March 13, 2008Robert Reich Says Telecoms Shouldn't Get Immunity for Spying for the NSAHouse Democrats are right to try to deny telecommunications companies protection from lawsuits over National Security Agency wiretaps, writes Robert Reich, a former labor secretary under President Clinton and now a professor of public policy at Berkeley.
Im old enough to remember J. Edgar Hoovers FBI and Nixons CIA, and the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But anyone whos even halfway sentient ought to know theres a Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. So youd think that executives at the nations biggest telecoms AT&T, Verizon, and so on would be alert to the possibility that government might illegally snoop on Americans. Yet these executives didnt blink an eye when the NSA came knocking. You want records of domestic phone calls Sure, help yourself E-mails Yeah, we got tons. Theyre yours!. . . Corporate executives have a duty to disobey government orders when they have reason to believe those orders are illegal or unconstitutional and make the government go to court to get what it wants. The duty to refuse is especially important when it comes to the nations telecoms, whose technological reach is extending deeper and deeper into our private lives.Sure, theres a delicate balance between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties. But thats for courts to decide - not spy agencies and not telecom executives.
Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard was facing embarrasment with her new American public last night after it emerged that she doubted the official account of the September 11 attacks.
The 32-year-old French star has swept this yearâs best actress awards, also receiving a Bafta, Golden Globe and a CĂ©sar for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
Miss Cotillard, who earned under ÂŁ1 million in 2007, could expect her Oscar success to significantly increase her earning power. She is due to start filming Public Enemies with Johnny Depp.
But the actress faces a potential backlash in the US over comments she made in an interview in France. Footage which surfaced on the internet showed her questioning the New York terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 1969 moon landing.
"I think weâre lied to about a number of things," she said, singling out September 11. Referring to the two passenger jets flown into the World Trade Centre, Miss Cotillard said: "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."
Miss Cotillard suggested that the towers, planned in the early 1960s, were an outdated "money sucker" which would have cost so much to modernise that it was easier to destroy them.
Turning to Americaâs space programme, she said: "Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I donât believe all they tell me, thatâs for sure."
Miss Cotillard, who was born and brought up in Paris, made the comments on Paris PremiĂšre â Paris DerniĂšre (Paris First â Paris Last), a programme first broadcast a year ago.
They were largely ignored at the time, but appeared yesterday on a French website. Miss Cotillardâs film career began in Luc Bessonâs 1998 film Taxi. She is an environmental activist, who once worked as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace.
News of Miss Cotillardâs comments comes at a time when Franco-American relations appear to be thawing, following Parisâs refusal to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
President Nicolas Sarkozy insists that he is pro-American, supporting so-called Anglo-Saxon economic reforms and going on holiday to America.
Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
Related
For American Muslims since 9/11, few acts could be considered more ill-advised or foolishly provocative than enrolling in flight school to get your pilot's license.
Which is why Monem Salam had to do it.Well, proving a point wasn't the sole reason. Salam has dreamed of being a pilot since he was a boy in Pakistan. He was drawn to Bellingham Airport by the same force as everyone in his beginner's class. He wanted to touch the sky.
It's just that the others didn't have everyone they knew telling them they were nuts.
"I heard it over and over, from all the Muslims I spoke to," Salam said recently from his Bellingham office, shortly after his noon prayer.
"They'd say: 'Are you crazy, Monem? Are you trying to make trouble for yourself?' "
Behind the doubts loomed 9/11. A sense that life for American Muslims fundamentally changed that day. Why poke that bee's nest of suspicion? Why not lay low?
"And yet every non-Muslim I spoke to urged me to go for it, to follow my dream," he said. "It made me wonder: Are we Muslims afraid of something that is not really there?"
So Salam, a 35-year-old adviser for an Islamic mutual fund, went to the airport to ask around about pilot training. Then he enrolled in a flight school, Bellingham Aero.
The next day, the FBI showed up, asking questions about him. He was the school's first student ever to attract the scrutiny of the FBI. Even though he has been a U.S. citizen since 1986.
"My Muslim friends were all saying 'See?' " Salam says. "They said it was inevitable I'd end up on a watch list."
Maybe someone at the airport got suspicious and decided better safe than sorry. Salam doesn't know. It happens, often enough that when he's in airports as a passenger, he'll hide behind a ticket counter or a flight info board to bow down in prayer to Allah.
It's all part of Flying While Muslim.
But this story, Salam says, "is not about victimization." This time, a funny thing happened on the way to our usual pigeonholes. We stopped ourselves.
The good folks at Bellingham Aero soothed the FBI and encouraged Salam. Though one non-Muslim friend admitted his gut reaction to Salam's pilot lessons was "He's a terrorist," Salam resisted the lure of paranoia.
Last summer, he earned that pilot's license. He adheres to Sharia â Islamic religious law â so he couldn't celebrate with a drink. He jumped up and down, hooting and hollering. Later he flew, heart soaring, out over the San Juans.
All this is captured in a new film, "On a Wing and a Prayer: An American Muslim Learns to Fly." It will air on KCTS Channel 9 in Seattle, at 10 p.m. May 20.
Salam says mostly what you hear about Muslims are stories of righteous anger. And what you hear about America and Muslims are stories of distrust.
"My story is that anybody in America, including Muslims, who has a dream can go out and fulfill it," he said. "There are obstacles but you can't assume this country is against you. If you do, it becomes self-fulfilling."
I don't know if that's headline news. But it ought to be.
Lurking behind the massive cancellation of flights this week due to faulty wiring is the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off New York's Long Island in July 1996 that killed all 230 people on board.
Although the plane in question was a Boeing 747, not an MD-80, the disaster, as the AP and other news sources have faithfully reported, "was blamed on fuel vapors ignited by wiring."
USA Today, in fact, quotes Bernard Loeb, the National Transportation Safety Board honcho, as saying that fuel tank issues are "very serious matters."
Loeb should know. As head of the TWA Flight 800 investigation, he did everything in his power to show how one could blow.
In fact, however, in its effort to avoid the obvious missile strike, the NTSB never got beyond rank speculation as to the cause of the TWA Flight 800 disaster.
To make the "fuel vapors ignited by wiring" theory work, the NTSB needed to establish at least two critical points.
The first was that the fuel-air mixture in the center wing tank was sufficiently volatile that the least spark could set it off. The second was that the aircraft was capable of spontaneously generating that spark.
(Column continues below)
The theoretical spark itself would require two separate causes of its own â a break in the insulation of the wiring and a breakdown in the system that limits the strength of the current through those wires.
All these conditions were fully necessary to validate any mechanical theory for TWA Flight 800's destruction.
As the investigation evolved, NTSB officials steered their efforts to the realm of what scientists call the "unfalsifiable," the realm where theories can neither be proved nor disproved.
In early November 1996, Loeb told CBS's Ed Bradley that static electricity from a faulty Wiggins coupler most likely triggered the explosion. Loeb neglected to add that there was no evidence that any Wiggins coupler was faulty.
The FBI's James Kallstrom was reportedly furious at this indiscretion, but NTSB Chairman Jim Hall reassured Kallstrom that the NTSB "has more leeway to speculate because we're not bound by criminal legal standards."
With or without the Wiggins coupler, static electricity stood as Loeb's "pet theory."
It remained so, as AP reporter Patricia Milton noted, until "scientists at Wright Patterson laboratories had proved unable to produce a single scenario under which static electricity could have caused a significant spark."
After many fruitless experiments by outside labs, the NTSB contracted with Combustion Dynamics "to evaluate the consistency between the computer calculations of the full-scale CWT [center wing tank] combustion model and other information and evidence obtained during the investigation."
The NTSB had hoped "that by conducting this evaluation ... it would be possible to narrow the number of probable ignition location(s) within the CWT."
This hope was in vain. The NTSB had to concede defeat yet again: "Therefore, the rules-based analysis did not provide a definitive determination regarding the probability that any given location within the CWT was the ignition location."
With all of its investigative hypotheses reduced to rubble, the NTSB chose to reconstruct the results itself in a way more to its liking:
"Finally, analysis of the results of computer modeling of combustion in a full-scale CWT under conditions simulating those of TWA Flight 800 indicated that a localized ignition of the flammable vapor could have generated pressure levels that, based upon failure analysis, would cause the damages observed in the wreckage of the accident airplane's CWT."
Note all the "coulds" and "woulds." No outside scientific agency or person had made such a statement. In fact, all contracted testing and analysis ran counter to the NTSB speculation.
Even Patricia Milton, whose book on the crash â "In the Blink of An Eye" â read like an FBI defense brief, had to acknowledge that the CWT pieces retrieved and studied in one simulated explosion after another "bore no resemblance to those of Flight 800."
She consoled herself, however, with the thought that the government was at least "proving negatives."
By the year 2000, the NTSB had exhausted just about all possible scientific testing that might have reinforced its wiring and fuel vapor scenarios.
The scientific community had too much integrity to validate desperate theories either about fuel volatility or ignition sources. Accordingly, the NTSB ceased scientific inquiry along these lines.
From that point forward the board descended from modern science to old-fashioned alchemy and summed it all up in a fable worthy of Harry Potter, titled "Factors Suggesting the Likelihood that a Short-Circuit Event Occurred on TWA Flight 800."
In this report, aimless speculation goes on and on and on to the point of absurdity, considering the NTSB's acknowledgement that the computer modeling done by the two research laboratories â Sandia National Laboratory and Christian Michelsen Research â had failed.
"The results of that modeling could not be used to determine the most likely ignition location," said the report.
The NTSB officials, in fact, knew the whole exercise was a failure. At the final NTSB hearing, an honest staffer, Joseph Kolly, came to the following reluctant conclusion:
"The search for the probable ignition location was pushed to the limits of current technology. An accounting of the scientific uncertainties was meticulously maintained throughout the entire experimental, computational, and analytic processes.
"In the end, the uncertainties were too great to permit the identification of the probable location of ignition."
No, Joseph, the uncertainties were not too great at all. The ignition source was a missile. Mr. Loeb just did not let you in on it.
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The Tampa Tribune
Published: April 12, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE - A jury considering charges against six South Florida men accused of plotting to blow up the Chicago Sears Tower and the Miami FBI headquarters reported Friday it has been unable to reach verdicts for any of the defendants.
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard instructed the jury of seven men and five women to continue trying to reach agreement. News that the panel is at an impasse after 10 days of deliberations, however, raises the possibility that the high-profile case could be poised for a second mistrial.
The defendants, struggling construction workers who hung out in a Liberty City warehouse, are charged with conspiring to support terrorism, to destroy buildings and to wage war on the United States. If convicted of all counts, the men face up to 70 years in prison.
An earlier trial in the so-called "Liberty City 7" case ended in a mistrial Dec. 13 after jurors agreed to acquit one man but could not reach verdicts for the other six.
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PILOTS FOR 9/11 TRUTHhttp://www.pilotsfor911truth.org
Contact: Robert Balsamoe-mail: pilots@pilotsfor911truth.org
Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) via the Freedom of Information Act to obtain their 2002 report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77", consisting of a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file and Flight Path Animation, allegedly derived from Flight 77's Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The data provided by the NTSB contradict the 9/11 Commission Report in several significant ways:
In August, 2006, members of Pilots for 9/11 Truth received these documents from the NTSB and began a close analysis of the data they contain. After expert review and cross check, Pilots for 9/11 Truth has concluded that the information in these NTSB documents does not support, and in some instances factually contradicts, the official government position that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001 .According to the 9/11 Commission Report, which relied heavily upon the NTSB Flight Path Study, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37:46 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001 . However, the reported impact time according to the NTSB Flight Path Study is 09:37:45 . Also according to reports, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon and by doing so, struck down 5 light poles on Highway 27 in its path to the west wall.
The information provided by the NTSB does not support the 9/11 Commission Report of American Airlines Flight 77 impact with the Pentagon.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth is committed to discovering the truth surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 . We have contacted both the NTSB and the FBI regarding these and other inconsistencies. To date, they have refused to comment on, correct, refute, retract or offer side-letters that might explain the discrepancies between what they claim are the data extracted from the FDR of AA Flight 77 and the official story alleging its crash into the Pentagon.As concerned citizens and professionals in the aviation industry, Pilots for 9/11 Truth asks, why have these discrepancies not been addressed by agencies within the United States Government? Why have they falsely represented their own data to the American people? Pilots for 9/11 Truth takes the position that an official government inquiry into these discrepancies is warranted and long overdue. We call upon our fellow citizens to write to their Congressional representatives to inform them of these discrepancies and call for an immediate investigation into this matter. For more information please visit pilotsfor911truth.org.
For complete member list please visit http://pilotsfor911truth.org/core.html
For detailed analysis, please view Pandora's Black Box - Chapter Two - Flight Of American 77
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:Sept 11, 2001 Flight Data Recorder Analysis
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers
http://pilotsfor911truth.org
9/11: UNITED 93 DATA PROVIDED BY US GOVERNMENT DOES NOT SUPPORT OBSERVED EVENTS
by rob balsamo
http://www.opednews.com
PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PILOTS FOR 9/11 TRUTHhttp://www.pilotsfor911truth.org
Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) via the Freedom of Information Act to obtain United Flight 93 Flight Data Recorder information, consisting of a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file and Flight Path Animation, allegedly derived from Flight 93 Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The data provided by the NTSB contradict observed events in several significant ways:
In May, 2007, members of Pilots for 9/11 Truth received these documents from the NTSB and began a close analysis of the data they contain. After expert review and cross check, Pilots for 9/11 Truth has concluded that the information in these NTSB documents does not support, and in some instances factually contradicts, the official government position that United Airlines Flight 93 created the impact crater as reported, in Somerset County, PA on the morning of September 11, 2001. According to the US Govt, United Airlines Flight 93 approached Somerset County from the North-Northwest at a high altitude on the morning of September 11, 2001. However, many witnesses contradict altitude as well as approach path. Also according to reports, and as the impact crater suggests, United Airlines Flight 93 impacted terrain at an almost vertical 90 degree angle, while the Flight Data Recorder shows a 35 degree angle with up-sloping terrain, further reducing impact angle.
The information provided by the US Government does not support reports of United Airlines Flight 93 approach, impact angles, and lack of jet fuel at Somerset Country, PA.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth is committed to discovering the truth surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 . We have contacted both the NTSB and the FBI regarding these and other inconsistencies. To date, they have refused to comment on, correct, refute, retract or offer side-letters that might explain the discrepancies between what they claim are the data extracted from the FDR of United Flight 93 and the events observed. As concerned citizens and professionals in the aviation industry, Pilots for 9/11 Truth asks, why have these discrepancies not been addressed by agencies within the United States Government? Pilots for 9/11 Truth takes the position that an official government inquiry into these discrepancies is warranted and long overdue. We call upon our fellow citizens to write to their Congressional representatives to inform them of these discrepancies and call for an immediate investigation into this matter. For more information and in depth analysis please visit pilotsfor911truth.org.
Members of Pilots For 9/11 Truth at http://pilotsfor911truth.org/core.html
Co-Founder Of Pilots For 9/11 Truth Member List Individual Citations
Defence lawyers for convicted republican Michael McKevitt have claimed that gardaĂ investigating the Omagh bombing did not adequately investigate the credibility of FBI agent David Rupert.
McKevitt is one of five men being sued by relatives of the victims of the Omagh bombing in 1998.
Mr Michael O'Higgins SC for McKevitt was questioning Superintendent Diarmuid O'Sullivan in relation to five statements Mr Rupert gave to gardaĂ during the investigation into the bombing in 2001.
Mr O'Higgins said Rupert's statement was 'a tissue of lies' and described him as a 'fraudster, drug smuggler, people smuggler and a confidence trickster'.
Mr Rupert's evidence was key to the 2003 conviction of McKevitt, who was jailed for directing terrorism. McKevitt has always denied knowing Mr Rupert.
The prosecution in this civil action are seeking to establish that McKevitt was the Real IRA leader who carried out the 1998 Omagh bombing.
Superintendent O'Sullivan said it was not up to the gardaĂ to investigate matters relating to alleged fraud committed by Mr Rupert in the US.
But he said he believed 90% of Mr Rupert's evidence in relation to the activities of dissident republicans had been substantiated.
He said three judges in the Special Criminal Court and in the Court of Criminal Appeal had tested the credibility of Mr Rupert's evidence.
Earlier, the court heard the address of a vocational school in Donegal was given to Mr Rupert as a location to ship weapons and ammunition to.
Supt O'Sullivan said Mr Rupert had given gardaĂ a business card, which he said he was given from a well known republican Joe O'Neill .
It had 'Kathleen Askin, Vocational School, College Street, Ballyshannon' handwritten on the top.
Supt O'Sullivan said that this was the address that David Rupert was given by Joe O'Neill to ship military supplies from the US for the continuity IRA.
TWO READS ABOUT FBI AGENTS WHO MAKE THINGS GO BOOM
1st Cops train; kids feel it
KP school buildings shake as FBI holds explosives demo at psychiatric center By Joe Darrow write the author May 16, 2008 | 11:25 AMIf you were near the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center last Wednesday afternoon and happened to hear explosions or see smoke, you were not mistaken, but neither were you in danger, according to the FBI. In fact, you as well as a number of children and teachers in nearby schools were distant witnesses of counter-terrorism training for local law enforcement officials.
Last week the New York FBI Counterterrorism Division and special agent bomb technicians, along with the Suffolk County bomb squad, offered more than 60 federal, state and local law enforcement personnel a five-day course in indoor post-terrorism incident crime scene investigation. Police recipients included investigators, bomb technicians, crime scene response units and crime lab personnel. The Wednesday session included an outdoor demonstration at the former mental hospital of explosive devices â and the evidence their detonation leaves behind â used in recent terrorist attacks. Instructors set off about 30 different explosives in a two-hour span, an FBI spokesman said.
Several blasts were heard and felt by onlookers as well as children and staff in nearby Kings Park School District buildings.
Students at William T. Rogers Middle School, about a quarter-mile away from the blast site, heard the explosions and saw smoke rising over the trees, according to a parent. Kings Park Superintendent of Schools Martin Brooks said school employees at San Remo "said they could feel the building's walls shake."
"I understand the need to hold the drills, but they were loud," Brooks said. "If you're doing a lesson on math and a loud explosion occurs ... the attention of the kids gets diverted to the noise."
The district had been notified ahead of time, the superintendent said, and he sent a letter home to parents the day before, May 6, warning them of the potential disruption to students. He said the district received a few complaints from parents, but beyond the momentary disturbance, students took the noises in stride.
"I think that the staff was prepared and therefore the kids were fine," Brooks said. "It went off uneventfully from our point of view."
Although, he added, "In the best of all worlds it would have been done in some place where we couldn't have heard all the noise."
Of greater concern than the noise, Brooks said, was the fact that the demonstrations were being held from 12:30 to 2:30 pm, the latter about the time teens are dismissed at nearby Kings Park High School, creating the possibility of students wandering onto the blast site.
"The Suffolk County Police Department has assured me that officers will be stationed throughout the area of the drill to insure that curious students and residents don't actually wander onto the area of the site," Brooks wrote in his advisory letter. "In addition we have notified our building principals and asked them to take the necessary precautions to keep students away from the site."
New York FBI office spokesman Special Agent James Margolin said law enforcement officers had anticipated this concern, placing officers to intercept anyone approaching the training site. As far as he had heard, police had encountered no wanderers. "Even if someone did manage to wander onto the scene, they would have been noticed" and made to stay behind a perimeter, he said.
The bomb demonstration was "perfectly safe," Margolin stressed, saying it produced some flashes and bangs, but no safety risk. "The worst effect to the neighboring population was some loud noises occasionally," he added.
According to Margolin, the grounds of the former Kings Park mental hospital, now property of the state Office of Parks with a portion embodying the Nissequogue River State Park, was selected for the workshop due to its combination of large open spaces and abandoned buildings, necessary for staging both inside and outside terrorist attack scenarios.
"This isn't something we do all the time," Margolin said. "On balance, ... disturbance to the community is outweighed by the training benefit that law enforcement gains."
Steve Weber of San Remo, who has a son, Nick, 12, at the middle school and a daughter, Angel, 9, at RJO Intermediate School, only slightly further down Old Dock Road heading away from the blast site, said the feeling among parents he's spoken with is that the explosions were "way too close to the schools."
"Not only is this a disruption to class, but what if something goes wrong? There is no margin for error," Weber wrote in an email.
"Law enforcement agencies train in the Nissequogue River State Park on a regular basis, using the old buildings for this training," Weber wrote. "I 100-percent support this, even if the park has to be closed while they are training â it's just a small accommodation which we can make to support those who risk their lives to protect us. I just don't think that the [park] is the place for the detonation of explosives and other live fire exercises."
2nd readFriday, May 16, 2008 â Last update: 1:16 p.m. MDT Salt Lake CityClear72˚Forecast | Traffic Powered bySign in Register Subscribe E-edition %3Cbody%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3D%22adDiv%22%3E%3Cscript%20language%3D%22javascript%22%20src%3D%22http%3A//media.fastclick.net/w/get.media%3Fsid%3D14631%26m%3D1%26tp%3D5%26d%3Dj%26t%3Dn%22%3E%3C/script%3E%3Cimg%20src%3D%22http%3A//63.225.61.6/IMPCNT/ccid%3D18141/area%3Ddn.local.article.position0/adsize%3Dbanner1/aamsz%3D728x90/keyword%3D/site%3D/acc_random%3D60958233/pageid%3D60958233%22%20width%3D1%20height%3D1%20border%3D0%3E%3C/div%3E Visit MormonTimes Home Utah Community World & nation Movies Sports LDS Newsline Business Arts & Entertainment Photos Opinion Obituaries Classifieds Jobs Cars Real Estate Misc Shop Archives Nichols says bombing was FBI op Detailed confession filed in S.L. about Oklahoma City plot
By Geoffrey FattahDeseret Morning News Published: Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 1:02 p.m. MST 0 comments E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - Page: 1 2 Next >The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involvement of others. However, one congressman who has investigated the bombings remains skeptical of Nichols' claims.
The declaration was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
The most shocking allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts.
Story continues below Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers.Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.
When contacted, the FBI's main office in Washington, D.C., said it could not provide immediate comment on Nichols' claims Tuesday.
Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "while he was serving in the U.S. Army, he had been recruited to carry out undercover missions."
In the next few years, the two men hatched the bombing plot. In October 1994, "McVeigh and I stole explosives from a quarry in Marion, Kansas consisting of 8 1/2 cases or boxes containing 229 (2-inch by 16-inch) sticks of the gel type explosive known as Tovex," Nichols wrote, adding that only a small amount was used in the actual bombing.
It was while traveling the gun-show circuit that Nichols claims the two obtained bombmaking knowledge and the materials used in the bombing. One example is that McVeigh allegedly attended a gun show in Knob Creek, Ky., in 1993.
"At this gun show, McVeigh had the opportunity to make contact with about 20 people who were bomb experts. McVeigh told me that he himself had no knowledge about how to construct a bomb, but that he always wanted to gain more knowledge about how to construct bombs," Nichols stated.
Nichols says he knew McVeigh was building the bomb, and in November 1994 he left for the Philippines to get away from the area to avoid being implicated."I did not want to be present when and if McVeigh did explode a bomb. Consequently, I left for the Philippines to be out of the country," he wrote.
That statement contradicts findings of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, whose study on the bombing was made public last December. It indicated Nichols had traveled to the Philippines to receive bombing training by a possible foreign terrorist.
Having not heard of any bombing, Nichols said he returned to the U.S. in January 1995. It was later that, in a fit of rage, McVeigh mentioned Potts' name, Nichols wrote.
"McVeigh said he believed Potts was manipulating him and forcing him to 'go off script,' which I understood meant to change the target of the bombing," Nichols stated.
It wasn't until April 18, 1995, that Nichols said he helped McVeigh construct a bomb at Geary Lake. The bomb was comprised of "metal and white plastic" barrels which were filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and mixed with nitromethane. In all he estimates between 90 to 92 fifty-pound bags of fertilizer went into the barrels and explosive sticks were placed in the holes of each barrel.
Story continues below Nichols said he had no further role in renting the Ryder truck and claims he did not know the target, only that McVeigh "wanted to make a statement" by "targeting some structure."After hearing about the bombing of the federal building, which killed 168 adults and children, Nichols said he panicked when his name came up on the radio and he wanted to turn himself in â but not before hiding evidence, including explosives used in the bombing.
The claims made in the declaration have added yet more twists to the mystery surrounding the bombings. Some familiar with the bombing's history say Nichols' claims seem to indicate the FBI put McVeigh up to the plot as a draw for radicals, but that the situation got out of control and McVeigh became a runaway informant.
After reviewing the declaration, Rohrabacher told the Deseret Morning News that Nichols' claims should be investigated but treated with extreme skepticism.
"I need to caution people to remember that Terry Nichols is a mass murderer," Rohrabacher said. "But if Terry Nichols is beginning to reveal some of the information that's been kept from the public, I'd be very happy about that."
Rohrabacher also expressed disappointment with the FBI and the Department of Justice for not adequately following up on indications there were others who helped Nichols and McVeigh.
The congressman said he no longer is chairman of the subcommittee that conducted the investigation and is "dismayed" that no one else in Congress seems interested in the matter.
Nichols said he has much more information, which he offered to former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, but is willing to divulge only under sworn video deposition. Trentadue said he plans to seek that deposition of Nichols, but "I expect one hell of a fight with the Department of Justice."
Nichols is serving life in prison without parole after being convicted by a jury for his role in the bombing. McVeigh also was convicted and on June 11, 2001 was executed in Terre Haute, Ind.
Jesse Trentadue wishes the family of Ronnie L. White luck - and fortitude - as they seek to find who killed their son while he was imprisoned in a Prince George's County jail.
Mr. Trentadue spent the past 13 years trying to find out why his brother died in a federal prison in Oklahoma and approached everyone from former federal agents to convicted Oklahoma City bomber conspirator Terry Lynn Nichols.
Mr. White was charged with fatally running over a Prince George's police officer. He was held in a cell separate from other prisoners for his safety. State and federal investigations are pending in his strangling death, and county officials ordered jail guards to cooperate with the probe Wednesday after reports surfaced that some had refused to speak with investigators.
But Mr. Trentadue advised family members waiting for answers to steel themselves.
"It's just a horrible fight, a horrible fight," he said Wednesday.
His younger brother, Kenneth, died in an Oklahoma City federal prison in August 1995 after being arrested on a parole violation. Officials said Mr. Trentadue's brother committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell with a braided bed sheet.
But when the Trentadue family asked authorities to release their brother's body to them, they found a corpse marred with bruises and lacerations that a medical examiner later determined were consistent with strangulation.
Mr. Trentadue said he thinks that federal authorities accidentally tagged his brother as "John Doe No. 2" - America's most-wanted criminal at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Since then, the Trentadue family has fought with federal authorities for more information about Kenneth's death, placing an enlarged photo of Kenneth's autopsy on a billboard in Florida and seeking a deposition from Terry Nichols, who is serving a life sentence for helping Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
The NAACP on Wednesday called for the suspension of nine corrections officers who had been charged with watching Mr. White at the Prince George's Corrections Center.
County safety director Vernon Herron told corrections officers that they would have to cooperate with the probe or face disciplinary action after four of the officers reportedly declined to cooperate with state and federal investigators.
Mr. Trentadue, a Salt Lake City trial lawyer, said he has closely followed news of Mr. White's death this week and was struck when he learned that two small bones had been broken in his neck, indicating strangulation.
"That fractured hyoid bone tells all, my brother had all of the classic signs of strangulation," he said.
Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times Inmate Ronnie L. White was strangled at the Prince George's County Correctional Center.
Mr. Trentadue urged the White family to stay strong.
"It will be a tremendous fight, and it will take a lot of resources not only financially, but physically, mentally and emotionally," he said.
Global Research recently published my essay entitled 9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics In this article, I argue that 9/11 should be analyzed as a deep event (an event not fully aired or understood because of its intelligence connections) and above all as one of a series of deep events which from time to time have frustrated peace initiatives or become pretexts for war.
In support of this overall thesis I pointed to features of 9/11 which recalled similar deep events: the still not fully understood outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the JFK assassination, and the so-called Second Tonkin Gulf Incident of 1964 (an alleged attack on U.S. destroyers which we now know never happened).
The similarities between these deep events which have disturbed American history since World War Two suggest that they are not just a sequence of unrelated external accidents, but at least in part the product of some on-going deep indigenous force not yet adequately understood.
In this series of deep events, perhaps the most striking similarities are between the JFK assassination (henceforward referred to as "JFK") and 9/11. Earlier talks and articles I have delivered on this topic are developed even further in my forthcoming much expanded reissue of my early book, The War Conspiracy. As The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War, it is due to be published by the Mary Ferrell Foundation Press in August 2008.
The following essay is the concluding section of the new book, and has never hitherto been published.]
I wish to summarize again the first striking similarity between 11/22/63 and of 9/11/01: the dubious detective work on those two days. Less than fifteen minutes after the Presidentâs assassination, the height and weight of Kennedyâs alleged killer was posted.1 Before the last of the hijacked planes crashed on 9/11, the FBI told Richard Clarke that they had a list of alleged hijackers.2
In the case of Oswald, within fifteen minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, Inspector Sawyer of the Dallas police put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer â "About 30, 5â10", 165 pounds."3 As noted, this height and weight exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswaldâs FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him.4
The announced height and weight were however different from Oswaldâs actual measurements, as recorded by the Dallas police after his arrest: 5â9 1/2", 131 pounds.5 More importantly, there is no credible source for the posted measurements from any witness in Dallas. (The witness said to have spotted him, Howard Brennan, failed to identify Oswald in a line-up.)6 This leaves the possibility that the measurements were taken from existing files on Oswald, rather than from any observations in Dallas on November 22. If so, someone with access to those files may have already designated Oswald as the culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime.
A similar situation pertains to the alleged hijackers on 9/11. For example, shortly afterwards men in Saudi Arabia complained that "the hijackers' `personal detailsâ" released by the FBI -- "including name, place, date of birth and occupation -- matched their own."7 One of them, Saeed al-Ghamdi, claimed further that an alleged photograph shown on CNN (of an alleged Flight 93 hijacker with the same name) was in fact a photograph of himself. He speculated "that CNN had probably got the picture from the Flight Safety flying school he attended in Florida."8
If the above information is accurate, then the details posted by the FBI and CNN about the alleged hijackers cannot have derived from the events of 9/11, with which the survivors in Saudi Arabia would appear to have been uninvolved. Once again this leaves the strong possibility that the details were taken from existing files, rather than from empirical observations on September 11.9
And some of the hijackers, like Lee Harvey Oswald, may have been in CIA files for a special reason: because the CIA had an operational interest in them.
Internal CIA Evidence of Operational Interest in Oswald and the Hijackers
I have speculated that Oswald, like the al-Qaeda trainer Ali Mohamed, might have been a double agent reporting to the FBI about the terrorist group (Alpha 66) with which some law enforcement officers associated him.
I would like now to discuss more unequivocal evidence, from internal CIA records, about an operational CIA interest in first Oswald and later two of the alleged al-Qaeda hijackers, Nawaz al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar. In 2001 as in 1963 the CIA inexplicably withheld information about the subjects from the FBI, which ought categorically to have received it. The anomalies are extreme.
This is now easy to show in the case of Oswald. On October 10, 1963, six
weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, CIA Headquarters sent out two messages about Oswald, a teletype to the FBI, State, and Navy, and a cable to the chief of the CIAâs Mexico City station. Both messages contained false and mutually contradictory statements, and also withheld known facts of great potential importance.10 The teletype to the FBI withheld the obviously significant information that Oswald had reportedly met in Mexico City with a Soviet Vice-Consul, Valeriy Kostikov, who was believed by CIA officers to be an officer of the KGB.11
One CIA officer, Jane Roman, helped draft both messages. In 1995 she was confronted by two interviewers with irrefutable evidence that she had signed off on erroneous information about Oswald in the CIA cable to Mexico City. After much questioning, she finally admitted, "Iâm signing off on something I know isnât true." One of the interviewers, John Newman, then asked her, "âIs this indicative of some sort of operational interest in Oswaldâs file?â âYes,â Roman replied. âTo me itâs indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on the need-to-know basis.â" She later repeated, "I would think there was definitely some operational reason to withhold it [the information at CIA headquarters on Oswald], if it was not sheer administrative error, when you see all the people who signed off on it."12
Other CIA officers withheld important information from the FBI in January 2000, with respect to Khalid al-Mihdar, who would later be identified as one of the al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001. The NSA overheard on a Yemeni telephone about a meeting in Malaysia which al-Mihdar would attend, along with Tewfiq bin Attash, the mastermind of the fatal attack on the USS Cole.13 It notified the CIA but not the FBI. In consequence
[Khalid al-Mihdarâs] Saudi passport â which contained a visa for travel to the United States â was photocopied [in Qatar] and forwarded to CIA headquarters. The information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August 2001. An FBI agent detailed to the Bin Ladin unit at the CIA attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI Headquarters. A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information. Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI.14
Lawrence Wright, reviewing this and other significant anomalies, reported in The Looming Tower the belief among FBI agents following bin Laden "that the agency was protecting Mihdar and [his companion, the alleged 9/11 hijacker Nawaz al-] Hazmi because it hoped to recruit them," or alternatively that "the CIA was running a joint venture with Saudi intelligence" using al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.15 Wright himself speculated in a companion essay he wrote for The New Yorker that "The CIA may also have been protecting an overseas operation and was afraid that the F.B.I. would expose it."16
The Consequences of the CIAâs Withholding of Evidence
As just noted, the CIA, in its teletype to the FBI of October 10, 1963, withheld the information that Oswald had reportedly met with a KGB officer, Valeriy Kostikov. Former FBI Director Clarence Kelley in his memoir later complained that this failure to inform the FBI was the major reason why Oswald was not put under surveillance on November 22, 1963.17 In other words, the withholding enabled Oswald to play whatever role he played on that fateful day, even if it was only to become a designated patsy.
FBI officials are even more bitter about the consequences of the withholding of information about al-Mihdar:
They didnât want the bureau meddling in their business â thatâs why they didnât tell the FBIâŠ.They purposely hid from the FBI, purposely refused to tell the bureau that they were following a man in Malaysia who had a visa to come to AmericaâŠ.And thatâs why September 11 happened. That is why it happenedâŠ.They have blood on their hands. They have three thousand deaths on their hands.18
But the CIA withheld information from the FBI about bin Attash (already the subject of a criminal investigation) as well, even when asked by an FBI agent, Ali Soufan, about bin Attash and the Malaysia meeting. According to Wright,
The agency did not respond to his clearly stated request. The fact that the CIA withheld information about the mastermind of the Cole bombing and the meeting in Malaysia, when directly asked by the FBI, amounted to obstruction of justice in the death of the seventeen American sailors."19
In late August 2001, only days before 9/11, FBI agent Steve Bongardt, complaining about the CIAâs withholding of information about al-Mihdar, correctly predicted in an angry email to the CIAâs bin Laden unit that "someday someone will die."20
The CIAâs Dishonest Efforts to Cover-Up
From the moment Congress, in the 1970s, began to evince an interest in the Kennedy assassination, former CIA officer David Phillips became a vigorous defender of the CIAâs performance. With respect to false information about Oswald in CIA cables both to and from Mexico City (where Phillips was in charge of Cuban affairs for the CIA station), Phillipsâs first response was to dismiss Oswald as "a blip" of no interest.21
A similar defense of the CIAâs failure to act on al-Mihdar was offered to the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by the Director of the CIAâs Counterterrorism Center, Cofer Black: "I think that month we watchlisted about 150 people."22 The same defense was offered by Dale Watson, the FBIâs former counterterrorism chief:
There were a lot of red flags prior to 9/11âŠ.So itâs a mass of information and itâs a sea of threats, and itâs like working against a maze. If you know where the end point of a maze is, itâs certainly easier to work your way back to the starting point than trying to go through the maze and sort out all the red flags.23
The problem with this excuse is that both Oswald and al-Mihdar were singled out for special CIA attention, not left floating in a sea of red flags. The cable to Mexico City which Jane Roman signed off on was not handled routinely, it was sent for signature to the CIAâs Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Thomas Karamessines. And in the case of al-Mihdar in Malaysia, back in 2000
CIA leaders were so convinced about the potential significance of the al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, they not only set up surveillance of it, but provided regular updates to the FBI director [Louis Freeh], the head of the CIA [George Tenet], and the national security advisor [Samuel Berger].24
That Freeh and Berger were being notified at the top about the Malaysia meeting (at the same time that the regular FBI bureaucracy was being cut out) is confirmed in accounts by Terry McDermott and Philip Shenon.25
CIA officials testified falsely to congressional committees with respect to both Oswald and al-Mihdar. James Angleton was asked by the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations about a memoir written by the CIAâs station chief in Mexico City, Win Scott, and later personally retrieved for the Agency after Scottâs death by Angleton himself. Angleton testified that Scottâs "manuscript was fictional and did not include a chapter on Oswald." In fact, according to Jefferson Morley, "The only surviving manuscript is clearly nonfictional and does have a chapter on Oswald."26
Both George Tenet and Cofer Black testified before the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that the FBI had been granted access to the information linking al-Mihdar and Tewfiq bin Attash (alias Khallad), the mastermind of the Cole bombing. The 9/11 Commission, after a lengthy review of the matter, concluded "this was not the case."27
The CIA, Oswald, and Al-Mihdar: Suppression of Vital Records
That the CIA regards its relationship to the suspects Oswald and al-Mihdar as sensitive is further illustrated by its suppression of vital evidence with respect to both. Although in the 1990s all government agencies were required by law to submit their Oswald-related documents to the Assassination Records Review Board, the CIA has been vigorously resisting pressure to do this in the case of former CIA officer George Joannides. In 1963 Joannides was the case officer for AMSPELL, the CIAâs operation in support of the Cuban exile group DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil). In August 1963 the DRE was in contact with Oswald and participated with him in a radio broadcast which was later distributed with CIA help throughout Latin America.28
According to Jefferson Morley, "four decades after the fact, the most important AMSPELL records are missing from CIA archives â perhaps intentionally." Monthly reports on DRE activities were filed by CIA case officers Ross Crozier and William Kent, and these records were declassified by the ARRB for the periods September 1960-November 1962 and after May 1964.
But the board was unable to locate any monthly AMSPELL reports from December 1962 to April 1964. There was a seventeen-month gap in the AMSPELL records, which coincided exactly with the period in which George Joannides handled the group.29
With respect to 9/11, all that is known about suppression so far has to do with the public record. Here it is striking that the Report of the Joint Inquiry by Congress into 9/11 has one glaring redaction of twenty-eight pages, dealing with "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11th hijackers while they were in the United States." Press reports have specified that this refers to Saudi money which reached al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi in 2000 while they were in San Diego. According to committee cochair Senator Bob Graham,
The draft contained a twenty-eight page passage that detailed evidence that Saudis in the United States â Saudi government "spies," Graham called them â had provided financial and logistical support to [al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi] while they lived in Southern California.30
Similarly the 9/11 Commission failed to deal with the information on an FBI "hijacker timeline" that al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi were met at the airport on their first arrival in the United States by Omar al-Bayoumi, the transmitter of the Saudi funds, whom Graham claimed was obviously "a low-ranking Saudi intelligence agent."31 The FBI findings were leaked in an early story in Newsweek:
At the airport, they were swept up by a gregarious fellow Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had been living in the United States for several years. Al-Bayoumi drove the two men to San Diego, threw a welcoming party and arranged for the visitors to get an apartment next to his. He guaranteed the lease, and plunked down $1,550 in cash to cover the first two months' rent.32
One month later, "In January 2003, Graham and the other members of the committee were âŠthe focus of a criminal investigation by the FBI into whether someone on the panel had leaked classified information."33
The 9/11 Commission avoided this sensitive area. It cited the FBI Chronology a total of 52 times in its footnotes, for example at 493n55, concerning al-Mihdarâs travel from Yemen to the Malaysian meeting. But it suppressed the FBIâs report that al-Bayoumi met al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi on their arrival; and it substituted what Shenon calls an "improbable tale" supplied by al-Bayoumi himself: namely, that he had run into the two men two weeks later by accident "at a halal food restaurant" near Los Angeles.34
It is clear that two members of the 9/11 Commission staff who redacted this part of the report â Dietrich Snell and Philip Zelikow â were concerned to tone down what junior staffers considered to be "explosive material" on the Saudis.35 Shenon tells how this section of the 9/11 report was rewritten by Snell and Zelikow, until the text "removed all of the most serious allegations against the Saudis."36
But Snell and Zelikow may have been protecting the CIA as well as the Saudis. We have already noted how Lawrence Wright, looking at the extraordinary CIA record on withholding information about al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi, concluded, "It is also possible, as some FBI investigators suspect, the CIA was running a joint venture with Saudi intelligence."37
Conclusion
It is clear, as everyone who has studied these matters closely and impartially concurs, that there have been cover-ups of the CIAâs relationships to first Oswald and later al-Mihdar â cover-ups which in both cases have not yet been adequately resolved.
A reasonable conclusion from the available evidence is that the cover-ups were in order to conceal prior CIA operational interest in the designated subjects, just as in the case of Ali Mohamed in the early 1990s. It could of course be a coincidence that people of operational interest to the CIA became designated subjects in the deep events of JFK and 9/11. Another, more disturbing possibility is that those responsible for these events knew of the CIAâs operational interest, and exploited it in such a way as to ensure that the government would be embarrassed into covering up what really happened on those days.
A lot of books about 9/11, including my own, have focused on the roles played by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld on that day. But it is clear that 9/11 involved a USG connection to at least one figure (Ali Mohamed) so sensitive that it had been covered up from the time of the Nosair murder in 1990 and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. It is probable that Oswaldâs covert USG connections also dated back to the time of his strange release from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1959, enabling him to travel to the Soviet Union.38
In short there is a substratum of covert operations underlying both events that antedates the presidencies in which they occurred. Thus one should not expect the cover-up of 9/11 in the G.W. Bush administration to dissipate simply because the Democrats take over the White House, just as the Johnson administrationâs cover-up of the Kennedy assassination did not dissipate with the election of Richard Nixon.39
This is said not out of despair, but out of belief in the ultimate resilience and good sense of the American people. The analysis in this book is that Americaâs involvement in two disastrous wars â first Vietnam and later Iraq â was not an outcome of the peopleâs will, but rather in large part because of deep events that were used to manipulate that will. Thus this analysis is not an attack on America, but on that manipulative mindset that has twice succeeded in maneuvering America into war.
This dominant mindset is not restricted to intelligence agencies, though it is largely rooted there. Over time it has spread into other parts of government, and has also corrupted large sections of the media and even universities. That the mindset is widespread does not however make it either omnipotent or invincible.
It is important to identify the dominant mindset clearly, if we are ever going to displace it. It is important also to recognize that the dark topics discussed in this book are not representative of America as a whole. In the half century since the CIAâs first adventures in Burma and Laos, America has continued to be, as in the two centuries before it, a source of life-enhancing innovations, such as the computer and the internet.
As Amy Chua has written in her book Day of Empire,
If America can rediscover the path that has been the secret to its success since its founding and avoid the temptations of empire building, it could remain the worldâs hyperpower in the decades to come â not a hyperpower of coercion and military force, but a hyperpower of opportunity, dynamism, and moral force.40
I have tried to suggest in this book that the key to this rediscovery is the
identification and displacement of the manipulative forces that have maneuvered America, almost unsuspectingly, into two unnecessary and disastrous wars.
If there is any merit to my analysis, then, to isolate those forces, we must press for the truth about both the Kennedy assassination and 9/11.
NOTES
1 Transcript of Dallas Police Channel Two, 12:44 PM; cf. Channel One 12:45 PM,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/; Warren Report 5, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 397, 23 Warren Commission Hearings 916.
2 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 13-14. The list of 19 names, accepted without question by the 9/11 Commission Report, was given by the FBI to the press on September 14, 2001 (Daily Telegraph, September 15, 2001,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/15/whunt15.xml).
3 Transcript of Dallas Police Channel Two, 12:44 PM; cf. Channel One 12:45 PM,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/; Warren Report 5, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 397.
4 E.g. Dallas FBI Report from John Fain, May 12, 1960, 17 Warren Commission Hearings 704, NARA #157-10006-10213 ("Height: 5â10" Weight: 165 lbs." [inaccurate description supplied by Marguerite Oswald]); CIA HQ Cable DIR 74830 to Mexico City, 10 Oct 1963, NARA #104-10015-10048, reproduced in John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 512 ("five feet ten inches, one hundred sixty five pounds").
5 Fingerprint card dated "11-25-63," 17 Warren Commission Hearings 308.
6 Warren Report 5, 144; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2006), 10-13, 78n. After seeing Oswald twice on television, Brennan picked out Oswald in a second lineup (Warren Report, 143).
7 Daily Telegraph, September 23, 2001,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml.
Cf. Guardian, September 21 2001,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/21/afghanistan.september112 :" Abdulaziz
Al-Omari has also come forward to say he was not on the flight from Boston that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. An electrical engineer who works in Saudi Arabia, Mr Al-Omari said he was a student in Denver during the mid-1990s, and that his passport and other papers were stolen in a burglary in the US five years ago. ⊠`The name is my name and the birth date is the same as mine,â he told Asharq al-Aswat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. `But I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Centre in New York.â"
8 Daily Telegraph, September 23, 2001,
9 On October 4, 2001, the FBI issued a press release showing what appeared to be photos from surveillance videotape of two hijackers, Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz Al-Omari, entering Portland Jetport on the morning of September 11, 2001 (FBI Press Release, October 4, 2001,
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/100401picts.htm ). If valid, these would constitute evidence from the event itself. However the photos are anomalous, in that they show two time superimposed stamps, one showing 5:45, the other showing 5:53. The photos are not cited as evidence in the 9/11 Commission Report. On July 22, 2004, the date of the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, CNN aired what they said was surveillance videotape of two hijackers, Majed Moqed and Khalid al-Mihdar. entering "at one of the security screening points at Dulles International" (CNN, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/22/lad.04.html ). The authenticity of the videotape has been challenged, however, because it lacks the time and date and location identification normally burned into a surveillance video image (Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions [New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005], 117-19).
10 I have argued that the conflicting messages were part of a so-called "marked card" or "barium meal" test to determine if and where leaks of sensitive information were occurring. This was a familiar technique, and was the responsibility of the CI/SIG or Counterintelligence Special Intelligence Group which drafted the two cables. See Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files,1994-1999 (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2007), 17-18, 92; also Peter Dale Scott, "Oswald and the Hunt for Popov's Mole," The Fourth Decade, III, 3 (March 1996), 3;
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=519798.
11 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II, 30-33.
12 Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 196-98. See Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II, 30-33.
13 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 310.
14 9/11 Commission Report, 502n44.
15 Wright, The Looming Tower, 312, 313.
16 Lawrence Wright, "The Agent," New Yorker, July 10 and 17, 2006, 68.
17 Clarence M. Kelley, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City: Andrews, McMeel, & Parker, 1987), 268.
18 James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of Americaâs Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 224.
19 Wright, The Looming Tower, 329. In his New Yorker story (p. 70), Wright wrote that "By withholding the picture of Khallad [bin Attash]âŠthe C.I.A. may in effect have allowed the September 11th plot to proceed."
20 9/11 Commission Report, 271; Wright, The Looming Tower, 353-54.
21 David Atlee Phillips, Nightwatch, 139; quoted in Morley, Our Man in Mexico, 184. Morley observes that in the 1970s Phillips offered a total of "four not entirely consistent versions of the story of Oswaldâs visit to Mexico City."
22 J. Cofer Black testimony before 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry, 107th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 24, 2003.
23 Dale Watson testimony before Joint Inquiry, 107th Cong., 2nd Sess., September 26, 2002.
24 Amy B. Zegart, Flying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007), 117.
25 Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why TheyDid It (New York: HarperCollins, 20050, 294n45; Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve/Hachette, 2008), 141.
26 Morley, Our Man in Mexico, 7, 294.
27 9/11 Commission Report, 267.
28 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 81-86; Morley, Our Man in Mexico, 170-77.
29 Morley, Our Man in Mexico, 177.
30 Shenon, The Commission, 50-51.
31 Larisa Alexandrovna, "FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report," RawStory, February 28, 2008, http://rawstory.com/news/2008/FBI_documents_contradict_Sept._11_Commission_0228.html (met at the airport); Shenon, The Commission, 52 (al-Bayoumi). Al-Bayoumi "apparently did work for Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar" ("The Saudi Money Trail," Newsweek, December 2, 2002, http://www.newsweek.com/id/66665).
32 "The Saudi Money Trail," Newsweek, December 2, 2002. The FBI "hijacker timeline" was released by the FBI on February 4, 2008. See Larisa Alexandrovna, "FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report, Rawstory.com, February 28, 2008,
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/FBI_documents_contradict_Sept._11_Commission_0228.html.
33 Shenon, The Commission, 54.
34 9/11 Commission Report, 217; Shenon, The Commission, 52-53.
35 Shenon, The Commission, 398.
36 Shenon, The Commission, 398.
37 Wright, The Looming Tower, 313. Looking at the same evidence, Christopher Ketcham has raised an alternative possibility, that "the CIA may have subcontracted to Mossad, given that the agency was both prohibited by law from conducting intelligence operations on U.S. soil, and lacked a pool of competent Arabic-fluent field officers. In such a scenario, the CIA would either have worked actively with the Israelis or quietly abetted an independent operation on U.S. soilâŠ. When in the spring of 2002 the scenario of CIA's domestic subcontracting to foreign intelligence
was posed to the veteran CIA/NSA intelligence operative, with whom I spoke extensively, the operative didn't reject it out of hand" (Christopher Ketcham, "Cheering Movers and Art Student Spies: What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?" CounterPunch, February 7, 2007,
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=73&contentid=4253&page=2 ).
38 Oswald requested a dependency discharge from the Marines in August 1959, "on the ground that his mother needed his support" (Warren Report, 688). Accordingly Marine Lt. A.G. Ayers, Jr. signed a document for Oswaldâs release to inactive duty on September 11, 1959 (19 WH 679, cf. 17 WH 762) "by reason of hardship (19 WH 678). However Lt. Ayers should have known that Oswald had no intention of staying in Texas to support his mother; he had already, on September 4, 1959, signed an affidavit in support of Oswaldâs passport application "to attend the College of A. Schweitzer, Chur, Switzerland and the Univ of Turku, Turku, Finland" (22 WH 77-79). (It is a sign of some covert intrigue that the language of instruction at the University of Turku was Finnish, a language Oswald did not know.)
39 A significant symptom of this enduring substratum has been the Bush Administrationâs protection of Samuel Berger, Clintonâs national security advisor. Berger pleaded guilty in April 2005 to having stolen 9/11 documents from the National Archives (Shenon, The Commission, 414). A condition of his plea bargain was to submit to a Justice Department polygraph test, to determine what documents had been stolen. Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a long-time critic of CIA operations in Afghanistan, revealed to the House in February 2008 that he had written to the Bush Justice Department, demanding that it administer the polygraph test, and that the Justice Department had rejected his demand (Congressional Record, February 26, 2008, House, pp. H1065-H1072). We have already seen that Berger when in office was receiving regular reports from the CIA about the presence of al-Mihdar and al-Hamzi at the Kuala Lumpur meeting (Zegart, Flying Blind, 117). It is possible that these were the reports he was stealing from the Archives, and that the Justice Department refusal to administer the polygraph test is part of a cover-up to protect the CIAâs relationship to the two Saudis.
40 Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance â and Why They Fall (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 342.
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War, due in August 2008. This previously unpublished essay is the concluding section of the new book, which can be ordered from the Mary Ferrell Foundation Press by clicking here at http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/MFF_Store. His website is http://www.peterdalescott.net.