FBI Prevents Agents from Telling 'Truth' About 9/11 on PBS

[babylonsister]

FBI Prevents Agents from Telling 'Truth' About 9/11 on PBS

By Jeff Stein | October 1, 2008 6:00 AM


The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days.

The FBI denied Rossini and Miller permission to participate in the book or the PBS "NOVA" documentary, which is also being written and produced by Bamford, on grounds that the FBI "doesn't want to stir up old conflicts with the CIA," according to multiple reliable sources.
Bamford, contacted by phone, said he could not comment because his publisher has embargoed his new book for release around Oct. 10.

The author of two other ground-breaking books on the NSA, Bamford also said his general policy is not to discuss his negotiations for interviews with intelligence agencies.

Pre-9/11 intelligence mishaps have been generally attributed to bureaucratic screw-ups -- a "failure to connect the dots," exacerbated by spy agency rivalries.

But Rossini and Miller, who were assigned to the CIA-run Counterterrorist Center during the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, are prepared to describe on camera how the CIA blocked them from sharing crucial intelligence with FBI headquarters - and then later pressured them not to tell the truth to investigators.

more...

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2008/10/fbi-prevents-agents-from-telli.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. 9/11 = INSIDE JOB - EOM

[ixion]

2. yep

[indepat]

3. Yep

:P

[MadinMo]

8. YEP YEP YEP!

[Vincardog]

30. YEP YEP YEP 9/11 = inside job YEP YEP YEP 9/11 = inside job YEP YEP YEP

[tomp]

41. ummm....yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep....nt

[biermeister]

46. oh yeah!

[lonestarnot]

85. And yeP!

[DearAbby]

126. Oh yeah ...yep yep yep

[illuminaughty]

87. Absolutely.

I'm at Home Depot the other day when the salesperson started spouting right wing talking points. You know the extreme crazy ones like Obama is a muslim and the anti-Christ. Before I knew my lips were moving I'm saying, "You know that 9/11 was an inside job?" Let's get it out. I've seen a few bumper stickers lately which give me hope.

[blue sky at night]

113. i hate the Home DEBLOW...

won't shop there unless I have to for work, but you should have reported the associate to the store manager, you still could.

[Butch350]

122. What exactly do you mean inside job - don't make since?

[JohnyCanuck]

132. What exactly do I mean inside job?

Either 1) the 9/11 attacks were intentionally allowed to happen when they could have been prevented

or

2) Elements of the US and perhaps allied or friendly military/intelligence agencies set it up as an intentional false flag op using the supposed hijackers as patsies, the idea being to get the US population enraged at the supposed evil Arab/Muslim extremists and onside for Dick and the Shrubmeister's planned and very profitable (for the MIC) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Right now I am leaning to option #2.

Nothing like thinking that your country has suffered a dastardly, underhanded and unprovoked attack out of the blue by the evildoers of the day to gin up the old "let's bomb 'em all back to the stone age" feeling in the sheep-like masses who think CNN and Fox honestly present the news.

As that old Nazi and Hitler henchman Herman Goering said:
"Goering: 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 danger. It works the same in
any country."

For details on previous examples of the actual use (and planned use) of false flag terror tactics by the US military or CIA in order to demonize a targeted enemy, see this post further down on this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4141202&mesg_id=4149786

[QueenOfCalifornia]

140. sense

it's sense.

google 9/11, inside job.

(where have you been?)

[proud2BlibKansan]

142. Sure looks like it

[paulthompson]

4. This is HUGE!

It basically says that for nearly two years the CIA knew that two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, were al-Qaeda agents living in the US and yet deliberately kept this info from the FBI and did nothing about it. Then after 9/11, there was a conspiracy to keep this scandal from going public.

This fits in very well with all the info we've collected at the 9/11 Timeline about these two hijackers. In fact, we have an entire section, with 100 entries, about the CIA hiding what it knew about these two hijackers:

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&complete_911_timeline_alhazmi_and_almihdhar__specific_cas=complete_911_timeline_cia_hiding_alhazmi___almihdhar

For instance, check out this entry, based on a declassified government document, that indicates the CIA had been following them all along:

9:53 p.m. September 11, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s Assistant Notes that Three 9/11 Hijackers Were Followed by CIA since 2000

Stephen Cambone, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, makes the following note for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at an emergency policy meeting, “AA 77—3 indiv have been followed since Millennium + Cole. 1 guy is assoc of Cole bomber. 2 entered US in early July (2 of 3 pulled aside and interrogated?).” Although four of the subsequently alleged Flight 77 hijackers were known to the authorities in connection with terrorism before 9/11, it appears that the three referred to here as being followed are Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Salem Alhazmi, due to their ties to an al-Qaeda Malaysia summit around the Millennium (see January 5-8, 2000) and ties to the USS Cole bombing (see October 12, 2000). Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar initially arrived in the US shortly before or after the Millennium plot was due to come to fruition (see November 1999 and January 15, 2000), even entering at Los Angeles Airport (LAX), a target of the plot. If the note is literally correct that some US authorities were following these three since the Millennium, this would contradict the 9/11 Commission’s position that the trail of the three was lost shortly after the Millennium. The comment that one of the hijackers is an associate of a Cole bomber could refer to photos the CIA had before 9/11 identifying Almihdhar standing next to Cole bomber Fahad al-Quso (see Early December 2000) or photos of him standing next to Cole bomber Khallad bin Attash (see January 4, 2001). The note’s mention that two of them entered the US in July is also accurate, as Salem Alhazmi entered the US on June 29 (see April 23-June 29, 2001) and Khalid re-entered on July 4 (see July 4, 2001). Earlier in the day, Cambone took notes for Rumsfeld that indicate Rumsfeld is keen to move against Iraq following the 9/11 attacks, even though he was aware there may be no connection between Iraq and 9/11 (see (2:40 p.m.) September 11, 2001). (US Department of Defense, 9/11/2001 ; Guardian, 2/24/2006)

Yet amazingly, people who point out this stuff are still called "conspiracy theorists."

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the CIA knew about these two hijackers for a long time, and it's very hard to believe that they could have known about them and not learned of the other 9/11 hijackers, as Alhamzi and Almihdhar kept in regular contact with many of them by phone and sometimes even visited them in person. And its hard to imagine that the CIA would not have learned about the 9/11 plot itself because these hijackers were not very circumspect. For instance, shortly after Almihdhar arrived in San Diego in early 2000, he told an acquiantance (Mohdar Abdullah) that he was in the US as part of a plot to crash a plane into a building.

It's also not very likely that the CIA didn't know what these two guys were doing because they were in the US and the CIA was prohibited from conducting surveillance in the US. The two guys were frequently calling a known al-Qaeda hub in Yemen that was being intensively watched by the CIA and NSA, and sometimes Almihdhar traveled from the US to stay at the hub for up to a month. This hub was considered so red hot that not only were its phones tapped, but there was constant audio and video surveillance of the building, too. It beggars belief that he wouldn't have talked about the 9/11 plot with al-Qaeda associates living in the hub, including his own close relatives who were al-Qaeda, since we know he was freely talking about the plot to other associates around the same time.

The CIA cover story mentioned in the link above, that the CIA thought these guys were working on a Southeast Asia plot and didn't want the FBI to muck it up, just isn't credible. Even Bush's counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke discusses the mystery of what the CIA knew about Alhazmi and Almihdhar for several pages in his new book "Your Government Failed You" and basically admits he can't figure out just how much the CIA knew and why they didn't tell the FBI or act on the info.

I look forward to this new book, but I'm sure there's even more about these two hijackers that has yet to come out. We know the CIA monitored Alhamzi and Almihdhar attending an al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia in early 2000 that was attended by a number of key al-Qaeda figures, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. We know, from counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna who has unique access to classified US government material, that the 9/11 plot was discussed at that summit. It seems likely to me that the CIA did not just accidentally lose track of these guys shortly after the summit and then forget to tell the FBI what it knew. Instead, they followed them all the while from that point on and had a very good idea what they were up to. One can argue why the CIA didn't do anything about it, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the CIA knew more than enough info to stop the 9/11 attacks but did not do so, and then covered this up afterwards.

[HamdenRice]

5. Thanks for explaining the significance of this

Great to hear from you, Paul.

It seems that the real question now is not what the CIA did, but its motive. The $60,000 question is: why didn't the CIA pass off surveillance of these guys to the FBI when they were within the US?

[KJF]

11. What Wilshire Knew

In the summer of 2001 Wilshire knew three things:

(1) There was going to be an al-Qaeda attack on the US. For example, Lawrence Wright writes that "he was privy to the reports that al-Qaeda was planning a 'Hiroshima'..." (p. 340

(2) He knew that Almihdhar was probably going to be involved in this. On 23 July he wrote: "When the next big op is carried out by hardcore UBL cadre Khalad will be at or need the top of the command food chain--and probably nowhere near the attack site or Afghanistan. That makes people who are available and who have direct access to him of very high interest. Khalid Mihdar is very high interest anyway, given his connection to the (redacted)."

Link:
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/defense/939.pdf

(3) He knew that Almihdhar was in the US, as he was informed of this by FBI agents Mary Gillespie and Dina Corsi on 22 or 23 August. See page 301 of the DoJ IG report.

So he knew there was going to be an attack, knew Almihdhar was probably going to be part of it, and knew Almihdhar was in the US, but helped stymie the FBI's efforts to find Almihdhar because he had somehow convinced himself the attack was going to be in Malaysia? Miller and Rossini may believe this in good faith, but I, for one, don't - it has "LIMITED HANGOUT" written all over it in big, flashing letters.

If Wilshire was trying to keep the FBI away from Almihdhar and Alhazmi, that means there must have been an illegal CIA-backed monitoring operation targeted on them, and, as the hijackers' operational security was just a big joke, this operation could hardly have failed to notice all the other hijackers. They missed the surveillance flights, the flight training, the purchases of tickets for 9/11? We're supposed to buy that?

And, by the way, didn't Almihdhar blow up the Cole - how many US sailors did he have to kill to get arrested?

And here's a simple question: why did Wilshire screw up the Moussaoui investigation?

[JackRiddler]

75. "given his connection to the (redacted)."

Wow, that redacted sure is interesting. Presumably not the Cole bombing, as this isn't classified. It sounds like an organization. Wouldn't we like to know which?

[leveymg]

146. Saudi GID intelligence service, according to Joe Trento.

Double-agent who turned out to be a triple.

[JohnyCanuck]

6. 'Yet amazingly, people who point out this stuff are still called "conspiracy theorists."'

Columnist Sydney Schangerg as quoted in a FAIR article about the Gulf of Tonkin incident (the pretext used to launch a full scale ramp up in US military involvement in Vietnam):

"We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

[pberq]

10. Thanks Paul, and thanks to the OP

". . .it's becoming increasingly clear that the CIA knew more than enough info to stop the 9/11 attacks but did not do so, and then covered this up afterwards."

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. Paul,,,what you have done is heroic.

Thank you for being.:thumbsup:

[JackRiddler]

21. Hey, Paul, what do you think of the idea that some at FBI must have known, too?

See this, for example http://journals.democraticunderground.com/JackRiddler/140

Meaning: After arriving and by a supposed chance meeting getting to know likely Saudi GID agent Omar al-Bayoumi at the LA airport, al-Bayoumi arranged for them to stay at the residence of Abdussattar Shaikh, FBI informant, in San Diego. In addition, Dr. Graham's story as covered by Sander Hicks places them with another possible FBI informant, in Louisiana.

Circumstantially, we had the high-level FBI trio of Frasca, Bowman and Maltbie blocking investigations into possible al-Qaeda in the US (as in the cases of the FBI's Rowley and Wright).

Somehow, the same names were known to Able Danger through an unnamed female contract researcher who got the information from some connections in the "Middle East." (And also almost certainly to the Mossad, which according to German reports provided the names to the CIA in August 2001.)

Besides this obvious CIA coverup in not telling the FBI about the pair, I see the possibility of a high-level secondary coverup among others at the FBI (or else a truly amazing coincidence with Shaikh being their live-in landlord. HIs testimony after subpoena by Congress you will remember was blocked by the FBI, and his name was effectively "reclassified" by the 9/11 Commission even though it had already been in the press). And a third coverup involving Able Danger (a SOCOM program out of Florida).

Who mechanically would be in place to assure by passing orders down the line that such information could be contained and rendered useless at all three: CIA, FBI and SOCOM? (That's not a rhetorical question; I'm wondering.)

[KJF]

24. Wilshire at the FBI

Don't know about Louisiana, but Wilshire moved to the FBI in May 2001. He was involved in the Moussaoui investigation, and, although he was not the line manager of Frasca, Maltbie and Flack, he seems to have been on a higher pay grade, as a consultant to his "counterpart," Michael Rolince (who was Frasca's boss). If you are looking for the official who failed to pass notification about the case up the chain of command, you need look no further than Wilshire. Also, check what he calls the FBI's Minneapolis field office in the e-mail attached to his substitution for testimony at the Moussaoui trial:
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/defense/939.pdf

The main wrongdoer at the FBI was Dina Corsi, who worked closely with Wilshire. Everything she touched turned to broken.

Shaikh is interesting, but do we know he was only reporting to his FBI handler?

[JackRiddler]

25. Know anything about Wilshire's background?

As for Shaikh... well we don't know jack. He didn't have to testify, we don't know who his handler was, the 9/11 Commission doesn't know him, etc. etc. That's the same old story, the smoking coal fire under all of it: the cover-up.

[KJF]

26. Not much

He told the congressional inquiry: "From September 1998 until May 2001, as an operations manager, I was privileged to work alongside a group of extraordinary officers from the CIA, the FBI and other agencies who were and remain committed to combatting the threat posed by bin Laden and those he has inspired."

From His testimony on 20 September 2002.

What makes you interested in his background?

[JackRiddler]

44. Do you really have to ask?

For example, he might be connected in obscure or long-term fashion to other people who played similar roles of "incompetence" or "negligence" in this drama. Wouldn't that interest you?

[KJF]

73. I thought you meant something else

Of the other officials who withheld information and then came up with a dog-ate-my-homework excuse, Wilshire is connected to Clark Shannon, who attended the 11 June shouting match, Dina Corsi, who helped Wilshire sabotage the the hunt for Almihdhar in late August 2001, Rich B (his boss), who lied to CIA superiors about surveillance of the Malaysia meeting in January 2000 and also must have known that al-Qaeda would be involved in a major attack in the summer of 2001, that Almihdhar would probably be part of it, and that Almihdhar was in the US (incidentally, Rich B was the official who briefed Rice at the "missing meeting" revealed by Bob Woodward in 2006, he was in charge of the battle of Tora Bora when bin Laden escaped and the ramping up of extraordinary rendition after the attacks was pretty much his doing). Presumably, Wilshire is also linked to the CIA station chief in Yemen who withheld information from the FBI's Cole bombing investigation team, the CIA officer in Islamabad who withheld information from the FBI's Cole bombing investigation team, and "James," who withheld the same information from the FBI that Wilshire was withholding at the same time, although these links have yet to be 100% proven. It wouldn't surprise me if he were also connected to the NSA officials who were withholding information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi from the FBI.

[JackRiddler]

74. Good start. What do you know about past associations?

For example:

- places or past operations or agencies where members of this loose set of obstructors might have worked together in the past, or forged a common understanding or purpose.

- schools, churches or other places through which multiple members of this loose group might have been recruited into the spook world.

Do you have resume files? (It's an idea for the timeline generally by the way: bios. I know, I know.)

I confess I haven't closely followed timeline updates or most 9/11 research in many months. Other than you guys, there's very little out there not weighted down by unproven prior assumptions, or outright obsessions.

[KJF]

78. Zip, I'm afraid

There is no public knowledge about what any of these people did before these events, with the exception of Rich B. Rich B worked in Algeria and then as a fast-rising executive assistant (Coll's phrase I think) at CIA headquarters before he was moved in to Alec Station as Scheuer's replacement. Most of the conspirators only provided assistance in one matter or at one time, for example Shannon is only in it really (at least as far as we know) in May 2001, when he and Wilshire create a virtual reality with memos and then Shannon goes to the 11 June shouting match, "James" only gives two distorted briefings to the FBI in early January 2000 and then does nothing else (as far as we know), the officer in Islamabad who shows the photo of Almihdhar to "Omar" is only active in the matter around January 2001. Wilshire and Rich B seem to be the main guys and they are involved from, at least, January 2000 until 9/11. Presumably, they got the others to help them by feeding them a line about something; if they just told Shannon that the FBI was close to uncovering and botching an important covert operation, then Shannon would presumably have helped out--why not? Wilshire and Rich B must have known it was likely the attack was going to be inside the US, the others (that we know of) probably did not know that.

Incidentally, one article (by Ken Silverstein of Harper's) said that Rich B was the son of a controversial former CIA officer from the agency's beginnings. Assuming that Tenet's last initial B is correct (otherwise the field is too large and why would Tenet go to the trouble to make the initial up, when he could just have left it out--like Coll, Bamford and the 9/11 Commission), then how many controversial former CIA officers whose surnames begin with B can you think of?

Incidentally again, Coll says Rich B was nuts, "unyielding zealot" was a choice phrase.

The "entity" Rich B is here:
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=rich_b._1

Wilshire is here:
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=tom_wilshire_1

[JackRiddler]

82. um okay I'm stumped...

"then how many controversial former CIA officers whose surnames begin with B can you think of?"

I can think of a really obvious one, but maybe you mean someone else who isn't occurring to me?

The only Richard I can find in that direction doesn't seem to be part of that family, and was occupied during this time as an expert on Taiwan (though I suppose anything could be a cover). Of course, maybe Richard isn't his name?

What are you imagining? Please enlighten.

[KJF]

90. Richard Bissell and Tracey Barnes

They were the only two I could think of. Richard Bissell did have a son called Richard, don't know about Barnes.

I'm not sure what you mean by Taiwan. I found a Richard E. Bissell who wrote something about Taiwan, but Richard Bissell's oldest son's middle initial is M, not E, so presumably these two people are unrelated.

Here is the article that says Rich B was the son of a former officer:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/01/meet-the-cias-new-2007-01-28

Here is the obit that gives Bissell's son's name:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804EED61138F93BA35751C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

This is all speculative--we can't even be sure that Tenet gave Rich B's correct last initial--but Bissell's connection to Northwoods certainly does make my tinfoil hat buzz.

[JackRiddler]

118. Bissell, of course.

Idle speculation, of course. Narrative appeal, certainly. The father headed covert ops and assassinations, was involved in all manner of crimes, and went away in disgrace.

Here's what the Harper's piece says about Rich B, however giving him the name of "James".



By law, I cannot tell you the name of the new station chief, so I will call him James. He is the son of a well-known and controversial figure who served at the agency during its early years. Sources with whom I spoke say James was stationed in Algeria in the early 1990s, after the military staged a coup to block a sweeping victory by Islamist forces in parliamentary elections (and thereby triggered a bloody civil war that lasted eleven years). During the mid-1990s, James served on an Iraq task force that sought to contain and destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime.

Later, James was posted to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC), where he served as chief of operations, effectively the number four position at the center. He oversaw Alec Station (the unit charged with hunting Osama bin Laden, which was disbanded late last year) as well as the CTC branch that directed renditions. Following the 9/11 attacks, James served as station chief in Kabul and then in Islamabad.

[paulthompson]

94. The Tom Wilshire mystery

Tom Wilshire is an intriguing figure. If you want to look at government officials most responsible for letting 9/11 happen, he'd have to be near the top of the list.

Check out this confusing entry, which I will try to explain:

Mid-May 2001: CIA Manager Says Photo Identification Is Incorrect, Hinting He Has Greater Knowledge of Al-Qaeda Malaysia Summit Figures

Tom Wilshire, a CIA officer detailed to the FBI, discusses three photographs of al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit (see January 5-8, 2000) with CIA analyst Clark Shannon. Based on an identification by a source inside al-Qaeda, one of the photos is thought to show al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash, who was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole (see January 4, 2001). However, Wilshire tells Shannon that he does not see bin Attash in any of the photos and that he is “missing something” or “someone saw something that wasn’t there.” Wilshire is correct—the photo actually shows 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi not bin Attash, but it is unclear why Wilshire would think this; he has apparently not read the cable stating the source identified the man in the photo as bin Attash, but he is aware that bin Attash has been identified in the photo. The three photos will later be passed to the FBI and shown to investigators working on the bombing of the USS Cole (see Mid-May 2001, Late May, 2001, and June 11, 2001). (US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 284-5)

It's confusing because you have to understand some things that were going on at the time about the identification of surveillance photos from the al-Qaeda Malaysia summit. Basically, summit attendee Khallad bin Attash was misidentified, but Wilshire apparently accidentally revealed that he knows what bin Attash looks like when he shouldn't have known that.

How could he know that? This goes to one of the mysteries about the CIA surveillance of the Malaysia summit. The summit went for four days and surveillance teams took all kinds of photos of them the whole time they were there. The summit attendees were photographed using internet cafes, going shopping, riding in taxis, etc, etc... There were probably hundreds of good photos taken. The attendees were even videotaped, and we know that Alhazmi and Almihdhar were videotaped with Hambali, a known top al-Qaeda leader whose picture was not only known to the CIA but was even published in Southeast Asian newspapers some months before 9/11.

Yet, mysteriously, all these photos and video from the summit disappeared down some black hole, except for four photos. Those four photos, and especially three of them mentioned in the entry above, got passed around within the CIA and some FBI agents even saw them before 9/11. But what happened to all the other surveillance photos and video? We know the CIA had them and details about what they contain have been mentioned here and there in various government documents since 9/11. But the CIA is a collection of people - there had to have been one or more CIA officials with knowledge of these photos and video who decided not to show them to most everybody else in the CIA, much less people in other agencies.

It would make sense that Wilshire was one of these people. That would explain how he knew what bin Attash looks like when he should not have, because he'd seen the other photos from the summit that contained other pictures of bin Attash.

Why does this matter? Because of who else attended the summit. Other attendees included:
-Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a known al-Qaeda leader who was a mastermind of several previous plots. The CIA had photos of him since 1995.
-Hambali. Mentioned above. The CIA had pictures of him since 1995.
-Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The mastermind of the USS Cole bombings. The CIA had at least one picture of him too by late 2000.

So, presumably, Alhazmi and Almihdhar were photographed at a top al-Qaeda planning meeting with three of al-Qaeda's known top operational masterminds. I can't think of any important al-Qaeda attack before 9/11 that didn't involve at least one of these three guys. And yet one or more people in the CIA sat on the photos and video, and only circulated four pictures from the summit, none of which showed any of these three leaders.

Obviously, if these guys were getting together, they were gonna be planning an attack. The CIA knew for instance that in 1995, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Hambali worked together on the Bojinka plot, which would have killed about 4,000 people (including the Pope) if it had been successful. This was an unbelievably huge lead. This meeting was almost unique in al-Qaeda history, to have so many al-Qaeda leaders meet somewhere outside of Afghanistan. I don't think al-Qaeda ever did anything like it before or since, at least that we know of. It was considered so important that while it was happening there were daily US intelligence briefings about it reaching some at the cabinet level, including the CIA and FBI directors. But then after the summit was over, most of the info about it went down a black hole.

Why hide this info? WHO hid this info? Where are these photos and video today and why haven't they been made public? Again, to claim the CIA just wasn't that interested or somehow got distracted and fumbled this doesn't make any sense. This was the biggest al-Qaeda lead the CIA had ever had.

What this all suggests is that the CIA knew much, much more about Alhamzi and Almihdhar than they were letting on. They knew that the two of them had flown to the US days after meeting al-Qaeda's top operational leaders at the summit, and yet not only was this information hidden from the FBI, it was even hidden from most people within the CIA.

Then there's the mystery of apartment where the summit was held. It was held in the Malaysian apartment of an al-Qaeda operative named Yazid Sufaat. The Malaysian govenment wanted to keep monitoring the apartment, figuring that if one big meeting was held there, others meetings would take place there, too. And they were right. All kinds of al-Qaeda people passed through there. Zacarias Moussaoui stayed at that same apartment for several weeks later the same year and he was such a blabbermouth about al-Qaeda secrets, including talking about his flight lessons in the US, that Hambali called Afghanistan to complain. Almihdhar also passed through again. There would have been tons of clues about the 9/11 plot, and other plots, had that apartment continued to be monitored. But the CIA specifically told Malaysian intelligence NOT to monitor the apartment, and so they didn't, although they were mystified about that decision.

It seems like some people in the CIA learned someting at the summit (in which the 9/11 plot was discussed) and wanted to prevent others from finding it out, even shutting down good intelligence leads to make sure that happened. One can trace the CIA coverup to basically the first day of the summit. Within 24 hours, the CIA was blatantly lying to the FBI about what it was learning from the summit surveillance. For instance, the CIA had made a copy of Alhmidhar's passport that showed he had a US visa, and this was kept from the FBI. My guess is, whatever was going on here, Wilshire was in the middle of it.

[KJF]

135. First day of the coverup

You could maybe trace the first day of the coverup by the CIA to the first day of the Malaysia summit, but the first day of the coverup by the NSA would be earlier. Remember the intercept of the call from Alhazmi and Almihdhar at the Yemen hub in early 1999 that should have been disseminated but wasn't? Then another intelligence service (probably the British) found out about it, reminded the NSA, and the NSA then forgot to disseminate it again. And, while we're at it, what about all the calls to the Yemen hub before the embassy bombings? What did the NSA do with them?

[JackRiddler]

136. Do you really think this doesn't apply equally to CIA surveillance of the Hamburg cell?

We don't have as much information on that, although Binalshibh was at the Malaysia summit. For some reason all the focus from JICI on forward has always been on the San Diego two (often merely to rehash it as news). CIA watching this group in Hamburg since 1998, what are the chances there isn't a similarly huge store of disappeared knowledge? Near zero, really, since enough about them got out through other channels (such as Able Danger) to imply the awareness was there.

[paulthompson]

137. I agree

Hamburg was a known hotbed of al-Qaeda activity. US intelligence found links pointing there as early as 1993. And that's not all. There were other hijackers that were under surveillance who have been almost completely forgotten. Check out this timeline entry:

Spring 2001: US Customs Investigate Three Hijackers Before 9/11

In the wake of the foiled al-Qaeda plot to blow up hotels in Jordan during the millennium celebrations, Jordan gives tips to the US that launch a Customs investigation into one of the plotters, Raed Hijazi, and his US connections. “Customs agents for months traced money flowing from several Boston banks to banks overseas, where officials believe the funds were intended for bin Laden’s network.” In September and October 2000, Jordanian officials gave US investigators evidence of financial transactions connecting Raed Hijazi, Nabil al-Marabh, and future 9/11 hijacker Hamza Alghamdi (see September 2000; October 2000). By spring 2001, Custom agents further connect al-Marabh and Hijazi to financial deals with future 9/11 hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam Al Suqami. The Washington Post will later note, “These various connections not only suggest that investigators are probing ties between bin Laden and the hijackers, but also that federal authorities knew about some of those associations long before the bombings.” (Washington Post, 9/21/2001) It appears that the money flowed from al-Marabh to Alghamdi and Al Suqami. (Cox News Service, 10/16/2001; ABC News 7 (Chicago), 1/31/2002) While accounts of these connections to Alghamdi and Al Suqami will be widely reported in the media in the months after 9/11, a Customs Service spokesman will say he can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the inquiry.
And this mention from another entry:

In at least some cases, it appears that US intelligence did quickly access existing files on the hijackers. The Washington Post reports, “In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings, investigators searched their files on Al Suqami and Alghamdi, noted the pair’s ties to al-Marabh and launched a hunt for him.” A top Customs official claims that by checking flight manifests and comparing them with other information such as watch lists, he is able to determine the names of all 19 hijackers by 11:00 a.m.(see (11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). (Washington Post, 9/21/2001)


and this:

May 2, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Ahmed Alghamdi Is Not Stopped from Entering US Despite Praising Bin Laden to Customs Officials and Customs Investigation

9/11 Hijackers Majed Moqed and Ahmed Alghamdi arrive in Washington, DC, on the same flight from London. Alghamdi tells the immigration inspector that Osama bin Laden is a good Muslim and that the media distorts facts about him, but is nevertheless allowed into the country. This incident will not be mentioned in the main 9/11 Commission Report or the Commission’s Terrorist Travel Monograph, but is mentioned in an FBI timeline of hijacker movements that the 9/11 Commission will frequently use as a source. Both Alghamdi and Moqed declare over $10,000 in cash, but the customs inspector who processes Alghamdi does not fill out the documentation required when a person brings in more than $10,000. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 139; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 528; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 22) Shortly after 9/11, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers will report that by the spring of 2001, US customs was investigating Alghamdi and two other future 9/11 hijackers for their connections to known al-Qaeda operatives (see Spring 2001). One British newspaper will note that Alghamdi should have been “instantly ‘red-flagged’ by British intelligence” as he passed through London on his way to the US because of a warning about his links to al-Qaeda (see April 22-June 27, 2001). It will not be explained how Alghamdi is able to pass through Britain and US customs, even as he is openly praising bin Laden. Majed Moqed apparently is not stopped while passing through customs. However the FBI will later note that he uses the alias Mashaanmoged Mayed on the flight manifest before returning to the Moqed name when passing through customs. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 139)


Think about that. Why the heck would Alghamdi just out of the blue bring up bin Laden and defend bin Laden's reputation to a customs official as he's passing through US customs? That would be insanely stupid. Obviously, the Customs official had some reason to suspect he had a bin Laden link, so that official was trying to ask probing questions. If accused of being linked to bin Laden, an obvious defense would be to say bin Laden's misunderstood and not a bad guy.

How would Customs know to ask him about bin Laden? Why, because the very same Customs department had started investigating him (and other hijackers) months before, as mentioned in the entry above! Yet he was allowed in even though he could have easily been busted about the $10,000 cash thing. The British press says he should have been red flagged while passing through Britain on his way to the US because he was on a watch list, and it really defies logic that he wasn't on the US watch list too, since he was probably put on the British watch list because of the US Customs investigation.

I think the logical conclusion is he was on the US watch list, he was red flagged as he entered the US, and then questioned a bit about his militant ties to make sure he was who they thought he was. Then he was simply allowed to enter the US anyway. That would be the smart thing to do if he was monitored from that point on, and he probably was. Given what was already known about his ties to al-Qaeda and other hijackers from the Customs investigation, a surveillance of his activities of him in the US should have exposed the entire 9/11 plot in short order. These guys did NOT have good operational security. There are probably many other unknown stories like this that we can only barely glimpse at if we see anything at all, due to the usual government cover up and lack of investigative journalism.


In fact, I strongly suspect that US intelligence had plentiful data on all 19 hijackers well before 9/11. Check out this entry:

Between October 2000 and September 10, 2001: British Banking Company Profiles Fifteen 9/11 Hijackers as High-Risk Likely Terrorists

Global Objectives, a British banking compliance company, identifies fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers as high-risk people and establishes profiles for them. The hijackers are regarded as high-risk for loans because they are linked to Osama bin Laden, suspected terrorists, or associates of terrorists. The list of high-risk people maintained by Global Objectives is available to dozens of banks and the hijackers’ files contain their dates and places of birth, aliases, and associates. It is unclear which fifteen hijackers are considered high-risk. It is also unknown if any Western intelligence agencies access this database before 9/11. (Associated Press, 2/21/2002) According to the 9/11 Commission, US intelligence is only aware of three of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi, and Khalid Almihdhar, before the attacks. (9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 181-2) However, media reports will suggest US intelligence agencies may have been aware of another six: Ziad Jarrah (see January 30, 2000); Marwan Alshhehi (see March 1999 and January-February 2000); Mohamed Atta (see January-May 2000 and January-February 2000); and Ahmed Alghamdi, Satam al Suqami, and Hamza Alghamdi (see September 2000 and Spring 2001).

It is at all plausible that some obscure company named Global Objectives would know the names of 15 of the hijackers and their high risk link to terrorism and yet US intelligence would not? If nothing else, I'm sure US and British intelligence had access to the data collected by the company!

[JackRiddler]

145. Very good examples, Paul. And how exactly would...

Global Objectives have such information, if not through access of some kind to intelligence databases, for example through intel subcontractors? What's this company's global network of intel-gathering agents, if not that?

Simplicity suggests a single database somewhere has them all in it, and whoever holds it is both suffering leaks and trying to protect the information about the later alleged hijackers from spreading, rather than that so many different agencies (and this company, and the unnanmed Able Danger subcontractor) all manage to detect the later alleged hijackers independently of one another (and also all manage to fuck up independently in getting the information to authorities who might pick these guys up for questioning). For consideration, I posit a group at the CIA working with the usual allied agencies abroad, with the intent of having 9/11 happen as it did (or manufacturing it, it's the same).

[paulthompson]

40. Yes...

It appears that some within the FBI were blocking information too. We don't know why. For instance, Dina Corsi, an FBI agent working in the FBI's bin Laden unit, appears to have played a key role in blocking the info about Alhazmi and Almihdhar from getting to the rest of the FBI. Some have speculated that the CIA may have had moles within the FBI working on another agenda.

But it goes deeper than that. For instance, Ali Soufan was an FBI agent working on the USS Cole investigation. By early 2001, interviews with suspects in Yemen had given him very good reason to believe that there had been an al-Qaeda summit in Southeast Asia in January 2000, probably in Malaysia, and that info about that was vital to solving the Cole bombing case. He gathered some info from telephone calls and hotel bills to support this. And yes, he was right, there was a summit in Malaysia right when he thought there was. One of the calls he'd learned about was to a telephone booth just a few feet away from where the summit took place on the days when it took place. He repeatedly asked the CIA for info on this, giving more and more specific requests as he learned more, and they repeatedly ignored him.

But what's really strange is that a lot of higher ups in the FBI, including FBI Director Robert Mueller, knew all about this Malaysia summit, as they (including Mueller) had been repeatedly briefed on it when it took place. Yet this information never got to Soufan or other agents who were looking for it, like Steve Bonghardt. I mentioned in a below post that when Soufan learned one day after 9/11 just how much was known about Alhazmi and Almihdhar and the Malaysia summit, he was so disgusted that he threw up. But he wasn't disgusted just that the CIA kept this info from him, he was also disgusted that his own FBI bosses kept this info from him. Lawrence Wright makes that clear in his book the Looming Towers.

Why were some FBI higher ups blocking this info? I don't know, but it fits a pattern. Over and over, we see that FBI field agents were doing their best to fight al-Qaeda before 9/11, but were foiled by their own superiors. The Moussaoui case is one clear example. One FBI agent, Harry Samit, tried over 70 different ways to warn about Moussaoui before 9/11, all to no avail. He concluded, even before 9/11, that there was NO information he could come up with tying Moussaoui to al-Qaeda or terrorist acts that would get his superiors to act. For some reason unknown to him, they simply were not going to do anything about Moussaoui, no matter what. As to why, he testified in court in 2006 that he still doesn't know.

We see the names of the same few superiors who were blocking investigations. For instance, Dave Frasca and Michael Maltbie. It was so bad that Coleen Rowley (later Time magazine's Person of the Year) joked with other agents that al-Qaeda had moles within the FBI.

It seems possible to me that FBI superiors were given different marching orders than field agents were, orders they were not allowed to explain. For instance, Moussaoui was known to be a recruiter for militants who wanted to go fight in Chechnya. The Chechnya war was a thorn in Russia's side and the US did not mind at all if militants there were stirring up trouble for Russia. So people like Maltbie may have known all about Moussaoui's al-Qaeda ties and actually thought that was a good thing, thinking, hey, let Moussaoui recruit all the people to fight in Chechnya that he wants. But these superiors would not be allowed to explain to field agents their Machiavellian reasons for taking no action. (But even if one buys into the Chechnya logic, which I find very short sighted and stupid, that doesn't explain why people like Maltbie did nothing when agents were screaming at him that Moussaoui could hijack a plane in the US. They even specifically warned that he could fly an airplane into the World Trade Center!)

[JackRiddler]

64. As you know I don't buy the wealth of unrelated individual excuses...

Not when it all so consistently coincides in the same direction of shielding these two alleged hijackers (and the rest of the alleged ringleaders). The variety of places and agencies where the same decision keeps getting made in favor of not pursuing them, always against protest, even as so much knowledge about them is sprinkled throughout the system anyway, suggests a coordinating force that has decided to protect them and has sufficient authority to do so. Possibly as simple as that they're GID agents and therefore have a CIA cover against exposure. But in that case, for the official story to still work, they're also al-Qaeda who have successfully infiltrated a CIA-sanctioned GID counterterror sting; a whole bunch of them! Pretty bloody unlikely, albeit reason enough for many, many heads to roll. You are of course aware of a more straightforward explanation, generally unspeakable in this forum.

[bjobotts]

81. Follow the money and who gained the most from 9/11 and it all leads back to the neocons

[chimpymustgo]

27. Thank you Paul, for all your good work. The bastards did this shit - and they just keep finding new

ways to screw us.

How can ANY thinking person EVER believe or trust them????

[seafan]

28. Re: The San Diego hijackers and the FBI

From the man who keeps thousands of notebooks:, December 13, 2007


(Last half of post)

[Gregorian]

34. So then Bush knew? August PDB Bin Laden Determined to...

This would mean that not only did Bush know, but he sat in that classroom while KNOWING?

[Kaleko]

47. Yes.

[xyouth]

107. Self Delete

[moodforaday]

36. Kick for visibility

And thank you. :kick:

[FourScore]

45. Paul you are so amazing!!

Thank you so much for your incredible work!

[petgoat]

80. Paul's work is very credible to me. He's a true hero! nt

[OwnedByFerrets]

49. How long before these two commit "suicide"?

:mad:

[victordrazen]

69. Except there weren't any hijackers

Diversion.

[noise]

116. This is a fact?

It was all a high tech magic show?

[victordrazen]

124. Kind of like a made for tv movie

with a ficitional "let's roll" theme.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

128. Yes -- hard to swallow, I know, but it is a fact.

Youtube is your friend -- the truth is out there.

[Hissyspit]

83. Good to see you again, Paul. I actually have "9/11: Press for Truth" sitting in my DVD player

right now.

I don't think that it is hyperbole to say that "The Terror Timeline" is one of the most important reference books ever published. (O.K., well, Top 50.)

[leveymg]

102. Cofer Black knows. He was in charge of CIA CTC when the Flt. 77 hijackers were let in, and super-

vised the torture of al-Qaeda detainees held in CIA "black prisons". He had a relationship with Usama bin Laden that went back to 1996, when he was Chief of Station in Khartoum, Sudan. Black was with Tenet when the two went to see Condie Rice on July 10, 2001 to plead with the Bush Administration to roll-up al-Qaeda cells known to inside the U.S. Black is the link that runs through the whole story. See, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/337

THE CIA OFFICER WHO OVERSAW TORTURE: Cofer Black
Posted by leveymg in General Discussion
Sun Dec 23rd 2007, 01:44 PM
Cofer Black Headed Unit Alleged to Torture Detainees and Withhold Pre-9/11 Warning Memo to FBI


In the Osama bin Laden story, a former CIA official with the unlikely name “J. Cofer Black” is the character who seems to pop up in the most interesting places.

Indeed, Mr. Black is the one person at CIA who admits to having dealt with bin Laden, face-to-face, after the Soviets departed Afghanistan in the early 1990s.

During the last few years of his CIA career, Cofer Black had an extraordinarily focused, unusual assignment. Until he retired from CIA in late 2002, Cofer Black was one of the few officers within the clandestine service with a real subject matter expertise. Black’s specialty was Usama bin Laden, “UBL”, as he’s known in U.S. intelligence circles.

From 1999 until May 2002, Black was in charge of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, at which some historic decisions and catastrophic failures took place.

While Chief of Station in Sudan in the early 1990s, Black oversaw CIA contact with UBL, at the time that UBL was a major organizer of Mujahaddin veterans fighting in Bosnia; al Qaeda flowed in a straight line through Cofer Black to 9/11 and to the present day privatization of intelligence as Vice Chairman of Blackwater, LLC, and as Mitt Romney’s advisor on national security.

***

Most career officers in the CIA clandestine division are generalists who move from station to station, assigned to fill slots in countries where their foreign languages and backgrounds are needed. Not Cofer Black. He was a specialist.

Before his reassignment, announced in a back-page Washington Post article on May 17, 2002, Black, Chief of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), was in charge of renditions and the interrogation of detainees captured and held abroad. That puts Black at the immediate head of the chain-of-command for operational decisions made up until that date in the torture of CIA prisoners held at “black sites” around the world.

James Risen writes in his book about the CIA’s counter-terrorism operations, State of War, cited at, http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2007/12/...

The CIA assigned a group of agency officials to try to find alternative prison sites in countries scattered around the world. They were studying, said one CIA source, "how to make people disappear."

There were a number of third world countries, with dubious human rights records, willing to play host. One African country offered the CIA the use of an island in the middle of a large lake, according to CIA sources, and other nations were equally accommodating. Eventually, several CIA prisons were secretly established, including at least two major ones, code-named Bright Lights and Salt Pit. A small group of officials within the CIA's Counterterrorist Center was put in charge of supporting the prisons and managing the interrogations.

SNIP

Bright Light is one of the prisons where top al Qaeda leaders--including Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the cenral planner of the September 11 attacks--have been held. Bright Light's location is secret, and it has been used for only a handful of the most important al Qaeda detainees. (30)(emphasis added)


Under Cofer Black’s Command

“A small group of officials within the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center was put in charge of supporting the prisons and managing the interrogations.”

By most accounts, Abu Zubaydah was taken into custody in March, 2002 in Pakistan, and after initial U.S. interrogation and treatment for gunshot wounds, sent to a secret CIA torture center in Thailand, where he was waterboarded, in April or May 2002. (FTN. 1) See, e.g., Larry Johnson’s timeline, http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/12/10/di... /

If the Johnson timeline is indeed accurate, at the time Abu Zubayda torture was videotaped, Cofer Black was CTC Director, and he shares command responsibility for that action with his CIA superiors right up through McLaughlin and Pavitt to George Tenet and the President.

Nonetheless, the really significant thing about Cofer Black is that he was also in charge of CTC on 01/15/2000 when Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, the Flt. 77 Pentagon hijackers, entered the U.S. What’s so significant about that? The pair’s entry into the U.S. was noted by CTC after they attended an al-Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumur – monitored by the CIA -- where 9/11 and the USS Cole attacks were mapped out in January 5-8. Just so happens, al-Hazmi had earlier trained at Abu Zubayah’s camp in Afghanistan, along with five of the other 9/11 hijackers. There is, indeed, a striking symmetry to this. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/17/8...

The second al-Qaeda figure tortured at that time, Abd al-Nashiri, also had a role in recruiting and training the 9/11 attack cell, and was the architect of the Cole bombing. These two worked closely with another trainer, Sakkra, who now states that he was a double-agent working for U.S. and Syrian intelligence in organizing al-Hazmi and the others as part of the CIA’s secret war in Chechnya. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/10/1...

Here’s the kicker. Cofer Black was CIA Chief of Station in Khartoum at the same time bin Laden made his base of operations there. Abu Zubaydah was with bin Laden in Sudan. Black admits he had a confrontation with UBL shortly before they both left Sudan in 1996. Bin Laden went to Afghanistan. Black was later made commander of CIA CTC, where he maintained his focus on UBL.

Bottom-line: Cofer Black was in immediate command of CTC at the time CIA let the Flt. 77 hijackers into the U.S. — and an intentional decision was then made at CTC not to alert the FBI when they came in — and Cofer Black was in immediate command of the CIA unit that tortured those who knew the details of the CIA’s role in training at least six of the 9/11 hijackers. Both of those tortured under Black’s command were waterboarded, which cuts off oxygen to the brain, and can result in long term memory loss. Abu Zubaydah is said to have been driven mad by waterboarding and sensory driving techniques, as was Jose Padilla, who AZ fingered during interrogation. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/18/1...

Why torture detainees and then “erase” the tapes? In the context of the CIA’s long relationship with Zubaydah and al-Nashiri, this begins to make sense now, doesn’t it?

SNIP

Also, see,

Perjury by CIA Counterterrorism Center Director - the Blocked Memo

Edited on Fri Jun-10-05 11:05 AM by leveymg

June 10, 2005. The LA Times reports that in early 2000, the CIA intentionally withheld a memo from the FBI that reported the entry of key 9/11 hijackers into the US. See:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-te...

In his testimony before the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee in September 2002, former head of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) stated under oath that his office had inadvertently neglected to inform the FBI when it became known in early 2000 that Flight 77 hijacker, Nawaf al-Midhar, had entered the U.S. However, it was revealed yesterday that a memo informing the FBI had actually been drafted at CTC, but an order was issued blocking transmission of that information.

In this sworn testimony, Cofer Black stated that he and Agency staff had simply missed the importance of reports that know al-Qaeda terrorists had entered the US after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit. According to Black, then CTC director -- who after 9/11 was promoted by President Bush to head State Department Counterterrorism -- the CIA Center failed to pass this information on to the FBI in early 2000 because staff were distracted and overworked. For more information see:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/01_...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/p/2...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htm

However, as we learned yesterday, Black's testimony to Congress was a material misrepresentation of what is the most important question that Congress had for the CIA. Why wasn't the FBI informed in a timely way of this obviously critical development in tracking known al-Qaeda terrorists?

As ranking officer at CTC, Cofer Black was in a position to know about the Center's memo that had been prepared for transmittal to the FBI at the time. He was also clearly in the chain of command that would decide to block the memo's transmission to the FBI. Nonetheless, Black told Congressional investigators something quite different, and his testimony under oath before the Joint Committee was patently false, in light of the facts that were released yesterday.

US intelligence first became aware of Nawaf Al-Midhar in 1995, when he was referenced in a telephone call from a major al-Qaeda communications center in Yemen intercepted by the NSA. That communications post was run by Nawaf's uncle. The Al-Midhar family has long been prominent within the militant Yemeni Islamic opposition. Osama bin Laden's family is originally from Yemen, which has been the center of armed opposition to westerners for many decades since the British occupied the key port city of Aden and built a huge naval base there, which in the late 1990s was again visited by US naval forces after a long absence. This was viewed as a serious provocation by local Islamic radicals. The USS Cole was blown up in Aden harbour in October, 2000 during a "refueling stop".

In January 2000, The Agency had trailed the al-Midhar and his partner, Khalid al-Hazmi, as they traveled to a meeting with top al-Qaeda planners in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That meeting. at which 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole were planned, was surveilled by multiple US and allied intelligence agencies. Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar reentered the US on the same flight from Bangkok on January 15, 2000.

Somehow -- and this has been a major gap in the record -- the CIA neglected to notify FBI of the entry.

Now we know that this failure to notify the FBI was no oversight. A command decision was taken by the CIA -- Director Tenet had been briefed on multiple occasions about al-Midhar and al-Hazmi and the Kuala Lumpur meeting. The only question that remains is, why did the CIA allow known al-Qaeda terrorists to run free across the US, and complete their mission on 9/11?

The Bush Administration must now appoint a special counsel to immediately investigate Black's apparent perjury. Any delay can be viewed as obstruction of justice, and as an impeachable offense.

[Jax]

120. Great info paulthompson

You are one of my DU treasures.

:thumbsup:

Alyce

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. Get thee on the Greatest page!

9-11 = inside job... MIHOP or LIHOP, either one is treasonous..

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi, and the rest of the PNAC gang need to be swinging in the breeze...

K&R!

[HamdenRice]

9. WARNING to everyone who wants this to get a wide readership: NO LIHOP/MIHOP posts

I'm certainly not disagreeing with the premise of LIHOP/MIHOP. I'm just noting that factual reporting about 9/11 (such as the OP and Paul's post) is often allowed to stay in GD.

If this thread becomes a long list of people saying LIHOP/MIHOP and arguing that position -- with the inevitable OCT defenders arriving as well -- then this very important information will be sent to the Dungeon.

I know how you guys feel, but could we please, not get into LIHOP/MIHOP just now so this can stay here?

[intheflow]

12. I absolutely agree!

Reporting like this shores up certain arguments, but since all 9-11 interpretations aside from the Bush administration's version are discounted by some as being conspiracy-based, it throws the good as well as the bad reporting into the same "loony" category. And this is definitely in the "good reporting" category.

[yodermon]

13. seconded. n/t

[Beam Me Up]

14. You are right. But it still SUCKS that such is DU policy.

Here we have a factual OP which may, as many important discussions on DU, generate controversy. So what? Why must it therefore be CLOSETED? The very fact that this kind of thing is kept out of GD has helped keep people ignorant and helped keep GWB and his gang of crooks in office.

[robertpaulsen]

17. Yeah, sucks to be GAGGED. Is it too controversial to say "COVER-UP"?

I think that this, along with the put options and war games, goes a long way to explain WHY there has been an official cover-up.

Great signature! I haven't read Peter Dale Scott's book on 9/11, but I think The Iran Contra Connection is a fantastic piece of research.

[illuminaughty]

86. Thus my low post number

I stopped a few years ago when we couldn't say 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!

[file83]

15. Kind of difficult to stay away from LIHOP when the OP is about how the CIA Let It Happen...

On Purpose, isn't it?

The very definition of what the CIA did is LIHOP, so I ask you, how do you not say "elephant" when there is an Elephant in the room?

[JohnyCanuck]

16. Maybe you're supposed to say....

Hey folks, this humongous, bad tempered animal with a thin tail, a lonnnnnnnngggggg nose, big floppy ears, and sad brown eyes stomping about the room busting up the furniture has to be sedated and brought under control before it destroys our house and stomps us all to death.

[baldguy]

19. If true, this evidence proves LIHOP

with strong indications of MIHOP.

[HamdenRice]

20. All it says is that the CIA withheld information from the FBI

We don't know why. One explanation offered is that the CIA thought the FBI were bozos, and although when these hijackers entered the US they were supposed to hand it off to the FBI (CIA was forbidden to work within the US) CIA thought FBI would screw up their investigation and blow their operational covers.

Of course I don't think that's true, but as long as it could be what the OP is saying, maybe this can stay in GD.

[KJF]

22. The probem with that is...

... if Wilshire didn't pass the info to the FBI because he thought they were bozos, then what did he do? What action did he take?

In the summer of 2001, Wilshire knew there was going to be an attack, knew Almihdhar was probably going to be involved and knew Almihdhar was in the US. What did he do? He continued to block the FBI. Plus, don't forget Moussaoui, and what about Almihdhar's role in the Cole bombing, of which Wilshire was aware?

[paulthompson]

38. Yes, we don't know why

There are various theories put forth to explain why the CIA might have held this information from the FBI. For instance, Lawrence Wright in the book Looming Tower discusses some possibilities.

One theory is that the CIA hated FBI agent John O'Neill and kept the information to themselves specifically from him. O'Neill was said to be an expert on al-Qaeda but also a grandstander with a big ego who tended to swoop in and take credit for other people's work and elbow everybody else out of the way. I think there's definitely some truth to this. The key evidence in favor of this is that O'Neill retired from the FBI on August 22, 2001, and on August 23, the CIA finally told the FBI some limited information about Alhazmi and Almihdhar.

But even if this is true, it would not explain why the CIA didn't do more after O'Neill was gone. They continued to hide the fact that the two hijackers were involved in the USS Cole bombing, that they were linked to the monitored Yemen hub (and that Almihdhar was the son-in-law of the owner of the hub, who was a close pal of Osama), that they were linked to the Malaysia summit, and much more. The info about them was marked as routine. One day AFTER 9/11, FBI agent Ali Soufan, who was in Yemen, was sent a big packet of information about these hijackers so he could interview a suspect in a Yemen jail who knew them. Soufan had been repeatedly trying to get info about these two hijackers from the CIA for months before 9/11, to no avail. When he saw the packet of information about them that had obviously been collected before 9/11 and realized all the info that had been deliberately kept from him and others, he was so disgusted that he immediately rushed to the bathroom and threw up.

So while O'Neill may have been one factor, there clearly were more important factors, as the cover up continued after O'Neill retired.

Another theory is that the CIA thought Alhazmi and Almihdhar were Saudi government agents penetrating al-Qaeda, so they didn't want the FBI to know about them and mess up their penetration operation. Wright pushes this theory in his book. In fact, there's some evidence for it. They kept in contact with some Saudis living in California who were almost certainly Saudi intelligence agents, including one working at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles.

But that doesn't explain the CIA's behavior, though. For one thing, Alhazmi and Almihdhar were undeniably major league killers. Almihdhar at least was involved in both the Cole bombing and the African embassy bombings (and the CIA knew this before 9/11), and both had a long resume of militant activity, including fighting in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. If they were Saudi penetration agents, why didn't that stop the Cole bombings or embassy bombings? Furthermore, before 2000, the CIA had officially declared the Saudi intelligence agency to be untrustworthy and particularly hostile regarding al-Qaeda. They knew there was deep sympathy for al-Qaeda within Saudi intelligence, to the point that foreign intelligence agents visiting Saudi offices noticed that many Saudi agents had Osama bin Laden screen saver pictures on their government computers. Even if you conclude the CIA thought they were Saudi agents, it boggles the mind that the CIA would let these two guys live in the US for over a year and a half and not keep their own tabs on them and find out who they were meeting with and so on.

It is very possible that some elements of the Saudi government were supporting the 9/11 attacks, and so that could explain the Saudi contact with these hijackers. But it's not credible to me that the CIA would have just completely left them alone due to their Saudi ties. There had never been such a clear case of known al-Qaeda agents living in the US as these two guys were a clear case. All kinds of alarm bells would have been going off. Even if there was a deliberate hands off policy not to monitor them due to their Saudi ties, the CIA would have still been picking up all kinds of information about them inadvertently. For instance, their frequent calls from the US to the monitored Yemen hub and even visits from the US to the Yemen hub. The CIA would have had to have actively ignored info from those calls and visits pointing to them planning an attack in the US at a time when all info about the Yemen hub was considered red hot and of the highest intelligence priority.

Another possibility: perhaps the CIA had recruited Alhazmi and Almihdhar as their own penetration agents but in fact were played. Imagine the two hijackers fed a stream of bad info to the CIA to mislead and cover up the 9/11 plot. That's theoretically possible, but it doesn't fit with anything that we know about them. They were regularly meeting with and calling other hijackers. For instance, during the summer of 2001, they took a series of practice flights across the US with a mix of other hijackers, and took part in meetings with most of the other hijackers in Las Vegas and so on. Even if the CIA had thought they'd turned them, there's no way they would have completely trusted them when they had a history of killing US citizens in the embassy and Cole bombings. Even the most cursory keeping of tabs on them would have shown all kinds of red flags, like Alhazmi's constant flight training efforts or the buying of first class airplane tickets with their own credit cards to fly back and forth across the US for no logical reason. They left a huge trail of evidence directly pointing to the 9/11 attacks, even doing things like paying for pizza delivery with their credit cards when having meetings with other hijackers!

Maybe some people can think of some other theories to explain why the CIA did what they did, but I can't think of any. This wasn't just a case of incompetence because we know what the CIA knew about them and know the CIA knew they were important al-Qaeda and hadn't forgotten about them. An example of this is a curious meeting that took place in June 2001 between the CIA and FBI. It's a long story, but basically, the CIA allowed some FBI agents to see some surveillance photos of Alhamzi and Almihdhar, but wouldn't tell the FBI who the photos were of or anything about them. It has been pointed out by more than one observer that the whole incident appears to be a test by the CIA to see what the FBI knew about them (and the CIA came away reassured that the FBI knew their names but didn't recognize their pictures or know anything about them).

[KJF]

76. "They're coming here"

There are problems with the "innocent illegal covert operation" theory, such as what Rich B, one of Wilshire's evident co-conspirators, told a roomful of witnesses in late July:

...during one of my updates in late July when, as we speculated about the kind of attacks we could face, Rich B. suddenly said, with complete conviction, ‘They’re coming here.’ I’ll never forget the silence that followed.
Tenet, pp. 158.

Given that he told a roomful of witnesses that the major attack in the summer of 2001 was going to be in the US, he is going to find it awful hard to then claim he discounted the possibility of the attack being in the US, which is basically what Wilshire's defence must be. Also remember that Rich B probably knew that Almihdhar would be involved in the attack and that Almihdhar was in the US.

Even if Wilshire and Rich B had convinced themselves that Almihdhar and Alhazmi were working for the GID, working for them and part of a cell planning attacks in Malaysia, they would still have them under tight surveillance. Intelligence agencies don't trust their assets, they actively mistrust them and keep them under surveillance. If you remember Omar al-Nasiri, he was about as loyal as they come, but MI5 had him under surveillance in London. And why exactly would a terrorist organisation headquartered in the Middle East move to Paterson, New Jersey, to plot attacks on Malaysia? That makes no sense.

[paulthompson]

92. Very good points

While it's obviously true that a lot of people in government in the summer of 2001 were oblivious to the al-Qaeda threat, those who knew a lot about al-Qaeda and were in a position to do something about them were not at all oblivious. The idea that they thought the attack could only be overseas is a complete BS after the fact cover your ass explanation. The top people in the CIA certainly were very aware that al-Qaeda could attack the US soon, as this entry indicates:

August 15, 2001: CIA Counterterrorism Head: We Are Going to Be Struck Soon

Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, says in a speech to the Department of Defense’s annual Convention of Counterterrorism, “We are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die, and it could be in the US.”

I especially like your point that having Alhamzi and Almihdhar live in the US while plotting an attack in Southeast Asia made no sense whatsoever. Not so much now, but at that time Southeast Asia was a great haven for al-Qaeda types. A lot of governments were in complete denial that there even was a terrorism problem and there were very busy terrorist camps in several countries. It was probably one of the easiest places for al-Qaeda to operate, so much so that al-Qaeda number two leader Ayman al-Zawahiri personally visited Indonesia in early 2001 to consider shifting operations there. That's also why the al-Qaeda summit in January 2000 was held in Malaysia, because it was probably the safest place to gather a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders.

Not only that, but the number of al-Qaeda operatives successfully planted in the US have been very few and far between. There have been a few, but most have been more like al-Qaeda sympathizers or wanna-bes with very tenuous connections to the al-Qaeda leadership. Whereas Alhamzi and Almihdhar were about as hard core and trusted al-Qaeda operatives as you could get, with ties going back to the early 1990s when they were young teenagers. Almihdhar came from an entire al-Qaeda family, with nearly every male working with the group and a number of them dying as suicide bombers. If you managed to get guys like that planted in the US you'd be a fool not to use them in the US, whereas al-Qaeda operatives in Southeast Asia were a dime a dozen. There were entire training camps full of them. The idea that the CIA would somehow have not cared much about these guys because they thought they were part of a Southeast Asian operation is patently absurd.

[paulthompson]

93. By the way...

Some people, even some people on this thread, think there is no such thing as al-Qaeda. That's just not true. But it's easy to see why people think that, because al-Qaeda has been wildly overhyped and distorted on many sides for propaganda purposes, and it's always been more influential as an idea than an actual organization. At the time of 9/11, experts believe there were probably only about 1,000 al-Qaeda operatives in the world. Of those, the number with the abilities and trustworthiness to take part in an attack (or weren't working on other things like fundraising or logistics) was much smaller. That's why you find the same names popping up in different attacks, because there just weren't that many al-Qaeda people to go around. Almihdhar's involvement in the embassy bombings, USS Cole bombing, and 9/11 is a good example (operationally, you'd never want to do that if you can help it, because intelligence agencies usually figure out who was involved in an attack and start following them and rounding them up). People like me who research this stuff closely see the same names coming up over and over because al-Qaeda had so few able hands. Out of those people, the number who were able to get visas to live in the US were smaller still.

That's why Alhazmi and Alhmidhar coming to the US would have been such a big deal. There literally had never been such a golden intelligence opportunity like this about al-Qaeda for US intelligence ever, to find out two die-hard al-Qaeda agents were in the US while they were still there and not long after they'd gone. That would have been the holy grail, a chance to uncover their possible sleeper agent associates elsewhere in the US. FBI field agents have said after 9/11, and I believe them, that had they known these guys were in the US they would have thrown all available resources to this case. So for the CIA to have known these guys were in the US and not doing anything about it or seemingly not even care much because they thought they were taking part in an attack overseas doesn't make any sense. These two guys were not just two suspicious characters who might be up to no good, the CIA knew they had ties to al-Qaeda as long as your right arm. They knew all kinds of things about them before 9/11, like that they had tried to smuggle missiles into Saudi Arabia in 1998 or that they'd been taking plane flights with masterminds of previous attacks.

[noise]

115. This is why Tenet's

explanation of poor watchlisting/cable trafficking procedures is so outrageous. A real response would have included something like daily briefings with FBI officials. One wonders why FBI officials were not present at the July 10 briefing with Rice. Nobody at that meeting thought the agency with jurisdiction in the US should be in the loop?

[petgoat]

88. Don't Think of an Elephant is the trick, to coin a phrase. nt

[chimpymustgo]

100. Cheney is overseeing "war games" with NORAD that VERY day??? MIHOP.

[awoke_in_2003]

60. I prefer IHOP

especially when the stuffed French toast is on special :)

[navarth]

67. self delete

[crankychatter]

84. since I don't know what lihop and mihop are, I guess I'm safe

oops, read a little further there, cranky old guy

[spooked911]

99. for Pete's sake-- 9/11 was Made to Happen on Purpose!

Anyone who doesn't realize this by now has their head buried in the sand

[defendandprotect]

23. MIHOP ... and neo-cons also blocked FBI re first attack on WTC ....

and then they/PNAC'ers tried to push Clinton into attacking IRAQ ...


ALL kinda familiar .... ??? !!!

[bertman]

29. THE NEW PEARL HARBOR, Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9-11 by

David Griffin. He puts it nicely when he says that EVERYBODY thinks it's a conspiracy--when two or more people plan something dire, that's what it is by definition. Whether it's BinLaden or some other as yet undisclosed person or persons, remains to be decided.

Sorry, but I have no idea what LIHOP or MIHOP means. Is this top secret, verboten, or is it going to tank the thread if someone tells me.

Thank you for your help,

An Acronym-Impaired Individual (AA-II) ((-:


Edited for clarifuckation

[Pastiche423]

32. What they mean...

LIHOP = Let It Happen On Purpose

MIHOP = Made It Happen On Purpse

[Vincardog]

33. LIHOP = Let It Happen On Purpose MIHOP = Made It Happen On Purpose GIH = Glad It Happened

[defendandprotect]

42. It's "made" or "let" ...."it happen on purpose" -- your choice ---

and thanks to Griffin and many, many others who have exposed this deadly corruption --

[bertman]

50. thanks to all who helped me on the acronyms. Also, now that I have your attention, what means n/t?

I see that at the end of a thread all the time. Thanks in advance.

[JohnyCanuck]

51. n/t = no text (other than what's in the subject line)

Some people use EOM (End of Message) for the same purpose. i.e. to indicate that there is no text following what was written in the subject line.

[bertman]

58. Damn, I'm thick. Thanks, Johny.

[JackRiddler]

147. LIHOP and MIHOP are a false dichotomy...

both basically pointing to orchestration of the events by elements within the US spook complex, but implying different means (like whether or not the hijackers even existed).

Check this out for a more nuanced graduated treatment of different scenarios:

WHAT IS YOUR "HOP" LEVEL?
TEN SCENARIOS OF WHAT MAY HAVE HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001
http://summeroftruth.org/lihopmihopnohop.html

[sarcasmo]

31. Kick for the truth.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

35. we need transparency

[Enthusiast]

121. This is why they

can't allow Obama to win the election.

[MrScorpio]

37. I'm not sure if this means "inside job"

However, I am very suspicious about what the FBI has been up to aside from 9/11.

- Revised COINTELPRO tactics against American Muslims

- Illegal electronic surveillance

- FBI incompetence

- Various other criminal activities

I'm thinking that the story is even bigger than what's been revealed.

[barbtries]

39. MIHOP

i wonder if the truth will come out in my lifetime, and i doubt it, sadly.

[JackRiddler]

55. The over-under for the broad outlines documented academically is 10 years.

It may take 40 to become the commonplace view, however.

And another 20 to be admitted by government military historians.

[grannylib]

43. Keep pushing for the truth to come out! Even if it may be too late

to impeach the Imbecile while he's in office, he still needs to be held accountable for this filth.

[Jackpine Radical]

48. Hey, waiddaminit, waiddaminit

http://bp0.blogger.com/_tZbZyZlKGwg/SGHykrtDx2I/AAAAAAAAANg/fo9mDokYnZc/s320/Hansen+-+tin+foil+hat.jpg

OK, let's talk.

Amazing if all this stuff starts coming out just about now.

[Canuckistanian]

52. October the Tenth?

Is there something magical about that date?

[BuyingThyme]

53. kcik

Thanks Babs!

[AuntPatsy]

54. You would think this would be major for the nightly media...you would think...considering the

importance of such criminal behavior from our own goverment agencies...

[paulthompson]

63. Hopefully...

There will be some coverage when Bamford's book comes out. But I'm not that hopeful. There's been some really stunning info in some recent books, including Ron Suskind's, that have gotten way less coverage than they deserve. It seems that if the info comes out in a book first, the info doesn't count for much. Newspapers are only interested in exclusive scoops by their own reporters. :(

[noise]

66. Even the investigative reporters won't take this on

For example Suskind (One Percent Doctrine), Mayer (The Dark Side) and Shenon (The Commission). Suskind and Mayer suggest torture was an overreaction by the CIA and Bush White House. That explanation rests entirely on the idea that the CIA and the White House acted in good faith in the lead up to 9/11. Shenon chalks everything up to incompetence and bureaucratic failures. Blocking FBI agents from sharing crucial intel doesn't sound remotely like incompetence or bureaucratic failure.

[Imagevision]

56. Absolutely no mention of FBI totally ignoring Crawley's intelligence

about the mid-eastern dudes in Arizona flight schools learning how to fly 737's 90 days before 9-11.

[New Dawn]

57. K&R

[sce56]

59. IBTMTTD

The following pictures were taken by Richard Levin that day, he is not using these to talk conspiracy just his way of remembering the loss of that day and he did a good job of documenting the collapse of the second tower.
All photos were taken with a 35mm SLR camera, using a 28-70 zoom or a 70-200 telephoto zoom, a 2x telephoto extension and a tripod
The originals are posted here http://www.reservoir.com/extra/wtc/index.h...
I have downloaded them and used a drawing program to point out the things that don't fit the pancake collapse theory. I suggest you download and look more closely at them! To see explosions going off between ten and twenty floors below the collapse is quite revealing also note the explosive ejection of material way below the collapse!


















The picture below is the same as the above with highlighting added














The picture below is the same as the above with highlighting added












The picture below is the same as the above with highlighting added









The picture below is the same as the above with highlighting added










I say this is the best photographic proof explosions happened in a controlled demolition!
No I don't have a degree in structural engineering but I do have an eye and I have set off explosives in my military training!
The time it took for the building to completely collapse was according to the 911 commission 10 Seconds impossible for that to happen unless they were in a free fall with no lower support at each floor!
from http://physics911.net/closerlook

Look at this video taken on the scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX9gdRST6zM
it shows more of those explosions even farther below the collapse wave!

[Politicalboi]

61. The CIA did 9/11

All this bullshit about info from other countries warning us is bullshit. There were no dots to connect to terrorist. All dots lead to the White House and Israel.

[victordrazen]

71. Exactly.

This is a "pretend" "revelation".

[jrockford]

72. Naturally, like most things that benefit Israel, it harms the U.S. profoundly. nt

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

129. Sadly, horribly, and most of all shockingly, this is true.

[noise]

62. Get ready for an outraged op-ed from Tenet

His usual response is to suggest that criticism of CIA officials is outrageous. For some unknown reason we are simply supposed to believe he is a honest man.

Tenet has made a huge deal about his efforts to warn the White House and NSA Rice (in the lead up to 9/11) but they wouldn't listen. He is also a key advocate of torture. Yes, it is torture regardless of Tenet's sickening Orwellian spin.

Tenet cannot have it both ways. Either he truly wanted to prevent a terrorist attack or he didn't. The record shows that CIA sat on crucial intel at the very same time Tenet claims he was panicked about a terrorist attack.

Why should the public keep pretending the CIA (and the FBI ITOS) acted in good faith? Where is the good faith?

[BuyingThyme]

65. kcik

[navarth]

68. kick - to learn more

[noise]

70. How about a joint press conference

Rich B. (Chief of Alec Station) and Rod Middleton (Chief of the FBI's Bin Laden Unit).

Why don't these men explain what happened in the lead up to 9/11?

[me b zola]

77. K&R

[JohnyCanuck]

79. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Above quote from poet and philosopher George Santayana

Many people automatically reject the possibility that there might be any aspect of "inside job" or intentional holding back by authorities to ensure the 9/11 attacks went ahead. They just can't conceive that any official US government agency or agents could be that cynical and callous as to allow the loss of innocent life basically to take advantage of the propaganda value it would provide in helping to launch a war.

If people were more familiar with some historical events in the not too distant past it would not seem so entirely far fetched or "off the wall." Here are 3 examples of the US military or intelligence agencies participating in false flag operations or planning the use of false flag terror attacks in order to demonize targeted enemies over the last 50 years or so.

Operation Gladio/Strategy of Tension

Strategy of Tension

SNIP

The “strategy of tension” denotes a highly secretive series of interconnected covert operations conducted jointly by the CIA and MI6 largely in Western Europe during the this period. Well-documented by several respected historians, confirmed by official inquiries, and corroborated by former intelligence officials, the “strategy of tension” is one of those unsavoury moments in contemporary history that we don’t learn about in school, or even university.

My favourite book on the subject, and the most authoritative in my view, is Dr. Daniele Ganser’s NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (2004). Published in the UK as part of the “Contemporary Security Studies” series of London-based academic press Routledge, Ganser’s study is the first major historical work to bring the “strategy of tension” into the mainstream of scholarship.

During the Cold War, indeed through to the late 1980s, the United States, United Kingdom, and Western European governments and secret services, participated in a sophisticated NATO-backed operation to engineer terrorist attacks inside Western Europe, to be blamed on the Soviet Union. The objective was to galvanize public opinion against leftwing policies and parties, and ultimately to mobilize popular support for purportedly anti-Soviet policies at home and abroad – most of which were really designed to legitimize brutal military interventions against nationalist independence movements in the “Third World”.

SNIP

The existence of this secret operation exploded into public controversy when in August 1990 upon the admissions in parliament by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, the existence of ‘Gladio’ was exposed as a secret sub-section of Italian military-intelligence services, responsible for domestic bombings blamed on Italian Communists. Ganser documents in intricate detail how a subversive network created by elements of western intelligence services – particularly that of the US and UK - orchestrated devastating waves of terrorist attacks blamed on the Soviet Union, not only in Italy, but also in Spain, Germany, France, Turkey, Greece, i.e. throughout western Europe. Despite a number of European parliamentary inquiries; an European Union resolution on the Gladio phenomenon; NATO’s close-doors admissions to European ambassadors; confirmations of the international operation from senior CIA officials; and other damning documentary evidence; NATO, the CIA and MI6 have together consistently declined to release their secret files on the matter.

http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2007/05/strategy-of-tension.html

More on Gladio/Strategy of Tension in the article http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8110.htm">Sword Play by Chris Floyd

Operation Northwoods: Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff planned false flag terror attacks to justify an invasion of Cuba.

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1, 2001


In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

Operation Ajax: The overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh (also spelled Mussadiq or some similar variant thereof) and installation of the Shah as dictator and compliant US/British puppet.

A 'great venture': overthrowing the government of Iran
by Mark Curtis

This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis's book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995).

SNIP

The coup decision is taken

The go-ahead for the coup was finally given by the US in late June - Britain by then already having presented a 'complete plan' to the CIA (54) - and Churchill's authorisation soon followed, the date being set for mid-August. (55) That month, the head of the CIA operation met with the Shah, the CIA director visited some members of the Shah's family in Switzerland, whilst a US army general arrived in Tehran to meet 'old friends', among them the Shah and General Zahidi. (56)

When the coup scenario finally began, huge demonstrations proceeded in the streets of Tehran, funded by CIA and MI6 money, $1 million dollars of which was in a safe in the US embassy (57) and £1.5 million which had been delivered by Britain to its agents in Iran, according to the MI6 officer responsible for delivering it. (58)

According to then CIA officer Richard Cottam, 'that mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars.' (59) One key aspect of the plot was to portray the demonstrating mobs as supporters of the Communist Party - Tudeh - in order to provide a suitable pretext for the coup and the assumption of control by the Shah (my emphasis /JC). Cottam observes that agents working on behalf of the British 'saw the opportunity and sent the people we had under our control into the streets to act as if they were Tudeh. They were more than just provocateurs, they were shock troops, who acted as if they were Tudeh people throwing rocks at mosques and priests'. (60) 'The purpose', Brian Lapping explains, 'was to frighten the majority of Iranians into believing that a victory for Mussadeq would be a victory for the Tudeh, the Soviet Union and irreligion'. (61)

The head of the CIA operation also sent envoys to the commanders of some provincial armies, encouraging them to move on to Tehran. (62) In the fighting in the capital, 300 people were killed before Musaddiq's supporters were defeated by the Shah's forces. A US general later testified that 'the guns they had in their hands, the trucks they rode in, the armoured cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the military defence assistance program'. (63)

'All in all', US Iran analyst Barry Rubin comments, 'only five Americans with a half-dozen Iranian contacts had organised the entire uprising'. (64) The British input, however, had clearly been significant. One Iranian agent of the British - Shahpour Reporter, who subsequently served as adviser to the Shah - was later rewarded with a knighthood, before becoming a chief middleman for British arms sales to Iran, in particular for the manufacturers of Chieftain tanks and Rapier missiles. (65) Two years after the coup, the head of the MI6 end of the operation became Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of Britain's leading 'independent' academic research institutes. (66)

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l30iran.htm

In this particular case the mercenary mobs paid by the British and US agents to act as communist party members supporting Mossadegh and to attack mosques and religious leaders were intended to scare (i.e. terrorize) the Iranian people into believing the propaganda spread by the US and British intelligence agencies that Mossadegh had an alliance with the communists and intended to turn Iran into a totalitarian, communist state and ban all religious expression by Iran's large, devout Muslim population.

[G_j]

89. K&R !

[MrSlayer]

91. This didn't happen.

It was 18 Iraqis with exacto knives sent by Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden acting in concert. :puke:

[Norrin Radd]

95. Smells like...limited hangout. n/t

[judasdisney]

96. E-r-g-e-n-e-k-o-n

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergenekon_network

[OakCliffDem]

97. Kick

[dbt]

98. Mo Kick

:evilgrin:

[DeeDeeNY]

101. K & R

[Raster]

103. The 9/11 Official Story Protectors should be showing up any time now....

questioning everyone's intelligence, rudely proclaiming their "facts" and demanding this be moved to the dungeon "...because it makes us all look crazy."

[spiritual_gunfighter]

123. I think more and more people are coming around

to the MIHOP theory (IMO it isnt a theory at all but a fact). When we see what eight years of this criminal administration has done to our country and the world at large, it isnt much of a stretch to believe that a false flag event serving as a pretext to start a war in Afghanistan and Iraq and probably Iran etc. is possible. It's happen in American history before, the Gulf of Tonkin incident has been proven to have been a false flag operation with documentation to back it up. But the MSM and the people that accept what they report as gospel want to paint the people that have studied this evidence and has come to the same conclusion as I and many others as "tin hat conspiracy theorists". To me the real "conspiracy theory" which is a lot more far fetched is that a guy in a cave in Pakistan orchestrated a perfectly executed attack on the most powerful country in the world using 19 men with box cutters. Now that is a crazy story.

[Raster]

138. Yes, and adding to that: those 19 men with box cutters were able to

invade and terrorize the most restricted airspace on the planet, above the world's most technologically advanced superpower. And in addition, said superpower could not even PROTECT their airspace above their capital city.

Nope, I don't believe a word of it. I KNEW-KNEW!-when I saw the second jet impact who was ultimately responsible.

[JohnyCanuck]

104. This story from across the pond has a familiar ring to it.

BBC reveals how Britain’s spies monitored Omagh bombers
By Steve James
2 October 2008

According to a BBC Panorama programme, “Omagh—What the Police Were Never Told,” the British government’s intelligence monitoring service, Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), was actively monitoring mobile phones used in the 1998 car bombing of Omagh, Northern Ireland, in which 29 people died.

The allegations are made by John Ware, an investigative journalist who has written on Northern Ireland since 1974, and who has closely followed the Omagh atrocity.

Ware reports that in 1998, GCHQ in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, were handed a mobile phone number by the then Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch (SB), with a request for “live monitoring” of the number along with information that the number related to active bombing operations by the dissident Irish republican group, the Real IRA. This was prior to an August 2, 1998 bomb attack on Banbridge, Northern Ireland, which was also monitored by GCHQ.

The request came as part of SB’s own efforts to create a telephone monitoring system against the Real IRA. SB was unable to monitor phones in the Irish Republic and had therefore requested GCHQ assistance. Ware interviewed a former RUC assistant chief constable, Ray White, who claimed that SB had a unit on standby to intercept any bombing operation discovered by the telephone monitoring.

SNIP

O’Loan’s report also noted allegations made by an Irish police officer, Garda John White, who claimed insight into Real IRA activities prior to the bombing.

In 2003, these surfaced in the Observer regarding the activities of a Paddy Dixon—a Dublin car thief and informant who stole cars to order for the Real IRA. According to White, Dixon also passed details of the cars to the Irish authorities, allowing a number of Real IRA operations to be stopped. White told the Observer that, shortly before Omagh and following another aborted car theft, he had discussions with a superior officer in a Dublin pub. White claimed he was told, “John, we are going to let this one go through.”

White claimed his concerns over the consequences were ignored.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/omag-o02.shtml

[The Backlash Cometh]

105. We want the truth! WE are ready to handle it!

[tanyev]

106. Kick for later.

[fascisthunter]

108. This is Huge..... Inside Job Me Thinks

yes, I do think a sociopath such as Cheney and Bush could be sick enough to do such a thing.

[Flarney]

109. K and too late to R!

David Ray Griffin's updated "New Pearl Harbor - Revisited" that just came out is a must read...

http://www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Revisited-Cover-Up/dp/1566567297/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222956660&sr=8-1

[juno jones]

110. OK, now anybody who hasn't see this before

Go check out DrDebug's journal. There are some anazing *coincidences* concerning the companies that made money in shady trades just days prior to 9/11 and the companies we have bailed out and are currently in the position to be handing this additional $700 billion bailout to. The names include AIG, Lehman Bros, etc.


Anyone who can really think that our government was a blushing innocent on that day is the real moonbat.

[RoccoR5955]

114. Interesting how the same companies who made money on those deals

are folding seven years later. They were probably were on shaky ground before this whole financial crisis/farce.

Perhaps it's all linked.

K&R

[victordrazen]

125. I noticed that too. They were all under investigation

for fraud (most of the financial organizations in the wtc) and AIG, which was Silverstein's insurance co.

[redqueen]

111. There has been NO accountability at all ... and a whitewash of an investigation.

I don't know why more people aren't outraged about it.

Then again, how many are outraged about the JFK assassination and coverup? Or the MLK assassination and cover up?

[bagrman]

112. read Crossing the Rubicon.

[musette_sf]

130. agreed, great book

that more people should read.

[OneBlueSky]

117. the very LAST thing that those in power want is . . .

for the truth about what happened on 9/11 to come out . . . as long as they can maintain the fiction of the "official" story, they can keep pretending that misadventures like Iraq and Afghanistan are somehow justified . . .

but the truth will eventually become known . . . and then -- watch out! . . . the American people are gonna be PISSED! . . .

[BuyingThyme]

119. kcik

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

127. This isn't going to be like the Kennedy assassination...

...the mountains of evidence, of which this video is only a small part, simply cannot and will not be suppressed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJL91tfFJ9Q

[BuyingThyme]

131. kcik

[BuyingThyme]

133. kcik

[petgoat]

134. kikikikikicick nt

[Raster]

139. Kick for TRUTH!

Wake Up America!:kick:We Can Do Better!

[QueenOfCalifornia]

141. Dear Babylonsister,

I am so happy someone kicked this because I missed it on Wednesday. I am sending the link to a big email list -

You be da bomb!

[BuyingThyme]

143. kcik

[Kurovski]

144. Kick. (nt)

[sce56]

148. Congratulations babylonsister! Some how this did not get moved to the dungeon!

Mineta and the secret orders of Cheney

In 2003, Former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified before the 9/11 Commission:

Mineta: "During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President...the plane is 50 miles out...the plane is 30 miles out....and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president "do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said "Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!??"

Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory often claim that Mineta was referring to United 93 and not to unidentified plane coming towards Washington D.C. before the explosion at the Pentagon.

Now listen carefully to this interview..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGI5BmNd7AE

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

149. Kick for truth...

http://desip.igc.org/NoPlanesOn911.html

[balantz]

150. Thank you! Kicking for truth! n/t

[balantz]

151. dupe