The war on terror is not over we are far from safe. The war that “will not end in our lifetimes” has a new front. First we were attacked from the sky by a CIA asset in Afghanistan. Then we were attacked from within our own country by “the gays”. Next we were being attacked from the south by immigrants that have darker skin than the immigrants we are used to.
This time though they’ve gone too far. Cornered like rats, tear-wrists to tha left o’ us and tear-wrists to tha right. We have to fight back. The United States has been under attack for too long. This is a post 9-11 world! Don’t you understand what that means?
The Qainadians are going to invade from the north!
Well its time we redoubled our efforts in the war on terror. I know I know your faith in the leadership may have shaken when the unitary executive himself declared that we probably can’t win , but I think we can pull it off.
Call me an idealist, but I think it is completely feasible to destroy terrorism entirely.
Am I the only one?
Heres a quick question: As a leader(or a follower) is it smart to embark on a war you will not win?What would Sun-Tzu say?Well the criteria for victory is quite drawn out in Sun-Tzu’s opinion
Ok what would he say about a “war that will not end in our lifetimes”?‘2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is longin coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor willbe damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust yourstrength. 3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources ofthe State will not be equal to the strain. 4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftainswill spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man,however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that mustensue. 5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays’
But wait, Sun-Tzu was talking about war and war is only engaged in by state entities. The “war on terror” is first and foremost not a war, wars are two state’s militarys fighting eachother. War is such a terrible event and human catastrophe that we assume the war will only be fought if one side is the aggressor and the other side is defending itself. If no one is the aggressor…...how do wars start?
We must know the answer to this question, before we can understand the “war” on “terror”.
The aggression against the United States in the Gulf of Tonkin justified ratcheting up our engagement in Vietnam.
My life is the most important thing in history. I’m sure you feel the same way or we wouldn’t be both paralyzed with fear, right?
Are you afraid of being the one jumping out of the burning building?As the pavement approaches a pre-cognition flashback trip kicks in.
You can see a few months down the line everyone in mourning then the “moments of silence for firefighters were interrupted by cell phones”, the sleepers checked their voice mail and holy shit they were waaaaay behind schedule.
You could see a few weeks after that when everyone forgot about you and instead started to simultaneously praise the “leaders” and cursing Immanuel Goldstein.
You could see when the hate became so powerful that Immanuel no longer mattered and the United States was no longer a Democratic-Republic.
Instead while everyone was ignoring the atrocity or oversimplifying the atrocity with hate.While the papers told us we were unified: the ideology that “the greatest generation” achieved victory over in WWII crept in to the “New World”.
Do they need to be listed? The clamp down? Are you raving about it? Or are you ignoring it as best you can, hoping that it will just go away?Is there anyone still out there who thinks they weren’t duped?
I know its hard, you don’t want to think they could pull one over on you, but the longer you wait the harder the cognitive dissonance will be to overcome.
I want our politicians to get out in the public. I want our politicians to handle the war on terror.
I want them to attempt to fix it or admit it is a complete clusterfuck and bring the IED catchers home.
If this was a War on Terror; rather than a “war on terror” or a “war” on “terror”; we would have invaded Spain, Britain, and now Canada to eradicate the Al-Qaeda threat in each of those places.
I know this stupid fucking pointless rant won’t do shit and will fall on deaf ears and even motherfuckers who agree with me will find some stupid shit to harp on and splinter in to ever more specific separate distinctions of “freedom”.
Tell us some fucking information please! Stop sucking the fucking administrations collective nuts and ask questions you fucking “journalists”!
For starters why don’t you ask what the fuck Al-Qaeda is?
Or maybe write something, FUCK ANYTHING WRITE FUCKING ANYTHING about osama bin laden, write fucking EN-EEE-THING about al qaeda.
Its our fucking enemy right!!!!
WELL TELL US WHAT THE FUCK IT IS!!!!
WHY THE FUCK AM I A CONSPIRACY THEORIST FOR WANTING TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK AL QAIDA IS!?
WHY ARE YOU READING THIS AND NOT GIVING A SHIT EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IT IS EITHER!!???WELL HOW ABOUT UHH…TERRORISM? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS EVEN? WELL GO AHEAD DEFINE IT FOR ME
SERIOUSLY WHOEVER IS READING THIS: DEFINE “TERRORISM”and
fuck it
all i’m saying is we need to eradicate the al-qainadian threat, canadians are out to get us. The government of Canada(which is technically Britain)should be given 5 days to transport all people who follow al-qaida ideology out of canada to the US, or else face carpet bombing and land takeover.
threat to freedom this and that, blah blah
don’t ask fucking questions you stupid fucking automatons, read about britney spear’s new wasted genetic material, better check to see if you have properly basked in the reflective glory of ‘your’ sports team, and for fucks sake don’t miss a chance to go purchase the latest in fashionable consumption.
just get in. the. FUCKING. OVEN!
GET IN THE FUCKING OVEN, WHY ARE YOU WAITING!!!??? IS THERE ANY POINT IN WAITING, JUST GET IN THE FUCKING OVEN!!!!!
IF YOU CAN’T DEFINE AL-QAIDA OR TERRORISM AND THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T DEFINE AL-QAIDA OR TERRORISM, THEN GUESS WHAT AS FAR AS YOU OR THE GOVERNMENT KNOW…....
we’re all al-qaida
Whatever you do though, for god’s sake don’t ask a single fucking question, its exactly what the terrorists want you to do.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Support Our Troops
We have all seen the yellow ribbons on the backs of innumerable automobiles. It is considered such a normative value to “support our troops” that even the 24-hour propaganda disseminators can parrot it without having their objectivity called into question.
“Support The Troops” only works one way. And that way is “Support The Troops” when its good PR. Right now there is a lame duck president with a 29% approval rating embroiled in a war that is three years old. With more combat deaths than any engagement since Vietnam it raises some interesting questions about what “Supporting The Troops” really means.
During the 1990s there was a certain conflict involving Milosevic in which President Clinton used his famous technique to borrow from “conservative” and “liberal” schools of thought throughout his presidency. Many critics argued this was evidence he was actually a “populist”, but I personally think it was just an attempt to be identified as “moderate” just like the vast majority of United Statesians self-identify as. The United States(See NATO ) conflict in Kosovo created a “third way”. Rather than diplomatic moves like shunning/embargoes or overt military moves like an occupation. Clinton embarked on a billion dollar plus bombing campaign. This way only a few troops would be lost, but they could take out infrastructure that Milosevic relied upon. So Clinton did a very good job of “Supporting The Troops”, because he minimized casualties. His true motivation though was to protect his approval ratings, because nobody likes body bags .
So Clinton in the bombing campaign of Kosovo may have killed many civilians, but not so many US soldiers.While say, the first gulf war killed both US soldiers, enemy soldiers, and civilians.
Which brings me to my next question: is a United Statesian soldier’s life more important than a civilian who happens to be living in an enemy’s country? Does one conflict become worse than another when the body count is bigger? When the body count is bigger for “our” side?Should I cheer if less people died today than yesterday?
Well it seems that there are times when normativity dictates not “Supporting The Troops” is ok. Like Thisor This
Don’t get me wrong here. The Habitha massacre and the (people that were caught in pictures) torturing was terrible. So was Dasht-e-Leili, but it is important to take note of what happens during these situations: when it is normatively acceptable for us to turn our backs on the troops.
Ok! Lynndie England is locked up problem solved!Pay no attention to Titan Corp, CIA, Alberto Gonzales, or george bush jr.It is insulting to every United Statesian’s intelligence that we are expected to believe the official line: that a few MPs just decided to up and go a-torturin’.Bullshit.
So you say: “Well they still have to have responsibility for their actions”well…The troops are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they don’t follow “fucked up war crime order #1” they’re getting court-martialed, discharged, and possibly incarcerated.Or.If they do execute “fucked up war crime order #1” , and word of the order reaches the public, the politicans will serve them to the angry mob on a platter. Hell his approval rating might go up for it! The soldier will be lucky if he sees the outside world again. Fucked coming AND going.
Don’t tell me you “Support The Troops” if you simultaneously support scapegoating the grunts to save the politicians’ asses.
Don’t say you “Support The Troops” if you’re not yelling for the head of the person who orginally issued the order for the Habitha Massacre.
Or will it happen the same way with Habitha?The soldiers that even Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity can’t “Support” get scapegoated and the truly culpable walk free?
I am not going to list reasons why the Iraq war should not have been fought.
I simply have a new name for our soldiers which I feel is FAAAAR more accurate than “Troops” or “Soldiers”.*“I.E.D. Catchers”*
We should call them what they are and what they are is I.E.D. Catchers. They have been in hostile country for over 2 years and still don’t even know how to distinguish “the enemy” from the rest of the population. Their ground transportation is plagued by Improvised Explosive Devices which as General John Abizaid wrote to the DoD: “IEDs are the number one killer of American troops”. Their air travel is halted by stingers using a technique taught to the Arab Afghans, by the US, to take down choppers. This is what our “Soldiers” and “Troops” are they are I.E.D. Catchers, Stinger Magnets, and just plain fucking targets.
I’m done worrying about holding the individuals accountable who malevolently deceived us in order to take our troops in to a war that had nothing to do with the “War on Terror”. Notice I did not say “take ‘us’ in to a war”. “We” are not in Iraq the I.E.D. Catchers are in Iraq, we may have been lied to, but “We” are NOT paying for it.
Life here in the states has not changed. We do not even miss our I.E.D. Catchers. Oh, I’m sure people who have family or freinds miss them, but what about the rest of the I.E.D. Catchers? The I.E.D. Catchers you have never met? Do you really give a shit if the newspaper reads “17 marines killed in Iraq” or “2 marines killed in Iraq”?Do you even notice the number every morning?Do you truly “Support The Troops” or do just say such things to ease your conscience?If you’re around someone else do you say something out loud like “awwww thats a shame.” to look compassionate or empathetic?Do you fling your newspaper in a blind rage fueled by knowledge of the inhumanity of war?
Do you cry in to your coffee when you see the numbered dead every morning?
You don’t. And neither do I.
If you truly Support The I.E.D. Catchers bring them home, re-unite them with their families, and for fucks sake stop hiding behind them when it is politically convenient to do so.
“Support The Troops” only works one way. And that way is “Support The Troops” when its good PR. Right now there is a lame duck president with a 29% approval rating embroiled in a war that is three years old. With more combat deaths than any engagement since Vietnam it raises some interesting questions about what “Supporting The Troops” really means.
During the 1990s there was a certain conflict involving Milosevic in which President Clinton used his famous technique to borrow from “conservative” and “liberal” schools of thought throughout his presidency. Many critics argued this was evidence he was actually a “populist”, but I personally think it was just an attempt to be identified as “moderate” just like the vast majority of United Statesians self-identify as. The United States(See NATO ) conflict in Kosovo created a “third way”. Rather than diplomatic moves like shunning/embargoes or overt military moves like an occupation. Clinton embarked on a billion dollar plus bombing campaign. This way only a few troops would be lost, but they could take out infrastructure that Milosevic relied upon. So Clinton did a very good job of “Supporting The Troops”, because he minimized casualties. His true motivation though was to protect his approval ratings, because nobody likes body bags .
So Clinton in the bombing campaign of Kosovo may have killed many civilians, but not so many US soldiers.While say, the first gulf war killed both US soldiers, enemy soldiers, and civilians.
Which brings me to my next question: is a United Statesian soldier’s life more important than a civilian who happens to be living in an enemy’s country? Does one conflict become worse than another when the body count is bigger? When the body count is bigger for “our” side?Should I cheer if less people died today than yesterday?
Well it seems that there are times when normativity dictates not “Supporting The Troops” is ok. Like Thisor This
Don’t get me wrong here. The Habitha massacre and the (people that were caught in pictures) torturing was terrible. So was Dasht-e-Leili, but it is important to take note of what happens during these situations: when it is normatively acceptable for us to turn our backs on the troops.
Ok! Lynndie England is locked up problem solved!Pay no attention to Titan Corp, CIA, Alberto Gonzales, or george bush jr.It is insulting to every United Statesian’s intelligence that we are expected to believe the official line: that a few MPs just decided to up and go a-torturin’.Bullshit.
So you say: “Well they still have to have responsibility for their actions”well…The troops are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they don’t follow “fucked up war crime order #1” they’re getting court-martialed, discharged, and possibly incarcerated.Or.If they do execute “fucked up war crime order #1” , and word of the order reaches the public, the politicans will serve them to the angry mob on a platter. Hell his approval rating might go up for it! The soldier will be lucky if he sees the outside world again. Fucked coming AND going.
Don’t tell me you “Support The Troops” if you simultaneously support scapegoating the grunts to save the politicians’ asses.
Don’t say you “Support The Troops” if you’re not yelling for the head of the person who orginally issued the order for the Habitha Massacre.
Or will it happen the same way with Habitha?The soldiers that even Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity can’t “Support” get scapegoated and the truly culpable walk free?
I am not going to list reasons why the Iraq war should not have been fought.
I simply have a new name for our soldiers which I feel is FAAAAR more accurate than “Troops” or “Soldiers”.*“I.E.D. Catchers”*
We should call them what they are and what they are is I.E.D. Catchers. They have been in hostile country for over 2 years and still don’t even know how to distinguish “the enemy” from the rest of the population. Their ground transportation is plagued by Improvised Explosive Devices which as General John Abizaid wrote to the DoD: “IEDs are the number one killer of American troops”. Their air travel is halted by stingers using a technique taught to the Arab Afghans, by the US, to take down choppers. This is what our “Soldiers” and “Troops” are they are I.E.D. Catchers, Stinger Magnets, and just plain fucking targets.
I’m done worrying about holding the individuals accountable who malevolently deceived us in order to take our troops in to a war that had nothing to do with the “War on Terror”. Notice I did not say “take ‘us’ in to a war”. “We” are not in Iraq the I.E.D. Catchers are in Iraq, we may have been lied to, but “We” are NOT paying for it.
Life here in the states has not changed. We do not even miss our I.E.D. Catchers. Oh, I’m sure people who have family or freinds miss them, but what about the rest of the I.E.D. Catchers? The I.E.D. Catchers you have never met? Do you really give a shit if the newspaper reads “17 marines killed in Iraq” or “2 marines killed in Iraq”?Do you even notice the number every morning?Do you truly “Support The Troops” or do just say such things to ease your conscience?If you’re around someone else do you say something out loud like “awwww thats a shame.” to look compassionate or empathetic?Do you fling your newspaper in a blind rage fueled by knowledge of the inhumanity of war?
Do you cry in to your coffee when you see the numbered dead every morning?
You don’t. And neither do I.
If you truly Support The I.E.D. Catchers bring them home, re-unite them with their families, and for fucks sake stop hiding behind them when it is politically convenient to do so.
Racial Profiling Shortened version
According to the NODCP in Samuel Walker’s book: “Sense and Nonsense about crime and drugs” 74% of those incarcerated for drug crimes in the United States are African-American, while this minority is 12% of the population and 13% of drug users.
The drug war is a system of institutionalized slavery that has been used to oppress African-Americans since they were given political equality in the 1964 civil rights act. Since 1964 the prison population has quadrupled, whereas before it stayed relatively the same with slight fluctuations.
The Prison Industrial Complex is growing at an incredible rate and privatization means that even businesses want a chance to lock people in cages for extended periods of time(because prisons will never close with the drug war being endless and all, privatized prison companies make a great stock investment).Many of them are the darlings of NYSE wackenhut, CCA, etc. It is great that the ability to keep humans locked in cages is a commodity(sarcasm). For example directly following 9/11 stocks on all these privatized corrections corporations went through the roof. It was obvious there would be a lot of cattle in them pens very soon, judging by the guy on the megaphone.
Its very easy to stop racial profiling: Step 1:record the race of all traffic stops, searches, and arrests; Step 2: make records public; Step 3: public takes care of rest.
Please someone tell me where i’m wrong in this solution.Tell me how this could possibly NOT work.
If you could easily access such records from your local police department and you found out that 74% of searches were done on African-Americans. Would you stand idly by? No, there would be watchdog groups, there would be grassroots organizations that would then attempt to hold law enforcement accountable. As more and more people heard about the bullshit more and more people would be angry about the bullshit.
This is of course getting ahead of ourselves. Most people(caucies) don’t think racial profiling even exists. They look at the statistic from the NODCP that three quarters of people serving time for drugs are black.
These individuals do not beleive this is a smoking gun that obviousl;y proves beyond any doubt that racial profiling is a reality and it is pervasive.They’re racist, yah I said it, if you don’t think that law is enforced unevenly you’re not only stupid, you’re racist.
These people like to brand individuals who are victims of racial profiling as crybabys hiding behind their race.
Now lets do a little assumption here. Lets assume that all these 74% of individuals are guilty. They committed a crime by possessing or distributing narcotics. Lets assume drugs were not planted, lets assume they didn’t find it in a car and charge everyone regardless if they use drugs, and lets assume the police aren’t straight racist.
The only answer is that drug use is only being prosecuted if its an African-American male from the ages of 18-34. Every once in awhile other races will get busted, they couldn’t help it. Maybe some white dude walked in to the station and asked if they had seen his crack pipe. I mean some of ‘em you can’t ignore, but you know maybe they hooked him up with a choreboy from the evidence room and let him hit a rock on the stoop. I mean one more white person would really throw off the proportion. Maybe they are eurocentric and just feel bad about subjecting other Caucies to slavery?
Not only would it end racial profiling effectively and permanently.
It would give the people a little control over their solidiers of the status quo.
The forces running our government want to enslave all people. They will start with the easy ones. The ones that so many people don’t care about, because they’re fucking racist. So now that our prison population has overtaken Russias. Now that we over a million prisoners in our coutnry. Now that we have 1 million slaves, who will find it next to impossible to get a job when they get out, so they’re always going to be slaves.They’ll start with what middle america thinks the perpetrator looks like(you know tim mcveigh vs. bin laden which one is gonna amp up support for war with the mdidle east?).
So black males 18-34 my advice to you: Run.
Good Luck
The drug war is a system of institutionalized slavery that has been used to oppress African-Americans since they were given political equality in the 1964 civil rights act. Since 1964 the prison population has quadrupled, whereas before it stayed relatively the same with slight fluctuations.
The Prison Industrial Complex is growing at an incredible rate and privatization means that even businesses want a chance to lock people in cages for extended periods of time(because prisons will never close with the drug war being endless and all, privatized prison companies make a great stock investment).Many of them are the darlings of NYSE wackenhut, CCA, etc. It is great that the ability to keep humans locked in cages is a commodity(sarcasm). For example directly following 9/11 stocks on all these privatized corrections corporations went through the roof. It was obvious there would be a lot of cattle in them pens very soon, judging by the guy on the megaphone.
Its very easy to stop racial profiling: Step 1:record the race of all traffic stops, searches, and arrests; Step 2: make records public; Step 3: public takes care of rest.
Please someone tell me where i’m wrong in this solution.Tell me how this could possibly NOT work.
If you could easily access such records from your local police department and you found out that 74% of searches were done on African-Americans. Would you stand idly by? No, there would be watchdog groups, there would be grassroots organizations that would then attempt to hold law enforcement accountable. As more and more people heard about the bullshit more and more people would be angry about the bullshit.
This is of course getting ahead of ourselves. Most people(caucies) don’t think racial profiling even exists. They look at the statistic from the NODCP that three quarters of people serving time for drugs are black.
These individuals do not beleive this is a smoking gun that obviousl;y proves beyond any doubt that racial profiling is a reality and it is pervasive.They’re racist, yah I said it, if you don’t think that law is enforced unevenly you’re not only stupid, you’re racist.
These people like to brand individuals who are victims of racial profiling as crybabys hiding behind their race.
Now lets do a little assumption here. Lets assume that all these 74% of individuals are guilty. They committed a crime by possessing or distributing narcotics. Lets assume drugs were not planted, lets assume they didn’t find it in a car and charge everyone regardless if they use drugs, and lets assume the police aren’t straight racist.
The only answer is that drug use is only being prosecuted if its an African-American male from the ages of 18-34. Every once in awhile other races will get busted, they couldn’t help it. Maybe some white dude walked in to the station and asked if they had seen his crack pipe. I mean some of ‘em you can’t ignore, but you know maybe they hooked him up with a choreboy from the evidence room and let him hit a rock on the stoop. I mean one more white person would really throw off the proportion. Maybe they are eurocentric and just feel bad about subjecting other Caucies to slavery?
Not only would it end racial profiling effectively and permanently.
It would give the people a little control over their solidiers of the status quo.
The forces running our government want to enslave all people. They will start with the easy ones. The ones that so many people don’t care about, because they’re fucking racist. So now that our prison population has overtaken Russias. Now that we over a million prisoners in our coutnry. Now that we have 1 million slaves, who will find it next to impossible to get a job when they get out, so they’re always going to be slaves.They’ll start with what middle america thinks the perpetrator looks like(you know tim mcveigh vs. bin laden which one is gonna amp up support for war with the mdidle east?).
So black males 18-34 my advice to you: Run.
Good Luck
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
[PAGE 3]:
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.
[PAGE 4]:
(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
[PAGE 5]:
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)
[PAGE 6]:
(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)
[PAGE 7]:
(redactered portion)This information is being provided to receiving offices for information analysis and comments.
[PAGE 8]:
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
FBI agent Kenneth Williams sends the following memo to the Washingon and New York Bureaus.
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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)
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(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
[PAGE 5]:
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
My September 24th
The bus ride was tight. The bus ride was long. But it was worth every minute.
The mall was packed. The obelisk ringed with people. And the crowd was shoulder to shoulder all the way to the stage in back of the white house. There were 2 stages and a tightly controlled area for us to do our marching.
Cindy Sheehan, McKinney, Jesse Jackson, Galloway, and many others spoke for a few hours before the march. As the march was starting Nader took the mic.
The march was my favorite part(besides Barbara Lee and McKinney): There were SO MANY people marching. There was not actually a march. reader raises eyebrow.
The area for marching was a small square between 15th and 17th street. As everyone went to the streets to march….......THE ENTIRE SQUARE WAS FILLED. There was no room for marching, instead the entire procession kind of took baby steps around the ring because there were so many people.
As the march winded down the other stage opened up. Saw a couple bands that I am not familiar with, then Joan Baez took the stage.
Around the stages there was little or no violence. The violent segment (self-proclaimed anarchists[see: Young’uns]) did a good job of keeping away from the peaceful protest. I had heard they were gonna go fuck up the recruitment center.
This is exactly the kind of action that facilitates both aims. Keeping seperate from the peaceful protestors and fuckin’ with recruiters thats all good. This was the only violent altercations I had heard of. The spraypaint by the farragut north metro stop “Fuck Capitalism” it gave me a laugh, but seriously, did the person who painted this think that this was effective at doing anything, but making the media and populace reject the ideas of the protestors prima facie?
One other incident of violence I had actually heard of. The pro-war protestors(who should just put on a black bandanna and start throwin rocks at cops if they really wanted to protest the protest[but oh yah thy’re not that intelligent, after all they’re PRO WAR!]) One of the self-proclaimed anarchists snagged a sign from one of them and started beating them with it. This disgusts me, who is this kid think he is that he can enact violence on another who is peacefully expressing their opinion. His action is on the same level morally as the cops clubbing and gassing anti-war protestors. (and seriously is there ANYTHING you need to do to a pro-war protestor besides tell them: “join the fucking military if you like this war so much!”?)
There were a vast amount of factions in this rally. The central meme was stuck with though, which was the most important factor I thought going down. There was a little talk of Palestine and Haiti, but this rally focused (as it should have) on the occupation of Iraq. This IS the most pressing issue fothe day.
I do not believe in the feasibility of this action. I believe this action is 90% symbolic. I also have been asking everyone I come across(back in Chi) if they heard ANYTHING about anti-war protests in DC. The answer has so far ALWAYS been NO. The media didn’t cover it.
Public opinion is swinging though. We may get out sooner then 2008 like Wolfowitz said. I just wish people didn’t have to WORK to see the cost of war, that the media would actually explain the cost of war. Show the flag draped coffins, show the endless numbers of soldiers returning with PTSD, put another commercial after the recruitment commercial about how you’re gonna come home from Iraq and your wife will be pregnant with someone elses kid, because the white house wanted you there for 3 years straight.
So my freind and I took off during Joan Baez, we had to catch our bus and we missed Steve Earle :( . Not only that but we couldn’t go through my second home in Mt. Pleasant to roll through my favorite burrito shop(not even sure if its still in business).
22 hours on a bus, 6 hours at the rally. Well…...............................tiring to say the least…................................but again: worth every minute.
Favorite quote: Cynthia McKinney- ”...Criminal negligence on 911…”(reading a laundry list of evil and stupid things this white house has done).
Shout out to the Guy with “Al-CIAdah” poster board- Don’t look so depressed! more people then you think know that 911 was facilitated by elements within our federal government. All that ”’bout to put a bullet in my head” look, its not inspiring, just makes people think you’re a street preacher.
Anyway hopefully there will be no need for another rally, bit if there is another I hope to see you there. I’ll be the one with the cheesy american flag hat lookin’ like i’m ‘bout to go to a nascar race.
The mall was packed. The obelisk ringed with people. And the crowd was shoulder to shoulder all the way to the stage in back of the white house. There were 2 stages and a tightly controlled area for us to do our marching.
Cindy Sheehan, McKinney, Jesse Jackson, Galloway, and many others spoke for a few hours before the march. As the march was starting Nader took the mic.
The march was my favorite part(besides Barbara Lee and McKinney): There were SO MANY people marching. There was not actually a march. reader raises eyebrow.
The area for marching was a small square between 15th and 17th street. As everyone went to the streets to march….......THE ENTIRE SQUARE WAS FILLED. There was no room for marching, instead the entire procession kind of took baby steps around the ring because there were so many people.
As the march winded down the other stage opened up. Saw a couple bands that I am not familiar with, then Joan Baez took the stage.
Around the stages there was little or no violence. The violent segment (self-proclaimed anarchists[see: Young’uns]) did a good job of keeping away from the peaceful protest. I had heard they were gonna go fuck up the recruitment center.
This is exactly the kind of action that facilitates both aims. Keeping seperate from the peaceful protestors and fuckin’ with recruiters thats all good. This was the only violent altercations I had heard of. The spraypaint by the farragut north metro stop “Fuck Capitalism” it gave me a laugh, but seriously, did the person who painted this think that this was effective at doing anything, but making the media and populace reject the ideas of the protestors prima facie?
One other incident of violence I had actually heard of. The pro-war protestors(who should just put on a black bandanna and start throwin rocks at cops if they really wanted to protest the protest[but oh yah thy’re not that intelligent, after all they’re PRO WAR!]) One of the self-proclaimed anarchists snagged a sign from one of them and started beating them with it. This disgusts me, who is this kid think he is that he can enact violence on another who is peacefully expressing their opinion. His action is on the same level morally as the cops clubbing and gassing anti-war protestors. (and seriously is there ANYTHING you need to do to a pro-war protestor besides tell them: “join the fucking military if you like this war so much!”?)
There were a vast amount of factions in this rally. The central meme was stuck with though, which was the most important factor I thought going down. There was a little talk of Palestine and Haiti, but this rally focused (as it should have) on the occupation of Iraq. This IS the most pressing issue fothe day.
I do not believe in the feasibility of this action. I believe this action is 90% symbolic. I also have been asking everyone I come across(back in Chi) if they heard ANYTHING about anti-war protests in DC. The answer has so far ALWAYS been NO. The media didn’t cover it.
Public opinion is swinging though. We may get out sooner then 2008 like Wolfowitz said. I just wish people didn’t have to WORK to see the cost of war, that the media would actually explain the cost of war. Show the flag draped coffins, show the endless numbers of soldiers returning with PTSD, put another commercial after the recruitment commercial about how you’re gonna come home from Iraq and your wife will be pregnant with someone elses kid, because the white house wanted you there for 3 years straight.
So my freind and I took off during Joan Baez, we had to catch our bus and we missed Steve Earle :( . Not only that but we couldn’t go through my second home in Mt. Pleasant to roll through my favorite burrito shop(not even sure if its still in business).
22 hours on a bus, 6 hours at the rally. Well…...............................tiring to say the least…................................but again: worth every minute.
Favorite quote: Cynthia McKinney- ”...Criminal negligence on 911…”(reading a laundry list of evil and stupid things this white house has done).
Shout out to the Guy with “Al-CIAdah” poster board- Don’t look so depressed! more people then you think know that 911 was facilitated by elements within our federal government. All that ”’bout to put a bullet in my head” look, its not inspiring, just makes people think you’re a street preacher.
Anyway hopefully there will be no need for another rally, bit if there is another I hope to see you there. I’ll be the one with the cheesy american flag hat lookin’ like i’m ‘bout to go to a nascar race.
Nation, State, and Nation-State
Going to attempt brevity it never effin works. These are not dictionary or Encyclopedic defintions, just something from Inter. Relat. literature.
1. Nation=>A group of people that identify either ethnically, religiously;, or in some way that creates a strong culture(not sub-culture) and; self-identification with the culture.(think Nationality)Example: Nation of Islam
2. State=>A piece of land with borders, ruled over by a government. example: The United States(nationality Americans), Russia(nationality Slavic)
3. Nation-state=>A nation that has founded a state for themselves(often called homelands or such). A state that has adopted a national identity associated with a nationality.examples of not Nation-States: Americans: Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Canadians, etc. etc. Examples of Nation-States: Israel(Jewish), France(Norman), etc.
Assertion: The ideas we have been conditioned with as a Nation-State is all States are nation-states. This is incorrect and most likely arrived at, because old states such as France and Britain are Nation-States because they basically created a national identity over time. People are taught western society came to fruition with “Nation-States”.
Obviously the codified versions of these 3 defintions are approximately correct(at best) and open to interpretation. One can convey ideas much easier speaking and reading body language/receiving stimuli from the receiver. Peace
1. Nation=>A group of people that identify either ethnically, religiously;, or in some way that creates a strong culture(not sub-culture) and; self-identification with the culture.(think Nationality)Example: Nation of Islam
2. State=>A piece of land with borders, ruled over by a government. example: The United States(nationality Americans), Russia(nationality Slavic)
3. Nation-state=>A nation that has founded a state for themselves(often called homelands or such). A state that has adopted a national identity associated with a nationality.examples of not Nation-States: Americans: Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Canadians, etc. etc. Examples of Nation-States: Israel(Jewish), France(Norman), etc.
Assertion: The ideas we have been conditioned with as a Nation-State is all States are nation-states. This is incorrect and most likely arrived at, because old states such as France and Britain are Nation-States because they basically created a national identity over time. People are taught western society came to fruition with “Nation-States”.
Obviously the codified versions of these 3 defintions are approximately correct(at best) and open to interpretation. One can convey ideas much easier speaking and reading body language/receiving stimuli from the receiver. Peace
The Jesus we know did not exist
All quotes are from the book “The Jesus Mysteries” by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
Its not so much that he didn’t exist, but most stories about him are in fact lies.
A lot of people have been talking about Jesus lately on GNN in various posts. Some people(a majority of Christians) think that the Old Testament and New Testament is not only canon, but meant to be taken literally. This gives rise to things like interpreting revelations as truthful prophecy and belief in completely unreasonable assertions. So I thought I’d set the record straight with a few quick quotes from a book I recently read through. You see it seems that Jesus may or may not have existed. One thing is for sure he was not immaculately conceived, that's right “Christians”, to conceive: a female must have their egg fertilized by a sperm. Who’da thought that in order to get pregnant, one must have an egg fertilized by a member of the same species and opposite sex. Strange that history if full of gods impregnating women. One of them is Zeus(hes the guy on the roof of the Sistine chapel[even though it is supposed to be Jesus’ supernatural father]). The demi-god is as old as conceptions of god.
Ok well lets say that you are in fact dumb enough to believe that a woman became pregnant without fucking. Lets move on to some other interesting historical facts.
What does this look like to you:
(There should be a fish here, but I have trouble putting graphics up here)
I have a suspicion that you said “Jesus fish”, when in actuality it is more accurately described as a Pythagoras fish. It is really just a symbol that is sacred to pagan(pythagorean and other belief systems) geometry. The ratio of height to length is 153:265 ”...a formula known to Archimedes in the third century BCE as ‘the measure of fish’. It is a powerful mathematical tool, being the nearest whole number approximation of the square root of three and the controlling ratio of the quilateral triangle.”
Lets look in to this whole “fish” thing a little more.
“In the Gospel of John, Jesus miraculously helps his disciples land a large catch of fish. This supernatural feat was also performed by Pythagoras in a legend recorded by Prophyry. Pythagoras miraculously predicted the exact number of fish that would be caught, but the story does not record what this number was. In the gospel account Jesus makes no such prediction, but we are told the catch numbers exactly 153 fish. This seems on the face of it to be an irrelevant fact that the gospel writer included just for dramatic color. But scholars have concluded that it is mentioned deliberately and is highly significant.It is likely that the number of fish Pythagoras predicted would be caught is precisely 153. The Pythagoreans were renowned for their knowledge of mathematics and regarded 153 as a sacred number. It is used in a mathematical ratio that Archimedes called ‘the measure of fish’ to produce the mystical symbol of the vesica piscis or ‘sign of the fish’—the intersection of two circles which yields a fish-like shape. This was an ancient Pythagorean symbol that was used by early Christians to represent their faith. The fact that this mystical fish symbol can be produced from the number of fish that were caught in the account of Jesus’ miracle strongly suggests it has been adapted from the original miracle of Pythagoras and that this miracle story encoded sacred geometrical formulae.”
So Pythagoras is one of the original God-men. He was said to be able to still wind and raise the dead. Still, what does that prove?
“Other of Jesus’ miracles were also attributed to the Pagan godman[Osiris-Dionysus]. Asclepius who was followed by Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ was said to have cured the sick and raised the dead. He was known as the ‘lover of men’. A comparison between the wonders of Asclepius and the miracles of Jesus was a standard feature of Pagan anti-Christian writings. In reply, early Christians described Jesus as the physician greater than great Asclepius. The Pagan Celsus and the Christian Origen argued with equal conviction as to the relative merits of Asclepius savior or Jesus savior. Many of the inscriptions to Asclepius were taken over by early Christians by simply replacing his name with that of Jesus.Many of the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysis were renowned as wandering wonder-workers who performed exactly the same supernatural feats attributed to the wandering wonder-worker Jesus.”
Early christians basically plagiarized the lives of other godmen.
Dying and Resurrecting Godmen
“At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egypt he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name Osiris-Dionysys to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific mystery tradition.”
The specifics of Jesus birth, death, and resurrection are all plagiarized.
”-Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the savior and ‘son of god’-His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin-He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on December 25 before three shepherds-He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism-He miraculously turns water in to wine at a marriage ceremony-He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him-He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.-After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.-His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days-His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.”
Did you think they were talking about Jesus Christ/Jesus of Nazareth in that last paragraph?Guess what….they weren’t. Those things happened to godmen that existed BC(which stands for before Christ[which means before Jesus existed]).
Diabolical Mimicry
“Pagan critics of early Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early ‘church fathers’ such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of diabolical mimicry. Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of ‘plagiarism by anticipation,’ of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible!...The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian Theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition ‘borrowed’ from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints’ days. This theory is common among those who go looking for the ‘real’ Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris.Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanation seemed inadequate.”
They sum up the thesis of The Jesus Mysteries:
“The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered, if the picture were reversed and the Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.”
Fight it for as long as you can “Christians”, but most likely your godman did not exist. In fact most likely he is just an amalgamation of godman archetypes assimilated in to an ancient Jewish culture.
I want to talk about the piece that I found the most interesting and that is “30 pieces of silver”.We all know that “30 pieces of silver” is what Judas get for betraying Jesus. Did you know that this was most likely stolen from Socrates? When Socrates was put on trial for corrupting the youth the judge said if he paid a fine he could live and get off with exile(similar to copping a plea). Socrates stated he would give 1 copper(or whatever tiny throw away denomination) just to be a smart ass and give the judge some shit. As it turns out one of Socrates’ disciples offered the court “30 pieces of silver” to save Socrates life. Although it was done with nothing but benevolence, this follower betrayed Socrates on a deep level. Because payment implied that he was guilty of something and would be perceived as recanting his beliefs. Is it coincidence that the New Testament has 30 pieces of silver?
I leave you with this quote from The Jesus Mysteries:
“The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice that prevent us from seeing the New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Atis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?”
Take a close look at this picture:
4th century amulet
Its not so much that he didn’t exist, but most stories about him are in fact lies.
A lot of people have been talking about Jesus lately on GNN in various posts. Some people(a majority of Christians) think that the Old Testament and New Testament is not only canon, but meant to be taken literally. This gives rise to things like interpreting revelations as truthful prophecy and belief in completely unreasonable assertions. So I thought I’d set the record straight with a few quick quotes from a book I recently read through. You see it seems that Jesus may or may not have existed. One thing is for sure he was not immaculately conceived, that's right “Christians”, to conceive: a female must have their egg fertilized by a sperm. Who’da thought that in order to get pregnant, one must have an egg fertilized by a member of the same species and opposite sex. Strange that history if full of gods impregnating women. One of them is Zeus(hes the guy on the roof of the Sistine chapel[even though it is supposed to be Jesus’ supernatural father]). The demi-god is as old as conceptions of god.
Ok well lets say that you are in fact dumb enough to believe that a woman became pregnant without fucking. Lets move on to some other interesting historical facts.
What does this look like to you:
(There should be a fish here, but I have trouble putting graphics up here)
I have a suspicion that you said “Jesus fish”, when in actuality it is more accurately described as a Pythagoras fish. It is really just a symbol that is sacred to pagan(pythagorean and other belief systems) geometry. The ratio of height to length is 153:265 ”...a formula known to Archimedes in the third century BCE as ‘the measure of fish’. It is a powerful mathematical tool, being the nearest whole number approximation of the square root of three and the controlling ratio of the quilateral triangle.”
Lets look in to this whole “fish” thing a little more.
“In the Gospel of John, Jesus miraculously helps his disciples land a large catch of fish. This supernatural feat was also performed by Pythagoras in a legend recorded by Prophyry. Pythagoras miraculously predicted the exact number of fish that would be caught, but the story does not record what this number was. In the gospel account Jesus makes no such prediction, but we are told the catch numbers exactly 153 fish. This seems on the face of it to be an irrelevant fact that the gospel writer included just for dramatic color. But scholars have concluded that it is mentioned deliberately and is highly significant.It is likely that the number of fish Pythagoras predicted would be caught is precisely 153. The Pythagoreans were renowned for their knowledge of mathematics and regarded 153 as a sacred number. It is used in a mathematical ratio that Archimedes called ‘the measure of fish’ to produce the mystical symbol of the vesica piscis or ‘sign of the fish’—the intersection of two circles which yields a fish-like shape. This was an ancient Pythagorean symbol that was used by early Christians to represent their faith. The fact that this mystical fish symbol can be produced from the number of fish that were caught in the account of Jesus’ miracle strongly suggests it has been adapted from the original miracle of Pythagoras and that this miracle story encoded sacred geometrical formulae.”
So Pythagoras is one of the original God-men. He was said to be able to still wind and raise the dead. Still, what does that prove?
“Other of Jesus’ miracles were also attributed to the Pagan godman[Osiris-Dionysus]. Asclepius who was followed by Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ was said to have cured the sick and raised the dead. He was known as the ‘lover of men’. A comparison between the wonders of Asclepius and the miracles of Jesus was a standard feature of Pagan anti-Christian writings. In reply, early Christians described Jesus as the physician greater than great Asclepius. The Pagan Celsus and the Christian Origen argued with equal conviction as to the relative merits of Asclepius savior or Jesus savior. Many of the inscriptions to Asclepius were taken over by early Christians by simply replacing his name with that of Jesus.Many of the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysis were renowned as wandering wonder-workers who performed exactly the same supernatural feats attributed to the wandering wonder-worker Jesus.”
Early christians basically plagiarized the lives of other godmen.
Dying and Resurrecting Godmen
“At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egypt he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name Osiris-Dionysys to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific mystery tradition.”
The specifics of Jesus birth, death, and resurrection are all plagiarized.
”-Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the savior and ‘son of god’-His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin-He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on December 25 before three shepherds-He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism-He miraculously turns water in to wine at a marriage ceremony-He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him-He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.-After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.-His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days-His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.”
Did you think they were talking about Jesus Christ/Jesus of Nazareth in that last paragraph?Guess what….they weren’t. Those things happened to godmen that existed BC(which stands for before Christ[which means before Jesus existed]).
Diabolical Mimicry
“Pagan critics of early Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early ‘church fathers’ such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of diabolical mimicry. Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of ‘plagiarism by anticipation,’ of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible!...The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian Theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition ‘borrowed’ from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints’ days. This theory is common among those who go looking for the ‘real’ Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris.Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanation seemed inadequate.”
They sum up the thesis of The Jesus Mysteries:
“The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered, if the picture were reversed and the Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.”
Fight it for as long as you can “Christians”, but most likely your godman did not exist. In fact most likely he is just an amalgamation of godman archetypes assimilated in to an ancient Jewish culture.
I want to talk about the piece that I found the most interesting and that is “30 pieces of silver”.We all know that “30 pieces of silver” is what Judas get for betraying Jesus. Did you know that this was most likely stolen from Socrates? When Socrates was put on trial for corrupting the youth the judge said if he paid a fine he could live and get off with exile(similar to copping a plea). Socrates stated he would give 1 copper(or whatever tiny throw away denomination) just to be a smart ass and give the judge some shit. As it turns out one of Socrates’ disciples offered the court “30 pieces of silver” to save Socrates life. Although it was done with nothing but benevolence, this follower betrayed Socrates on a deep level. Because payment implied that he was guilty of something and would be perceived as recanting his beliefs. Is it coincidence that the New Testament has 30 pieces of silver?
I leave you with this quote from The Jesus Mysteries:
“The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice that prevent us from seeing the New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Atis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?”
Take a close look at this picture:
4th century amulet
Monitorin Al-CIAduh's Chatter
Well first we start off with one assumption: Since Carl Bernstein (a more credible reporter than most because of his role in breaking Watergate) published The CIA and the Media Which I cannot find a complete version of ANYWHERE online if anyone could help me out that would be fuckin’ awesome. Anyway he publishes this in Rolling Stone in the late 70s. Now if individuals had listened to the truth he tried to spread there may have been a little movement to clean house. We may have seen a few more media outlets asking questions about CIA connections, we may have seen congress do an investigation, and maybe we would have put a little accountability on the unaccountable intelligence apparatus. Instead this article was “conspiracy theory” and so we can only assume one thing (which I will do for the purposes of this entry) and that is that it has only gotten worse since this was published. Couple more cites: 1 2 3 4 5
Alright so we understand that the Cocaine Importation Agency has journalists “embedded” with real journalists. Now we should take a quick look at the people behind the agents. Now the CIA does not control all media if that is your understanding of this writing then just stop reading I don’t want you here. Mainstream media sources can have their message broadcast the world over….multiple times! Hundreds of times! How about 7 days a week, 24 hours a day! With such a massive propaganda machine one can inculcate billions, and quickly! Now the CIA does not control all media if that is your understanding of this writing then just stop reading I don’t want you here. So who runs these massive propaganda disseminators? Well it turns out that the airwaves are public and every so often they are licensed for use to a third party. This is where the institutions of corporations come in to play. We all understand that corporations are legally a person thanks to the Santa Clara decision. So these legal persons decide what they will pay people to scream about all day. Now what is the nature of a corporation you ask? The answer is that Corporations are driven by profit, they are in fact required by law to seek profit no matter what the other costs, and the only growth that matters is growth in profit. So what propaganda will this corporation disseminate? The answer is any type that will help the bottom line.
The major controllers of what is termed “mainstream media”(MSM) are people…people that we call corporations. So under that assumption we will look at what I like to call the “collective conscious”. This idea is different from the Jungian version that generally states that we are all just pieces of a shattered mirror that was once a single object. Instead this refers to the general sense of organized and top-down truth. They can use their power to criticize actual truth, some thought is deemed radical and other thought is deemed “conspiracy theory”. By either marginalizing the truth or condemning the truth as paranoid insanity the MSM manages to maintain its’ position as arbiter of the collective conscious. For example: a majority of United Statesians thought 911 was linked to Saddam. This was not solely because of corporations this was also a concentrated effort by the white house and pentagon, which the MSM helped disseminate because it benefits them. (Anyone have the listing of correspondence to War machines? like GE owns CBS or something I can’t remember exactly so I don’t want to write it, somebody help me out?)
At least at a site like this that is centered on research and discussion we all understand that Saddam had NOTHING to do with 911. In fact the “Al-Qaeda/CIAduh/muslim brotherhood” in Iraq fights against Saddam. They would kill saddam if given half a chance because he was a self-proclaimed secular socialist. So how did people come to believe that the truth was: “Saddam had a hand in 911”? Rice’s quote and the MSM’s constant dissemination.
So how do we fight against it?
(The following may be perceived as an advertisement, but I don’t receive shit from them. I just want to let others know about a tool that helps me)
Google Desktop This shit does two things without plugins:1. Indexes your hard drive so you can google search it fucking instantaneously2. Provides you with scrolling articles similar to RSS feeds. As you tell the program to “not show articles like this” (which I did to hundreds of sports “journalism” articles).
It reminded me of chatter. I saw hundreds of articles on Iran recently. So it allows us to observe and come to conclusions about where this massive crypto fascist machine is headed next. As “Chatter” increases about Iran we know that they are trying to build public support for a war in Iran.
The thing that truly scares me is that a terrorist attack will be stages by our government to catalyze public support for war with Iran. The reason I see this as plausible is because people are starting to wizen up about Iraq and realizing its not all “liberation” and being greeted with flowers. As public opinion shifts on Iraq it will be harder to rally support for Iran. Thus making a terrorist attack a prerequisite for invasion.
One word of advice: Do NOT have google desktop on while you’re working. It spits hundreds of great articles at you, you’ll end up under a stack of 50 articles, but you’ll have a grin from ear to ear. (Political junkies only)
So my suggestion is some people should grab the program and start monitoring AL CIAduh Chatter. Then post on GNN about what you think. We may think we’re journalists, but I think many of us are more skilled at being media watchdogs.
Central meme:Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the media How America’s most powerful news media worked hand in glove with the central intelligence agency and why the church committee covered it up” Rolling stone October 20, 1977 1
Alright so we understand that the Cocaine Importation Agency has journalists “embedded” with real journalists. Now we should take a quick look at the people behind the agents. Now the CIA does not control all media if that is your understanding of this writing then just stop reading I don’t want you here. Mainstream media sources can have their message broadcast the world over….multiple times! Hundreds of times! How about 7 days a week, 24 hours a day! With such a massive propaganda machine one can inculcate billions, and quickly! Now the CIA does not control all media if that is your understanding of this writing then just stop reading I don’t want you here. So who runs these massive propaganda disseminators? Well it turns out that the airwaves are public and every so often they are licensed for use to a third party. This is where the institutions of corporations come in to play. We all understand that corporations are legally a person thanks to the Santa Clara decision. So these legal persons decide what they will pay people to scream about all day. Now what is the nature of a corporation you ask? The answer is that Corporations are driven by profit, they are in fact required by law to seek profit no matter what the other costs, and the only growth that matters is growth in profit. So what propaganda will this corporation disseminate? The answer is any type that will help the bottom line.
The major controllers of what is termed “mainstream media”(MSM) are people…people that we call corporations. So under that assumption we will look at what I like to call the “collective conscious”. This idea is different from the Jungian version that generally states that we are all just pieces of a shattered mirror that was once a single object. Instead this refers to the general sense of organized and top-down truth. They can use their power to criticize actual truth, some thought is deemed radical and other thought is deemed “conspiracy theory”. By either marginalizing the truth or condemning the truth as paranoid insanity the MSM manages to maintain its’ position as arbiter of the collective conscious. For example: a majority of United Statesians thought 911 was linked to Saddam. This was not solely because of corporations this was also a concentrated effort by the white house and pentagon, which the MSM helped disseminate because it benefits them. (Anyone have the listing of correspondence to War machines? like GE owns CBS or something I can’t remember exactly so I don’t want to write it, somebody help me out?)
At least at a site like this that is centered on research and discussion we all understand that Saddam had NOTHING to do with 911. In fact the “Al-Qaeda/CIAduh/muslim brotherhood” in Iraq fights against Saddam. They would kill saddam if given half a chance because he was a self-proclaimed secular socialist. So how did people come to believe that the truth was: “Saddam had a hand in 911”? Rice’s quote and the MSM’s constant dissemination.
So how do we fight against it?
(The following may be perceived as an advertisement, but I don’t receive shit from them. I just want to let others know about a tool that helps me)
Google Desktop This shit does two things without plugins:1. Indexes your hard drive so you can google search it fucking instantaneously2. Provides you with scrolling articles similar to RSS feeds. As you tell the program to “not show articles like this” (which I did to hundreds of sports “journalism” articles).
It reminded me of chatter. I saw hundreds of articles on Iran recently. So it allows us to observe and come to conclusions about where this massive crypto fascist machine is headed next. As “Chatter” increases about Iran we know that they are trying to build public support for a war in Iran.
The thing that truly scares me is that a terrorist attack will be stages by our government to catalyze public support for war with Iran. The reason I see this as plausible is because people are starting to wizen up about Iraq and realizing its not all “liberation” and being greeted with flowers. As public opinion shifts on Iraq it will be harder to rally support for Iran. Thus making a terrorist attack a prerequisite for invasion.
One word of advice: Do NOT have google desktop on while you’re working. It spits hundreds of great articles at you, you’ll end up under a stack of 50 articles, but you’ll have a grin from ear to ear. (Political junkies only)
So my suggestion is some people should grab the program and start monitoring AL CIAduh Chatter. Then post on GNN about what you think. We may think we’re journalists, but I think many of us are more skilled at being media watchdogs.
Central meme:Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the media How America’s most powerful news media worked hand in glove with the central intelligence agency and why the church committee covered it up” Rolling stone October 20, 1977 1
HIllary Clinton is a fascist Bitch
I hereby vow to not vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election. I will donate and actively support Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination and vote for him if he receives it in the 2008 elections.
Well Joe Lieberman must have given up, because Hillary had to start picking up the slack. guess what america???????
CARTOONS ARE HAVING SEX….........AND ON YOUR WATCH!!!!
First of all, yes I do like video games, yes they do kick ass, yes they are entertaining, yes they do waste time, but what the fuck you think you’re doin now reading this pile o’ shit.
GTA san andreas came out for xbox. I dig it, its hiliarious, you listen to the radio on that and the storyline half the stinkin’ game is ripping on the military, cops, and CIA. The combat gameplay has also been exponentially improved above GTA and vice city. So its one of the few things(that won’t alter consciousness) that I’ll pay 50$ for. So I rent it first on my freinds account, i’m playing it and all of a sudden I see on the news. There is “latent” content in the disc. All you need is a modded x-box or a modded ps2(no mods for PC) and you can “unlock” this content. Since the content is actually on the disk the game has its rating changed to (fucked if I know some mindfuck/doublespeak/newspeak restricted rating[that means the gov’t has to save you from yourself]). So the next day I make a run to a temple of consumerism and ask for it. “Nope they took it off the shelf when the rating changed”. Every fucking store in the city took it off the shelves. So my freind told the clerk that we rented the game from, that we lost the game and they’d have to charge him for it.
Now Hillary Clinton has picked up Lieberman’s crusade(you may know Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman as the people named most likely to have a lovechild named Barry Goldwater). Now this game is so dangerous for children “Think of the children sob sob this will warp their fragile minds*sob sob*”. In the meantime we’re firing depleted uranium bullets all over Iraq, ‘bout to drop tactical nukes on Iran, and creating torture camps for muslims. If anything will fuck these kids minds its growing up in a country that they tell you stands for peace and freedom, while killing and incarcerating everything that is different. Many others want to take a step further and actually ban the game. I think they should also ban catcher in the rye with it, i mean do you know the word FUCK is in that book!!????gasp I feel so dirty.
I mean I don’t even have a mod, mods cost like 100 bucks or some stupid shit. I don’t even want a mod I will NEVER SEE THIS LATENT CONTENT! But I still have to be protected from this obviously harmful content.
But thats not the point, the point has been around for over 200 years, its called the bill of rights. The first 10 amendments to the constitution. Now you may have forgetton 7, 8, 9, or 10. I mean they’re all the way at the end of the Bill of Rights, but even if you gave up reading the bill of rights i’m sure you got through the first few senetences. If you did: The amendment i’m talking about, ITS THE FIRST ONE! It says there is complete freedom of speech and press to express your opinion/mind. Well tell me how this “video game” doesn’t qualify for that and i’ll stop being angry at poor HIllary.
The other point is Art. Video games are art they are created by people from nothing, to entertain and make people laugh, think, relax, blah blah blah.
So these two cartoons having sex(there was an article in Rolling stone that has the pictures[which are hilarious]). So now the m4s blasting through pig’s heads and blowing up civilians stopped at red lights, the molotov’s in to homes, the harrier jet shooting missiles at civilians, or sneaking up on innocent pedestrians and slitting their fucking throat. These all pale in comparison to the image of 2 cartoons having intercourse.
Now If I want the game, I have to walk past the curtain in to the back room. As I scan movie titles, i always think out loud. “all anal, men on men, hardcore fucking, loads on faces, hoagie slapping, more anal, all lesbians, group sex orgies, oh! There it is GTA san andreas, right where it should be, inbetween Double anal double vaginal and the gay male hatefucking chronicles part 1 through 5”
Fuck you Hillary, you lost one person scared enough of Neo-cons to compromise, but not that much. Few years from now when you want to change the rating on the bible or some other dumb shit you let me know, because I love a good fire(i’ll bring the ‘mallows, Hillary will bring the crackers, and Guy Montag will bring the chocolate bars).
Well Joe Lieberman must have given up, because Hillary had to start picking up the slack. guess what america???????
CARTOONS ARE HAVING SEX….........AND ON YOUR WATCH!!!!
First of all, yes I do like video games, yes they do kick ass, yes they are entertaining, yes they do waste time, but what the fuck you think you’re doin now reading this pile o’ shit.
GTA san andreas came out for xbox. I dig it, its hiliarious, you listen to the radio on that and the storyline half the stinkin’ game is ripping on the military, cops, and CIA. The combat gameplay has also been exponentially improved above GTA and vice city. So its one of the few things(that won’t alter consciousness) that I’ll pay 50$ for. So I rent it first on my freinds account, i’m playing it and all of a sudden I see on the news. There is “latent” content in the disc. All you need is a modded x-box or a modded ps2(no mods for PC) and you can “unlock” this content. Since the content is actually on the disk the game has its rating changed to (fucked if I know some mindfuck/doublespeak/newspeak restricted rating[that means the gov’t has to save you from yourself]). So the next day I make a run to a temple of consumerism and ask for it. “Nope they took it off the shelf when the rating changed”. Every fucking store in the city took it off the shelves. So my freind told the clerk that we rented the game from, that we lost the game and they’d have to charge him for it.
Now Hillary Clinton has picked up Lieberman’s crusade(you may know Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman as the people named most likely to have a lovechild named Barry Goldwater). Now this game is so dangerous for children “Think of the children sob sob this will warp their fragile minds*sob sob*”. In the meantime we’re firing depleted uranium bullets all over Iraq, ‘bout to drop tactical nukes on Iran, and creating torture camps for muslims. If anything will fuck these kids minds its growing up in a country that they tell you stands for peace and freedom, while killing and incarcerating everything that is different. Many others want to take a step further and actually ban the game. I think they should also ban catcher in the rye with it, i mean do you know the word FUCK is in that book!!????gasp I feel so dirty.
I mean I don’t even have a mod, mods cost like 100 bucks or some stupid shit. I don’t even want a mod I will NEVER SEE THIS LATENT CONTENT! But I still have to be protected from this obviously harmful content.
But thats not the point, the point has been around for over 200 years, its called the bill of rights. The first 10 amendments to the constitution. Now you may have forgetton 7, 8, 9, or 10. I mean they’re all the way at the end of the Bill of Rights, but even if you gave up reading the bill of rights i’m sure you got through the first few senetences. If you did: The amendment i’m talking about, ITS THE FIRST ONE! It says there is complete freedom of speech and press to express your opinion/mind. Well tell me how this “video game” doesn’t qualify for that and i’ll stop being angry at poor HIllary.
The other point is Art. Video games are art they are created by people from nothing, to entertain and make people laugh, think, relax, blah blah blah.
So these two cartoons having sex(there was an article in Rolling stone that has the pictures[which are hilarious]). So now the m4s blasting through pig’s heads and blowing up civilians stopped at red lights, the molotov’s in to homes, the harrier jet shooting missiles at civilians, or sneaking up on innocent pedestrians and slitting their fucking throat. These all pale in comparison to the image of 2 cartoons having intercourse.
Now If I want the game, I have to walk past the curtain in to the back room. As I scan movie titles, i always think out loud. “all anal, men on men, hardcore fucking, loads on faces, hoagie slapping, more anal, all lesbians, group sex orgies, oh! There it is GTA san andreas, right where it should be, inbetween Double anal double vaginal and the gay male hatefucking chronicles part 1 through 5”
Fuck you Hillary, you lost one person scared enough of Neo-cons to compromise, but not that much. Few years from now when you want to change the rating on the bible or some other dumb shit you let me know, because I love a good fire(i’ll bring the ‘mallows, Hillary will bring the crackers, and Guy Montag will bring the chocolate bars).
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?
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
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.’”
Vote: Avg: N/A Votes: 0 Comments: 3 [Add]
RECENT COMMENTS
“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
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