“Anyone can benefit from insider information but not anyone can afford a supercomputer. They may both provide – with fair certainty – a market advantage but only one advantage will be prosecuted.”
– Anthony Wile, The Daily Bell
Category Archives: 9-11
The ISI And 9-11
Abid Ullah Jan, Pakistan Tribune, July 14, 2006
“With CIA backing and massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the ISI developed [since the early 1980s] into a parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government… The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers estimated at 150,000.6
The ISI actively collaborates with the CIA. It continues to perform the role of a ‘go-between’ in numerous intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA. The ISI had, and still has, access to considerable funding from the CIA. According to Selig Harrison, a leading American expert on South Asia with access to CIA officials, distribution of these funds has been left to the discretion of the ISI itself with whom “The CIA still has close links.” Harrison spoke to an audience of security experts in London at a conference on “Terrorism and regional security: Managing the challenges of Asia” in the last week of February, just before the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan. As a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1974 to 1996, he had been in close contact with the CIA.7
The ISI directly supported and financed a number of operations and organizations without realizing the seeds of destruction it was sowing for Pakistan. Mossad (the Israeli government’s intelligence agency) also became involved in these operations, in order to have access to the structure and operations of the ISI and Pakistan’s military. These are the lesser well-known facts.
The growing body of evidence suggests that the ISI was actively involved in part of Operation 9/11, where it was required to use its intelligence assets to frame Osama bin Laden for the planned 9/11 attacks. An elaborate operation was undertaken to develop evidence, linking Arabs to the 9/11 attacks, to pave the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. A transfer of funds to the lead hijacker on the orders of the ISI chief is just one piece of the bigger picture. The FBI had this information—they knew exactly who was transferring funds to whom. Less than two weeks later, Agence France Presse (AFP) confirmed the FBI’s findings. According to the AFP report, the money used to finance the 9/11 attacks had allegedly been “wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan, by Ahmad Umar Sheikh, at the instance of [ISI Chief] General Mahmood [Ahmad].”8 Dennis Lormel, director of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Unit, has confirmed that Saeed Sheikh transferred $100,000 to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, before the New York attacks.9 According to the AFP (quoting the intelligence source): “The evidence we have supplied to the U.S. is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism.”10
The questions remain: What did the U.S. government do with the information provided by the FBI and other sources with regard to the ISI’s involvement in 9/11? Why has there been no meaningful action and investigation? Why are U.S. officials not telling the truth? In a May 16, 2002 press conference on the role of General Mahmood Ahmad, a journalist asked Condoleezza Rice about her awareness of “the reports at the time that the ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups.” She was also asked why General Mahmood was in the United States, and about his meeting with Condoleezza Rice. She replied: “I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me.”11
Michel Chossudovsky concludes in his June 20, 2005 report, published by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) that the ISI and CIA have developed close relationships, and that Condoleezza Rice was covering up the ISI Chief’s involvement in 9/11″
An Open Letter To The 9-11 Commission
From: Ian Henshall and others
Hove BN3 7NQ
To Sir John Chilcot, The Iraq Inquiry,
35 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BG
Your ref Alastair Seaton, IE0054
27 September 2010
Dear Sir John Chilcot,
Thank you for your recent letter in which you state:
“Thank you for your further letter of 27 July, in which you urge the Committee to challenge the conclusion that the 911 bombings were perpetrated by Al Qaeda. The attribution of responsibility for the 9/11 bombings is out with the terms of reference for this Inquiry, except insofar as it impacts on the UK’s involvement in Iraq. We are nevertheless very grateful for the information and sources of further information provided in your letter and hope you will continue to follow the Inquiry’s progress on our website.”
We welcome your agreement that the attribution of responsibility for 9/11 is relevant insofar as it impacts the UK’s involvement in Iraq. Blair made clear that 9/11 was indeed a major factor in the invasion of Iraq while the official paper trail shows that the attribution of responsibility, which includes the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, is murkier than first appeared.
It is noteworthy that your terms of reference start in summer 2001 when, we now know, warnings of the 9/11 attacks were flooding into Washington.
1. BLAIR’S EVIDENCE AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISES
In case there can be any doubt as to the central role of the 9/11 attacks in the decision to invade Iraq, please recall that Blair made his “shoulder to shoulder” speech in the weeks after 9/11 and as we now know decided effectively to subordinate UK foreign policy to the Bush White House at that time. As he explained to you very clearly and repeatedly in his testimony, 9/11 was a major factor in the decision to invade Iraq because it changed the “calculus of risk”. This confirms what commentators across the political spectrum have been saying: that the invasion of Iraq was made politically possible by 9/11.
Assuming Al Qaeda carried out the attacks independently of any other organisation, an extremely important question remains: how were the attacks able to succeed and hence to change the “calculus of risk”?
2. DANGER OF PUBLIC DISSATISFACTION IF WASHINGTON’S EXPLANATION NOT EXAMINED
We accept it is not up to your Inquiry to determine what happened on 9/11, but we contend the public will not be satisfied unless you examine whether the explanation of the causes, offered to London by Washington, of this massive US defence failure was reliable. Given the anger that now exists in many quarters over the weapons of mass destruction allegations and the “dodgy dossiers” in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, we submit that the public will expect you to look into this with great concern and investigate whether the official 9/11 story is wrong, self-exculpatory, misleading, or simply not adequately substantiated. If Washington’s explanation is unreliable we contend your report should state that further investigation is needed.
3. MISLEADING MEDIA REPORTS AND OFFICIAL STATEMENTS
A review of the media reports at the time confirms that the initial 9/11 account was indeed seriously wrong and that this is the version on which Tony Blair seems to have based his decision making. Politicians and commentators said that Al Qaeda succeeded in this unprecedented, audacious and well-planned attack because they had immense resources and, in the words of Condoleeza Rice, that in the US government “nobody could imagine” that such an attack might occur. Blair made similar comments.
However we now know that the main features of the 9/11 attacks had all been built into various Pentagon war games in the months before 9/11, that Rice had ignored multiple warnings from top officials and foreign governments, and that the failure of the CIA to co-operate with FBI investigations into the presumed 9/11 hijackers was a major factor in the success of the attacks. The 9/11 Commission chair said at one point that the attacks “could and should” have been prevented. There is much further evidence to support this view. It may be noteworthy too that the CIA’s Inspector General later gave George Tenet, CIA director at the time, a severe reprimand over 9/11 on grounds that remain secret.
4. INADEQUACY OF INFORMATION SUPPLIED TO LONDON
If you agree with the consensus view now, that failings of the US authorities, glossed over at the time, were a significant factor in the success of the 9/11 attacks, and if London was trusting information supplied by Washington rather than carrying out their own checks, this has a major bearing on the UK decision to invade Iraq.
It would mean that the alternative policy to war was not properly evaluated. This would have been to avoid launching the invasions, deal with terrorism in the ways that had always been followed up to then, and deal with the causes of the intelligence failings at home.
5. WAS 9/11 ADEQUATELY INVESTIGATED PRIOR TO WAR?
We are not asking you to mount an entirely new investigation into the 9/11 attacks, but we hope you will agree that judgment by media acclamation and White House press release is not a sufficient basis to launch two wars. Therefore we submit that you should note in your final report that the 9/11 attacks have never been fully investigated by a well resourced and independent body prepared to consider a range of ideas on what the full story might be. Many people in the US, including many of the bereaved and members of the 9/11 Commission itself, emphasize the lack of a thorough investigation. The 9/11 Commission was starved of funds, given a very tight timescale and was refused access to key evidence. See note below for some more failings of the 9/11 Commission. The promised trial of alleged ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the only person ever indicted for a central role in the 9/11 attacks, seems to have been postponed indefinitely.
6. NEED FOR A NEW INVESTIGATION
A new 9/11 investigation, and particularly a sharing of the mountain of still secret evidence with the public, is all the more important in the light of the many details which still have not been satisfactorily explained. For instance there is so far no official explanation for the recent discovery by associate Professor Niels Harrit of uncombusted high energy artificial nanothermite particles in the dust at Ground Zero, which indicate the possibility that the collapse of the buildings was some sort of a controlled demolition which could explain the rapid and symmetrical downward collapse of the three (sic) multistorey WTC buildings. Official sources insist the collapses all happened spontaneously in a way unforeseen by any expert before the event, but independent experts have not been given access to the evidence or the computer models which government scientists rely on. Hundreds of architects, engineers and demolition experts have spoken out publicly calling for a new investigation.
Another reason for a further investigation is that the 9/11 Commission discovered the CIA had a top secret 80 strong Osama Bin Laden unit working on projects in the months before 9/11. This contrasts with the explanation proffered by many politicians and commentators that Washington had lost interest in Afghanistan. The CIA reportedly refused to talk to the 9/11 Commission about vast areas of what the OBL unit was up to.
Similarly no details have been given of the Pentagon’s anti-hijack exercise running, apparently by sheer coincidence, at the exact time of the 9/11 attacks and which we now know interfered with the response from air traffic control and the Pentagon. Even the flight manifests for the hijacked planes are still secret.
7. QUESTIONS THAT NEED TO BE ASKED
As well as the more general recommendations mentioned above concerning the preventabilty of the 9/11 attacks and the failure to investigate the whole affair in any depth, we submit that you should ask some specific questions to Tony Blair. Before he gave his almost unconditional support to the Bush White House, did he task MI6 or any other UK agency to make an independent assessment of the 9/11 attacks, of who was behind them, and of how they came to be carried out so successfully? Did anyone mention to him that the Oklahoma bomb was at first wrongly blamed by Washington on Islamic extremists? Did he and his advisors discuss the possibility the attacks were successful as a result of failings in the US? Did they inquire if 9/11 resulted, as now seems possible, from a CIA sting operation gone wrong?
8. WHAT WE CAN OFFER
Finally we submit that you should take adequate evidence from us and make appropriate recommendations in your report, not only because the decision to invade Iraq is at the heart of your inquiry but also out of respect for the rights of the bereaved and other victims of many nationalities in both the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please take public testimony from Paul Warburton on the general legal issues, Niels Harrit on the nanothermite at the World Trade Centre, and Ian Henshall for an overview on how the official 9/11 story has changed and whether it is reliable. Other experts could probably be made available including retired FBI and CIA officers.
Ian Henshall (co-ordinator Reinvestigate 911, author 911 The New Evidence)
Paul Warburton (barrister)
Niels Harrit (associate professor of Chemistry University of Copenhagen, nanotechnology specialist)
Noel Glynn (Convenor Quakers for Truth on Terrorism)
NOTE
The only official attempts to investigate 9/11 were the FBI probe that was ended prematurely and run by Bush appointee Michael Chertoff (later Homeland security chief in charge of the Hurricane Katrina disaster), and the 9/11 Commission. The latter was severely underfunded, short of time, and stuffed with Washington insiders. It never considered any scenario other than the official story. Its executive Director Phillip Zelikow was caught reporting regularly in secret to the White House, while Senator Max Cleland resigned angrily denouncing the process as a whitewash. Later the chief investigator John Farmer wrote that there was an agreement in the White House or the Pentagon to lie to investigators. The Commission failed to clarify the role of the CIA’s top secret Osama Bin Laden unit and its refusal to pass on important information to the FBI prior to the attacks. It failed to investigate the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings one of which was not struck by a plane and which we now know fell at free fall speed. For the chaos and manipulation of the 911 Commission by Zelikow and the Bush White House, see the book The Commission by Phil Shenon the New York Times specialist on the subject.
————————————————————————————————–
“9/11 THE NEW EVIDENCE”
pub Sept 2007 Constable (UK) ISBN 978-1-84529-514-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/11-New-Evidence-Ian-Henshall/dp/1845295145/
“9/11 Revealed: The New Evidence”
pub Oct 2007 Carroll & Graf (US) ISBN-10: 0786720417
http://www.amazon.com/9-11-Revealed-New-Evidence/dp/0786720417/
Ian Henshall is also proprietor of Coffee Plant ( www.coffee.uk.com)
and chair of INK, trade organisation for UK alternative print media (www.ink.uk.com)
Ian Henshall’s email is crisisnewsletter@pro-net.co.uk
Barry Zwicker: Noam Chomsky And The Left Gatekeepers
My Comment:
This piece was published on the web in October 2008 2007 and is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of “Towers of Deception,” Barry Zwicker, New Society Publishers, September 1, 2006. The left gatekeepers referenced in the piece include well-known and well-respected activists like Amy Goodman, Sonali Kolhatkar, David Basarmian, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky.
Pre 9-11 Put Options Records Destroyed by CBOE
From Bob Wenzel at EconomicPolicyJournal.com:
Explosive new information has broken with regard to destruction of pre-9-11 options trading records.
Just prior to 9-11, someone (or group of people) bought large amounts of put options on various airline stocks. Put options gain in value when a stock goes down. The airline stocks went down after 9-11. Continue reading
The Free Bees Sing “9-11’s A Lie”
9-11’s A Lie
(sung to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees from the soundtrack of the motion picture, “Saturday Night Live” )
Well you can tell by the way the buildings fell
There was something wrong, now its time to tell
Spread the word, its nothing new
You gotta educate yourself in “truth”
It’s not alright, it’s not okay
For you to look the other way
We can help you understand
The New York Times effect on man Continue reading
Left “Gate-Keeping” On Controversial Topics
“It should be noted that the MacArthur-funded Nation, for which Corn is a staff writer, has ties back to the CIA and its former director William Casey, and the Manhattan Institute, and Chief Editor Katrina vanden Heuval’s father was involved in “Operation Mockingbird”, a CIA project originating in the early days of the Cold War to buy influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and put reporters on the CIA payroll. Solomon is the Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington and is the ostensible head of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Working Assets group, and the Schumann…”
— Charles Shaw in “The Gate-Keepers of the So-Called Left”
Comment
I originally included the part on Michael Ruppert in the excerpt above. But I haven’t read a lot of Ruppert, and his take on a number of things about which I do know a bit (such as, the bail-out) is very different from mine, so I decided not to include the reference, in case I should seem to be endorsing him.
Of course, I do post pieces on this blog, with which I don’t always agree. But usually they’re about things I can make a judgment on. I can tell if what I’m posting is completely off the wall, possible, plausible, or convincing.
I haven’t mastered enough of the facts about 9-11 to make that kind of judgment. Ergo, no Ruppert.
But I certainly do resent the way discussions about 9-11 are censored, directed elsewhere, or regarded as disreputable or pointless. It’s one thing to decide you’re not the best person to discuss an issue. It’s another thing to stifle discussion from conformity, fear, or plain pig-headedness. Anyway, with or without Ruppert, the post was meant to bring up the issue of “gate-keeping” among progressive outlets.
(There’s no such thing among right-wing outlets? Discussion for another post..)
Force X And The Roads Leading To 9-11
The more I read, the more I feel that it’s a big mistake to skirt 9-11 research on the grounds that its a whole area to itself and distracts from ongoing issues (Madoff, the bail-out, etc).
Of course, I’ve never bought the notion of some people on the left that talking “conspiracy” discredits or calls into question a journalist. On the contrary.
First, to accept the evidence of conspiratorial politics is not to become a full-fledged “conspiracist.” It isn’t a step from 9-11 theory-making into believing in shape-shifting lizards.
(Although that’s what clever media manipulators would have you believe…and it’s what masses of readers are brainwashed into believing).
Second, anyone who fails to see that there’s rather clear evidence of the work of conspiratorial groups (what was Madoff’s scheme except a conspiracy?) is either brainwashed or part of government propaganda.
Today, reading and rereading the material surrounding 9-11, US drug trafficking, BCCI, money-laundering and the Nasdaq, I’m more than ever sure that it’s a mistake to skirt 9-11, as I’ve been doing so far.
Here’s what Peter Dale Scott, a leading researcher on things related, has to say:
“My personal suggestion to 9/11 researchers is that they focus on the connections of the meta-group’s firm Far West, Ltd. – in particular those which lead to Khashoggi, Berezovskii, Halliburton and Dick Cheney, and Diligence, Joe Allbaugh, and Neil Bush….”
And:
“Once the local power of drug armies was enough in itself to neutralize the imposition of state authority. But today there are increasing signs that those at the highest level of the drug traffic will plot with the leaders of major states to ensure, or even to stage, violence that serves the power of the state and the industry alike.
Thanks to extensive research in Russia, we now have initial evidence of a second and even more significant proposition: There exists on the global level a drug meta-group, able to manipulate the resources of the drug traffic for its own political and business ends, without being at risk for actual trafficking. These ends include the creation of designed violence to serve the purposes of cabals in political power – most conspicuously in the case of the Yeltsin “family” in the Kremlin, but allegedly, according to Russian sources, also for those currently in power in the United States.
One piece of evidence for this consists in a meeting which took place in July 1999 in southern France near Nice, at the villa in Beaulieu of Adnan Khashoggi, once called “the richest man in the world.” Those at the meeting included a member of the Yeltsin cabal in the Kremlin and four representatives from the meta-group, with passports from Venezuela, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Germany. Between them they allegedly enjoyed excellent relations with:
1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, the acknowledged mastermind of 9/11 and senior mentor to Osama bin Laden.
2) Soviet military intelligence.
3) the FARC, the Colombian revolutionary group that has become increasingly involved in the drug traffic.
4) the Kosovo Liberation Army, a similarly involved group.
5) (according to a well-informed Russian source) the CIA.
The third important proposition is that a meta-group of this scale does not just help government agencies make history. I hope to show that it, and its predecessors, are powerful enough to help make history themselves. However they do not do so overtly, but as a hidden Force X whose presence is not normally acknowledged in the polite discourse of academic political scientists. On the contrary, as we shall see, references to it are usually suppressed….”
More here in “The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9-11,” Lobster Magazine. 10/29/05