The
Propaganda Preparation for 9/11,
The
mystery surrounding the death of John O'Neill: by Chaim Kupferberg ,
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca
, 13 June 2002 (revised 19 September 2002) The URL of
this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP206A.html
In
the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center, the
finger of guilt was directed toward the only plausible author for such a
sophisticated and ruthless act of terror - Osama bin Laden.
Throughout
the late '90's, we were informed that bin Laden had declared war on
America by reason of the American military presence on Saudi soil in the
wake of the Persian Gulf War. We were told how bin Laden, ensconced in
Afghanistan, headed up a world-wide terror franchise whose sophistication
and global reach dwarfed that of the Iranian-financed Hizballah or Islamic
Jihad (previously, the most widely known of the terror organizations among
the masses in the Middle East). Bin Laden's organization, al-Qaida, was
presented to us as something entirely new in the annals of terrorism - a
far-flung, sophisticated empire of terror, possessing - possibly - weapons
of mass destruction, while having no clear or viable state sponsor behind
it (as the Afghani Taliban were merely its resident protectors).
In short, by September 11, the United States now had a bona fide
enemy - and, as they say in criminal justice parlance, a suspect with
motive, means, and opportunity.
And
while I was a bit taken at how quickly - and confidently - the fingers
were pointing only hours after the 9/11 bombings, I was positively shaken
by the first red flag that popped up. His name was John O'Neill - or more
precisely, he is the seam that shows. Dated September 12, in a Washington
Post article by Vernon Loeb, it was revealed that O'Neill, who died in his
capacity as head of security for the World Trade Center, was also formerly
the New York FBI Counterterror chief responsible for the investigation
into Osama bin Laden. That could perhaps be written off as one of those
freak synchronicities. There were the other items - reported quite
blandly, in that "there's nothing to see here, folks" tone -
that gave me that sinking feeling. Apparently, O'Neill had a falling-out
with the Ambassador to Yemen over his investigative style and was banned
from returning there. But then there was that other nugget that I had
trouble digesting - that O'Neill had resigned from a thirty-year career in
the FBI "under a cloud" over an incident in Tampa - and then
left to take up the security position at the WTC (only two weeks before!).
The
seam that shows...
For
the bulk of his career, like most of his FBI colleagues, John O'Neill was
largely unknown to the public at large - respected in his circle, to be
sure, yet scarcely meriting much mention in the media - beyond being
referenced now and then as an expert on counterterrorism. Yet in the few
months leading up to September 11, O'Neill was now suddenly the subject of
a series of seemingly unrelated controversies - the first, in July,
involving his dispute with the State Department over the conduct of the
bin Laden investigation in Yemen; and the second, in August, in which he
was reported to be under an FBI probe for misplacing a briefcase of
classified documents during an FBI convention in Tampa.
In
the light of the aftermath of this second controversy - the documents were
found, "untouched", a few hours later - one wonders why this
seemingly minor news would merit such lengthy coverage in the Washington
Post and New York Times. Keeping in mind the fact that these latter
articles on O'Neill appeared a mere three weeks before he was to die in
the rubble of the Twin Towers, one wonders if this wasn't a
well-orchestrated smear campaign against O'Neill, with a bit of unintended
"blowback" - as this now-discredited counterterror chief in
charge of all bin Laden bombings would finally make the news as a fatal
casualty of bin Laden's final bombing. Coincidence? Or was there something
more here that would bear investigating?
My
gut told me that, in the months preceding September 11, somebody was out
to either discredit John O'Neill or, alternatively, to plant
disinformation that could later be used to divert any investigator from a
fruitful reconstruction of the forces behind 9/11.
Or, quite possibly, was a mistake made - one pointing the way
toward a plan whose scope goes well beyond the designs of Osama bin Laden?
In other words, could we spot the telltale fingerprints of a propaganda
campaign preceding 9/11?
Well,
as they say, a hypothesis is only as good as its usefulness in ferreting
out reality. My hypothesis: that the events of September 11 were planned
by those who not only had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out
the plan, but also were best placed to manage the consequences stemming
from it, as well as managing the flow of information. If this were an
"inside job", the first thing to do was to look at who conveyed
specific information on bin Laden before - and I stress, before - 9/11,
for they were most likely involved wittingly or not with those who
masterminded it.
Virtually
the first "smoking gun" was presented the day after 9/11, when
Vernon Loeb and Dan Eggen reported in the Post that Abdel Bari Atwan,
editor of the Al-Quds al Arabi newspaper in London, "received
information that he [bin Laden] planned very, very big attacks against
American interests" only three weeks before 9/11. Moreover, the
article reported that Atwan "was convinced that Islamic
fundamentalists aligned with bin Laden were 'almost certainly' behind the
attacks." Incidentally, Atwan had personally interviewed bin Laden in
Afghanistan in 1996 - among the very few to do so. As reported by Michael
Evans in the August 24, 1998 issue of The Times, Atwan "is trusted by
bin Laden."
Curious,
perhaps, that Atwan seemed to be one of the major "point men"
used in elaborating the Osama bin Laden "legend", as they say in
intelligence parlance. In a U.S. News article dated August 31, 1998, Atwan
informs us that bin Laden "is a humble man who lives simply, eating
fried eggs, tasteless low-fat cheese, and bread gritty with sand. He hates
America." No flash in the pan, this interviewer. Apparently, bin
Laden kept Atwan's business card tucked away in his toga pocket. "Bin
Laden phoned this newspaper, phoned me last Friday," Atwan revealed
in an ABC News LateLine Transcript dated August 25, 1998. We'll come back
to ABC News shortly.
While
solidly implicating bin Laden the day after 9/11, Atwan was also the
media's "go-to" guy back in 1998 when he informed us, after
President Clinton bombed tool sheds in Afghanistan, that bin Laden issued
this threat against the United States: "The battle has not started
yet. The response will be with action and not words." In the same
article (which I took from Nando Times), ABC News is the source for an
additional threat called in by Ayman al-Zawahiri, a senior bin Laden aide:
"The war has just started. The Americans should wait for the
answer." Only a few months before that, ABC had conducted its
televised interview of bin Laden. By the summer of 1998, primed by Atwan,
ABC NEWS, and a surprisingly small clique of well-worn sources, we had
come to know bin Laden as America's latest "Saddam", "Qaddafi",
"Noriega" - take your pick and set your bomb sites.
By
October 2000, when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in Yemen, in case there was
any doubt, Atwan offered Reuters his helpful analysis with regards to the
source of blame: "I do not rule out that this was undertaken by Osama
bin Laden. Yemeni groups don't have the experience to carry out this kind
of operation." Atwan
informed Reuters that bin Laden "was unlikely to claim direct
responsibility for Thursday's attack for fear of U.S. reprisals." One
can imagine, then, that Atwan gave his trusting phone mate cause for many
a sleepless night. With friends like these...
Leading
up to 9/11, by the Spring of 2001, an incriminating wedding videotape,
apparently implicating bin Laden in the Yemen bombing, was circulating
around the Middle East after being broadcast on the ubiquitous al-Jazeera
television station (reconstituted from the BBC TV Arabic Service - more on
them later). In the video, bin Laden, according to the Saudi-owned al-Hayat
newspaper (more on them later, too), recited a poem celebrating the
bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (shades of deja vu here?) This from the
ABCNEWS.com site dated March 1: "Al-Hayat, which carried a photo of
bin Laden and his son at the wedding, said its correspondent was the only
journalist at the ceremony, also attended by bin Laden's mother, two
brothers and sister who flew to Kandahar from Saudi Arabia."
And
yes, here, too, Atwan offers his thoughtful review of the bin Laden video,
courtesy of PTI, datelined London June 22, 2001: "[Atwan] said the
video was proof that the fugitive Saudi millionaire [the Bruce Wayne of
terrorists] was fit, well equipped and confident enough to send out a call
to arms." Why this sudden need for proof? According to Atwan in the
same article: "There have been rumours that [bin Laden] is ill and
that he is being contained by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is quite
clear from the film that he is in good health to the point where he can
fire a rifle, and is free to operate as he chooses." In other words,
limber enough for his starring role in the months ahead.
So
who is Abdel Bari Atwan and why is he anxious to tell us so much?
According to the Winter 1999 issue of INEAS (Institute of Near Eastern and
African Studies), Abdel Bari Atwan, a Palestinian, was born in a refugee
camp in the Gaza Strip in 1950. Educated at the American University of
Cairo, Atwan moved to Saudi Arabia and worked as a writer for the al-Madina
newspaper. In 1978, he moved to London, where he became a correspondent
for the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. In 1988, after shuffling
around between Saudi-owned papers, Atwan was offered a position as editor
of al-Quds al-Arabi. By his account, he was offered a position as the
executive editor of the Saudi-owned al-Hayat (of the bin Laden wedding
video coup), yet turned it down to produce a more independent newspaper as
a challenge to the "empires" of the Saudi-dominated dailies.
Al-Quds
began production in April 1989. A little more than a year later, Saddam
invaded Kuwait and al-Quds stood alone as the only Arab newspaper opposed
to the Persian Gulf War - at least by Atwan's account. According to Atwan:
"Without the Gulf War, we wouldn't have taken such political lines,
which made us well recognized and well respected." In November 1996,
Bari-Atwan braved a twelve-hour car ride through muddy roads, attired in
shabby Afghani rags in below-zero weather, and gave us the early scoop on
bin Laden, conducting a one-on-one interview in bin Laden's [bat]cave.
From then on, the mainstream media - CNN, ABC, BBC, Sky News - looked to
Bari-Atwan and al-Quds as the "independent" voice of the Arab
street.
Incidentally,
in a discussion concerning the matter of Saudi domination of the Arabic
media, taken from the Carryon.oneworld.org site, Atwan, as editor of his
struggling independent, was facing off against Jihad Khazen, the editor of
the Saudi-owned al-Hayat. As Atwan proudly related in support of his
independence: "One day I was called by the BBC-TV Arabic service
[whose staff later reconstituted itself as al-Jazeera television]:
'There's a story on your front page today, saying such and such. Is it
true?' I asked why he should doubt it and he replied: 'It's not published
in al-Hayat [his job offer] or al-Sharq al-Awsat [his alma mater].' "
Atwan boasts: "At least I can say we are 95 to 96 per cent
independent" - leaving out the 4 to 5 per cent spent on bin Laden, I
presume. Whether or not al-Quds truly is independent, this is the cover
story the mainstream media buys into when they come trolling for their
"independent" evidence.
So,
to elaborate further on this (so far) fruitful hypothesis, it is my
contention that al-Qaida and bin Laden are elaborate "legends"
set up to promote a plausibly sophisticated and ferocious enemy to stand
against American interests. I am not, however, implying that bin Laden
himself is a total fabrication. Rather, it is my contention that
confederates, believing themselves to act on behalf of bin Laden, are
being set up in a "false flag operation" to perform operations
as their controllers see fit. And
who are these controllers? If they're anything resembling the folks who
brought you Hizbullah and Hamas, you wouldn't be sweating the suitcase
nukes (made in America), the Ames strain anthrax (made in America), the
MI5-like "sleeper agents" and coded "go" messages.
Instead, you would be dodging primitive nail bombs and road mines - and
not needing Abdel Bari Atwan to feed you the lowdown on the blame.
In
view of the fact that bin Laden is of Saudi origin, that much of the
"evidence" on the Arab side initially originated from
Saudi-owned or Gulf Anglo-client state sources, and that Saudi Arabia is
the major financial sponsor of the Taliban brand of fundamentalism in
Afghanistan (as a counter-point to Iran), I believe it is fair to say that
Saudi Arabia might possibly be implicated. " Most likely, the Saudis
performed their roles as subservient proxies. We'll get to the ultimate
controllers soon enough (if you haven't already guessed where this is
going). And now, to fill out the picture further, it is necessary to name
an equally essential partner as proxy - Pakistan, or, more specifically,
Pakistan's version of the CIA - the ISI (Interservices Intelligence
Directorate).
And
this is where we begin to "close the circle" of our close-knit
pre-9/11 propaganda clique. Returning again to the above-mentioned Dan
Eggen and Vernon Loeb Post article of September 12, we're offered - in a
powerful little side-bar - more critical evidence implicating bin Laden
for the attacks the day before. This time, the bombshell is offered by
Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail, Abu Dhabi Television's bureau chief
in Islamabad. According to Ismail, a bin Laden aide called him "early
Wednesday on a satellite telephone from a hide-out in Afghanistan,"
praising the attack yet denying any responsibility for it.
As it turns out, Ismail was also among the select few to conduct
his very own bin Laden interview, published by Newsweek in its April 1,
1999 issue. Here is how Newsweek described Ismail's good fortune:
"Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail's mobile phone rang just before
prayers on December 18. 'Peace be upon you, ' said the voice on the line.
'You may not recognize me, but I know you.' " And thus was Jamal
Ismail invited on his own mud-soaked incursion to the bin Laden [bat]cave.
Searching
deeper, I found an interesting obscure article penned by respected
Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufszai in The News Jang, and dated May
3, 2000. It details the
detention of two men of Kurdish origin, accused by the Taliban of spying
for American and Israeli intelligence. As Yusufszai relates it, he spoke
to the only journalists allowed by the Taliban to interview the detained
men - Jamal Ismail and his cameraman. Apparently, Ismail had a special
relationship with the Taliban, allowing him this rare privilege above
other journalists. And, as we shall shortly see, so does Yusufszai.
One wonders who debriefs them at the end of a workday. But more
interestingly, by May 5, as reported by Kathy Gannon for the Associated
Press, the story acquires - as they say - "new legs." Not only
are the basic elements of the Yusufszai story mentioned, but the article
leads off with the bombshell that one of the detained men revealed that he
was recruited by the United States to find Osama bin Laden. It finishes
with a little coda implicating bin Laden in the 1998 embassy bombings.
Thus, in the space of two days, Yusufszai's Pakistani "spy"
article sprouts a bin Laden addition when fertilized by the American
Associated Press - and nicely provides a plausible explanation as to why a
Kurd would be prowling around Afghanistan on behalf of the United States.
Yusufszai,
incidentally, moonlighted as an ABC News producer, charged with guiding
ABC News correspondent John Miller through the Afghani marshes to the bin
Laden [bat]cave - one of the very few American journalists to be accorded
such an honour (and also, as it happens, a good friend of bin Laden
arch-foe John O'Neill. But not chummy enough to direct O'Neill on to bin
Laden's hideaway). Moreover, Ismail and Yusufszai are mentioned together
in a CNN article posted January 4, 1999 - the former for his Newsweek
interview, the latter for his own bin Laden dialogue for TIME Magazine the
day later.
Rahimullah
Yusufszai, regarded by New York Times reporters John Burns and Steve
LeVine as "one man who has seen more of the Taliban than any other
outsider," is also named by The Nation, in its article of January 27,
1997, as "one of the favourite journalists of [Pakistan's] ISI...one
of the organizations funding and arming the Taliban. "
It's
a small world after all. In the September 29, 2001 article of PressPlus,
Yusufszai's ABC colleague, John Miller, mused about running into his buddy
John O'Neill in Yemen while reporting on the U.S.S. Cole bombing the year
before. "He said, 'So this is the Elaine's of Yemen.' "
"There
is a terrible irony to all this," Miller said. I'll say: Miller, one
of the very few Americans who can give a first-hand account of bin Laden,
bumps into his friend, bin Laden's chief investigator, while both are
investigating a bombing in Yemen that will later be tagged onto bin Laden
- and only a year before O'Neill dies at the hands of... allegedly ...bin
Laden.
Now,
following the logic of my hypothesis, if the bin Laden threat was,
pre-9/11, a close-knit propaganda campaign, one would expect to find the
same names showing up repeatedly in combination with one another. This,
too, applies to the American commentators. Let us return to the August
1998 American bombings of bin Laden's tool sheds as an example. The night
of the bombing, Rahimullah Yusufszai received a call from bin Laden aide
Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a report from the Associated Press. Later, Yusufszai
obtained for ABC News exclusive photos of the damage to bin Laden's camp.
Further commentary describing the layout of the bin Laden camp was
furnished to the Washington Post by former CIA analyst and terrorism
expert Kenneth Katzman, as well as Harvey Kushner of Long Island
University. Only little more than a week before that, Katzman and Kushner
were offering their assessment of bin Laden's culpability for the embassy
bombings in Africa in a Washington Post article penned by Vernon Loeb and
Walter Pincus. They were joined in this effort by Vincent Cannistraro, the
ABC news analyst who also escorted John Miller to his bin Laden interview,
as well as provided running commentary in the days immediately following
9/11. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, provided covert
aid to the Afghani mujaheddin in the late '80's, as well as supervised CIA
operations with the contras. He was also one of the point men in the
notoriously circumspect investigation at Lockerbie. In the above-noted
Loeb and Pincus article - in which bin Laden is quoted from the ABC News
Miller and Yusufszai interview - Cannistraro weighs in with his assessment
of the embassy bombings: "I believe Osama bin Laden is the sponsor of
this operation, and I think all of the indications are pointing that
way."
Soon
after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, a Vernon Loeb Post article,
dated October 13, 2000, proceeded to implicate bin Laden through the
detailed information provided by Kushner, Katzman, and Cannistraro.
Earlier, in a Vernon Loeb Post article dated July 3, 2000,
Yusufszai, Kushner, and Cannistraro unveiled bin Laden aides Ayman al-Zawahiri
and Muhammed Atef as the men to watch as bin Laden's likely successors,
with a helpful tidbit on the Zawahiri biography thrown in by the
Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat.
None
of the above, of course, is offered as the "smoking gun"
pointing the way to a propaganda conspiracy, nor are my chosen examples
meant to be exhaustive in evidencing this point.
According to Felicity Barringer, in a New York Times article dated
September 24, 2001: "A
good deal of the public information on bin Laden comes from the
journalists who went to Afghanistan to interview him, including [Peter]
Bergen, ... Peter Arnett, John Miller, Rahimullah Yusufzai, and Jamal
Ismail." The article
further makes reference to Vernon Loeb, Al Quds al-Arabi (Atwan), Judith
Miller, Al Jazeera, and Brian Jenkins (formerly of Kroll Associates - the
security firm that obtained the WTC position for John O'Neill by way of
Jerry Hauer). Clearly, I have
also not heretofore made mention of the other experts who have worked
assiduously toward building our knowledge base on bin Laden - Steven
Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Yossef Bodansky, and various British and EU elites.
However, the above examples do show how the information flow on bin Laden
could be plausibly managed by the skilfully placed revelations of a
relatively insular clique of "experts" called upon repeatedly by
the mainstream media.
Here
is how it would work: A
relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the
"scoops" that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream
news sources - the four TV networks, TIME, Newsweek, CNN - where the
parameters of debate are set and the "official reality" is
consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain. In other countries,
this is what is known as propaganda - or, put less politely, psychological
warfare.
But
before I leave this topic, I would like to provide an example of
"news management" that is revealing for what is omitted - that
is, the "smoking gun" of Pakistani ISI involvement in the events
of 9/11. On October 9, 2001,
the Times of India dropped this little bombshell:
"Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday that [ISI Chief Mahmud
Ahmad] lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to
show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade
Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact
that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by
Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen. Mahmud."
What
makes this particular piece so devastating is that only days before, much
of the mainstream American media was touting the news of a "key
link" in the chain of evidence linking bin Laden to the events of
September 11 - namely, a $100,000 wire transfer to the hijackers from a
shadowy operative linked to bin Laden.
Yet once this operative was "outed" as being linked
instead to the Pakistani ISI Chief, any propaganda gains initially made
through this evidence would now crumble.
One possible reason might stem from this Karachi News item,
released only two days before September 11:
"[Pakistani]
ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood's week-long presence in Washington has triggered
speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon
and National Security Council. Officially, State Department sources say he
is on a routine visit in return to [sic] CIA Director George Tenet's
earlier visit to Islamabad...What added interest to his visit is the
history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmood's predecessor,
was here during Nawaz Sharif's government the domestic politics turned
topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in
the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys..."
In
other words, this was a propaganda piece that went disastrously wrong.
After October 9, bin Laden's alleged paymaster could now be linked to a
U.S. "ally" who spent the days before 9/11 in deep consultation
at the Pentagon. The US
authorities immediately went into damage control mode by insisting on the
quiet retirement of the "outed" ISI chief. Thus removed from the
public eye, the ISI Chief's role in all this could be effectively ignored,
and an American media black-out could be safely assumed.
Such
a scenario certainly fits in snugly with my hypothesis, which I will now
proceed to elaborate completely. The events of September 11 were
masterminded by those who were in the best position to manage the
consequences - namely, those most able to manage the flow of information,
those most able to coordinate all the elements necessary for the
perpetration of a successful operation (subverting airport security,
guiding the planes to their specific targets), and most significantly,
those who stood to reasonably benefit in the aftermath. Conspiracies, by
their very nature, are not crimes of passion. They may involve rational,
albeit cold-blooded, attempts to achieve a desired end by employing the
most effective means available. It is for this reason that
"mainstream" terror groups like Hamas and Hizbullah largely
avoid attacking American interests where such attacks would serve no
practical interest. For all their talk of Jihad, these terror groups tend
to plan their specific attacks with an eye to the consequences that could
reasonably be expected to follow. Thus, knowing the moral and political
constraints of Israeli deterrent strategies, they calibrate their attacks
to elicit consequences that are most tolerable for them - and hence,
manageable. Yet surely, in the light of the cult of suicidal martyrdom,
such considerations no longer hold sway. Perhaps. But then, in the case of
such a far-flung anti-Zionist movement as al-Qaida, one would expect at
least a little more exertion against Israeli interests than has heretofore
prevailed - unless, of course, the "point" of al-Qaida was to
provide a plausible dire threat to American interests where none had then
existed. In any case, as nobody has noticed this particular anomaly, there
was no need for any needless exertion of resources in order to bolster a
credibility that needed no bolstering in this one particular sector.
Motive,
means, and opportunity. While I presented the Saudis and Pakistani
intelligence as clear-cut proxies, the only motive these elements would
have to benefit from a crime of this nature is an assurance that no
punishment would be forthcoming but rather, they would be on the right
side of power and wealth among those in a position to determine the booty.
Another
anomaly: on the very day that the ISI Chief was in deep consultation at
the Pentagon, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the head of the Afghani Northern
Alliance - a cultishly popular figure within that group, and a mortal foe
of Pakistan's ISI - was assassinated by two terrorists posing as
cameramen. Keeping in mind the fact that, throughout the '90's, American
leaders such as Clinton, and American companies such as Unocal, were
largely throwing their support over to the Taliban in opposition to the
Northern Alliance (or United Front), it seems rather convenient that, in
the aftermath of 9/11, the way was now cleared for the Northern Alliance
to be co-opted as an instrument for setting up a more pliant Afghani
government (now headed, incidentally, by a former consultant to Unocal).
So
who are the ultimate controllers? To begin with, the circumstantial
evidence seems to point to an operative clique primarily based out of New
York City and the State of Florida. I stress the word
"operative", as this clique appears to consist of subservient
agents involved in laying the preparations. Once again, John O'Neill
serves as an effective Rosetta Stone in interpreting the raw outlines of
this operative clique (which is by no means a "rogue" clique).
The FBI and CIA elements involved in counterterrorism have a checkered
past. For one, Oliver North in the 1980's served as Counterterrorism Chief
while he used his office as a cover to deal with such narco-terrorists as
Monzar al-Kassar (who figures in the crash at Lockerbie - also
investigated by Cannistraro). In the late '90's, O'Neill was transferred
from the federal office of Counterrorism to the New York Counterrorism
Office of the FBI - and it was the New York branch which was then
designated as the primary investigator of all overseas investigations
involving bin Laden. Moreover, this branch was also involved in the
somewhat suspect investigation of TWA 800 - investigated by O'Neill and
reported upon by ABC's John Miller, who was formerly the Deputy Police
Commissioner of Public Relations for the NYPD before he joined up with
ABC.
As
regards New York, there is another element involved in germ warfare
operations. Actually, a multi-million dollar bunker - serving as a command
and control center in the event of a biological attack - was set up at 7
World Trade Center at the direction of Rudolph Giuliani, who also oversaw
the mass spraying of malathion over the boroughs of New York City when the
West Nile Virus hit town a few summers previously.
The man Giuliani placed in charge of that operation, Jerry Hauer,
also happened to be the man who found John O'Neill the position at the
World Trade Center, as well as being the one who - by his own admission -
identified O'Neill's body.
Moreover,
there has been a widespread campaign on to link the threat of al-Qaida
with that of a mass biological attack. At least the day after September
11, the link - as the Anthrax mailings had yet to arise - was not so
apparent. Yet on PBS' Frontline, the New York Times' Judith Miller (no
apparent relation to John Miller, as far as I'm aware), accompanied by the
New York Times' James Risen, was interviewed as an expert on al-Qaida.
Several weeks later, Judith Miller would once more make the headlines as
the apparent recipient of an anthrax mailing which turned out to be a
false alarm - yet was all the same conveniently timed with the
well-publicized launching of her book on...germ warfare. As was later
discovered, the anthrax mailings petered out once the news leaked that a
DNA test revealed the material to be of the Ames strain of anthrax, an
agent synthesized out of a CIA laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Nevertheless, this was sufficient to fast-track Bioport's exclusive
license for the anthrax vaccine toward FDA approval. Formerly, Bioport's
experimental anthrax vaccine was being forcibly administered - under
threat of court-martial - to hundreds of thousands of American servicemen
(in conformity with Bioport's exclusive and lucrative contract with the
Department of Defense).
Incidentally,
Judith Miller, along with Jerry Hauer, was among 17 "key"
participants in a biowarfare exercise known as "Dark Winter" - a
think tank-funded scenario that aimed to study the nationwide effects of a
hypothetical smallpox outbreak. One
of the sponsors of that exercise was the Anser Institute of Homeland
Security, an organization established before September 11, 2001.
Interestingly enough, the curious phrase "homeland
security" was starting to creep up with increasing frequency in the
vocabularies of certain political cliques (Dick Cheney, the Hart-Rudman
Commission, et al.) in the year or two leading up to 9/11.
The
point of the above-noted information is to draw attention to an apparent
propaganda campaign to prepare the public for a catastrophic biological
attack. As with the Twin Towers, the blame for any coming attack may be
duly and plausibly assigned by those who carefully laid the groundwork in
preparing us for this eventuality.
As
for Florida, the connection with this state is obvious, for not only was
the first anthrax mailing directed to the Florida offices of the National
Enquirer, but many of the accused hijackers were also reported to receive
their pilot training from flight schools in Venice and Tampa. Notably, it
was a Florida bank account to which hijacker Mohamed Atta allegedly
deposited his 9/11 pay cheque. Moreover,
Florida, by way of the MacDill Air Force Base, is also Central Command for
the war in Afghanistan. In
addition to its function as Central Command for the war on terrorism,
MacDill is -outside of Langley - also a major base of the CIA. Thus, in
the CIA's own backyard, we find the infrastructure and financial support
that went into the planning for the events of 9/11. And, as we so often
find with events surrounding 9/11, another synchronicity - for
coincidentally enough, the woman who reportedly happened to find an
apartment for one of the alleged hijackers was the wife of the senior
editor of the National Enquirer. Moreover, her husband, Michael Irish,
also happened to make use of an airfield that reportedly served as flight
training for some of the hijackers. I emphasize the word
"reportedly," as the possibility always exists that this
"reported fact" may be nothing more than disinformation,
strategically placed to divert attention from a possibly more subtle
truth. In intelligence
operations, foreign assets are often placed with resident
"controllers" whose job it is to supervise the asset as well as
provide accommodations as the need arises. Who are Michael and Gloria
Irish? Or, perhaps more revealingly, what kind of social circles do they
run with? This is certainly an avenue worth exploring - by reason of its
many synchrocities if for nothing else. Again, the seam that shows.
As
a little side-note, Tampa experienced its own mass spraying of malathion,
a mutagenic pesticide, when it encountered a med fly outbreak the year
before New York's West Nile outbreak.
In the end, the flies were contained through a sterile med fly
program administered out of MacDill Air Force base.
So,
to sum up, it appears that the events of September 11 were planned years
in advance, with the groundwork being carefully laid by a propaganda
campaign orchestrated to convince the public that the United States has a
plausibly sophisticated nemesis with the motive, means, and opportunity to
perpetrate a devastating act of terror against Americans. Toward that end,
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been used as the primary proxy agents to
run a "false flag" operation, setting up and financing the
infrastructure of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Through madrassas based in
Pakistan, Saudi and Yemenite militants were instructed in the Saudi brand
of Wahabbi Islam, and subsequently "graduated" to the camps that
were set up in Afghanistan - again, under Saudi and Pakistani sponsorship.
Stateside, the operative agents were mostly based out of New York City and
Florida. In the aftermath of 9/11, elements in the American government are
now widely disseminating information in vast quantities, overwhelming the
populace and lending credibility to the government's version of events.
Thus, post-9/11, the actions of this formerly insular propaganda clique
are no longer perceptible. Information is now being doled out in generous
portions to credulous reporters who are outside the loop, yet perform
their unwitting service as "bottom feeders" in the downward flow
of information.
In
all cases, the actions of these proxy agents and operative planners are
sufficiently distanced and compartmentalized from the true masterminds to
create a condition of "plausible deniability". In short, the
proxies have also been set up as possible patsies with evidence that has
been carefully laid to incriminate them should cracks in the
"official story" become too discernible. Moreover, the
groundwork has already been carefully laid to cast aspersions on another
convenient patsy - the Jews, by way of the State of Israel and its
supporters. Already, for those prone to perceive Jewish conspiracies, the
reliable vein of anti-Semitism - combined with anti-Zionism - has been
mined to distract the masses and to create a modern version of the ritual
blood libel, thereby further "muddying the waters" should the
true masterminds be threatened with exposure. In other words, the present
difficulties in the Middle East work perfectly to set up the State of
Israel as a plausible alternative suspect with motive, means, and
opportunity. Toward that end, a low-level "buzz" has been
circulating over the Internet (and especially in Europe) of an Israeli spy
ring that was rounded up in the days after September 11.
Whether or not these reports are credible is not the point.
Most likely, there was a spy ring operating, and various Israelis
were unwittingly set up as patsies, to be exposed should the need arise.
Thus, while evidence may be marshaled to taint the Saudis, Pakistanis, or
Israelis, the real guilt must inevitably lie with those in the best
position to manage the flow of information as well as reliably benefit
from the new order created, primarily, the political and corporate elites
of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union - also,
as it happens, the very parties orchestrating the global war on terrorism.
In this respect, the Saudis, Pakistanis, or Israelis have far less to gain
(other than the benefits of going along with the designs of the rich and
mighty).
I
could go on and further highlight the obvious geostrategic gains of those
who are clearly managing the flow of information - the proverbial
pipelines, oil, wealth, and so forth. But I think those purported benefits
are a bit of a "red herring" - more of a side benefit than the
main motivating factor. Americans and their allies would have easily
supported a thrust into Afghanistan for a provocation far less costly and
bloody than this (such as Kuwait in the early '90's).
It is no small act to intentionally take down such an overarching
symbol of financial stability as the Twin Towers, and chance killing
thousands in the process. Such a conspiracy, if in fact perpetrated from
within, would by its nature necessitate a huge structural, cultural, and
demographic change. The very brazenness of the act, the naked aggression,
would necessitate a tenacious determination to achieve the ends for which
these actions were perpetrated. There
is no going back now. An infrastructure is being laid out - one that will,
finally, provide a dissident-proof totalitarian oligarchy composed of
like-minded elites served by an under-class kept under constant
surveillance. The edifice of this regime is being constructed, brick by
brick, with the mortar of the Office of Homeland Security (to centralize
and coordinate an effective police state), the Freedom Corps (to
indoctrinate the most idealist - and therefore activist - elements of the
populace toward service to the state), and the Patriot Act (to provide the
legal basis for subverting long-held rights under the screen of national
security). If all of this sounds strangely familiar, if it is redolent of
Huxley and Orwell, that is perhaps because Huxley and Orwell were both
intimately involved with the elites of their time - in fact, were fully
subsumed among them - in ways that made their future projections
abundantly prescient, and, in their minds, inevitable. With further
refinements in mind control technologies - yes, they do exist - as well as
the monopolization of the food supply by way of sterile seed
"terminator technology" - the approval for which was granted in
the months following 9/11 - the masses may be perpetually culled and
exploited by those who hold the keys to this fully managed society.
If
this notion of reality strikes you as somewhat dissonant, at odds with
your own personal experience, it may be perhaps that we have not quite
arrived there yet, and that you have personally not felt the corrosive
lash of political corruption and governmental malfeasance. In all
likelihood, you have not read the mountain of evidence detailing political
and elite deviant behaviour in this country. You may even be dismissive of
"conspiracy theories", yet wholly unaware of the well-documented
attempts by the CIA and FBI to subvert, surveil, and propagandize the
populace through programs such as Project Mockingbird (media infiltration)
and MK-Ultra (mind control through chemical, hypnotic, or electro-magnetic
means). These programs are effected primarily through "think
tanks" that are set up across the United States for the purpose of
disseminating information and propaganda under the rubric of
"expertise". Moreover, various foundations, such as the
Rockefeller or Ford Foundations, are often used as funnels to finance and
feed the arteries of these propaganda networks. In the 1970's, a good deal
of this structural corruption was officially exposed - in a "limited
hang-out" - by way of the Church Commission, as well as the House
Select Committee on Assassinations. Thereafter, much of the most damaging
revelations were played down or ignored by the mainstream media, and the
waters were then muddied by a stream of outlandish conspiracy theories -
aliens, Elvis, etc. - that merely served to discredit the information that
was most credible. "Muddying the waters", incidentally, is a
tried and true staple of the intelligence craft.
It
is really just a matter of familiarizing yourself with all the documented
anomalies that do not accord with the received, mainstream reality put
forth to you by the mainstream media. As a practical guide to begin, you
might want to confine your search to strictly "mainstream"
sources, as I have sought to do in attempting to construct my case on
9/11. My evidence is by no means exhaustive. In fact, it is merely the
proverbial tip of the iceberg. Yet proceeding in this direction, under my
hypothesis, has been most fruitful in analyzing the various anomalies that
pop up now and then.
Any
simple keyword search of the following terms may be helpful in pointing
toward a more substantive understanding of the elites who ultimately guide
your fortunes: "Iran-Contra" , "Mena", "BCCI",
"Project Paperclip", "Michael Aquino", "Paul
Bonacci", "Operation Northwoods", "MK-Ultra".
Much of the information on these topics is credible and well-documented.
More disturbingly, it highlights behavior committed by the very same
elites who are now interpreting the events of 9/11 for you. Read for
yourself, and decide, at the end of the day, how much credibility you will
continue to accord to those who claim to be the proper trustees of your
fate and well-being.
Chaim
Kupferberg is a freelance researcher and writer. Copyright © Chaim
Kupferberg 2002. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial
community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated,
the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed.
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP206A.html
Read
more in Global Outlook September 11:
Foreknowledge or Deception? Stop the Nuclear Threat, Issue
no 2, Summer 2002. Now available (click here to order)
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