Saturday, September 12, 2009

What Role Did the U.S.-Israeli Relationship Play in 9-11?

On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: “It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel).”

Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of “the mark” to staged provocations. Reactions thereby become foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science, he conceded that “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”

With a well-planned provocation, the anticipated response can even become a weapon in the arsenal of the agent provocateur. In response to 9-11, how difficult would it be to foresee that the U.S. would deploy its military to avenge that attack? With fixed intelligence, how difficult would it be to redirect that response to wage a long-planned war in Iraq — not for U.S. interests but to advance the agenda for Greater Israel?

The emotionally wrenching component of a provocation plays a key role in the field of game theory war planning where Israel is the authority. With the televised murder of 3,000 Americans, a shared mindset of shock, grief and outrage made it easier for U.S. policy-makers to believe that a known Evil Doer in Iraq was responsible, regardless of the facts.

The strategic displacement of facts with induced beliefs, in turn, requires a period of “preparing the mindset” so that “the mark” will put their faith in a pre-staged fiction. Those who induced the March 2003 invasion of Iraq began “laying mental threads” and creating agenda-advancing mental associations more than a decade earlier.

Notable among those threads was the 1993 publication in Foreign Affairs of an article by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. By the time his analysis appeared in book-length form in 1996 as The Clash of Civilizations, more than 100 academies and think tanks were prepared to promote it, pre-staging a “clash consensus”–five years before 9-11.

Also published in 1996 under the guidance of Richard Perle was A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). A member since 1987 of the U.S. Defense Policy Advisory Board, this self-professed Zionist became its chairman in 2001. As a key adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Perle’s senior Pentagon post helped lay the required foundation for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Greater Israel strategy, a key theme of A Clean Break – released five years before 9-11.

A mass murder, articles, books, think tanks and Pentagon insiders, however, are not enough to manage the variables in a “probabilistic” war-planning model. Supportive policy makers are also required to lend the appearance of legitimacy and credibility to an operation justified by intelligence fixed around a pre-determined agenda.

That role was eagerly filled by Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, when they co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Echoing Tel Aviv’s agenda in A Clean Break, their bill laid another mental thread in the public mindset by calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein–three years before 9-11.

The legislation also appropriated $97 million, largely to promote that Zionist agenda. Distracted by mid-term Congressional elections and by impeachment proceedings commenced in reaction to a well-timed presidential affair involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton signed that agenda into law October 31, 1998 — five years before the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein.

After 9-11, John McCain and Joe Lieberman became inseparable travel companions and irrepressible advocates for the invasion of Iraq. Looking “presidential” aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in January 2002, McCain laid another key thread when he waved an admiral’s cap while proclaiming, alongside Lieberman, “On to Baghdad.”

By Way of Deception

The chutzpah with which this game theory strategy progressed in plain sight could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another Zionist insider. Four days after 9-11, in a principals’ meeting at Camp David, he proposed that the U.S. invade Iraq. At that time, the intelligence did not yet point to Iraqi involvement and Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan.

Frustrated that President George H.W. Bush declined to remove Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz proposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. By 2001, the Israeli Mossad had agents at work for a decade in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Intelligence reports of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda also came from Mosul — reports that later proved to be false. Mosul again emerged in November 2004 as a center of the insurgency that destabilized Iraq. That reaction precluded the speedy exit of coalition forces promised in Congressional testimony by senior war-planner Wolfowitz.

The common source of the fixed intelligence that induced America to war in Iraq has yet to be acknowledged even though intelligence experts agree that deception on such a scale required a decade to plan, staff, pre-stage, orchestrate and, to date, cover up. The two leaders of the 9-11 Commission report conceded they were stopped by Commission members from hearing testimony on the motivation for 9-11: the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The fictions accepted as generally accepted truths included Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraqi purchases of “yellowcake” uranium from Niger. Only the last fact was conceded as phony in the relevant time frame. All the rest were disclosed as false, flawed or fixed only after the war began. An attempt to cover-up the yellowcake account led to the federal prosecution of vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, another well-placed Zionist insider.

Did game theory-modeled pre-staging also include the Israeli provocation that led to the Second Intifada? An intifada is an uprising or, literally, a “shaking off” of an oppressor. The Second Intifada in Palestine dates from September 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led an armed march to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – one year before 9-11.

After a year of calm—during which Palestinians believed in the prospects for peace—suicide bombings recommenced after this high-profile provocation. In response to the uprising, Sharon and Netanyahu observed that only when Americans “feel our pain” would they understand the plight of the victimized Israelis. Both Israeli leaders suggested that shared mindset (“feel our pain”) would require in the U.S. a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 Americans lost to terrorism, the initial estimate of those who died in the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center—one year later.

The American Valkyrie?

When successful, game theory warfare strengthens the agent provocateur while leaving the mark discredited and depleted by the anticipated reaction to a well-timed provocation. By game theory standards, 9-11 was a strategic success because the U.S. was portrayed as irrational for its reaction — the invasion of Iraq – that triggered a deadly insurgency with devastating consequences both for Iraq and the U.S.

That insurgency, in turn, was an easily modeled reaction to the invasion of a nation that (a) played no role in the provocation, and (b) was known to be populated by three long-warring sects where an unstable peace was maintained by a former U.S. ally who was rebranded an Evil Doer. As the cost in blood and treasure expanded, the U.S. became overextended militarily, financially and diplomatically.

As “the mark” (the U.S.) emerged in the foreground, the agent provocateur faded into the background. But only after catalyzing dynamics that steadily drained the U.S. of credibility, resources and resolve. This “probabilistic” victory also ensured widespread cynicism, insecurity, distrust and disillusionment along with a declining capacity to defend its interests due to the duplicity of a game theory-savvy enemy within.

Meanwhile the American public fell under a regime of oversight, surveillance and intimidation marketed as “homeland” security. This domestic operation even features rhetorical hints of a WWII “fatherland” with clear signs of a force alien to the U.S. with its welcome embrace of open dissent. Is this operation meant to protect Americans or to shield those responsible for this insider operation from Americans?

By manipulating the shared mindset, skilled game theory war-planners can wage battles in plain sight and on multiple fronts with minimal resources. One proven strategy: Pose as an ally of a well-armed nation predisposed to deploy its military in response to a mass murder. In this case, the result destabilized Iraq, creating crises that could be exploited to strategic advantage by expanding the conflict to Iran, another key Israeli goal announced in A Clean Break—seven years before the invasion of Iraq.

Which nation benefitted from the deployment of coalition forces to the region? Today’s mathematically model-able outcome undermined U.S. national security by overextending its military, discrediting its leadership, degrading its financial condition and disabling its political will. In game theory terms, these results were “perfectly predictable”—within an acceptable range of probabilities.

In the asymmetry that typifies today’s unconventional warfare, those who are few in numbers must wage war by way of deception—non-transparently and with means that leverage their impact. Which nation—if not Israel—fits that description?

Treason in Plain Sight?

Game theory war-planners manipulate the shared mental environment by shaping perceptions and creating impressions that become consensus opinions. With the aid of well-timed crises, policy-makers fall in line with a predetermined agenda—not because they are Evil Doers or “imperialists” but because the shared mindset has been pre-conditioned to respond not to the facts but to manipulated emotions and consensus beliefs. Without the murder of 3,000 on 9-11, America’s credibility would not now be damaged and the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.

By steadily displacing facts with what “the mark” can be induced to believe, the few-within-the-few amplify the impact of their duplicity. By steady manipulation of the public’s mindset, game theory war-planners can defeat an opponent with vastly superior resources by inducing those decisions that ensure defeat.

Intelligence wars are waged in plain sight and under the cover of widely shared beliefs. By manipulating consensus opinion, such wars can be won from the inside out by inducing a people to freely choose the very forces that imperil their freedom. Thus in the Information Age the disproportionate power wielded by those with outsized influence in media, pop culture, think tanks, academia and politics—domains where Zionist influence is most rampant.

Induced beliefs act as a force-multiplier to wage intelligence wars from the shadows. At the operational core of such warfare are those masterful at anticipating the mark’s response to a provocation and incorporating that response into their arsenal. For those who wage war in this fashion, facts are only a barrier to overcome. For those nations dependent on facts, the rule of law and informed consent to protect their freedom, such insider treachery poses the greatest possible threat to national security.

America is far less safe than before 9-11. Tel Aviv clearly intends to continue its serial provocations, as evidenced by its ongoing expansion of the settlements. Israel has shown no sign of a willingness to negotiate in good faith or to take the steps required to make peace a possibility. To date, Barack Obama appears unwilling to name senior appointees who are not either Zionists are strongly pro-Israeli. The greatest threat to world peace is not terrorists. The greatest threat is the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

In the same way that a decade of pre-staging was required to plausibly induce the U.S. to invade Iraq, a similar strategy is now underway to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran or to support and condone an attack by Israel. The same duplicity is again at work, including the high profile branding of the requisite Evil Doer. From its very outset, the Zionist enterprise focused on hegemony in the Middle East. Its entangled alliance with the U.S. enabled this enterprise to deploy American might for that purpose.

Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence required to take the U.S. to war in the Middle East while also making it appear that Islam is the problem. If Barack Obama continues to defer to Tel Aviv, he can rightly be blamed when the next attack occurs in the U.S. or the European Union featuring the usual orgy of evidence pointing to a predetermined target. Should another mass murder occur, that event will be traceable directly to the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the failure of U.S policy-makers to free America from this enemy within.

US May Be Sucked Into Yemeni Civil War

As the Yemeni government continues to reject calls for talks to end the conflict in the nation’s Shi’ite dominated north, rising numbers of displaced are creating a humanitarian crisis which and the conflict seems set to be long enough to force Yemen to seek international help.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh seems set for a protracted conflict, vowing to use the impoverished nation’s limited resources to buy weapons “instead of building schools” and to show no mercy against the Shi’ite separatists.

Still, analysts say that as the conflict continues to escalate the US risks being sucked into the nation’s civil war, if for no other reason than to prevent Yemen from becoming another failed state.

The US State Department, for its part, has been pressuring the Yemeni government to work harder to crack down on al-Qaeda’s rising presence in the nation. But Yemen seems more focused on the clash with the Shi’ites, which it accuses of being backed by Iran (though without presenting any actual evidence to support this claim). With so many conflicts rearing their heads at once in Yemen, the US will almost certainly be asked to throw more support at them if it wants to retain them as an ally.

September 11 Attacks: The Greatest Fraud of the 21st Century

September 11, 2009 marks eight years since the day of tremendous terrorist attacks in the United States. The tragic events still raise many questions. Why did the twin towers collapse if they were built to stand a much stronger blow? How did some of the “suicide bombers” remain alive afterwards? Where is the clear footage of the plane crashing on the Pentagon?

2,973 people were killed in the series of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Two twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City tumbled down as a result of the attacks. A part of the Pentagon building was demolished in Washington.

The WTC used to be a symbol of power of the United States during the end of the 20th century. The towers were built in the beginning of the 1960s to show something grand to Americans and make them feel proud of their nation.

The towers were built instead of 164 buildings that were standing on the location of the would-be giants. The total weight of steel, which was used in the construction of the towers, exceeded 200,000 tons. Electric cables used for the buildings had the length of 3,000 miles, which is a half of the distance between New York and London. As a result, two 110-storeyed 450-meter high monsters changed NY’s skyline for good, as everyone believed.

The structure of the buildings was simple and wise: the buildings were designed to stand powerful earthquakes.

The buildings were opened on April 4, 1973. They could live for ages, but they collapsed in 28 years. The questions, which many people have in this connection, still have no answers.

How could huge steel columns smelt because of the kerosene, the burning point of which is four times as low as the smelting point of steel? About a dozen of cargo planes loaded with white phosphorous should have slammed into each of the two towers to make them collapse like a house of cards. Or the buildings should have been previously mined.

There are plenty of versions to explain what really happened in the USA on September 11, 2001. Newsweek wrote on September 16, 2001 that five of 19 hijackers had been trained at US army bases. Three terrorists had driver licenses and technical passports of the vehicles registered at the US naval base in Pensacola.

The mysterious details of the terrorist acts set off speculation about the possible participation of US top officials in the attacks, who used them to reach their political goals.

If it is true it only means that US strategists had not thought of anything new. Roman Emperor Nero set Rome on fire to blame Christians for that. Hitler set Reichstag ablaze to lay the blame for it on his adversaries.

Selling Death: Wall Street’s Newest Bubble

When Wall Street’s commodities bubble crashed last year, I asked whether the next bubble might be in securitized body parts. Wall Street would search the world for transplantable organs, holding them in cold storage as collateral against securities sold to managed money such as pension funds. Of course, it was meant to be an apocryphal story about unregulated banksters gone wild. But as the NYT reports, Wall Street really is moving forward to market bets on death. The banksters would purchase life insurance policies, pool and tranch them, and sell securities that allow money managers to bet that the underlying “collateral” (human beings) will die an untimely death. You can’t make this stuff up.

This is just the latest Wall Street scheme to profit on death, of course. It has been marketing credit default swaps that allow one to bet on the death of firms, cities, and even nations. And the commodities futures speculation pushed by Goldman (NYSE:GS) caused starvation and death around the globe when the prices of agricultural products exploded (along with the price of gasoline) between 2004 and 2008. But now Goldman will directly cash-in on death.

Here is how it works. Goldman will package a bunch of life insurance policies of individuals with an alphabet soup of diseases: AIDS, leukemia, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. The idea is to diversify across diseases to protect “investors” from the horror that a cure might be found for one or more afflictions–prolonging life and reducing profits. These policies are the collateral behind securities graded by those same ratings agencies that thought subprime mortgages should be as safe as US Treasuries. Investors purchase the securities, paying fees to Wall Street originators. The underlying collateralized humans receive a single pay-out. Securities holders pay the life insurance premiums until the “collateral” dies, at which point they receive the death benefits. Naturally, managed money hopes death comes sooner rather than later.

Moral hazards abound. There is a fundamental reason why you are not permitted to take out fire insurance on your neighbor’s house: you would have a strong interest in seeing that house burn. If you held a life insurance policy on him, you probably would not warn him about the loose lug nuts on his Volvo. Heck, if you lost your job and you were sufficiently ethically challenged, you might even loosen them yourself.

Imagine the hit to portfolios of securitized death if universal health care were to make it through Congress. Or the efforts by Wall Street to keep new miracle drugs off the market if they were capable of extending life of human collateral. Who knows, perhaps the bankster’s next investment product will be gansters in the business of guaranteeing lifespans do not exceed actuarially-based estimates.

If you think all of this is far-fetched, you have not been paying attention. From Charles Keating’s admonition to his sales staff that the weak, meek and ignorant elderly widows always make good targets, to recent internal emails boasting about giving high risk ratings to toxic securities, we know that Wall Street’s contempt for the rest of us knows no bounds. Those hedge funds holding CDS “insurance” fought to force the US auto industry into bankruptcy for the simple reason that they would make more from its death than from its resurrection. And the reason that most troubled mortgages cannot obtain relief is because the firms that service the mortgages gain more from foreclosure. It is not a big step for Wall Street and global money managers with big gambling stakes at risk to slow efforts to improve health. Indeed, it is easy to see some very nice and profitable synergies developing between Wall Street sellers of death and health insurers opposed to universal, single-payer health care. As AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Trumka recently remarked on NPR, we already have committees deciding when to cut-off care—the private health insurers decide when to deny coverage. It would not be in the interest of securities holders or health insurers to provide expensive care that would prolong the life of human collateral—a natural synergy that someone will notice.

It should be amply evident that Wall Street intends to recreate the conditions that existed in 2005. Virtually every element that created the real estate, commodities, and CDS bubbles will be replicated in the securitization of life insurance policies. If Wall Street succeeds in this scheme, it will probably bankrupt the life insurance companies (premiums are set on the assumption that many policyholders will cancel long before death—but once securitized, the premiums will be paid so that benefits can be collected). But it is likely that the bubble will be popped long before that happens, at which point Wall Street will look for the next opportunity. Securitized pharmaceuticals? Body parts?

Here’s the problem. There is still—even after massive losses in this crisis—far too much managed money chasing far too few returns. And there are far too many “rocket scientists” looking for the next newest and bestest financial product. Each new product brings a rush of funds that narrows returns; this then spurs rising leverage ratios using borrowed funds to make up for low spreads by increasing volume; this causes risk to rise far too high to be covered by the returns. Eventually, lenders and managed money try to get out, but de-levering creates a liquidity crisis as asset prices plunge. Resulting losses are socialized as government bails-out the banksters. Repeat as often as necessary.

Reform of the US financial sector is neither possible nor would it ever be sufficient. As any student of horror films knows, you cannot reform vampires or zombies. They must be killed (stakes through the hearts of Wall Street’s vampires, bullets to the heads of zombie banks). In other words, the financial system must be downsized.

Identity of CIA Officer Responsible for pre-9/11 Failures, Tora Bora Escape, Rendition to Torture Revealed

The name of the CIA officer who ran Alec Station, the agency’s bin Laden unit, in the run-up to 9/11 can be revealed. Known by a variety of aliases in the media until now, such as “Rich” in Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, “Richard” in the 9/11 Commission report and “Rich B” in George Tenet’s At the Center of the Storm, his real name is Richard Blee.

Blee was a key figure in the pre-9/11 intelligence failures, the CIA station chief in Afghanistan when Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora and instrumental in setting up the Bush administration’s rendition and torture policies.

I confirmed Blee’s identity in this document, notes drafted by a 9/11 Commission staffer, apparently in preparation of the drafting of the final report. The notes were found along with thousands of other 9/11 Commission files at the National Archives by History Commons contributor Erik Larson, who uploaded them to the 9/11 Document Archive at Scribd. I previously blogged other interesting aspects of the notes here and here.

Blee is mentioned several times in the 9/11 Commission’s files, but his name is always redacted, as it has been in the media until now. However, in one case the people doing the redactions let it slip past them.

His name is disclosed on page 41 of the notes, where a comment says: “No one anticipated (well a few like Clarke, Black, Blee) what these people would do, or their single-minded determination, or that it would adapt to events and change to be more lethal.”

Clarke is White House counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, who Blee met with to discuss the an impending al-Qaeda attack in the summer of 2001. Black is Cofer Black, the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) and Blee’s boss at the time.

Before this, much information was known about Blee. His first name was given in at least four books and a key break was provided by former CIA Director George Tenet, who disclosed the initial of his surname in his 2007 book. Tenet even has an entry for “B., Rich” in the index and named the book’s eighth chapter after a comment Blee made to him in July 2001 about the location of the next al-Qaeda attack: “They’re coming here.”

Harper’s journalist Ken Silverstein revealed in a January 2007 article about Blee (under the pseudonym “James”) that he was the son of a well-known former CIA officer. Taken together, this meant that the officer’s first name was Richard, his surname began with the letter B and his father had also been a CIA officer–a relatively small group of people.

His father was David Blee, an Office of Strategic Services veteran who was honoured as one of the CIA’s finest fifty employees ever at ceremony on 18 September 1997. Blee came to fame within the agency in the mid-1960s, when he spirited Stalin’s daughter out of India and to the west. However, his main contribution was to sweep away the influence of paranoid counterintelligence chief James Angleton and build a network of spies in the Eastern Bloc. He also rated a mention by the Church Committee.

David Blee died in August 2000. James Risen’s obituary in the New York Times mentions that one of his sons was called Richard.

Involvement in Pre-9/11 Failures

One of the best-known pre-9/11 failures was the failure by the CIA in January 2000 to pass on to the FBI the information that one of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar, had a US visa, and would therefore probably soon arrive in the US. FBI officers detailed to the CIA learned of the information, but one of Blee’s deputies, Tom Wilshire, prevented them from passing it on to the bureau.

While it was wrong of Wilshire to keep information from the bureau, it is perhaps not so unusual for the CIA to withhold information from the FBI. However, Blee’s actions at this time are more bizarre.

The CIA had been monitoring a summit of al-Qaeda leaders in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which began on 5 January. On 8 January three of the summit attendees, Almihdhar, his partner Nawaf Alhazmi and al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash, left for Bangkok, and Alec Station received a cable from the field reporting this. The CIA claims that its officers in Bangkok could not pick up the surveillance at the airport and that the three men were lost. The next day Alec Station sent a high-priority NIACT (night action) cable urging the station in Bangkok to find them.

Although the other summit attendees had also dispersed at the same time as the three men who flew to Bangkok, on 12 January Blee claimed to his bosses that the surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was continuing. The 9/11 Commission, suggested that Blee “may not have known that in fact Almihdhar and his companions had dispersed and the tracking was falling apart.” The interview of Blee received high-level attention on the commission. It was led by the commission’s executive director Philip Zelikow and two team leaders, Kevin Scheid and Barbara Grewe.

It is unclear how Blee could possibly have been unaware of this, as his unit had previously both received and sent at least one cable stating they had left for Bangkok and he would presumably have asked his subordinates for an update in the four days between the hijackers’ departure from Kuala Lumpur and the 12 January briefing. The commission’s formulation—that Blee “may not have known”—also begs the question: Well, did he know or not? If he did, he withheld key information from his bosses during the high threat period of the millennium alert. If he did not know, it means his subordinates withheld the information from him.

The next day, Bangkok station reported that it could not find the three men. Nevertheless, Blee went back to his superiors on 14 January and told them officials were continuing to track the summit’s attendees, who had now dispersed to various countries. Here, the commission’s report is clear, finding, “there is no evidence of any tracking efforts actually being undertaken by anyone after the Arabs disappeared into Bangkok.”

It is clear the information received by Blee’s superiors was incorrect. Given the improbability of Blee’s subordinates wanting or being able to conceal the real state of affairs from him for nearly a week, it appears that it was Blee that decided to withhold the information from them.

There has been speculation that the reason the information was withheld was to enable the CIA, perhaps using a group of former employees or confederates, to monitor Almihdhar and Alhazmi in the US without having to worry about a competing FBI surveillance team. The above analysis indicates that Blee wanted not only the FBI, but also his own superiors off his back.

The hypothesis that the withholding of the information from the bureau was not sanctioned by the CIA’s management is supported by the behaviour of the agency’s station in Kuala Lumpur. Four local stations performed badly regarding information about Almihdhar in the run-up to 9/11: Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Sana’a and Islamabad. Whereas the performance of the three last-named stations is so shocking—at various times they withheld information they must have known was crucial—that it indicates they were acting in bad faith, the errors by Kuala Lumpur station could be attributed to the usual mistakes that creep into anyone’s performance. In addition, on three separate occasions Kuala Lumpur went the extra mile and tried to move the issue forward. If the withholding of the information from the bureau was approved by the CTC’s leadership, why was Kuala Lumpur not on board with this?

“They’re Coming Here”

As most of the heavy lifting in the efforts to keep information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi from the FBI was done by Wilshire, Blee does not resurface in the story until July 2001.

On 4 July, Almihdhar re-entered the US. The next day, Wilshire, who had by then gone on loan to the FBI, apparently as the deputy chief of its International Terrorism Operations Section, wrote an alarming e-mail. In it he told unnamed Alec Station managers that he thought Almihdhar was linked to the current high level of threat reporting.

Five days after the e-mail, Black briefed Tenet about current threat reporting. The briefing was so alarming that it “literally made my hair stand on end,” Tenet recalled. He then immediately took Blee and Black to the White House, requesting an emergency meeting with National Security Condoleezza Rice so that Blee could brief her on the threat reporting. The meeting was also attended by Clarke and Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley, and caused controversy when it was omitted from the 9/11 Commission’s final report, but highlighted in one of Bob Woodward’s books.

There is no indication that Blee mentioned Almihdhar or Malaysia to anybody there, at this time or at any other.

The withholding of the information about Almihdhar in January 2000 and subsequent occasions only makes sense if the hijackers were being followed by people linked to those who were withholding the information, and Blee sits at the centre of that web. It is therefore highly likely that Blee knew all about the hijackers’ entries and residences in the US by this time from following Almihdhar and Alhazmi, but that he withheld this information deliberately. Had he told the people at the meeting of this information, there would have been plenty of time to prevent the attacks—over two months to round the hijackers up.

Three days after the meeting, Wilshire sent another e-mail to the Counterterrorist Center, this time warning that Khallad was a “major-league killer,” pointing out that he had been identified by a CIA mole in al-Qaeda, and saying that it would be a good time to re-examine the Malaysia summit documents to get more information about him. On the same day this e-mail was sent Blee wrote an e-mail to another CIA officer entitled “Identification of Khallad,” so it is highly likely Blee received this e-mail.

Wilshire wrote a third e-mail on 23 July. This time it was very clear:

When the next big op is carried out by [bin Laden’s] hardcore cadre, [Khallad bin Attash] will be at or near the top of the command food chain—and probably nowhere near either the attack site or Afghanistan. That makes people who are available and who have direct access to him of very high interest. Khalid Almihdhar should be very high interest anyway, given his connection to the [redacted].

Blee made the comment that left such an impression on Tenet around this time. Tenet wrote:

[I]magine how I and everyone else in the room reacted during one of my updates in late July when, as we speculated about the kind of attacks we could face, Rich B. suddenly said, with complete conviction, “They’re coming here.” I’ll never forget the silence that followed.

At this time, Blee certainly had reason to make such a comment: he was the government official most responsible for gathering the warning signs in the summer of threat and thus the most highly aware of them. He must have been aware of the hijackers’ presence in the US and was also involved in efforts to keep this presence hidden from both the bureau and his own superiors. Even if he did not figure out that the hijackers were linked to the threat reporting by himself, he must have known this because Wilshire told him so repeatedly and documented this with a clear paper trail.

Even if we suppose that Blee was cut off from the surveillance of the hijackers, Alec Station claims to have realised Almihdhar and Alhazmi were in the US on August 21 and communicated this to the FBI. (Coincidentally, this was one day before Blee’s nemesis FBI manager John O’Neill retired from the bureau and Ali Soufan, a bureau agent who had been asking questions about a possible al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, went back to Yemen.) At this point Alec Station knew (1) there was going to be a major al-Qaeda attack, (2) Almihdhar was one of the terrorists probably involved in the attack, and (3) Almihdhar was in the US. With this information, it does not take a genius to work out the likely location of the attack was inside the US. Yet the FBI’s search for Almihdhar, overseen by Wilshire, was a catastrophe.

The case against Blee can be summed up like this: some intelligence community employees at and linked to Alec Station deliberately withheld information from the FBI in general and the USS Cole investigators in particular about Almihdhar and Alhazmi. Two of the officials who were involved in one example of this in January 2000, Doug Miller and Mark Rossini, have confessed to their part and implicated Wilshire and one of his subordinates. It stretches credulity well beyond breaking point to suggest that the group centred on Blee and Wilshire withheld information deliberately in January 2000, but that its subsequent inability to pass on the same and similar information was due to overwork and understaffing, especially given the most peculiar circumstances in which the information was not passed.

Although it is Wilshire that did most of the work, it is hard to imagine that a deputy unit chief could practice such a deception, leading us to suspect his boss, Blee. This suspicion is greatly enhanced by Blee’s incorrect briefings of his superiors on 12 and 14 January 2000 and his failure to mention to anyone the evident links between the high threat and the Malaysia meeting in numerous discussions in the summer of 2001. In addition, his position as a child of a CIA hero would have given him access to a network of intelligence community professionals. If he did want “off-the-books” surveillance of the two hijackers in San Diego, he would have known who to call.

It is certainly possible to dream up scenarios in which the surveillance of the hijackers inside the US somehow broke down, or to theorise that the hijackers, who were employing a countersurveillance technique when taking flights, were smarter than the people monitoring them. Both these scenarios would clear Blee of the most serious charge of deliberately allowing the attacks. However, neither of these scenarios seem likely at the moment. Perhaps further research will allow them to be either confirmed or ruled out.

Another question to ask is: did Blee benefit from the attacks?

Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars offers us an insight into the debate inside the CIA about what action to take against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It portrays Blee as an officer most interested in providing increased assistance to Northern Alliance chief Ahmed Shah Massoud, with whom he met repeatedly. However, Blee was frustrated in this by others at the White House and agency, who did not trust Massoud. As we now know, all this changed after 9/11 and the US is still bogged down there along with its allies. In addition, as we will see, it was Blee that got himself appointed head of the CIA arm of the war…

What Richard Blee Did Next

Following the attacks, Blee was made station chief in Kabul, replacing Gary Berntsen, an officer who had realised the back door was open for bin Laden to escape from the battle of Tora Bora. Knowing some of the local warlords could not be trusted, Berntsen had repeatedly requested US ground forces to close off the escape routes and encircle bin Laden. However, he was unsuccessful, and Blee arrived to take over on 9 December. Although there are numerous stories about bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora, he seems to have still been there at this time. For example, in The One Percent Doctrine author Ron Suskind has bin Laden making a radio broadcast there on 15 December.

Had bin Laden been captured or killed there, it certainly would have provided some degree of closure for the US and the world, and probably significantly changed the course of subsequent events, possibly including a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan and a different public perception of the security vs. liberty trade-off. One can speculate about Blee’s role, but there is no evidence, let alone proof, one way or the other. On the other hand, it would be interesting to read his first cables from Afghanistan and compare them to Berntsen’s.

As CIA station chief in Afghanistan, he must have overseen all the abuses of prisoners that occurred there. One example for them all, from the Washington Post:

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards — paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit — dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

While Tora Bora is shrouded in the fog of war, the rendition of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi is not. Al-Libi, who had run training camps for radicals in Afghanistan, was captured by Pakistani forces trying to flee the country in November and handed over to the US in December. His questioning was initially headed by FBI agent Russell Fincher, who used the bureau’s traditional rapport-building techniques and began to extract nuggets of information from al-Libi. Fincher had previously worked on the Cole investigation–he was one of the agents the Blee/Wilshire group had withheld information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi from before 9/11.

FBI veteran Jack Cloonan was working with Fincher from headquarters. He later told the American Prospect: “They’re getting good stuff, and everyone’s getting the raw 302s [interview summaries] — the agency, the military, the director. But for some reason, the CIA chief of station in Kabul is taking issue with our approach.”

Newsweek also fingered Blee as the official responsible for starting the interagency contest:

The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency’s hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA.

More details of the discussions over al-Libi between the CIA, FBI and White House can be found elsewhere. However, this was the key battle between the agency and the bureau over the handling of detainees and determined the outcome of later contests, in particular the fight over Abu Zubaida. The CIA’s victory led to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” and everything they gave rise to.

After the agency took control of al-Libi, they put him on a plane to Cairo, where he was tortured into confessing a fictitious link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. This information then found its way into Colin Powell’s famous speech to the UN making the case for war with Iraq.

Ali Soufan, one of the Cole investigators from whom the Blee/Wilshire group had withheld information before 9/11, interviewed Abu Zubaida after his capture and got some useful information out of him. However, the CIA, led by its SERE contractors, muscled in on the interrogation and started implementing its torture tactics. Soufan was disgusted and protested what was happening, but eventually left the site of the interrogation.

Before 9/11, one of the mechanisms used to justify withholding the information was the “wall,” a term sometimes used to mean different things, but basically a set of regulations governing information sharing between and inside agencies. After 9/11, the wall came down, and information was shared freely in the panic to prevent what was then assumed to be the next attack. However, as Soufan wrote in an April 2009 New York Times op-ed:

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

Blee, whose subordinates built up an impressive track record of failing to share information with the FBI before the attacks, helped re-institute the barriers that enabled the information to be withheld after them. In particular, this led to information not being obtained by Fincher and Soufan, two of the very agents he and his associates had been withholding information from not six months previously. We must ask: is this just a coincidence? Or could Blee reasonably foresee that shipping al-Libi to Egypt and getting control of detainees for the CIA would hurt the FBI’s access to information?

Finally, there is the question of the CIA’s assassination programme, devised but never implemented after 9/11, although it was put into practice by the military in another form.

The first mention of it in the press I can find is in Dana Priest’s groundbreaking November 2005 exposé of the CIA’s black sites, “The CTC’s chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list [of high-value targets], one by one.”

Although Blee was appointed chief of Alec Station around June 1999, there was a reorganisation at the Counterterrorist Center in the first half of the next year and Blee’s position was upgraded. In a 2007 article Silverstein gives his positions in chronological order: a posting to Algeria (which was in the early 90s), work on Iraq (mid-90s), chief of operations at the CTC with oversight of Alec Station and renditions, and station chief in Kabul (a position he took up in December 2001). Therefore it appears that after his short stint as Alec Station chief, the position he moved to was CTC chief of operations. This makes him the official Priest has arguing “for creating hit teams.”

As we can see, he built up a very consistent track record: withholding information before 9/11, assassination teams, rendition and torture. Thankfully, it seems he has now left the agency.

On the Edge with Max Keiser - 11 September 2009 - Interview with Rob Kirby

Check this link ...... http://bit.ly/4xrrYZ

9/11 anniversary: a lovely day for a spot of protesting at the BBC

Cool kids' at Television Centre call for investigation into nano-thermite - whatever that is – at Ground Zero
9/11 conspiracy theorists outside BBC

9/11 conspiracy theorists outside BBC television centre. Photograph: Charlie Skelton/Charlie Skelton

Eight years ago today, the world fell over on my TV screen while I vomited dodgy prawns into a washing up bowl. Shivering and baffled, I lay on the living room carpet, picking shreds of bok choy from my poisoned teeth, as the four busy horsemen of the apocalypse rode their jets into skyscrapers and put everything we knew about everything to the torch.

No wonder some people saw Satan's face in the dust – 11 September was a day for the demons, a jubilee of mayhem. The devil's own harvest festival.

Eight years later and though the shivering has stopped, that sense of bewilderment and awe remains. The dust from that day is still in people's lungs, our world is madder than ever, and I'll never eat shrimp chow mein again. Damn you, al-Qaeda! You took away my freedom to eat Chinese food! I hate your hatred of my freedom!

I'll say this about 9/11: it was absolutely bonkers. It was double-plus bonkers with a cherry on top. And I find it bonkers squared that anyone can look back on that godforsaken day and think that they know exactly what happened. As if a giant CASE CLOSED has been stamped across the skyline of New York. As if 9/11 is a question that's been answered, a theorem that's been solved. Clearly, to the satisfaction of many, it has – but to the people standing outside the BBC today, the mystery and outrage not only haven't gone away, they're deeper and stronger than ever.

It's a lovely day for a spot of protesting. The sun is out, the placards are freshly sprayed, and the police are being friendly. "You can do what you want," smiles the sergeant, "just don't run inside the building." Gareth assures me that running inside the building isn't part of the plan. The plan today is to hand out fliers and DVDs, holler facts at the BBC front entrance, and tell as many people as possible about nano-thermite.

I don't know what nano-thermite is. Turns out it's a high-tech incendiary compound that the US Department of Defence is fond of using to incendiarise things. It's a substance that a Professor from the University of Copenhagen has found in the rubble of Ground Zero. Gareth is excited about the nano-thermite. "The paper was peer reviewed," he grins. "I've got a copy if you want one." I take one for the Tube. If it's a choice between London Lite and the Open Chemical Physics Journal, I know which one I'd rather spend rush hour with.

Gareth Newnham is from London Truth Action. He's hoping for a decent turn out today – around 150 people are expected; already there's 60 or so truthers here, and a cheery informational vibe. There's a slim, half-uttered hope that the BBC might even do a story about the "new evidence". They won't, of course. Everyone knows that.

Still, Gareth is a beacon of optimism. "A lot of younger people are questioning the official story, particularly those who were in the age range of 18-25 when the attack happened." A sad bit of maths takes place in my head; I'm one of the older guard. "Something has changed over the last couple of years. Fewer people think we're crazy, the initial shock of the information is starting to wear off."

And certainly the protest here feels resolutely sane. No one here has a tinfoil hat. Gareth's had a haircut and everything. The girl in the pants is about as kooky as it gets. The free DVDs are proving a hit with BBC workers, spirits are running high and the leaflets are running low. I offer to go and print some more.

"Go back to sleep!" booms the tall man with the loudspeaker, as I head off to the print shop. "Your government is in control! Believe everything that you're told! Don't ask questions!" A taxi driver honks his support. Either that or he's honking at the girl who's wearing frilly knickers over the top of her jeans. It's hard to tell just from the honk.

The massive banner opposite the lobby says INVESTIGATE 9/11, which I realise isn't an imperative at all. It's a question. Everyone here is a question. Gareth is a question. Nano-thermite is a question. Truth is a question. 9/11 is a question.

But here's something I really don't understand: when did it become uncool to ask questions? When did questioners become imbeciles? Who gets to hand out the tinfoil hats? When did it become cool to believe what we're told? In the words of Mr Hicks, did I miss a meeting? When did so many of the cynics and sceptics, so many of the sharpest brains I know (hello Charlie Brooker!) think that the cool thing to do is mock the questioners, and defend the party line. How stratospherically uncool is that? You want to know who's cool? Gareth is cool, Mohsin in the pink shirt is cool, the girl in the pink pants is cool. Charlie Sheen is cool, Julianne Moore is cool, Dario Fo is cool. And today, perhaps for the first time in my life, I'm cool too.

Charlie Skelton is a writer and actor

The BBC's 'WTC 7 Collapsed At 4:54 p.m.' Videos

At 21:54 GMT on 9/11/2001 the BBC announced that WTC 7 had collapsed. There was just one problem with this news: WTC 7 did not collapse until 22:20 GMT.

The videos below show the BBC World broadcast.

The two screenshots below show WTC 7 behind the reporter.

The following screenshot shows the satellite feed mysteriously breaking up roughly five minutes before the actual collapse.

Members of We Are Change UK questioned ex-BBC reporter Phil Hayton about the early reporting of WTC 7's collapse during a speaking appearance. Hayton failed to recollect even being in the studio on the day of 9/11-- at first-- but then recalls the situation when it is described in detail, including the actions of Jane Standley, who reported the collapse some 26 minutes in advance with WTC Building 7 still visible in the background.

"A lot of eyebrows were raised," We Are Change reporters point out in summary, because many saw it as a clear controlled demolition, including a number of engineers. Hayton responded, pointing out that he was not aware of the situation with WTC 7. "This sounds so significant-- I'm just amazed I didn't know about this... This is completely news to me."

"So, is there no official explanation?" Hayton further probed.

We Are Change continues to explain the delayed NIST report on WTC 7 as well as the response from a BBC editor who claimed 9/11 tapes were "lost" in a 'cock-up.'

"I sense that you think there's a conspiracy here-- but you might be right," Hayton concluded. [Prison Planet]

BBC News 24 also broadcast that WTC 7 had collapsed, and a corroborative time stamp was on their broadcast. [357kB WMV video download]

21:54 GMT is 16:54 (4:54 PM) East Coast time, 26 minutes BEFORE WTC 7 actually collapsed.

Fox News also reported the building had collapsed before it came down:

"...we are getting word from New York that another building has collapsed and we understand this is a 47 story building ... is that smoke coming from this third collapse?"

"Take a look at that right hand of the screen."

"It's going down right now."

1.1 MB wmv download

Richard Porter, the head of news at BBC World issued this explanation of the BBC World video:

1. We're not part of a conspiracy. Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn't get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down. We didn't receive press releases or scripts in advance of events happening.

2. In the chaos and confusion of the day, I'm quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate - but at the time were based on the best information we had. We did what we always did - sourced our reports, used qualifying words like "apparently" or "it's reported" or "we're hearing" and constantly tried to check and double check the information we were receiving.

3. Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services.

4. We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.

5. If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... "

Below are some selected comments made in reply to Mr Porter's explanation:

How deservedly ironic that the BBC gets exposed for what it really is (a propaganda bureau that attempts to indoctrinate Britain and the world with a false reality) so soon after the airing of the appalling hit piece (9/11 conspiracy files) last Sunday night. Please show some respect for the BBC and the license fee paying public by answering a simple question. How did the BBC know that Building 7 was going to collapse 20 minutes before it actually did when prior to 9/11 no steel-structured building had ever collapsed due to fire?
I'm not a conspiracy nut. But this footage of your reports of WTC7 collapsing a full 20 minutes prior and repeatedly discussing it's collapse is highly suspicious.

If you were talking about a building that never did collapse, well then you'd just look incompetent. But as we all know, building 7 did, in a feat that suspended all laws of physics and logic, collapse spontaneously due to fires on floors 7 & 12.

You can't possibly expect us to believe this. Let's look at all the pieces here.

1. BBC reports for 20 solid minutes that WTC7 has collapsed when even in the live shot it stands as sturdy as the day it was built.

2. The idea that WTC7 would collapse spontaneously due to minor fires and minimal damage to the north face is laughable and an insult to intelligence. But it did, approximately 5 minutes AFTER BBC's report....or at least 5 minutes after Jane Standley's live shot was disconnected.

3. BBC loses all of it's 9/11 footage so this cannot be reviewed or explained. My nephew still has all his VHS tapes from that day. He recorded almost every news station for 24 hours straight. He's 19 now. He was 13 when it happened. So, a 13 year old can be more responsible with his VHS tapes than one of the largest news organizations?

4. The archive footage is mysteriously pulled off of YouTube and Google video repeatedly and without provocation or explanation.

5. BBC's response is, 'there is no conspiracy. it was a mistake.'

Grant us logical thinkers at least one thing. This is highly suspicious. The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed.

Oh, and the ez-out phrases like 'it appears' and 'we're receiving reports that..' were not used throughout this footage.

Especially when the anchor starts talking about the (lack of) body count since there was so much time to evacuate since the collapse of WTC 1-2.

The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed. I do not necessarily think the BBC is a witting participant in some 9/11 conspiracy, but it's definitely looking like you were a pawn. Revealing who/where the BBC received the information that WTC7 had collapsed would be a good start in clearing your name.
To report that a building had collapsed before it had done so would be an odd sort of error, wouldn't it? A bit like reporting that the Lord Mayor's trousers had fallen down before they did so.
Let's say for a second that you messed up and reported a building going down that didn't - why the exact one that DID? What are the odds? Why not by mistake report a building going down that DIDN'T actually go down?

You lose footage of one of the most important days in modern history... ;)
(Good job! That way no one can "prove" anything that day...)

Out of all the surrounding buildings that suffered massive damage - WTC 3,4,5,6 - and assorted others that suffered minor damage (amoung them, WTC 7 - Salomon Brothers Building), BBC - by merely a mistake and in confusion - picked exactly the right one that was going to fall -.... ;)
(Good job! Hey, BBC is incompetent - they lose tapes AND they claim buildings fall that haven't - but what LUCK! They hit the lottery! What a 'lucky guess', huh?)

BBC should go to Vegas, with those odds - you'd be rich.

BBC is not part of the conspiracy - but you are just a bunch of pathetic dupes.

You capture the biggest smoking gun in history ... and your response is ..... to call yourselves incompetent and go play 'blind/deaf/dumb monkey' on your public.

Good job, Guys!!

"If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that."

Uh, it WASN'T an error... That's the point. You keep harping on about what a chaotic day it was. Then why didn't the anchor say something like, "We're getting some unconfirmed reports of some other building apparently collapsing... We'll have to check up on this... etc." No, he had (23 minutes before hand) the name of the building, the correct # of floors in the building (47), the explanation of the collapse (weakened by other collapses), and he was reporting that the building was apparently empty. You even had graphics made up for the scrolling info at the bottom of the screen. That is some pretty precise reporting for a day of chaos when everyone was "...trying to make sense of what they were seeing... and what was being told by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services."

And there lies the key (perhaps). No doubt the info was just being fed to the anchor and reporter off the wires as the news would cross... So, which agency fed that bit about WTC7 collapsing? AP? Reuters? VOA? We'll probably never know, but you got the information from some source more than 23 minutes before it happened (had to be longer than 23 minutes, because there must have been some delay from the time the story came over the wires and the time the anchor actually got the news out on the air).

Do I think the BBC is "...part of a conspiracy"? No... but you were played perfectly by some entity, IMO.
With respect, the response to this issue is unacceptable. At the very least you are minimizing your error and trivializing the life’s lost or the potential of life’s that could have been saved.

In the most important final 7 minutes and 15 seconds of the said segment the words "apparently", "it's reported" or "we're hearing" ARE NOT USED in context of building 7.

The words used are those have definite and past tense.

"Now more on the latest building collapse in New York,...the Solomon Brothers Building collapse... and indeed it has"

"What can you tell us about the Salomon Building and it's collapse?"

"When it collapsed"

Ticker –“The 47 storey Salomon Brothers building close to the World Trade Centre has also collapsed.”

Who is responsible for the newsroom in desk and floor prompters being used by the news presenter?
Who is responsible for the news report on the bottom screen news ticker?
Who is responsible as the newsroom floor source for giving these people information?
What is the complete list of editors and journalists responsible for this program on said day?

The words in your statement #4 of footage being lost may very well redefine irresponsible. The BBC Media Management policy clearly states TWO broadcast standard copies be retained one on a separate site as a master.

As follows.

Ref No.
Policy Area / Policy Statement
01
Components to be Retained
01-01

The following components to be retained:-

Two broadcast standard copies of all transmitted/published TV, Radio and BBCi output – one to be stored on a separate site as a master

One browse-quality version for research purposes, to protect the broadcast material

http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/docs/historical_information/archive_policies/media_management_policy
_overview.htm#top

If the footage had continued, we'd all have been able to watch WTC 7 collapse right on your program.

Good thing you lost the feed five minutes before THAT happened in front of all your viewers.

What in the world would you have said if that had happened?

What is going on here?

I'd like a little truth please.
I never actually thought I would live to see the day that things would surpass even Orwell, Huxley, Wells, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Zamyatin, Ayne Rand, on and on...but, the virtual reality that the "media" create for us now is truly more unfathomable than even those great minds warned us of.
Contrary to the dismissive tone of the "explanation", whether or not the building was known to be about to fall goes to essential point of culpability for 9/11, foreknowledge.

Those who are in the dock and being cross-examined are not allowed to wave their hands and create a plausible explanation. It's gone too far for that. There is a disastrous war built on false evidence, and that falsification process may have begun much sooner than is generally now understood.

In ordinary life, a witness who lies about one thing will be assumed to lie about everything. And we aren't talking about private matters, but about the essential role of a government to defend its country. This issue is about credibility of news sources during a terror attack, in which a rush to judgment resulted shortly in an invasion of a sovereign nation, and the BBC know it.

Thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost thus far, and there are doubtless more to come.

IT WASN'T MUSLIMS

Check this link ...... http://www.takeourworldback...

The Sacred Mysteries of 9/11

September 11, 2009 will not be a simple anniversary of an extraordinary day but the mythic return of a day that is now in the calendar of American civil religion.

American citizens will be urged to re-achieve the levels of patriotic fervour stimulated by the original event by flying the nation’s flag.[1]

Pilgrimage to “Ground Zero” will thrive.

No one familiar with war and nationalism will be surprised by the religious aspects of these memorials and revisitings.[2]

The homeland was violated. Blood sacrifice and murder were accomplished. The nation, after reeling from the blow, found a sense of meaning and direction only by setting off on its own path of blood sacrifice.

I will not discuss here the well known aspects of the path chosen--the illegal invasions and torture abroad, the degrading of civil rights at home, and the parallel developments in other states, including Canada.

My concerns in this essay are different. I am troubled by something else. I am troubled by the role the political parties, the corporate media and the universities have played, and are still playing, in the construction of the cult of 9/11.

I am bothered by the way they continue to set this day aside as if some sacredness protects it from all rational scrutiny and examination of evidence. Those of us who want to treat 9/11 like a historically important but otherwise ordinary day--who want to examine the crime scene and found out who did it and how—are treated like heretics.

We profane the elements of the cult. We must be “conspiracy nuts.” Or perhaps we hate Jews? Political parties, especially, rush to rid themselves of such scum as we obviously are.[3]

Even the political left has, to a great degree, closed its eyes and muttered prayers and incantations. While rejecting the imperialistic response of the United States to the events of 9/11, it has refused to look seriously at the events themselves. Is it afraid to put at risk the fragments of social legitimacy it has acquired through the years? Or is it afraid it will find itself looking into an abyss of deception that goes beyond its own imagining?

In this context, we Canadians will be expected on this coming September 11 to maintain a respectful silence before the most bizarre, irrational and even absurd episodes in the official narrative of 9/11.

Our government, especially, will be angry if we are bold enough to ask questions. This is not surprising: the stakes are high for the government of Canada. If the myth of 9/11 is meddled with, who knows what questions we may end up asking about our own killing and dying in Afghanistan, our compliance with unlawful detention, our rising military budget, restriction of civil rights and failure to protect our own citizens abroad?

Dissident intellectuals, beware. On this September 11 none of the following six forms of sacred mystery is to be scrutinized. None is to be discussed.

Miraculous skill acquisition

Hani Hanjour, a month before 9/11, was judged by flight instructors to be incapable of competently handling a Cessna 172, yet on 9/11 he sat down in the cockpit of a Boeing 757--a type of plane he had never flown--and piloted it like an ace.

His descent into the Pentagon was so skillful that flight controllers could not believe the plane on their radar screens was a commercial jet: they thought they were dealing with a military plane. (“The speed, the maneuverability ...”)[4]

And this was accomplished under duress by a man of whom a former flight school employee said: “he could not fly at all.”[5]

Many former pilots, including extremely experienced U.S. military pilots, have protested the absurdity of this chapter of the official story.[6]

But Canadian leaders and intellectuals, doggedly faithful to Washington’s script, appear untroubled. Why? Is Hanjour indispensable? Is there a fear that if the American Airlines 77 episode unravels the whole story will unravel?

Fearful symmetries

Three buildings at the World Trade Centre came down dramatically on 9/11: World Trade 1 and 2 (the Twin Towers) and World Trade 7.

The Twin Towers were struck in quite different places, with corresponding differences in the numbers and types of steel columns severed, yet they collapsed in extremely similar ways through the path of greatest resistance--suddenly, rapidly and symmetrically.

How the structure of the buildings, including their 283 vertical steel columns, could have given up the ghost symmetrically due to asymmetrical plane and fire damage remains a mystery.

How Building 7, which had relatively minor fire damage, could have experienced its own wonderfully symmetrical collapse (achieving free fall acceleration for 2.5 seconds) through its suddenly compliant 82 steel columns is likewise best passed over in pious silence.[7]

Contagious failure

The first two buildings had at least been hit by planes, but what of the third?

Building 7 was, says the National Institute of Standards and Technology in its 2008 study, the first tall building in history to collapse from fire.

Not only did it collapse from fire, we might add, but from fire that was on the wane. At the time of collapse, significant levels of fire were visible in only two or three out of 47 stories. No matter: at 5:20 in the afternoon, down went WTC 7 into its own footprint in about seven seconds.[8]

I recently asked a retired professor of civil engineering for his opinion of WTC 7’s collapse. After studying the evidence he replied wryly: “I guess the little one just fainted when it saw that its mom and dad had fallen.”

Flippant? Perhaps there is a good explanation that he is ignoring? I can only urge the reader to study the NIST report on WTC 7 and to study critiques of the report such as that recently written by David Ray Griffin.[9]

Pervasive precognition

Despite the historical uniqueness of WTC 7’s collapse, many people knew well before its demise that the building was coming down.

The BBC erroneously reported the collapse over 20 minutes before the event and CNN did even better, reporting the collapse over an hour before it happened.[10]

There is no obvious reason for these odd reports: video footage shows the building standing straight and tall, apparently unchanged. Yet dozens of firefighters were told in advance that the building was coming down. Some were told over four hours before the fact. Some were told quite precisely where the debris would land. Some were told the building might be deliberately brought down during the day through controlled demolition.[11]

No doubt the 9/11 Commission adopted the wisest strategy in relation to all this: it chose not to mention this building collapse at all.[12] Too many embarrassing possibilities.

The option of silence may not be possible much longer. There has been a gradual erosion of the united front of complicity. Hundreds of architects and engineers have now gone public: this collapse can only be a controlled demolition.[13]

We can expect strenuous efforts to combat these heretical scientists. Their patriotism and their devotion to the cult of 9/11 will be questioned. After all, if they are right a second look at the collapse of the Twin Towers will be necessary. Then a second look at the events of the entire day.

Demonic force

Since America saw evil on 9/11 we will not be surprised to find evidence of demonic force. Extreme and rapid pulverization of the Twin Towers, the hurling of debris and steel columns great distances horizontally, the blowing out of windows in neighboring buildings—all of this must have been done by the Evil One.

Perhaps it was also the Evil One who created the forceful and focused ejections from the building that are clearly visible in the video record of the collapse? Since they are supernatural occurrences there is no need to take measurements or compare them with the ejections familiar in controlled demolitions.[14]

Temperatures in excess of 2000 degrees Celsius, reached during the destruction of the Towers—far higher than could be achieved through jet fuel and office fires—may, perhaps, be a taste of hellfire?[15]

Evidence that the earth shook several seconds before the buildings began their descent will not surprise us. It was an earth shaking day.[16]

If 9/11 had been an ordinary day, continuous with profane history, we might reasonably connect all this evidence of great force to the large amount of explosive recently discovered in the remains of the Towers.[17] But, of course, it was not an ordinary day and must be protected from such logic.

Mass hallucination

There seems to be no explanation but hallucination for the claims of more than 150 witnesses that they perceived explosions in the Twin Towers at or near the time of the collapses.[18] Or were these false visions and auditions conjured up by satanic powers?

One thing is clear: ordinary people standing at the scene of the manifestation cannot be trusted. We must, instead, rely on authorities who were not at the scene. Perhaps we should officially adopt a social epistemology for Canada that assigns all accurate perception to our holy authorities?

Yes. Enough of this tiring and time-consuming dissent!

Let us stand up on 9/11, light our candles, sing our anthem, and mumble phrases about Islamic extremism and its threat to our freedoms. Let us stop up our ears so that we do not hear the voices of the New York firefighters:[19]

“all the way around like a belt, all these explosions”

“a tremendous explosion and tremendous shaking of our building”

“you saw the one floor explode”

“like on television they blow up these buildings…”

“flash flash flash”

“boom, boom, boom, boom”

“shook my bones”

“sucked all the oxygen out of the air”

“like someone had planted explosives”

“like a million firecrackers”

“every floor went chu-chu-chu”

“like it was a timed explosion”

“boom, a massive explosion”

“whole top came off like a volcano”

“a very, very tremendous explosion”

“the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV”

“a giant, giant explosion”

“in my mind it was a bomb”

“a synchronized deliberate kind of thing”

“I just went flying, maybe 30, 40 feet”

“ like shrapnel”

“everything shook”

“ever see professional demolition?”

“pop, pop, pop, pop, pop”

“like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom”

“and then just a huge wind”

“the sound was deafening”

“the street was bouncing like a trampoline”

“huge mushroom cloud”

“horrendous noise”

“what the hell blew up?”

“my ears were like deaf…”

“they sounded like bombs”

Dr. Graeme MacQueen taught in the Department of ReligiousStudies and the Centre for Peace at McMaster for many years.

NOTES

1. An American friend recently sent me the following email, which, it seems, is being forwarded widely:

“We have less than one month to get the word out all across this great land and into every community in the United States of America.

If you forward this email to least 11 people and each of those people do the same ... you get the idea.

THE PROGRAM:

On Friday, September 11th, 2009, an American flag should be displayed outside every home, apartment, office, and store in the United States. Every individual should make it their duty to display an American flag on this eighth anniversary of one of our country's worst tragedies. We do this to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11, their families, friend's and loved ones who continue to endure the pain, and those who today are fighting at home and abroad to preserve our cherished freedoms.

In the days, weeks and months following 9/11, our country was bathed in American flags as citizens mourned the incredible losses and stood shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism. Sadly, those flags have all but disappeared. Our patriotism pulled us through some tough times and it shouldn't take another attack to galvanize us in solidarity. Our American flag is the fabric of our country and together we can prevail over terrorism of all kinds.”

2. I have written about National Religion and its relation to war in Johan Galtung and Graeme MacQueen, Globalizing God: Religion, Spirituality and Peace. Transcend University Press, 2008.

3. The 2008 treatment of candidate Leslie Hughes by the Liberal Party is an example of this purging.

4. “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.”

ABC News:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011025074733/http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_011024_atc_feature.html

5. Mark Gaffney’s essay, “How the FBI and 9/11 Commission Suppressed Key Evidence about Hani Hanjour, alleged hijack pilot of AAL 77” gives a good summary of Hanjour’s experience and flying skills:

http://www.the911mysteryplane.com/

6. See the Pilots and Aviation Professionals section of the Patriots Question 9/11 website, and especially the statements of Wittenberg and Kolstad.

http://patriotsquestion911.com/pilots.html

7. The reports by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the Twin Towers and on World Trade 7 can be found here:

http://wtc.nist.gov/

Discussion and criticism of these reports are found on many websites and in many publications. See especially the Journal of 9/11 Studies:

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

and the website of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth:

http://www.ae911truth.org/

8. Several views of WTC 7’s collapse can be found here:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wtc7.html

NIST’s final report on WTC 7 is here:

http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/NCSTAR1Aindex.htm

9-11 Research is a good website for those wishing to study WTC 7’s collapse:

http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html

9. For NIST’s report, see note 8.

David Ray Griffin’s book is, The Mysterious Collapse of the World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Interlink Publishing, 2009).

http://www.interlinkbooks.com/product_info.php?products_id=2130&osCsid=77ba582242e931dba1a54c644717e40c

10. Basic information about the BBC error can be found here:

http://www.wtc7.net/bbc.html

The CNN error is described here:

http://www.wtc7.net/cnn.html

and, in more detail, here:

http://911research.wtc7.net/letters/nist/WTC7Comments.html

11. See my article, “Waiting for Seven.”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200701/MacQueenWaitingforSeven.pdf

See also this MSNBC video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KQA1KOKrPc

12. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004)

13. http://www.ae911truth.org/

14. See Kevin Ryan’s article, “High Velocity Bursts of Debris from Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers.”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/Ryan_HVBD.pdf

15. Steven Jones, et al, “Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction.”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf

16. See my article, “Did the Earth Shake before the South Tower Hit the Ground?”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/MacQueen_EarlyEarthShake.pdf

17. Niels Harrit, et al, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.”

http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

18. The number 150 is used here as a symbolic minimum figure: the numbers of explosion witnesses is certainly much greater than this. I began the count by using the Fire Department of New York witnesses discussed in my article, “118 Witnesses:”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_5_118Witnesses_WorldTradeCenter.pdf

To this body of witnesses I added several from the reports of the Port Authority Police Department, which can be found here:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/pa-transcripts/

I then added further accounts from David Ray Griffin’s 2006 article, “Explosive Testimony:”

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060118104223192

and from Webster Tarpley’s book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Progressive Press, 2006).

Finally, I took several accounts from the same-day coverage (September 11, 2001) of CNN and other television networks. Feeling 150 was a good symbolic number, I stopped counting when I reached it.

19. These quotations are mostly taken from the statements of members of the Fire Department of New York and can be found in the Appendix to “118 Witnesses,” referred to in note 18. I have added a couple of quotations from members of the Port Authority Police. See also note 18.

by Dr. Graeme MacQueen

Project Camelot interviews Jane Burgermeister

Check this link ..... http://bit.ly/3YjsU

Sheen Challenges 9/11 Truth Debunkers To Larry King Live Debate

“We’re not hiding,” states Sheen as he calls out McCain, Hannity, Limbaugh and O’Reilly

Sheen Challenges 9/11 Truth Debunkers To Larry King Live Debate 110909top2

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show today to discuss his video address to Barack Obama, Charlie Sheen has challenged those who have publicly attacked him for speaking out on 9/11, particularly Meghan McCain, Rush Limbaugh Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, to debate him on CNN’s Larry King Live.

Following the publication of Sheen’s “20 Minutes With The President,” a fictionalized account of a meeting with Barack Obama in which Sheen implores the President to reopen the investigation of 9/11 in light of the majority of the 9/11 Commission members publicly denouncing the official story as a deception, McCain attacked Sheen on ABC’s top rated show The View, comparing people who question 9/11 with holocaust deniers.

“I quoted Charlie Sheen yesterday about his experience with prostitutes, so really you’re the one I should be listening to about 9/11?… I am not going to take my political advice from Charlie Sheen,” stated McCain, daughter of the former Republican nominee John McCain.

McCain’s sophomoric reliance on attacking Sheen on the foundation of decades old events in his personal life, while failing to address even one of the 20 pieces of evidence raised in his letter to Obama, is typical of the media response to Sheen’s challenge thus far.

Amongst the scoffers and debunkers, not one corporate media outfit has managed to actually address a single point Sheen raised in his letter, resorting instead to childish quips and badly researched proclamations.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Sheen Challenges 9/11 Truth Debunkers To Larry King Live Debate 270809banner

A familiar theme arising out of such hit pieces is an effort to imply that Sheen’s questioning of the official 9/11 story is somehow an “outrage” and hurtful to the family members of the victims, despite the fact that the majority of victims’ family members share the same questions.

Furthermore, claiming that people who doubt the government story are on a par with holocaust deniers completely ignores the fact that six of the ten 9/11 Commission members, along with scores of other highly credible former and current government officials, intelligence professionals, military officials, scientists, structural engineers and architects, and legal scholars have all publicly questioned the official version of events behind September 11.

Fox News talking heads Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, as well as popular radio host Rush Limbaugh, have also attempted to attack Sheen’s credibility while failing to discuss any of the subjects he actually raised.

In response, Sheen told The Alex Jones Show that he is challenging any one or all of McCain, Hannity, Limbaugh or O’Reilly to a debate about 9/11 on CNN’s Larry King Live or any other television show in Los Angeles, adding that the show must be broadcast live to prevent bias editing.

Should the debate go ahead, Sheen will be accompanied by Bob Mcilvaine, a 9/11 families representative who lost his son Robert in the attacks. Sheen suggested that his adversary in the debate be accompanied by representatives from Popular Mechanics, who have routinely sought to debunk questions surrounding 9/11.

“Let’s do it,” Sheen told the Alex Jones Show Friday, “I issue the challenge to debate Meghan McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, bring them all, Bob Mcilvaine and I will join you on Larry King Live and you guys bring whatever you’ve got….and we’ll show up with the truth and we’ll just see how it goes – we’re not hiding,” added Sheen.

Watch the clip of Sheen making the challenge on today’s Alex Jones Show below.

Watch the clip from The View below. Turn your volume up for this one as the sound is very low.