Gordon Duff: 9/11 was an inside job and those responsible are still pulling the strings

DISINFORMATION, SPYING, INTIMIDATION, THE BIGGEST COVER-UP IN AMERICAN HISTORY
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor  
VeteransToday October 16, 2010

9 years after 9/11, American drug production in Afghanistan has gone from zero to 92% of world output.  Calling the drug business there anything but “American” is a lie.  We don’t just “turn way,” we are in it up to our necks, maybe deeper.  Last week we learned that USAID, part of the Department of State, was supplying fertilizer for opium production.  Testimony that implicates every level of the American government in drug dealing, corruption and even complicity in terrorism has been ignored or suppressed for years.  The American government, in concert with the powerful Israel lobby, is working to silence citizen dissent, suppress “open source” information and control, not just the media but every form of human communication beyond the guarded whisper.

No police state in history is guilty of more.
In particular, I recently read the most recent additions to Dimitri Khalezov’s book on 9/11.  Khalezov was a Russian “special weapons” officer.  This led his examination to look at applications of advanced technologies tied to the application of particle physics, fission and fusion weapons and “Star Wars” technology which he has a unique understanding of.  What was enjoyable was his non-dogmatic approach.  There are so many theories around regarding 9/11, with government paid “shills” coming up with a new and crazier version almost weekly.  For every pronouncement about Al Qaeda and hijackers the government makes overtly, they make ten pronouncements about space aliens and cosmic death rays on the internet.
We know they do it, they have been caught repeatedly.  These are the actions of a police state.

I am not ready to comprehensively discuss all the reasons that 9/11 is such a disgusting subject.  Suffice it to say that the naked lies the government has foisted on the public for so long are both irrational and patently insane.  This is where Khalezov shines.  He has a way of cutting through the manure.
It is funny to read a Russian discuss 9/11.  One area that we can deal with today and, perhaps, put one minor thing to rest is how the World Trade Center was built and why an aircraft, why 500 aircraft could never hurt it.  Oh, you say, the plane flew right through the building, passing through the thin glass windows and out the other side.
Yup, that’s how it seemed.
How Khalezov describes the outer walls of the WTC is though comparison with a World War II T-34 Russian Tank.  His point is that each of the beams that made up the outside of the building, space 3 feet apart, had four sides, each not only harder but thicker than the armor on a tank.  The analogies used by Khalezov were compelling.

His first point, of course, is that anti-tank rounds are never made of aluminum.  You don’t use aluminum knives.  Aluminum can’t cut steel.
We could go further:  Crashing a Boeing 767 into 20 massive 4 sided hardened steel girders, highly supported and interlaced, cutting through them and eventually bringing down the largest building in the world would be the equivalent of throwing a beer can at a garbage truck.
Want more?  Cutting a steel knife with a piece of cheese?
Derailing a freight train with a thrown marshmallow?  OK, that one is a bit much, but you get the picture.  Aircraft are made of lightweight and very thin aluminum.  The WTC had a massive outer wall of heavy steel, thick enough to armor a tank, a similar center structure around the core and a second wall for a plane to pass through.  No possible amount of aluminum in any shape or configuration at 400 miles per hour or 2000 miles per hour could pass through one steel beam much less dozens.

Pages are spent describing this point nobody has discussed other than Khalezov.  It is clear that Khalezov and David Ray Griffin don’t see “eye to eye” on the methods used to bring the building down.  In many ways, it is a shame that there is a more powerful need to deal with the science before we deal with the criminal intent, especially finding those responsible.  I respect both men for the work they have done and their disagreement is an honest one.  That both manage to disagree with each other and still humiliate the government’s fabrication is both curious and compelling.
This point all are in agreement.  Khalezov is emphatic that the wildest possible conspiracy theory involves box cutters, hijackers and  a massive building “pancaking” to the ground in total free fall while enough steel to build a naval fleet turns into dust. No idiot could believe that, a “hare brained” lie that has proven to be assembled from planted witnesses, misquotes and total fabrications.
If even one of these things were a factor, it would be evidence of a criminal conspiracy.  That all are present, that and the massive government spy operation directed against those seeking the truth, an operation that takes up an entire department header by Cass Sonnenstein, with a title that unavoidably sounds like “Reichs Minister of Propaganda,” we can say “case closed.”  We can also say with some certainty, “No Muslims were harmed in the making of this picture.”

I don’t plan on going there but something haunts me.  Nobody has seen or heard from Osama bin Laden since 2001.  Benazir Bhutto says he was killed then.  Intelligence officials from several countries confirm this privately.  Yet we have a hundred thousand people looking for him, nearly 5,000 have died hunting him after his death was confirmed, as reliable sources tell us.
On the other hand, the “suicide hijackers” we claim were on the planes on 9/11 seem to be, not only alive, but are thinking of suing the networks for being refused entry into the country to go on talk shows.  How can we have dead hijackers kept out of the country because they are on terrorist watch lists?  Doesn’t that stop when you die?
What kind of place are we running here?

But, we are here to talk dissolving steel, magically plummeting buildings and government misconduct.  When the NIST stated that the WTC “pancaked” they misrepresented the amount of concrete in the upper stories.  There was nothing to collapse, only vertical steel, no huge concrete walls, no pillars made of concrete and only thin concrete floors.  They lied.
Almost all the concrete in the buildings is in the foundation, there is little in the upper floors.  They are steel.  It would be like dissolving several aircraft carriers and seeing them blow away with the wind, except this is exactly what we saw.  However, we have seen one other steel building, the Windsor Building, in Madrid, burn for 24 hours.  This building was nowhere as strong and burned, not one hour but for at least a day.

The “government’ runs a website at www.america.gov meant to “debunk” 9/11.  They refer to an article from Popular Science and a study done by the National Institute of Standards.  Few scientists will stand by any of this anymore, they are all either onboard with “9/11 Truth” or protecting their careers with silence.
When we talk about steel no plane could ever penetrate, the NIST does supply a nice photo, though.

My recommendation is to read the book, not because I agree with it or everything it says.  Simply read it because it provides many relevant points, and some clear warnings about how serious government interference has been in the process of finding the truth.
Every lie, every infiltrated group, every bit of ridiculous pseudo-science proves one thing.  9/11 was an inside job and those responsible are still pulling the strings in America.
_______________-


Related: 

Pentagon Author Exposes Zelikow’s Key Role in 9/11 Cover-Up

Gen. Hugh Shelton: Clinton Official Suggested Letting U.S. Plane Be Shot Down To Provoke War With Iraq

The War On Terror, By Paul Craig Roberts, October 15, 2010
"The bottom line answer is that the “war on terror” is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that they continue to accept the police state that provides “security from terrorists,” but not from the government that has discarded civil liberties.
The US government creates terrorists by invading Muslim countries, wrecking infrastructure and killing vast numbers of civilians. The US also creates terrorists by installing puppet governments to rule over Muslims and by using the puppet governments to murder and persecute citizens as is occurring on a vast scale in Pakistan today."

LEAP/E2020’s analysis of 39 countries’ risks 2010-2014: A collective but contrasting dive into the phase of world geopolitical dislocation

From LEAP/Europe 2020:

- Public announcement GEAB N°48 (October 16, 2010) -

In this issue, our team introduces the annual "country risk" update in the light of the crisis. Based on an analysis incorporating eleven criteria this year, this decision-making tool has already demonstrated its relevance in faithfully anticipating developments over these past twelve months. The identification, at the beginning of 2009, of a new phase of the crisis (the phase of global geopolitical dislocation) forced us to take new parameters into account (nine indicators were selected in 2009) to effectively incorporate trends that are reshaping the global system (1). As 2010 draws to a close, LEAP/E2020 now estimates that the world’s various countries are heading for a collective dive at the core of this phase of socio-economic and strategic geopolitical dislocation (2). Thus our studies enabled us to continue presenting the LEAP/E2020 anticipation of "country risk" for the 2010-2014 period (3), by adapting the categories to the crisis’ development, via four groups of countries (4) characterized by the contrasting impacts of this dive in the geopolitical dislocation phase of the global systemic crisis (5).

On the other hand, in this GEAB issue, we give our anticipations for the progress of Euro-Russian relations between now and 2014. In our recommendations, we pay particular attention to helping our readers deal with a currency market in global conflict, a fallout anticipated over 18 months ago by our team, as a result of geopolitical dislocation. Moreover, on the occasion of the publication of his book "The Global Crisis: The Path to the World After - France, Europe and the World in the 2010-2020 decade ", Franck Biancheri, Director of LEAP/E2020, and Anticipolis editions, have given us permission to publish his analysis of the process of the ongoing global geopolitical dislocation.

The G20’s (or IMF’s) now patent failure to secure effective international cooperation to try and remedy the structural weaknesses of the current international monetary system perfectly illustrates LEAP/E2020’s anticipation which in March 2009, before the London G20 meeting, explained that the summit was the only window of opportunity to fundamentally rethink the global monetary system at the heart of the current crisis. In failing to seize this opportunity, we reported that the world would begin to enter the global geopolitical dislocation phase from late 2009. At that time, by way of an introduction to this new phase of the crisis, the world has seen the mid-flight explosion, during the Copenhagen summit, of the whole international process on global warming. Since then, every month brings a stream of public finance crises in one state or another, drastic austerity measures causing increase in social unrest (6), international meetings leading to reports of disagreement, the proliferation of threats between States over trade imbalances, etc., all against a background of a downward spiral into hell of the global system’s central power, namely the United States (7).

For several months now we have been witnessing the onset of a massive currency world war just like LEAP/E2020 anticipated nearly two years ago and reiterated in its time-frame of the crisis (8). Several weeks hence, the inevitable failure (9) of the FMI/G20 duo to resolve these currency-trade (10) tensions will provide both new evidence while marking a new tipping point of global geopolitical dislocation: every man for himself becoming the rule (11).

Two weeks from now, with the announcement of the actual details of a comprehensive plan to reduce spending, the United Kingdom will eventually have to face an unprecedented (12) socio-economic crisis that it has desperately tried to hide for months (13), and it will have to do it alone (since the United States are unable to help it, and it has put itself outside the European financial rescue system).

And in three weeks, the United States will concurrently expose an unprecedented political paralysis following the mid-term election (14), whilst the US Federal Reserve will launch a new attempt to rescue the US economy by monetizing a stimulus plan that the federal government is no longer able to launch (15). This attempt - whose size will be less than financial markets expect (because the Fed is now forced, in this case by the holders of US Dollar denominated assets: China, Japan, Europe, oil-producing countries (16)...) but more than enough to lead to a further fall in the dollar and plunge the world monetary system into an even worse conflict - will fail anyway because US society has, de facto, entered a phase of austerity that US leaders, in 2011, will have to recognize must also constrain the country’s fiscal and monetary policy (17).

From the world leaders’ side (18), the next four years’ global sequence can be summarized quite simply: last US attempts to "return to the world before the crisis" (stimulating consumption, maintaining deficits, debt monetization) that will all fail (19), last Western attempts to deal with the crisis using "Washington consensus" methods (limiting deficits by reducing social spending, no tax increases on high incomes, privatization of public services, ...) which will generate growing socio-political chaos, acceleration of the BRIC countries’ exit from the majority of Western financial and monetary markets (especially the two financial pillars of Wall Street and London) which will increase monetary instability, rising intensity of trade wars (coextensive with currency wars (20)), the coming to power from 2012 of groups of leaders who have decided to try new solutions (21) to exit the social, economic and political consequences of the crisis, taking note of the fact that the “Washington consensus” is dead ... because there is no consensus anymore and because Washington is a moribund world power.

As for the rest, the keeping the US debt’s Triple-A rating belongs to the same virtual world as the recent declaration by US economic authorities (22) of the end of recession: the growing disconnect between the words of a collapsing system’s key players and the reality perceived by the majority of citizens and socio-economic players is an infallible indication of systemic decline (23). But the financial markets are not mistaken because with the soaring cost of insuring US debt hot on the heels of Ireland and Portugal with a 28% third quarter increase in cost, the United States has become the third country for which the debt markets fear some very unpleasant surprises (24).

--------- Notes:

(1) From the beginning of 2006, in the GEAB No. 5, LEAP/E2020 indicated that the global systemic crisis would evolve in 4 major phases. "A global systemic crisis develops in a complex process that can be cut into four phases which may overlap:
. a first "trigger" phase that suddenly sees a whole series of factors, hitherto disconnected, start to converge and interact, and which mainly remain noticeable to alert watchers and the main players
. a second phase called "acceleration" which is characterized by the sudden realization by the vast majority of players and observers that the crisis is here because it starts affecting a rapidly growing number of the system’s elements
. a third "impact" phase which is formed by the radical transformation of the system itself (implosion and/or explosion) under the effect of accumulated factors and which simultaneously affects the entire system
. and finally, a fourth phase called "decanting" that sees the release of the new system’s characteristics resulting from the crisis. Source GEAB No. 5, 15/05/2006
. early 2009, in the GEAB No. 32, LEAP/E2020 identified a fifth phase of the crisis, called global geopolitical dislocation, which begins at the end of 2009, following the G20 failure to launch a credible process of establishing a new international system, particularly in the monetary field. This new phase has been, of course, integrated into the time-frame presented last year in GEAB No. 38.

(2) The ability of states to cope with social unrest that will multiply in the coming quarters and years is closely linked to their ability to contain the most traumatic social effects of the crisis; therefore, our team has introduced a tenth indicator correlated to the tax burden of the past twenty years, whilst an eleventh indicator has been added to assess the resilience to a global monetary war.

(3) Our team has analyzed indicators for 39 countries in addition to Euroland.

(4) These country- risk analyses may be particularly useful for those planning an investment in a given country, intending to settle there or wishing to make an investment in assets linked to that country.

(5) We chose to keep 2014 as an overview because we believe that the changes in political leadership occurring in many important countries (China, USA, Russia, France, ...) in 2012, and which are the principal potential positive factor looking at the next four years, will have no appreciable impact on these country-risks before 2014, the time that new policies are starting to yield results.

(6) France gives a striking example with the growing unpopularity of an executive which fails to prevent social unrest against its reforms and which risks turning into a general strike (France 24, 14/10/2010). Meanwhile, throughout Europe, there is a marked increase of extremist political forces. Source: Le Point, 20/09/2010

(7) All the lights are turning red. The road transport volume has started to decline again (Los Angeles Times, 13/10/2010). Foreclosures continued to grow last month, whilst the whole legal system on which they rest has now broken down (for the legal reasons mentioned in the GEAB a year ago) upsetting a real estate market on Fed and Federal Government life support even more (CNBC, 14/10/2010; USAToday, 14/10/2010; USAToday, 11/10/2010). Cities are sinking into vey deep deficits (such as their employee retirement funds estimated at over 500 billion USD, CNBC/FT, 12/10/2010) and are obliged to turn to the states to try and extricate themselves (CNBC/NYT, 05/10/2010), while the latter can no longer balance their budgets and are obliged to pay interest rates higher than developing countries (thus, Illinois must now pay more than Mexico to borrow, Bloomberg, 05/10/2010).

(8) See the GEAB N°43 particularly.

(9) History doesn’t repeat itself. If we pushed so hard (including at the cost of a full page advertisement in the global edition of the Financial Times) for world leaders to seize the opportunity at the G20 in Spring 2009, it was because we were aware that such a set-up would not happen again. Now the US is too weak to continue to steer the global game, no other player is able to take affairs in hand ... and therefore, the global financial system looks more and more like the "drunken boat" in Rimbaud's poem describing the drift towards unexplored beaches, a perfect description of the world’s course today.

(10) As for the negotiations on climate change, a "West" already clearly divided (here between the Dollar, Pound, Yen and Euro), tries to make the emerging countries (the Yuan in particular) pay the cost of adapting a system they invented and which no longer works. And it's not by ending the game as shown by US efforts to prevent any new Chinese rating agency from operating in the United States that will dissipate this feeling in the BRIC countries. One remembers the performance in Copenhagen. It will pale in comparison to what awaits us at the G20 meeting in Seoul. Besides, the soaring gold price is a very reliable indicator: even the European central banks have stopped their sales. Sources: New York Times, 21/09/2010; Vigile, 29/09/2010; PrisonPlanet/FT, 27/09/2010, Bloomberg, 10/10/2010; ChinaDaily, 27/09/2010

(11) The Telegraph summarized it admirably on 11/10/2010 in "Jobless America threatens to sweep us all away." Sign of the times, Bloomberg on 08/09/2010 announces the opening of a Ruble-Yuan currency exchange in Shanghai to finance Sino-Russian trade.

(12) There is a growing fear in the United Kingdom over the country’s social and political situation in the context of "super-austerity" planned by the government due to financial and budget crisis: the loss of nearly a million jobs, social crisis, unrest.... Sources: Independent, 02/10/2010; Telegraph, 13/10/2010; Guardian, 11/09/2010;MarketWatch, 21/09/2010.

(13) This was, moreover, the main reason for the “Greek crisis becoming the Euro crisis” in Spring 2010, in particular fed daily by articles in the Financial Times to divert attention from London and the Pound Sterling. See GEAB in the first half of 2010.

(14) Recent statements by Steve Schwarzman, head of the financial giant Blackstone, comparing Barack Obama's willingness to tax financial companies more heavily to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, illustrates the explosive atmosphere that rules at the core of the US elite. Source: NewYorkPost, 14/10/2010

(15) Because of the magnitude of existing deficits and political deadlock in Washington.

(16) In this regard, our team gives a timely reminder that there is no mystery about the simultaneous rise of different asset classes, like stocks or gold for example: operators are leaving the stock exchanges (as we showed in the last GEAB issue) and selling their financial and monetary assets for gold (or other less dangerous assets) and the Fed (and its partners) are injecting liquidity into the financial markets to prevent a widespread collapse. The only problem, when the music stops: it will be a tragedy for the stock exchanges. Source: CNBC, 08/10/2010

(17) The situation is so bad that a reading of the New York Times of 13/10/2010 started to look like a cut and paste of the GEAB a year or two ago ... that’s saying something! The article by Michael Powell and Motoko Rich, which describes the "recovery" as merely a continuation of this recession shows the plight of the middle classes across the country in a harsh light, while the very same day Paul Reyes unveils a remarkable collection of photographs showing the ravages of the "Very Great US Depression" as LEAP/E2020 has called it since late 2006.

(18) Franck Biancheri offers a detailed presentation, with the two likely main scenarios for 2010-2020, in his book "The Global Crisis: The Path to the World after"

(19) Source: SeekingAlpha, 24/09/2010

(20) Singapore’s recent announcement that from now on its currency’s trading band against the U.S. dollar will be wider, is the latest example (each day brings a new one) of increasingly defensive positions taken by individual states. Each one tries to increase its room for maneuver to cope with the unexpected. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Singapore suffered a 19% third quarter fall in GDP, evidence that the mood in Asia is becoming gloomy. Source: YahooFinances, 14/10/2010; MarketWatch, 13/10/2010

(21) For China, one solution will most probably be to inject the country's huge US Dollar reserves into the economy as already suggested by the new generation of Chinese bankers. This will not help the US Dollar. Source: Dallasnews, 19/09/2010

(22) The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER is in charge of "holding a Mass" on this subject.

(23) As MSNBC aptly described on 06/10/2010, it’s once a month at midnight that America’s great depression is revealed in the supermarkets, when tens of millions of food voucher recipients go and do their shopping. According to the study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research published on 16/09/2010, in effect now one in three Americans can no longer make ends meet (one hundred million people ).

(24) Source: CNNMoney, 12/10/2010

Released State Department Documents Mention ‘Failed Pipeline Negotiations’ With The Taliban Right Before 9/11

From ForeignPolicyJournal
September 20, 2010 


U.S. government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and recently posted on the website of the George Washington University National Security Archive shed some additional light on talks with the Taliban prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including with regard to the repeated Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, and the role of Pakistan before and after the attacks. 

One of the recently released State Department documents, from March 2000, notes that a proposed “gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Multan, Pakistan figured prominently in discussions” about the mutual goal between the U.S. and regional players of stabilizing Afghanistan. Discussions on another proposed pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan had also been proposed that were “more advanced”, and the Pakistanis had gone to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials “to pursue these negotiations”. But neither “pipeline is likely to go forward in the mid-term”, the documented concluded. 

A Pakistani official told the U.S. that “Pakistan ‘will always support the Taliban’”. This “policy cannot change, he continued; it would prompt rebellion across the Northwest Frontier Provinces, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and indeed on both sides of the Pashtun-dominated Pak-Afghan border.” But the Taliban were “‘looking for a way out’ of the problem with bin Laden”. The U.S. was urged to “find a way to compromise with the Taliban”, and possible “ways that the U.S. and the Taliban might use to break the impasse” were suggested, including “the possibility of a trial in a third (Muslim) country”, “U.S. assurances that bin Laden would not face the death penalty”, and “a U.S. outline of what the Taliban would gain from extradition of bin Laden”. 

It is already known that the U.S. had demanded in secret discussions with the Taliban that bin Laden be handed over for more than three years prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The talks continued “until just days before” the attacks, according to a Washington Post report the month following the attacks. But a compromise solution such as the above that would offer the Taliban a face-saving way out of the impasse was never seriously considered. Instead, “State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system.” 

Officials described the U.S. decision to reject Taliban offers as a missed opportunity. Former CIA station chief Milt Bearden told the Post, “We never heard what they were trying to say…. We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.’” Bearden added, “I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck,” but this “never clicked” with U.S. officials. 

Michael Malinowski, a State Department official involved in the talks, acknowledged, “I would say, ‘Hey, give up bin Laden,’ and they would say, ‘No…. Show us the evidence’”, a request U.S. officials deemed unreasonable. 

According to the BBC, the Taliban later even warned the U.S. that bin Laden was going to launch an attack on American soil. Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said his warnings, issued because of concerns that the U.S. would react by waging war against Afghanistan, had been ignored. A U.S. official did not deny that such warnings were issued, but told BBC rather that it was dismissed because “We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff”. 

Indeed, underscoring Muttawakil’s stated reasons for having delivered the threat warning to the U.S., a State Department document from June 2001 obtained by INTELWIRE.com showed that the U.S. had warned the Taliban “that they will be held directly responsible for any loss of life that occurs from terrorist actions related to terrorists who have trained in Afghanistan or use Afghanistan as a base of planning operations.” The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef responded that “the Taliban do not see Americans as their enemies and that there are no threats to Americans coming from the Taliban. Nontheless, said Zaeef, ‘We will do our best to follow up and stop’ any threat.” With regard to bin Laden, “Zaeef emphasized that the Taliban’s relationship with UBLUsama/Osama bin Laden and others is based not on enmity against the United States, but on ‘culture.’ 

Rejecting the Taliban offers to have bin Laden handed over, the U.S. instead pursued a policy of regime change well prior to the 9/11 attacks. Jane’s Information Group reported in March 2001 that “India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime”, which included support for Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, including “information and logistic support” from Washington.8 Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik told the BBC that he had been told by senior U.S. officials in July 2001 at a U.N.-sponsored summit in Berlin that military action would be taken against the Taliban by the middle of October. Preparations had already been coordinated with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Russia. Naik also “said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.” 

A newly released document dated August 30, 2001 shows that Pakistan was continuing to urge the U.S. “to maintain open channels to the Taliban.” Pakistani officials denied that their support for the Taliban included military assistance. When asked “why Pakistan supports the Taliban”, an official replied, “We don’t support but inter-act with the Taliban”. Pressed further on why Pakistan continued “to give the Taliban international diplomatic support and to press the USGUnited States Government to engage with the Taliban?” the Pakistanis “reiterated that the Taliban are the effective rulers of at least 90 percent of Afghanistan, that they enjoy significant popular support because they ended the banditry and anarchy that once bedeviled the country, and that the instant success of the opium poppy production ban underscored … the reality and effectiveness of Taliban authority.” If it wasn’t for “external support” for the Northern Alliance, it “would collapse in a matter of days.” 

Another newly disclosed document shows that two days after the 9/11 attacks Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was told “bluntly” that “There was no inclination in Washington to engage in a dialog with the Taliban.” The U.S. was already prepared for military action and “believed strongly that the Taliban are harboring the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks.” The U.S. was “fairly sure” that bin Laden “and his Al Qida network of terrorists” were guilty. 

The following day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage issued an ultimatum to Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed that Pakistan’s cooperation was expected “should the evidence strongly implicate Usama bin-Laden and the Al Qaida network in Afghanistan and should Afghanistan and the Taliban continue to harbor him and this network”. 

Mahmud conveyed the message to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and reported back to Armitage that “the ‘response was not negative on all these points’.” The Taliban was to convene a grand council to discuss the U.S.’s terms. Mahmud said he had “framed the decision to Mullah Omar and the other Afghans as essentially choosing between one man and his safe haven versus the well-being of 25 million citizens of Afghanistan” and that they were “now engaged in ‘deep introspection’ about their decisions.” 

The BBC reported on the Pakistani talks with the Taliban, noting that the Taliban were “demanding proof of his involvement in the terror attacks on the US” before they would consider handing over Osama bin Laden, who issued a statement saying, “The US is pointing the finger at me but I categorically state that I have not done this”.14 CNN similarly reported that the Taliban was “refusing to hand over bin Laden without proof or evidence that he was involved” in the 9/11 attacks. Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said “that deporting him without proof would amount to an ‘insult to Islam.’” But, he added, “We are ready to cooperate if we are shown evidence.” U.S. officials said evidence gathered linking bin Laden to other terrorist attacks were all the proof that was needed, but declined to provide evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. 


A document from September 23 notes that Mahmud planned to meet with the Taliban a second time, and that he emphasized to the U.S. that “A negotiated solution would be preferable to military action”, but was told that “his trip could not delay military planning” and that “The time for negotiation was past.” In his further meeting, Mahmud would ask Omar to “surrender Usama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants”, and reiterated Pakistan’s pledge of support for the U.S. effort, but replied by saying, “I implore you not to act in anger. Real victory will come in negotiations…. Reasoning with them to get rid of terrorism will be better than the use of brute force. If the strategic objective is Al Quaida sic and UBL, it is better for the Afghans to do it. We could avoid the fallout.” Overthrowing the Taliban regime would “leave a dangerous political vacuum” and Afghanistan would “revert to warlordism”, Mahmud warned. He further cautioned that “a strike will produce thousands of frustrated young Muslim men. It will be an incubator of anger that will explode two or three years from now.”The U.S. dismissed these concerns, which were subsequently proven to have been prescient. 

Secretary of State Colin Powell at the same time told Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I am absolutely convinced that the al Qaeda network, which he heads, was responsible for this attack.” When asked whether the government would “release publicly a white paper which links him and his organization to this attack”, Powell replied, “We are hard at work bringing all the information together, intelligence information, law enforcement information. And I think in the near future we will be able to put out a paper, a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack.” The promised white paper was never delivered. 

The U.S. war against Afghanistan commenced on October 7, and the Taliban again repeated offers to negotiate handing over bin Laden. Taliban deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir announced that “If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved” and the U.S. stopped its bombing, “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country”. President George W. Bush rejected the offer as “non-negotiable”, adding, “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty.” Refusing to provide evidence of bin Laden’s guilt, Bush reiterated the U.S. ultimatum: “If they want us to stop our military operations, they’ve just got to meet my conditions. When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations.” 

The Taliban then dropped their demand for evidence and repeated their offer to turn bin Laden over to a third country. The London Guardian reported that Taliban minister Muttawakil met with officials from the CIA and ISI to propose the offer, which was once again dismissed by U.S. officials.20 Taliban spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi said at the end of October, “We do not want to fight…. We will negotiate. But talk to us like a sovereign country. We are not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama’s involvement, but they have refused. Why?” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher responded by falsely claiming, “All one has to do is watch television to find Osama bin Laden claiming responsibility for the September 11 bombings.” 

In fact, as already noted, bin Laden had in denied any involvement in the attacks. On September 16, bin Laden issued a statement saying: “Following the latest explosions in the United States, some Americans are pointing the finger at me, but I deny that because I have not done it…. Reiterating once again, I say that I have not done it….” He added that the Taliban had forbidden terrorist attacks from being “carried out from Afghanistan’s territory”, and that this message had been delivered to him personally from Taliban leader Mullah Omar. 

Again on September 28, in an interview with the Karachi daily Ummat, bin Laden denied involvement: “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people…. Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.” 

He went on to suggest that the attacks were an inside job: “Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taliban and then this incident happened…. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United States? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.” 

Bin Laden was correct in his observation that U.S. policymakers perceived the need for an external enemy in order to pursue their policy goals. Without such a threat, the goal of many after the end of the Cold War not only to maintain U.S. military expenditures, but to effect a “transformation” of the military into a force for U.S. global hegemony, could not be realized. The neoconservative think tank The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), acknowledged this in its September 2000 manifesto “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century”, which argued the case for maintaining U.S. preeminence and global hegemony, and to “extend the current Pax Americana” through a buildup of the military. But this “process of transformation” was “likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” 

This assessment echoed that of Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on March 5, 1999. After stating that “There appears to be a general agreement concerning the need to transform the U.S. military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars,” he noted that “this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation.” He stated further that “While there is growing support in Congress for transformation the ‘critical mass’ needed to affect it has not yet been achieved.” In conclusion, he said, “in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States—a latter-day ‘Pearl Harbor’ of sorts—surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process.” 

While the U.S. never produced the white paper it promised that was to present the evidence against bin Laden in making its case for war, the British government did present a paper Tony Blair insisted demonstrated his guilt. Yet “Downing Street acknowledged that the 21-page dossier did not amount to a prosecutable case against bin Laden in a court of law.” Harder evidence, the document claimed, was “too sensitive to release.” 

To this day, the attacks of 9/11 are not listed as being among the crimes for which Osama bin Laden is wanted by the FBI, because there is not enough evidence against him to bring an indictment against him in a court of law. 
The threshold of evidence required for waging a war is apparently much lower than that to issue an indictment in a court of law. As a direct consequence of the war, Afghanistan once again became far and away the world’s leading producer of opium and heroin; it indeed returned to a state of warlordism, chaos, and violence, just as the U.S. had been warned; many more Afghan civilians have been killed than Americans who died on 9/11, and Osama bin Laden was never captured. 

_______________--


Related:

State Department Admits: Detroit Christmas Bomber Was Deliberately Allowed to Keep US Entry Visa, Board His Flight

From ZeroHedge: 


Don't forget Chertoff's body scanners....

The Detroit Christmas bomber was deliberately and intentionally allowed to keep his US entry visa as the result of a national security override issued by an as yet unknown US intelligence or law-enforcement agency with the goal of blocking the State Department’s planned revocation of that visa. This is the result of hearings held on January 27 before the House Homeland Security Committee, and in particular of the testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Undersecretary of State for Management. The rickety US government official version of the December 25 Detroit underwear bomber incident, which has been jerry-built over the past month and a half, has now totally collapsed, and key elements of the terrorism-spawning rogue network inside US agencies and departments are unusually vulnerable to a determined campaign of exposure.

These developments decisively confirm the analysis offered by the present writer in a Dec. 28, 2009 television interview on Russia Today.1 On that occasion, my estimate was that Mutallab was a protected patsy being used by rogue elements of the US intelligence community for the deliberate and intentional creation of a high profile incident with the goal of obtaining a large-scale political effect. On January 4, Richard Wolffe reported on the MSNBC Countdown program that the Obama White House was investigating whether the Detroit Christmas incident had been “intentionally” created by an intelligence network with an “alternative agenda.”2 It was in this report that Wolffe posed the alternative of “cock-up or conspiracy.”3 Unfortunately, Obama opted for the screw-up version on January 5.

Based on what was already known a few days after this incident, it was clear that normal screening and surveillance procedures had been scrapped and aborted in order to allow the youthful patsy Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria to board his flight from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Detroit. Mutallab’s father, a rich, well known, and reputable Nigerian banker had gone to the US Embassy in his country and formally warned a State Department official as well as a CIA representative that his son was in Yemen and in all probability consorting with terrorists. Under normal circumstances, this report alone would have been more than enough to get Mutallab’s US visa revoked in the same way he had already been denied entry to Great Britain. He also would normally have been placed on the no-fly list, thus setting up two insuperable obstacles to getting on his Detroit bound flight and winging off to produce an incident which caused several weeks of public hysteria in this country, completely with demands for body scanners in airports. In addition, the US intelligence community had reports that a Nigerian was training with the purported “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” in Yemen. Obama had called a December 22 meeting with top CIA, FBI, and DHS officials because of reports of a terrorist attack looming during the Christmas holiday.

The January 27 hearings of the House Homeland Security Committee were also addressed by Michael Leiter, the AWOL Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, along with Jane Holl Lute, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, who was sent in place of HHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who boycotted the hearings. But the important testimony came from Kennedy, whose responsibilities include Consular Services, and therefore visas. In his opening statement, Kennedy offered a tortured circumlocution to describe what had happened. Attempting to head off the question of why the State Department had not revoked Mutallab’s visa, Kennedy stated:

“We will use revocation authority prior to interagency consultation in circumstances where we believe there is an immediate threat. Revocation is an important tool in our border security arsenal. At the same time, expeditious coordination with our national security partners is not to be underestimated. There have been numerous cases where our unilateral and uncoordinated revocation would have disrupted important investigations that were underway by one of our national security partners. They had the individual under investigation and our revocation action would have disclosed the U.S. Government’s interest in the individual and ended our colleagues’ ability to quietly pursue the case and identify terrorists’ plans and co-conspirators.” 4
Undersecretary Kennedy: An Agency Objected to Revoking Visa

Not surprisingly, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) wanted to know what that really meant. Here is his exchange with Undersecretary Kennedy:

REP. THOMPSON: Okay. So — all right. So he has a visa. So what does that do? In the process, does it revoke the visa? Does it —

MR. KENNEDY: We — as I mentioned in my statement, Mr. Chairman, if we unilaterally revoked a visa — and there was a case recently up — we have a request from a law enforcement agency to not revoke the visa. We came across information; we said this is a dangerous person. We were ready to revoke the visa. We then went to the community and said, should we revoke this visa? And one of the members — and we’d be glad to give you that out of — in private — said, please do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying roll up an entire network, not just stop one person. So we will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, do you have eyes on this person, and so you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?

REP. THOMPSON: Well, I think that the point that I’m trying to get at is, is this just another box you’re checking, or is that some security value to add in that box, to the list?

MR. KENNEDY: The intelligence and law enforcement community tell us that they believe in certain cases that there’s a higher value of them following this person so they can find his or her co-conspirators and roll up an entire plot against the United States, rather than simply knock out one soldier in that effort.5

What Kennedy is saying is that the established bureaucratic routine calls for the State Department to inquire of the other intelligence and law enforcement agencies that compose the US intelligence community whether they have any objection to the lifting of a visa. In this case, reports Kennedy, there was such an objection from at least one agency, based on their contention that Mutallab was under intensive scrutiny as part of an operation which might lead to the discovery and arrest of far bigger fish. We should also notice that Kennedy is extremely reluctant to speak before the committee in public session about exactly which intelligence or law-enforcement agency this was, and that the members of the committee do not demand an immediate straight answer. Perhaps Kennedy told them later, behind the closed doors of a secret executive session. But after weeks of hysteria, the public has a right to know.
Classic Use of National Security Override to Protect A Patsy

What we see here is a classic example of the use of a national security override on the part of subversive moles who are performing their most basic responsibility of protecting a patsy by preventing him from being arrested or otherwise interfered with until that patsy can perform his assigned task and produce the desired incident, with the goal of inducing an intensive political response in the form of a wave of public hysteria. With this method, the name of the patsy is in effect flagged in all the relevant databases with the notation that this person is the target of an ongoing investigation which cannot be interfered with because of overriding national security concerns. This means that the patsy in question is immune to arrest by traffic cops, airport and border officials, or any other law enforcement official. The patsy is untouchable — until of course the terrorist provocation has been carried out.

Various alleged 9/11 figures operated for extended periods of time inside the US, evidently under the cover of such national security overrides. How did the accused 19 9/11 hijackers enter and leave this country, obtain visas, rent apartments, acquire checking accounts and credit cards, obtain driver’s licenses, register vehicles, rent cars, attend flight schools, and repeatedly fly on US domestic airlines? How did they escape arrest for traffic violations, which some of them committed? The answer is in all likelihood that they had been made untouchable to ordinary law enforcement because their names had been flagged with national security overrides which made them immune to arrest for routine infractions or because their names appeared on watch lists and similar databases.

Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX) returned to this sensitive issue in his questioning of Undersecretary Kennedy, leading to the following exchange:

REP. MCCAUL: Well, I think there needs to be a lot better coordination going on here between these two entities. And Mr. Kennedy, why given the information that you had, why wasn’t the VISA revoked?

MR. KENNEDY: Sir, as I mentioned earlier, when we get any information, when anyone appears at an American embassy and they say that they have doubts about someone, we immediately generate what is called a visa VIPER message. We sent that to the entire law enforcement and intelligence —

REP. MCCAUL: My problem — I understand the process. But you had this information, and you didn’t revoke the VISA.

MR. KENNEDY: Because —

REP. MCCAUL: I mean the cable I just read makes it pretty clear that this man is associated with extremists in Yemen, and you didn’t revoke his VISA.

MR. KENNEDY: What it was, sir, is his father said he was associated with this. And so we then asked the intelligence and law enforcement communities if they have any other information. I don’t want to take much of your time, and I’d glad to visit with you afterwards. 6

We note again the tremendous reticence of Undersecretary Kennedy in getting into the details of how the national security override was issued in the case of Mutallab’s visa. Kennedy suggests he will explain it all to the Congressman in private, but not in the full glare of public opinion were his words will end up on the Federal News transcript.
Demand to Know Who Let Mutallab Keep His Visa

Instead, it is imperative for the preservation of democratic institutions that the full details be known of how the State Department was prevented from revoking Mutallab’s visa. We want to know which agency demanded that Mutallab not be interfered with. We want to know the names and posts held by the officials who issued the override of the State Department’s proposal. We want these officials fired. We want these officials thoroughly investigated. We want them to appear before public congressional hearings. We want them to be the targets of civil suits by airlines and other interested parties. We want to find out the nature of any privately controlled intelligence networks to which they may belong. Such an investigation may well lead outside of the United States, and most particularly to the United Kingdom. Mutallab comes from Nigeria, a former British colony. He spent several years in London, the site of MI-6’s Londonistan school for Islamic fundamentalist extremist patsies and fanatics, where he was apparently radicalized. Mutallab was then you sheep dipped into Yemen, another former British colony, where he was placed in contact with Awlaki the CIA lackey, a notorious double agent and agent provocateur. Given the fact that Mutallab was operating outside of this US, the CIA is an obvious suspect, but not the only one.

There is every reason to conclude that the rogue network of moles operating inside US intelligence — otherwise known as the invisible government or shadow government — knew that Mutallab was coming, knew that he would be carrying a device resembling a bomb, and wanted him to enter the skies over Detroit. (Whether Mutallab’s handlers thought they were giving him a bomb that would actually go off is a separate question.) They did all this because they sincerely wanted a major terrorist provocation of the US population, designed to unleash waves of Islamophobic hysteria that would be useful for the support of ongoing operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and quite possibly against Iran.
Not Body Scanners, But Mole Detectors at CIA and FBI

Earlier commentaries on this incident had alleged a failure to connect the dots. As it now transpires, the dots were evidently connected by the State Department, but their action was blocked by an override issued by another agency. Another popular cover story for the failure of screening and surveillance on Christmas between Amsterdam and Detroit was that Mutallab’s name had been misspelled when entered into the relevant antiterrorist database. Kennedy conceded in his testimony that one such data entry was misspelled, but another one was entered accurately. All of this needs to be viewed with great skepticism.

Apart from these details, it should be clear to all that the official US account of the Detroit Christmas incident has now been completely refuted. We do not need body scanners at airports. We need mole detectors installed at the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, State Department, NCTC, and the National Security Council. The urgent necessity is now to find out precisely who issued a critical override that allowed Mutallab to keep his visa and board his flight to Detroit. Pull on that thread and revelations might well follow that lead back to the networks behind 9/11, Iran Contra, and much else. Political forces friendly to Obama have tended to see this case as staged in order to embarrass the tenant of the White House. These forces should now demand immediate congressional hearings into the allegations contained in Undersecretary Kennedy’s testimony.

1http://tarpley.net/2009/12/28/tarpley-on-rt-nigerian-patsy-helps-us-meddling-in-yemen-civil-war/
2http://tarpley.net/2010/01/05/obama-white-house-probing-rogue-network-of-moles-behind-christmas-detroit-patsy-fiasco-reports-richard-wolffe-on-msnbc/
3http://tarpley.net/2010/01/06/obama-flubs-his-first-bay-of-pigs-moment-as-terror-moles-escape-purge/
4 http://www.state.gov/m/rls/remarks/2010/135865.htm
5See Federal News Service transcript of the Q&A before the committee at: http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=25151&docId=l:1117012781&start=15 , emphasis added.
6See Federal News Service transcript of the Q&A before the committee at: http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=25151&docId=l:1117012781&start=15 , emphasis added.