Booklet published by the Communist Party of Australia
The material in this booklet is based on articles published by Emperor's Clothes, a US newsagency.
The full text of articles can be accessed on webpage: www.emperors-clothes.com/
There is compelling evidence that the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US were organised, at least in part, by US authorities as an excuse to start an already planned war in South Asia. It was also to be used as an excuse to begin the biggest attack on civil liberties in the West since the fascist era.
There is evidence that the normal interception of hijacked aircraft was not activated until AFTER the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon had taken place.
There is evidence of a close relationship between the Bush family, the bin Laden family and the CIA.
There are many inconsistancies in the official stories and other suspicious events.
On the morning of September 11, four US airliners were hi-jacked. Two slammed into the World Trade Centre (WTC), a third crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
On that morning President Bush visited the Emma E Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. He was reading a book about a girl and her pet goat. At 9.05 am, his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear about the attack on the WTC. He continued to read to the children.
At 9.08 Police radio had broadcast, “This is a terrorist attack. Notify the Pentagon”.
The New York Times wrote on 15/9/01: “despite elaborate plans that link civilian and military efforts to control the nation's airspace in defense of the country, and despite two other jetliners having already hit the WTC, the fighter planes that scrambled into protective orbits around Washington did not arrive until 15 minutes after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon”.
People with military experience, and my own research into the timeline of previous, comparable military campaigns suggest that it would simply not be possible to organise a military operation on the scale of that launched by the USA against Afghanistan in the space of 25 days, which was the time between September 11 and the beginning of the attack on Afghanistan, writes Jared Israel of Emperor's Clothes.
As a comparison, the time taken for the US to be ready to attack Iraq in 1991 was 4½ months. The attack was not delayed by attempts to find a negotiated settlement. Negotiations took place during the time that the US was preparing for its attack. The attack took place as soon as they were militarily capable of doing so. And if it is suggested that the US military is so astonishingly razor sharp that it is able to organise an operation like the attack on Afghanistan in 25 days, then this is wildly inconsistent with their unbelievable lack of response on the morning of September 11.
It is also preposterous to suggest that the US can have identified the culprit behind the September 11 attacks within the time that they claim. While it is reasonable that a list of suspects would immediately spring to mind, it is another matter to be so certain of someone's guilt that you are prepared to attack another country on the basis of that suspicion. It is instructive to review the timeline of the “investigation” into September 11.
Within a few hours bin Laden was already being named as the main suspect. Within 12 hours it was being claimed that they were “almost certain” of bin Laden's guilt. Within a few days, they were proclaiming his guilt as 100% certain, using the expression, “his fingerprints are everywhere”, and the US was already threatening to attack Afghanistan.
This is clearly ridiculous. It's not even enough time to set up a committee to discuss the personnel and logistics of such an investigation.
It is clear that US authorities were happy to use the September 11 events to start a war against Afghanistan. We have information that alleges they were already making plans to attack Afghanistan before September 11.
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani diplomat has said that senior US officials told him in mid-July 2001, that they planned to attack Afghanistan by mid-October at the latest, before the winter snow set in.
(BBC report by George Arney Sept 18, 2001).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm
If we accept that the attack on Afghanistan was planned prior to September 11 then, in order to believe that the USA was not involved in organising September 11, we have to believe that the most spectacular terrorist attack in history just happened to occur at a time which could not have been better, from a propaganda point of view, for a war which the US had already planned. While this is possible, it isn't really probable. It's just too convenient.
It will clarify things to list the possible scenarios that arise at this point, assuming that we accept that plans were already in place to attack Afghanistan:
1) The US Government had nothing to do with the September 11 attack, and was genuinely surprised by it, but saw the propaganda opportunities for its forthcoming war and considered this to be more important than identifying the real culprits.
2) The US Government did not have anything to do with organising the attacks but knew in advance that they were coming and deliberately allowed them to happen, for propaganda reasons.
3) The Bush administration was actively involved in planning September 11 as part of an integrated plan which involved the coming war in Afghanistan.
If we accept that the attack on Afghanistan was preplanned, then scenario 3 is the only plausible explanation.
Scenarios 1 and 2 require us to believe that the convenient timing of the terrorist attacks was just by chance. In respect of scenario 2, it might be suggested that the date of mid-October was itself planned around the terrorist attack which they knew was coming.
The evidence which is presented will interweave with these scenarios and demonstrates conclusively that active collusion by US authorities in the planning of the attacks is the only possible explanation.
On the morning of September 11, the largest aviation crisis in the history of the world took place. Before continuing, it is relevant to examine the standard procedures which take place in the event of a hijacking, the approach of an unauthorised or unidentified aircraft, the failure of communications, or any other unscheduled aviation activity, regardless of whether any immediate threat is perceived.
The air force is alerted and jet fighters are put into the air immediately. The purpose of interception is to closely shadow the plane, thus giving exact information about its movements, possibly keeping radio contact, and perhaps learning more of the pilot's situation or intentions. It also provides the opportunity, but not the obligation, to force down or shoot down the plane, if it becomes apparent that it's intentions are hostile. Interception itself is not an aggressive move.
There are standardised signals, which are part of the aviation code, which an airforce pilot will give to a civilian airliner if radio contact is unavailable. When pilots are off course and disorientated, the fighter pilot will guide them back to the correct course.
But the airforce has a record of having previously forced down, or shot down, civilian aircraft that were behaving in a manner which was considered to be a deliberate aggressive flouting of aviation rules and likely to present a danger.
While the end result of September 11 -- large commercial airliners flying into buildings -- is unprecedented, the events leading up to the crashes are routine. Planes off course, transponders not working and reports of hijackings are handled regularly by the US airforce with expert efficiency.
Normally, interception of these planes would have been well and truly in place before it became apparent that their intentions were hostile.
What is unusual about September 11 is that these normal airforce procedures, activated automatically and without the need for high level authority, simply didn't happen. The routine procedures were waived for every one of the planes involved.
The four hijacked planes were all being tracked on Federal Aviation Authority radar and air traffic controllers across the country were in communication with each other.
Since no junior officer would have the authority to override the interception routines, the failure to activate them can only have come from orders to that effect, from the very highest levels. In the case of the plane which struck the Pentagon, United Airlines flight 77, It should have been intercepted, as it approached Washington, by fighters from Andrews airbase, a mere 10 miles from the Pentagon. In fact in should have been intercepted a lot earlier than that.
By 9.05 at the very latest, the Pentagon knew that two hijacked planes had struck the World Trade Centre and that at least one more hijacked plane was at large. It may not have been clear by this time, that flight 77 was headed to Washington, but it was clear that a terrorist attack of massive proportions was taking place, and that at least one more plane probably had intentions to strike somewhere.
The fighters at Andrews airbase stayed on the ground. By 9.25 at the very latest, it was clear that this plane was headed to Washington. The Andrews airbase fighters stayed on the ground and whichever squadron was responsible for covering the area where the plane was originally hijacked had also failed to activate. At 9.41, just two minutes before the plane struck the Pentagon, two F16 fighters from Langley airbase were dispatched to intercept it. But Langley airbase is 130 miles away! They had no hope whatsoever of intercepting it. Meanwhile the fighters at Andrews airbase stayed on the ground! The official story is that no fighters were available at Andrews that day. This is clearly a lie.
The specific mandate of the fighters at Andrews airbase is to protect Washington DC. And if none were available, how did they miraculously appear in the sky over Washington DC, a few minutes AFTER the Pentagon was hit?
Another official story is that they thought at the time that the plane was targeting the White House. So what? Isn't that even more reason to have activated the airforce? And if that's what they thought, why was the White House not evacuated until two minutes after the Pentagon crash?
Overall, 45 minutes passed between the time that Flight 77's transponder was turned off, (which is when automatic interception procedures should have begun, even on a normal day), and the time that it crashed into the Pentagon.
That there was no interception is all the more incredible, given that at the time it's transponder was turned off it was already 10 minutes since one hijacked airliner, United Airlines flight 175, had crashed into the WTC and about 5 minutes since it had become known that a third plane, American Airlines flight 11, had been hijacked.
At 9.03, flight 11 also hit the WTC, and still no movement at Andrews. By 9.25, there was no doubt that flight 77 was headed to Washington, and still no movement at Andrews, and no evacuation of either the Pentagon or White House.
The Andrews fighters got into the air and the evacuation of the White House took place, just for show it would seem, immediately after flight 77 had completed it's mission.
This plane, at a time when a security crisis of huge proportions was taking place, was able to turn off its transponder, change course and fly 300 miles, being tracked by radar the whole way, without being intercepted. And then approach the nation's capital, fly past the White House, and crash into the Pentagon, without being challenged!
At 10.10, it was known that a fourth plane, United Airlines flight 93, had been hijacked. This plane was also not intercepted. It crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.37. (Note: There is some discrepancy between different information sources about the exact times involved with this one).
It is difficult to say exactly what the official stories are, concerning the failure to intercept the two planes which hit the WTC, because the stories keep changing, but it has been admitted by NORAD (North American Air Defence Command) that it was alerted to a hijacking as early as 8.35 am, but didn't activate any airforce action until after the Pentagon was hit, while at the same time admitting that interception of civilian aircraft by jet fighters is a routine procedure.
Their story regarding flight 93 is that they could have shot it down if they had wanted to. If they “could have shot it down”, then why hadn't they at least gone through the routine procedure of intercepting it and checking it out? They had 27 minutes to do so and by that time there had already been three suicide crashes that morning.
Vice President Cheney, in response to questioning about this bizarre chain of events, deliberately tried to confuse interception with shooting down, trying to create the impression that the reason nothing was done, was because officials were agonisingly biting their nails over whether to take the dramatic step of shooting down a plane full of innocent civilians.
Cheney knows very well that interception, while giving the opportunity to shoot down the plane, does not commit one to that action. And at the same time that Cheney is spinning this smokescreen we are being told that the only reason interception didn't happen in the case of flight 77 was because no fighters were available at Andrews.
And how does Cheney's statement reconcile with NORAD's admission that interception is a routine procedure?
There is no possible explanation for these events, nor for the extraordinarily garbled confusion of unconvincing cover up stories, except to conclude that someone very high up in the airforce or the Bush administration was determined to nobble the airforce and make sure that the attacks on New York and the Pentagon were successful.
At 8.46, as the first plane hit the World Trade Centre, the President was at a Florida elementary school, mingling with teachers and children. It is curious to say the least that, 14 minutes later, at 9.00, it seems that no one had informed the President of the emergency which was unfolding across the nation.
Not only had the WTC been hit, air traffic controllers were aware of at least one more hijacked plane at large, and may have been aware of two by this time. It must have also been apparent by this time that the airforce was standing idly by, waiving normal procedures of intervention.
At 9.00, the President had settled down with the Florida school's second grade children. At 9.05, two minutes after the second attack on the WTC, Andrew Card, the Presidential chief of staff, whispered something in his ear. According to reporters at the scene, the President “turned briefly sombre”.
Others who claim to have seen footage of this event describe his reaction as more like a nod of confirmation to something which he had been expecting.
The President did not react by leaving the school, convening an emergency meeting and intervening to ensure that the airforce did it's job. He did not even mention the extraordinary events occurring in New York but simply continued with the reading class. At 9.08 the NY police department had announced, “This was a terrorist attack. Notify the Pentagon” (NY Daily News 12/9/01).
The situation, then, at 9.05, is that at least three planes have been hijacked and are known to be on terrorist suicide missions. Two have already struck their targets with spectacular effect. Another is known to be still in the air. The airforce is doing nothing and the President, who has apparently only just been informed, decides to continue reading to children about a little girl's pet goat!
He continued to read about the pet goat for another 24 minutes! In an interview for Newsweek, Bush recalls the moment he was told. “I'm the Commander in Chief, and the country had just come under attack.” So why did he continue to find pet goats such a fascinating subject for the next 24 minutes? Doesn't this prove that at the very best, he's unfit to be in charge on matters of national security, and at the worst, indictable for treason?
By 9.30 the President, rather than calling an emergency meeting, or taking direct command of the airforce, or at least demanding to know what the hell was going on with the airforce, decided to stay at the school and give a television address to the nation, to tell them what everybody already knew, that there had been an “apparent terrorist attack”.
In the circumstances, this was a blatant evasion of his duty to do everything possible to take command of the situation, even at the same time as flight 77, known more than half an hour before to have been hijacked, had now reached Washington, being tracked by radar — and the Andrews fighters were still on the ground!
By 9.35, as the President was wasting his time with this pointless address to the nation, the third plane was over Washington.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr described the situation: “... the jet, flying at more than 400 mph, was too fast and too high when it neared the Pentagon at 9.35. The hijacker-pilots were then forced to execute a difficult high-speed descending turn. Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. The complex manoeuvre suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed ... less than a minute later it clipped the tops of street lights and plowed into the Pentagon at 460 mph.”
It was forty minutes after the Pentagon crash that it was revealed that yet another plane, Flight 93 had been hijacked. This was also not intercepted and the President again failed to intervene in the amazing inaction of the airforce.
To suggest that such inaction was simply a result of incompetence and confusion is not credible.
If we believe that the US military is so razor sharp that it can implement preparations for the attack on Afghanistan in 25 days then, how can we simultaneously believe that the same country is capable of such a staggering, inconceivable level of incompetence in instituting routine domestic security measures?
The two scenarios are mutually exclusive. To give any credence whatsoever to the possibility that the highly successful and well organised attack on Afghanistan was organised in 25 days, as a response to September 11, we must then, on the balance of the evidence, accept the events of September 11 as conclusive proof of collusion.
This creates the thorny problem of why there was a retaliatory military response to something that US authorities were themselves involved in.
Or, alternatively, if we give credence to the possibility that the events of September 11 were innocent incompetence on a staggering scale we must be highly suspicious that the attack on Afghanistan was already into an advanced stage of planning by September 11.
In this case we are asked to believe that the most spectacular terrorist attack in history just happened, by co-incidence, to take place at a time which could not have been more convenient, from a propaganda point of view, to justify a war against Afghanistan.
Just the raw facts of what actually happened on the morning of September 11 are by themselves enough to conclusively prove that US authorities were involved in collusion. But there is a deeper pattern to the evidence that hammers this home even harder.
If we wish to believe that US authorities are innocent of any involvement in September 11, and that the attack on Afghanistan is a genuine response to the events of that day, we find ourselves, in every aspect so far examined, in the awkward position of having to continually choose, one after the other, the scenario which common sense tells us is the least likely.
There appears to be no rational, objective basis why we should not be suggesting with some confidence that US authorities were involved in September 11 and had pre-planned the attack on Afghanistan.
The only basis for refusing to do so seems to be based on preconceived bias rather than a genuine attempt to examine the evidence objectively.
If it is claimed that the evidence for collusion is over-ruled by a belief that no country would do that to its own citizens, then it must be pointed out that the contemplation of terrorist attacks on US citizens by the CIA is a matter of public record.
The previously classified “Northwoods” document demonstrates that in 1962 the US military high command and the CIA seriously considered the possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks against US citizens in order to blame it on Cuba and, thereby, justify the invasion of that country. (See details of this document and other examples of deliberate provocations on pages 38 to 44 of this booklet).
http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-int.htm
And there's plenty more. The problem of the mutually exclusive scenarios regarding the competence, or lack of, concerning the US air force, repeats itself in relation to US intelligence services.
How is it that they can have had no warning whatsoever of the largest, most difficult and complicated terrorist attack in the history of the world, but then be allegedly able to nail the culprit, almost beyond doubt, in less than a day, and beyond any doubt in two days?
If they genuinely had no warning of the attack, we can only assume that they are lying when, within two days, they claim to be so confident of bin Laden's guilt that they are already threatening to attack Afghanistan in response.
Or if they had some forewarning of the attack, even if it was not specific and were on the alert for “something” from bin Laden, the inaction of the President and the airforce on the morning of September 11 is confirmation, even more conclusive, if that's possible, of collusion rather than incompetence.
Strong supporting evidence for the allegation of forewarning and collusion is presented by a curious side to the Pentagon attack. The plane that flew into the Pentagon, had it done so a week earlier, would have flown into exactly the right spot to cripple the Pentagon's key operations and kill many important senior staff. Was it a fortunate co-incidence that the Pentagon had done a major reshuffle just a week before? (Source, CNN TV report 12/9/01.)
All the important people and operations had moved to the other side of the building and the unimportant people and operations had moved to the side which was hit. Very little real damage was done to the important operations of the Pentagon.
This is powerful evidence that someone very high up in the Pentagon knew that the attack was coming. Otherwise, it means choosing the least likely explanation on the basis of a preconceived conclusion. How many times are we prepared to do that?
Remember that from day one there has not been a shred of publicly available evidence against bin Laden. We had, in fact, up until mid-December, nothing but the continual repetition of his name as if, by repeating something often enough, we can somehow make it true.
Then came the videotape which is a complete joke. This is an age of technology where film of crystal clear quality can show Forest Gump shaking hands with JFK, where simulated cyclones can be animated into a movie set, where dinosaurs, extinct for 200 million years can be shown so clearly that you would swear they were there. All this is done with such startling reality that the only way we know it's not true is that we have pre-existing knowledge that it's a fake.
By comparison, the videotape of bin Laden is of such poor quality that we have no way of even knowing for sure whether it's actually him on the tape.
In feature movies of top quality, it is common practice to use a stand-in to replace the real actor for much of the filming. An extra of similar height and build, is given the same clothing and hairstyle and the two are virtually indistinguishable. Such a substitution would be even easier on a poor quality video.
And when the main character has a long beard, a headdress, and loose clothing, it's an absolute snap. On the bin Laden tape, the poor quality prevents any analysis of whether the dialogue is genuinely live or dubbed. We also have had to rely on translations of dubious independence. The timeline of when and where the tape was allegedly made and where it was allegedly found is also, although possible, somewhat perplexing.
Allegedly, it was made in Kandahar on November 9 and found in a house in Jalalabad. Jalalabad fell to anti-Taliban forces on November 14. This means that there was only 4 days in which the newly made tape could have been taken from Kandahar to Jalalabad which was already under fierce siege and serious threat.
So, we are asked to believe that upon making the tape, someone almost immediately, for no apparent reason, took it to Jalalabad, which was about to fall, and then conveniently left it there, to be found by anti-Taliban forces. It's not impossible, but it does have the strong smell of a set up.
Was it edited by US authorities? They've been forced to admit that the “translation” they've released is doctored. “The tape is NOT a verbatim translation of every word spoken during the meeting, but it does convey the messages and the information flow”, said a department of defense spokesman.
“The translation is what it is. We made it very clear that it's not a literal translation” says the Pentagon. But will the Pentagon work at a more complete translation? No! Will the full transcript be released to the public? No!
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/story_23359.asp
The BBC reported in October that “American intelligence specialists are reported to have 'secretly' sought advice on handling terrorist attacks from Hollywood film-makers”. Among those said to have been consulted is Steven E De Souza, the screenwriter for the movie Die Hard, whose plot deals with terrorists trying to destroy a big city skyscraper.
To be objective, none of this proves that the tape is a fake, but equally, it's authenticity can hardly be claimed as proven either. And even if it is genuine, we've been given a selectively edited version of it. If this is the only evidence against bin Laden, then the case is in an awful lot of trouble.
It is no surprise, therefore that no formal charges have been laid against bin Laden. The normal practice of the law is that it is necessary to actually have evidence in order to lay charges.
The irony is that if the tape is genuine it only serves to prove that bin Laden was NOT the mastermind behind the attacks. While it would indicate that he had some prior knowledge of it and was, therefore, by definition, involved in some capacity, he clearly states (if we accept the tape as stating anything) that he was told about the impending attack 5 days before it happened.
If that's the case he can't possibly have been the main organiser. Who told him about it? Presumably the person(s) who actually organised it, still unknown, but definitely not bin Laden. In all the frenzied outrage against bin Laden that this convenient tape has engendered, it seems that very few people have actually viewed the tape carefully enough to ask the important question that flows from bin Laden's admission of having been told about the attack 5 days in advance. Who then did actually organised it?
Tape or no tape, if we think clearly and logically about the likelihood of bin Laden being involved, we actually find that it's impossible unless he was involved in the capacity of collusion with US authorities or, at best, in the context of the US knowing all along what he was up to and deliberately allowing him to do it.
The point has already been made about the ridiculously short span of time that passed before bin Laden was pronounced guilty and the fact that this sets up mutually exclusive scenarios.
If he was involved then it cannot have been a surprise. This in turn, proves beyond any doubt that the inaction of the airforce and the President on September 11 was collusion rather than incompetence. But the evidence doesn't end there.
It is curious that no other suspect was ever even contemplated, however briefly (even though the US has plenty of enemies). This becomes downright suspicious if we think clearly about the logistics of actually setting up a real inquiry into the events of September 11.
Firstly, let's put it in context. It took 17 years to catch the unabomber and it took seven weeks of investigation into September 11 merely to confirm the nationalities of the 19 alleged hijackers, while the person who masterminded the whole thing was allegedly known within a few hours. Not likely!
Now, imagine that we're actually trying to set up an inquiry into September 11 in the first minutes after the attack while the dust is still settling. And it would have had to be literally, in the first minutes, because they claim to have had bin Laden nailed within a few hours.
While a list of suspects might spring to mind, it's not as if we could walk outside and see the letters “bin Laden” written in clouds up in the sky.
Was not Saddam Hussein also a suspect? Libya? A Palestinian group? Cuba? Russia? China? Local right-wing militias? Anti-globalisation fanatics? Syria? Someone completely unknown and unexpected? The list of possibilities that would spring to mind would be huge.
Bin Laden would have only been one of these. Where do we start in setting up an inquiry?
Firstly, we obviously need to recruit people with aviation expertise to the inquiry. But they must also be people with appropriate security clearances.
Start drawing up a list of possible people who might be useful in this context. We need people with architectural expertise to examine the exact nature of the collapse of the WTC.
Was it only the planes that caused the collapse or were explosives also used? We need people whose main field is airport security. Did someone in the airports deliberately let the hijackers through? Start drawing up a list. We need people with financial expertise to try to trace where some of the considerable funds needed for this operation came from. Again, start drawing up a list. We need to examine immigration records and cross-reference these with the granting of pilot's licenses. We need an urgent review of internal security in case it was an “inside job“. Such a review is a delicate operation to say the least.
It is quite a task simply to start drawing up the lists of possible suspects, possible personnel for the inquiry, and the main angles of investigation for the inquiry.
Extensive field-work and computer work would have to be done. The reports would have to be written up, summarised, checked for security clearances, printed, and given to the President and his top advisers, who would have to read at least the summaries and then discuss them with the investigation panel. And all this was done in less than 12 hours in a country which was in chaos and confusion at the time. This is one of the most preposterous suggestions of this whole affair.
Then all of these people have to be contacted and brought together in a group or, at least, hooked up with communications to each other. But hang on!
Aircraft are grounded. Even the President is having trouble getting around. Many communication networks are down, many financial institutions closed, and large parts of New York and Washington are inaccessible. And the whole country is crawling with security blockades. How do we get hold of the people we want? How do we get them all together and start delegating responsibilities?
Did all this miraculously happen? To have actually held a meeting of the senior agents to be involved in the inquiry within less than three days would probably have been impossible. Yet, by this time, the US had already claimed to have held it's “inquiry” and established bin Laden's guilt. Bush had declared that bin Laden's “fingerprints are everywhere” with copious quantities of evidence lying around to the extent that guilt was obvious within a few hours. How? Was anything ever more obviously a set up? It is simply not possible.
Tony Blair confirmed that this whole thing is a lie with a careless statement made at the beginning of November in response to polls showing that support for the war was falling in Britain.
He said. “There is no doubt about bin Laden's guilt. The evidence against him, first a trickle, then a flow, has now become a torrent. “ (World News page on nine MSN website).
This statement was made nearly two months after September 11. The key words are “trickle”, “flow”, “now” and “torrent”. Since they were already proclaiming bin Laden almost certainly guilty within a few hours, Blair is inadvertently admitting that it was a lie.
Did the evidence progress from “trickle” to “flow” to “torrent” all in a few hours? Tony Blair is inadvertently admitting that they were already declaring bin Laden guilty and threatening Afghanistan with war at a time when the evidence was still only a “trickle”.
This “torrent” of evidence is apparently still not sufficient to lay any formal charges or release any of this “torrent” of evidence to the public?
An important question remains to be cleared up. The pilots were obviously on a suicide mission. It is difficult to believe that Americans, or those loyal to the US, would knowingly participate in a suicide mission.
But this doesn't present any real problem for the scenario that has been advanced. The obvious explanation is that some of the hijackers were genuinely hostile to the USA and were participating in an attack that they thought would damage it. They were unaware that they were pawns in a double play and were part of a larger CIA plan.
In late November media reports began to emerge that some of the hijackers may not have been aware that they were about to participate in a suicide mission. I don't know how this evidence has emerged or what the basis of it is but that's what is being reported. (ABC Newsradio report).
This would fit very neatly with the rest of the information we have. Some of those who were not aware that they would be committing suicide would have been the CIA operatives, probably ordered to set up the terrorists and take part in the hijacking, while being kept in the dark about the full extent of the plans.
Those who were knowingly committing suicide were those genuinely hostile to the USA. (If this is the case the final moments of the black box flight recorder data would make interesting listening. Is this why it's being kept so quiet?).
It is clear that this could not have been organised without the use of pawns who thought that they were about to strike a blow against the US. This is where bin Laden fits in.
He deceived and sacrificed his own people in the same way that the Americans involved deceived and sacrificed theirs. The evidence that bin Laden and the CIA are in active co-operation in this atrocity will become clearer later. This might also explain the otherwise incomprehensible scenario of bin Laden producing an incriminating videotape and then immediately taking it to a place where it was sure to fall into American hands.
The New York Times noted: “[The tape] appeared to have been carefully prepared so as to have the maximum effect the moment American military operations against Mr bin Laden and the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan began.”
Very true! A cynic might say that in constructing the storyline of a Hollywood blockbuster it is necessary to have the terrorist villain goad and taunt the All-American hero several times before the hero comes back to smash the villain, or in this case, smash the country where the villain resides.
There is plenty of evidence to implicate bin Laden, but the problem is that it also implicates the Bush Administration, the CIA, George Bush senior, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates.
The official story about bin Laden is that of a terrorist monster, with a fanatical hatred of the USA and its allies and as being estranged from the rest of his wealthy Saudi family who are friendly to the USA. The terrorist monster part is correct, but the rest of it could not be further from the truth.
Bin Laden is well known as being a CIA operative. He had a close working relationship with the CIA in the 1980's. This is not denied by anyone. The claim is that they have since fallen out, but this story is a lie.
The French newspaper Le Figaro wrote on 1/11/01: “Contacts between the CIA and bin Laden began in 1979 when, as a representative of his family's business, bin Laden began recruiting volunteers for the Afghan resistance against the Red Army. FBI investigators examining the embassy bombing sites in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam discovered that evidence led to military explosives from the US Army, and that these explosives had been delivered three years earlier to Afghan Arabs, the infamous international volunteer brigades involved side by side with bin Laden during the Afghan war against the Red Army. In the pursuit of its investigations, the FBI discovered 'financing agreements' that the CIA had been developing with it 'Arab friends' for years.”
Le Figaro went on: “A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that public enemy number one stayed at this hospital between July 4 to 14. While he was hospitalised, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden's hospital room. A few days later, the CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited bin Laden.”
There is a continuous history of close business ties between the Bush family and the bin Laden family stretching back more than a decade and continuing to this day. (Wall Street Journal 27/9/2001 and www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html
The Bush Administration has attempted to throw a smokescreen over this by claiming that the rest of bin Laden's family has disowned him but this is not true. The bin Ladens are significant investors in the huge arms dealing firm, the Carlyle group which, by it's own boast, stands to make a lot of money from the Afghanistan war.
Quotes from the Carlyle's company profile at hoover's online says the following:
“Carlyle's directorship reads like George W Bush's inaugural ball invitee list.“ and, “Can you say military-industrial complex? The Carlyle group can. “
www.hoovers.com/premium/profile/6/0,2147,42166,00.html
An article on the Carlyle Group by Alice Cherbonnier of the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel and published on 3/10/01 says: “An important tenet of journalism is that you should always ask, 'Who benefits?'” The article goes on, “In the case of war, the answers to this question become of paramount importance. All told, Carlyle has about 420 partners all over the globe, from Saudi princes to the former president of the Philippines. Its investments run heavily in the defence sector; they make money from military conflicts and weapons spending.”
The article lists George Bush senior, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of State James Baker III, and Fred Malek, George Bush senior's campaign director. Former Defence Secretary, Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director. George Soros is also said to be one of the family as are ex-British PM, John Major and Colin Powell.
It cannot be claimed that Bush senior was unaware of the bin Laden's shareholding. He has met the bin Laden family at least twice — in 1998 and in 2000 — long after bin Laden had already been officially declared by the US as the most wanted man in the world for alleged terrorist activities. Why was George Bush Senior meeting with this man's family when the Clinton administration had already declared its determination to eliminate al Qaida and bin Laden at any cost and by any means necessary?
In 1995 US authorities named bin Laden as a co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing. But a year after this accusation and when the Sudanese government had bin Laden in custody and offered to extradite him to the US, the US government said it was not interested and told the Sudanese government to let him go to Afghanistan.
Since then the US government has declared bin Laden as the main suspect in terrorist attacks on two US embassies and for attacks against a US warship and a US military barracks in the Middle East (one of those which bin Laden's construction company helped to build).
Furthermore, bin Laden's al Qaida network is known to have fought alongside NATO forces in the Kosovo Liberation Army — a terrorist group supported by the CIA -- and portrayed in the West as “freedom fighters”.
www.thedubyareport.com/terrupdt.html
and
www.emperors-clothes.com/news/binl.htm
It is no co-incidence that the Australian, David Hicks, who has been arrested for fighting for the Taliban has fought for al Qaida in both the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Taliban. Apparently, al Qaida is a liberation force in Yugoslavia but a terrorist group elsewhere.
We also know that September11 was funded, at least partially, by a Pakistani sheik, highly placed in the Pakistan secret service. He has not been indicted or even pursued.
The FBI has complained that it has been muzzled and restricted in its attempts to investigate matters connected to bin Laden and al Qaida and has expressed frustration at the apparent refusal to allow it to fully investigate the events of September 11.
A BBC program replayed on the US program Newsnight conveys information that “In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the While House ... But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorists organisations before and after September 11 .. The FBI did look into WAMY (The World Assembly of Muslim Youth), but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail.
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis ... What became embarrassing was the revelation that the bin Laden's stake in Carlyle, [was] sold just after September 11.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm
“It will be no surprise if bin Laden miraculously escapes to another country giving the US the excuse to attack there. At the time of writing this, (December 20, 2001), my guess is Iran”, writes Jared Israel of Emperor's Clothes. “Let's see if I'm right”.
Normally, whenever an airplane is hijacked or crashes, there is extensive media coverage given to the recovery and examination of the black box flight recorders but there is not even one word being spoken about the black box data from the hijacked planes. This is highly unusual. Is this information being censored?
In the first few hours after the attacks there were immediate reports on CNN about insider-trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It seems that some very large investors had known in advance of the attacks and sold off before hand.
There was media speculation that the terrorists involved may have profited from their actions. For “terrorists”, substitute, “bin Laden”.
Within a few hours, the media was already into an unquestioning hysteria of bin Laden bashing. Bin Laden must have been insider trading, we were told. A tautological loop had already been established.
Whoever had organised the terrorist attacks had been insider trading. Since we knew that bin Laden had done the attacks then it must have been bin Laden who was insider trading and since we knew that bin Laden had been insider trading, that proved he did the attacks. We were assured that investigators were already hot on the trail of this vital question.
The figures on the New York Stock Exchange do seem to clearly indicate that SOMEONE was insider-trading. But who? For authorities with full investigative powers, this should be one of the easier aspects of the investigation. And if it could be found who was insider-trading it would give us a good idea about who knew about the terrorist attacks beforehand and this, in turn, would give us a pretty good idea as to who did it.
It is curious then, that this issue disappeared from the media almost as soon as it was raised and has not been heard of again. The bold promises that investigators were on to it — forgotten as soon as they had been made.
Surely, this would be the chance to nail bin Laden's guilt. And it is information that could be released publicly because it would not have security implications. And yet this aspect of the investigation (if it is still proceeding at all) is being kept very quiet.
One can only assume that it began to turn up answers that US authorities did not want anyone to know. Given what we know about the close business relationship of the Bush and bin Laden families this is hardly surprising.
However, one known financial fact is that a convicted Pakistani terrorist, highly placed in the Pakistani secret service (our allies in the “war against terrorism”) wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, named as the leader of the September 11 group, shortly before September 11. (ABC Newsradio report)
Although this fact is known and publicly available, the USA is quite uninterested in pursuing any action against this person in spite of President Bush's huffing and puffing that “if you fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist.” Not in the case of our allies, it seems.
This secret police official was forced to resign his position once his involvement in September 11 became known. Forced to resign? No retaliatory bombing of Pakistan until they hand him over? No labelling of Pakistan as a terrorist state? On the contrary, the US is becoming quite cozy with the only country in the world (apart from itself), against whom there is incontrovertible evidence of having been involved in September 11.
The USA has been prepared to pound Afghanistan into the ground despite having not a shred of evidence against bin Laden while showing a total lack of interest in pursuing an individual whose complicity in September 11 has become a matter of public record, not denied by anyone. The US is also totally uninterested in pursuing the country that harbours him. In fact it considers that country to be a close ally in the war AGAINST terrorism!
On reflection, it is also curious how little real damage was done to the USA, by the September 11 attacks. In spite of all the shock, horror and grief caused by the attacks, not one member of the US administration was killed or injured, not even a single Senator, Congress member or Governor, or any local official.
No damage was done to military capability and no damage to power, transport, communication or water supplies. In fact, the damage was so trivial that the US was (allegedly) able to organise a war in record time despite having had a plane crash into the Pentagon. The Pentagon was able to get on with business almost unhampered!
While the loss of (civilian) lives and the symbolic and psychological damage to the general public was enormous, in the larger scheme of things the attacks, while giving the US a huge propaganda weapon, made zero impact upon the USA's ability to continue its role as an aggressive world superpower.
This would seem to be an extraordinarily poor return considering the near technical perfection of the operation, when the damage could have been devastating, simply by choosing targets which would have done much more damage.
Van Romero is the director of research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures.
Referring to the collapse of both WTC towers Mr Romero told the Albuquerque Journal that the collapse of the buildings appears “too methodical” to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures. Van Romero said: “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Centre there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.
He said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures. “It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that”. If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, “it could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points”.
Romero's Tech Institute often assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.
Shortly after it published this rather definite opinion, the Journal (21/9/01) published a rebuttal. One gets the impression that somebody came down very hard on this scientist and perhaps on the Journal as well comments Emperor's Clothes. The Journal claimed that “Romero [now] supports other experts, who have said the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above.” Romero is quoted as saying: “I'm not trying to say anything did or didn't happen.”
It needs to be realised that the war in South Asia is more than just a continuation of US foreign policies. Jared Israel comments: “The Bushes and bin Ladens do not 'cover' for each other because they do business together. Rather, they do business together, and also 'cover' for each other, because they are part of what one might call the same class, because they have therefore come to know each [other] well, socially, and are deeply engaged in helping carry out the same monstrous world strategy.
“The Bushes and bin Ladens are not middle class. Despite his attempt to project an image of 'just plain folks', George Bush junior comes from a family that has helped rule American since maternal great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, worked with the Dulles brothers, at 1 Wall Street, to arrange financing for the German Nazis during the late 1920s and early 1930s. (On the Bush family's pro-Nazi history, see Nazis in the Attic, Part 6 at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas5.htm )
Up until now people in the West have been safe. The game has now changed. Not only have they randomly murdered thousands of their own citizens to justify unleashing a new intensified wave of terrorism against people in South Asia and the Middle East, but they are using those very same murders as a lever to reduce the rights and freedom of speech in the West to levels not seen since the fascist era.
Consider the following domestic developments since September 11.
In the USA:
The introduction of laws for indefinite detention without trial, charge or evidence; unlimited power to monitor and freeze finances and unlimited power to monitor and intercept email and internet traffic. Hugely increased funding for covert law enforcement agencies as well as sweeping new powers of arrest, surveillance and telephone tapping.
“Terrorist” organisations are to be defined according to political belief not according to any evidence that they are prepared to use terrorism.
Anti-globalisation activists, such as Naomi Klein, can now be classified as terrorists under the new laws.
Foreigners accused of terrorism may be tried in military rather than civilian courts with no public scrutiny of the trial or right of appeal. It gives power to monitor conversations between accused persons and their solicitors. (That is if they even get a trial).
In Britain:
Tony Blair has attempted to introduce similar laws. The House of Lords has frustrated some of them but, nevertheless, sweeping rollbacks of civil liberties have been achieved. A senior member of the British cabinet recently described civil liberties as an “airy fairy thing of the past, in the post-September 11 world.“
Similar type legislation is or is to be introduced in Canada, Australia and many European countries.
All of this would be scary enough even if it were genuinely an over-reaction to an act of foreign terrorism. When you realise that these laws are being drawn up by the same people who actually organised the act of terrorism that triggered it — the scenario is truly chilling.
And on the subject of the US President, it should be remembered that for the first time ever, the man who won the US election was not appointed President, while the man who LOST it, was.
When this is added to the extraordinary resources which were poured into George W Bush's Republican nomination push against other candidates, who were far better qualified to take on Gore, followed by an election which was clearly rigged, it becomes obvious that George W Bush was always going to be President, no matter what.
It is therefore clear that this plan goes back well before November 2000. Whether or not the September 11 atrocities had been specifically planned by then cannot be ascertained, but it is clear that the wider agenda had been.
The current, unelected President is the son of a man who is a major shareholder in the huge arms corporation, the Carlyle group, which is set to profit from this war. The same man helped to put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden's (not estranged) family, presumably for business purposes, as recently as the year 2000.
The scandalous aspect is that the President is the presumed heir to a fortune being amassed on the back of this war and that the alleged target of the war (bin Laden) is also set to make a tidy profit. It is a conflict scripted by the protagonists where they are the only people who don't get hurt.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is telling European countries that they need to boost defence budgets. I'll bet that the Carlyle group and Rumsfeld's old buddy, the chairman of the company, will get a tidy share of it. Colin Powell appears to have the snout in the trough as well, unless he's severed all his former ties with the Carlyle group and disposed of his shareholding.
The President's father will certainly be making a lot of money out of increased European defence budgets. Despite his attempt to project an image of 'just plain folks', George Bush junior comes from a family that has helped rule America since maternal great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, worked with the Dulles brothers, at 1 Wall Street, to arrange financing for the German Nazis during the late 1920s and early 1930s. (On the Bush families pro-Nazi history, see Nazis in the Attic, Part 6 at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas5.htm
But the wider agenda is the pursuit of the huge unexploited reserves of oil and gas under the Caspian Sea. They are currently owned by Russia and Iran but not for much longer if the US has it's way.
It has been US policy since at least 1996 that a pipeline to carry this gas and oil to the Indian Ocean for transport to the West must be built through Afghanistan. Whoever controls Afghanistan, controls the Caspian Sea reserves.
For years now US covert foreign policy has sponsored terrorist organisations in the south of the former Soviet Union in order to nibble away the area of Russian territory that borders the Caspian Sea and Afghanistan.
This process is now almost complete with breakaway governments having been successfully formed in Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Only the area to the north of the last two now needs to be broken off for Russia to lose it's territorial rights to the Caspian Sea.
The new autonomous countries will now simply become subject to US hegemony, rather than Russian, and rather than being genuine expressions of local culture, identity and self determination, will be dominated by local tyrants and terrorists doing corrupt deals for the sake of their own power.
The US is more than happy to talk business. In fact that's the whole idea of setting up these local tyrants. Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, proudly described his policy achievements in Afghanistan in the following terms:
The US, by stirring up local uprisings, did everything possible to goad the Soviets into invading Afghanistan and once it had achieved this, then backed the other side (the Taliban). This had a twofold purpose. It wasted Soviet resources in a long war of attrition which they couldn't win and it destabilised a part of the world which was strategically important to the USA.
Some direct quotes from Brzezinski:
“We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would“. Asked whether he regretted his past actions, Brzezinski replied:
“Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border I wrote to President Carter: 'We now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam war'”.
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm
So, the 20-year civil war which has ravaged Afghanistan and caused such appalling death, poverty and misery, was a deliberate policy on the part of the USA, who backed the Taliban all the way and is now giving them their final “reward“.
Furthermore, the last quote from Brzezenski is a tacit admission that much of the antagonism towards the West among Muslims was deliberately engineered by the US as part of its destabilisation plans for the Middle East and South Asia.
This US plan is so far-reaching that they may find it necessary to pound the whole of South Asia into the ground in order to achieve it. One way or another, they must control all of the aforementioned countries as well as Iran and Pakistan.
Some are likely to cave in out of a combination of intimidation and bribery as is so far the case in Pakistan. Others may need to be attacked.
The September 11 events gave the US a blank cheque to attack any country in the world simply by uttering the word “terrorist”.
The three latest countries (at the time of writing) to be named as targets in the war against terror, are Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, three countries we have heard very little about previously in relation to terrorism.
But one only needs to glance at a map to see their strategic significance. Somalia and Yemen, between them, form the two sides of the mouth of the gulf of Aden which is the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and, therefore, the shortest route between Europe and the Indian Ocean where it borders South Asia.
Control of these countries by the US would also place extra pressure on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to continue with US-friendly policies. Sudan forms most of the southern edge of the Red Sea. Iraq is strategic because it borders Iran.
The September 11 attack also gives the US and allies such as Britain, a blank cheque to roll back civil liberties to the extent that any of their own citizens who might make a fuss can be silenced simply by uttering the word “terrorist”.
When President Bush said, “You are with us or against us,” it was a thinly veiled warning to every other country in the world that unless the US receives absolute unquestioning obedience, anybody is fair game. Doubtless, all world leaders have heard the message loud and clear.
Anything directly referenced can be found with full referencing on the websites mentioned, except for some things which were heard on the radio. Where possible, clues have been indicated so that a persistent searcher may be able to find them in archives. This is not designed to be a serious academic work, with academic credentials. It's designed to expose the truth. Those who wish to do the work to verify this information in an academically acceptable format will find it easy enough to do so.
While the case pivots around a number of key facts a lot is also common-sense interpretation of general knowledge. The Bush administration has left a huge trail of evidence about September 11.
The main reason that it has not become obvious to the majority of people yet is, apart from the obvious influence of the media, that everyone has been too shocked by the speed and brutality of events to think clearly. Once the initial breakthrough is made the inconsistencies and implausible explanations begin to develop from a “trickle” to a “flow” to a “torrent”.
For example, this cracker was reported on the ninemsn website on November 28. An article says that US officials had received information that bin Laden may be planning a major terrorist attack on US energy facilities, in particular gas pipelines. The very same article reported that the “noose around bin Laden's neck” had tightened to the point that he was pinned down to a 30 km2 area, was running for his life, constantly on the move, in a desperate bid to avoid death or capture. Pardon me, but exactly how does anyone launch a sophisticated terrorist operation against targets on the other side of the world from this position?
Only people in a deep state of shock could fail to see that this is a ridiculous lie. And the next day it was reported that he “may” have chemical or nuclear weapons (although they admitted, late in the article of course, that they didn't actually have any evidence of this at all).
So, this man, allegedly desperately on the run, is carrying truckloads of intercontinental missiles and missile launchers between one cave and another? And they are not being picked up by US spy satellites, which we are told, can detect the faintest trace of heat in a cave where bin Laden may be hiding.
The lies and inconsistencies in this campaign are so obvious that those behind it are going to need a sophisticated strategy of continuing to keep people in a state of constant shock, fear and confusion, otherwise the obvious truth will come out.
The anthrax campaign springs to mind and the continual false alarms about renewed attacks from bin Laden and continual, totally unsubstantiated rumour mongering about nuclear or biological attacks. The Washington Post reported last month that the anthrax sent to Senators and other individuals is identical to anthrax stocks developed by the US military. The CIA immediately issued a denial.
Soon there will be attacks on other countries along with a torrent of propaganda about the terrorist threats from whatever villain is identified as the latest evil murderer who must be hunted down at any cost.
Perhaps bin Laden has outlived his usefulness and will now be killed although it is more likely that he will conveniently escape to another country giving the US the perfect excuse to attack it.
This will all add to the confusion, the fear, the distraction. The ball must be kept rolling at any cost. If necessary, they can always launch more terrorist attacks against their own people to renew the shock and fear.
They are now playing for the highest possible stakes. Not only what they stand to gain, which was their original motive but, given what they have done, Bush senior, Bush junior, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers and probably quite a few others all face the possibility of charges of treason and murder and would almost certainly face death penalties.
I'm not sure what can be done but the first step is that people must know the truth writes Jared Israel.
The detailed articles and information published by Emperor's Clothes can be found at: www.emperors-clothes.com/ add your own comments.
Some people ask: How can you believe that our leaders are capable of such cynicism, murderous cruelty, ruthlessness and dishonesty? That is why Operation Northwoods is so important.
The Northwoods document was obtained by the National Security Archive, “an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington.”
In 1962 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed staging phoney attacks to destroy US property, killing Cuban refugees and US citizens, in order to create a wave of indignation and rage, to justify an invasion of Cuba that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and possibly led to nuclear war. It was never implemented, perhaps due to fear of Soviet retaliation at the time.
The Northwoods proposal was authorised and tentatively approved by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. It had a very clearly stated purpose. Below are some excerpts from the Northwoods document. It was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which could provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
2. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes.” (See Operation Northwoods, page i )
5. The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A are based on the premise that US military intervention will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances. World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.” (Ibid p2)
6. While the foregoing premise can be utilized at the present time it will continue to hold good only as long as there can be reasonable certainty that US military intervention in Cuba would not directly involve the Soviet Union.” (Ibid p2)
8. It is recommended that:
“Enclosure A together with its attachments should be forwarded to the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara at the time) for approval and transmittal to the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project.” (Ibid p3)
1. Since it would seem desireable to use legitimate [sic!] provocation as the basis for US military intervention in Cuba, a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions [which] could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasised. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justified that.
The document also called for staging phoney Cuban attacks on US installations:
(5) Blow up ammunition inside the [Guantanamo] base; start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base onto base. Some damage to installations.” (Ibid page 8)
“It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight”. (Ibid p10)
“The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on the lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicised.” (Ibid p9)
3 A “Remember the Maine” incident could be arranged in several forms:
a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.” (Ibid p 8)
(Note: The Maine was a US battleship anchored in Havana harbour that was blown up on February 15, 1898 with the loss of 260 crew members. It is widely believed that it was deliberately blown up by the US authorities themselves to justify the Spanish-American war and the US occupation of Cuba. Although this incident took place over a hundred years ago the US military refuses to publicly acknowledge that the Maine was destroyed in a Northwoods-style provocation, though they privately know this was the case. The reference to the Maine in the context of the Northwards' document confirms that it was a provocation.)
Northwoods called for elaborate schemes to create the proper illusions:
“6. Use of MIG type aircraft by US pilots could provide additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions. An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact. The primary drawback to this suggestion appears to be the security risk inherent in obtaining or modifying an aircraft. However, reasonable copies of the MIG could be produced from US resources in about three months”. (Ibid p9)
“The only drawback to this scheme appears to be security” says the Northwoods' plan and lists a number of military organisations (including NATO) to which the document should not be sent — presumably fearing that it might be exposed. But it goes on:
3. It is understood that the Department of State also is preparing suggested courses of action to develop justification for US military intervention in Cuba”.
You may read the document in full by going to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm
For George Washington University's National Security Archive page for Operation Northwoods go to
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/
or go directly to the Adobe Acrobat PDF file at:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf
“Through the darkness, from the West and South, the intruders boldly sped. There were at least six of them, Russian-designed Swatow gunboats armed with 37-mm and 28-mm guns, and P-4's. At 9.52 they opened fire on the destroyers with automatic weapons, and this time from as close as 2,000 yards. The night glowed earily with the nightmarish glare of air dropped flares and boat's searchlights. Two of the enemy boats went down.
“That's the kind of vivid detail that the news magazines have made famous. I don't mean to single out Time. On the same date Life said almost the same thing and that week's issue of Newsweek had torpedoes whipping by US ships, blazing out salvo after salvo of shells. It had a PT boat bursting into flames.
“There was only one trouble. There was no battle. There was not a single intruder, never mind six of them. Never mind Russian designed Swatow gunboats armed with 37-mm and 28-mm guns. They never opened fire. They never sank. They never fired torpedoes. They never were.
“It has really taken 20 years for this truth to emerge. My authority is Admiral Jim Stockdale, who has written a fascinating book, In Love and War. Jim Stockdale was shot down over Vietnam a few days later and was a prisoner of the Vietnamese for more than seven years.
“But on the night in question he was in a Sabre jet fighter flying cover over the Maddox and the Turner Joy, and he scoured the seas for more than two hours and he is as sure as man can be that they were fighting phantom blips on a radar screen.
“This so-called Battle of Tonkin Gulf was the sole basis of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was the entire justification for the United States' war against Vietnam. This non-event was recorded as happening on August 4, 1964. President Johnson went on television that very night to ask the country to support a Congressional resolution. The resolution went to Congress the next day. Two days later it was approved unanimously by the House and 88-2 by the Senate.
“The 'facts' behind this critically important resolution were quite simply wrong. Misinformation? Disinformation? Deceit? Whatever! Lies.
(The above is an excerpt from a talk given by Ben Bradlee, former Executive Editor, Washington Post. It was delivered as the first James Cameron Memorial Lecture and is quoted in full in the London Guardian, April 29, 1987).
It is timely to recall that it was Americans who assassinated their own President, John Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in November 1963.
The dynamiting of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City with the loss of 168 lives in 1993, triggered the Anti-Terrorist Bill which was rushed through Congress in quick time. This legislation of over 60 pages gives the US Government broad powers to suppress opposition by branding those who disagree with government policies as “terrorists”.
With possible similarities to the WTC, many US and foreign military explosive experts argue that the explosives in the McVeigh truck would have barely scratched the facade of the building, let alone have the possibility of slicing the building in half. It is argued that there were two explosions from inside the building that followed by a few seconds the explosions from the truck. The two internal pillars of the building were found blown at the base. The ruins were closed for independent investigation and were quickly removed from the scene. The President conveyed condolences to the grieving families and Timothy McVeigh was executed for the crime.