9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out

A book of essays edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott
I originally got this book because I am very excited about Peter Dale Scott’s future book, which he has released a sample chapter from . Little did I expect to find the perfect 911 truth book. This book is a collection of essays from credible academics and whistleblowers. This book is an investigation with a vast breadth of information. The best part is this volume is broken in to smaller easier to consume portions, thusly it is anything but challenging. I have not finished reading all the essays, but I couldn’t help but suggest this to everyone already. I want to transcribe a few essays, but I do not want to give anyone an excuse not to get this bad ass book, so i’m going to transcribe the preface. I will not be rechecking for spelling errors and I type incredibly fast, so….deal with it.

[Begin Transcription]In the period since September 11, 2001, some researchers outside the mainstream of public discourse have increasingly been discovering and presenting evidence that contradicts the official account of what happened that day, including the official account of who was ultimately responsible for the attacks. Given the role that 9/11 has played in subsequent history-serving as the rationale both for a global “war on terror,” which has thus far targeted Afghanistan and Iraq, and for extreme reductions in the civil liberties of Americans-the discovery that the official narrative about 9/11 was a lie would be a discovery of first importance. And yet thus far the mainstream media and most members of the academy have refused to explore the evidence that has been presented for this alternative narrative.The main rationale for ignoring this evidence, insofar as a rationale is given, is that the so-called evidence need not be taken seriously because it has been presented by “conspiracy theorists.” If analyzed, however, this charge provides no basis for discounting the proffered evidence.For one thing, we are all conspiracy theorists. A conspiracy occurs whenever two or more people conspire in secret to do something illegal, such as robbing a bank, defrauding investors, or having a spouse killed. Our newspapers and television news shows are filled with stories about conspiracies. Insofar as we believe any of these stories, we are conspiracy theorists. A second problem is that the official narrative about 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory, alleging that the attacks were orchestrated entirely by Arab-Muslim members of al-Qaeda under the inspiration of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.In light of these two considerations, an alternative theory about 9/11 cannot rationally be dismissed out of hand on the grounds that it is a conspiracy theory. Instead, the question becomes: which of the two conspiracy theories is the more probable? And the only way to answer this question is to examine the relevant evidence, asking which of the competing hypotheses can better accommodate all the relevant evidence in a consistent and otherwise plausible way.Confronted with this argument, journalists, editors, and educators may reply that the above term “conspiracy theorists” in a pejorative way, they have a more particular meaning in mind. They mean people who tend to see conspiracies, especially involving the US government, everywhere; who do not construct their theories on the basis of evidence but select and construe evidence in terms of their preconceived theories; and who, insofar as they appeal to evidence, use it to make wild inferences based on leaps of logic. Conspiracy theorists in this sense of the term can certainly exist within what has been called the 9/11 Truth movement. But there are bad and every crazy theorist in every field, from quantum and relativity physics to evolutionary theory to the history of religion. Crazy theorists in these fields do not discredit the sensible ones. The same should be true in relation to 9/11 studies-assuming, of course, that this field of study has some sensible theorists.This book, by demonstrating that it does, makes clear that alternative accounts of 9/11 cannot be dismissed on the grounds that they are offered only by people who fit the label of “conspiracy theorists” in the pejorative sense. All of the eleven contributors to this volume were well-respected members of establishment organizations before they got involved in the question of 9/11. Ten of them had earned the Ph.D. Nine of them were professors at well-regarded universities; one was employed at Underwriters Laboratories; one was a military officer in the Pentagon. The combined weight of their testimony cannot be dismissed lightly. This combined testimony points to a twofold conclusion: the official account of 9/11 is false and this false account ahs been used to support an agenda that has been worked out in advance-the further extension of the American empire, most immediately in to Afghanistan and Iraq.Some of the chapters in this volume focus primarily on reasons to doubt the official account of 9/11. Some of them focus primarily on the way 9/11 has been exploited to further the American empire. And others deal somewhat equally with both issues.The chapter by David Ray Griffin, which is based on a lecture that inspired this volume, presents an overview of the most important evidence suggestive of complicity by the US government in the attacks of 9/11. Then, pointing to evidence that the motive would have been to advance the American empire, he argues that this connection reinforces the contention, already apparent on other grounds, that the project to create an all-inclusive American empire must be considered, on the basis of moral norms that are common to all traditions, an immoral project. The next three chapters focus primarily on evidence against the official account of 9/11. Karen Kwiatkowski assesses this account from her perspective as a former military officer, a scientist, an academic, and a person who was present at the Pentagon on 9/11. Pointing out that the 9/11 Commission contained no people capable of assessing the evidence from a scientific perspective, she says that it did not answer or even address any of her questions about the official story. Especially valuable is her eyewitness testimony about the west wing of the Pentagon shortly after it was struck, in which she reports that she saw neither the debris nor the damage that would be expected from an attack by an airliner. The chapter by physicist Steven Jones zeroes in on the collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the World Trade Center. He points to many features of these collapses that cannot be explained by the official theory, according to which the collapses were caused by fire (and, in the case of the Twin Towers, by airplane damage). He then shows that it is more probable that the buildings were destroyed in controlled demolitions, triggered by pre-set explosives. Kevin Ryan, whose whistle-blowing action while he worked for Underwriters Laboratories is mentioned by Jones, argues that the question of the true cause of the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings is of utmost importance, because it was what psychologically prepared Americans for the so-called War on Terror. Agreeing with Jones on the unscientific nature of the official report on the WTC collapses, which was put out by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), Ryan describes some of the behind-the-scenes details in the failure by Underwriters Laboratories to protest NIST’s distortion of evidence that it had supplied. The next two chapters discuss background information that may be important to unraveling the truth about 9/11. Peter Dale Scott focuses on the role of drugs and oil in American covert operations, especially the operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s involving so-called “Arab Afghans.” Saying that the American people have been misled about the origins of al-Qaeda, he describes its origin in the use of drug-trafficking Muslims by the United States and American petroleum companies in their quest to control oil. He suggests that secrecy in foreign policy formation has led to short sighted and disastrous strategies and that Congress should not give still more money to the very agencies that helped create the al-Qaeda network in the first place. Swiss historian Daniele Ganser’s contribution is relevant to one of the main a priori reasons Americans have had for rejecting the idea that 9/11 could have been orchestrated by our own government: the assumption that American political and military leaders simply would not do such heinous thing. He presents evidence, widely discussed in Europe during the 1990s but hardly at all in the United States, that during the Cold War, the CIA and NATO supported various right-wing movements in a “strategy of tension” to prevent left-wing electoral victories. The methods included staging “false-flag” terrorist attacks that would be blamed on the left to discredit them and justify their suppression. The next three chapters discuss problems in the ability of the American public to engage in a rational discussion about the truth of 9/11. Morgan Reynolds, as the first former member of the Bush-Cheney administration to declare 9/11 a false-flag operation, discusses the response by the academy: silence by most of it and ridicule and intimidation by his former university, Texas A&M, whose president, Robert Gates, was previously director of the CIA. Reynolds suggests that this kind of intimidation exercised by Gates may reflect a widespread problem within the academy, which would help explain the failure of most of its members to discuss the big lie of 9/11 and its connection to the government’s global domination project. Richard Falk, from whom Reynolds derived the phrase “global domination project,” suggests that the Bush administration probably either allowed the 9/11 attacks, or conspired to cause them, in order to facilitate this project. Discussing the official management of suspicion in relation to 9/11 is itself suspicious, he suggests that the inability to discuss the truth about 9/11 reflects a fear that dark secrets will be exposed. But until the truth about 9.11 is publicly discussed, Falk suggests, its paralyzing effect will prevent us from facing the structural deficiencies in the present global order. John McMurtry observes that the official story about 9/11 is transparently false; that the wars declared after 9/11 were in fact its strategic reasons; and that the so-called “liberation of Iraq” is an instance of what international law has determined to be “the supreme crime.” To explain why most Americans cannot see these obvious truths, McMurtry proposes the concept of a ruling group-mind, which screens out everything that does not fit its preconceptions. One of the many novel elements in McMurtry’s analysis is his explanation of why orchestrating 9.11 would have been entirely rational for the bush administration adnt he class it serves, given their goals and their ability to control any subsequent investigation. The final two chapters discuss the likely forces behind 9.11 in terms of the goal of global domination. Ola Tunander observes that the major effect of 911 has been to allow policies that were developed by influential US thinkers during the 1990s to establish a “Pax Americana” to be put in to practice under the guise of a global war on terror. Given the way in which state terrorism has been used in prior years, we can probably best understand 9/11 as an example of the kind of false-flag terrorism described in ganser’s chapter, used this time, however, to apply the “Strategy of tension” to the world as a whole.The idea of a group with a global domination agenda is explored in the chapter by sociologist Peter Phillips and two of his students. The global domination group, understood as the current version of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” is seen as as segment of the higher circle policy elites-the segment witht he most to gain from a US policy of global domination. Phillips suggests that investigations to determine ultimate responsibility for 9/11 and its cover-up might well begin with this group, the central members of which he seeks to identify. The various chapters contain, of course, much more than can be indicated in these thumbnail sketches. Each chapter presents as multitude of facts that have seldom appeared on mainstream radio and television or in mainstream newspapers and magazines. These facts, and the connections between them, have also thus far been largely absent in college and university classrooms, even in departments most germane to discussing the various kinds o evidence, such as departments of physics, chemistry, architecture, engineering, aeronautics, history, political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, and religion. The publication of the present volume-along with the establishment of a new organization, Scholars for 9/11 Truth (for which one of our contributors, Steven Jones, serves as co-chair)-signals the beginning of a new phase of the 9/11 Trust movement, one in which scholars will play an increasingly larger role. (see also Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 [Amsterdam: El sevier, 2006].) We hope that this book, besides convincing members of the public and the mainstream media of the seriousness and importance of the issues raised by this movement, will aos encourage specialists in the fields not represented in this volume to examine the relevant evidence that their educations have prepared them to evaluate. We have put out this volume in the conviction that 9/11 was not only the largest and least-investigated homicide in American history but perhaps also the largest hoax, with extremely fateful consequences for human civilization as a whole. If our educational community cannot address this issue, then it risks remaining merely “academic” in the worst sense of the term.[END TRANSCRIPTION]

The US federal government has no direct complicity in the 911 attacks

As the majority of people in our country believe(60% of new yorkers) the U.S. Government did not have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. I want to explore the facts and assumptions shared by this group. For the purposes of this blog I will assume that there was no foreknowledge in any branch of government, (like the administration)I will ignore warnings from Russia and the Mossad that were delivered to the white house, and will even ignore the wargames on 9/11 which were being co-ordinated by Dick Cheney.Shit I’ll ignore the August 6th PDB entitled: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” which refers specificallly to plane attacks and was published in the 9/11 commission report. I’ll ignore the massive troop movements of British and US military prior to 9/11. Basically I am going to BE IGNORANT for the purpose of this blog.

Under this mindset there are two large mutually exclusive schools of thought.
1. 9/11 is a result of Muslim Fundamentalism.
2. 9/11 is a result of imperialist foreign policy.

I intend to investigate both schools of thought and I argue these are the only 2 schools of thought when it comes to 9/11 compartmentalization.

1. 9/11 Is A Result of Muslim Fundamentalism

We’ll start with the simple one: 9/11 happened because of radical Islamists. There are again two divergent schools of thought under this assumption:

(a.)-Islam itself is a threat to western civilization
(b.)-Wahabbism is the threat.

(1.a.) As I write my own subjectivity should be apparent, which is good because then you can take me with a grain of salt and critically assess even the points I present in a good light. The only reason I bring up my own biases is because I believe (1.a.) is the assumption of the “all around ignorant idiot”. This is the assumption which is forceed down our throat on 24 propaganda disseminators. This is also one of the arguments brought up in the intellectual class under one of the most famous living political scientists: Samuel Huntington(his pen name), who wrote the “Clash of Civilizations”(the essay is available free online, look for the link in my profile).To understand such a eurocentric attitude in the public, one must trace it to its’ intellectual birth.Huntington sums his argument up: “These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily conflicts within Western civilization, “Western civil wars,” as William Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold War as it was of the world wars and the earlier wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its center- piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.”(from the essay not the book)I’d say its a pretty nice piece of forecasting. If one believes that 9/11 is a result of Islamic Fundamentalism and that all Islam poses a threat to the west, I think they’d agree with Huntington that 9/11 was a non-west entity thrusting itself in to the category of “movers and shapers of history”. Of course defining Islam as the enemy(or defining any enemy of your country) also makes whatever your country stands for just and right. This school of thought likes their history and news to be oversimplified to an incredible degree, they need what Chomsky called Emotionally Potent Oversimplifications in order to go through life. They do not want the opportunity to be paralyzed by choice, they see it as a blessing that someone else is making the decision. Democracy is a great responsibility and there are many who do not want the responsibility, they instead revel in the “freedom” of not having the responsibility of choice. I believe this category of (1.a.) is the largest category of 9/11 compartmentalizers.

(1.b.) This next school of thought is similar to the first in the respect that it is part of the same overarching idea of Islam as evil, but move away from the oversimplifications at that point. These are the people who have done cursory research on international relations or have a little more detailed view of Islam. They understand there are only 2 wahabbi regimes in history: the House of Saud and the Taliban, both of whom were heavily involved in the attacks of 9/11 and involved in the reaping of profit from 9/11. These individuals agree with Huntington, but fancy themselves smarter and more humane, because they recognize the specific sect of Islam that is the threat to “western civilization”. The book that I think carries some great information on “Wahabbism” is “House of Bush, House of Saud” by Craig Unger. As I look through this book and various articles I literally cannot quote anything. This is because I promised to function under the assumption that the U.S. government doesn’t share direct culpability. Everything one finds on Wahabbism is overshadowed by U.S. involvement.



Ok I’m going to take leave from the original assumptions and operative definitions I have to function under on this blog for this category to give my true opinion and some facts. The facts show that the Taliban was built brick-by-brick by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate of Pakistan which has been and still is funded with U.S. taxpayer money(and/or CIA dirty money). The citation for this is the George Washington University-National Security Archives, in the 9/11 source files, under the “lessons from the last war” sections. If anyone has not read those, I urge you to check them out, learning the details of what the Mujahadin were and the tasks they undertook are incredibly important puzzle pieces. The declassified documents are very blatant in their discussion of how the Taliban was created and why. It was not only UNOCAL’s pipeline it was also geopolitical considerations in avoiding the creation of an independent state “Pashtoonistan” on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan(which would of course take some territory from both states). The fact of the matter is that Wahabbists’ control a lot of oil, so we’re willing to do whatever they say, most important of which at the time was “not embarrassing the Saudis”. The example of this is the World Assembly of Muslilm Youth a group funneling money to Jihadis was being investigated by the FBI. This group was run by 2 Bin Ladens (I can only remember Abdullah’s first name off the top of my head), we’d all heard of the tanzania bombings, the khobar towers, and the uss cole so the name Bin Laden and his organization Al-Qaeda is well known. The FBI investigation of the WAMY was quashed by the White House(citation:Greg Palast). So I see Saudis ordering the U.S. around, lets see how our boy Tim Osman…sorry sorry…Usama Bin Laden says about that. (now i’m back functioning under the no culpability assumption, and I found my excerpt from Unger): ”...Robert Jordan, the Baker Botts attorney who had been nominated earlier as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, finally testified in confirmation hearings before the Senate. Jordan, who had represented President Bush during the Harken insider trading fracas…Jordan was not asked about nor did he comment on the fact that many high-level Saudis refused to accept that Saudis were involved in the attacks, and instead blamed 9/11 on unnamed ‘Zionists’...Jordan’s approach to Saudi Arabia was not out of sync with the policies that had linked the United States and the Saudis for several decades, policies that were deeply flawed because they were blind to the rise of Islamist terror, but that in many ways had been spectacularly fruitful for the United States, producing a stable, secure flow of oil that had lasted for decades. No two figures played a bigger role in those policies than George H.W. Bush and James Baker…Now,however, even in the wake of one of the worst catastrophes in American history, the Bush administration continued to ignore the Saudi role in terrorism. It had approved the Saudi evacuation and it continued to act as if the House of Saud and the Saudi merchant elite could in no way be complicit with the act of terror that had just taken place.”-pg 262



2. 9/11 is a result of Imperialist Foreign Policy

Ok now we get in to the gritty area that forced me to put the word “direct” in my title. (1.a.) functions on a complete lack of western culpability and (1.b) sees a certain small level of culpability in the fact that the US made the Taliban a contender for the national controller of the “state” and the protection afforded to oil-rich wahabbists.  This is where I again have to remind myself that I am functioning under the assumption that the US has no direct culpability, which means I have to incorrectly assume that the things Osama Bin Laden says are not efforts at social control to manipulate people who have been socialized in to a middle-east muslim culture and use them as tools for his(and his allies) betterment. Instead I will assume(as I must, in order to be consistent in the assumption that the US has no direct culpability) that: Bin Laden is an islamic revolutionary who truly believes in the moral ends of his cause. So straight from the horses mouth:
From CNN interview Peter Arnett with Usama Bin Laden, March 1997Peter Arnett: “You’ve declared a jihad against the United States. Can you tell us why? And is the jihhad directed against the US government or the United States’ troops in Arabia? What about US civilians in Arabia or the people of the United States?” Usama Bin Laden: “We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. it has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Land of the Prophet’s Night Journey. And we believe the US is directly reponsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq. The mention of the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took place in Qana [in Lebanon]. This US government abandoned even humanitarian feelings by these hideous crimes. It transgressed all bounds and behaved in a way not witnessed before by any power or any imperialist power in the world. They should have been sensitive to the fact that the qibla of the Muslims raises the emotion of the entire Muslim world. Due to its subordination to the Jews, the arrogance and haughtiness of the US regime has reached such an extent that it occupied the qibla of the Muslims, who are more than a billion in the world today. For this and other acts of aggression and injustice, we have declared jihad against the US, because in our religion it is our duty to make jihad so that God’s word is the one exalted to the heights and so that we drive the Americans away from all Muslim countries. As for what you asked, whether jihad is directed against US soldiers, the civilians in Saudi Arabia, or against the civilians in America, we have focused our declaration on striking at the soldiers in Saudi Arabia. This country has in our religion a significance of its own over the other Muslim countries. In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country. Therefore, even though American civilians are not targeted in our plan, they must leave. We do not guarantee their safety, because as a result of the US government’s targeting of Muslim civilians and executing more than 600,000 Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. So, the US is responsible for any reaction, because it extended its war against troops to civilians. This is what we say. As for what you asked regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and in other places, and its support of its client regimes who filled their prisons with our best children and scholars. We ask that God may release them.”


Ok so that is the guy who supposedly led the group that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and he is saying the entire “jihad” on the U.S. is a result of military imperialism. So it contradicts (1.a.) and (1.b.), because from his point of view its not civilization and not fundamentalist Islam, but a direct result of western violence perpetrated upon Muslims.
I would like to know what others think. I believe these 2 categories(and the subcategories) are the only ways in which individuals can compartmentalize the attacks on 9/11 and avoid ever even considering the assertion that the U.S. Government(particularly the Pentagon and White House) has some level of culpability in the attack of 9/11.
Now to speak from outside my original assumption I’d just like to give my opinion: If you don’t believe the US government has some level of culpability (whether direct or through proxy) in the 9/11 attacks, you are an idiot.
But I forgive you, we have been conditioned to make that compartmentalization very easy.
And it doesn’t take “conspiracy theory” to conclude there was culpability. My favorite was in fact published in the 9/11 commission report(as I mentioned earlier). The Aug. 6th PDB “Bin Ladin determined to Strike in U.S.”, put that in the context of the khobar, tanzania embassy, and Uss COLE. Now put ALL THAT in the context of the words Usama Bin Laden spoke in 1997. Why didn’t they take the PDB seriously?
With that info do you really think it was a good idea (for example) to quash investigation of Bin Laden family members running a “charity” near DC(WAMY)?
What I’m trying to establish is that if there wasn’t criminal complicity, then at the very least what we have seen is the worst leadership in security matters in the history of our country.
Well then why was the administration re-elected?
Compartmentalization of the constituents’ minds, which was facilitated by the mass media’s use of 9/11 as a stimulus to condition people with trauma based mind control, but that is a psychological matter. What I am primarily concerned with is this idea of: official story or conspiracy theory.Where there is no middle ground to assume that the government will obviously lie, omit, and obfuscate. While simultaneously understanding that cult leaders will do the same fucking thing.
The truth lies somewhere in-between I believe.

Washington Post's Hit piece attempts to do dmg control for Zogby poll

Republished from Washington Post
9/11 Truth? I Don’t Think SoEvery day, I receive a half dozen e-mails and a score or more comments from 9/11 rejectionists. The 9/11 cover-up, according to these correspondents, is that the U.S. government was complicit, even responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Like those who often write to tell me that the Pentagon, the FBI and/or the intelligence agencies are following them, that they are mind control victims whose lives have been ruined by directed energy weapons in space or the transmitters implanted in their teeth, I have a special place for this mass of correspondence. It is called delete.
So, when the headline crossed my desktop on Monday that “Over 70 million American Adults Support New 9/11 Investigation,” I admit that I fell for it and clicked on the link.
The tale is depressing. The 9/11 truth seekers, that self-declared movement who now count in their membership a number of high profile celebrities, turn out to be exactly what I thought they were: predatory and devious, seekers of polarization and not light, abusive of the political system, contemptuous of anything that even resembles the “truth.”
There was a moment in December, 2004, after President Bush nominated Bernard Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security, when I thought the national security paradigm had finally changed in America.
Kerik, to refresh flagging memories, led the New York City Police Department through 9/11.
I always interpreted the White House’s selection of Kerik as a need and a desire to neutralize the 9/11 families. I don’t mean a specific organization, nor a specific cause. I mean the mass of civilians who had become a powerful political force. Lives torn apart by a diabolical terrorist attack, they demanded action, accountability and investigation, speaking out despite the “men working” signs guarding national security making.
Normal citizens found themselves compelled by loss and shock. These were not anti-war activists, nor a partisan special interest working on behalf of a single agenda. In the aftermath of 9/11, they were instantly conferred with respect and given voice: their very presence insured that the events of that day remained specific and devastating, that 9/11 would not become some political football or reality show for the administration or its opponents to abuse.
But national security is men’s work, and by the end of 2004, the men in charge had had enough. By appointing Kerik, I thought the President was specifically someone who could represent a sanctioned view of 9/11. Kerik would turn the citizen’s movement into just another constituency, a special interest that needed to be dealt with but one marginalized rather than revered.
Fast forward to 911Truth.org’s press release Monday. “Although the Bush administration continues to exploit September 11 to justify domestic spying, unprecedented spending and a permanent state of war,” it said, “a new Zogby poll reveals that less than half of the American public trusts the official 9/11 story or believes the attacks were adequately investigated.”
The poll, conducted from Friday, May 12 through Tuesday, May 16, shows, according to 911truth.org, that:
42% of Americans believe there has indeed been a cover up,45% think “Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success”
Janice Matthews, executive director of 911truth.org said that there was “mounting evidence for U.S. government involvement in 9/11.”
911truth.org went on to quote poll co-author W. David Kubiak as saying that the 9/11 “myth” is “the administration’s primary source of political and war-making power.”
The organization then offered the view that if more Americans were exposed to “independent 9/11 research,” that is, the mass of conspiracy theories that is being exploited by this Star Wars bar of “justice” activists, “about 90 percent would support a new investigation of the events of that fateful day.”
Zogby then put out its own press release warning that 911truth.org was offering its opinions, and not Zogby’s as to the “meaning of the poll results.” It pointed out that Mr. Kubiak was not a “poll co-author” but a member of the organization. “Zogby International had no role in interpreting the survey results for the sponsor or in producing the news release,” Zogby warned.
Zogby then gave its own narrative summary of the poll:
In the question, “Some people believe that the US government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks, saying there has been a cover-up. Others say that the 9/11 Commission was a bi-partisan group of honest and well-respected people and that there is no reason they would want to cover-up anything. Who are you more likely to agree with?”
US government and 9/11 Commission are NOT covering up (48%)US government and 9/11 Commission are covering up (42%)No sure (10%)
People are “completely divided” on whether they believe President Bush exploited the 9/11 attacks (44%).
People are “closely divided” on whether there should be another investigation, with a slight plurality (47%) saying the attacks were thoroughly investigated, while 45% feel the attacks should be reinvestigated.
9/11truth.org refers to 9/11 “crimes,” of “motives” involved in the attacks, it asks “who profited.”
Isn’t the answer self-evident? The organization itself exploits the 9/11 families and the American public’s confusion.
For a moment, the 9/11 families—and again I don’t mean a specific set of families or any organization—recognized that 9/11 was the largest governmental failure in history, that if “we” the people were going to have security we were going to have to involve ourselves. 911truth.org might pretend that this is their goal as well, but in fact there is no amount of investigation, no amount of fact, no amount of government action, no amount of intelligence information, no amount of war, in fact no amount of security that is ever going to change anyone’s mind here.
These are not typical Americans who just want better security and government and pray for successful prosecution of the war on terrorism. This is a purely partisan political and cynical anti-everything group looking to exploit 9/11, just as they accuse the administration of doing.
Though 9/11truth.org and the blogosphere continues to rail against the mainstream media for ignoring their issue and their cause, the only gratifying element of the story is the restraint so far shown by the media in ignoring the thinly masked craziness and the Internet hype.
Oh, I know I’m giving them air time, and surely the “news” will cover the “growing” 9/11 rejectionist movement as we get closer to election time, but what is really interesting here is not some cover-up but the enormous disillusionment that exists not just with the war in Iraq but also the fight against terrorism.
By William M. Arkin May 26, 2006; 8:19 AM ET
The comments section on the Wash Post site should be checked out, people posted some great links
most read story of the past week on this site
This times herald article is getting tons of hits.
related item

Phoenix Memo

7/10/2001
FBI agent Kenneth Williams sends the following memo to the Washingon and New York Bureaus.
[PAGE 1]:
Synopsis: UBL (redactered portion) supporters attending civil aviation universities/colleges in the State of Arizona.
Full Field Investigation Instituted: 4/17/2000 (NONUSPER)
Details: (S) The purpose of this communication is to advise the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by USAMA BIN LADEN (UBL) to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Phoenix has obesrved an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the State of Arizona. The inordinate number of these individuals attending these type of schools and fatwas (redactered portion)
[PAGE 2]:
(redactered portion), gives reason to believe that a coordinated effort is underway to establish a cadre of individuals who will one day be working in the civil aviation community around the world. These individuals will be in a position in the future to conduct terror activity against the civil aviation targets.
Phoenix believes that the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liason. FBIHQ should discuss this with other elements of the U.S. Intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix’s suspicions. FBIHQ should consider seeking the neccesary authority to obtain visa information from the USDOS on individuals obtaining visas to attend these types of schools and notify the appropriate FBI field office when these individuals are scheduled to arrive in their area of responsibility.
Phoenix has drawn the above conclusion from several Phoenix investigations to include captioned investigation and the following investigations: (redactered portion), a Saudi Arabian national and two Algerian Islamic extremists (redactered portion)
Investigation of ZAKARIA MUSTAPHA SOUBRA was initiated as the result of information provided by (redactered portion) a source who has provided reliable information in the past. The source reported during April 2000 that SOUBRA was a supporter of UBL and (redactered portion) SOUBRA arrived Arizona from London, England on 08/27/1999 on an F-1 student visa to attend EMBRY RIDDLE UNIVERSITY (ERU), Prescott, Arizona. ERU only teaches courses related to the field of aviation. SOUBRA is an Aeronautical Engineering student at ERU and has been taking courses in “international security” relating to aviation. SOUBRA, within weeks of his arrival at Prescott, Arizona, (redactered portion) supporting UBL, at Mosques located throughout Arizona. SOUBRA has also organized anti United States and Israeli demonstrations in the area of ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY (ASU), Tempe, Arizona. He has also established and organized an Islamic student association on the ERU campus organizing the Muslim student population on the ERU campus.
Phoenix has identified several associates of SOUBRA at ERU who arrived at the university around the same time that he
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did. These individuals are Sunni Muslims who have the same radical fundamentalist views as SOUBRA. They come from Kenya, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, India, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Soubra’s Associates are:(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) (redactered portion)(s) The above individuals are involved with SOUBRA and regularly participate in meetings with him in Prescott, Arizona.(s) FBIHQ, IRS (redactered portion), RFU, wrote an analytical paper on the (redactered portion) dated 11/09/1999, in support of FBINY investigation captioned: (redactered portion) research paper can be found in (redactered portion) The following information was gleaned from IRS (redactered portion) research paper.
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(redactered portion)“The Fatwa is jihad against the U.S. and British government, armies, interests, airports (emphasis added by FBI Phoenix), and instructions and it has been given because of the U.S. and British aggression against Muslims and the Muslim land of Iraq…we…confirm that the only Islamic Fatwa against this explicit aggression is Jihad. Therefore the message for the British government or any other government of non-muslim countries is to stay away from Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Arabia, etc…or face full scale war of Jihad which it is the responsibility and the duty of every muslim around the world to participate in…We…call upon…Muslims around the world including Muslims in the USA and in Britain to confront by all means whether verbally, financially, politically or militarily the U.S. and British aggression and do their Islamic duty in relieving the Iraqi people from the unjust sanctions.”
SOUBRA was interviewed by FBI Phoenix on 04/07/2000 and 05/11/2000 at his residence. On 04/07/2000, interviewing Agents observed photocopied photographs of UBL, IBN KHATTAB and wounded Chechnyan Mujahadin tacked to his living room wall. SOUBRA admitted to (redactered portion) in the state of Arizona. SOUBRA stated that he considers the United States Government and U.S. Military forces in the Gulf as “legtimate military targets of Islam.” He also stated that the targeting of the U.S. Embassies in Africa was “legitimate.” SOUBRA denied having received any military training. However; Phoenix believes that SOUBRA was less than truthful in this
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regard. SOUBRA was defiant towards interviewing Agents and it was clear that he was not intimidated by the FBI presence. It is obvious that he is a hardcore Islamic extremist who views the U.S. as an enemy of Islam. Investigation of SOUBRA is continuing.(redactered portion)
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(redactered portion)Phoenix believes that it is more than a coincidence that subjects who are supporters of UBL are attending civil aviation universities/colleges in the State of Arizona. As receiving offices are aware, Phoenix has had significant UBL associates/operatives living in the State of Arizona and conducting activity in support of UBL. WADIH EL-HAGE, a UBL lieutenant recently convicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa, lived in Tucson, Arizona for several years during the 1980s.(redactered portion)
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(redactered portion)This information is being provided to receiving offices for information analysis and comments.
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Set Lead 1:
CounterterrorismAt Washington, DC
The RFU/UBLU is requested to consider implementing the suggested actions put forth by Phoenix at the beginning of their communication.
Set Lead 2:
New YorkAt New York, New York
Read and clear
[END]
LINKS:
Original pictures of docs, not in text form
From Time Magazine
May 21, 2002
FBI Director Robert Mueller FBI Headquarters Washington, D.C.
Dear Director Mueller:
I feel at this point that I have to put my concerns in writing concerning the important topic of the FBI’s response to evidence of terrorist activity in the United States prior to September 11th. The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY and go to the heart of the FBI’s law enforcement mission and mandate. Moreover, at this critical juncture in fashioning future policy to promote the most effective handling of ongoing and future threats to United States citizens’ security, it is of absolute importance that an unbiased, completely accurate picture emerge of the FBI’s current investigative and management strengths and failures.
To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring. The term “cover up” would be too strong a characterization which is why I am attempting to carefully (and perhaps over laboriously) choose my words here. I base my concerns on my relatively small, peripheral but unique role in the Moussaoui investigation in the Minneapolis Division prior to, during and after September 11th and my analysis of the comments I have heard both inside the FBI (originating, I believe, from you and other high levels of management) as well as your Congressional testimony and public comments.
I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons:
1) The Minneapolis agents who responded to the call about Moussaoui’s flight training identified him as a terrorist threat from a very early point. The decision to take him into custody on August 15, 2001, on the INS “overstay” charge was a deliberate one to counter that threat and was based on the agents’ reasonable suspicions. While it can be said that Moussaoui’s overstay status was fortuitous, because it allowed for him to be taken into immediate custody and prevented him receiving any more flight training, it was certainly not something the INS coincidentally undertook of their own volition. I base this on the conversation I had when the agents called me at home late on the evening Moussaoui was taken into custody to confer and ask for legal advice about their next course of action. The INS agent was assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and was therefore working in tandem with FBI agents.
2) As the Minneapolis agents’ reasonable suspicions quickly ripened into probable cause, which, at the latest, occurred within days of Moussaoui’s arrest when the French Intelligence Service confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups and activities connected to Osama Bin Laden, they became desperate to search the computer lap top that had been taken from Moussaoui as well as conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects. The agents in particular believed that Moussaoui signaled he had something to hide in the way he refused to allow them to search his computer.
3) The Minneapolis agents’ initial thought was to obtain a criminal search warrant, but in order to do so, they needed to get FBI Headquarters’ (FBIHQ’s) approval in order to ask for DOJ OIPR’s approval to contact the United States Attorney’s Office in Minnesota. Prior to and even after receipt of information provided by the French, FBIHQ personnel disputed with the Minneapolis agents the existence of probable cause to believe that a criminal violation had occurred/was occurring. As such, FBIHQ personnel refused to contact OIPR to attempt to get the authority. While reasonable minds may differ as to whether probable cause existed prior to receipt of the French intelligence information, it was certainly established after that point and became even greater with successive, more detailed information from the French and other intelligence sources. The two possible criminal violations initially identified by Minneapolis Agents were violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b (Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, which, notably, includes “creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury to any other person by destroying or damaging any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States or by attempting or conspiring to destroy or damage any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States”) and Section 32 (Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities). It is important to note that the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th was based on probable cause of a violation of Section 32.1 Notably also, the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th did not include the French intelligence information. Therefore, the only main difference between the information being submitted to FBIHQ from an early date which HQ personnel continued to deem insufficient and the actual criminal search warrant which a federal district judge signed and approved on September 11th, was the fact that, by the time the actual warrant was obtained, suspected terrorists were known to have highjacked planes which they then deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To say then, as has been iterated numerous times, that probable cause did not exist until after the disasterous event occurred, is really to acknowledge that the missing piece of probable cause was only the FBI’s (FBIHQ’s) failure to appreciate that such an event could occur. The probable cause did not otherwise improve or change. When we went to the United States Attorney’s Office that morning of September 11th, in the first hour after the attack, we used a disk containing the same information that had already been provided to FBIHQ; then we quickly added Paragraph 19 which was the little we knew from news reports of the actual attacks that morning. The problem with chalking this all up to the “20-20 hindsight is perfect” problem, (which I, as all attorneys who have been involved in deadly force training or the defense of various lawsuits are fully appreciative of), is that this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences. It is obvious, from my firsthand knowledge of the events and the detailed documentation that exists, that the agents in Minneapolis who were closest to the action and in the best position to gauge the situation locally, did fully appreciate the terrorist risk/danger posed by Moussaoui and his possible co-conspirators even prior to September 11th. Even without knowledge of the Phoenix communication (and any number of other additional intelligence communications that FBIHQ personnel were privy to in their central coordination roles), the Minneapolis agents appreciated the risk. So I think it’s very hard for the FBI to offer the “20-20 hindsight” justification for its failure to act! Also intertwined with my reluctance in this case to accept the “20-20 hindsight” rationale is first-hand knowledge that I have of statements made on September 11th, after the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already occurred, made telephonically by the FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) who was the one most involved in the Moussaoui matter and who, up to that point, seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents’ efforts (see number 5). Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui’s computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis’ prior suspicions about Moussaoui.2
4) In one of my peripheral roles on the Moussaoui matter, I answered an e-mail message on August 22, 2001, from an attorney at the National Security Law Unit (NSLU). Of course, with (ever important!) 20-20 hindsight, I now wish I had taken more time and care to compose my response. When asked by NSLU for my “assessment of (our) chances of getting a criminal warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer”, I answered, “Although I think there’s a decent chance of being able to get a judge to sign a criminal search warrant, our USAO seems to have an even higher standard much of the time, so rather than risk it, I advised that they should try the other route.” Leaked news accounts which said the Minneapolis Legal Counsel (referring to me) concurred with the FBIHQ that probable cause was lacking to search Moussaoui’s computer are in error. (or possibly the leak was deliberately skewed in this fashion?) What I meant by this pithy e-mail response, was that although I thought probable cause existed (“probable cause” meaning that the proposition has to be more likely than not, or if quantified, a 51% likelihood), I thought our United States Attorney’s Office, (for a lot of reasons including just to play it safe) in regularly requiring much more than probable cause before approving affidavits, (maybe, if quantified, 75%-80% probability and sometimes even higher), and depending on the actual AUSA who would be assigned, might turn us down. As a tactical choice, I therefore thought it would be better to pursue the “other route” (the FISA search warrant) first, the reason being that there is a common perception, which for lack of a better term, I’ll call the “smell test” which has arisen that if the FBI can’t do something through straight-up criminal methods, it will then resort to using less-demanding intelligence methods. Of course this isn’t true, but I think the perception still exists. So, by this line of reasoning, I was afraid that if we first attempted to go criminal and failed to convince an AUSA, we wouldn’t pass the “smell test” in subsequently seeking a FISA. I thought our best chances therefore lay in first seeking the FISA. Both of the factors that influenced my thinking are areas arguably in need of improvement: requiring an excessively high standard of probable cause in terrorism cases and getting rid of the “smell test” perception. It could even be argued that FBI agents, especially in terrorism cases where time is of the essence, should be allowed to go directly to federal judges to have their probable cause reviewed for arrests or searches without having to gain the USAO’s approval.4
5) The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism investigations and the obtaining and use of FISA searches (and who theoretically were privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field division agents), continued to, almost inexplicably,5 throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis’ by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause.6 In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!
Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval!
6 ) Eventually on August 28, 2001, after a series of e-mails between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, which suggest that the FBIHQ SSA deliberately further undercut the FISA effort by not adding the further intelligence information which he had promised to add that supported Moussaoui’s foreign power connection and making several changes in the wording of the information that had been provided by the Minneapolis Agent, the Minneapolis agents were notified that the NSLU Unit Chief did not think there was sufficient evidence of Moussaoui’s connection to a foreign power. Minneapolis personnel are, to this date, unaware of the specifics of the verbal presentations by the FBIHQ SSA to NSLU or whether anyone in NSLU ever was afforded the opportunity to actually read for him/herself all of the information on Moussaoui that had been gathered by the Minneapolis Division and the French intelligence service. Obviously verbal presentations are far more susceptible to mis-characterization and error. The e-mail communications between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, however, speak for themselves and there are far better witnesses than me who can provide their first hand knowledge of these events characterized in one Minneapolis agent’s e-mail as FBIHQ is “setting this up for failure.” My only comment is that the process of allowing the FBI supervisors to make changes in affidavits is itself fundamentally wrong, just as, in the follow-up to FBI Laboratory Whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst’s allegations, this process was revealed to be wrong in the context of writing up laboratory results. With the Whitehurst allegations, this process of allowing supervisors to re-write portions of laboratory reports, was found to provide opportunities for over-zealous supervisors to skew the results in favor of the prosecution. In the Moussaoui case, it was the opposite—the process allowed the Headquarters Supervisor to downplay the significance of the information thus far collected in order to get out of the work of having to see the FISA application through or possibly to avoid taking what he may have perceived as an unnecessary career risk.7 I understand that the failures of the FBIHQ personnel involved in the Moussaoui matter are also being officially excused because they were too busy with other investigations, the Cole bombing and other important terrorism matters, but the Supervisor’s taking of the time to read each word of the information submitted by Minneapolis and then substitute his own choice of wording belies to some extent the notion that he was too busy. As an FBI division legal advisor for 12 years (and an FBI agent for over 21 years), I can state that an affidavit is better and will tend to be more accurate when the affiant has first hand information of all the information he/she must attest to. Of necessity, agents must continually rely upon information from confidential sources, third parties and other law enforcement officers in drafting affidavits, but the repeating of information from others greatly adds to the opportunities for factual discrepancies and errors to arise. To the extent that we can minimize the opportunity for this type of error to arise by simply not allowing unnecessary re-writes by supervisory staff, it ought to be done. (I’m not talking, of course, about mere grammatical corrections, but changes of some substance as apparently occurred with the Moussaoui information which had to be, for lack of a better term, “filtered” through FBIHQ before any action, whether to seek a criminal or a FISA warrant, could be taken.) Even after September 11th, the fear was great on the part of Minneapolis Division personnel that the same FBIHQ personnel would continue their “filtering” with respect to the Moussaoui investigation, and now with the added incentive of preventing their prior mistakes from coming to light. For this reason, for weeks, Minneapolis prefaced all outgoing communications (ECs) in the PENTTBOM investigation with a summary of the information about Moussaoui. We just wanted to make sure the information got to the proper prosecutive authorities and was not further suppressed! This fear was probably irrational but was nonetheless understandable in light of the Minneapolis agents’ prior experiences and frustrations involving FBIHQ. (The redundant preface information regarding Moussaoui on otherwise unrelative PENTTBOM communications has ended up adding to criminal discovery issues, but this is the reason it was done.)
7) Although the last thing the FBI or the country needs now is a witch hunt, I do find it odd that (to my knowledge) no inquiry whatsoever was launched of the relevant FBIHQ personnel’s actions a long time ago. Despite FBI leaders’ full knowledge of all the items mentioned herein (and probably more that I’m unaware of), the SSA, his unit chief, and other involved HQ personnel were allowed to stay in their positions and, what’s worse, occupy critical positions in the FBI’s SIOC Command Center post September 11th. (The SSA in question actually received a promotion some months afterward!) It’s true we all make mistakes and I’m not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes. I’m relatively certain that if it appeared that a lowly field office agent had committed such errors of judgment, the FBI’s OPR would have been notified to investigate and the agent would have, at the least, been quickly reassigned. I’m afraid the FBI’s failure to submit this matter to OPR (and to the IOB) gives further impetus to the notion (raised previously by many in the FBI) of a double standard which results in those of lower rank being investigated more aggressively and dealt with more harshly for misconduct while the misconduct of those at the top is often overlooked or results in minor disciplinary action. From all appearances, this double standard may also apply between those at FBIHQ and those in the field.
8) The last official “fact” that I take issue with is not really a fact, but an opinion, and a completely unsupported opinion at that. In the day or two following September 11th, you, Director Mueller, made the statement to the effect that if the FBI had only had any advance warning of the attacks, we (meaning the FBI), may have been able to take some action to prevent the tragedy. Fearing that this statement could easily come back to haunt the FBI upon revelation of the information that had been developed pre-September 11th about Moussaoui, I and others in the Minneapolis Office, immediately sought to reach your office through an assortment of higher level FBIHQ contacts, in order to quickly make you aware of the background of the Moussaoui investigation and forewarn you so that your public statements could be accordingly modified. When such statements from you and other FBI officials continued, we thought that somehow you had not received the message and we made further efforts. Finally when similar comments were made weeks later, in Assistant Director Caruso’s congressional testimony in response to the first public leaks about Moussaoui we faced the sad realization that the remarks indicated someone, possibly with your approval, had decided to circle the wagons at FBIHQ in an apparent effort to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny. Everything I have seen and heard about the FBI’s official stance and the FBI’s internal preparations in anticipation of further congressional inquiry, had, unfortunately, confirmed my worst suspicions in this regard. After the details began to emerge concerning the pre-September 11th investigation of Moussaoui, and subsequently with the recent release of the information about the Phoenix EC, your statement has changed. The official statement is now to the effect that even if the FBI had followed up on the Phoenix lead to conduct checks of flight schools and the Minneapolis request to search Moussaoui’s personal effects and laptop, nothing would have changed and such actions certainly could not have prevented the terrorist attacks and resulting loss of life. With all due respect, this statement is as bad as the first! It is also quite at odds with the earlier statement (which I’m surprised has not already been pointed out by those in the media!) I don’t know how you or anyone at FBI Headquarters, no matter how much genius or prescience you may possess, could so blithely make this affirmation without anything to back the opinion up than your stature as FBI Director. The truth is, as with most predictions into the future, no one will ever know what impact, if any, the FBI’s following up on those requests, would have had. Although I agree that it’s very doubtful that the full scope of the tragedy could have been prevented, it’s at least possible we could have gotten lucky and uncovered one or two more of the terrorists in flight training prior to September 11th, just as Moussaoui was discovered, after making contact with his flight instructors. It is certainly not beyond the realm of imagination to hypothesize that Moussaoui’s fortuitous arrest alone, even if he merely was the 20th hijacker, allowed the hero passengers of Flight 93 to overcome their terrorist hijackers and thus spare more lives on the ground. And even greater casualties, possibly of our Nation’s highest government officials, may have been prevented if Al Qaeda intended for Moussaoui to pilot an entirely different aircraft. There is, therefore at least some chance that discovery of other terrorist pilots prior to September 11th may have limited the September 11th attacks and resulting loss of life. Although your conclusion otherwise has to be very reassuring for some in the FBI to hear being repeated so often (as if saying it’s so may make it so), I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs. I think the only fair response to this type of question would be that no one can pretend to know one way or another.
Mr. Director, I hope my observations can be taken in a constructive vein. They are from the heart and intended to be completely apolitical. Hopefully, with our nation’s security on the line, you and our nation’s other elected and appointed officials can rise above the petty politics that often plague other discussions and do the right thing. You do have some good ideas for change in the FBI but I think you have also not been completely honest about some of the true reasons for the FBI’s pre-September 11th failures. Until we come clean and deal with the root causes, the Department of Justice will continue to experience problems fighting terrorism and fighting crime in general.
I have used the “we” term repeatedly herin to indicate facts about others in the Minneapolis Office at critical times, but none of the opinions expressed herin can be attributed to anyone but myself. I know that those who know me would probably describe me as, by nature, overly opinionated and sometimes not as discreet as I should be. Certainly some of the above remarks may be interpreted as falling into that category, but I really do not intend anything as a personal criticism of you or anyone else in the FBI, to include the FBIHQ personnel who I believe were remiss and mishandled their duties with regard to the Moussaoui investigation. Truly my only purpose is to try to provide the facts within my purview so that an accurate assessment can be obtained and we can learn from our mistakes. I have pointed out a few of the things that I think should be looked at but there are many, many more.8 An honest acknowledgment of the FBI’s mistakes in this and other cases should not lead to increasing the Headquarters bureaucracy and approval levels of investigative actions as the answer. Most often, field office agents and field office management on the scene will be better suited to the timely and effective solution of crimes and, in some lucky instances, to the effective prevention of crimes, including terrorism incidents. The relatively quick solving of the recent mailbox pipe-bombing incidents which resulted in no serious injuries to anyone are a good example of effective field office work (actually several field offices working together) and there are hundreds of other examples. Although FBIHQ personnel have, no doubt, been of immeasurable assistance to the field over the years, I’m hard pressed to think of any case which has been solved by FBIHQ personnel and I can name several that have been screwed up! Decision-making is inherently more effective and timely when decentralized instead of concentrated.
Your plans for an FBI Headquarters’ “Super Squad” simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI’s pre-September 11th failures. The Phoenix, Minneapolis and Paris Legal Attache Offices reacted remarkably exhibiting keen perception and prioritization skills regarding the terrorist threats they uncovered or were made aware of pre-September 11th. The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters’ bureaucracy and you want to expand that?! Should we put the counterterrorism unit chief and SSA who previously handled the Moussaoui matter in charge of the new “Super Squad”?! You are also apparently disregarding the fact the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), operating out of field divisions for years, (the first and chief one being New York City’s JTTF), have successfully handled numerous terrorism investigations and, in some instances, successfully prevented acts of terrorism. There’s no denying the need for more and better intelligence and intelligence management, but you should think carefully about how much gate keeping power should be entrusted with any HQ entity. If we are indeed in a “war”, shouldn’t the Generals be on the battlefield instead of sitting in a spot removed from the action while still attempting to call the shots?
I have been an FBI agent for over 21 years and, for what it’s worth, have never received any form of disciplinary action throughout my career. From the 5th grade, when I first wrote the FBI and received the “100 Facts about the FBI” pamphlet, this job has been my dream. I feel that my career in the FBI has been somewhat exemplary, having entered on duty at a time when there was only a small percentage of female Special Agents. I have also been lucky to have had four children during my time in the FBI and am the sole breadwinner of a family of six. Due to the frankness with which I have expressed myself and my deep feelings on these issues, (which is only because I feel I have a somewhat unique, inside perspective of the Moussaoui matter, the gravity of the events of September 11th and the current seriousness of the FBI’s and United States’ ongoing efforts in the “war against terrorism”), I hope my continued employment with the FBI is not somehow placed in jeopardy. I have never written to an FBI Director in my life before on any topic. Although I would hope it is not necessary, I would therefore wish to take advantage of the federal “Whistleblower Protection” provisions by so characterizing my remarks.
Sincerely
Coleen M. Rowley Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel
NOTES
1) And both of the violations originally cited in vain by the Minneapolis agents disputing the issue with FBIHQ personnel are among those on which Moussaoui is currently indicted.
2) Just minutes after I saw the first news of the World Trade Center attack(s), I was standing outside the office of Minneapolis ASAC M. Chris Briesse waiting for him to finish with a phone call, when he received a call on another line from this SSA. Since I figured I knew what the call may be about and wanted to ask, in light of the unfolding events and the apparent urgency of the situation, if we should now immediately attempt to obtain a criminal search warrant for Moussaoui’s laptop and personal property, I took the call. I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the “hugest coincidence” at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The SSA stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, “coincidence” and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their (HQ’s) permission because we might “screw up” something else going on elsewhere in the country.
4) Certainly Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which begins, “Upon the request of a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government” does not contain this requirement. Although the practice that has evolved is that FBI agents must secure prior approval for any search or arrest from the United States Attorneys Office, the Federal Rule governing Search and Seizure clearly envisions law enforcement officers applying, on their own, for search warrants.
5) During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre-September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone’s first question was “Why?-<>Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn’t be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis’ effort.) Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all “unnecessary” actions/decisions by FBIHQ managers (and maybe to some extent field managers as well) has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course. Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions. In a large hierarchal bureaucracy such as the FBI, with the requirement for numerous superiors approvals/oversight, the premium on career-enhancement, and interjecting a chilling factor brought on by recent extreme public and congressional criticism/oversight, and I think you will see at least the makings of the most likely explanation. Another factor not to be underestimated probably explains the SSA and other FBIHQ personnel’s reluctance to act. And so far, I have heard no FBI official even allude to this problem- which is that FBI Headquarters is staffed with a number of short term careerists* who, like the SSA in question, must only serve an 18 month-just-time-to-get-your-ticket-punched minimum. It’s no wonder why very little expertise can be acquired by a Headquarters unit! (And no wonder why FBIHQ is mired in mediocrity!—that maybe a little strong, but it would definitely be fair to say that there is unevenness in competency among Headquarters personnel.) (It’s also a well known fact that the FBI Agents Association has complained for years about the disincentives facing those entering the FBI management career path which results in very few of the FBI’s best and brightest choosing to go into management. Instead the ranks of FBI management are filled with many who were failures as street agents. Along these lines, let me ask the question, why has it suddenly become necessary for the Director to “handpick” the FBI management?) It’s quite conceivable that many of the HQ personnel who so vigorously disputed Moussaoui’s ability/predisposition to fly a plane into a building were simply unaware of all the various incidents and reports worldwide of Al Qaeda terrorists attempting or plotting to do so.
*By the way, just in the event you did not know, let me furnish you the Webster’s definition of “careerism – - the policy or practice of advancing one’s career often at the cost of one’s integrity”. Maybe that sums up the whole problem!
6) For example, at one point, the Supervisory Special Agent at FBIHQ posited that the French information could be worthless because it only identified Zacarias Moussaoui by name and he, the SSA, didn’t know how many people by that name existed in France. A Minneapolis agent attempted to surmount that problem by quickly phoning the FBI’s legal Attache (Legat) in Paris, France, so that a check could be made of the French telephone directories. Although the Legat in France did not have access to all of the French telephone directories, he was able to quickly ascertain that there was only one listed in the Paris directory. It is not known if this sufficiently answered the question, for the SSA continued to find new reasons to stall.
7) Another factor that cannot be underestimated as to the HQ Supervisor’s apparent reluctance to do anything was/is the ever present risk of being “written up” for an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) “error.” In the year(s) preceding the September 11th acts of terrorism, numerous alleged IOB violations on the part of FBI personnel had to be submitted to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) as well as the IOB. I believe the chilling effect upon all levels of FBI agents assigned to intelligence matters and their manager hampered us from aggressive investigation of terrorists. Since one generally only runs the risk of IOB violations when one does something, the safer course is to do nothing. Ironically, in this case, a potentially huge IOB violation arguably occurred due to FBIHQ’s failure to act, that is, FBIHQ’s failure to inform the Department of Justice Criminal Division of Moussaoui’s potential criminal violations (which, as I’ve already said, were quickly identified in Minneapolis as violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b [Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries] and Section 32 [Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities]). This failure would seem to run clearly afoul of the Attorney General directive contained in the “1995 Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations” which mandatorily require the FBI to notify the Criminal Division when “facts or circumstances are developed” in an FI or FCI investigation “that reasonably indicate that a significant federal crime has been, is being, or may be committed.” I believe that Minneapolis agents actually brought this point to FBIHQ’s attention on August 22, 2001, but HQ personnel apparently ignored the directive, ostensibly due to their opinion of the lack of probable cause. But the issue of whether HQ personnel deliberately undercut the probable cause can be sidestepped at this point because the Directive does not require probable cause. It requires only a “reasonable indication” which is defined as “substantially lower than probable cause.” Given that the Minneapolis Division had accumulated far more than “a mere hunch” (which the directive would deem as insufficient), the information ought to have, at least, been passed on to the “Core Group” created to assess whether the information needed to be further disseminated to the Criminal Division. However, (and I don’t know for sure), but to date, I have never heard that any potential violation of this directive has been submitted to the IOB or to the FBI’s OPR. It should also be noted that when making determinations of whether items need to be submitted to the IOB, it is my understanding that NSLU normally used/uses a broad approach, erring, when in doubt, on the side of submitting potential violations.
8) For starters, if prevention rather than prosecution is to be our new main goal, (an objective I totally agree with), we need more guidance on when we can apply the Quarles “public safety” exception to Miranda’s 5th Amendment requirements. We were prevented from even attempting to question Moussaoui on the day of the attacks when, in theory, he could have possessed further information about other co-conspirators.} (Apparently no government attorney believes there is a “public safety” exception in a situation like this?!)
1998 memo
Coleen Rowley on FISA, Moussaoui, and whos at fault for 911

Habeus Corpus

Jose Padilla indicted for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. Padilla’s Case was about to go to the Supreme Court to have his status as an enemy combatant reviewed. Without a doubt the individual who was held, without being charged for three years, was charged because of the upcoming Supreme Court Review.
This individual originally made headlines as a “dirty bomb” suspect (I believe in Chicago). Dirty bombs are a technological impossibility. So we had a U.S. Citizen being held without charges in a navy Brig for three years for allegedly attempting an impossible act. The question is whether letting this case go too the Supreme Court would have been a good thing. With our new justice: which way would it go?
I think the Stare Decisis of “Ex Parte Milligan” would have won out. We need Habeas Corpus and if wartime is the justification then rebuttal is already in Ex Parte Milligan that eternal question: “If wartime is the justification for erosion of our constitutional rights then what the fuck reason is the war being fought for?” Certainly it is not being fought to defend our freedoms. Hopefully the logic contained in such a conundrum as well as the precedent of Ex Part Milligan should lend weight to the advantage of maintaining our rights.
On the other hand the risk that the Supreme Court would fail to check the executive’s unbridled power and create a lasting precedent for the suspension of habeas corpus. This is such a terrible outcome I am at some level relieved that the decision didn’t get to the Supreme Court, to allow the possibility of such a catastrophic blow to our civil liberties. After Bush v. Gore and the decisions on not making public the documents and conversations at Cheney’s NEPDG. The Supreme Court has become co-opted by the executive and there is a chance they would agree with the “enemy combatant” status argument concerning a U.S. citizen allegedly attempting a technologically impossible act. Here is my burning question:
“Does it have to get worse before it gets better?”
Is it:
1.Better to have the Supreme Court unmasked and decried for allowing the executive to become tyrannical; thus making it apparent to everyone that the checks and balances in stalled by our founders have collapsed.
OR
2.The executive be scared of judicial review thus providing marginal protection from the police state (One won’t be held for MORE than 3 years without being charged).
And of course there is a third possible eventuality which is far worse:
3. The Supreme Court agrees that suspension of Habeas Corpus is constitutional. They should make the corruption of the court obvious and the tyranny of the executive apparent, but most people just don’t care.
There is a strong possibility people will just ignore it.
Using terrorism to justify such a worldview and patriotism to justify apathy individuals will compartmentalize away the existence of the fascist police state that will have started ruling over us when Habeas Corpus is suspended.
Our state may have become tyrannical at the point it suspends Habeas Corpus and reverses Ex Parte Milligan.
Will such a debate emerge at the point this happens? Or will a PR blitz and the “mainstream media” help everyone forget the constitutional rights they had?

Excerpt from Crossing the Rubicon

From Crossing The Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert
Page 111
“A colorful Congressional figure who publicly criticized “Rick” Inderfurth and who spent a great deal of time in Congress attempting to blame the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party for the ascendancy and seeming invulnerability of the Taliban is Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of Orange County, California…
Perhaps one of the greatest post-9/11 research discoveries is reported by Nafeez Ahmed in The war on Freedom ...
From Hearings on Global Terrorism and South Asia, held in the House Committee on International Relations, Washington, DC, July 12, 2000
‘REP. DANA ROHROABACHER: After a year of requesting to see State Department documents on Afghan policy-and I would remind the committee that I have- I have stated that I believe that there is a covert policy by this administration, a shameful covert policy of supporting the Taliban- the State Department, after many, many months- actually, years- of prodding, finally began giving me documents. Mr. Chairman. And I have, in the assessment of those documents, I have found nothing to persuade me that I was wrong in my criticism. And I might add, however, that there has been no documents provided to me, even after all these years of requesting it, there habe been no documents concerning the time period of the forming of the Taliban. And I would again, I would hope that the State Department gets the message that I expect to see all thsoe documents…And although the administration has denied supporting the Taliban, it is clear that they discouraged all of the anti-Taliban suppporters from supporting the efforts in Afghanistan, to defeat the Taliban. Even so much as when the Taliban was ripe fro bing defeated on the ground in Afghanistan, Bill Richardson and “Rick” Inderfurth, high-ranking members of thisa dministration, personally visited the region in order to discourage the Taliban’s opposition from attacking the Taliban…and then going to neighboring countries to cut off any type of military assistance to the [opponents of the] Taliban. This at a time when Pakistan was heavily resupplyinng and rearming the Taliban. What did theis lead to? It led to the defeat of all the Taliban’s major enemies except for one, Commander Massoud, in the north, and left the Taliban the supreme power in Afghanistan…[Massoud was assasinated by al Qaeda operatives posing as TV cameramen two days before the attacks on New York and Washington.]One last note. Many people here understand that I have been in Afghanistan on numerous occasions and have close ties to peple there. And let me just say that some of my sources of information informed me of where bin Laden was, they told me they knew and could tell people where bin Laden could be located. And it took me three times before this administration responded to someone who obviously had personal contacts in Afghanistan, to even investigate that there might be someone who could give them the information. And when my contact was actually contacted, they said that the people who contacted them were half-hearted, did not follow through, did not appear to be all that interested…’
Later the subject of discussion between committee members turned to who had been supplying the Taliban with weapons.
‘REP ROhRABACHER: (Laughing) This is a joke! I mean, you have to go to closed session to tell us where the weapons are coming from? Well, how about let’s make a choice. There’s Pakistan or Pakistan or Pakistan.(Laughs) Where do you think the Taliban- Right as we speak- I haven’t read any classified documents. Everybody in the region knows that Pakistan is involved with a massive supply of military weapons and has been since the beginning of the Taliban. Let me just state for the record, here, before I get into my questions, that I think there’s – and it’s not just you, Mr. Ambassador (Michael Sheehan, State Department Coordinator For Counterterrorism], but it is this administration and, perhaps, other administrations as well, I do not believe that terrorism flows from a lack of state control…Only the United States has given – and I again make this charge – the United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban all along, and still is let me add…We have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department…Again, let me just – I am sorry Mr. Inderfurth is not here to defend himself – but let me state for the record: at at time when the Taliban were vulnerable, the top person of this administration, Mr. Inderfurth and Bill Richardson [Clinton Energy Secretary and now Governor of New Mexico] went to Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to go on the offensive and, furthermore convinced all of the anti-Taliban forces, their supporters, to disarm them and to cease their flow of support for anti-Taliban forces.’
Rohrabacher’s Pique continued during an exchange with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Inderfurth’s assistant) Alan Eastham.
‘REP. ROHRABACHER: But the Taliban were included; except when happened right after all of thsoe other support systes that had been dismantled because of Mr. Inderfurth’s and Mr. Richardson’s appeal, and the State Department’s appeal? What happened immediately – not only immediately after, even while you were making that appeal what happened in Pakistan? Was there an airlift of supplies, military supplies, between Pakistan and Kabul and the forward elements of the Taliban forcecs?REP. ROHRABACHER: [answering his own question]: The answer is yes, I know. MR. EASTHAM: The answer is-REP. ROCHRABACHER: You can’t tell me because-MR. EASTHAM: The answer is-REP. ROHRABACHER: -it’s secret information.MR. EASTHAM: The answer is closed session. If you would like to dredge up that record. REP. ROHRABACHER: Well, I don’t have to go into closed session because I didn’t get aht information from any classified document… Mr. Inderfurth, Mr. Bill Richardson, a good freind of mine, doing the bidding of this administration, basically convinced the anti-Taliban mentors to quit providing them the weapons they needed, with some scheme the Taliban were then going to lay down their arms. And immediately thereafter, Pakistan started a massive shift of military supplies that resulted in the total defeat of the anti-Taliban forces… Why haven’t I been provided any documents about State Department analysis of- durin the formation period of the Taliban, about whehter or not the taliban was a good force or a bad force? Why have none of those documents reached my desk after two years?MR EASTHAM: The effort was to stop the support for all the factions.REP ROHRABACHER: That’s correct. You didn’t deny that we disarmed their opponents, you just said we were doing it with the Taliban as well, But as I pointed out, which you did not deny, the Taliban were immediately resupplied. Which means that we are part and parcel of disarming the victim, thinking htat hte aggressor was going to be disarmed as well, but it just didn’t work out- at the moment when Paksitan was arming them I might add.’”
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“Although his death was not announced until 15 September, Massood is believed to have died in the explosion of a bomb hidden in a camera held by one of the bogus “reporters.” His interpreter and personal assistant, Assem Suhail, was also killed. For nearly a week afterward, Massood’s aides managed to keep his death a secret, maintaining that he had merely been wounded, but that his condition was worsening. Meanwhile, they worked frantically to hold the alliance together while they chose his successor. There has been speculation that the timing of the assassination-<>two days before the catastrophic terror attacks in New York and Washington-was no accident. Shah’s death considerably weakened the Northern Alliance at a time when the Taliban was facing the prospect of American retaliatory strikes. The assassination of the Alliance’s best military mind thus helped to “level the playing field” between the two sides.”
cite
nada @ 05/27/06 14:54:01
“An August 27, 1997 cable in which U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Thomas Simons comments on Pakistan’s claim that its total aid to the Taliban through the end of 1996 had been only 20 million rupees (approximately one-half million dollars). Simons notes that this amount “did not include access to Pak wheat and POL (Note 1), or the trucks and buses full of adolescent mujahid crossing the frontier shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and going into the line with a day or two of weapons training.” “That,” Simons’ noted, “was Pakistan’s real aid”
cite from GWU-NSA
POL=Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants
nada @ 05/27/06 14:55:23
”(REDACTERED PORTION) told me this AM that he is concerned that the GOP (ISI) is deeply involved in the Taleban take over in Kandahar and Qalat.”
“An Afghan contact in Dushanbe told me this AM that there is a Rabbani-ISI deal according to which Rabbani has agreed to an ISI move in to southern and western Afghanistan so long as it does not extend to a challenge of Ismail Khan in Herat. The thinking of this source is that Rabbani is exploiting the widening gulf between Gulbuddin and ISI -Growing out of ISI impression that Gulbuddin will be unable to move beyond the Kabul stalemate”
“One afghan asserts as fact involvement of Pak military with the Taleban and that old Khalqis are serving as enforcers in Kandahar. While many/most Afghan commanders would be contrained in condeming this alleged GOP intervention by virtue of their own dependence on Pakistan, there appears to be significant sentiment within the disapora against the GOP move”
Cite
GOP=Government of Pakistan(so it is important to note when it says GOP at the top of the document it quickly defines GOP as ISI in quotes, could be a fuck up, or it could imply whos truly running the country), or who their liason is.
And Khalqis are former members of one of the old parties pre-taleban Afghanistan.
nada @ 05/27/06 15:09:27

Department of Pre-crime

bloombergNew York Times
From NY Times article:
“A police spokeswoman, Cpl. Michile Paradis, asked whether the group had actually had the three tons of chemicals in their possession, and if the police had ‘seized’ it, replied: ‘That’s difficult to answer. They made arrangements to have it delivered and they took delivery.’”
They cannot be charged with possession of these chemicals or actually engaging in a terrorist act.Instead the only thing they can feasibly be charged with is conspiracy. We will see what they actually are charged with.
Another from NY Times: “In court, he said, government lawyers broke with tradition and did not present a synopsis of the reasons for their chages, arguing that they had not had time to prepare it. It will, however, be presented at another hearing on Tuesday.”
Thats right you read correctly: Lawyers at a loss for words.So “the crown” has not charged these individuals with anything yet.The papers allude to “anti-terrorism” charges based on a law passed in 2001.
These individuals never engaged in a terrorist attack. We still do not know where this “3 tons of ammonium nitrate” is or if it even existed.We do not know if it did exist whether or not the RCMP used it to dangle in front of them in order to arrest them. All articles state that the RCMP and FBI were watching this group of peope who attend the mosque of Qayyum Abdul Jamal.
More from NY Times:”One senior counterterrorism official said there had been extensive contact between American and Canadian authorities in the past several days”
If the ammonium nitrate does exist and was sold by terrorists:Why the fuck did they bust a buncha students? They should be following that vein wherever it goes. 3 tons of ammonium nitrate! Who is selling that amount of explosives? The threat is obviously far worse than they’re letting on and why did they bust these people? When they did they ruined their opportunity to take down an illicit arms network that can actually fence and move 3 tons of ammonium nitrate!
If the ammonium nitrate does exist and was sold by RCMP/RBI:This is an example of entrapment, there is no evidence that these individuals would have sought explosives if they had not been offered and entrapped by undercover agents.
If the ammonium nitrate doesn’t exist:Then they’re being charged for something they could never have done. Maybe a conspiracy charge could stick, but anything else is ridiculous.
My main concern is that being charged with breaking an “anti-terrorist” law is basically a catch-all. This threatens every person in Canada, the US, and the rest of America.
This whole scenario reeks of set-up, which means they could have been entrapped or without undercover involvement they never would have attempted to procure explosives.
If its not a set-up then there is a massive illicit arms network that has been allowed to operate and move on unscathed. Which means we have put ourselves in greater danger by arresting the small fish for PR, when the real threat exists in the arms network

Intro to the muslim brotherhood, or how i learned to stop worrying and love the ideology of the third reich

“What I’m doing today is doing what I’m doing now: I’m educating a new generation in the CIA that the Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist organization that was hired by Western Intelligence that evolved over time into what we today know as al Qaeda.”John Loftus, Former Deputy Attorney General Link
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“Numerous Islamic terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, have their roots in The Muslim Brotherhood.”Homeland Security website, (removed from web). Cached link
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“In 1928, six Egyptian workers employed by British military camps in Isma’iliyya, in the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt, visited Hassan al-Banna, a young schoolteacher who they had heard preach in mosques and coffee-houses on the need for an Islamic rewnewal. “Arabs and Muslims have no status and no dignity,” they said. “They are no more than mere hirelings belonging to the foreigners…. We are unable to perceive the road to action as you perceive it….” They therefore asked him to become their leader; he accepted, founding the Society of the Muslim Brothers”The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement by Brynjar Lia; Carré, Olivier and Gérard Michaud. 1983. Les Frères musulmans : Egypte et Syrie (1928-1982). Paris: Gallimard.; Mitchell, Richard P. 1969. The Society of the Muslim Brothers. London: Oxford University Presslink)
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“Here’s how the story began. In the 1920’s there was a young Egyptian named al Bana. And al Bana formed this nationalist group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Bana was a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler and wrote to him frequently. So persistent was he in his admiration of the new Nazi Party that in the 1930’s, al Bana and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm of Nazi Intelligence.
The Arab Nazis had much in common with the new Nazi doctrines. They hated Jews; they hated democracy; and they hated the Western culture. It became the official policy of the Third Reich to secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as the fifth Parliament, an army inside Egypt.”John Loftus, Former Deputy Attorney General Link
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Hitler and Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
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Mohammad Amin al-Husayni inspecting his SS
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Around 100,000 European Muslims fought for Hitler’s Germany in World War II. They included two Bosnian Muslim Waffen SS Divisions, an Albanian Waffen SS Division in Kosovo and Western Macedonia, the Waffengruppe der-SS Krim, formations consisting of Chechen Muslims from Chechnya, and other Muslim formations in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Bosnian Muslims, who were in the Croatian pro-Nazi Ustasha, were especially brutal toward the Christian Serbs.
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“On October 26, 1954, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdul Munim Abdul Rauf, attempted to kill Egypt’s second president Gamal Abdul Nasser . As a result, the organization was outlawed again and over 4000 of its members were imprisoned, including prominent member Sayyid QUTB, who became the most influential intellectual of the group, writing books in prison much like Hitler did before his rise to power.”Homeland Security Website Cache
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“What the British did then, they sold the Arab Nazis to the predecessor of what became the CIA. It may sound stupid; it may sound evil, but it did happen. The idea was that we were going to use the Arab Nazis in the Middle East as a counterweight to the Arab communists. Just as the Soviet Union was funding Arab communists, we would fund the Arab Nazis to fight against. And lots of secret classes took place. We kept the Muslim Brotherhood on our payroll.
But the Egyptians became nervous. Nasser ordered all of the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt or be imprisoned, and we would execute them all. During the 1950’s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood like Azzam, became the teachers in the Madrasas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabiism.”John Loftus
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Peter Dale Scott Chapter VIII: Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment The then leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sayed Kuttub, a man Faisal sponsored to undermine Nasser, openly admitted that during this period [the 1960s] ‘America made Islam.’
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“For the Saudis, there was a ruler in charge of Saudi Arabia, and they were the new home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and fascism and extremism were mingled in these schools. And there was a young student who paid attention – - and Azzam’s student was named Osama Bin Ladin. Osama Bin Ladin was taught by the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood who had emigrated to Saudi Arabia.
In 1979 the CIA decided to take the Arab Nazis out of cold storage. The Russians had invaded Afghanistan, so we told the Saudis that we would fund them if they would bring all of the Arab Nazis together and ship them off to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. We had to rename them. We couldn’t call them the Muslim Brotherhood because that was too sensitive a name. Its Nazi cast was too known. So we called them the Maktab al Khidimat il Mujahideen, the MAK.
And the CIA lied to Congress and said they didn’t know who was on the payroll in Afghanistan, except the Saudis. But it was not true. A small section CIA knew perfectly well that we had once again hired the Arab Nazis and that we were using them to fight our secret wars.
Azzam and his assistant, Osama Bin Ladin, rose to some prominence from 1979 to ‘89, and they won the war. They drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. Our CIA said, “We won, let’s go home!” and we left this army of Arab fascists in the field of Afghanistan.”-John Loftus
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Peter Dale Scott Chapter VIII: Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment :‘What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in the 1990s is the extent to which they have acted in the interests of both American oil companies and the U.S. government In one way or another, Americans in the 1990s cooperated with al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo. In other countries, notably Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, al Qaeda terrorists have provided pretexts or opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to follow.’
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“Osama Bin Ladin’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the results of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
There are many flavors and branches, but they are all Muslim Brotherhoods. There is one in Israel. The organization you know as “Hammas” is actually a secret chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel assassinated Sheik Yassin a month ago, the Muslim Brotherhood published his obituary in a Cairo newspaper in Arabic and revealed that he was actually the secret leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.”-John Loftus
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“The al Qaeda Doctrine is the same as the Arab Nazis held. They hated Jews, they hate democracy, and they hate Westerners for Western culture. Al Qaeda is nothing more than the religious expression of Arab Fascism. We allowed this branch of the Nazi trunk to survive, to flourish, and it has come back to haunt us.”-John Loftus (emphasis mine)
“When one considers the principles that guide the constitutional system of government, one finds that such principles aim to preserve in all its forms the freedom of the individual citizen, to make the rulers accountable for their actions to the people and finally, to delimit the prerogatives of every single authoritative body. It will be clear to everyone that such basic principles correspond perfectly to the teaching of Islam concerning the system of government. For this reason, the Muslim Brothers consider that of all the existing systems of government, the constitutional system is the form that best suits Islam and Muslims.”-Al-Banna, founder of the muslim brotherhood link)
“In an very impressive research effort into the early years of the Muslim Brothers, Lia (a Norwegian scholar) relies on new sources and deep knowledge of his subject to show convincingly just how well that movement does fit the new interpretation. He establishes that it organized in ways novel for Egypt and mobilized elements of the population hitherto neglected. But its greatest importance lay in developing an answer to the rampant European ideologies of the 1930s: in this, the Muslim Brothers began “a lasting process of renewal … in which religion was related to the modern age and all aspects of modern life.” With justification, Lia concludes that the Muslim Brothers’ “reinterpretation of Islam will remain the most far-reaching Islamic renewal this century.””link
There is a body of writing that basically perceives the muslim brotherhood as an innocuous “arab socialist” group.
Qutb developed his distinctive ideas after the Egyptian Ministry of Education, for which he worked as an official, sent him to the USA in 1948-51 to study American methods of schooling. He returned to Egypt with an uncompromising hatred for the West and all its works. Qutb’s rejection of the West was not that of the conservative concerned with preserving his culture’s traditions against foreign encroachments, but rather that of the ‘born-again Muslim’ who having adopted or absorbed many modern influences makes a show of discarding them in his search for personal identity and cultural authenticity. After his arrest, Qutb wrote his famous work, Signposts, which is the first clear statement of the aims and worldview of the sects we now think of as Islamist, and is required reading for the cadre of these groups. Qutb defined the regime itself as part of the ‘infidel’ problem. Society was divided into the Party of God and the Party of Satan. The Islamist movement was surrounded by a swamp of ignorance and unbelief (jahiliyya, the term used to describe the society of Arabia before the coming of Muhammed). The creation of an Islamic government was not just a culturally preferable alternative, but a divine imperative. The method of creating it would be jihad, or holy war. (For some Muslims, jihad can mean private spiritual striving, but for Islamist groups it increasingly means, very literally, war.) It is unclear if Qutb himself would have wholeheartedly approved of the modern groups who claim his legacy; but he spelled out the main themes of modern militant Islamism.
“Mitchell was well-informed through his personal contacts with prominent Brothers, and was also the first Western scholar to draw heavily on Arabic sources. Mitchell, like many others of his time, believed that the Society had been finally suppressed in 1954, by which time all its leaders had been jailed or executed. In 1968, he believed that ‘the essentially secular reform nationalism ƒ in vogue in the Arab world would continue until the earlier appeal of the Society eventually is lost’ (Mitchell, p.xxiii-xxiv). And, indeed, in the 1960s, such a conclusion was fully in accord with all observable political and social realities. However, in the 1970s and ‘80s, the situation changed dramatically and, in the 1990s, analysts were agreeing that ‘Islamic activism will be a major feature of regional politics into the 21st century’ (Robin Wright, quot. in Voll, J.O. Foreword, in Mitchell (1993), p.x.). Consequently this timely (1993) reissue of Mitchell’s classic work incorporates a foreword by leading US Islamic scholar John Voll discussing the subsequent history and continued significance of the Society.”link
link
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Egyptian ideologue of modern Islamism and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was one of the first to combine the two strands. His writings have been read by millions of Muslims around the world and have been a major influence in the development of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism. Qutb used racist stereotypes and forgeries of Western anti-Semitism such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (translated into Arabic and widely distributed in the Muslim world) [7] . As a result, Islamism today sees itself involved in a cosmic struggle against “the Jews” which has to fought to the bitter end: “Therefore the struggle between Islam and the Jews continues in force and will continue, because the Jews will be satisfied only with the destruction of this religion (Islam).” [8] For Qutb, modern-day Jews are identical to their forefathers at the time of Muhammad, who “confronted Islam with Enmity from the moment that the Islamic state was established in Medina. They plotted against the Muslim Community from the first day it became a Community.” [9] Since then, says Qutb, all Jews have always been wicked enemies of Islam, and contemporary Islam is attacked by the very same Jews using the same “machinations and double dealings which discomfited the Early Muslims . . . The Jews continue – through their wickedness and double-dealing – to lead this (Muslim) community away from its religion and to alienate it from its Qur’an” [10] . Qutb argues that Jews are inherently evil because all through the ages they have rebelled against God “in the most disgustingly aggressive manner . . .”. As a result: “From such creatures who kill, massacre and defame prophets one can only expect the spilling of human blood and dirty means which would further their machinations and evilness.” According to Qutb, Jews are characterized by ingratitude, selfishness, fanaticism and hatred for all others. They foment dissension in their host societies and exploit all disasters to profit from the misery of others. They also utilize usury to accumulate wealth, infiltrate societies, and dominate the whole world
link