. banks were directed to identify and seize those funds.  The implied incentives may help explain the late 1999 surge in currency shipments, along with pre-Y2K anxiety. 

Given that the U.S. had exercised these authorities in the past, and with warnings of a spectacular terrorism event on the radar screen in mid-2001, it is only natural to suspect that parties concerned that their assets might be at risk of being frozen and seized after the events of 9/11 were responsible for getting their assets out of the banks, into currency and, in turn, into safer underground assets like the diamond market.  And this factor may have been at work in other countries with dollar-denominated bank accounts, like Argentina, as well as in the United States.  Following that money trail could provide excellent clues about parties aware of, if not responsible for, the 9/11 attacks.  But the currency shipments, totaling over $5 billion above an average for the July/August interval, and concentrated in $100 bills, are unmentioned in any of our official investigations to date.

In light of some of the work of Gould and Fitzgerald here at Boiling Frogs Post and their book Invisible History:  Afghanistan’s Untold Story, a third explanation for the surge in currency shipments in mid-2001 arises.  Negotiations over energy issues were underway with parties in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, in mid-2001, with U.S. representatives reportedly delivering military threats. These negotiations broke down in early August 2001, and covert operations aimed at Afghanistan could have already been underway in August 2001.  (See this and this for some other background; at least one of these sources should be read, well, carefully.)  

Currency shipments have a long history in U.S. covert operations, including for example the coup in Iran in 1953.  They were certainly part of the U.S. operations in Afghanistan soon after 9/11.  More recently, currency shipments have been part of the corruption of U.S. aid in Afghanistan, including how funds may have found their way into the pockets of our professed enemies.  Any future honest and authoritative investigation of the events of 9/11 would explore the possibility that currency-funded covert operations were already in train in Central Asia soon before 9/11.  This avenue of investigation would include exploration of related matters identified by Sibel Edmonds (see this, for example).   

9/11-Suspicious Activity Reporting

On August 2, 2001, at a time when intelligence warnings of an impending terrorism threat were flowering, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors issued a non-routine supervisory letter to the Reserve Banks urging the importance of scrutinizing suspicious activity reports.  This letter didn’t mention terrorism or its financing explicitly, but they were known and emphasized as important elements of anti-money laundering efforts.  There was a significant increase in the number of suspicious activity reports being filed by financial institutions in July and August 2001, as well. 

There is a related false statement in the final report of the 9/11 Commission.  On page 186, while making a case that anti-terrorism efforts in the late 1990s and into the 2000s lacked focus on financial matters, the Commission stated:

Before 9/11, Treasury did not consider terrorist financing important enough to mention in its national strategy for money laundering.

This statement was footnoted, with the footnote referring the reader to the 2001 National Money Laundering Strategy Report from the Department of the Treasury.  In turn, in the underlying Commission staff monograph on terrorist financing, after making a case that ‘little attention was paid to terrorist financing,’ the monograph stated in footnote 26 that

The 2001 National Money Laundering Strategy, for example, issued by Treasury in September 2001, does not discuss terrorist financing in any of its 50 pages. 

This statement is wrong, plain and simple.  The words ‘terror’ or ‘terrorist’ appear 17 times in those 50 pages.  The authors either didn’t do their homework, or were trying to tell a story.  Terrorist financing was high on the agenda of anti-money­-laundering efforts prior to 9/11.  The NMLS reports for 1999 and 2000 also stressed terrorism and its financing, directly and prominently, as an important end to which anti-money laundering efforts (including suspicious activity reporting and analysis) were to be directed. And in the late 1990s the international Financial Action Task Force (the FATF, where the United States is significantly represented) repeatedly stressed terrorism threats in its international guidance.  In turn, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s “Suspicious Activity Report Review” dated June 2001 described a late-2000 FATF “Typologies Exercise,” where the major issues examined included terrorist financing as well as the role of cash vs. other payment methods in money laundering schemes.

Why did the commission and its staff state untruths?  Could these statements have been part of a diversionary storytelling effort?  Why might they have been trying to convince readers that anti-terrorism efforts and anti-money laundering efforts weren’t talking to one another, and weren’t ‘connecting the dots’?

One possibility is that the dots were indeed being connected, and information was indeed flowing between counterterrorism personnel and financial markets, including the banking regulators.  There are two reasons the powers that be may have been particularly interested in downplaying this possibility, and emphasizing a misleading story regarding the lack of cooperation and communication.  For one thing, the truth might reinforce how much information there really was out there regarding a threat, and open the door to the possibility the ‘attacks’ were effectively enabled, or worse.  In turn, the information flow could relate to the third issue introduced above.

9/11-Informed “insider” trading

There aren’t a lot of $20 bills lying around on the sidewalks.  If there were, people would have picked them up.  For similar reasons, there aren’t a lot of ‘cheap stocks’ in the stock market.  If there were, people would buy them, and bid up the prices until they weren’t cheap any more.

The securities markets are very efficient, in that they incorporate material information rapidly.  The events of 9/11 certainly had material effects, on individual companies and the market in general.  With the flowering of intelligence warnings in mid-2011, it is unreasonable to doubt that this information was being reflected in stock market trading activity.

A conference including the exchange community in Chicago was held soon after 9/11.  A member of the audience posed a question for the panel, asking when we might expect parties to be prosecuted for the widely-believed insider trading that had been apparently taking place.  An exchange community leader answered the question, stating that ‘this wasn’t insider trading,’ asserting the lack of any fiduciary obligation on the part of the traders to the companies at issue.  That was when another member of the audience spoke up, loudly and out of turn, “well, maybe those people should just be prosecuted for murder.”

The airline stocks and related options on those stocks have been widely discussed, but another angle worth noting is the impact on the reinsurance companies.  As people and companies buy insurance to protect themselves, insurers also buy insurance to protect themselves against large disasters.  Munich Re is one of the oldest and largest reinsurers on the globe, and was exposed to huge losses on 9/11.   From August 1 to September 4, 2001, Munich Re’s stock price fell 8%, and then fell sharply further the week before 9/11, another 13% in a single week.  Munich Re had company among the insurance company.  A large French insurance firm with 9/11 exposure, AXA, has some publicly traded equity here in the United States.  Here’s how its stock price looked the weeks before 9/11:

AXA’s common stock fell almost 20% in the week before 9/11. 

As people buy insurance, and as insurance companies themselves buy reinsurance, so can investors hedge their exposure (or amplify it) via the derivatives markets.  One instrument that has gained a lot of attention in recent years is the CBOE “VIX” index.  This index is based on options prices, and has gained the nickname ‘the market fear index’ because it can capture market uncertainty, an important element for anyone watching the financial market crisis in recent years.

So, how did the ‘market fear index’ do in the weeks before 9/11?  

From August 24 to September 10, 2001, the VIX index rose over 60%.  Such an increase over a 10 day trading period has happened less than one-half of 1 percent of the time since the introduction of this index in 1990.  It climbed sharply higher after 9/11, to be sure, but the increase before the event is consistent with information about the event flowing into the financial markets.

This isn’t proof, of course, but the existence of trading on some form of 9/11 information before the event is not to be unexpected, in light of the extent of intelligence warnings.  But that is what makes the 9/11 Commission’s treatment of this issue disturbing.  The Commission chose to take adopt ‘al Qaeda didn’t do it, therefore, there wasn’t any informed trading before the event’ posture.  For example, on page 171-172 of the final report, the Commission stated:

There also have been claims that al Qaeda financed itself through manipulation of the stock market based on its advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.  Exhaustive investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and other agencies have uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions.

And in a footnote to this finding, the Commission cited how an investor with ‘no conceivable ties to al Qaeda’ was responsible for significant volume in one transaction of interest.  There is no affirmative evidence the Commission investigated the possibility that information arriving through intelligence and/or financial regulatory agencies was also finding its way into the markets, even though al Qaeda wasn’t itself doing the trading.  The Commission’s conclusion cited above may not be an entirely accurate depiction of what the SEC and other parties did or didn’t find, but in any event, the 9/11 Commission wasn’t charged with finding out what other parties in the government found out.  The Commission was charged with making its own determination. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

The issues of pre-9/11 money transfers, suspicious activity reporting, and informed securities trading couple with the incomplete if not purposefully misleading official investigations to leave us with still-open questions that won’t go away. These three issue areas are not the only financial matters that remain worth investigating, and they couple with other scandalous elements suggesting negligence, or worse.

The thousands of deaths on 9/11 were multiplied by many thousands more for innocent civilians and, speaking of money, billions of our dollars spent (and received, by those who were enriched) in our military responses to a set of still-unsolved crimes. Yet there seems to be few signs that our Ship of State (including its mainstream media handmaiden) will ever revisit its course. It can make you wonder if it’s time to hang up the cleats and get on with life.

But this is America, and we still have patriots.

Press For Truth, the movie title goes. We will get there, wherever it is.

Bill Bergman- Senior Financial Analyst, ‘Follow the Money with Bergman’ at Boiling Frogs Post

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. His favorite course there was titled “The Economics of Regulation,” and the lessons learned in that course and elsewhere help illuminate his cautious if not cynical and concerned perspective when told that government is looking out for us. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations. He is married, with three kids, and lives in Chicago. His objective with this column is to provide insight into financial and economic conditions, public policy framing money and financial markets, the history underlying our financial infrastructure, and monetary aspects of investigations and scandals.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Nowosielski and Duffy are working with legal advisors and we will have more on this soon. Meanwhile you can listen to our recent exclusive interview with the producers and their discovery here at Boiling Frogs Post:

Podcast Show #55: The Boiling Frogs Presents Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy 

Also, here are related interviews with Paul Thompson based on the exposé by the two producers: Part 1 & Part 2.

The producers’ website was taken down yesterday. We are in touch with them, and we will keep you informed. Please disseminate this stunning new development, the CIA’s panic, and the content of their interview. Thank You.

Sibel Edmonds

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Filmmakers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy join us to discuss their extensive research, interviews and findings which have resulted in the unmasking of three former top CIA officials- George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee- and their role in withholding intelligence on two key 9/11 hijackers and subsequent cover-ups. Duffy and Nowosielski provide us with a detailed account of their new interview with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his allegations against the CIA officials- Tenet, Black and Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence from the White House, the FBI, Immigration and the State and Defense Departments. They discuss two key CIA analysts who were instrumental in this cover up, a joint statement issued by the three accused CIA officials in response to Clarke’s allegations, and more!

Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy produced the film “Press for Truth,” which documented the journey of four 9/11 widows as they lobbied the Bush White House to convene an independent commission to probe the attacks. They recently launched a new transparency web site SecrecyKills.com.

Here are our guests Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security” - Jim Garrison

International Newsworthy

Libya’s New PM: Civil War Not Over 

CIA Action May Backfire in Yemen 

9/11 in Little Kabul 

US Vows to Veto Palestinian Statehood 

Islamic Militant Group ‘Behind Xinjiang Attacks’ 

Israel Deploys Drones Over Egyptian Boarder 

Human Rights Watch: White House Softening on Uzbekistan for Sake of ‘Military Cooperation’

EU Fear Mongering Via Washington Post

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

FBI’s 9/11 Sarasota Probe Covered Up & Never Reported to Congress

Obama’s SolarGate: FBI Agents Raid Solyndra

Worst Examples of Taxpayer Money Wasted in Iraq & Afghanistan

The New York Times Twisted the Facts in FBI Wiretap of Israel

Supercommittee Members’ Cash Connections Illustrated

The Costs of War

The Coming Currency Crisis

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

James Bamford: Post-September 11, NSA ‘Enemies’ include us

A Note on Isolationism

An End to Empire

Post 9/11 America Fishes for Answers

The South China Sea Conundrum

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“President Obama will give a big speech on job preservation – I mean job creation…The speech will be translated into Spanish and Chinese so that the people who have our jobs can understand.” –Jay Leno

“President Obama’s approval rating is very low. But then again, his disapproval rating is very high, so there’s a silver lining.” - Jimmy Kimmel

Dick Cheney’s New Memoir

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: The Terrorism Industry that Hijacked America

Video 2: James Corbett-New World

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Although the story of the CIA’s actions in the run-up to 9/11 is complicated, at a fairly early point in any examination of them it becomes clear the agency committed multiple failures, and that these failures enabled the attacks to go forward. The key issue that remains in dispute ten years on is whether these “failures” were deliberate or simply the product of overwork and incompetence. Making an informed judgment means taking the time to look at all the failures, put them in order, and analyze what it all means.

Perhaps the most comprehensible problem is the scope of the CIA’s failings. There was not one error by some lowly neophyte, but a massive string of failures. As Tom Wilshire, one of the key CIA officials involved in the withholding of the information commented to the Congressional Inquiry, “[E]very place that something could have gone wrong in this over a year and a half, it went wrong. All the processes that had been put in place, all the safeguards, everything else, they failed at every possible opportunity. Nothing went right.”

In addition, some of the failures were extremely serious. For example, the alleged failure by Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, to inform CIA Director George Tenet that Flight 77 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar was in the country in August 2001 is simply beyond comprehension. Added to this, the failures were committed by a small group of intelligence officers, centered on Wilshire and his boss Richard Blee, and focused on a few al-Qaeda operatives, in particular Almihdhar and his partner Nawaf Alhazmi. Finally, one of the officers who withheld information has admitted this publicly, and a second reportedly in private, and some surviving documents contradict the “incompetence excuse.”

The story of the CIA’s pre-9/11 failings starts in late December 1999, when the NSA intercepted an al-Qaeda communication, apparently between Almihdhar and bin Laden associate Khallad bin Attash, who is currently in Gitmo. One end of the call was at al-Qaeda’s operations hub in Yemen, which the NSA had been monitoring for some time. The communication showed that a group of al-Qaeda operatives would soon be travelling to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The NSA told the CIA and FBI.

The CIA tracked Almihdhar from Yemen to a stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where a photocopy of his passport was made. US officials discovered he had a US visa, issued several months earlier and due to expire in April 2000. This information was reported to the various CIA stations involved in the tracking operation and to Alec Station at CIA headquarters on January 5, 2000.

An FBI detailee named Doug Miller read the relevant cables from the field and drafted a message to the FBI to telling them Almihdhar had a US visa. The FBI is a domestically focused organization, so without the US visa Almihdhar was just a foreign terrorist abroad, and not of much concern to it. It was the US visa that would have made Almihdhar significant to the Bureau. A female CIA officer who we will call “Michael” then told Miller not to send the cable yet, saying Wilshire wanted to hold off on it—no one below Wilshire had authority to release such information to the FBI.

A few hours after she blocked Miller’s cable to the FBI, Michael sent out a cable stating that the FBI had been informed of Almihdhar’s visa information. This was not true, and Michael must have known this at the time.

You will not find this episode in the main text of the 9/11 Commission report. Despite its obvious importance, the commission relegated it to a small-type endnote, number 44 to chapter 6.

Miller turned to a fellow FBI detailee, Mark Rossini, who went to Michael to ask what was happening. According to Rossini, Michael said that the FBI was not going to get the information until the CIA wanted it to and that the next al-Qaeda attack was going to be in Southeast Asia.

In addition, according to several CIA officers interviewed by the Agency’s inspector general, it was standard practice to confirm the Bureau had received such information. This was not done.

Around a week later, Miller sent an e-mail to Wilshire asking whether he could send the message to the FBI now. He received no reply.

After 9/11, investigators were unable to find Miller’s draft cable for nearly two and a half years and the people involved allegedly forgot all about it. It was discovered in early 2004, necessitating they relevant officials be interviewed again. However, they still claimed to have no recollection.

Rossini began to talk more freely about what happened to Lawrence Wright for his 2006 book The Looming Tower, which has an unnamed CIA official tell Miller “This is not a matter for the FBI.” However, Rossini then left the Bureau in disgrace and gave a full account of what happened to author James Bamford and journalist Jeff Stein in 2008. According to Rossini, there was nothing wrong with his memory when interviewed by investigators; he simply chose to lie under pressure from the CIA. Rossini also says there was a minder in the room during the interview, a depressingly typical occurrence for the post-9/11 investigations.

On the same day Miller’s cable was blocked, a CIA officer on loan to the FBI who we will call “Robert” briefed two FBI colleagues on what the CIA knew about the Malaysia meeting. Robert told the two FBI agents pretty much everything the CIA knew except the one key thing the Bureau needed to make it sit up and take notice—that Almihdhar had a US visa. Robert then told another CIA officer on loan to the Bureau there was no need to brief the FBI about Malaysia because he had already done so, ensuring this officer would not let slip the Almihdhar visa information.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, the CIA and a local Malaysian intelligence service were following Almihdhar, Alhazmi and their contacts around. Numerous photos were taken, the attendees at the meeting were videoed on the first day, the operatives went out to use computers at an internet cafe, and intelligence officials then examined the computers. However, an attempt to bug the meeting allegedly failed.

The full list of the attendees is not known. However, in addition to Almihdhar and Alhazmi, we do know that two leading radicals, bin Attash and Hambali, a leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah, were present, along with several other lower-level militants. According to counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna and a Pentagon document about Hambali, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohamed was also there. If true, this would make the CIA’s failure to exploit the meeting all the more bizarre—the Agency was actively looking to rendition him to New York for trial at this time due to his involvement in the 1995 Bojinka plot to blow up multiple airliners.

On January 8, Almihdhar, Alhazmi and bin Attash left Kuala Lumpur for Bangkok, Thailand. The CIA claims it lost them at this point, failing to get men to the airport in time to follow them. This claim needs to be taken with a pinch of salt—bin Attash was monitored in Malaysia making a call to the Washington Hotel in Bangkok, where the three men ended up staying, so it would not be too hard to find them there.

Something strange happened at Alec Station on January 12 and 14. Four days after the three men had left Kuala Lumpur, Wilshire’s boss Blee briefed his superiors, presumably including Counterterrorist Center chief Cofer Black and CIA Director George Tenet, about what was happening. He falsely claimed the surveillance in Malaysia was ongoing. Two days later, he gave another false briefing, saying that the meeting had broken up and, again falsely, that the attendees were still being tracked.

This is a puzzle. It is hard to believe that Blee, who managed only a couple of dozen officers, could be so ignorant of the various cables sent and received about the travel to Bangkok. So why did he misinform his superiors? Was he genuinely misleading them? Or had they told him they wanted no paper trail linking them to what was happening?

On January 15, Alec Station dropped the matter entirely, even allegedly failing to write up a full report on the matter. However, in February a foreign intelligence service made an offer to help with Almihdhar, an offer mentioned in the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry Report, but not the 9/11 Commission Report. The reply that came stated that no help was needed because the CIA was in the middle of an investigation “to determine what the subject is up to.” This is a key document, as it contradicts the claim Alec Station had forgotten all about the two men at the time.

Also in February, a CIA station (almost certainly the one in Kuala Lumpur) prodded Bangkok station about Almihdhar. What had happened to him? Bangkok was silent for some time, then replied they did not know, and would have difficulty finding out. As Thailand had watchlisted Almihdhar and Alhazmi at the CIA’s request in mid-January, it almost certainly did know, or could get the information with a simple phone call. A couple of weeks later, Bangkok got round to replying in a cable also sent to Alec Station: it said Alhazmi had taken a flight to Los Angeles on January 15 with a companion, who was not named but who was in fact Almihdhar. The non-naming of the companion was totally bizarre, the March 5 cable was drafted in response to a query about Almihdhar and Bangkok must have known his name, so why omit it?

Alec Station did nothing with this cable, which was yet another opportunity to watchlist the two men and inform the FBI. This was not the last time such failures were committed.

How the two main inquiries, by the two Congressional intelligence committees and the 9/11 Commission handled the March 5 cable is instructive. The 9/11 Commission report just glosses over it in a couple of lines. The Congressional Inquiry, however, realized just how important it was and zeroed in. Tenet was asked about this publicly under oath by Senator Carl Levin and Tenet… well, he was less than a hundred per cent truthful. In response to the questioning he claimed, “I know that nobody read that cable,” and then repeated the assertion twice. In actual fact, as the public learned five years later, at least 50 people at the CIA had read the cable. It is hard to believe that Tenet, who must have prepared thoroughly for such an important appearance before Congress, thought what he was saying was accurate. So the simple question is: what was he trying to cover up?

Part two of this series will focus on the bombing of the USS Cole and the CIA’s continuing failure to share information with the FBI.

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“All that is needed to set us definitely on the road to a Fascist society is war. It will of course be a modified form of Fascism at first.” – John T. Flynn

International Newsworthy

US Drone Strikes Kill Ten & Wound Dozens in Yemen 

The Missing Stockpile of Weapons in Libya

Sudan Arrests Al Jazeera Journalist

Blowback in Somalia

Uzbekistan: US Embassy in Tashkent down on Democratization-Wikileaks

Turkey: ‘Israel Not Keeping to Defense Deals’

Council of Europe Praises Manning & Wikileaks

North Korea & the Genocide Convention

Israel Used Excessive & Unreasonable Force: Palmer Report

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

New Law Would Shift All Terror Suspects to Military Instead of Civilian Authority

US Names “Aid Czar” for Post-Revolt Arab States

Congressional Hawks Push for Much Bigger US Force in Iraq

Leon Panetta Fear Mongering: He Cites Yemen in Warning for Another 9/11

National Archives Sits on 9/11 Commission Reports

Super Congress Super Patrons

Council of Europe Digs for Truth on CIA Prisons-Torture?

Obama’s Trifecta of Economic Ineptitude

States Offer Bank Immunity from Mortgage Lawsuit

Obama Wants to ‘Spend another $300 Billion’

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Pepe Escobar: Enduring Freedom Forever

Afghanistan: A Decade after 9/11

Worried About Big Government? Then, Worry About War

Libya & Mainstream Pundits

Ten Years Later: Who is Osama Bin Laden

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“Mitt Romney revealed a 59-point job plan at a big auto dealership. That shows you how smart Romney is. He knows that a politician only looks honest when he’s standing next to a car salesman.” –Jay Leno 

American Voices: Post Office Nearly Bankrupt!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: James Corbett: After 9/11- 10 Years of War

Video 2: Will Jobs Plan Put Americans to Work?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Last month the former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke made headlines in the alternative press when he revealed that the CIA’s failure to pass on information it knew about two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers living in the United States for over a year before the attacks did not merely involve a few lowly CIA analysts who did not understand the importance of the information, but instead extended all the way to former CIA director George Tenet.

The claim that the Director of Central Intelligence knowingly and purposely blocked the White House Counter-Terrorism Czar and high-level FBI officials from learning about known Al Qaeda agents living in the United States is profound in its implications. Given that any interpretation of this assertion would necessarily mean that Tenet and the other CIA officials who blocked this information actually aided the alleged 9/11 attackers and have now participated in a decade-long cover-up of their role, the question necessarily becomes: Why did they do this?

This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett on 9/11, the CIA & the Art of the Hangout: for boilingfrogspost.com.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.” -Charley Reese 

International Newsworthy

Libya is now Set to be a Scene of Multiple Battles 

Doctor who Helped CIA Barred from Leaving Pakistan 

Egypt Rallies Support for Palestinians at UN 

Turkey Suspends Military Ties with Israel 

Nigeria Released Known Terror Suspects 

Tajikistan & Russia Explore Long-Term Strategic Ties 

Kazakhstan Confronts Extremist Threat 

Will Germany Walk away from the European Union 

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

FBI Mossad Sting Bags Big-Headed Egghead 

35,000 Convicted of Terrorism since 9/11…But How Many were Really Terrorists? 

Politically Connected Solar Firm Secured Low Interest Government Loan Before Collapsing 

SolarGate

House Panel Calls for Historical Record of the Bin Laden Raid

Congresswoman Lee Introduces Bill to Repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force

Obama & Jobs: Why I Don’t Believe him Anymore

Big Banks to Declare War on Fannie & Freddie Over Lawsuit

Despite Warnings from Congress, SEC Still Destroying Records Illegally

Obama’s Ratings Sinks to New Lows

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Was there an Alternative?

How Scared of Terrorism Should you Be?

How the Hijackers Changed Americans’ Culture

Claims about Complicity in Torture That Refuse to Go Away

Iran, US & Afghan Conundrum

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“New statistics show the U.S. economy added 0 jobs in August. The White House cautioned Americans not to read too much into those numbers. What numbers?” –Jay Leno

Obama Earns Money for U.S. by Appearing in Japanese TV Commercial!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: NATO Uses Libya to Match, Surpass & Supplant UN

Video 2: As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Cry “Whitewashed UN Report”

Peter B Collins Podcast: Prof. Stephen Zunes on Drone Deaths, AfPak, Iraq, Syria & Much More

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

From ten years on, everything about 9/11 feels otherworldly and irrational, the reasons for it, the apparent helplessness in the face of it, the curious identities of the people involved and the American government’s response to it. It defied logic then and it still does. The World Trade Towers were proud symbols of who we were as early 21^st century Americans, at least who we thought we were. After all, wasn’t the spiritual motto of the original 1939 Flushing, NY World’s Fair “World trade center” pavilion dedicated to “world peace through trade?”  

There would be no peace after 9/11. The destruction loosed a demon that had been struggling for America’s soul since the creation of the Cold War in 1947. The U.S. would now be freed to pursue “evil” wherever it could be found and there would be no turning back. The creation of the World Trade Towers by Rockefeller brothers Nelson and David had been steeped in psychological symbolism from their start in the early 1960s. As the most well known scions of American business, the Rockefeller family brought more than just money to their endeavors, they brought a vision for the future of the planet and a philosophy to guide it.

Begun as a massive undertaking to revitalize lower Manhattan, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David and New York Governor Nelson pushed hard for the project and each tower stood as a symbol of their respective power. As metaphor, the towers were more than just two of the tallest buildings in the world. It might be said they were as important as the two pillars Joachim and Boaz which stood at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple; mystical gates to a Cathedral of wisdom in which all could worship under one religion; the religion of business, Capitalism.

The Rockefellers were no strangers to the power of psychological warfare and its impact on American opinion. During World War II Nelson had headed the U.S. government’s intelligence agency for Latin America, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). CIAA’s film division guided the 1942 production of Walt Disney’s Saludos Amigos to promote pro-American sentiment in South America. In 1954 Nelson was appointed as President Eisenhower’s White House special assistant on Cold War tactics and psychological warfare. Nelson Rockefeller played a central role in formulating domestic propaganda programs throughout the 1950s as chairman of the Planning Coordination Group which, in addition to its propaganda work, oversaw all CIA covert operations. His 1956 Special Studies Project directed by Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger produced many of the domestic policy recommendations that came to be known as President Kennedy’s New Frontier. His family’s philanthropic support of the arts had been carefully coordinated with the CIA and was both overtly and covertly propagandistic.

As a committed Anglophile, Rockefeller had aided British intelligence during World War II when he rented space in New York’s Rockefeller Center at a steep discount to a number of British propaganda agencies including their secret intelligence service for the Americas, the British Security Coordination (BSC). The BSC’s chief, Sir William Stephenson (Intrepid) set up shop in New York City with the help of some of New York’s wealthiest families with one main objective in mind: Get the United States into the war in Europe on Britain’s behalf.

One key agent in the psychological war for American public opinion was young RAF pilot Roald Dahl who along with James Bond creator Ian Fleming, playwright Noel Coward and Gallup pollster David Ogilvy were given free rein to commit sabotage, political subversion and propagandize “the natives” (Americans) through whatever means possible.

Dahl’s creative fiction earned him praise from the New York Times and publishing contracts from Random House as well as entrée to Hollywood where he would collaborate with Walt and Roy Disney in their studio’s transformation into an arsenal of animation while inspiring numerous imitators.  Dahl would go on to marry a movie star and become a Hollywood icon with perennial successes, most notably “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The cult of intelligence would ultimately become so seamlessly blended into every aspect of publishing, television and film, the CIA would jokingly be referred to as “the Chocolate Factory.” Along with Fleming, Ogilvy and Coward, Dahl would help to get the United States into the war with Germany and craft an enduring Anglo-centric cultural narrative in the public’s mind whose main objective was the promotion of a British agenda for the United States. That agenda would quickly shift from anti-fascist to aggressive Cold War anti-communist (read anti-Russian) as World War II ended, with Britain playing a seminal role in the creation of America’s national security state.

President Harry Truman’s March 12, 1947 proclamation laying out the rationale for the Cold War (Truman Doctrine), fundamentally altered America’s identity by embedding a permanent psychology of fear. But a hidden aspect of this conflict was the slow, grinding corruption that its unreality fostered in America’s leadership. That unreality was finally revealed in the catastrophe of Vietnam.

In a remarkably self-effacing (especially by today’s standards) January 8, 1972 New Yorker article tracing the origins of the devastation caused by Vietnam titled “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear,” Senator J. William Fulbright bemoaned the mental corruption caused by the Truman Doctrine during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, whereby “Our leaders became liberated from the normal rules of evidence and inference when it came to dealing with Communism… The effect of the anti-Communist ideology was to spare us the task of taking cognizance of the specific facts of specific situations. Our ‘faith’ liberated us, like the believers of old, from the requirements of empirical thinking… Like medieval theologians, we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion.”

What Fulbright’s brilliant but tragic reflections fail to include is that America’s assumptions about the Cold War were never empirical. In fact the assumptions weren’t even necessarily American but had been crafted by America’s Anglo-centric intelligence bureaucracy and rooted in messianic 19^th century British designs for control of the Eurasian landmass. A recent release of classified documents reveals that Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was so obsessed with Eurasian conquest, he’d envisioned rearming Germany and attacking the Soviet Union right up to the end of World War II in a plan named Operation Unthinkable. Faced with the absurdity of confronting an overwhelmingly superior Soviet force and starting World War III, Churchill’s operation was shelved, but his famous Iron Curtain speech of 1946 would animate the idea while establishing the ideological narrative by which all future U.S./Soviet relations would be defined.   

The inspiration for Churchill’s speech and its warning of the growing Communist threat to “Christian civilization” was the American child of British immigrants, James Burnham. As the godfather of neoconservatism, Burnham would work his way from Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the 1930s, to authoring a book that would forge the foundations of a new kind of planned, centralized society, to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. His much critiqued landmark 1940 The Managerial Revolution would be read and admired by Hitler’s general staff and viewed as the blueprint for George Orwell’s 1984 in which a new class of business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers would destroy the old capitalist order, crush the working class and seize all of society’s wealth for themselves.

In a 1945 Partisan Review article titled “Lenin’s Heir” Burnham, while still at the OSS, infused his apocalyptic political views with mystical allusions to the Eurasian heartland as “the magnetic core” of Soviet power, comparing it to the mystical “reality of the One of Neo-Platonism,” whose inexorable and unstoppable “emanative progression… descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter” towards its ultimate destination beyond the Eurasian boundaries and through “Appeasement and Infiltration (England, the United States).”  Burnham was a keen advocate of dirty tricks. He would play an important role in the overthrow of Iran’s Mohammed Mosaddeq and the installation of the Shah. His book The Machiavellians would become a handbook for CIA planners. 

As an “anti-Communist ideology” Burnham’s apocalyptic warnings about the inevitability of Soviet expansion from Eurasia’s magnetic core ring like a medieval theologian’s incantation throughout Churchill’s  “Iron Curtain” speech. George Orwell even makes clear in his 1946 “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” that Burnham’s words read like a mystical invocation and were most likely intended to hypnotize.  

Twenty six years later, Senator Fulbright would realize that only because of the disastrous outcome of Vietnam was there any willingness at all to reexamine the basic assumptions of American postwar policy toward the Soviet Union and what had brought the United States to such a sorry state. The 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SALT would spring from this realization, as would the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ABM and eventually SALT II, until in January of 1980 President Jimmy Carter would ask the Senate to delay consideration of the Treaty on the Senate floor because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That treaty would never be passed.

Our involvement in the Afghanistan story began in the summer of 1979 when we began production of a documentary titled Arms Race and the Economy: A Delicate Balance. During the next months numerous experts including economist John Kenneth Galbraith lent their experience to our understanding of the unseen damage that a massive new diversion of tax dollars and investment capital would represent to the civilian economy. Galbraith insisted that accelerated defense spending and renewing the Cold War – as the neoconservative right was demanding at that critical moment – would ultimately destroy the civilian economy. He was convinced that the Cold War had already made America more and more like the Soviet Union, ruled by a military-industrial-academic establishment suspended from reality.

But by the time our program aired that winter, the argument was no longer whether our government should call a halt to the nuclear arms race and reinvest in the civilian economy. The December 27, 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had rolled back the narrative to 1947, the Truman Doctrine, to Churchill and Burnham’s mystical, medieval enchantment and the psychological warfare campaign necessary to bring it back to life was about to begin.

J. William Fulbright’s 1972 “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear” represented an awakening from the deep hypnotic trance imposed upon Americans by Cold War ideology. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought about its re-emersion, but this time to a deeper and totally detached level of unreality.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980, the United States not only rejected Fulbright’s concerns for the intellectual dishonesty represented by the continuation of the Cold War, but willfully embraced the fraud, the lie and the illusion as its own and was willing to take it one step further.   

The U.S. had silently, almost imperceptibly crossed through a mirror in 1947 with the creation of a second and covert national-security-government. But few in Washington understood at the time, the Faustian bargain they were signing onto. Now that secret government would take the U.S. on a fairytale journey into a mirrored image of itself from the 1940s, interweaving its own delusion with a remanufactured, two dimensional Hollywood invention named Ronald Reagan as the host. America would never be the same.

As an actor, Reagan had been implanted into America’s subconscious as a hero during the 1940s and his militaristic campaign of Peace through Strength  was sold to Americans as the Reagan revolution. It was in fact a counter-revolution engineered by a reactionary gang of consummate insiders headed by former Research Industry of America employee, OSS veteran and Wall Street lawyer William J. Casey with the intention of restoring America’s militarist Cold War thinking.

As Reagan’s intelligence chief, Casey had key access to the concentric circles of international power necessary to carry off the tectonic shift of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street that would transfer power to an already wealthy globalist elite. As one of OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan’s Knights Templar during World War II, Casey took his “Crusade for Freedom” and a one world religion of Capitalism as creed, and as Director of Central Intelligence was perfectly positioned to put James Burnham’s dirty tricks and Machiavellian philosophy to work in the heartland of Eurasia.

Casey’s passion for the Afghan jihad was messianic. An ultra-conservative Catholic, Casey saw little difference in the antimodernist beliefs of the Wahhabist House of Saud and the anti-enlightenment views of the newly installed Polish Pope, John Paul II. Disguised as a war to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet aggression, Casey’s campaign was intended to infiltrate covert teams beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Muslim provinces and provoke an insurrection. Backed by neoconservatives, the Saudis and secretive organizations like the Safari Club, Le Cercle, the Bilderberg Group and the 6I, it would play out in propaganda from Rambo to Charlie Wilson’s War as the greatest American victory of the Cold War.

In reality, Casey’s team would so tear down the wall between fact and fiction, legal and illegal, truth and the lie, it would make 9/11 inevitable.

But if anyone deserves the prize for the culture of triumphalist self-deception which lives on today in the endless war on terror and the Homeland Security State-culture-of-fear, it is James Burnham.  On February 23, 1983 James Burnham was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan culminating his fifty years of service as one of the “guiding lights in mankind’s quest for truth.” Burnham’s 1940 prediction that Nazi Germany would win the war had actually been wrong as was his prediction that the Soviet Union would lose. His subsequent revised prediction that the Soviets would win and expand beyond the Eurasian heartland followed only after a Soviet victory appeared obvious in 1944.

In George Orwell’s 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” Orwell clinically diagnosed Burnham’s convenient powers of revisionist prophecy as the product of a “mental disease” whose “roots lie partly in cowardice and partly in the worship of power, which is not fully separable from cowardice.”

Ten years after the events of September 11, 2001, thirty two years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and sixty four years after the creation of the Cold War, James Burnham lives on as an icon to a deeply corrupted Homeland Security-culture “In Thrall to Fear.” We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing that culture’s acolytes, their lies and their fabrications to continue to hypnotize us.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

BFP Nightly Quote

“The history of totalitarian regimes is reflected in the evolution and perfection of the instruments of terror and more especially the police.” - Carl J. Friedrich

International Newsworthy

UK Terrorism Inquiry to Examine MI6′s Ties to Gaddafi 

Large Libyan Convoy Arrives in Niger   

Libya: Weapons Dump Left Unguarded in Tripoli 

Russia Set to Lose Billions in Libya 

Azerbaijan Told U.S. It Wants “Full Membership” in NATO 

Turkey-Israel Relations: The Palmer-Uribe Report of the UN Panel of Inquiry on the Gaza Flotilla 

German Secret Service Helped Save Karzai in 2001

AU Sets Ad Campaign to Inflate Security Fears

 * * * *

National Newsworthy

Top CIA Official: “Obama Changed Virtually None of Bush’s Controversial Programs”

Ex-Blackwater Mercenaries Kept Working in Iraq Despite Ban

US Government Issues Inflated 9/11 Anniversary Warning-Fear Mongering

US Ambassador Ryan Crocker Croaks: US Must Stay in Afghanistan Because of 9/11

Israel Lobby & Obama’s Gaza Test

Arizona Begins Charging for Prison Visits

More Restaurants are Targeting Customers who Use Food Stamp

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

Our Vanished Civil Liberties

Torture Island: Where Offshore Meets the National Surveillance State

Economic Crisis: Workers’ Power in an Age of Uneven Austerity

Military Contractors’ Mercenary Motives

The Predatory Global Empire in Panama: Punishing the Poor

What did Libya do for the CIA?

* * * *

BFP Funnies

“If you like light summer reading, Dick Cheney’s memoir came out at midnight . In Washington, D.C. this is like a ‘Harry Potter’ book coming out. There were long lines of bald old men outside bookstores, putting electrodes on each other’s nipples. Then they heard about Cheney’s book coming out.” – Craig Fergusson

‘Responsible’ Cable News Outlets to Devote ‘Sensible’ Amount of Airtime to 9/11 Tenth Anniversary

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Us Cable Tells of Israel’s ‘Harsh Measures’

Video 2: Corbett Report- Paul Craig Roberts on the 9/11 10th Anniversary

Video 3: The Art of Burning Banks

Podcast 1: James Corbett-Further Down the 9/11 Money Trail

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/06/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-september-6-2011/feed/ 0 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/06/podcast-show-54/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/06/podcast-show-54/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:25:38 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=6233 The Boiling Frogs Presents Paul Thompson-Part II

This is Part II of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org and Richard Clarke’s interview by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski at SecrecyKills.Com.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss the latest revelations by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials – George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence about two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks. He provides us with the most comprehensive history and context to date on Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 with three other terrorists and flew the jetliner directly into the Pentagon killing 189 people. Mr. Thompson takes us through a mind-boggling journey through the Yemen Hub, the highly critical Malaysia Summit, Thailand, USS Cole bombing, CIA’s Alec Station, NSA, FBI and beyond!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing directly.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/06/podcast-show-54/feed/ 9 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/04/bfp-sunday-music-video-the-future-by-leonard-cohen/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/04/bfp-sunday-music-video-the-future-by-leonard-cohen/#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:54:59 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=6172 Just Because

Here is my favorite Leonard Cohen song (with the lyrics) for you. Why? Because I love Leonard Cohen. Because it is Sunday. Because the 9/11 tenth anniversary is coming. Because it was written before 9/11 and ended up being so prophetic. Because right now I so very feel like it…And how do ‘you’ like it?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/04/bfp-sunday-music-video-the-future-by-leonard-cohen/feed/ 4 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/02/coming-up-next-week-at-boiling-frogs-post/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/02/coming-up-next-week-at-boiling-frogs-post/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:06:34 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=6097 Gould-Fitzgerald Grand Finale on 9/11 & US Psychological Warfare Series, Paul Thompson Part II, Kevin Fenton’s CIA & 9/11 & More!

We are going to have a busy and highly interesting week starting on Monday, September 5. Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald will present you with their Grand Finale, Part 4 of their 9/11, Psychological Warfare & the American Narrative series:

“Willie Wonka & the National Security State as the U.S. resumes a holy war begun in the 19^th century through a syncretistic cult-like British foreign policy known as Mystical Imperialism” 

Read the first three parts if you haven’t been following their extraordinary insight into US psychological Warfare operations:

Part I. A Campaign Where the Lie Became the Truth and the Truth Became the Enemy of the State

Part II. Building the Afghan Narrative with Black Propaganda, the People, the Process & the Product

Part III. A Clockwork Afghanistan

Also coming up: Boiling Frogs Podcast interview with Paul Thompson Part II

Here is the link to our interview Part I: Click here.

We’ll also have Kevin Fenton’s 9/11 series on the CIA, and other highly interesting articles, interviews and  updates for our 9/11 countdown series.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/02/coming-up-next-week-at-boiling-frogs-post/feed/ 0 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/01/podcast-show-53/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/01/podcast-show-53/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:55:06 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=6018 The Boiling Frogs Presents Paul Thompson-Part I

This is Part I of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org and Richard Clarke’s interview by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski at SecrecyKills.Com.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss the latest revelations by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials – George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence about two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks. He provides us with the most comprehensive history and context to date on Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 with three other terrorists and flew the jetliner directly into the Pentagon killing 189 people. Mr. Thompson takes us through a mind-boggling journey through the Yemen Hub, the highly critical Malaysia Summit, Thailand, USS Cole bombing, CIA’s Alec Station, NSA, FBI and beyond!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/09/01/podcast-show-53/feed/ 11 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/28/the-eyeopener-white-gold-heroin-the-destabilization-of-afghanistan/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/28/the-eyeopener-white-gold-heroin-the-destabilization-of-afghanistan/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:47:30 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5768

The Power(s) Behind Afghan Heroin & the Real Profiteers of the International Drug Trade 

The idea that the drug trade in Afghanistan is enabled and protected by western interests for their own benefit is by no means a new or controversial idea. After all, we are talking about the third most lucrative commodity in the world behind oil and the arms trade. However, the media coverage of this issue involving hundreds of billions of dollars is another story. James Corbett brings to you questions and points not dared to be raised by the media and pseudo alternatives alike.

This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett on Afghanistan’s White Gold for boilingfrogspost.com

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/28/the-eyeopener-white-gold-heroin-the-destabilization-of-afghanistan/feed/ 1 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/24/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-iii/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/24/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-iii/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:14:49 +0000 gould.fitzgerald http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5727

A Clockwork Afghanistan

The struggle to determine what the United States would become in the 21^st century didn’t begin at 9/11. 9/11 consumed America’s attention, but the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the signature event that made 9/11 inevitable. The invasion of Afghanistan ended détente and renewed the Cold War. At the time it was presented as an open act of aggression by the Soviet Union and declared by President Jimmy Carter to be the most serious threat to peace since World War II.  The invasion would establish a new narrative of uncompromising hostility toward the Soviet Union, erase decades of efforts by moderates inside both Soviet and American systems to end the Cold War, would increase defense spending to World War II size levels thereby changing the United States from a creditor to a debtor nation and would firmly establish the arrival of the so called New Right and its aggressive militarist logic on the American political scene.

The root cause of what the United States suffers from today, both politically and economically stems from the psychological warfare campaign triggered by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  At that time, Americans responded dutifully if not robotically to the threat as a barrage of propaganda poured from a hoard of foreign policy “experts” claiming vindication for Vietnam while bemoaning America’s military weakness. Zbigniew Brzezinski himself claimed that the Soviet invasion was a vindication of his prediction that the Soviets would be emboldened by a lack of U.S. resolve elsewhere. The shaken president, Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the creation of a rapid deployment force to the Middle East and a new get tough posture toward the Soviet Union.

On January 2, 1980 the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour presented former U.S. Ambassador Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes to speculate on the implications of the invasion. As an unabashed neoconservative ideologue, Pipes should have been considered a controversial choice sitting alongside the thoroughly Eastern establishment Eliot. But on this evening Pipes had been carefully chosen to play the very special role of delegitimizing détente with the Soviet Union while moving the discussion permanently and irretrievably to the neoconservative right.  Paired with Eliot, the dean of American diplomacy and soon to be Secretary General for the United States of a gathering of international elites calling itself, the Bilderberg group, the two were there to send the signal that the ideology of neoconservatism, globalism and the institutions of the American government were now one and the same.

It was a moment that would change the United States in ways that few Americans would immediately understand and many continue to find baffling. Years earlier, Pipes had been chosen to chair a highly controversial operation known as the Team B experiment in competitive analysis.

The decade of the 1970s had presented a series of strategic shocks to the United States. The Watergate scandal and the Arab oil embargo, campus protests, combined with the American military failure in Vietnam had shaken Washington’s own belief in the American narrative. Vietnam had removed the veil from America’s Cold War defense-intellectual elite, revealing their elaborate plans and complex mathematical formulas to be useless as a guide to action. But even before the end of that war in 1975, pressure had been building from a powerful collection of right-wing ideologues to ignore their own complete intellectual failure, wind back the clock and return to an openly militarized Cold War approach to the Soviet Union.

Backed by Gerald Ford’s CIA director George W. Bush, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) vice chairman, Leo Cherne, and the father of Cold War thinking, Paul Nitze, Team B’s goal was to turn the CIA’s thinking about the Soviet Union on its head.

“The intensity and scope of the current Soviet military effort in peacetime is without parallel in twentieth century history,” they claimed in their top secret 1976 report. The Soviets were preparing for a “third world war” and were comparable only to “Nazi remilitarization of the 1930s.” Given military superiority and the will to use it, they reasoned, at some point in the near future the Soviets would make a strategic move that the United States would be militarily unable to stop.

But it was in their claim that the Soviets would first “intimidate smaller powers . . . adjacent to the USSR . . . where pro-Soviet forces have an opportunity to seize power but are unable to do so without military help,” that the Team B assessment attained a level of prophecy.

If anything could be described as a psychological warfare operation come unhinged, it was the Team B experiment. Team B effectively exposed the government’s own process of rational analysis to an irrational exercise in personalized, politicized, ethnic and faith-based psychological warfare. And it succeeded.

By 1979, the Team B and its acolytes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad had so managed to overlay their alternate reality onto the mind of government that when the invasion of Afghanistan took place in 1979 their fantasy appeared to be as real and foreordained as it was intended to be.

Richard Pipes made clear in that January 2, 1980 broadcast that Afghanistan was “a superb springboard from which to launch offensives both into the Indian subcontinent and into Iran and the Iranian Gulf….” And then invoked the magic of World War II by stating that never before had the Soviets “felt bold enough… to engage in a direct blitzkrieg. So if they get away with it in Afghanistan, there’ll not only be great danger for our whole Middle eastern position but we will have encouraged them to engage in actions of this sort in other parts of the world, including, for example, Southeastern Europe or possibly even Western Europe.”

A “direct blitzkrieg” aimed at the Middle East, India, Southeastern and even Western Europe? Just like the phantom threat posed by Saddam Hussein in 2003 and brought forward by the very same people, the idea that the Soviets might cut off a vital oil supply was all that was needed to capture public opinion. That spring CBS News anchor Dan Rather followed up with a coast to coast broadcast reinforcing the company line: the American people were asleep to Soviet designs and had better start supporting the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” before it was too late. 

The major media had been priming the pump for months prior to the invasion citing Brzezinski and the importance of the “arc of crisis,” and predicting that the Soviet Union would be driven toward the Persian Gulf within the decade due to intelligence reports that it was “running short of the oil it needs to fuel an expanding economy.” Never mind that the Soviet economy was actually contracting at that point and the CIA’s secret 14-page memo titled “The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis,” was pure hokum.

Brzezinski and his Team B allies wanted the Soviets in Afghanistan as part of a long standing plan for the conquest of Eurasia and the psychological warfare campaign to convince Americans of the Soviets’ malevolent desires for world domination was already gearing up to make it reality.

International Rescue Committee Chairman Leo Cherne was well practiced in the arts of such deception. As of 1978, the year of the Marxist coup in Afghanistan the IRC was already at work stating in their Annual Report that they were actively engaged in bringing Afghan refugees to Europe and the United States following “The takeover of Afghanistan by dictatorial forces sympathetic to the Soviet Union…” The IRC’s Annual Report that year featured a photograph of Cherne’s old protégé at the Research Institute of America, board member William J. Casey while conducting a tour of Southeast Asia. Casey would serve as Chairman of the Executive Committee the next year before running Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign and shortly thereafter becoming his CIA director.

The IRC in cooperation with the CIA had virtually created the elaborate psychological warfare mechanism that sold the U.S. military buildup in Vietnam to the American public. By 1975 their campaign of black lies had been exposed as a dangerous fraud. But in faraway Afghanistan, those mistakes would be forgotten with the help of the Europeans and a covert globalist agenda. 

It was obvious to us in 1980 that the Soviet invasion was not what it seemed and even more obvious that the Western response to it was not what it should have been. 1979 was a critical moment in American history. Vietnam had created huge problems for the post World War II infrastructure and economy. Huge debt and a military resurgence was the last thing the U.S. needed. But when Theodore Eliot showed up at a preview of our first-person 1981 Afghan documentary on life behind Soviet lines and demanded to know who in the U.S. government had “authorized” our project, we realized we had penetrated a psychological warfare campaign that was steeped in the irrational.  

Like clockwork, the 1979 Soviet invasion would open a back door for a small band of globalists to bleed, loot and ultimately disassemble the Soviet Union, just the way the very same people would use 9/11 to go through the front door to bleed, loot and disassemble the United States.

# # # #

Join us next for Willie Wonka and the National Security State as the U.S. resumes a holy war begun in the 19^th century through a syncretistic cult-like British foreign policy known as Mystical Imperialism.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/24/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-iii/feed/ 4 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/19/podcast-show-51/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/19/podcast-show-51/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:13:55 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5578 The Boiling Frogs Presents Lorie Van Auken

Lorie Van Auken joins us and shares with us her reflections ten years on about the events of 9/11 and her loss. She discusses the still- classified 28 pages of the JICI dealing with terrorist financing, the 9/11 families’ stalled lawsuit to bankrupt the terrorists and the direct interventions by the White House to protect the Saudi regime against the justice-seeking families, and the many uninvestigated questions and facts covered up by the 9/11 commission. She questions our current many-fronted wars and the senselessness of the occupation of and our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan with Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden both dead, while our economy is crashing here at home. Ms. Van Auken talks about the three versions of the NORAD timeline, the passage of the Patriot Act as a vehicle to erode our civil liberties, NSA’s illegal wiretapping of our domestic communications under the guise of security, and more!

Lorie Van Auken, the mother of two children, lost her husband Kenneth Van Auken in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She is one of the “Jersey Girls” who, along with Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza, fought the Bush administration for a commission to investigate the attacks. Ms. Van Auken is also a member of the September 11 Advocates.

Here is our guest Lorie Van Auken unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/19/podcast-show-51/feed/ 14 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/18/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-ii/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/18/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-ii/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:49:44 +0000 gould.fitzgerald http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5548

Building the Afghan Narrative with Black Propaganda, the People, the Process & the Product

By definition, America’s use of Psychological Warfare is described as the “The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives.”  Of course this very definition is itself propaganda, a white lie which omits the fact that America’s domestic population is just as often the target of psychological warfare as any “hostile foreign groups.”  

The state’s use of psychological warfare to bend the population to war is as old, if not older than the existence of states themselves. But it was perhaps Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering whose statement while on trial at Nuremberg best summed up the cynical simplicity of the logic.

“Of course people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders, that is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Psychological warfare in the form of propaganda comes in all shapes and sizes as well as shades of black, grey or white.  America’s coordinated use of psychological warfare began in earnest during World War II and ever since has grown and expanded into public relations, advertising, cinema, radio and television, electronic video games and now social media. Its pro-war boosterism extends over sports, religion, education, news and entertainment (and of course the military) to form a seamless electronic cocoon-like web. It is employed on an ever growing list of those deemed as enemies of America as well as on a confused and agitated American public – whose corporate news networks frame and manage an increasingly shallow narrative while engaging in a kind of Orwellian Kabuki Theatre of fairness and balance.

Americans were heavily propagandized to support a U.S. entry into World War II and again heavily propagandized to accept the morality of deploying the atomic bomb to end it, despite dissent from within the scientific community. Even Mickey Mouse was conscripted for America’s total war effort along with the minds of America’s youth. Following the war Americans were heavily propagandized to accept the Cold War, the need for maintaining a permanent army, navy and air force as well as the buildup of a nuclear weapons arsenal.

 Since 9/11 Americans have been bathed in psychological warfare on Islamic terrorism despite the fact that only a handful of incidents in the West can be attributed to radical Islamists. What is generally not appreciated by America’s leadership about this kind of prolonged use of propaganda on the American public is that it exposes the rationale for the longest war in American history in Afghanistan as flimsy and unconvincing and completely sidesteps the outright lies and deceptions used to justify the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The origins of Washington’s war in Afghanistan have always been strategic, long term and particularly black, obscured throughout the Cold War by a narrative adapted from Britain’s 19^th century colonial expansion.

Given little priority during the U.S.’s long involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s, America’s psychological warfare campaign shifted its attention to Central Asia in 1973 when Afghanistan’s king was overthrown by his brother in law and cousin Mohammed Daoud with the help of the Parcham faction of the Marxist/Leninist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The role of the Communist party meant so little to the U.S. media at the time it remained invisible in both Time and Newsweek’s published reports of the coup. But to U.S. ambassador Robert G. Neumann, the presence of the PDPA meant that a “limited Great Game” with the Soviet Union was now back in play.

A coordinated campaign of pressure from U.S.-backed Pakistan and Iran soon ousted Daoud’s Marxist partner while the Shah’s dreaded spy agency SAVAK moved in to help Daoud clean house of leftists. The Shah even readied a military force to invade should Daoud waver in his newfound anti-Communist zeal. But by 1978 a new day for Iran and Afghanistan was about to dawn.  

Enter Hafizullah Amin. Before, during and after World War II the U.S. had created a number of psychological warfare organizations designed to compete with the political propaganda of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Integrated closely into the CIA’s intelligence and psychological warfare units after the war, organizations like Leo Cherne’s International Rescue Committee (IRC) and according to the CIA’s own website, the Congress for Cultural Freedom “helped to solidify CIA’s emerging strategy of promoting the non-Communist left–the strategy that would soon become the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades.”

In constant competition with the KGB, the CIA was also known to target foreign students destined to hold high rank in their home countries.  Handpicked by U.S. administrators to participate in a UNESCO/Columbia University program, Amin was sent to New York in 1957. He later completed a master’s degree at Columbia—coincidentally at a time when future National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was gaining prominence as a professor there.

Amin claimed to have become radicalized at the University of Wisconsin in 1958. He also claimed to have become a Marxist that summer but would conceal his emergence as a leader in the Kalq faction of the PDPA until much later. Despite being a Marxist, Amin was again chosen in 1962 by the Americans to attend Columbia, this time as a doctoral candidate and rose quickly to become the president of the Afghan Student Association. A disclosure in Ramparts magazine in 1967 would reveal the CIA’s sponsorship of that same Afghan Student Association during that time. Following his return Amin rose rapidly in Afghan politics and by 1978 was positioned to play a pivotal role in another Palace coup, this time of Prince Mohammed Daoud himself.

1978 was a pivotal year in the foreign policy of the United States as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski made steady inroads into Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s power. By that year he had persuaded Carter to transfer jurisdiction over the CIA from the Inter-Agency Policy Review Committee, (headed by the secretary of state) to the National Security Council’s Special Coordinating Committee which he chaired. This shift gave Brzezinski control over covert operations in Afghanistan. It also gave him control of the psychological warfare campaign necessary to make those operations work both at home and abroad.

Hafizullah Amin played the perfect foil to Brzezinski’s propaganda war which, regardless of the lack of evidence, painted the PDPA takeover in Kabul as a clear example of the growing dangers of Soviet expansionism and their pursuit of dominance in the Persian Gulf. Throughout 1978 and into 1979 Amin’s actions dovetailed perfectly into the expanding psychological warfare campaign with Brzezinski blaming Amin’s February 1979 assassination of American Ambassador Adolph Dubs, on the Soviets.

Transcripts from Politburo meetings in Moscow from March 1979 show a Soviet leadership confounded as the events unfolded, referring to conversations with Amin as looking “like a detective novel.” Had the operation been scripted in advance by the CIA to confuse Moscow, it was working brilliantly.

The subsequent, December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ended détente, renewed the Cold War and opened a U.S. relationship with Communist China that could not have been imagined at the time. It established a new narrative of an expanding Evil Empire threatening America’s vital interests in the Persian Gulf and would redefine U.S. objectives along neoconservative lines. These lines were laid out within days of the Soviet invasion by former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes in a MacNeil Lehrer broadcast on January 2, 1980.

But it wasn’t until we probed this new narrative by going to Afghanistan ourselves in 1981 and were challenged personally in a public forum for doing so by Ambassador Eliot, that we realized there was much more to Ambassador Eliot and his narrative than met the eye.

# # # #

*Join us next as we look at the strange team behind the psychological warfare campaign that brought the United States into Afghanistan and kept it there and how that campaign has come home to haunt America in a post 9/11 world.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/18/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-ii/feed/ 4 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/16/richard-clarke-is-being-too-nice-to-george-tenet/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/16/richard-clarke-is-being-too-nice-to-george-tenet/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:22:53 +0000 admin http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5509 “Tenet v Clarke: Whom to believe? It is a no-brainer!”

By David Swanson

Former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism Richard Clarke suggests that former CIA Director George Tenet blocked the sharing of information within the government on two members of al Qaeda in the United States, information that Clarke believes could have prevented 911. The CIA admits it knew about the two future hijackers but claims the Director was not informed.

“In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail to CIA) did see travel information on individuals who later became hijackers but the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.“

Clark claims to have been very close to Tenet and to find this impossible to believe. Clarke maintains that the Director must have been informed and must have made the decision not to share the information with Clarke and others. Clarke speculates that the presence of these two al Qaeda members was kept secret because the CIA had tried to recruit, or “flip,” those al Qaeda members and failed. Yet he has no evidence of such attempts.

But why not report that you tried to recruit someone and failed? What is the reason not to report that?

It seems more likely to me that Clarke is going easy on Tenet. “The September 11th attacks could have been prevented” has an “Obama could have fought for progressive principles” ring to it; it builds in the assumption that those involved WANTED the attacks to be prevented. Whatever this other new report ends up meaning, the history of Able Danger, and of White House inaction, and of Clarke’s earlier revelations begins to suggest a pattern.

I hate to underestimate incompetence and petty infighting as explanations for things, but I also hate to accept as the only possible explanation Clarke’s theory — of which he himself does not seem at all convinced — as to why Tenet apparently withheld information. I asked FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds what she thought, and her reply suggested a level of contempt for both Clarke and Tenet:

“I think sometimes it takes one evil fighting another evil to get to the truth. In this case, the clash of two guilty egos has helped unearth some truth on 9/11. Hope to have more clashes.“

I turned to Pentagon whistleblower Karen Kwiatkowski. She ought to have a sense of how accurate Clarke’s description is of standard practice versus inexplicable deviation from it. She seemed to think this new angle fit an existing pattern:

“[This] is just one more unanswered question regarding our own government’s involvement and possible complicity in the events. There are more gaping questions that lend credence to the theory that the U.S. government or parts of it were supportive and facilitated the 9/11 events (and the subsequent Amerithrax case). One, why was there no investigation of and no discussion of WTC 7 in the 9/11 commission report? And why has the case of the Israeli ‘art students’ (actually agents) who were tracking and had detailed operational intelligence on a significant number of the purported hijackers in this country in the months leading up to 9/11 never dealt with in a big way by any commission or any government agency? The after-the-fact lack of interest in these events kind of confirms the before-the-fact activities of those who were in a position to stop the attacks.“

Note that Karen does not here suggest, and neither do I have much use for theories to explain away what we know, theories that suggest there were no airplanes, no hijackers, etc., etc., some of which theories are extremely valuable but purely as entertainment. Rather, Karen is asking questions about things we don’t know, and things our government has gone to considerable lengths to avoid making known. When it comes to such matters, it’s hard to do better than turning to retired CIA officer Ray McGovern. I’ve just done so, and he hasn’t disappointed. Here’s a comment of McGovernian length and perception that he’s sent me:

“Withholding critical intelligence from the makers and implementers of security policy can be worse than lying. Of lying, we have plenty of evidence that former CIA director George Tenet is a serial offender — as is his long-time spokesman, Bill Harlow.

“But withholding intelligence on two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been unconscionable — the epitome of malfeasance, not just misfeasance. That’s why Richard Clarke’s conclusion that he should have received information from CIA about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, ‘unless somebody intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution’ is a most serious charge, given the role of the two in hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

“Tenet has denied that the information on the two hijackers was ‘intentionally withheld’ from Clarke, and has enlisted former CIA operatives Cofer Black (more recently a senior official of Blackwater) and Richard Blee (a more shadowy figure) to concur in saying, Not us; we didn’t withhold.

“Whom to believe? It is a no-brainer. One would have to have been born yesterday to regard the ‘George is right’ testimony from Black and Blee as collaborative.

“Tenet is the same fellow who provided the ‘slam dunk’ on the existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, as well as the ‘artist renderings’ of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the imposter code-named (appropriately) ‘Curveball.’ Tenet is the fellow who, under orders from Bush and Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq to deceive our elected representatives out of their Constitutional prerogative to authorize a war of aggression. Not small infractions.

“After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to ‘justify’ attacking Iraq as ‘uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent.’ Good enough to win Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though. It worked just fine for the purposes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, thank you very much.

“It is a matter of record that Tenet lies a lot — on occasion, demonstrating a sort of chutzpah on steroids. Recall, for example, Tenet telling Scott Pelley on ’60 Minutes,’ five times, in five consecutive sentences, ‘We do not torture people.’

“Tenet has lied about 9/11 too. The joint statement from Tenet, Black, and Blee, provided by Bill Harlow, concludes: ‘We testified under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we didn’t know. We stand by that testimony.’ Almost made me laugh….almost.

“In his sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet told the Commission under the prime-time klieg lights that he had not spoken to Bush — even on the telephone — during the entire month of August 2001.

“But Tenet did visit fly to see the President in Crawford — not once, but twice during August 2001, and briefed Bush again in Washington on the 31st. After the TV cameras at the 9/11 Commission hearing were shut off, Bill Harlow phoned the commission staff to say, Oops, sorry, Tenet misspoke. Even then, Harlow admitted to only Tenet’s August 17 visit to Crawford (and to the briefing on the 31st).

“How do we know Tenet was again in Crawford on August 24? From a White House press release quoting President George W. Bush to that effect — information somehow completely missed by our vigilant Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

“Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxes eloquent about the ‘president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna.’ But the visit was not limited to small talk.

“In his book Tenet writes: ‘A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events.’ The Aug. 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief contained the article ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.’ According to Ron Suskind’s ‘The One-Percent Doctrine’, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, ‘All right, you’ve covered your ass now.’

“If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24? I believe the answer can be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.

“Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing, focusing on Moussaoui, titled ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.’ Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.

“It is an open question — if a key one — whether Tenet told Bush about the two hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, while keeping that key information from the person who most needed it — White House counter-terrorist czar Richard Clarke. Clarke finds the only plausible explanation in his conclusion that Tenet was personally responsible. Clarke says:

“‘For me to this day, it is inexplicable, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn’t tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn’t tell me, that the other 48 people inside CIA that knew about it never mentioned it to me or anyone in my staff in a period of over 12 months.’

“But Tenet’s aide-de-camp Bill Harlow has branded Clarke’s statements ‘absurd and patently false.’ The statement Harlow shepherded for Tenet, Black, and Blee adds ‘reckless and profoundly wrong…baseless…belied by the record…unworthy of serious consideration.’

“And Harlow never lies. Right. I’m reminded of Harlow’s reaction to Newsweek’s publication on February 24, 2003 of the remarks of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs for almost a decade before he defected to Jordan in 1995. Kamel did provide some information on residual, closed-down sites relating to WMD, and that information proved correct.

“Kamel ALSO said that after the first Gulf War in 1991:

“‘I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.’

“This was not at all what Bush, Cheney, and — by extension — Tenet wanted Newsweek readers, or the rest of us, to learn just three weeks before the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq, ostensibly to find and destroy those threatening, non-existent weapons.

“So Bill Harlow rose to the occasion, telling the FCM that the Newsweek story was, ‘incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.’ And the FCM said, Gosh, thanks for telling us.

“By all indications, Harlow is still able to work his fraudulent magic on the FCM, which has virtually ignored this major story since it broke several days ago. If Harlow says it’s not true…and throws in still more pejorative adjectives to dismiss what Clarke says, it is surely Richard Clarke who is not telling the truth. No matter Clarke’s well deserved reputation for honesty and professionalism.

“And so it goes.”

Yes, it is as likely as that the sky is blue that Tenet knew and that Tenet is lying about what he knew. But I’m interested in why. Did he try to convert two members of al Qaeda to his team and fail, and then choose to keep quiet about it, despite his established habit of trying to “cover his ass”? Wouldn’t his ass have been better covered by sharing the information? And wouldn’t we all then be better off, in particular the million Iraqis and thousands of Americans and Afghans who’ve paid for this malfeasance with their lives?

But what if, just as Obama’s actions make sense when we stop fantasizing about him being a liberal, Tenet’s actions make sense when we stop assuming his top priority was protecting the people of this country?

# # # #

David Swanson is the author of “War Is A Lie” http://warisalie.org This article was originally published here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/16/richard-clarke-is-being-too-nice-to-george-tenet/feed/ 3 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/15/911-a-hot-case-in-an-igloo/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/15/911-a-hot-case-in-an-igloo/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:49:45 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5472

The Anatomy of a Still-Open Hot Case

A cold case is any criminal investigation by a law enforcement agency that has not been solved, and has been closed from further regular investigation. First, before anything else, and certainly before becoming a ‘cold case,’ a case must be ‘investigated.’ By investigated I mean a real investigation involving real investigative techniques and an investigative process performed by real investigators. If after real investigations by real investigators the case remains unsolved, then the case can be justifiably put aside as a cold case.

On the other hand, by this very same definition, a criminal ‘hot case’ that has not gone through a proper investigation by real investigators remains a ‘hot case.’ Whether that hot case is shoved into a cold case file or not does not make it technically a ‘cold case.’ The never-investigated mass murder on September 11, 2001, a case never assigned to real and independent investigators, with many witnesses never-interviewed, with many suspects never-pursued, with many questions left unanswered, and with many leads never-followed, remains a ‘hot case.’ The self-serving classifications and redactions, the many cover ups, and the burial of the case and related files in government-created massive igloos, do not make 9/11 a cold case.

Let’s take a few minutes and by comparison examine a smaller scale murder investigation involving a murdered wealthy middle-aged man in an office building that was set on fire. While the forensic teams go over the body and through the charred building and debris to search for clues and evidence, the trained detectives begin interviewing witnesses, checking out the victim’s history, following any leads and forming their list of suspects.

In creating their list of suspects, the investigators look at all persons with direct or indirect motive(s): A young trophy wife with a multi-million dollar life insurance policy; a business adversary with much to gain from the elimination of the murder victim; former business partners and associates with grudges; a man who had actually threatened the murder victim; another who had shared his intense desire to see the victim dead; the owner of the handsomely insured burned down office building who had been unsuccessfully trying to sell the building and liquidate his assets …so on and so forth.

Whether through accounts of eye-witnesses or relatives, coworkers and friends, whether through documented evidence such as letters or e-mails, the investigators fill the list with possible suspects with motive(s) to see the victim dead, and maybe some with the established intent to kill him. Once the investigators create their list of suspects, and once the forensic and other evidence and witness statements have been gathered and analyzed, then they set about winnowing down the list. Using exhaustive interrogation techniques, investigative channels, and forensic evidence, the investigators begin eliminating unlikely suspects from the initial list one-by-one.

Sometimes the list is simultaneously narrowed down and expanded. While some initial suspects can be eliminated, others related to the initial suspects may be added as accessories to the crime. For example, the murder victim’s business adversary hired a professional hit organization that turned around and contracted the killing to three of its contract hit men. Or the victim’s wife’s lover plotted with her and engaged two hit men to execute the plot.

In the end, the investigators turn over their final suspect-accessory list and all the evidence that they believe will stand up in court to a prosecutor who then decides (on the evidence)  whether to bring charges against one or more suspects, and then argues the case in court. The suspect(s), motive, means and opportunity, all supported by evidence and witnesses, are presented in court for the jury to judge the case and decide guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Of course we then have those cases that never make it to court. The lack of sufficient evidence, witnesses, or even a lack of possible suspects, moves the case from the investigation phase directly into the cold case file cabinet.

Then, we have cases that never make it even to the real investigation phase. Period. Without going through the usual investigative process- evidence-gathering, witness interviews, seeking motives and means, looking for intent, establishing a list of suspects …Without turning over any suspect with ‘all’ associated evidence and witnesses to any prosecutor…These case are evasively declared closed or a cold case.

The investigation of the 9/11 mass murder was first assigned to a highly-influenced and dependent Congress. We are not talking seasoned detectives and investigative agents here. Then, it was given to a group of sleazy pocketed politicians called a commission. Again, we are not talking about experienced detectives and savvy and independent prosecutors. No; just a handful of masterful and deceitful politicians and their puppet administrative staff.

There never was a thorough initial list of suspects. A few hours after the mass murder a bearded man in some dark cave in Afghanistan was announced as the mastermind and less than a couple dozen dead hit-men were declared the executioners of that mass murder. As for motive and intent, there was a round or two of circular discussions in the media, but absent any real investigation and thus any need for real prosecution, establishing motive and intent were deemed irrelevant and unnecessary. Same for any accessory suspects; a few hundred were rounded up around the globe and were taken into black holes, black sites, and black prisons. Some were later released, some were tortured and killed, and some still remain in those holes. We don’t know, and it looks like we’ll never know.

In a real-life mass murder investigation by real investigators a document like this, explicitly stating the desire for a mass murder like this would immediately make its way into the evidence bag, and signatories such as these people with a real motive and unlimited means would be automatically added to the top of the investigators’ initial list of suspects. They would remain there until further investigated, eliminated, or possibly prosecuted. Of course this was not a real investigation, and with no real investigators, and there never was a real list of suspects.

In a real-life investigation highly suspicious suspects like this would not easily disappear into thin air just like that.

In a real-life investigation any suspect accessory like this would be investigated, interrogated, and accordingly cleared or apprehended. And other highly suspicious persons or possible witnesses like this would be questioned and examined very thoroughly, rather than being directly assisted in fleeing the country.

In a real-life investigation key witnesses and investigative experts like these would be held with the highest regard, and their knowledge, first-hand information, and documented evidence would be considered of great value. They certainly wouldn’t be censored, classified and officially gagged.

In a real-life investigation if the highest-level criminal investigative body declares the capriciously designated perpetrator only a ‘suspect’ with no real hard evidence ever linking him to the crime in question, the case would be categorized as ‘never-solved & so very much open.’

And the list goes on and on. When we get down to it, I mean really get down to it, what do we really have in the investigation of the biggest mass murder in the history of our nation? I’ll tell you what we have. We have a still ‘Hot Case’ that has been shoved inside a massive establishment-built igloo; so far, successfully.

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/15/911-a-hot-case-in-an-igloo/feed/ 11 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/oh-george-you-got-some-%e2%80%98splainin%e2%80%98-to-do/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/oh-george-you-got-some-%e2%80%98splainin%e2%80%98-to-do/#comments Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:27:24 +0000 admin http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5383 Who at Alex Station knew what in August-September 2001?

By Kevin Fenton

Recent allegations made by former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke against former CIA Director George Tenet and two other former CIA managers, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, have thrown one of the key unanswered questions of 9/11 into sharp relief. What happened at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, after an officer there discovered that two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, had entered the US?

The officer, Margaret Gillespie, says she made the discovery on August 21 and the record indicates she began to notify the FBI and other government agencies on this day. However, while a substantial amount of information has been made public about how the news circulated around the FBI, almost nothing is known of how Alec Station dealt with it.

In an interview recently broadcast as a trailer for the forthcoming audio documentary “Who Is Rich Blee?” Clarke alleged that the CIA had deliberately withheld from him information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi—in particular the news that Almihdhar had a US visa—for over twenty months before 9/11. Clarke also highlighted the importance of the information, saying it was more important than, for example, any of the key pieces of intelligence discussed at a controversial meeting with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001.

According to a statement recently released by Tenet, Black and Blee, neither Tenet nor any other senior CIA official was told of the visa or of travel to the US by Alhazmi and Almihdhar before 9/11. This was also the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion, although this conclusion was hedged. If this is true, then one appropriate question would be: why not?

After the attacks, it emerged that the FBI had arrested one of the possible hijackers, Zacarias Moussaoui. However, it blew the case, failing to obtain a warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings and even failing to inform its own director of what was happening. This later failure became a badge for the FBI’s general uselessness. And Thomas Pickard, the acting director whom the information did not reach, made matters worse when he suggested Tenet, who had been informed of the case, should have stepped in and done the job Pickard’s staff failed to do.

In his 2007 book At the Center of the Storm Tenet piled on the agony for Pickard (emphasis in original):

During the 9/11 Commission hearings, I was stunned to hear Tom Pickard, who was acting FBI director in August 2001, suggest that I had somehow failed to notify him about Moussaoui. Failed to tell him? Hell, it was the FBI’s case, their arrest. I had no idea that the Bureau wasn’t aware what its own people were doing.

However, the CIA’s failure to inform Tenet of the Almihdhar and Almihdhar information must be regarded as more serious than the FBI’s failure to inform Pickard of Moussaoui. While the local Bureau agents who arrested Moussaoui thought he may well be a terrorist, they did not even realise he was a bin Laden operative, let alone connected to a suspected forthcoming al-Qaeda attack. On the contrary, the CIA knew Almihdhar was linked to the next attack.

In a July 23, 2001 e-mail published following Moussaoui’s trial in 2006, one of Blee’s former deputies, Tom Wilshire, warned CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC) managers of Almihdhar’s link to the next attack: “When the next big op is carried out by UBL hardcore cadre, Khalad will be at or near the top of the command food chain—and probably nowhere near either the attack site or Afghanistan. That makes people who are available and who have direct access to him of very high interest. Khalid Mihdar should be very high interest anyway, given his connection to the (redacted).”

Khalad (usually spelt Khallad) was a known al-Qaeda leader, currently in Guantanamo. The redaction is probably a reference to al-Qaeda’s global operations hub in Yemen, to which Wilshire knew Almihdhar was linked. The e-mail appears in none of the relevant reports published by the Congressional Inquiry, 9/11 Commission and Justice Department inspector general. It was a follow up to one sent ten days earlier that Blee is known to have read. Wilshire, who was on loan to the FBI at this point, is one of the officials who failed to pass on notification of the Moussaoui case towards Pickard.

The scenario that Tenet, Black and Blee are selling is this: Gillespie found that Almihdhar and Alhazmi had entered the US and notified multiple other agencies. Four weeks previously, Wilshire had informed his former CTC colleagues that Almihdhar was “very high interest.” Yet, nobody at the CTC was able to put this together. Indeed, the significance of the two militants’ presence in the US would usually necessitate prompt notification to Tenet, even without Wilshire’s e-mail. Yet this was not done.

Here, then, is a very simple question: If Tenet did not know that Alhzami and Almihdhar had entered the US after August 21, who failed to tell him?

# # # #

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/oh-george-you-got-some-%e2%80%98splainin%e2%80%98-to-do/feed/ 5 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/answers-in-absolute-for-%e2%80%98why-911%e2%80%99/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/answers-in-absolute-for-%e2%80%98why-911%e2%80%99/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:39:36 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5357

Why ‘some’ Still Question, Seek Answer(s) & Accountability

For ‘some’ reason I have been receiving more than a few ‘eye-rolling’ responses when I mention our theme for the month leading up to September 11- the tenth year. You and I know where the conscious but mostly subconscious eye-rolling and in some cases eye-aversion reactions come from. A very few bold ones are courageous enough to actually put this reaction into words. They ask ‘why can’t some people just let it go?’ They comment, ‘enough already with this 9/11 subject!’ Many of these same people are actually very outspoken and active in combating civil liberties related issues and abuses such as NSA Illegal Domestic Wiretapping, Rendition and Torture, FBI National Security Letters, TSA’s outrageous abuses …and the long list goes on. However, for ‘some’ reason they see ‘this 9/11 thing’ as a pointless nuisance, and wonder why some people don’t give up and keep bringing ‘it’ up. After all, the majority of these people consider 9/11 as ‘case closed,’ and a few regard it as a ‘cold case.’

 I am not going to get into the ‘some’ reasons for this post; although, I have plenty to say on the subject. Instead, for the purpose of this piece, and for those audiences, I am going to answer the ‘whys.’ Why ‘some’ still question and seek answer(s) and accountability on 9/11.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ claim that’s what gives them the right to override our Constitution and all other laws guaranteeing our liberties and privacy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what ‘they’ claim as justification for every one of our many wars.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what ‘they’ say is the reason for us having to be violated, humiliated, groped and fondled for the ‘privilege’ of travel.

Why 9/11? Because that’s when ‘they’ began the illegal eavesdropping of all our communications.

Why 9/11? Because that’s how ‘they’ legitimize excessive secrecy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the excuse ‘they’ use to implement torture and severe human right violations and escape all liabilities.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the rationalization ‘they’ use to expand ‘their’ size and power.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ have successfully made it a means to justify many unjustifiable ends.

Why 9/11? Because that holds answers to many questions ‘they’ don’t want you to ask.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the question ‘they’ don’t want ever answered.

Why 9/11? Because maybe that is what ‘they’ really wanted.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ should not get away with it.

With all due respect to those who are still not satisfied with my answers to their ‘why’ question, we’ll be publishing articles, podcast interviews and investigative videos on 9/11 and related topics for the next few weeks…or maybe longer.  We hope to have those friends as an open-minded and critical thinking audience during our 9/11 coverage here at Boiling Frogs Post.

Sibel Edmonds

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/12/answers-in-absolute-for-%e2%80%98why-911%e2%80%99/feed/ 17 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-i/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-i/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:47:01 +0000 gould.fitzgerald http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5323 A Campaign Where the Lie Became the Truth and the Truth Became the Enemy of the State

By Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald

 9/11. The number still rings in the mind as if chosen to act as a Pavlovian trigger: Outrage, anger, paranoia, retribution. A shadowy band of religious zealots fly not one, but two commercial airliners into the heart of America’s financial community while others deal a deadly blow to the Pentagon. It was a Hollywood movie, an act of war rivaling Pearl Harbor. Why did it happen? Who would do this to Americans, to America? How could a band of ragged terrorists plotting from a cave in faraway Afghanistan have accomplished such a complex task given the size and pervasiveness of the largest and most expensive military/intelligence apparatus in the history of the world? And even more curiously, why would Islamic radicals give the ideology-driven neoconservative administration of George W. Bush exactly the pretext they needed to launch a bloody invasion and further occupation of the Middle East?

According to the official narrative, 9/11 was an attack on everything American and in so doing changed everything about America. Like Kafkaesque characters who’d suddenly found themselves on the other side of a Cold War “Iron Curtain” mirror, Americans would now have to “watch what they say and watch what they do,” open up to questioning or face jail when prodded by squinty-eyed border guards and forsake any hope of privacy or dignity in a new world of electronic spies and full body scans. Former National Security Advisor, Admiral John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program would be enacted and a preexisting “Patriot Act” would be signed into law to clamp down on dissent and real or imagined domestic terrorism.

Some careful observers like Anthony Lewis of the New York Times had already noticed the bizarre coup-like changes coming over Washington in the months leading up to the attack as the George W. Bush administration inaugurated radical shifts in domestic and foreign policy that seemed un-American and alien to anything that had gone before. But those concerns would soon be forgotten in the race for revenge. 

9/11 would ultimately give President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors all the public approval they needed to transform America and invade Afghanistan and Iraq to cleanse the world of evil in an endless “war on terror.” In the end it would turn America’s reputation for racial and religious tolerance, military invincibility and economic dominance on its head.

Looking back on the carnage of the last ten years it’s easy to see how the psychology of 9/11 changed America. What’s not easy to see is how a long standing campaign of covert psychological warfare built up since the early days of World War II had made the slow destruction of American democracy and the ascension of rule by secrecy inevitable, long before the planes ever left the runway on 9/11. 

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -Dr. Joseph Goebbels

As chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, Joseph Goebbels system of black propaganda not only helped Hitler’s rise to power but kept him there by utilizing near-hypnotic powers over the German people even after the consequences of his disastrous failures had become obvious.

To counter Goebbels’ propaganda theatre emanating from Nazi party headquarters at Munich’s Braunes Haus (Brown House), an organization named Freedom House was founded in New York City in 1941. Fronted by American celebrities and public luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt, the brains behind the outfit was Leo Cherne, the psychological warfare specialist/co-founder of the Research Institute of America (RIA), which would much later be labeled the “CIA for businessmen.”    

If anyone was a match for Goebbels mastery of the black arts of psychological warfare it was Cherne. In 1938 Cherne had published a guide to industrial mobilization in Adjusting Your Business to War, prophetically forecasting the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 and on September 1^st of that year completed a 3000-page report titled, Industrial Mobilization Plans for World War II, the very day that German troops crossed into Poland.

That same year Cherne asked a young protégé named William J. Casey, the future director of the CIA, “How do you take a country like ours, stuck in depression, and convert it into an arsenal?” Their combined answer was the loose-leaf book called The War Coordinator. Cherne and Casey’s psychological warfare campaign would establish a narrative that didn’t just embrace freedom as its major theme, in their minds their ideas would actually become Freedom and through the use of propaganda would grow and harden over the decades into an impenetrable shield-like narrative of American triumphalism.

Cherne’s prophecies on war and business attained a near mystical quality and over the decades following World War II he would attract the most powerful and influential figures in American business and politics to his causes. A listing of Freedom House trustees on its 50^th anniversary in 1991 includes people as diverse as Kenneth L. Adelman, Andrew Young, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Albert Shanker, Donald Rumsfeld and James Woolsey. It has since become an exclusive neoconservative bastion.

Freedom House’s narrative is no less than the narrative of the American century where, “It has fought on the side of freedom and against aggressors in struggles that can be evoked by simple words and phrases: the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, NATO, Hungarian Freedom Fighters, the Berlin Wall, the Prague Spring…” and of course Afghanistan.

We experienced Freedom House’s simple words and phrases and their dark influence on the major media in the spring of 1983 in a televised Nightline program following a trip to Afghanistan with Harvard Negotiation Project Director, Roger Fisher. We had brought Fisher to Afghanistan to explore the possibilities of a Soviet withdrawal of forces and discovered the Soviets were desperate to get out. But instead of expanding on Fisher’s efforts to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, host Ted Koppel undermined the very premise of the discussion by introducing a political officer of the Jamaat-i Islami, which Koppel described as “an anti-communist resistance group based in Pakistan. He is here in the United States under the auspices of two American organizations, concerned with democracy in Afghanistan, the Afghan Relief Committee and Freedom House.”

Had Koppel and Freedom House really been concerned about democracy in Afghanistan, their choice of the Jamaat-i Islami could not be viewed as anything but the darkest of black propaganda, an outright lie.

Originally founded by the Pakistani theologian Abul Ala Maudidi in 1941, the goal of the Jamaat-i Islami was more than just that of gaining political representation for radical Islamists. The Jamaat was to be an all-embracing, extremist Islamic Society, crafted through the strictest interpretation of Islamic law, as a replacement for a modern western-style democracy.

Through the help of the mainstream media during the 1980s the psychological war promoted by Freedom House and Ronald Reagan’s C.I.A. director William J. Casey held the Soviets in Afghanistan for an additional six years, destabilized Central Asia, encouraged the growth of the largest heroin operation in history and enabled the rise of the very Islamic extremists that allegedly planned and carried off the attacks on 9/11.

Ten years after 9/11 Afghanistan remains the center of a growing Islamic insurgency and the longest war in American history. The success of America’s seventy year old psychological warfare campaign, where the lie became the truth and the truth became the enemy of the state, has now so disorientated America’s institutional thinking that we have reached the moment when the state can no longer shield the American people from the consequences of that lie.

Follow us as we go deeper into the creation of the Afghan narrative and the broader implications of the side effects of psychological warfare on the American people in our next piece, Building the Afghan Narrative with Black Propaganda, The Process is Revealed.

# # # #

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story  and   Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/911-psychological-warfare-the-american-narrative-part-i/feed/ 14 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/zacarias-moussaoui-what-we-don%e2%80%99t-know-might-hurt-us/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/zacarias-moussaoui-what-we-don%e2%80%99t-know-might-hurt-us/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:19:10 +0000 admin http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5287 A Significant Stimulus for the Reform that Never Came

By Kevin Fenton

 Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the numerous “20th hijackers,” was arrested ten years ago next Tuesday, outside the Residence Inn in Eagan, Minnesota. The arrest was one of the first events in a case that gave the FBI a chance to blow open the 9/11 plot, but resulted in abject humiliation for the bureau when its headquarters’ string of errors was exposed in the press.

The Moussaoui case is a poster boy for the state of our knowledge about the attacks: we have some of the details, but know some are missing. Also, two key questions remain unanswered. This despite the wealth of information that came out at the trial and the fact that Moussaoui, although largely ignored by the 9/11 Commission’s final report—partly due to the forthcoming trial—was a major topic of the Justice Department inspector general’s report into the FBI’s pre-attack failings.

These are the bare bones of the case: Moussaoui had been a known extremist for years prior to his arrest. Before the bureau first heard his name on August 15, he had been under surveillance by French and British intelligence and the CIA, although the agency would claim it only knew him under an alias. He was sent to the US for flight training by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, possibly to participate in 9/11, possibly to participate in a follow-up operation. However, he was a poor student and dropped out of basic flight school before obtaining a licence and went to learn about flying a Boeing 747, which aroused suspicion.

When the FBI was brought in, the Minneapolis agents realized he was dangerous and arrested him on an immigration violation—despite being told not to do so by headquarters. This was the first of many times the Minneapolis field office and FBI headquarters clashed over the case. Essentially, even though they did not know he was linked to al-Qaeda, the local agents understood the risk Moussaoui posed—one even speculated he would fly a large airliner into the World Trade Center—and they wanted a warrant to search his belongings to get information that would lead to his accomplices. On the other hand, headquarters seemed to think they were alarmist and there was nothing to the case. They kept throwing up roadblocks.

Although it is uncertain whether Moussaoui would have participated in the 9/11 attacks if he had remained free, or whether he ever met any of the nineteen hijackers, he certainly had very visible links to some of their key associates, such as Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Yazid Sufaat. These links would have led to eleven of the nineteen. Some of the connections between what Moussaoui had in his possession and the hijackers would have been easy to make. For example, the CIA knew that Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had stayed at Sufaat’s apartment during al-Qaeda’s January 2000 summit in Kuala Lumpur.

There were four key figures who dealt with the case at FBI headquarters: Rita Flack, an intelligence operations specialist at the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU); Michael Maltbie, a supervisory special agent with the RFU; their unit chief Dave Frasca; and Tom Wilshire, a CIA officer on loan to FBI headquarters. Wilshire was either a consultant to Michael Rolince, head of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section, or his deputy. Wilshire was also the key figure in the CIA’s withholding of information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi from the bureau.

These four people somehow managed to convince themselves that the Moussaoui case was a minor matter that deserved little attention and that the Minneapolis agents were, in Flack’s words, “maniacs.” Although very little is known about Wilshire’s involvement in the case, an e-mail used as evidence at the trial shows he shared this attitude; on August 24 he e-mailed his three colleagues asking for the latest on the “Minneapolis Airplane IV crowd,” although it is unclear whether this was a reference to Moussaoui and an associate or the Minneapolis field office.

This is one of the two key questions outstanding: where did this attitude come from? With hindsight, what the Minneapolis agents foresaw was not half as bad as what happened. It was not one airliner that flew into the WTC, but two, with another at the Pentagon and a fourth also aimed for Washington. Given the circumstances of the case, Minneapolis’ fears were reasonable and were shared both by a CIA detailee to the FBI, who predicted Moussaoui may crash a 747 into the White House, and at least one officer in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Given that we still lack information about the interactions between the four participants, we cannot say with whom this bad attitude originated. However, we can say that Wilshire shared and supported it.

It would take too long to summarise all the obstacles thrown up, but here are two examples: when French intelligence reported that, yes, they knew Moussaoui and, yes, he was an Islamist militant, Maltbie objected that maybe they were talking about some other guy with the same name. Therefore, Maltbie argued, the FBI should search all the telephone directories in France to see how many people called Zacarias Moussaoui actually lived there.

The second example involves a comment made by Moussaoui’s imam on a phone monitored by the FBI to the presumed accomplice arrested with him. “I heard you guys wanted to go on jihad,” said the imam. “Don’t talk about that now,” was the reply. Frasca’s response upon learning this? “The jihad comment doesn’t concern me by itself in that this word can mean many things in various [M]uslim cultures and is frequently taken out of context.”

Other roadblocks included Frasca’s ban on Minneapolis applying for a criminal warrant itself, Maltbie blocking a referral to the Justice Department’s criminal division, Flack’s inability to provide the Phoenix memo to anyone else after she read it, the withholding of the relevant documentation from attorneys asked to assess the case, the deletion of key passages from an application for an intelligence warrant, etc., etc.

When the case became public knowledge after the attacks the bureau was a laughing stock—they arrested one of the hijackers (actually more of an associate) over three weeks before the attacks but were unable to even file a warrant application to search his luggage. What’s worse, the bureau was so completely clueless that it even failed to inform its own acting director, Thomas Pickard, of the case. How much more incompetent could it get? This dynamic was made even worse when one of the Minneapolis office employees, Coleen Rowley, went public with her criticism of FBI headquarters, becoming one of Time’s people of the year for 2002.

Logically, if the information came into FBI headquarters, but didn’t get to the acting director, it must have stopped with someone. So who was that someone? The most senior official to be told about the case was Rolince, but he received scant information on it for nearly two weeks. The two people below him were his consultant/deputy Tom Wilshire and RFU chief Dave Frasca and the blame needs to be shared between them. Exactly how it should be apportioned out we don’t know—the relevant reports, by the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/11 Commission, and Justice Department inspector general, are silent on who should carry the can—and the inspector general omits even to mention that not informing the bureau’s director was a failure. This is symptomatic of the reports’ approach—nobody who performed badly was held accountable.

Wilshire’s role in the deliberate withholding of information from the FBI about Pentagon hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi makes his presence in the Moussaoui case alarming. However, although Wilshire certainly had a malign influence on the case, there is no smoking-gun proof of wilful malfeasance on his part. What we do know, however, is that this case was a significant stimulus for the reform of the US intelligence community. Without knowing what actually happened here and why, we have no way of judging whether those reforms were warranted and appropriate. Perhaps it would have been better to fire those who performed badly, instead of promoting them.

# # # #

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/10/zacarias-moussaoui-what-we-don%e2%80%99t-know-might-hurt-us/feed/ 9 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/09/boiling-frogs-beltway-buzz-obama-administration%e2%80%99s-left-over-al-qaeda-card/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/09/boiling-frogs-beltway-buzz-obama-administration%e2%80%99s-left-over-al-qaeda-card/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:36:16 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5199

Never Before Exposed Plan ‘C’: Al Qaeda v. Debt-Ceiling, Next Bailouts & Hefty CEO Bonuses

In a recently leaked report the Obama Administration’s never-came-into-play contingency plan, referred to as ‘Plan C’, points to the Al Qaeda threat and the War on Terror as major reasons for raising the debt ceiling, refraining from any cut in defense and intelligence-related government expenditures, facilitating and approving future financial institutions bailouts, and avoidance of pursuing accountability for the massive bonuses paid to executives of bailed-out financial institutions.

Plan C was prepared by Obama’s White House advisors and staff, during the time that Congress was preparing their Plan B, as a last-resort wild-card maneuver to play the never- before-failed Al Qaeda Card. Although some consider the report moot and no longer of any significance, others are alarmed by the possible implications of this contingency plan as the preferred method of choice in future presidential-congressional dances involving a wide range of issues,  including  even pharmaceutical and environmental laws and regulations.

Boiling Frogs Post obtained the report prior to the deal reached by the White House and Congress on August 2. However, as a responsible news organization, BFP refrained from publishing the report until now in order to protect our national security interests in the face of the never-waning and ever-increasing Al Qaeda threat targeting our government, major mega institutions, and perhaps even insignificant and ordinary citizens. We believe we have fulfilled our journalistic obligation to our government and mega institutions by observing this grace period by sitting on the story, and now are ready to present some of the highlights of the Obama administration’s not-used but saved to-be-used-later Plan C.

Plan C emphasizes the urgent need to raise the debt ceiling in order to meet the increase in government spending on the to-be-expanded War on Terror against Al Qaeda overseas and domestically:

We are a nation at war. We are a nation involved in several wars. We are a nation intent upon getting involved in even more wars; nationally and internationally. We call it our global and domestic ‘War on Terror.’ These wars are fought to defeat Al Qaeda around the globe and within our borders. Not raising the debt ceiling would cut funding for our current wars and planned future wars, since spending money we don’t have is the only way to pay for these wars and more wars. Thus, not raising the debt ceiling would result in handing Al Qaeda terrorists our defeat. For Congress not to raise the debt ceiling is to side with terrorists; is to aid Al Qaeda. We have analyses by our legal scholars who argue that not raising the debt ceiling can actually be considered an act of terrorism; whether direct or indirect, providing aid and support to Al Qaeda terrorists is an act of terrorism.

…

In the Plan C proposal the administration provides several studies on and analyses of the ‘American Way of Life;’ what it really means today, and how the inevitable future bailouts of financial institutions are necessary to preserve and maintain this way of life:

It is a known fact that Al Qaeda hates our way of life; our previous President himself has eloquently stated so. Our corrupt financial institutions have become an inseparable part of life in America. These corrupt financial institutions are woven into the fabric of life here in the United States of America. Thus, to let these corrupt financial institutions collapse is to fulfill Al Qaeda’s objective; is to help Al Qaeda win. Is this really what Congress wishes to do? To side with Al Qaeda and let them destroy our way of life? Because to not facilitate or approve soon-to-come additional bailouts of these corrupt institutions is to fulfill Al Qaeda’s wish: to Destroy the American Way of Life. Thus, raising the debt ceiling without really capping federal government spending, including its ability to keep bailing out our corrupt financial institutions is to stand for the American way of life. You, the Congress, are either with us and our way of life, or against us and with them – the terrorists…

…

Obama’s Plan C also includes a persuasive argument against any congressional investigations into or pursuit of accountability against any of the financial industry executives who generously helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars in compensations taken out of government bailout packages, either past or future. This argument also heavily relies on Al Qaeda related risk evaluations:

We know that ambitiously crooked executives helped themselves to outrageous sums that came right out of generous government bailout packages to the banking industry. Yes, we are talking CEO’s taking home hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘bonuses.’ We expect to have additional bailouts in the near future, and with those, we expect to see the same CEO robbery trend happening again and again. It is a fact of life today; a fact of the American way of life. We understand public pressure to do something about this mega thievery, but we urge you not to give in. These executives are more privy to our nation’s sensitive secrets than even our high-level intelligence executives. We cannot isolate them. We cannot turn them away. Think about their value to the terrorists we are at war with – the Al Qaeda. Can we take a chance on even the slightest possibility of these executives playing for the other side? We smoke and chase them out, and the other side, the Al Qaeda, may welcome them with open arms. We consider these executives valuable potential recruits for the terrorists – the Al Qaeda. And we cannot take a chance. And we are asking you not to take that chance…

…

In the end, the Obama administration’s Al-Qaeda wild card, Plan C, was not needed in settling the debt ceiling crisis in the duel with Congress. However, the Al Qaeda wild-card outline was saved, and is being refined further. No one knows when it may come to play in full force. Will it be during the next expenditure cut duel? Will it be on the next humongous black budget item in need of congressional approval? Will it be during the next wave of corruption charges against defense, financial or intelligence industry entities? No one knows, but many expect it to come, and some with certainty. So please stay tuned.

# # # #

*This article is part of Boiling Frogs Beltway Buzz Satire series.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/09/boiling-frogs-beltway-buzz-obama-administration%e2%80%99s-left-over-al-qaeda-card/feed/ 3 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-august-5-2011/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-august-5-2011/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 23:22:12 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5089

Kharotabad Killings & the Cover Up, No One Safe Under the Espionage Act of 1917,  Disposable Army in Iraq, Pentagon Purchases $23 Billion worth of Drones, Permanent US Base in Iraq, Obama Debt Crisis: A successful Con Game, the End of the Presidential Public Financing, Azerbaijan: Lobbying for U.S. Weapons Sales, Video: Destabilization of Syria Based on Libya Model & More!

BFP Nightly Quote

“Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.” - John Andrew Holmes 

International Newsworthy

Balochistan: Kharotabad Killings & the Cover Up

Disposable Army: Private Security in Iraq

Iranian Terrorist Group (MEK) has Intimate US Ties

US Steps Up Pressure on Syria

Is Azerbaijan Lobbying for U.S. Weapons Sales?

Strippers, Georgia on Russian-US Minds

NATO Considers More Kosovo Reserves

Death Squads Threaten Journalists in El Salvador

* * * *

National Newsworthy

Cartoonist Targeted with Criminal Probe for Mocking Police

Government to Monitor Social Networks for “Extremist Propaganda”

Debt Crisis? Pentagon Purchases $23 Billion worth of Global Hawk Drones

Beneath Jobs Report Surface Lie Some Ugly Truths

Will 2012 Be the End of the Presidential Public Financing?

NY Times Journalist Cites Congressional Unanimity on Gaza Slaughter & Embraces ‘J Street’ to ‘Balance’ Lobby 

USCENTCOM Buys Software to Impersonate Social Networkers & Bloggers

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

No One is Safe under the Espionage Act of 1917

The Mysterious Death of Bin Laden: Creating Evidence Where There is None

US Considering Permanent Base in Iraq

Barack Obama & the Debt Crisis: A successful Con Game?

Onset of Imperial Decline: Osama Bin Laden & the Aftermath of 9/11

* * * *

BFP Nightly Funnies

“A man jumped the White House fence, but after a brief chase, the Secret Service was able to talk President Obama into coming back and finishing his term.” – Conan O’Brian

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” - Mark Twain  

If they don’t spot him, we are doomed!

Spenditol!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Destabilization of Syria Based on Libya Model

Video 2: John Pilger Film Trailer- “The war you don’t see”

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-august-5-2011/feed/ 1 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/exactly-how-big-is-this-so-called-al-qaeda/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/exactly-how-big-is-this-so-called-al-qaeda/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:08:39 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5077 Massive Perpetual Wars against Fantastical Dwarfed Terrorists

For almost 10 years we have been engaged in a massive and many-fronted war advertised as a war on terror-war on Al Qaeda. Recent reports put the total cost to America of this war on terror at around $3 trillion. This is not counting un-countable covert operations with secret budgets, and it does not include the war in Libya or covert wars elsewhere.

For the last 10 years of the Cold War, the period of our heightened expenditures against a war marketed as a war against communism, we reportedly spent slightly under $3 trillion.

For a moment let’s forget about the exaggerated and sometimes dubious Soviet threats that were being sold to our nation during the Cold-War, and assume all of them legitimate and warranted. Okay?

We had the Soviet military with over 5 million men. We were dealing with Long-Range Ballistic Missile capabilities.  We had an empire with a declared arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons. We were faced with massive nuclear arsenals and warheads, sophisticated fighter aircraft, tanks… All that, and of course the added fear propaganda and jazzed up other threats to go with it. My point here is not how scary an adversary the USSR was to the United States. Here is what I want you to do:

Take into perspective and compare the size, budget, militaristic and technological capabilities, and the vast power of our former adversary, the USSR, to the current alleged terrorist adversary, Al Qaeda, whom we have supposedly been fighting for ten years.

Let’s first begin by engaging in a rational process of elimination, and take out the wars and targets that are not related to the 9/11 terrorists, the supposed Al-Qaeda. That will take out Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and also Libya and Gaddafi.

Next, we should take out Afghanistan as a terrorist nation state. Afghanistan has been under our occupation for almost ten years, and we have our puppet government installed there, and when it comes down to it, the Taliban does not equate to Al-Qaeda, it never did. The Taliban did not exercise terrorism in the United States or its Global territories.

We must also remove Pakistan as a terrorist country, thus a nation state target. If you remember, neither the quasi 9/11 Congressional Inquiry nor the quasi 9/11 Commission Report ever declared the Pakistani government/nation as terrorists or an Al-Qaeda member. Let us go with their official judgment. After all, haven’t we been giving Pakistan billions of dollars in US aid since 9/11 and continuing to date? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to on one hand categorize our drone war there as war against Pakistan as a member of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, and on the other hand support and finance them? Exactly; that eliminates Pakistan as an Al-Qaeda nation-government. Are you with me so far? What does this leave us with?

Our war on Al-Qaeda terror does not include a single nation state or organized state military. No military infrastructure or headquarters. No trained army-navy-air force. No tanks, warplanes, nuclear warheads, drones. No intelligence institutions or landmarks. No communication satellites. No technology. No borders. No GDP…

The supposed Al Qaeda’s top leadership was declared by our government to be Osama Bin Laden, aka Al Qaeda Commander in Chief; a sickly old man who was hooked to a dialysis machine; who supposedly lived and hid in caves, and later, in a mud house located in a remote third world village with chickens and goats. A man who sustained himself and his family by periodically selling his wives jewelry or bartering milk from his goats for occasional lamb chops. All this according to our own government; coming out in bits and pieces, and of course, sometimes in a totally contradictory fashion.

The supposed Al-Qaeda network’s communication and intelligence sharing infrastructure, according to our government, was kept very simple to evade our trillion-dollar intelligence institutions. The Al-Qaeda commander-in-Chief wrote down notes and instructions. He then waited for the courier to come and pick it up. The old man courier would hop on a donkey and travel from a bigger town to the Commander-in-Chief’s mud house in a third world village. This sometimes took several days. He’d take the note, then hop on his donkey, and go back to the town where he’d meet another intermediary courier. The intermediary courier would take the note to a nondescript little house, climb up to the roof where he kept trained courier pigeons and hawks, and based on the importance of the communication given to him, he’d either choose a hawk or pigeon to send the intelligence to the next courier. The next one used couriers who traveled to the remote deserts by camels, and so on and so forth.

How about the sophistication of weapons-methods used by our target terrorists, the ominous Al Qaeda? We are talking about a dozen or so pocket knives priced at approximately $4 a piece (probably made in China), and of course if bought in bulk, for a total under $40. That for the supposed execution of the massive terror plot over here, in the world’s super power nation. As for other worldwide terror incidents that have been placed under the  ‘Al Qaeda Track Record,’  we are talking about rudimentary bomb-making ability paired up with ultra simple bombs created by ingredients such as fertilizer; we are talking a few loads of cow dung here; literally, that is.

What about the size of the manpower these terrorists, Al-Qaeda, possess? Interestingly no one in our government has ever touched upon any scientific or even commonsensical estimate as to the number of active-combative Al-Qaeda terrorists. Instead, our government, through their stenographers in the media and their marketing arm in the Hollywood filmmaking industry, has succeeded in forming this public perception of a massive number of boogieman-Al Qaeda-terrorists out there who are actively and constantly planning and executing terror plots against the West.  Thus, to get a certain level of rational perception we must look at some factual indicators:

We have had this $3 trillion ‘War on Al Qaeda Terror’ for the last 10 years with nearly a quarter million military members, thousands and thousands of intelligence operatives and analysts, highly sophisticated and gigantic intelligence gathering tools (Think NSA, satellite technologies, wiretaps, spooks and snitches), mega rewards for turning in Al-Qaeda members …You’d think in ten years of these constant war and intelligence gathering operations we’d have tens of thousands of captured Al-Qaeda terrorists in our jails here and abroad. No?

Interestingly ‘No.’ Let’s take a look at the mother of all our captive top Al Qaeda terrorists detention center; Guantanamo Bay:

Since October 7, 2001, when began the war in Afghanistan, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo. Of these, most have been released without charge or transferred to facilities in their home countries. The Department of Defense often referred to these prisoners as the “worst of the worst”, but a 2003 memo by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says, “We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants … GTMO needs to serve as an [redacted] not a prison for Afghanistan.”

Currently we have less than 200 detainees at Guantanamo most of whom have not been proven guilty of being ‘Al Qaeda terrorists.’ Let’s be even more generous and count in those detained in other US military prisons like Bagram. Again, we are looking at 500 or so prisoners none of whom having ever been charged; none of whom legally found to be an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Now please put all these facts in perspective: Ten long years of continuous wars, trillions of dollars, 250,000 military personnel, trillions of dollars worth of intelligence gathering institutions and capabilities, millions of dollars set in rewards for Al Qaeda terrorists, and a supposed network with supposed  Al Qaeda active terrorist members in very large numbers. Yet we have less than 1000 detained who have been accused of being Al Qaeda terrorists, and none ever proven to be an active Al Qaeda terrorist member.

Does this make sense to you? Does it make sense as far as the trillions of dollars you have been made to pay for this? What are we talking about here? A massive never-ending war against a fantastical network of technologically and militaristically dwarfed terrorists whose proven guilty members we haven’t been able to catch or kill.

Everyone is busy arguing whether we should cut or add a few billion dollars to the several trillion dollars war on Al Qaeda. People keep talking about which country we should be getting out of, or, how many more countries we should get into to fight against terrorist Al Qaeda. No one is asking what Al Qaeda is or who really these supposed Al Qaeda terrorists are. The question that never seems to come up is exactly how big is this Al Qaeda we are spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives fighting against. I mean no one.

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/05/exactly-how-big-is-this-so-called-al-qaeda/feed/ 8 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/04/the-nsa-911-failure-to-exploit-the-us-yemen-hub-beyond-2/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/04/the-nsa-911-failure-to-exploit-the-us-yemen-hub-beyond-2/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:38:02 +0000 admin http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5046 Just one of the Legacies of 9/11

By Kevin Fenton

Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn’t know they were here, until it was too late.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time.

-President Bush, December 17, 2005

In the aftermath of 9/11, reams of newsprint were given over to discussing the CIA and FBI failures before the attacks; the agency had some of the hijackers under surveillance and allegedly lost them, the bureau was unable even to inform its own acting director of the Zacarias Moussaoui case. However, the USA’s largest and most powerful intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, got a free ride. There was no outcry over its failings, no embarrassing Congressional hearings for its director. Yet, as we will see, the NSA’s performance before 9/11 was shocking.

It is unclear when the NSA first intercepted a call by one of the nineteen hijackers. Reporting indicates it began listening in on telephone calls to the home of Pentagon hijacker Khalid Almihdhar’s wife some time around late 1996. However, although Almihdhar certainly did stay there later, it is unclear whether he lived there at that time. The house, in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, was a key target for the US intelligence community as it was Osama bin Laden’s communication hub, run by Almihdhar’s father-in-law Ahmed al-Hada.

The NSA kept the Yemen communications hub secret from the rest of the US intelligence community. However, Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, found out about it through an agency officer loaned to the NSA. Even after the discovery, the NSA refused to provide transcripts of the calls, meaning Alec Station could not crack the simple code the al-Qaeda operatives used. This was one reason the 1998 East African embassy bombings—assisted by al-Hada—were successful despite the bombers being known to numerous intelligence agencies.

 The first time the NSA is known for certain to have intercepted a call involving the hijackers was in early 1999, when the call involved Almihdhar and his fellow Flight 77 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi. The NSA did not disseminate a report on this call, although the heavily redacted text of the Congressional Inquiry’s 9/11 report indicates it should have. The NSA continued to intercept Almihdhar’s calls throughout 1999, when he apparently spoke to al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash, now languishing in Guantanamo Bay.

In late December 1999, the NSA picked up a call that tipped it off about al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit meeting—a unique meeting of al-Qaeda leaders in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. The NSA alerted both the FBI and CIA, the latter of which monitored Almihdhar, Alhazmi and their various associates at the meeting in cooperation with Malaysian colleagues. However, the CIA claims, it did not learn much about what the participants were planning.

Almihdhar and Alhazmi then travelled via Bangkok and Hong Kong to Los Angeles, but, the CIA says, it lost them on the way.

 Nevertheless, beginning a few months before the two men moved in with an FBI informer in San Diego, they began making calls back to the Yemen hub. At this time Almihdhar was on the NSA’s watchlist and the agency intercepted the calls, but generally did not disseminate reports on them.

Almihdhar left the US in the summer, returning to the Yemen hub a few months before the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s second city of Aden. Reports indicate that Almihdhar was involved in the bombing and that the bombers used the Yemen hub phone to “put everything together,” but the NSA apparently did nothing. There are no mentions in the media of the NSA’s inspector general investigating the agency’s performance before the Cole—or before the embassy bombings or 9/11 for that matter.

The NSA continued to intercept calls between the hijackers in the US and the Yemen hub, but sat on information that could obviously have been used to roll up the plot. The FBI, which learned of the number itself during the embassy bombing investigation, had mapped al-Qaeda’s global network based on calls from the hub and had specifically asked the NSA to be notified about all calls between it and the US. However, no notification of the calls ever arrived at the bureau.

The NSA also intercepted calls between alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on the one hand and lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and attack coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shibh on the other. Again, it appears not much was done with these calls.

When the Congressional Inquiry first published its report, the controversy over the massive redactions was centered on the deletion of 28 pages alleging certain elements of the Saudi government had supported the hijackers. The passages on the NSA also suffered badly from redactions, making them hard to comprehend, and some events did not appear at all in the published version of the report.

This pattern was followed by the 9/11 Commission, which practically ignored the NSA in its public activities. Only one former NSA official testified publicly; he had left the agency in the early 1990s and his input focused on the FBI and CIA. Likewise, mentions of the agency are scarce in the commission’s final report, which entirely omits to remind readers the NSA intercepted calls between the hijackers in the US and al-Qaeda’s operations center in Yemen.

Two aspects of this are most disturbing. Firstly, it is clear that a group of CIA officials at Alec Station deliberately withheld information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi from the FBI. At the same time, the NSA was failing to pass on related information about the two men to the bureau. Should we write this off as a mere coincidence, or should we consider the possibility that somebody at the NSA engaged in deliberate wrongdoing?

Second, the NSA’s failure to exploit the US-Yemen hub calls before the attack was the reason for the agency’s expanded powers, in particularly its warrantless domestic wiretapping, after 9/11. This was stated most clearly by President Bush in a radio address after the New York Times broke the story in late 2005. The very first justification Bush reached for is contained in the quote at the top of this article.

So, the NSA failed to pass on information about the hijackers, perhaps deliberately to aid CIA machinations, and has not even stated publicly whether and how it investigated this failure, let alone what the conclusions of such inquiry might be. Nevertheless, with remarkable speed it used its failure as a justification for massive new powers. This is just one of the legacies of 9/11.

# # # #

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/04/the-nsa-911-failure-to-exploit-the-us-yemen-hub-beyond-2/feed/ 9 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/03/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-19/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/03/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-19/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:43:35 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=5001

The US-Al Qaeda Buddy System, Lowering the War Ceiling, Obama Still Wall Street’s Honey, Getting Access to the Secrets of OBL Kill, Senate Intel Committee Blocks Report on “Secret Law”, Counter-Terrorism & China Pressure on Pakistan, Kosovo: The Gathering Storm, Sources: Israel’s Mossad Behind Tehran Assassinations, Video: Drunken Ben Bernanke on How Screwed US Economy Really is & More!

BFP Nightly Quote

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”- Thomas Jefferson

International Newsworthy

Counter-Terrorism & China Pressure on Pakistan

Russia: Automatic Protection for Official Reputations

Kazakhstan: Is State Sponsored Hacking Curbing Internet Freedom?

Kosovo: The Gathering Storm

Israeli Security Minister Calls for Massive Invasion of Gaza

Alarming Rise in Attacks on Palestinian Children

Sources: Israel’s Mossad Behind Tehran Assassinations

Russia Reaches out to Iran

* * * *

National Newsworthy

Senate Intel Committee Blocks Report on “Secret Law” 

Getting Access to the Secrets of Osama Bin Laden Kill

Officer: Raid was Always to Kill Bin Laden, Not to Capture him

Pentagon to Spend $42 Million to ‘Covertly’ Monitor & Influence Twitter & Other Social Networking Site 

Mullen: Debt Threatens Our Warmaking

Trillion-Dollar-Business: US War Spending Out of Control

Obama Still Wall Street’s Honey

Mobile Biometrics to Hit US Streets

An Unprecedented Cyber-Espionage Campaign &Intellectual Property Bonanza

6 Creepy Weapons the Police & Military Use to Subdue Unarmed People

* * * *

 Noteworthy Editorials

The US-Al Qaeda Buddy System

Imperial Quest for Riches Fuels Africa’s “Civil Wars”

‘Science’ & America’s Police State

Lowering the War Ceiling

Hiroshima, Nagasaki & the US Terror State

The Decline & Fall of the American Empire

* * * *

BFP Nightly Funnies

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” – Alexis de Tocqueville  

“A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen”- Winston Churchill  

Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone at Neighborhood Bar How Screwed US Economy Really is!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Raise the Debt Ceiling Rap Video

Video 2: The Last Word on Utopia by James Corbett

Video 3: John Pilger on War by Other Means- Part II

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/03/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-19/feed/ 3 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/02/a-forum-for-the-israeli-lobby-neocons-the-whirling-obama-apologists/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/02/a-forum-for-the-israeli-lobby-neocons-the-whirling-obama-apologists/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:04:10 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4936

A Parasitic Puppet Forums’ No-No List: From 9/11 to Israel & Obama-Cons

I generally don’t like to spend time and energy going after the little parasites at the bottom of the ailing disease chain that has infested our nation. Surely they pop up here and there as examples illustrating our real diseases. For example, if I am writing about mega corporations’ mega foundations implementing their mega infestation plans through parasitic little NGOs, then, one or two little NGO parasites show up in my writing. The same exact principle applies to phony little entities who pose as ‘alternatives.’ I usually don’t give them status by covering and dwelling upon those parasites either. With that said, I am making an exception with this post prompted by a recent example I came upon yesterday:

DailyKos has acted to ban commenters from linking to Mondoweiss, charging me with anti-Semitism. It is a disgraceful smear and hides DailyKos’s real anxiety: it cannot deal with the issue of Palestinian human rights, any more than the Democratic Party can, and so Israel supporters are striking at me.

            …

And this from another writer over there at Mondoweiss:

…Several times over the last few months I’ve been alerted by friends regarding ‘diaries’ by members of ‘Team Shalom’ at Daily Kos highly critical of Mondoweiss. Why does this matter? For our site, I don’t think it does. It’s clear some of our biggest detractors read this site avidly, including the comments that ultimately drive traffic.  Team Shalom has run a campaign to have this site banned from Daily Kos (even tho I am not aware posters there link to this site with any regularity, perhaps I am wrong) and yesterday one of my friends who posts there wrote to inform me they have achieved this goal.

…

You can read more on other recent censorship incidents by these Israeli Lobby parasites here.

Does this incident, this exposé, come as a surprise to me? Of course not. After Obama’s election any discussion threads about me or my case were also banned from this Parasitic-Zionist-Neoconistic mega establishment mini mouthpiece. I didn’t bother writing about it. With the reasons so obvious, with the pattern so very clear, and with the involved participants’ agenda extremely translucent, why waste time to dwell upon it?

It took one article to get on this extension of partisan status quo’s black-list. While foaming at the mouth they yelled ‘How dare she criticize Obama?! She should just focus on Bush-Cheney FBI and DOJ, and leave the rest of the politics to our experts….’

Any real criticism and exposure of Obama-Cons made it to the top of their ‘no-no’ list.

Same goes for other ‘dangerous’ topics. Even though, initially, this forum started off on the back of rational and legitimate 9/11 critics, despite milking the attention on 9/11 related topics at the time, it very quickly changed course and started banning and censoring any and all topics related to 9/11.

The real establishment is nonpartisan. It seeks power, control, and of course mega dollars. For them real independent and rational ‘ideas’ are dangerous. For them the ‘free exchange of ideas’ is extremely dangerous. For them the possibility of the exchange of independent rational ideas leading to ‘real action’ is detrimental. So be realistic and ask yourself what are they to do? Shouldn’t they rein in any forums and channels with any potential of becoming a place for any rational independent ideas that may lead to any real action? Right. Then, welcome the phony alternative news; welcome the little parasitic puppet forums; welcome the existence of sites such as the Daily Kos. Need I say more?

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/02/a-forum-for-the-israeli-lobby-neocons-the-whirling-obama-apologists/feed/ 17 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/01/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-17/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/01/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-17/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:25:35 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4922

Karzai Brother’s Killer: Not Taliban, Iran Gas Pipeline Bombers Killed-Arrested, Iraq to buy 36 F-16 from USA, Getting Bin Laden: What Happened in Abbottabad ‘that’ Night?, Dual Classification of Open Source Information, The Essential Rules of Tyranny, Grappling with the Banality of Evil, USA Spies to Find you Through your Pictures & More!

BFP Nightly Quote

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before morning.”- Henry Ford

International Newsworthy

Official: ‘Associate’ Killed Karzai’s Brother, Not the Taliban 

Afghan Civilians Pay Lethal Price for New Policy on Air Strikes

CIA Pakistan Station Chief Clashed with Ambassador Munter

Iran: Authorities Say Gas Pipeline Bombers Killed, Arrested

Iraq’s Maliki to Buy 36 F-16 Fighters from US

Report: Iraq Deadlier Now Than a Year Ago

Turkey Seeks Solution to Army Resignation Crisis

Blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin’s Arrest: A Warning to the Growing Online Media

US-Russia ‘Reset’ Faces Biggest Challenge

Europe’s Right-Wing Populists Find Allies in Israel 

* * * *

National Newsworthy

Getting Bin Laden: What Happened that Night in Abbottabad

Dual Classification of Open Source Information

Here is how US Spies will Find you through your Pictures

Shhhhh! Spooks Want Drones as Silent as Owls 

The Collapse of America’s Middle Class

When a Cut is Not a Cut

Debt Deal a Partial Solution at Best?

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

The Essential Rules of Tyranny

Grappling with the Banality of Evil

Obama Administration’s Secret Law to Spy on Americans

John McCain: Ever Confused, Always for War

The US Debt Ceiling Deal

Ron Paul’s Challenge to the Left

Are the US & Taliban Ready to Tango?

* * * *

BFP Nightly Funnies

“Democrats warned that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, the government would cease to function. How would you be able to tell?” —Jay Leno

Al-Qaeda: US Mass Transportation Infrastructure Must Drastically Improve Before Any Terrorist Attacks!

Hot Deal in Georgia: Buy One TV Tower, Get 36 Towers Free. True!

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Smart Meters & Your Right to Privacy

Video 2: Human Rights Group Warn of Severe Water Crisis in the Gaza Strip

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/08/01/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-17/feed/ 0 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/26/brushfire-with-julia-the-saudi-states-of-america/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/26/brushfire-with-julia-the-saudi-states-of-america/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:51:34 +0000 Julia Davis http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4729 From BAE to Iran-Contra, 9/11 & Beyond

Money makes the world go ‘round. Whose money spins your planet?  In recent decades, Saudi Arabia emerged as a skillful puppeteer, pulling the strings of its expanding influence. Dare to see the big picture, out of the context of pseudo-political loyalties, free of the intoxicating opiate of the mainstream media. Look behind the mask of false pretenses to see the awful truth: riches seeking ever more money, celebrity looking for more notoriety, propaganda masquerading as the truth and the deprivation of liberties posturing as the savior in the “war on terror”.

To uncover who is truly in control, all you have to do is follow the money.  

Since the mid-eighties, British and American politicians have been operating under suspicion of being compromised by al-Yamamah, the $80 billion Anglo-Saudi black operations slush fund. It is the product of the 20-year oil-for-arms barter deal, wherein BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace), Britain’s largest defense contractor, reportedly paid bribes to sell combat fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and ammunitions to Saudi Arabia. In return for the arms, the Saudi’s agreed to supply hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day to the British. It was the largest arms deal in UK history that was arranged in a way that circumvented any potential objections by the U.S. Congress.

BAE (the world’s second largest defense company) was said to have paid millions into accounts controlled by Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a highly influential former ambassador to Washington, DC. Prince Bandar’s close ties to the Bush family prompted the nickname “Bandar Bush”. Bandar’s children reportedly attended school with Cheney’s grandchildren. The power Bandar wielded was extraordinary. For decades he was a close friend to five U.S. Presidents and numerous CIA directors, as well as heads of state and monarchs of other countries. In the Bush years, Bandar became virtually part of the administration, able to enter the White House unannounced. Ever a master manipulator, Bandar skillfully controlled the mainstream media, with the Washington Post being his paper of choice when it came to royal leaks.

Bandar had his hand in some of the biggest scandals in modern history. During the Reagan presidency, Bandar secured the purchase of AWACs surveillance aircraft, despite opposition from AIPAC (after the U.S. rejected an arms order, Bandar covertly arranged the delivery of intermediate-range nuclear-warhead-capable missiles from China). He was exposed for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, having arranged $32 million in Saudi financing for the Nicaraguan Contras. Bandar’s wife was reportedly sending money to one of the 9/11 hijackers. President George W. Bush told Prince Bandar about the invasion of Iraq before he told Secretary of State Colin Powell about it (incidentally, another one of Prince Bandar’s close connections).

Planning wars is just one of many perks that come with having friends in high places. Those connections came in handy when Bandar was accused of siphoning off $100 million per year for 10 years, in a $2 billion contract between Saudi Arabia and BAE.

The al-Yamamah “slush fund” was first reported by a whistleblower in 2001, but British Ministry of Defense covered up those allegations. In 2004, another whistleblower disclosed further details of the bribery scandal to the Guardian, prompting an investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

In 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a secret visit to Riyadh to expedite one of BAE’s deals with the Saudi princes. Blair agreed to sell to the Saudis 24 jets ahead of schedule, by letting them get their hands on the jets that were already allotted for the British armed forces.

In 2006, when investigators were about to gain access to the Swiss bank accounts linked to Saudi royal family, Tony Blair blocked a corruption investigation against them. Blair said that the probe would have led nowhere except to the “complete wreckage” of a vital strategic relationship. Translation: “We don’t want to upset our rich Saudi benefactors.” The Saudis were apparently threatening to back out of a lucrative deal and to halt their participation in anti-terrorism efforts. Bandar had arrogantly warned a U.K. official that “British lives on British streets were at risk” if the investigation was allowed to continue.

The British High Court ruled that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government may have interfered with the rule of law in December 2006, when it ordered the British government’s Serious Fraud Office to shut down its bribery investigation. Blair claimed that his decision to scrap the probe was made purely in the interest of national security. The court blasted him in a scathing rebuke that stated in part, “No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice…It is the failure of Government… to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court.” Blair also ensured that the report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on BAE’s dealings in Saudi Arabia was not published. It remains the only NAO report never to have been made public. British Ministry of Defense stated, “The report remains sensitive. Disclosure would harm both international relations and the UK’s commercial interests.”

In 2007, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the world’s anti-bribery watchdog, rebuked the government for terminating SFO investigation and launched its own inquiry. During the same year, the U.S. Department of Justice was forced to investigate, since the U.K. government was criticized in the press for halting the inquiry. The DOJ had the jurisdiction, since Prince Bandar received some of the funds in question in Washington, DC.

Prince Bandar has retained former FBI Director Louis Freeh to represent him in connection with the DOJ probe. In a videotaped interview, Freeh admitted on behalf of Bandar that approximately $2 billion was sent from the al-Yamamah account in the United Kingdom to bank accounts of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation at Riggs Bank in Washington, DC. Prince Bandar, who was serving at the time as Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. exercised control and had signatory authority over those bank accounts. Freeh admits that these monies were sent to purchase arms through the offices of BAE, which was done in a way that would circumvent “objection” by the U.S. Congress.

Interestingly enough, former FBI Director Louis Freeh is linked to another aspect of 9/11, as a former boss of John Patrick O’Neill, a top American anti-terrorism expert. In 1995, O’Neill investigated the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef. He also investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen.

After years of investigating terrorism, O’Neill was convinced that “All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama Bin Laden’s organization can be found in Saudi Arabia.” In spite of praising O’Neill and his efforts, not everyone shared his enthusiasm for pursuing and exposing the Saudi links to terror. O’Neill voiced his frustrations with Saudis’ lack of cooperation to Freeh.

As a Director of the FBI, Freeh was involved in controversial investigations of the events at the Ruby Ridge and Waco. The FBI under Freeh was accused of such severe cover-ups that U.S. Marshals had to be dispatched to relieve them of the evidence. Businessweek called for Freeh to resign, stating in part that he “has overseen a bureau that has bungled investigations of high-profile criminal cases and repeatedly misled probers and judges in legal proceedings — never more shamelessly than in the matter of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. At the same time, Freeh’s FBI has tried to run roughshod over the civil liberties of ordinary citizens, demanding access to encryption codes and elbowing its way onto every PC in the country through its Carnivore project.”

The New York Times wrote that “Freeh will probably go down as either the F.B.I. director who slept as terrorists prepared to attack the World Trade Center or as the man who hounded Bill Clinton for seven years.” Interestingly enough, just like Freeh, Bandar has been working to undermine President Bill Clinton for quite some time.

John P. O’Neill certainly wasn’t sleeping on his watch or worrying about sexual proclivities of mischievous Presidents. He had gained a tremendous knowledge of Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, but was repeatedly excluded from terrorism investigations. He became the target of a smear campaign and was subjected to petty internal inquiries. This is not uncommon within federal government, as a tactic that is routinely used to silence those who come across any information that has the potential of embarrassing the government. Freeh was reportedly involved in those attempts to force O’Neill out of the Bureau.

After leaving the FBI, O’Neill became the head of security at the World Trade Center, where he perished in the September 11, 2001 attacks, while attempting to save others.

In a book “The Age of Sacred Terror”, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon state that Louis Freeh deliberately withheld information about Bin Laden and the precursors for the attack of 9/11 from the White House.

Richard A. Clarke, a former top counter-terrorism advisor for the White House, criticized Freeh and his actions in his book, “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” Clarke also expressed serious concerns about Freeh’s representation of Bandar, stating, “Someone who characterizes himself as a U.S. patriot and national security advocate ought not to be on the side of someone blackmailing people not to investigate crimes by threatening to withdraw a nation’s cooperation against terrorists.”

Prior to his tenure as the FBI Director, Freeh was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. He also forged an alliance with “Bandar Bush”. Freeh traveled to Saudi Arabia many times, meeting with Bandar and the highest levels of Saudi government in a relationship that started during Freeh’s investigation of the 1996 Khobar bombing. The secrecy surrounding it has been such that Dale Watson, the FBI’s Chief of Counter-Terrorism, once said, “It’s a killing offense around here to talk about it.”

What was Freeh doing during that time? He started courting Bandar, spending time in his heavily guarded mansion in McLean, Virginia. Bandar also visited Freeh at his FBI office, where the privileged Saudi visitor was the only one ever allowed to smoke cigars. Louis Freeh was bending over backwards to express his respect of the Arab culture and Sharia. He was “cultivating personal relationships” with Bandar, as well as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and other prominent Saudi officials. Freeh said, “The statutory authorities and the resources and all the other factors are significant, but my experience is that none of them are as important as those relationships.”

Could those relationships be the reason behind Freeh’s failure to pursue Saudi links to terror? His shameless hobnobbing with the Saudis has proven to be important (and lucrative) indeed, since Louis Freeh left the FBI and went on to represent Prince Bandar. The New Yorker reported that “Bandar, like Freeh, is skilled at cultivating people to get things done. Unlike other ambassadors, who exist on the ceremonial fringe, Bandar has real power.”

Prince Bandar said, “If you tell me… that we misused or got corrupted with $50 billion, I’ll tell you, “Yes.” … But, more important, more important — who are you to tell me this? … What I’m trying to tell you is, so what? We did not invent corruption, nor did those dissidents, who are so genius, discover it. This happened since Adam and Eve. … I mean, this is human nature.”

In 2008, when BAE refused to cooperate with the bribery investigation, the DOJ detained its former CEO Mike Turner and other top executives at the airport for questioning. The Times (Rupert Murdoch’s company, which boasts significant Saudi ownership) complained that “such humiliating behaviour by the DOJ was unusual because most companies co-operate with regulators.” Most companies may cooperate with regulators, but BAE was clearly not one of them.

On February 5, 2010, BAE pled guilty to foreign bribery charges, conspiring to defraud the United States, to make false statements about its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance program, to violate the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). According to the statement of criminal information filed by the DOJ, BAE’s gains from these violations exceeded $200 million dollars. BAE was ordered to pay $447 million dollars in fines to U.S authorities – one of the largest criminal fines in the history of DOJ.

The DOJ filing reflected that BAE began serving as the prime contractor to the U.K. government in the mid-1980s, after the U.K. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) entered into a formal agreement. BAE started to provide millions to Prince Bandar (whose name the DOJ conspicuously omitted from its charging papers, referring to “Bandar Bush” as “KSA official”), who was in a position of influence regarding sales of fighter jets, other defense materials and related support services. Over a billion dollars was reportedly sent to two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington, DC controlled by Prince Bandar. BAE also transferred over a billion dollars to a bank account in Switzerland controlled by an intermediary, being aware that these payments would also go to Prince Bandar. It is claimed that Bandar received over $1 billion dollars over the course of 10 years, with the knowledge and authorization of British Ministry of Defense officials.

Following BAE’s criminal conviction by the DOJ, the U.S. State Department also filed charges against the company for committing over 2,591 separate violations, which were settled in May of 2011 for a civil fine of $79 million dollars. In an Internet notice posted on March 1, 2010, the State Department advised export license applicants to remove BAE products from their applications, if possible. That portion of the notice was withdrawn the very next day. In a comment to “Defense News” about such blatant back-peddling, a Washington trade lawyer commented, “What State has done sends a terrible message. It makes it seem like State does not have a handle on what it wants to do – or that it’s being manipulated by outside interests.”

The State Department noted that BAE’s willful refusal to cooperate resulted in “the incomplete nature of the investigation” and therefore the government was unable “to assess fully the potential harm to U.S. national security.” Nonetheless, the settlement rescinded the statutory debarment, allowing BAE to get right back to business. BAE is apparently “too big to bar.” Although the company was sanctioned with a criminal fine of over $400 million for its foreign corrupt practices, none of BAE’s executives were prosecuted. A felony conviction could have interfered with BAE’s ability to compete for U.S. contracts, but it didn’t. No one seemed too concerned that BAE paid millions in bribes, to include payments made to the likes of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. In the 365 days that followed, BAE was awarded roughly $58 billion in US government contracts.

Similarly, nothing got in the way of BAE’s takeover of the US-based Armor Holdings. U.S. regulators approved the deal, in spite of the company’s history of multibillion dollar bribery and corruption. The Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch’s company, which boasts significant Saudi ownership) reported that the purchase would bolster BAE’s expansion in the U.S. and the increase of its involvement in military ground vehicles. Bribery and corruption continued. On July 13, 2011, Armor Holdings settled charges of bribery with the Department of Justice and the SEC. The charges arise out of bribes paid to obtain contracts to supply body armor for U.N. peacekeepers (SEC v. Armor Holdings, Inc., Case No. 1:11-CV-01271).  Armor Holdings agreed to pay a total of $5,690,744 to the SEC and $10,290,000 to the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve the charges. Of course, none of the company’s executives were prosecuted.

In 2005, BAE purchased United Defense Industries, maker of combat vehicles, artillery, naval guns, missile launchers and precision munitions.

The implication of these dealings is that a company under control of Saudi money and influence, with a documented history of bribery and corruption, owns an enormous slice of the American defense industry, striving to be the Pentagon’s biggest supplier. The threat surpasses the “Fast and Furious” faux pas on an unimaginable scale, because Saudi Arabia (with its undeniable links to terror) now controls massive military enterprises inside the U.S.

A report, prepared by a bipartisan panel of terrorism experts for the Council on Foreign Relations, sharply criticized the Bush administration for its lackadaisical approach towards Saudi Arabia’s involvement in terror funding, which remains a “lethal threat” to the United States. CFR report concludes that “it is worth stating clearly and unambiguously what official U.S. government spokespersons have not: “For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda… It would be wrong to say that no progress has been made… But it would be equally wrong to overstate the progress that has been made—a mistake that is too often made by U.S. government spokespersons. In recent years, for instance, Saudi Arabia has taken two or three important steps to improve its capability to cooperate on these matters with the United States, for which it should be commended. A hundred more steps and Saudi Arabia may be where it needs to be.”

The report profoundly summarized why the U.S. is neither being taken seriously by the rest of the world in our “war on terror”, nor does our own government take it seriously enough to abandon its unholy alliances: “The Task Force appreciates the necessary delicacies of diplomacy and notes that previous administrations also used phrases that obfuscated more than they illuminated when making public statements on this subject. Nevertheless, when U.S. spokespersons are willing to say only that “Saudi Arabia is being cooperative” when they know very well all the ways in which it is not, both our allies and our adversaries can be forgiven for believing that the United States does not place a high priority on this issue.”

No one can deny the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden himself was Saudi-born. During a 2002 raid on a Saudi-based charity, Benevolence International Foundation, FBI agents discovered a handwritten list of 20 alleged Al Qaeda financiers. Bin Laden referred to this informal financial network of prominent Saudi and Gulf individuals as “the Golden Chain.” FBI agents said that two Saudis with direct links to Al Qaeda, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, acted as conduits for financial aid for the 9/11 hijackers and other Saudi militants. They received “seemingly unlimited funding” from Saudi Arabia. Bassnan and his family reportedly obtained significant support from Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar.

In the days following 9/11, with the blessing of George W. Bush, at least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the Bin Ladens out of the U.S. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the Bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country. At least one private plane flew to pick up Saudi nationals while private flights were still grounded. The White House denied the very existence of that flight for years, until they finally revealed some of its details in response to a request from the 9/11 Commission. Former Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 3, 2003 and stated in part: “It is true that members of the Bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can’t say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House.” 

In 2002, the Congress noted that Saudi links to 9/11 are not being adequately explored.

In 2003, Los Angeles Times reported that the classified pages were kept out of a congressional report about 9/11. They demonstrated that the Saudi government not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers, but also allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts. A U.S. official who has read the document said that it describes “very direct, very specific links” between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators “that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental.”

In his book, “Intelligence Matters”, former Florida Senator Robert Graham also highlighted connections between a Saudi government spy and the planners of the terrorist attacks, criticizing the deletion of 28 pages from the 9/11 Commission Report that dealt with Saudi Arabia.

“The Commission: The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation”, written by Philip Shenon, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, discusses revelations contained in a classified portion of a House-Senate Joint Intelligence Committee report. It discusses the Saudi links to the 9/11 attacks. The pages pertaining to the Saudi connections never saw the light of day because the White House invoked executive privilege.

While the officials refuse to declassify this information, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld exposed them in her book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It”. She was subsequently sued by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz for “libel” and relentlessly harassed by his affiliates. Ehrenfeld, Director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy, refused to be intimidated. She championed the SPEECH Act (the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage) to guard American authors and publishers from enforcement of frivolous foreign libel judgments that undermine the First Amendment and American due process standards. This bill was signed into law on August 10, 2010.

Frustrated by the government’s failure to hold anyone personally accountable in the BAE bribery scandal, the city of Harper Woods, Michigan has filed a lawsuit against BAE Systems over allegations that the company funneled bribes to Prince Bandar. Harper Woods was intimately involved in a $100 billion international arms deal, because its $40 million employee pension fund includes about $135,000 invested in BAE Systems. William Bradford Reynolds, who served as the Chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division during the Reagan administration, signed on to represent Bandar in this lawsuit. During this litigation, a U.S. court froze Prince Bandar’s assets in the U.S., reportedly worth over $150 million dollars.

Bandar was clearly furious about these developments. When George W. Bush visited Saudi Arabia, he asked, “Where’s my pal Bandar?” In response, he was told that Bandar is unavailable. During Cheney’s visit to Saudi Arabia, old pal Bandar was similarly a no-show.

In 2009, the U.S. District court dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, holding that English law controls and therefore the city of Harper Woods has no standing to pursue the action. This was a predictable outcome, given the political control of the U.S. government over the judiciary. For the last quarter of a century, motivated by greed, many of our elected officials chose to hold the interests of Saudi Arabian oligarchs above those of the American people.

As of 2011, Bandar is back as a force in world politics. He was present in recent meetings between Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates (former director of the CIA) and King Abdullah, as well as during a separate visit by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. United States’ recently sold $60 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, including 84 new F-15 fighter jets (in addition to upgrading 70 of their existing F-15s), 190 helicopters as well as a wide array of missiles and bombs. The deal was announced while Congress was in recess, to ensure that it would move forward without interruptions by any possible opponents.

This was the largest purchase of American arms in Saudi Arabia’s history. Gates also urged King Abdullah to buy an upgraded version of Patriot air defense missiles and the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense System, which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles of longer range. Gates told reporters, “I think the relationship is in a good place.” This “relationship” seems to be blooming indeed, since the U.S. continues to sell arms to the country with direct ties to terrorism.

You may have noticed that the mainstream media avoids discussing the issues of Saudi influence and links to 9/11. There’s a good explanation for that. It so happens that the second largest shareholder of News Corp. is Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. His slice of the pie is topped only by the holdings of Rupert Murdoch himself.

Al-Waleed involved himself in a variety of Western enterprises and powerhouses, including but not limited to Sony (now planning to launch more Arabic TV shows), Michael Jackson, Rupert Murdoch’s scandalous media empire, AOL/Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Amazon, Apple, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Compaq, Disneyland, eBay, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, McDonald’s, Motorola, PepsiCo, Priceline, Procter & Gamble and General Motors.

Not to be outdone, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, a company that owns MSNBC and is already firmly entrenched in Saudi Arabia, also approached Al-Waleed and solicited him to invest in GE.

In case you were wondering, the acronym “MSM” nowadays stands for “Mainly Saudi Media”.

Al-Waleed was quoted asserting that Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making “if they unite through economic interests, not political…We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.” Al-Waleed donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, also known as the “Ground Zero Mosque“. The majority of the American public didn’t take too kindly to that idea.

To bolster their public image, the Saudis hired a PR firm and scores of high-powered Washington lobbyists. Saudi Arabia’s shabby public image in the U.S. has long been exacerbated by reports of a barbaric judicial system that believes in chopping off heads and limbs, complete absence of religious freedom, nonexistent human rights and ongoing abuses against women. According to the Department of Justice records, Saudi Arabia has spent over $20 million dollars on public relations, advertising and lobbying. Relentless PR efforts to clean up the Saudi image initially failed (especially when Al-Waleed claimed that the U.S. Foreign policy is to blame for the attacks of 9/11), but later started to pay off. The positive image of Saudi Arabia is being pushed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Starting in 2002, series of ads appeared on American TV, in major newspapers and magazines, were broadcast on radio stations and popped up all over the Internet. All of them featured slogans, representing Saudis as America’s allies in the “war on terror”. In August 2004, following the final release of the 9/11 Commission Report, the Saudi government paid for a series of new radio ads, repeatedly reiterating that no link had been established between Saudi Arabia and the terror attacks of 9/11.

One of the PR firms hired by Saudi Arabia, Qorvis Communications, who received millions for their activities, lobbied on Saudi Arabia’s behalf with US Congressional staffers 62 times in the first half of 2004. Saudi Arabia also arranged series of meetings with the editorial boards of major US newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today, and secured appearances on numerous cable news programs.

A feature film “Unknown” prominently features a character of a benevolent and magnanimous Saudi prince who bankrolled an expensive research project to create a genetically modified strain of corn that could eliminate world hunger. The film “Unknown” is based on the novel “Out of My Head” by Didier van Cauwelaert. There is no such a character in the original version of the story. One has to wonder if this feature film is just another extension of Saudi Arabia’s multimillion dollar PR campaign.

Anything that challenges the dominance of Saudi Arabia, as it holds the rest of the world over an oil barrel, or exposes the complicity of First World country governments is assaulted with all the might of the brute force that deems itself too powerful to be held accountable. It’s quite a spectacular feat for a primitive oligarchy of Saudi Arabia to achieve such a level of control over the world’s supposed super-powers through oil and money, usurping ownership of Western arms, politics and mainstream media. Money does make the world go ‘round – and with this much money being thrown around, our world seems to be spinning out of control.

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/26/brushfire-with-julia-the-saudi-states-of-america/feed/ 10 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-12/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-12/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:34:21 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4707

Obama: Transnational Organized Crime is A National Emergency!, Who Rules America, 9/11: Who Really Benefited?, Foreign Powers Behind “Cambodia Killing Fields?”, Pentagon: You Hack- We Shoot, Murdoch’s Misery- China’s Delight, The lesser Evil, & More!

Newsworthy

Foreign Powers behind “Cambodia Killing Fields?” 

US Turns Heat on ISI: Says it Spies on Pakistani-Americans

Iran Draws the Line with Turkey on Syria

More Predator Drones for Libya

As Central Asia Dries Up, States Spar Over Shrinking Resources

Murdoch’s Misery, China’s Delight

****

Obama Declares Transnational Organized Crime Threat A National Emergency!

You hack, We Shoot:  Pentagon Discusses Armed Counter-strikes to Cyber-Attacks

$16 Trillion in Secret by Fed

Companies Churn Out Profits But Jobs Don’t Follow

 Lobbying Surges by AT&T & Other Communication Companies

1400 Arrests for Antiwar Protesters

****

Fear-Mongering & Servitude

The Power Elite & the Police State

9/11: Who Really Benefited?

Who Rules America: 0.1% Controls Legislative & Political Process

The lesser Evil

****

Video1: Former Guantanamo Guard-Whistleblower Brandon Neely on Former Guantanamo Inmate David Hicks

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-12/feed/ 1 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-food-for-thought-trying-to-see-the-forest-despite-the-trees%e2%80%a6/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-food-for-thought-trying-to-see-the-forest-despite-the-trees%e2%80%a6/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:02:40 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4692 …and Finding Some Ones

Can we just step back for a few minutes, put aside all the little meddling points showcased by the propaganda machine media and political showmen, take a look at the following facts, and try to see the forest despite the trees?

An ‘alleged’ Mastermind executes a terror attack on September 11, 2001, with a few men, to be exact 19.

Our government responds by sending over at least 150,000 men and women.

 That ‘alleged’ Mastermind implements the 9/11 terror plot with a few hundred thousand dollars; in the range of $400,000.

Our government spends more than $1,000,000,000,000 in response, on wars on terror abroad, at least that much here at home, and keeps on spending.

Our government has been using lots of this:

To bomb the hell out of this:

Because we have this:

And they have only this:

The 9/11 Terrorist Attack cost us 2977 innocent lives. 19 terrorists’ also died on that day; resulting in 2996 deaths.

 In Afghanistan alone our government’s response has resulted in the deaths of more than 2600 coalition forces, at least 10,000 civilians, and many more thousands lumped together as Taliban, Militants or  simply unknown; our estimated total around 20,000.

We suffered greatly as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with 2977 deaths, nearly 7000 treated for injuries, and tens of thousands suffering the losses of their loved ones.

As a nation we’ve been suffering continuously since then; for almost a decade: with thousands of our soldiers killed, many more thousands wounded, and many many more thousands of these men and women’s loved ones suffering the results. We have also been suffering the loss of trillions of our hard-earned tax dollars. For a decade; Continuously.

As a nation we’ve been causing lots of suffering too; for a decade; continuously. With tens of thousands of people we’ve killed and seriously injured, and with many more tens of thousands of orphans and loved ones left behind to suffer those losses.

Tens of thousands of lives. Trillions of dollars. Tens of thousands of disabled; orphans, and widows. Suffering there. Suffering here.

There must be ‘some ones’ out there immune to all this suffering. Obviously those ‘some ones’ have not been suffering. In fact ‘some ones’ must be gaining a lot from all this suffering.  And maybe, considering the tremendous level of ‘gains’ involved, ‘some ones’ actually want, thus, start and inflict the suffering. Otherwise what could ever explain this insanity?

Tens of thousands of lives lost there. Thousands of lives lost here. Tens of thousands more in pain; and many more mourning. Millions deprived of Trillions of hard-earned dollars. And there are those ‘some ones’ who have been earning billions of dollars from many millions’ sufferings; for almost a decade, and, continuously.

Who could these ‘some ones’ be? Any food for thought?

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/25/bfp-food-for-thought-trying-to-see-the-forest-despite-the-trees%e2%80%a6/feed/ 5 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/20/brushfire-with-julia-what%e2%80%99s-good-for-the-goose-may-prove-disastrous-for-murdoch/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/20/brushfire-with-julia-what%e2%80%99s-good-for-the-goose-may-prove-disastrous-for-murdoch/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:16:12 +0000 Julia Davis http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4560 The Prevalent Conflicts of interest on both sides of the shark-infested pond

Mainstream media is up in arms over the latest revelations in the ever-growing Murdoch scandal. In a firestorm of outrage, reporters are screaming at the top of their lungs about stunning privacy violations. Members of Congress passionately demand that everyone responsible be investigated and prosecuted. In his letter to FBI Director Mueller, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, had cited reports that News of the World journalists “attempted to obtain phone records of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping.”

He also cited reports that the reporters had solicited a New York police officer “to gain access to the content of private phone records” of the 9/11 victims. The NYPD does not intend to conduct an investigation into these shocking allegations. They’re leaving it up to the federal authorities, even though accusations of bribery against one of its own would certainly be within the police department’s purview. Ironically, the FBI has been aware of News Corp’s criminal misconduct for years, but elected not to pursue it until now.

We could only wish that our politicians, law enforcement and the mainstream media were eager to act when our own government engages in the same abuses against law-abiding citizens. Anyone responsible for conducting warrantless surveillance, wiretapping and hacking should be held accountable. The Department of Justice announced that it does not intend to prosecute any government officials responsible for unlawful acts committed under the guise of a “war on terror”. Instead, whistleblowers who exposed the very unlawful acts in question are the ones being prosecuted.

In the mean time, the Murdoch firestorm continues to spread high and wide, engulfing mainstream media’s power structure in its wake. Implications of this case go far beyond the unsavory tabloid tactics employed by the international media empire. It will mar and negatively alter the image of journalism, politics and law enforcement. This case exposed the corruption and media manipulation on a mind-boggling scale that involves 9/11 victims, politicians, celebrities, the royal family, police corruption, murdered children and victims of the 2005 London subway bombings. Murdoch tried to downplay the magnitude of this fiasco by telling his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, that his executives had made only “minor mistakes.” These peccadilloes went far beyond digging through garbage bins. They reportedly included unauthorized wiretapping, bribing the police to gain law enforcement access to confidential records (including medical and financial files of prominent politicians) and hacking.

While it’s only now exploding on such a massive scale in the worldwide media, the Murdoch case is actually quite old. News Corp. paid out more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits that accused their journalists of using information obtained by illegally hacking into mobile phones of public figures, politicians, sports stars and entertainers, as well as gaining unlawful access to tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills. According to the Guardian, Murdoch’s newspapers entered into confidential out-of-court settlement agreements with respect to three such cases, gagging their victims in the process.

During his Parliament testimony, Murdoch repeatedly slapped the table with his hand and did his best to appear indignant. He touted the number of his employees, made excuses for not knowing that they were breaking the law and denied having any responsibility whatsoever as the head of the company. These denials ring hollow, since Murdoch had to be aware of the lawsuits and investigations going on against his company for several years. The News of the World entered into settlement agreements, paid out huge amounts to its victims, was confronted with the evidence of unlawful activities by its reporters and took legal action to silence their targets. While Murdoch refuses to accept any responsibility, he claims to be the best person to stay in charge and “clean this up”. Why, then, didn’t he clean it up years earlier?

In 2008, when the high court ordered the News of the World to pay damages to one of its victims, the paper published the following message: “It is not for the powerful and the influential to run to the courts to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are TRUE…This is all about the public’s right to know.” At the same time, company’s lawyers were persuading the courts to seal the files containing evidence of their illegal actions and paying off its targets to ensure their silence.

In doing so, they prevented the public from knowing anything about criminal behavior by journalists on its payroll. Saying the right thing and doing the right thing is not quite the same.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Murdoch downfall is the elaborate cover-up that went on for years, including media blackouts, suppression of relevant information through avoidance and rampant police corruption. Free press turned out to be Scott-free, operating under the misapprehension that they are above the law. Their arrogance was bought with bribes, as well as close-knit connections to law enforcement, prominent politicians and the Saudi shadow government.

Since August 2006, the evidence of wrongdoing was gathering dust at Scotland Yard, including 11,000 pages of handwritten notes. They were filled with explosive revelations, listing nearly 4000 celebrities, politicians, sports players, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by News of the World. Interestingly enough, senior police officials claim that no one bothered to process and analyze the damning paperwork, because they were too busy with counterterrorism investigations. In reality, the police have become so intertwined with the tabloid that they had a common agenda of shutting down any investigations into their own wrongdoing.

Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, who previously served as the editor of the News of the World, appeared before the Commons media committee in 2003 and testified that her newspaper paid police for stories. She later retracted that statement and claimed that she was referring to the industry in general.

Members of Parliament are apoplectic over a ”revolving door” between the police and News International. Company executives enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the beginning of the hacking scandal in 2006, Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson shared meals with company executives and editors 18 times. Assistant Commissioner John Yates also regularly dined with editors from News International. Andy Hayman, who was running the hacking investigation as the chief of the counterterrorism unit, socialized with News International personnel as well. During the same time frame, senior police officials assured Parliament, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the news agency in question. Hayman left the Metropolitan Police, turning in his badge for a pen, in December 2007. He was hired to write a column for The Times of London, a News International paper. Apparently, loyalty to the Murdoch Empire is richly rewarded.

Faced with worldwide scrutiny, police later admitted that they botched up the case and acknowledged being inappropriately cozy with those they were obligated to investigate. Stephenson resigned because of his close ties to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World editor involved in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal. Stephenson hired Neil Wallis as his secret PR advisor, from whom he accepted lavish offerings.

Within 24 hours of Stephenson’s resignation, his deputy, John Yates, followed suit. Yates was set to be suspended because of his links with Wallis and his refusal to reopen the case into phone-hacking on two separate occasions. While he was working for the police on the hacking case, Wallis was reporting back to News International. He had also informed Murdoch’s former aide Rebekah Brooks about The New York Times’ reporting on the matter.

Brooks is one of ten participants arrested so far on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption. During her latest appointment with the police, she was arrested and promptly bailed out. Brooks is known to have many friends in high places. Those who know her describe Rebekah as a networker extraordinaire. “She buttered up a lot of middle-aged men, and she’s good at that. They probably each thought they were a special adviser and confidant. She was very good at keeping those old warhorses well and truly on her side,” said one former co-worker.

British Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly had dozens of interactions with News International executives and editors, including Rebekah Brooks. She defiantly continued to socialize with political figures amidst the furore over the Prime Minister’s ties to the Murdoch Empire. Brooks managed to keep her job even as the 168-year-old News of the World was shut down, displacing 200 other journalists. Dubbed Murdoch’s “fifth daughter“, Brooks’s closeness to the octogenarian magnate was apparent when Murdoch was asked what his priority was in the current crisis. He pointed to Brooks and said: “This one.”

Murdoch initially insisted that Brooks must not resign, but caved in to the pressure from News Corp.’s second biggest shareholder, Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. His slice of the pie is topped only by the holdings of Rupert Murdoch himself. As soon as Alwaleed called for the resignation of Brooks, Murdoch and Cameron concurred. In addition to appeasing the richest man of the Arab world and a longstanding Murdoch ally, these public statements appear to be an attempt to distance themselves from the frenzy prompted by the sensational allegations.

Alwaleed has financial links to the “Ground Zero Mosque”, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan. He was quoted asserting that Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making “if they unite through economic interests, not political…We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.”

Alwaleed has bragged that it only took a phone call to ensure that the Fox News Channel coverage of Muslims rioting in France not be described as “Muslim”. Money buys all kinds of undue influence over American and British mainstream media. Is anyone still surprised that there is virtually no open discussion as to the issues of Saudi influence in the western media and politics, as well as Saudi links to Al Qaeda and 9/11?

The Murdoch scandal took another dark turn, as the News of the World whistleblower, reporter Sean Hoare, was found dead at his home on July 18, 2011. Just one week before his demise he told the Guardian that “there’s more to come, this is not going to go away.” He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in general being cleaned up, stating that as his reason for blowing the whistle. Hoare said, “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation.” He emphasized that he was not making any money from telling his story.

Sean Hoare recently told the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were given access to police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals, in exchange for bribes to police officers. He explained that journalists were able to pinpoint the coordinates of their targets through the use of “pinging” by measuring the distance between a cell phone and a number of phone masts to determine the location of a person they were following.

After Hoare was found dead, there was a notable delay in the arrival of forensics officers at the scene. His death is currently being treated as “unexplained”, but police commented that they are not considering it “suspicious”.

To deal with the public scrutiny, Murdoch hired Steven Rubenstein, a PR guru, whose clients also include Robert De Niro, David Letterman, Paramount Pictures and its head, Brad Grey. Murdoch was also briefed by Dan Tench, one of the UK’s leading entertainment lawyers. Michael Wolff, Murdoch’s biographer, said the head of the media empire is “awful at this sort of stuff. He is pretty inarticulate, mumbles all the time and is incredibly defensive… that is the reason that when he does do interviews they tend to be to his own papers.”

The firestorm already crossed the ocean, as Les Hinton, CEO of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, resigned. Hinton has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and headed Murdoch’s British newspaper arm while the hacking and corruption took place. In 2009, Hinton testified to a Parliamentary Committee that phone hacking was an isolated incident involving solely one jailed reporter. Scotland Yard assigned a new team to the hacking allegations only after The New York Times published an article raising questions about the mishandling of the case.

The police are just now starting to notify nearly 4000 targets in the staggering scandal. More arrests are looming on the horizon, as the Metropolitan Police itself is the subject of a judicial inquiry into its handling of this case, as well as the allegations of bribes received by police officials in exchange for supplying confidential information to reporters.

Why didn’t anyone stop the corruption? The Murdoch Empire simply seemed too big to fail, too massive to expose. News International Limited owns the Sunday Times of London, the Times of London, the British tabloid The Sun and newspapers such as the News Limited in Australia and all over the world. It’s a subsidiary of News Corp, a publicly traded American company, whose U.S. holdings include the Wall Street Journal, Fox Broadcasting Co. network, Fox Entertainment Group, New York Post, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, HarperCollins Publishing and two dozen local television stations.

Authorities were looking the other way while the media monopoly continued to grow. The Justice Department that was so eager to pursue a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft was not the least bit concerned with the worldwide reach of the Murdoch tentacles. During the last two decades, the number of corporations controlling most of America’s mainstream media outlets, book publishers and movie companies has dwindled from 50 to only 5.

Corporate news media skillfully creates an impression of being free, independent and objective. In reality, the mainstream is quite crafty at pursuing certain stories and blackballing the matters it elects to suppress. Unpopular topics are disposed of by omission, as the media moguls have perfected the art of avoidance. For example, the tragic demise of a child receives mind-numbing amounts of tedious coverage, pushing the populace to disregard multiple murders happening because of misguided wars. Stories that are truly sensational are being avoided or purposely downplayed, while the pieces that pose no threat to the establishment are unduly sensationalized.

The press tiptoes around the minefield of reports dealing with national security shortcomings, which are amongst the least likely topics to receive substantial media exposure. If suppressed stories receive coverage in the so-called “alternative media,” the mainstream reluctantly jumps on the bandwagon. They do so only to dismantle and discredit any politically inconvenient exposé that makes it past the silent treatment stage. The government gets exonerated for their unlawful activities under the guise of “the war on terror,” greedy corporations are defended as “job creators” and corrupt management is favored over “disgruntled” employees with an “axe to grind”.

When so few serve as the opinion-makers for so many, there is no true freedom of the media and no sincere representation of diverse points of view.

The mainstream loathes the alternative media’s use of the Internet, since it defies their blatant media manipulation – but they have a plan for dealing with any threats to their dominance. Meet the Protect IP Act or PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, also known as United States Senate Bill S.968). Senator Wyden placed a hold on this deceptive bill, noting that overreaching legislation poses a significant threat to Internet commerce, innovation and free speech.

The bill seeks to give control of the Internet to government agencies and corporations by allowing them to blacklist and deny public access to “rogue” websites, especially those registered outside the United States. It would give the United States Department of Justice the power to “expeditiously” make the target website invisible. It would also include the removal of hyperlinks to such websites from search engines and other sites linking to content.

The bill was criticized for not being specific about what constitutes an “infringing” web site and for providing sweeping new powers for removing Internet content without any notification to the alleged offenders. Similar legislation was previously introduced under the name of Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010 and was re-written under the new heading.  

PIPA is supported by government associations, unions, corporations and trade associations. It is opposed by individuals, consumer rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as Google, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch.  

Even without this legislation websites are already being seized by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE’s stated primary mission is “to protect national security, public safety and the integrity of our borders”. Instead, between 2008 and 2011, in the course of its operation “In Our Sites” ICE conducted 2,889 website investigations, devoting 834,360.00 hours to policing the Internet. This is a harbinger of bad things to come.

In the agency’s official presentation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), belligerent ICE bragged that it was “Kicking ass and seizing websites – While you were eating your turkey.” Terrorists must have been shaking in their boots reading about the Department of Homeland Security’s priorities. At the same time, the DHS is not the least bit concerned with Saudi involvement in continuing to fund terrorist activities, while they freely operate in the U.S. and abroad, exercising unprecedented control over our mainstream media.

Conflicts of interest that influence media and politics are prevalent on both sides of the shark-infested pond. Tony Blair attempted to downplay the Murdoch scandal by stating that he was surprised by the amount of attention it was receiving. According to Blair, such activities were business as usual for any newspaper and he learned to just “live with it”.

Surely that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Blair’s close relationship with Murdoch, widespread beliefs that Murdoch was secretly functioning as the hidden member of Tony Blair’s cabinet, the fact that Blair aided Murdoch in overcoming other investigations and the fact that Blair was promised a senior role in his News Corporation (which may no longer seem as such a tempting proposition). Blair is also well known for doing his best to protect the interests of his powerful Saudi friends and alliances, so his efforts to downplay the Murdoch debacle might serve a dual purpose.

Apparently, cartoonish plans of world domination exist not only in “Austin Powers” movies, but also in real life.

Now Rupert Murdoch is taking out ads to say “We are sorry.” I bet everyone responsible for the News of the World disaster is sorry – sorry they got caught. Whether justice prevails at the end of the day remains to be seen. At the very least, Murdoch should find out how his victims felt when their privacy was stolen by his unscrupulous henchmen. Unlike their unsuspecting targets, the Murdoch Empire actually deserves such exposure to let the world see that the Emperor has no clothes.    

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/20/brushfire-with-julia-what%e2%80%99s-good-for-the-goose-may-prove-disastrous-for-murdoch/feed/ 1 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/15/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-4/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/15/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-4/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:58:59 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4443 More Planes & Bombs for Libya, Libya in Pictures, the Covert War in Yemen, the Staggering Price Tag for Iraq-Afghan Wars, Budget Cut=Return to the Draft?, Echelon Incest, The Silent Liquidity Freeze & More

Newsworthy

NATO Calls for More Planes to Bomb Libyan Targets

Libya in Pictures: What the Mainstream Media Does Not Tell You

U.S. Strikes Said to Kill 8 in Yemen

Record Civilian Toll in Afghanistan in 2011

NATO Raid Kills 6 Civilians in Afghanistan

FBI to Investigate News Corp over 9/11 Hacking Allegations

Staggering Price Tag for Iraq-Afghanistan Wars

****

Will Presidential Campaigns Shine a Light on Their Top Fundraisers?

Pentagon: “Budget Cuts Could Force a Return to the Draft”

The Greater Depression Is Upon US

Echelon Incest!

The Silent Liquidity Freeze

Federal Court Rules: TSA ‘Naked Scans’ are Constitutional

The Strange & Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force

Video: JP Morgan Made $5.4 Billion in the 2^nd Quarter of 2011

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/15/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-4/feed/ 4 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/14/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-3/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/14/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-3/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:59:27 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4412 New US Jails in Afghanistan, the Syrian Paradox, MIC: The Enemy Within, Media’s Endless War Propaganda, CIA in Business with the Parent Group to Al-Qaeda … & More!

Newsworthy

‘Deadliest Six Months’ for Civilians in Afghanistan

U.S. Building New Jails across Afghanistan

Iran Rejects US Claims of Role in Iraq Attacks

Libya Says 1,100 Dead in NATO War Crimes

Unfolding the Syrian Paradox

Canada: The Gift That Keeps Giving to Israel

CIA Officer May Face War Crime Charges

The “Secret” PATRIOT ACT

Lawmaker: US Airports are not Secure Enough

A False Narrative About Fannie Mae

Select Editorials

The New “Let Them Eat Cake!”

The Military Industrial Complex: The Enemy From Within

Wasted & Stolen Trillions for War

The Media’s Endless Propaganda for War

How Has Murdock Improved With Age

Video- The Secret History of the CIA: The CIA in Business with the Parent Group to Al-Qaeda?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/14/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-3/feed/ 2 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/13/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-2/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/13/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-2/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:20:00 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=4382 CIA Secret Sites in Somalia, the Next Massacre: Pakistan, What Panetta Saw-What we got, Questioning the ‘Truth’ about 9/11 & More!

The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia

Officials: NATO Kills 16 Civilians in Afghan Air Strike

Next Up: Pakistan- Ominous signs of a major new war

Why Ahmed Wali Karzai was so controversial

Ahmed Karzai: From dishwasher to drug kingpin

Anger spreads in Egypt as military warns protesters

UK Police Intel Expert: Government, Not Islam, Real Terror Threat

Petraeus at the Head of the CIA: Business as Usual?

What Panetta Saw—and What We Got

Citing Secret Order, Federal Court Dismisses Airline Passenger Lawsuit against DHS & TSA Over Scanners, Virtual Strip Searches & Full-Body ‘Rub-Downs’

Robert Fisk: Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11

Video: Aloha Hawaii New World Order

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/07/13/bfp-select-nightly-news-editorials-2/feed/ 0 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/podcast-show-45/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/podcast-show-45/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 02:40:41 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=3802 The Boiling Frogs Presents Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts joins us to discuss the September 11 terrorist attacks as the defining event of our time, which has launched our nation on interminable wars of aggression, a domestic police state where the American President is a Caesar and completely above the law. He describes the US corporate media’s role today, which is to serve the government and the interest groups that empower the government, their astonishing blackout on legitimate investigations regarding 9/11 such as the investigation results supported by more than 1500 architects, and how currently the majority of Americans are ruled by propaganda and with little regard for truth and little access to it. Mr. Roberts talks about the conflicting, ever-changing and in many ways dubious accounts of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Military Industrial Complex’ need for the next ‘black hat,’ the question of China, and more!

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has been reporting on executive branch and cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. He has written or co-written eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books, and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Mr. Roberts has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy, and has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews, Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell’s web site, CounterPunch, and the American Free Press.

Here is our guest Paul Craig Roberts unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/podcast-show-45/feed/ 53 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/paul-craig-roberts-%e2%80%9camerican-presidents-are-despots%e2%80%9d/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/paul-craig-roberts-%e2%80%9camerican-presidents-are-despots%e2%80%9d/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:18:50 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=3790 Coming Up Tomorrow at Boiling Frogs Show: Paul Craig Roberts

Tomorrow morning we’ll publish our interview with Paul Craig Roberts. We had a sobering interview session on the rise of the police state, the US media’s role in ever-declining liberties, the never-investigated September 11 terrorist attacks, and more. While we are waiting for the interview I want to share with you a few excerpts from a collection of great articles written by Mr. Roberts, starting with his powerful piece on the US mainstream media published in 2010, Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With it:

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-Semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

…

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

…

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

…

Okay, I don’t want to abuse my direct quotes quota right. Please go and read the entire article here.

The following excerpts are from Mr. Robert’s article, It Is Official: The US Is a Police State:

“Violent extremism” is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning’s FBI’s foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with “the material support of terrorism,” just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.

…

An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let “their” government get away with 9/11. Americans are too gullible & too uneducated to remain a free people. As another Nazi leader Herman Goering said, “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.”
…

And here are a couple of quotes from his latest piece Hail Caesar published at LWR:

However, regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the US government is not going to go out of business. Why does anyone think that the President, who does not obey the War Powers Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, US and international laws against torture, or any of the laws and procedures that guard civil liberty, is going to feel compelled to obey the debt ceiling?

As long as the US is at war, the American President is a Caesar. He is above the law. The US Justice (sic) Department has ruled this, and Congress and the Courts have accepted it.

…

If the President can declare on his own authority, without statutory basis and in defiance of the US Constitution, that he can assassinate US citizens who he considers to be a threat to national security, he certainly can declare that default is a threat to national security and that it is within his powers as commander-in-chief to ignore the debt ceiling.

Indeed, the executive branch would jump at the chance. Then it could reshape the budget to its own pleasing without having to consult Congress on spending any more than the executive branch consults Congress on war.

The Bush/Cheney regime brought democracy and accountable government to an end. If Obama doesn’t finish the process, the next in line will.

…

Please stay tuned for our interview with Paul Craig Roberts tomorrow!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/02/paul-craig-roberts-%e2%80%9camerican-presidents-are-despots%e2%80%9d/feed/ 3 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/03/31/being-proud-of-what-we-are-not/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/03/31/being-proud-of-what-we-are-not/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:03:49 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=3183 A Few Notes on Boiling Frogs Post in Wrapping Up Our Countdown

I think it is appropriate to revisit the purpose and some of the main characteristics of Boiling Frogs Post as we are getting ready to wrap up and finalize our countdown month. Usually, as we have done, organizations and various forums list adjectives on what they are: independent, nonpartisan, etc. I believe equally important are those characteristics and objectives that are not part of a website or a forum’s content or theme; especially those by design. I want to go on record and talk about a few things that I’ve made sure this site is not about and does not provide a platform for, and all that by design and unrelenting adamancy.

Not Providing Platforms to Undeserved Petty Personalities

One of the reasons for years I stayed away from blogs and various forums was their general tendency, a willing tendency that is, to extensively cover and meddle in some ridiculous ‘popular’ personalities with even more ridiculous context or quotes. By this I mean both positive and negative coverage, because negative coverage is coverage, in other words, negative publicity for those ‘pop political figures’ is far better than getting no coverage-no publicity. Frankly I find this continuous trend sickening, and I refuse to consider these sites respect worthy-visit worthy.

I am not just talking the talk here. I have ensured that Boiling Frogs Post never gives coverage, even the slightest, to these personalities, scandals or petty headlines. And, I invite you to review the content of our website and check it out for yourself. You will not find a single word or even the name of some Female Pop-Political Figurehead from Alaska, nor will you see any mentioning of some strange lady with an Adam’s apple, nor the name or coverage of some crying-wailing Pop-Political Radio-TV clown … Please don’t take my word for it, instead take a few minutes and search this site, and you’ll come up empty-handed! Next, take a few more minutes and visit sites that have been selling themselves as ‘alternative news,’ search their present content and past archives, and take a note of the  amount of coverage dedicated to that kind of garbage, packaged and sold to their readers as ‘alternative news and coverage.’ Well, we are proud not to be one of those, and will remain this way for as long as this site is able to continue.

Not Intimidated by the Taboo-Setting Popular Media Boogie Men

One of the major pitfalls faced by many start-up forums is the tendency to give in to the fear of being labeled-marginalized-made an outcast, based on topics of coverage. What starts, usually, as alternative, quickly transforms into conformity, becomes mainstream, which in turn changes into coverage appeasing the powers. The no-no topics of the powers-governed mainstream media become the no-no topics of wanna-be alternative media, and from there the trend mushrooms out into many smaller forums. Like it or not this is the sad reality applicable to most.  Let me give you a few examples:

Israel & Israel Lobby: I don’t think I need to elaborate much on this as I suspect most of you, our readers, are pretty familiar with this ‘taboo’ uniformly avoided & censored by the mainstream and their minions within the smaller (aka alternative) news and commentary sphere. You can read my commentary on this here, written after one of my articles on the Israel Lobby and Israel Lobby backed political figures.

9/11 & Many Unanswered Questions: Again, many of our readers know how the powers have successfully turned this topic into a taboo equal (or more extreme!) than Ebola. Simply put, the motto on this issue has become: ‘Thou shall not mention 9/11 unless it is to advocate for bigger government and lesser liberties via fear mongering.’ All truth seekers, all critical thinkers, anyone who dares to point out major discrepancies has been placed in one bucket tagged as nut cases. Are there some really ‘way out there’ people with more ‘way out there’ theories on this major world-changing issue? You bet! I wish you could read some of the most absurd letters and e-mails I’ve received from people in this category. On the other hand, to place activist 9/11 family members who have been pushing for real investigations and answers, all the former and current government intelligence & law enforcement experts and witnesses who have raised their legitimate flags, all rational people who haven’t given up their critical thinking thus have been seeking ‘real’ answers … all in that same bucket? Well, as far as conspiracies go, that will make it to the top of the list: successfully implemented propaganda by the powers.

I have had e-mails and calls from well-known and well-respected people who criticize and warn me every time I write a piece, raise a question, or make a comment on this topic. They say: ‘you don’t want to marginalize yourself by touching this issue, Sibel.’ They say: ‘I am sorry I cannot grant an interview because you are known to be associated with the 9/11 issue.’ They ask: ‘Why do you risk your reputation and reduce the chances of having a successful site by touching this issue?!’

This website is not about 9/11 but many of the issues covered here are directly or indirectly relevant to what happened on September 11, 2001. How could they not be?! The event triggering senseless wars, the PATRIOT ACT, Illegal Eavesdropping, Imperialism via Expansion of Bases, the persecution (and prosecution!) of whistleblowers, Warrantless Body Searches & Groping … is the beginning, the core and the center of many issues we’ve been facing; not only here in the US but everywhere in the world. Period! This site is not a platform for every 9/11 activist out there, but then again, this site does not shy away from tackling and covering the issue when it is related or relevant. Again, period!

Narcotics & Military-Intelligence Operations: Whether it is giving real information surrounding Afghan heroin or connecting the real dots in the global drug scene or going after the real players, when it comes to narcotics the attitude of the media is pretty much uniform: don’t cover it, or, report what ‘they’ want us to report. Of course this is not a new phenomena-think Iran Contra; think the coverage of the Karzai clan before it became kosher to touch upon their long-known narc associations; think Richard Armitage being always presented with a sanitized biography; just think. I have many reporter/journalist/editor acquaintances, and when I ask them they put it simply and uniformly: it is a messy area and we won’t investigate or even touch it. Another taboo. Another no no. And it goes a long way towards influencing others’ decision (conscious or subconscious) to leave it untouched. Here at Boiling Frogs Post and with very limited resources we don’t shy away from this taboo- the heroin connections show up in most stories-articles we cover; how could they not and yet be real analyses?!

Not a Site on Everything for Everyone

Another factor that puts me off when it comes to many so-called alternative sites and forums is their attempt to be everything to everyone. Think about it, outside the few major mainstream media players with significant resources, how can small sites with very limited resources and even more limited access to expertise cover and provide analyses-commentary on a wide range of topics and issues- from the economy to health care, from Afghanistan to Peru, from civil liberties to local elections, from marijuana legalization to pop icons, from the strange lady with the Adam’s apple to the current First Lady …and, be taken seriously?! I understand most want to increase site traffic, but come on, even the idea of it is preposterous, and the fact that huge numbers of people visit and read these sites is even more mind boggling to me.

I remember one of these sites recommended by a chronic blogger friend that I put on my radar for a week or so: two or three women claiming expertise on and writing about issues ranging from elections fraud, the Federal Reserve, First Amendment, whistleblowers, Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, Korea, the Scooter Libby trial, abortion, CIA covert operations, FBI operations, various legislations in the making in Congress … to Coca Cola, Madonna, poetry on the greatness of the recent AOL Queen, Blueberry Pie recipes … you name it. Again, not claiming personal opinion, but trying to sell it as ‘expert analyses’ and facts.

While I appreciate sites such as War is Business where readers are provided with solid facts/data/research on a very well determined, staked out and defined range of issues (Military Industrial Complex-Lobby-Congress), I have zero tolerance or respect for websites that compile and put out a hodgepodge of issues/cases/personalities.

Boiling Frogs Post has been operating within fairly well defined boundaries of interconnected issues, and I intend to keep it that way. We are not trying to be everything to everyone. I think our coverage truly reflects our motto: A site for the Irate Minority; quality over quantity.

I can go on with the list of things we are not- not partisan, not dependent on any agenda-setters disguised under foundations or various brands of NGOs, not controversy averse, …but I think you get the picture and have our archive of publications in the last 18 months as backup and proof. This week will wrap up our fundraising countdown. We are halfway there, but not there.  We need your support to continue. You determine whether this site is worthy of existence or not. Please donate what you can to keep this home of the irate minority alive, and thank you for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Founder & Publisher, Boiling Frogs Post

Please Donate Now

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/03/31/being-proud-of-what-we-are-not/feed/ 7 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/01/31/911-family-members-demand-answers-from-the-911-commission-the-censored-testimony-of-fbi%e2%80%99s-behrooz-sarshar/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/01/31/911-family-members-demand-answers-from-the-911-commission-the-censored-testimony-of-fbi%e2%80%99s-behrooz-sarshar/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:38:31 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=2928 The Witnessed & Documented “Kamikaze Pilots” Case

In a public statement issued today (see below), members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee demanded a prompt response from the former Chairman and Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission regarding Former FBI Language Specialist Behrooz Sarshar’s censored testimony to the Commission. The press release was prompted by recently released documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission published at Cryptome.org, in particular the “Memorandum for the Record” containing the Commission’s interview with Mr. Sarshar. The memorandum, after establishing Mr. Sarshar’s credibility and  vaguely referring to his documented and witnessed testimony regarding specific tip(s) provided to the FBI in April and June 2001 regarding planned imminent “Kamikaze Pilots” attacks targeting major cities in the United States, leaves out the entire testimony. This testimony was also entirely left out of the Commission’s final report released in July 2004.

For Immediate Release: January 31, 2011

Statement of September 11th Advocates Regarding FBI Translator Behrooz Sarshar’s Redacted Testimony To The 9/11 Commission

The 9/11 Commission’s mandate was to provide a “full and complete accounting” of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and recommend how to prevent such attacks in the future.

As family members who actively fought for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission and served on The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission (FSC), we find it appalling that once again we must question the thoroughness and credibility of the 9/11 Commission and its Final Report.

A pattern of ignoring whistleblowers persisted throughout the Commission’s tenure, even though Governor Kean, the Chairman, promised the FSC that no credible witnesses would be turned away. The list of whistleblowers that should have been interviewed by the 9/11 Commission included former and current intelligence agents, analysts, translators and others. It was only after repeated attempts by the FSC that former FBI translator, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, was finally interviewed by them. The “Memorandum for the Record” containing this interview was just released on January 1, 2011 (http://cryptome.org/nara/behrooz-sarshar.pdf).

According to previously published sources, in April 2001 Mr. Sarshar, in his position as FBI interpreter/translator, attended a meeting between a long-term, reliable FBI asset and two additional FBI agents from the Washington Field Office. That FBI asset told the two FBI agents that his sources in Afghanistan had information of an al-Qaeda plot to attack America in a suicide mission involving planes. It would appear that when Mr. Sarshar filed his reports within the Bureau, they were titled “Kamikaze Pilots”.

After leaving the FBI in 2002, Mr. Sarshar provided the same information to various Congressional offices and investigators, such as staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senator Patrick Leahy. The Justice Department’s Inspector General also interviewed him.

Thus, we were shocked to find that Mr. Sarshar’s relevant information was missing from the “System Was Blinking Red” section of the 2004 Final Report issued by the 9/11 Commission. Now, six and a half years past the publication of the Final Report, the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview has been released with all of its substance redacted. In light of the fact that the majority of his information does not meet the standard for classification, which is to protect “sources and methods”, it is unclear as to why that information was blocked. Covering up incompetence, or worse, malfeasance, is not a valid reason for classification. So, what happened to Mr. Sarshar’s warnings once he filed his reports? This is exactly the type of essential information the Commission should have used in order to write its final report and issue recommendations. How does the Commission justify omitting information from a credible source within one of our own intelligence agencies?

By their own admission, a large portion of the 9/11 story was based on the tortured, third party interrogations of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the alleged “Mastermind” of the 9/11 plot. Does this make any investigative sense? What criteria did the Commission use to determine whom they would interview and whom they would ignore? One must wonder how many others were similarly omitted. It also seems that the nation’s intelligence agency(ies) had information that included kamikaze pilots and planes being used as weapons. So how does the Commission reach its absurd conclusion that 9/11 was a “failure of imagination”?

Based on just these facts alone, one could surmise that the Commission was more intent on conforming to a predetermined storyline rather than a truthful compilation of the facts revealed through an objective, thorough and effective investigation, that left no stone unturned.

As the public has a right to know this information, we request that the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview be immediately declassified. Furthermore, we respectfully request that the former Chairman, Governor Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman, Mr. Lee Hamilton and the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Mr. Philip Zelikow, promptly answer the questions herein.

# # #

Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Behrooz Sarshar worked as a GS 12 language specialist with Top Secret Clearance at the FBI Washington Field Office. After leaving the FBI in 2002, he provided his testimony on “Kamikaze Pilots” to several Congressional offices and investigators, including staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee’s leading Democrat at the time, Senator Patrick Leahy, and the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office. The congressional sources familiar with Mr. Sarshar’s case and briefing found him and his report credible:

A former Grassley investigator says he found Sarshar credible, too. “We thought he was a pretty credible guy,” said former Senate Judiciary Committee investigator Kris Kolesnik.

In April and June of 2001 a long-term FBI informant told two FBI agents from the Washington field office that his sources in Afghanistan had provided him with information regarding a terrorist plot to attack the US in a suicide mission involving airplanes. Mr. Sarshar acted as an interpreter at both meetings after which the case agents filed a report (on 302 Forms) with their squad supervisor, Thomas Frields. Here is what Mr. Frields told the reporter when questioned about the case:

Frields, now retired from the bureau, says the case is too “sensitive” to discuss.”It involves very sensitive matters that took place while I was an on-duty agent, and I have absolutely nothing to say,” said Frields, reached at his Washington-area consulting office.

The 9/11 Commissioners had initially refused to interview Mr. Sarshar. He was one of several witnesses from the intelligence and law enforcement organizations with relevant testimonies and reports who were denied access to the commission (the ones that we know of). It was only after pressure from members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and memorandums from the congressional offices that the commission reluctantly agreed to interview Mr. Sarshar. However, his entire testimony was omitted from their final report. According to a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter even FBI Director Mueller appeared baffled by the Commission’s lack of inquiry into this particular case:

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who expected to be asked about the case during an appearance before the commission in April, was surprised when the commissioners never raised the question, according to aides.

I do not expect to see any satisfactory explanation from the commission in response to this public statement issued by the 9/11 family members. In this case they certainly cannot hide behind their usual lame secrecy or classification mantra. Mr. Sarshar provided several testimonies and briefings to official bodies where neither the facilities nor the officials were considered secure or in possession of clearance. I was present during at least four of those meeting where the briefings were recorded and transcribed. In two of these meetings several members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee were also present. In fact, during my short tenure with the Bureau, I was briefed about this case by not only Mr. Sarshar but other firsthand witnesses, and I saw the actual 302 forms filed with the unit’s squad supervisor (FBI language specialists get to keep a copy of their reports/forms). Further, I personally briefed the 9/11 commission investigators on the details of this particular case, which is confirmed by the commission’s memorandum:

Members of the Family Support Group requested that the Commission meet with Mr. Sarshar, Dan Marcus arranged for a meeting with Mr. Sarshar. The meeting became an interview and was recorded. Sibel Edmonds, another former FBI translator, provided information concerning Mr. Sarshar during her interview with Chris Healey and Lance Cole on February 11, 2004.

I believe not only the families of the September 11^th attacks but every American has the right to know about this case. They need to know that this significant report was completely censored by a quasi commission, that this is one of many cases that were omitted from this staged and rehearsed show to pacify the public’s need to know, and that there never was any real investigation into this horrific event used in reshaping not only our country, but the entire world. Based on my discussion with the family members who issued the following public statement, the commission will be given two business days to provide them (and the public) with answers to questions raised by this bold and appalling omission. If no response is forthcoming, on Wednesday, February 2, I will publish Mr. Sarshar’s verbatim testimony here at Boiling Frogs Post.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/01/31/911-family-members-demand-answers-from-the-911-commission-the-censored-testimony-of-fbi%e2%80%99s-behrooz-sarshar/feed/ 23 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/10/23/podcast-show-34/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/10/23/podcast-show-34/#comments Sat, 23 Oct 2010 20:53:35 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=2491 The Boiling Frogs Presents Tony Hall

Tony Hall provides us with an overview of his recently released book Earth into Property, and discusses the relationship between the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the making of global capitalism, beginning with Christopher Columbus’s inception of a New World Order in 1492. He tells us how the US corporate state moved to fill the vacuum of power after the dismantling of the formal empires of Europe after the Second World War, and how the US government is seeking to replicate its Cold War era role by mounting the Global War on Terror. Professor Hall talks about Obama the brand, the National Security Act, the anti-imperial current, and more.

Anthony J. Hall is a professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge. He is the author of The American Empire and the Fourth World, which introduces the series, The Bowl with One Spoon. “Earth Into Property: Colonization, Decolonization and Capitalism” is the second volume of the Bowl Project.

Here is our guest Tony Hall unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/10/23/podcast-show-34/feed/ 15 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/11/september-11-the-9th-year/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/11/september-11-the-9th-year/#comments Sun, 12 Sep 2010 00:04:12 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=2243 Condolences

My Deepest Condolences,

To the family members and friends of those ‘sacrificed’ here,

To those who have lost their loved ones as a ‘result;’ the civilian casualties of our illegal wars over ‘there,’

…and, to every American, to all of us, for the loss of our liberties and integrities.

With that,

Let us remember the true winners of this tragedy,

Those who succeeded in replacing the Cold War with one without a ‘risk’ to end,

The handful whose survival depends on an un-ending war(s),

The ones in search of true & absolute power(s),

…the real winners and profiteers of this dark day.

 

A Boiling Frogs Post

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/11/september-11-the-9th-year/feed/ 5 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/08/a-potpourri-of-noteworthy-links/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/08/a-potpourri-of-noteworthy-links/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:41:29 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=2209 Phony Commissioners & Phony Reports, Central Asia, Laos, Bryza Candidacy, Gulen…You Name it!

This post is similar to what I usually publish under my ‘Weekly Round Up’ series, only with a caveat: the time period covers more than a week, make that more than a month. I’ve been saving links and articles of interest, either those I’ve been coming across or ones sent by my loyal friends with good noses, and meaning to publish them as ‘weekly round ups.’ Then of course, due to ‘this or that,’ those ‘round up’ points ended up piling up week after week. Where did they get piled up? As ‘saved’ e-mails in my e-mail box and marked as ‘unread.’ Why that way? Because that’s one of my ‘supposed’ motivating strategies to prevent ‘delays & procrastination;’ seeing these piled up e-mails in my box every day, usually several times a day, bugs me big time…

Well, obviously, and for truly justifiable reason(s), that so-called strategy/method didn’t work, and I ended up with over one hundred e-mails of this particular category sitting in my mail box, glaring at me. Last night I decided I couldn’t take it any longer. After putting my daughter in bed for the evening, I sat behind my PC, scrolled down to the bottom of my e-mail box where the oldest e-mails sit, clicked and read. I eliminated (deleted) many due to the time-sensitive nature of those articles/analysis/editorials, and saved (technically ‘re-saved’) those timeless and or worthy-of-listing ones. And, at 10:30 p.m., began typing away!

I hope ‘some’ of you will find ‘some’ of this information worthy or useful; I did. Maybe we’ll get a chance to discuss these in the comments section… Oh, also, I am going to preempt a few finicky readers: I am mostly listing the links & the headlines/titles rather than adding my usual fairly long commentaries to each and every one of the links, because I don’t have the time; hope you understand. And finally, I am looking forward to tomorrow morning, when I’ll check my mail box and won’t see those glaring ‘months’ old e-mails;-) So here we go!

…………………………………………………………

Last year I did a piece on Vietnam & Agent Orange. The following is another awful footprint left by one of our many wars, reminding us once again of our established record as the number one nation in using WMD (and going for ‘preemptive wars’!)…Truly sad; truly sad.

New case for US reparations in Laos
Melody Kemp, Asia Times

Laos carries the tragic distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of modern warfare. Thirty-five years after the United States wound up its so-called “secret war” against communist guerillas, the impact of its unexploded ordnance (UXO) continues to take a heavy human and economic toll.

A new report published jointly by UXO Lao and the Lao National Regulatory Authority (NRA) has shed more light on the damage caused by the US’s UXOs. The research surveyed 94% of Lao households and concluded that an estimated 20,000 people had died from UXOs since the conflict ended after the communist takeover in 1975.

…

COPE’s research shows that the US government, corporations and private foundations have given over $39.5 million for UXO clean-up since 1993 – a trifling sum compared with the billions it has allocated for its new generation of wars. A US Senate committee recently recommended committing $7 million for UXO clearance in Laos in 2011 and $3.5 for similar activities in Vietnam. The US Congress allocated about $5 million and the US State Department $1.9 million for UXO clearance in Laos this year.

The US war in Laos was shrouded in intrigue and disinformation. An Australian-made film entitled Bomb Harvest contains footage of a US government spokesperson saying that internationally accepted rules of engagement were suspended during the campaign in Laos. Legally, that means there are still unresolved questions over who should bear primary responsibility, the US government
or the private companies who produced the weapons, for UXO victims and other legacies of the war in Laos.

As warfare is increasingly outsourced to private companies, questions are emerging about the legal liability of private companies that supply and profit from war. From a common law perspective, US negligence and injury in Laos are easy to prove, say international lawyers. However, the tenets of war reparations have been generally designed so that the vanquished are economically punished for both their aggression and loss

…

Laos, which had an estimated one ton of ordnance per capita rained on it by US bombers, has more recently emerged as a global icon for the movement against cluster bombs. It is estimated by the US State Department’s Walk the Earth With Safety bureau that about 30% of those bombs did not explode on contact with the ground. Canisters dropped from US B-52s could have carried up to 600 cluster bomb units and distributed them over a wide terrain on impact.

A new research report entitled National Survey of UXO Victims and Accidents reveals that, apart from cluster munitions, land mines, artillery shells and other US ordnance also continue to cause significant casualties decades after the end of the war. Indeed, many areas of the country where injuries have recently occurred were not adjacent to known combat zones.

During the conflict, the largest numbers of bombing-related fatalities came among soldiers. Nowadays, it’s farmers, fisherfolk, foresters and women and children foraging for food in UXO-contaminated areas. That is, those being killed now by what is known to be US ordnance are civilians merely trying to make a living. Many of those killed and injured, such as the five children killed in southern Champassak province in February this year, were not even alive during the war.

…

Military adventurism for less ideological reasons, including access to and control over natural resources, has changed the face of modern warfare. However, some wonder whether reformed reparation laws that forced state aggressors and the private companies that supply them with weaponry to pay for all injuries and assistance to non-combatants would reduce the risk of future armed conflicts.

Vietnam tried for years to win US compensation for its victims of US chemical warfare, including the US’s use of the defoliant Agent Orange, but ultimately failed to secure a US court decision in its favor. Laos has not collected comprehensive data on the effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on its southern territories, but the recent $300 million deal Vietnamese stakeholders reached with the US panel could change that.

Meanwhile, signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions are scheduled to meet in Vientiane in early November. The US is notably not a signatory to the munitions-curbing treaty, but 107 other nations are, 40 of which have formally ratified the agreement. The convention took effect on August 1, 2010, and the meeting in Laos will be the first since its enactment.

…

I encourage you to read the rest here. And below are two clips I filmed while in Vietnam: First, Victims of Agent Orange, and the second, an interview I conducted (with Le Ly Heyslip) while in Vietnam on Agent Orange:

 

 

The Latest ‘Pitch & Tone’ on Central Asia

The following links are on one of the most important topics unknown to and or ignored by the majority here in the States: Central Asia & the Caucasus. I picked the following three since they reflect the latest ‘trend’ and the ‘advertised tone’ by the Obama-Hillary Clinton Administration. The first analysis/report was published by the Council on Foreign Relations, so it’s independence and purity should be pretty self explanatory. The following two pieces by the same author, published by Asia Times, are a bit hard to judge; as far as intentions & interests are concerned… Okay, take a look at them and you’ll see what I mean.

Reimagining Eurasia
Samuel Charap and Alexandros Petersen,  Foreign Affairs

As Kyrgyzstan descended into chaos after President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in April 2010, most observers were focused on the fate of the key U.S. airbase there. They feared that Moscow had orchestrated the unrest as revenge for Bakiyev reneging on his alleged promise to shut down the base and would now demand that the new government follow through on that pledge. But instead of indulging in geopolitical gamesmanship as usual, Russia and the United States actually worked together, pursuing back-channel talks that facilitated Bakiyev’s safe escape into exile. Periodic consultations since April have thus far managed to prevent conflict between the Cold War adversaries in the one country where both have military outposts. This marked a tectonic shift in the geopolitics of Eurasia. For the first time in over a decade, what Russia calls its “near abroad” was a locus of cooperation, not confrontation, between Russia and the United States.

…

This shift has opened a window of opportunity to fundamentally rethink U.S. foreign policy in Eurasia — a term used here to refer to the countries of the greater Black Sea region and Central Asia — a strategically situated area with massive natural resource wealth and great economic potential. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has formulated its approach to countries as diverse as Azerbaijan and Ukraine through a Russia-centric lens; U.S. policy toward the region as a whole became a function of its plans for dealing with Moscow. Although Washington focused on ensuring Eurasian states’ independence in the 1990s, the past decade saw U.S. policy toward these countries devolve, becoming mired in outright U.S-Russia strategic competition. Although that competitive dynamic has diminished significantly over the past year and a half, its legacy still defines Washington’s engagement with the states of the region.U.S. policymakers must abandon the tired Russia-centric tack and develop new individualized approaches to the states of the greater Black Sea region and Central Asia. By treating each country based on its merits, as opposed to approaching the region as a set of contested territories, Washington can serve long-term U.S. interests and avoid re-creating a nineteenth-century-style Great Game.

…

You can read the rest here

Russia and US march in post-Soviet step
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times

An unprecedented military parade in Red Square in Moscow on Sunday, when servicemen from the major North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries will march alongside Russian soldiers, will be a commemorative event marking the 65th anniversary of Victory Day in World War II. Arguably, it is not a parade of NATO troops but rather of Russia’s erstwhile allies in the coalition against Adolf Hitler.

…

You can read the rest of this fairly brief, and equally light-weight on the analysis-front, piece here.  I think Bhadrakumar misses on several extremely important points, what I call ‘reality check,’ but what do you think?

…

Here is another piece by the same author, Bhadrakumar. This one is a bit better, relatively speaking, that is

A Kosovo on the Central Asian steppes
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times

A robust geopolitical thrust by the United States aimed at creating a role for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in resolving conflicts in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan promises to rewrite the great game rivalries in Central Asia in anticipation of an Afghan settlement. The US initiative poses political challenges to Russia, which is a member of the 56-member OSCE, and China, which is not. The security vehicles piloted by each the respective two regional powers – the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – are being outmaneuvered by the US.

…

Paradoxically, Russia and China could seize the initiative if the OSCE plan to stabilize the situation in Kyrgyzstan somehow crash-lands and ethnic tensions, violence and anarchy ensue. But that would be a dubious blessing as Russia and China too are stakeholders in regional stability in their own ways.

‘B team’ for the Afghan war
The unkindest cut of all is that it is Kazakhstan, which both Moscow and Beijing counted to be their most sober and thoughtful regional partner, which is heading the OSCE chariot. As Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev firmly asserted, “There is no doubt a new OSCE strategy on Afghanistan is necessary.”

The US is delighted, and as a quid pro quo, Washington has accommodated the Kazakh leaderships’ desire to chair an OSCE summit meeting within the year in Astana and thereby claim a legacy on the world stage. The last time the OSCE held a summit meeting was in 1999. This is also the 35th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act..

…

Again, I don’t consider the piece heavy-weight by any means, and in fact that’s exactly why I am listing it here…It may open up a few of our readers whom I know to be very savvy in this area;-) Now, the following piece seems to have somel dose of realism:

Bad Blood in Baku
Thomas Goltz, FP

If I were still a journalist, I would have had juicy scoop last Saturday when I learned of the imminent but still unannounced arrival in Azerbaijan of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Gates had been tasked with hitting the reset button — there are a lot of those in the former Soviet Union these days — on Washington’s increasingly problematic relationship with Baku.

I learned of the emergency visit when an old friend of mine called to say he knew I was in the Azerbaijani capital, and that his former boss, a U.S. intelligence officer, wanted to buy me a few beers and chat about my nearly 20-year hobby of reading tea leaves and goat entrails in the Land of Az.

“The American chargé d’affaires told me not to talk to you, but he is State Department and I am not,” the official said — I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but closely — putting initial pleasantries out of the way. “I am here to set up the Gates visit tomorrow. We finally decided to give the Azerbaijanis something before this thing deteriorates any further.” Then he sort of smirked while saying the following: “We frankly don’t care about human rights or democracy-building, or Israel and Turkey, or peace in Karabakh or Georgia, or even Azerbaijani energy. There is only one thing we really care about right now, and that is Afghanistan.”

I was not surprised, but had to ask: “Afghanistan,” he said, and then repeated the word

Azerbaijan’s role in that war is fairly well known: The country has donated a symbolic company of 90 soldiers (which has suffered no casualties to date) and shared intelligence with the United States. But Azerbaijan’s main contribution to the U.S.-led war effort has been geographic: The country’s location in the Caucasus is a gateway between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, and Baku has provided a vital transportation alternative by opening its air, rail, and seaport space to NATO.

There has been no murmur of a threat to close or restrict the Azerbaijan corridor, but even the remote possibility that the Azerbaijanis would do so has apparently worried Pentagon contingency planners — enough so that a decision was made to show Baku some respect, in the form of a personal letter from President Barack Obama to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Delivering the missive was the purpose of Gates’s visit, and news of the surprise stop-off was regarded as important enough that the usual Associated Press and Reuters stories about the visit and the letter were soon splashed across the front pages of most international and virtually all American newspapers — even small ones, such as my local rag in Bozeman, Montana.

…

All right, let’s not violate the ‘quote’ limits, at least not too much; here is the link.
 
…………………………………………………………………
 
The Fear Mongering & Opportunist 9/11 Commissioner, Phony Reports & More

Here is another from last May. I was away, travelling, so I don’t know if this piece of nothing coming from a less-than-nothing weasel was ever publicized by the media that is good at publishing nothing noteworthy or truth-worthy… 

Former Gov. Tom Kean says U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attacks since 9/11

The United States is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than any time since the 2001 assault on the World Trade Center, according to the chairman of the 9/11 commission.”This is the most dangerous time I’ve seen since 9/11,” former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean said. “Al Qaeda is constantly learning our weaknesses, and the U.S. intelligence community is dysfunctional.

…

Both Friedberg, who was deputy national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Kean also agreed the new face of terrorism is increasingly “home-grown.” Faisal Shahzad, for example, is a naturalized citizen allegedly responsible for last month’s abortive attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.”Thank God no one was hurt, but terrorists have learned that they don’t have to be successful to disrupt our lives and our economy,” Kean said. “So now they’re looking to recruit home-grown (American) operatives who can move around at will under the radar of our intelligence community.”

…

Who really cares about what this omission-er guy says? Is there anyone left out there who doesn’t recognize this guy as a phony little fear-mongering joker badly in need of some publicity? Please tell me he was totally ignored by our phony-loving MSM on this particular case! Did they put his face on MSNBC/CBS for this? Again, I was gone, and (maybe blissfully!) missed the coverage (or lack of) of stooges like Kane/Hamilton…

…

Speaking of commissioners, ‘ommosioners,’ and laughable reports, here is a good one:

Bhutto probe: More than enough blame
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times

Pakistan has suspended eight police officials following the release of a United Nations report into the assassination of former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, but no action has been taken against any members of the military or intelligence agencies, even though the report implicates the military in the events surrounding Bhutto’s death on December 27, 2007.

…
Bhutto’s assassination after leaving a campaign rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi two weeks before general elections has been the subject of intense controversy, and while the report does not give any definitive answers it is most likely to intensify divisions between the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the military establishment, both of which are tainted by the report.
Current officials, the report says, were less than helpful. “The investigation was severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other government officials, which impeded the search for the truth,” Heraldo Munoz, chair of the Bhutto Commission of Inquiry and permanent representative of Chile to the UN, said. “These officials, in part fearing intelligence agencies’ involvement, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken,” he said.

The commission’s report, based on interviews with 250 people in and outside Pakistan as well as other evidence, says the official investigation focused on “low-level operatives and placed little or no focus on investigating those further up the hierarchy in the planning, financing and execution of the assassination”.

…

Read the rest here. Doesn’t it sound like our very own investigations here?! You know, BCCI, Iran Contra, 9/11 …Please bring in your own reasoned theories, speculations, interpretation, or just plain good ole comments…

…

You’d think this latest on Dr. Kelly’s highly suspicious ‘suicide’ would make it to the front pages, and stay there. Well, not surprisingly it is not the case…I wonder what kind of a ‘commission & commissioners’ will be ‘set up’ by the Brits to handle this latest…of course, with another phony report attached at the end of it…

British Medical Experts Seek Full Inquest on Iraq Inspector Kelly’s Death
Thomas Penny & Chris Peterson, Bloomberg

A group of U.K. doctors and lawyers called for a full inquest into the death of David Kelly, the government scientist who was the source of a story saying the official dossier justifying the Iraq war had been “sexed up.”

Kelly, a former weapons inspector working for the defense ministry, was found dead in a wood near his home in southern England in 2003 after he was revealed as the origin of a BBC report about the way information about Iraqi arms had been used to make the case for the U.S.-led invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

The group, including two former coroners and an intensive care specialist, said in a letter published by the Times of London newspaper today that, based on the evidence currently in the public domain, it was “extremely unlikely” that Kelly had bled to death after slitting his wrist.

…

The letter-writers, who include former coroners Michael Powers and Margaret Bloom, as well as Julian Bion, a professor of intensive-care treatment, said it was “extremely unlikely from a medical perspective” that Kelly’s severed ulnar artery would have bled enough to be the primary cause of death.

…

I think this is a good place for the next link dealing with another repeating joke: The State Department’s ever-alteration of terror list!
State Department to Leave Chechen Rebel Group off Terror List
Josh Rogin, The Cable

The State Department’s update of its annual list of official terrorist groups is imminent, but the group that just attacked Moscow won’t be on the list.

The Caucasus Emirate, which has been waging a jihad against the Russian government, is led by Doku Umarov, who calls himself the “emir of the North Caucasus.” He was previously President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, but dissolved that Republic and established the Emirate in its place in 2007 in order to impose sharia law in his territory.

Umarov declared all the way back in 2007 that his group was expanding its struggle to wage war against the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. Last month, he released a video claiming credit for the suicide attacks in Moscow in March that resulted in the deaths of 39 people.

But apparently, the State Department chose not to include Caucasus Emirate in the newest update to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, according to Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-FL, who is calling on the State Department to add the group for the sake of national security and U.S. -Russia relations.

…

Foreign Lobbies & Serving Elected Officials: Jane Schmidt Story

We’ve been talking about the speedy transitions of former elected officials from public office to foreign lobby firms as foreign agents… Well, this particular ‘representative’ is in a real hurry! She ain’t waiting! Why would she? Who’s watching? Who is reporting? With no worries she’s been doing lap dances for the foreign lobby, and yes, she’s been getting paid…

Who’s paying Schmidt lawyers?
Malia Rulon, Enquirer

Rep. Jean Schmidt isn’t Turkish, and there aren’t many Turks in her southern Ohio district, but the Miami Township Republican is deeply invested in a legal battle stemming from the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide. And that battle could land her in a heap of trouble. At issue is whether Schmidt accepted what foes estimate to be at least $200,000 worth of free representation from a Turkish legal group so she could file two cases against former opponent David Krikorian, who is of Armenian descent.

Schmidt spokesman Bruce Pfaff told The Enquirer that the Schmidt campaign hired the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund to represent her in both cases against Krikorian. Pfaff said she is in the process of setting up a legal expense fund to pay the organization’s fees.

Krikorian, who ran unsuccessfully as an independent in 2008 and as a Democrat in this year’s primary, has filed a complaint over this issue with the Office of Congressional Ethics, which forwards complaints of merit to the official House ethics committee for further action. Investigations aren’t typically made public unless a sanction is made. Krikorian’s complaint is dated July 13.

He alleges that Schmidt, or her campaign, accepted free legal services from TALDF, which would be a violation of campaign finance laws or House gift rules, or both. If it turns out she violated campaign finance laws or House rules, she could face a fine, a reprimand, or much more – such as an ethics investigation.

Haven’t gotten the bill yet

Since her first case filed with the Ohio Elections Commission in May 2009, Schmidt’s campaign finance reports have not indicated any payment or debt for legal services, or any in-kind gifts from TALDF for the work. A separate lawsuit was filed against Krikorian this past June. Again, no payments were listed in her latest campaign finance report, which covers activity until June 30.
Schmidt spokesman Pfaff said that’s because the cases are still going on. He turned down a request to speak to the congresswoman directly.

“I don’t believe that there has been a bill for their services to this point,” he said, adding that the lawyers are waiting for the legal expense fund to be set up before submitting a bill. But statements made under oath in August 2009 by Bruce Fein, who handles cases for TALDF and is representing Schmidt, and former Schmidt chief of staff Barry Bennett seem to contradict this. They suggest the TALDF would pay the legal bills for Schmidt’s case. When asked whether TALDF had charged the Schmidt campaign any money for representation, Fein said: “The answer is no. We stated that we would do this and we would not charge them legal fees.”

Krikorian’s lawyer asked Bennett, “And there’s no ethics issue associated with Turkish American Legal Defense Funds paying for Ms. Schmidt’s legal fees?” Bennett replied: “No, not that I’m aware of.” These statements were made in depositions taken for the Ohio Elections Commission case. They were submitted to the Office of Congressional Ethics as part of Krikorian’s request for a formal investigation.

…

In May 2009, right after filing the Ohio Elections Commission complaint against Krikorian, she traveled to Turkey, courtesy of the Turkish Coalition of America. The following month, an editorial she wrote was published in Today’s Zaman, a Turkish newspaper.
In Congress, she has praised the founding of Turkey on the House floor, opposed legislation recognizing the Armenian genocide, and joined the Caucus on U.S.-Turkish Relations. She has also marched as grand marshal in a Turkish Day Parade, lunched with a group of Turks at Cafe Istanbul in Newport, and raised thousands in campaign contributions from Turkish Americans.
According to the last census, there are just 3,159 Turks in Ohio, including 297 in the 2nd Congressional District.

…

And here is an update on our Bryza story:

Controversy Continues Over Obama’s Pick for Ambassador to Azerbaijan
Richard Solash, RFERL.Org

At a July 22 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bryza said the criticism was to be expected given the high tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “Being criticized or being thought of as being closer to one side or the other is part of the game,” he said.
But at the request of Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California), who represents the largest Armenian-American constituency in the country, the committee’s vote on Bryza’s nomination was put on hold. Boxer and her legislative colleagues are far away from Washington at the moment, so they’re unlikely to have picked up a copy of the August 23 “Washington Examiner,” a conservative-leaning D.C. daily.

In a guest opinion-page column that day, former Republican Senator Conrad Burns came to Bryza’s defense. Burns wrote: “It appears this opposition [to Bryza's nomination] is based upon senators responding to special interest groups whose sole purpose is to oppose all things related to Azerbaijan.” The apparent reference was to efforts by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), an influential Armenian lobbying group, to stop Bryza’s confirmation.
…

And here is the juicy part:

After the column was published, the ANCA contacted the newspaper to point out a detail in Burns’ background that wasn’t mentioned in the piece: the senator himself can be linked, albeit in a roundabout way, to the family of President Aliyev.
The former senator is a senior adviser to the Gage Company, a Washington-based lobbying firm. The CEO of Gage is Leo Giacometto, a former political aide to Burns. In addition to being CEO of Gage, Giacometto sits on the board of a company called Silk Way Holding.

As revealed in an investigative report by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service earlier this month, Silk Way Holding — which owns more than a dozen aviation industry companies in Azerbaijan — is partially owned by Arzu Aliyeva, the 21-year-old daughter of President Aliyev.

“It came, sadly, as no surprise at all that the people defending Bryza are exactly the people who are close to the Aliyev regime,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee, who added that he used the information uncovered by RFE/RL to connect the dots.
But it was apparently a surprise to the editorial-page editor of “The Washington Examiner,” who published Burns’ piece.

Two days after the piece appeared, Mark Tapscott wrote a special column that said, “Burns’ relationship to a special interest that may benefit by the Bryza appointment should have been revealed by Burns’ spokesman when the [editorial] was first proposed. When ‘The Examiner’ pointed this out to the spokesman after becoming aware of it, Gage Vice President Ryan Thomas offered no explanation or apology.”

…

You can read the rest here

Speaking of Turkey, Fethullah Gulen is Back in the News

Objectives of charter schools with Turkish ties questioned
Greg Toppo, USA Today

They have generic, forward-sounding names like Horizon Science Academy, Pioneer Charter School of Science and Beehive Science & Technology Academy. Quietly established over the past decade by a loosely affiliated group of Turkish-American educators, these 100 or so publicly funded charter schools in 25 states are often among the top-performing public schools in their towns.

The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they’d make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade. But the success of the schools at times has been clouded by nagging questions about what ties the schools may have to a reclusive Muslim leader in his late 60s living in exile in rural Pennsylvania.

Described by turns as a moderate Turkish nationalist, a peacemaker and “contemporary Islam’s Billy Graham,” Fethullah Gülen has long pushed for Islam to occupy a more central role in Turkish society. Followers of the so-called Gülen Movement operate an “education, media and business network” in more than 100 countries, says University of Oregon sociologist Joshua Hendrick.

Top administrators say they have no official ties to Gülen. And Gülen himself denies any connection to the schools. Still, documents available at various foundation websites and in federal forms required of non-profit groups show that virtually all of the schools have opened or operate with the aid of Gülen-inspired “dialogue” groups, local non-profits that promote Turkish culture. In one case, the Ohio-based Horizon Science Academy of Springfield in 2005 signed a five-year building lease with the parent organization of Chicago’s Niagara Foundation, which promotes Gülen’s philosophy of “peace, mutual respect, the culture of coexistence.” Gülen is the foundation’s honorary president. In many cases, charter school board members also serve as dialogue group leaders.

…

Utah’s State Charter School Board launched an investigation last year after American teachers complained that Turkish colleagues got hiring and promotion preferences. The charter school board looked into Beehive’s ties to Islam and found them “circumstantial,” but a financial probe found that the school was $337,000 in the red — and that Accord officials had loaned it thousands. The board last April revoked its charter, but in June voted to keep the school open on probation.

Dunnigan, the state lawmaker who requested the legislative audit, says the financial details, such as personal loans and public funds spent recruiting overseas faculty, are what concern him. “When they’re in such financial difficulty, should they spend $53,000 to bring these people over from another country?”

…

Those of you who’ve been following our Gulen discussion will find this very interesting. Read the rest here

……………………………………………….

Israel’s Success Recipe: Covert Operations to Pocket the US Media & Publication Industries

Here is a very important release with an attached report on Israel’s covert operations targeting the US media. Many thanks to Metem (as always;-) for bringing it to my attention:

Declassified Senate Investigation Files Reveal Clandestine Israeli PR Campaign in America
PRNewswire-USNewswire

Declassified files from a Senate investigation into Israeli-funded covert public relations and lobbying activity in the United States were released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on July 23rd, 2010. The subpoenaed documents reveal Israel’s clandestine programs for “cultivation of editors,” the “stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines” as well as U.S. reporting about sensitive subjects such as the Dimona nuclear weapons facility.

Documents are now available for download from http://IRmep.org/ila/azc include:

Dimona (excerpt): “The nuclear reactor story inspired comment from many sources; editorial writers, columnists, science writers and cartoonists. Most of the press seemed finally to accept the thesis that the reactor was being built for peaceful purposes and not for bombs.” http://www.irmep.org/11-121960AZC.pdf

Content placement and promotion (excerpt): “The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories… Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who’s Who in America…Our Committee is now planning articles for the women’s magazines for the trade and business publications.” http://www.irmep.org/09101961AZC.pdf

Pressure campaigns (excerpt): “It can be said that the press of the nation…has by and large shown sympathy and understanding of Israel’s position. There are, of course, exceptions, notably the Scripps-Howard chain where we still need to achieve a ‘break-through,’ the Pulliam chain (where some progress has been made) and some locally-owned papers.” http://www.irmep.org/11-121960AZC.pdf

Magazine Committee achievements (excerpt): “We cannot pinpoint all that has already been accomplished by this Committee except to say that it has been responsible for the writing and placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines….” http://www.IRmep.org/10301962_AZC.pdf

According to Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, “It is frightening how easily some in the American news media surrendered to a foreign public relations campaign that spent the 2010 equivalent of $36 million over two years. Time has proven most of the planted content to be misleading, if not dangerous. These historical documents hold many important lessons for Americans who have long needed—but rarely received—straight reporting on key Middle East issues.”

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation’s record keeper. It retains 1%-3% of the most important documents of business conducted by the United States Federal government. The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington.

…

I agree with Metem ‘And this is especially timely given the recent purchase of Newsweek by Jane Harman’s husband.’ Let’s repeat the golden quote in this release by Grant Smith:

“It is frightening how easily some in the American news media surrendered to a foreign public relations campaign that spent the 2010 equivalent of $36 million over two years. Time has proven most of the planted content to be misleading, if not dangerous. These historical documents hold many important lessons for Americans who have long needed—but rarely received—straight reporting on key Middle East issues.”

………………………………………………………..

And finally, here is an interesting observation on the latest Wikileaks story sent to me by Linda (Linda, thank you for all your e-mails with great links). As you may already know I have refrained from making comments on this case, but I think this particular article is harmless enough to take a chance on…:

Wikileaks: that sinking feeling
Mark Pesce, ABC

Reading a recent lengthy and detailed Sydney Morning Herald article
detailing the latest charges against Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange, I can only nod my head knowingly. This was always going to be the way things worked out. From the time last year when we all became aware of Assange, I felt a twinge of fear, an inner voice saying Something isn’t right here. It took me a few weeks to articulate that feeling into a real, grounded rationale for my dread.

Long ago, before I moved to Australia, before I’d done any of the work that I’m known for within the technology community, I had some peripheral contact with the ‘hacker’ world (In this usage, ‘hacker’ means folks who break into computers, not the folks who stay up all night programming them in weird and wonderful ways).

One of the things I learned very early on was a simple rule of thumb to separate the accomplished from the n00bs and fools: only a n00b would brag about their exploits. Only a n00b would tell others that he’d broken the law. Those who do crimes keep silent about their darker doings. Those who wannabe, they’re loud about it.

When Assange suddenly became the public face for the increasingly fascinating Wikileaks, it confused me on several levels.

…

You can find the rest here

 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/09/08/a-potpourri-of-noteworthy-links/feed/ 6 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/31/podcast-show-22/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/31/podcast-show-22/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:51:39 +0000 admin http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=1621 The Boiling Frogs Presents Coleen Rowley

Coleen Rowley shares with us her views on the latest spectacle surrounding the Christmas Day foiled terrorist attempt, and how it reflects on policies that were implemented after 9/11. She provides us with insight into the pretend investigations carried out by the 9/11 Commission, and how they conducted many of their interviews of FBI witnesses and experts inside the FBI HQ and offices. Ms. Rowley talks about the absence of real investigations and accountability in almost any government related wrong doing and issues, our shameful treatment of inmates in Guantanamo detention center, the alarming desensitization of our people bolstered by the culprit mainstream media, and much more.

Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

Here is our guest Coleen Rowley unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/31/podcast-show-22/feed/ 17 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/25/armitage-part-iii-a-neocon-for-all-seasons/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/25/armitage-part-iii-a-neocon-for-all-seasons/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:28:40 +0000 Mizgin_Yilmaz http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=1541 Our first post on the American Turkish Council’s new chairman, Richard Armitage, focused on his early years and his involvement with Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle. Our second post focused on Armitage’s history in Washington and his involvement with the Iran-Contra Affair. This post will focus on Armitage’s role as the Deputy Secretary of State for the second Bush administration and the 11 September attacks.

In 1999 Richard Armitage joined an “advisory team” put together by Condoleezza Rice for the George W. Bush presidential campaign. Other members of this “advisory team” included Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, and Donald Rumsfeld all of whom, along with Armitage, were signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton that advocated regime change in Iraq through the bogus “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument. It should have been no surprise, therefore, to see where these “advisors” were to lead as soon as they were appointed to key positions in the Bush administration in early 2001.

Armitage was appointed as the number 2 man at the State Department but not without protest from a certain former Republican congressman:

“General Colin Powell has named Richard Armitage to the key position as his deputy secretary of state.

“Mr. Armitage served in the Pentagon back in the 1980s and, in the process, caused so many problems that by 1989 he twice had to withdraw his name from consideration for high-ranking positions in the first Bush administration.

“Simply stated, the U.S. Senate would not confirm him for any job.

“The FBI agent in charge of compiling the ‘file’ on Armitage said at the time, ‘The Armitage file is the thickest file ever for any nominee for any position.’”

“Now, 12 years later, the new Bush administration is again trying to ram Armitage through the confirmation process. Powell wants him because ‘Rich Armitage is my best friend in the world.’”

Both Armitage and Powell had served in Vietnam and it’s worth remembering that prior to his performance at the UN National Security Council in early 2003, Colin Powell was best known for helping to cover up the My Lai Massacre.

Armitage was confirmed by the Senate as the Deputy Secretary of State in late March, 2001, in plenty of time to implement the plan for regime change in Iraq that he had supported in 1998 and which PNAC had argued for in September, 2000:

“Further, the process of [US military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The “new Pearl Harbor” that was so desired by Armitage and the rest of the PNAC crowd occured on 11 September, 2001. Immediately after 11 September, Armitage threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”:

“During last week’s US media blitz to promote his new book, Musharraf claimed soon after 9/11, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the US would ‘bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age’ if it did not immediately turn against its Afghan ally, Taliban, and allow the US to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan.

[ . . . ]

“I’ve heard various versions of Armitage’s exact words. But I know whatever he said put the fear of god into Pakistan’s military leadership.

“ISI sources say the Bush Administration threatened to bomb faithful old ally Pakistan, cut off its oil, collapse its banking system, and call in its loans. More frightening, Washington also threatened to ‘unleash’ India against Pakistan, either allowing India to conquer the Pakistani-held portion of disputed Kashmir, or give Delhi a green light to invade all of Pakistan, possibly with American assistance.”

Such language by Armitage would be consistent with other ultimatums issued by the US government, such as this gem by a Bush administration State Department negotiator to the Taliban in August, 2001, more than a month before the “new Pearl Harbor”:

“At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: ‘Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold [for 'secure access to the Caspian Basin for American companies'], or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.’ With the futility of negotiations apparent, “President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October.”

“This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.”

Almost a year later, Armitage was sent by the Bush administration to deliver, perhaps, the same message to the Pakistanis:

“Bush has stopped short of publicly admonishing Pakistan, Washington’s key ally in the war on terror, but he’s dispatching burly Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad next week, and his mission will be to deliver a heavy, private bruising. ‘If anyone can threaten to crack Musharraf in half, it’s Armitage,’ says one State Department source.”

“Bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”? “Crack Musharraf in half”? It should be no surprise that Armitage was tasked with delivering these messages. He was sent by the Reagan administration to deliver a similar message to Manuel Noriega a year before the US invasion of Panama:

“The Reagan Administration sent a high-ranking Pentagon official on a secret mission to Panama last week to press its strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, to step down and allow free elections in the country, State Department and congressional sources said Thursday.

“The emissary, Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, held what one U.S. official called ‘a lengthy session’ with Noriega early last week to urge him to withdraw from politics.

“Armitage was picked to deliver the Administration’s strongest direct message to date to Noriega because the Panamanian strongman is a ‘military man’ and Washington wanted “the most effective interlocutor possible,” the official said.”

Having arrived in the US a week before 11 September “on a regular visit of consultations”, the ISI’s General Mahmoud Ahmed met with State Department officials, including Armitage, on 12 and 13 September:

“The press reports confirm that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad had two meetings with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, respectively on the 12th and 13th. After September 11, he also met Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.

“Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had ‘a regular visit of consultations’ with US officials during the week prior to September 11, –i.e. meetings with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon.

“What was the nature of these routine ‘consultations’? Were they in any way related to the subsequent ‘post-September 11 consultations’ pertaining to Pakistan’s decision to cooperate with Washington, held behind closed doors at the State Department on September 12 and 13? Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?”

The article continues:

“The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13 between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even involved in these crucial negotiations:

“‘Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over [to ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take’. ‘After a telephone conversation between [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate.’ President George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that the Pakistan government had accepted “to cooperate and to participate as we hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on America’.

[ . . . ]

“Armitage was one of the main architects behind US covert support to the Mujahedin and the ‘militant Islamic base’, both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well as in its aftermath. US covert support was financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade.”

We know that Armitage was no stranger to the Golden Crescent drug trade.

General Mahmoud Ahmed met with someone else in those days immediately following 11 September, and that “someone else” worked directly under Richard Armitage. That “someone else” was none other than Marc Grossman:

“ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood’s week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. [ . . . ] But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. US sources would not furnish any details beyond saying that the two discussed ‘matters of mutual interests.’”

Or, as Sibel Edmonds stated back in 2005:

“Although Grossman ‘has not been as high profile in the press’ FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, ‘don’t overlook him – he is very important.’”

Chris Deliso elaborates further:

“Marc Grossman has served in a number of interesting countries and positions over the past 29 years. From 1976-1983, at a pivotal point in the Cold War, he was employed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan – America’s key regional ally, through which millions of dollars in weapons and other “aid” were delivered by Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service to the mujahedin following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

[ . . . ]

“Grossman’s professional ties with Pakistan apparently long outlived his nine-year tenure there. The Guardian, among others, mentioned the fact that in the days immediately preceding Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistani ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed – financier of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta – paid a visit to senior administration officials, including Grossman, then undersecretary of state for political affairs.”

As The Times reported in January, 2008 (although not mentioning Grossman by name), Grossman was so deeply involved in the sale of nuclear secrets to Pakistan that he was under FBI surveillance. Since Grossman was directly responsible to Armitage, what did Armitage know about Grossman’s dirty dealings?

That question does not stretch the imagination because Armitage became involved in another event that Grossman was also involved with–Plamegate and the exposure of CIA front company Brewster Jennings, and those events will be included in our next post.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/25/armitage-part-iii-a-neocon-for-all-seasons/feed/ 7 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/11/21/september-11th-family-members-advocates-endorse-boiling-frogs-post/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/11/21/september-11th-family-members-advocates-endorse-boiling-frogs-post/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:25:15 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=853 ‘A Place Where investigating & understanding the truth is the only thing that matters’

Americans and citizens from all over the world are slowly awakening to find that things just might not be as they seem.

Sibel Edmonds has launched BOILING FROGS POST, a website that allows you to explore what you won’t get from the mainstream media. It is a place where investigating and understanding the truth is the only thing that matters; not the political consequences or how daunting the challenges may be to make things right again.

After 9/11 Sibel began working for the FBI as a translator. When she saw the crimes and incompetency at The Bureau, she became a Whistleblower, risking her career, as she attempted to reveal the disturbing things she found there. Thus, we are certain that you can count on Sibel to select investigative material based on truth, as well as that which will keep you best informed.

We hope that you will join us in putting BOILING FROGS POST at the top of your daily must reads for news and insight. Let’s rally reader and financial support for Sibel’s efforts to educate all of us, as to when, how and why bad things happen at the crossroads of U.S. government and foreign policy.

After all, it is only as informed citizenry that we can, as we have in the past, properly mobilize our efforts and focus our energies, in order to make things right again, for humanity’s sake.

Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken,
Patty Casazza & Monica Gabrielle

PLEASE DONATE NOW

This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

• Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
• Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
• Present independent editorials and analyses
• Showcase original editorial cartoons
• Facilitate lively discussions
• Maintain & Manage this Website

We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.

PLEASE DONATE NOW

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/11/21/september-11th-family-members-advocates-endorse-boiling-frogs-post/feed/ 20 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/09/10/podcast-show-6/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/09/10/podcast-show-6/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:22:00 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/09/10/podcast-show-6/
The Boiling Frogs Presents Peter Lance

Peter Lance discusses his latest book Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI. He talks about how U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald tried to kill the new trade paperback version of his bestselling 9/11 expose, the importance of Ali Mohamed and the 9/11 Commission’s omission of the crucial facts involved, the US media’s deafening silence, the need for a real investigation into 9/11, and of course more.

Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and former correspondent for ABC News. He has covered hundreds of stories worldwide for 20/20, Nightline, and World News Tonight. Peter is the author of 1000 Years for Revenge, Cover Up, and the novel First Degree Burn. For more details visit his website: http://www.peterlance.com/

*Sibel’s Note- Bring in your comments and questions. Peter will be checking the site and your comments.

Here is our guest Peter Lance unplugged!

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/09/10/podcast-show-6/feed/ 104 http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/07/21/podcast-show-1/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/07/21/podcast-show-1/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:49:00 +0000 Sibel Edmonds http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?p=46
The Boiling Frogs Presents James Bamford

James Bamford discusses the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies including the Israeli companies involved in intercepting highly sensitive communications for the U.S. government, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the relevant information blackout by the 9/11 Commission, the US mainstream media, President Obama’s ‘no change’ so far, and more.

James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include “The Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.

Here is our guest James Bamford unplugged!

]]> http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/07/21/podcast-show-1/feed/ 63