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!

Interview with Paul Thompson [ 1:03:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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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. Read more È

James Bamford joins us to discuss the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the government’s overreach in bringing espionage charges against him, and the Obama Administration’s unprecedented level of retaliation against government whistleblowers. He discusses the Obama Administration’s shift from military wars to covert-secret wars, the increased use of the CIA as a war branch, and Obama’s violation of the Presidential War Powers Act. Mr. Bamford talks about the CIA operations in Yemen and the use of cluster bombs there as early as December 2009, the implications of WikiLeaks, the absurdity of Obama’s Nobel Peace Award and his recently given Transparency Award, the ineffectiveness and uselessness of NSA in monitoring Osama Bin-Laden’s activities, the absence of real coverage and analyses in the US Mainstream Media, 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!

Interview with James Bamford [ 48:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Last week John Young’s information site Cryptome.Org began publishing documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission which were released for the first time. On January 3, Cryptome posted the 9/11 Commission’s report on my interview (the infamous Sibel Edmonds Case), and aptly titled this particular file as “Sibel Edmonds Censored Yet Again.� Once you read the PDF document you’ll quickly see the reason for Cryptome’s appropriate label. The entire report, by that I mean the entire report, is blacked out (actually, whited-out;-). It took me less than one minute to scan the entire document; basically, scrolling down the white pages-one white page after another. Initially, I was not a bit surprised. Hey, I’ve been declared the most gagged and classified person in US history, after all- State Secrets Privilege invocation twice, gagging the entire Congress for the first (and only) time in US history, hundreds of pages of blacked out DOJ-IG report… So, as I said, I didn’t find it a bit surprising.  However, after the minute it took to go over these blank pages, I started clicking and scanning all the other files (interviews by the 9/11 Commission), and that’s where I was truly surprised:

Despite some redactions here and there, and in a few cases fairly extensive redaction, there were no interviews where the entire interview (and the report on the interview) was blacked out in its entirety. Mine was the only one privileged and honored to such degree! Why? I mean, come on, we are talking about interviews with: FBI Special Agent in Charge on Counterterrorism, CIA Officers with Directorate of Intelligence with a Specific Focus on Drugs & Thugs, The Chairman of National Intelligence Council, NSA Chief of Counterintelligence & SIGNIT Support, Senior CIA Analysts…Yet, none of these interviews was redacted in its entirety. None. Please be my guest and make your own comparison; My 9/11 Commission interview document here, and the rest, here, here, here, here, here…You can check out the rest published by Cryptome here, and if you want more here for thousands of them. Read more È

In this urgent message delivered by ultra snail method of delivery due to restrictions placed upon our communication means (warrantless mass surveillance by our government targeting our telephone, text messages, e-mail, fax, and internet accessibility) we, American citizens, hereby urgently request that the recipients on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific add our desperately repressed nation to their list of qualified political refugee nations and or raise their existing annual quota for US political refugees. We not only meet but surpass the United Nations 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees on the grounds of political opinion and membership and or participation in any particular social group or social activities.

We Americans, every single one of us, are treated as potential terrorists, are considered guilty with no way to prove otherwise. We all are subjected to round the clock surveillance (phone, e-mail, fax, text, internet accessibility; with internet activities soon to be monitored and restricted), and degrading physical probing-groping searches as mandatory requirements for our travel.

We United States Citizens have been deprived of expressing collective dissent even through the most peaceful means and pacifist manner. Read more È

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them‘- – Paulo Freire

The illegal domestic wiretapping of all Americans, the invasive search practices at every airport directed at every single US passenger, the compilation of all data on all citizens in not only one but multiple government databases, the unreasonable and warrantless search and seizure practiced on US masses facilitated arbitrarily by the FBI, are among many known and unknown government practices directed at the entire population of the United States of America.

Despite the current futility, many constitutionalists, legalists, analysts, and activists are writing, talking, and arguing about the legality or illegality, constitutionality or unconstitutionality, practicality or impracticality, of these surveillance and search practices of our ‘National Security State.’ There is a plethora of material out there for you to read or listen to on those points, so there is no need for me to cover all that has been covered already; over and over. I am not going to discuss the tedious and ambiguous laws, nor am I going to waste time on the vague and irrelevant notion of and argument on security. No. I intend to focus on the subjects of these practices; the people; the masses, in fact, the entire population as the willing recipients who have come to view and accept themselves as suspects. Isn’t this what we have become; a nation of suspects?

No one any longer questions the fact that our government has been engaged in domestic surveillance of our communication systems. The news came out. The practitioners admitted to it, in fact, proudly. These activities were challenged in courts and the challenges overridden, thus making the legality or illegality, constitutionality or unconstitutionality, all irrelevant; moot.  Several years have passed and it has become, it is, a fact of life; a fact in every American’s life. And for the majority, not a painful or aggravating fact of life; just ‘a fact’ of life. Why?

Many say ‘look, there are these bad guys out there called terrorists. The government is out there looking for them; everywhere. I ain’t doing nothin wrong, and I ain’t got nothin to hide. So why should I be concerned? My government is doing it to keep me, to keep us all, safe; to protect us against those bad terrorist people lurking here and there…’

If you were to ask most ‘but why do they tap your phone line and capture your data or conversation? You the good citizen?‘ The common answer would be along these lines, ‘I don’t know. They must know something. I don’t understand how intelligence and police stuff like this works. They must know something, if they think tapping my phone and listening to my conversation helps to fight terrorists and keep us safe…I just do my own thing and since I don’t have anything to hide it doesn’t bother me. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do to protect us…’

Most of you know that the above dialogue is more or less what we get everywhere with almost everyone. I have had that exact same conversation with tens if not hundreds of people, and I can assure you that the above rendition is in no way exaggerated or downplayed. It is the general attitude. It is the common thought and response process. It is a fact of today’s life expressed by today’s people in our country. And to recognize these common beliefs, to draw the most logical conclusion, takes neither a genius nor a philosopher nor a psychologist…But let’s move to the next related fact, and see that same logical conclusion.

Starting immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, we began to see, and of course become subject to, jacked up security check points and searches in our airports. First, they already had us all going through big complex metal detectors. Then, they had us do the same thing but remove our belts and other metal containing garments and belongings. Then, they had us bend over like servants before kings, remove our shoes, and humbly walk barefoot through the big complex metal detectors. After that, they prohibited us from carrying our drinking water or any other liquid, and they made our lactating women open up their stored breast milk and sip it before the eyes of the traveling masses passing by…

Meanwhile we learned of their massive databases on fliers, where over one million people were divided into no fly lists, almost no fly lists, and maybe no fly lists, with further division into high-risk fliers, medium-risk fliers, and low-risk fliers…But, despite all these massive, complex and secret multiple lists and databases, we all had to go through those same detectors, with no shoes, no liquids, supposed random but all too frequent pat downs…So we never understood the rationale for having all those lists and databases anyway. No worries. We, most of us, said, ‘we may not understand, it may not make the slightest sense, it can defy all logic…but that doesn’t matter. The government must know things we don’t, and they are protecting us against the big bad terrorists…’ So we went on, kept putting up.

Recently, they said all those practices were not nearly enough, so they’ve been erecting body-scanner temples at security checkpoints, and asking us to step in them to be viewed naked-breasts, penises, arses and all. To be technically correct, they are not forcing us to go through the scanners; in fact, they are giving us options:

-You either step in the scanners and let us view you, all your private parts naked, or,

-You go through grabbing, groping, patting, and worse one-on-one searches.

They have been proudly justifying these invasive procedures by presenting them as reasonable options for people to choose from. Think of a rapist saying the following in court:

‘But I gave her a choice, and I made it clear. I said you either submit willfully and quietly while I rape you, or, you can fight and I’ll beat the hell out of you while I’m raping you….’

We’ve been complying with all that. We get to the checkpoints, and as one woman told me:

‘I just go into this auto pilot mode. I remove my shoes and other items. I move forward towards the screening machine while looking into empty space and avoiding any eye contact. I step in there, slightly spread my arms and legs, pause, and step out on the other side. I then let out a deep breath for making it, without sounding off any alarm bells, and without having to be touched, groped and patted everywhere…Then I walk away quickly and try to wipe away all the memories of those long minutes…It’s the best way to deal with these things…’

Again, this sounds very familiar. Just read through documented victim accounts on dealing with highly traumatic experiences. I used to read about and listen to such victims. A woman telling the story of being molested and raped by her father:

‘I used to pretend not being there…you know, almost like an out of body experience. He’d quietly come to my room, his breath reeking with alcohol…I’d close my eyes when he pulled down my panties…I’d spread my legs, close my eyes, and imagine not being there…imagine it was not happening…It was quicker that way. He’d be done and gone. And I would go on trying to forget, pretending I forgot…trying to erase all the memories and the feeling of being violated…’

Doesn’t it feel that way? Don’t we feel violated? Don’t we feel powerless? Doesn’t it feel like total submission to a force greater than any one of us, and obviously the total of all of us? Read more È

I am certain all of you know of the infamous New York Times reporter Judith Miller. You know, the dark lady who worked with the Bush administration’s Pentagon to sell us the war with Iraq – based on planted made-up stories on WMD; the one who was involved in the Plame case? The one who ended up not getting fired, but retired from the New York Times, took a job with the Fox News Channel, and joined the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank? Yes, that Judith Miller you all know about.

I am sure many of you are aware of the New York Times decision to cover up and bury the story on NSA’s illegal domestic wire tapping program. Right? They were later forced to admit that they held the story on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. Basically, they protected the Bush administration and helped them get reelected.

I believe some of you are also familiar with the New York Times’ decision to hire the disgraced LA Times editor, Dean Baquet, after he was exposed for killing AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein’s documented revelations, and voluntarily disclosing those revelations to Negroponte and the head of NSA, Michael Hayden. Exactly! This same man was later hired by the New York Times and put in charge as head of their Washington DC Bureau – the perfect place for a rat who buries stories and leaks whistleblowers and their information to government officials.

Well, here is the latest on another New York Times character with a questionable pedigree who is positioned by the paper in another strategically sensitive and important division:

New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief’s conflict of interest

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army. Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning:”Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”

The Electronic Intifada also wrote to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, to confirm the information and ask for an opinion on whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but had yet to receive a response.Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper’s reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the “Israel Defense Forces.”

……………………

Read the rest here.

How should we characterize New York Times’ criteria when it comes to selecting, hiring, and promoting their reporters for strategically important divisions of reporting? Do they have an unwritten but consistently practiced policy which says ‘Thou shall be a government approved rat, tied to special interests and agenda, shady and unethical by any standards, to be selected and placed in high places?’

Am I being fair?

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On Christmas Day, 2009, 23-year old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly tried to blow up a plane on route from Amsterdam to Detroit by detonating a device stitched to his underwear. Fortunately, in yet another example of the level of sophistication of the new league of violent extremists, Abdulmutallab succeeded only in setting fire to his own crotch, before being apprehended by fellow passengers.

Security officials now reveal that the attack was planned by an al-Qaeda network in Yemen, where Abdulmutallab was apparently radicalized and trained, although he had been originally recruited, they say, in London. During his stint in London as a student, Abdulmutallab had been President of the Islamic Society at University College London.

The incident has been described as a major intelligence failure exposing the ongoing weakness of US and British security infrastructures and procedures. According to President Barack Obama, intelligence agencies were unable to “connect and understandâ€� separate strands of information that would have alerted them to the attempted attack. “What we have here is a situation in which the failings were individual, organizational, systemic and technological,â€� said one US official. “We ended up in a situation where a single point of failure in the system put our security at risk, where human error was compounded by systemic deficiencies in a way that we cannot allow to continue.”

More simply: no one is to blame.

British Security Surveillance

The problem is that the official narrative is already hopelessly littered with contradictions. Abdulmutallab was apparently first added to the UK Border Agency’s immigration watch list in May 2009 after failing to get a UK entry visa. “His refusal was not on national security groundsâ€�, claimed an early BBC report rather earnestly, “but because he had been tagged as a potential illegal immigrant because he had applied to study at a bogus college… This would, in theory, have prevented him from entering the UK – but not from passing through the country, if he was in transit to another country.â€�

We now know that MI5 had him “tagged� as far more than a “potential illegal immigrant.� “The security services knew three years ago that the Detroit bomber had “multiple communications’ with Islamic extremists in Britain�, reported the Times of London. “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was ‘reaching out’ to extremists whom MI5 had under surveillance while he was studying at University College London.� And then, another crucial caveat: “None of the information was passed to American officials, which will prompt questions about intelligence failures prior to the attack.�

Unfortunately, it now turns out that MI5’s files on Abdulmutallab were, indeed, passed on to the Americans – despite their initial claims that they had received nothing. As the Scotsman reported: “On Monday, Downing Street revealed that intelligence on Abdulmutallab had been passed to the US authorities before the Detroit incident. That revelation prompted suggestions of a rift between Gordon Brown and the White House, and increased pressure on US security agencies to explain why they had failed to identify the alleged bomber.â€�

CIA and NSA

The narrative from the American side has now also taken shape. Security analyst Tom Burghardt provides a meticulous overview: Abdulmutallab was placed in a “catch-allâ€� US terrorism watch list, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), containing 550,000 individuals. This by itself was not enough to put him on a no-fly list. But in September 2009, the National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly picked up intercepts among al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen planning an imminent terror plot by a Nigerian man. The intercepts were translated and disseminated “across classified computer networksâ€�, including the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Then in November, Abdulmutallab’s father, a former top Nigerian government official, provided detailed information to the US embassy in Nigeria warning that his son was a violent extremist. Read more È

Mark Klein provides us with his personal account of the illegal spying apparatus installed at AT&T by the National Security Agency and his battle as a whistleblower to bring it to light. He talks about the difficulties in getting a reluctant media to report the story, the incredible betrayal by the L.A. Times, his role as a witness in a lawsuit brought against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the alarming state of our civil liberties today, the need for vigilant activism, and more.

Mark Klein is a former AT&T technician who disclosed knowledge of his company’s cooperation with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) in installing network hardware to monitor and process American telecommunications. The subsequent media coverage became a major story in May 2006. In recognition of his actions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation picked Klein as one of the winners of its 2008 Pioneer Awards. Klein worked for AT&T as a technician for over 22 years, first in New York and then in California, before retiring in 2004. He is the author of Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine And Fighting It.

Here is our guest Mark Klein unplugged!

Interview with Mark Klein [ 1:08:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In Part one of my piece, I attempted to explain the nature and scope of the US Warrantless Wiretap Program and the growing Surveillance Regime being built in this country. In Part 2, I will compare and contrast the growth and structure of the aforementioned Surveillance Regimes with other countries’ corresponding Systems of surveillance and control. I will also spotlight the International Surveillance Industry and its efforts to market its products by offering this technology to governmental power centers around the world.

Back in 1992, I was living in Vallejo, Ca, a working-class/Navy town in the northeastern San Francisco Bay Area. At that time, there was a local news story about a local drug dealer facing his third-strike conviction under California’s Three-Strikes law who had a brilliant idea. If I blow up the police evidence room and destroy my incriminating evidence, they can’t convict me. He knew the local police evidence storage wasn’t in the Police station, but at the local library of all places. He also knew that if he blew up just the library, sooner or later, the police would get around to him as a suspect. So he hired two other guys he knew who actually managed to find and steal enough explosives to construct three bombs. They planted the first bomb outside the local Solano County government office which detonated late at night doing little damage. The second bomb they planted against the outside wall of the evidence storage room at the library, but a local kid discovered it and the police were able to successfully defuse the bomb. So the two guys planted the third bomb next to the ATM at the local Wells Fargo branch, which also detonated with little damage, as another diversion. Unfortunately, for all concerned, the ATM camera had captured perfect pictures of the two men and police were able to solve the case in short order.

I offer the preceding story to illustrate a point. Had those 2 men just left town in 1992, taken a powder, gone to Buffalo, chances are they would have probably gotten away with it as the surveillance technology had not become so advanced, ingrained and integrated into society. Had those guys attempted the same crime today, their first bomb placement would have been recorded by surveillance cameras surrounding the government building, their facial features subjected to facial recognition software and their identities established from police and prison records, their fingerprints correlated to evidence from the explosives theft site, and their movements tracked from RFID chips embedded in their new “Real ID� driver’s licenses  thus apprehending them before they had a chance to place their second bomb.

I had my first personal experience in Biometric Access in 2000 at Level 3. I had been administratively transferred from the Outside Plant Department on the Central Coast of California to the LA Metro office as I had responsibilities for their fiber routes out to San Bernardino and up to Santa Barbara. Level 3 had installed fingerprint scanners at all access points into their equipment rooms and my prints had to be inputted into the system. I also saw the installations of workplace cameras throughout the facility, where the main long haul fibers terminated into my equipment and then branched off to two floors full of Cisco routers. Since Level 3 was marketing itself as “The Carriers’ Carrierâ€� and selling off a lot of dark fiber to other firms, I took note. Read more È