The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, currently serving a life sentence in Greenock Prison.

The evidence will form a crucial part of Megrahi's attempt to have a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). The claims pose a potentially devastating threat to the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system.

The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses "wrote the script" to incriminate Libya.

Last night, George Esson, who was Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway when Megrahi was indicted for mass murder, confirmed he was aware of the development.

But Esson, who retired in 1994, questioned the officer's motives. He said: "Any police officer who believed they had knowledge of any element of fabrication in any criminal case would have a duty to act on that. Failure to do so would call into question their integrity, and I can't help but question their motive for raising the matter now."

Other important questions remain unanswered, such as how the officer learned of the alleged conspiracy and whether he was directly involved in the inquiry. But sources close to Megrahi's legal team believe they may have finally discovered the evidence that could demolish the case against him.

An insider told Scotland on Sunday that the retired officer approached them after Megrahi's appeal - before a bench of five Scottish judges - was dismissed in 2002.

The insider said: "He said he believed he had crucial information. A meeting was set up and he gave a statement that supported the long-standing rumours that the key piece of evidence, a fragment of circuit board from a timing device that implicated Libya, had been planted by US agents.

"Asked why he had not come forward before, he admitted he'd been wary of breaking ranks, afraid of being vilified.

"He also said that at the time he became aware of the matter, no one really believed there would ever be a trial. When it did come about, he believed both accused would be acquitted. When Megrahi was convicted, he told himself he'd be cleared at appeal."

The source added: "When that also failed, he explained he felt he had to come forward.

"He has confirmed that parts of the case were fabricated and that evidence was planted. At first he requested anonymity, but has backed down and will be identified if and when the case returns to the appeal court."

The vital evidence that linked the bombing of Pan Am 103 to Megrahi was a tiny fragment of circuit board which investigators found in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity.

The fragment was later identified by the FBI's Thomas Thurman as being part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives, and manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo, which supplied it only to Libya and the East German Stasi.

At one time, Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was such a regular visitor to Mebo that he had his own office in the firm's headquarters.

The fragment of circuit board therefore enabled Libya - and Megrahi - to be placed at the heart of the investigation. However, Thurman was later unmasked as a fraud who had given false evidence in American murder trials, and it emerged that he had little in the way of scientific qualifications.

Then, in 2003, a retired CIA officer gave a statement to Megrahi's lawyers in which he alleged evidence had been planted.

The decision of a former Scottish police chief to back this claim could add enormous weight to what has previously been dismissed as a wild conspiracy theo ry. It has long been rumoured the fragment was planted to implicate Libya for political reasons.

The first suspects in the case were the Syrian-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), a terror group backed by Iranian cash. But the first Gulf War altered diplomatic relations with Middle East nations, and Libya became the pariah state.

Following the trial, legal observers from around the world, including senior United Nations officials, expressed disquiet about the verdict and the conduct of the proceedings at Camp Zeist, Holland. Those doubts were first fuelled when internal documents emerged from the offices of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. Dated 1994, more than two years after the Libyans were identified to the world as the bombers, they still described the PFLP-GC as the Lockerbie bombers.

A source close to Megrahi's defence said: "Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC.

"The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made."

Dr Jim Swire, who has publicly expressed his belief in Megrahi's innocence, said it was quite right that all relevant information now be put to the SCCRC.

Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the atrocity, said last night: "I am aware that there have been doubts about how some of the evidence in the case came to be presented in court.

"It is in all our interests that areas of doubt are thoroughly examined."

A spokeswoman for the Crown Office said: "As this case is currently being examined by the SCCRC, it would be inappropriate to comment."

No one from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland was available to comment.

Crushing Congressional Dissent: The Fall of Hilliard, Barr and McKinney

by Wayne Madsen

Historians will one day write that the 107th Congress was the last to stand up to the constitutional encroachment by the military and monarchist policies of the Bush II administration. Just as with the Roman Senate, the Congress of the United States is becoming an elite club of pathetic assenters and global elitists. Once the domain of great orators and dissenters like Cato and Cicero, the Roman Senate was eventually subsumed by the Roman Army when the Emperor took on dictatorial powers. The Roman Senate could say nothing as the Roman dictatorship annexed Macedonia, Spain, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa. By the time Emperors Tiberius and Septimius Severus took power, the Senate, which had grown to an elite club of 600, was a rubber stamp body that had no choice but to go along with the military's continued usurpation of power.

The United States Congress stands on the same precipice as its Roman ancestor. If Bush pulls another electoral coup in 2004 and we see the presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives, the future for the country appears very dim.

The August 20 defeat of two Georgia Representatives, one Democrat, the other Republican, is a bellwether event that bodes ill for this November's elections. Rep. Cynthia McKinney was successfully challenged by a Republican-turned-Democrat for her Fourth District seat. Before a cleverly contrived political operation was launched under the aegis of Georgia's other quasi-Republican, Senator Zell Miller, no one outside of Georgia had ever heard of former state judge Denise Majette, a self-described supporter of fringe lunatic GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes in 2000. Majette will join in Congress fellow Ivy Leaguer Artur Davis, who beat Alabama Democratic Representative Earl Hilliard in that state's primary because of the latter's outspoken support for a more even-handed Middle East policy. Hilliard and McKinney join a long list of politicians who were defeated after advocating an independent U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Senators Charles Percy, James Abourezk, James Abdnor, and J. William Fulbright, and Representatives Paul Findley and Paul McCloskey. The careers of Adlai Stevenson and William Scranton were similarly ended after they supported a Middle East policy less tied to the interests of Israel. Only Michigan's veteran Representative John Dingell was able to stave off a recent assault from the powerful American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) in a match off with fellow Representative Lynn Rivers in a redrawn congressional district.

However, Dingell's National Rifle Association ally, Georgia Representative Bob Barr, was not as fortunate. Barr was also a target of Miller's political operation. An opponent of the more draconian elements in Bush's and John Ashcroft's USA-PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Department bill, Barr was a target of opportunity for the extreme right that favors turning the United States into a version of East Germany or North Korea. Moreover, Barr's chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law gave him real gavel power to block Bush and Ashcroft on critical civil liberties and privacy infringements, a power Barr has not hesitated to wield. And after supporting Steve Forbes in the 2000 GOP primary, Barr did not fit into Bush's binary and simplistic world: "If you're not with me, you're against me." Therefore, Miller, who, according to a former aide, is targeting fellow Senator Max Cleland and Georgia Governor Roy Barnes for defeat by conservative Republicans, figured out that if Barr supporters in Gwinnett County, which straddles McKinney's Fourth District and Barr's Seventh District, could be coaxed into crossing over party lines and voting for Majette, it would kill two birds with one stone. Barr would lose votes to his opponent John Linder and McKinney would get trounced by Majette in a low turnout (25 per cent) election with a high GOP crossover vote. The gambit paid off. McKinney and Barr were both defeated handily, McKinney with the help of 25,000 crossover votes. Of course, the fact that people not authorized to vote in the Fourth District may have voted anyway would fall into the category of election fraud. But after the Florida debacle, the Ashcroft Justice Department sees such electoral machinations as a way to remain in power a la any totalitarian regime parading around before the world as a democracy.

That McKinney and Barr were on the same neo-conservative hit list was exemplified on August 21 by a second-tier conservative radio talk show host in Washington, DC. Speaking on WTNT-AM, Oral Roberts University graduate, Pat Buchanan political adviser, and Tom DeLay- style Republican talk show host Michael Graham said it was great news that two "kooks" had been beaten in Georgia. He then stated he was talking about "Cynthia McKinney and her photo negative twin, Bob Barr." The statement was clearly racist in nature and a not-so-veiled reference, through a warped attempt at humor, to Barr's long rumored African-American heritage. But for the extreme right that dominates the GOP, such incendiary ethnophobic comments are the rule and not the exception.

McKinney had incurred the wrath of the White House by her question about what George W. Bush knew in advance about the September 11 terrorist attacks. But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the Republicans and their major campaign contributors. While it true that McKinney has championed the cause of Palestinian statehood and self- determination, thus inviting the enmity of major Jewish organizations in the United States, it was her long-time opposition to the trade of blood diamonds and other strategic minerals in Africa that earned her a major challenge from multinational corporations, including Barrick Gold, on whose board President Bush's father serves as an international adviser. Among its other misdeeds, Barrick has been accused of helping to cover up the 1996 burying alive by one of its subsidiaries of over 50 Tanzanian gold miners in Bulyanhulu, in the northwest part of the country. Of course, when it comes to the lives and welfare of non-white people, the Bushes have never really held any soft spot, whether they are blacks in Africa or America's inner cities, Afghan or Iraqi children, or even a troubled half-Hispanic daughter/niece/granddaughter in Florida.

McKinney long advocated a halt in the pilferage of blood diamonds out of African war zones. She cited, on numerous occasions, the result of such commerce: the hacked off limbs, hands, and ears of small children in Sierra Leone; the permanent crippling from land mines of children in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and over 2.5 million deaths from civil wars in the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The diamond profiteers from this mayhem and death are largely the Hasidic diamond dealers of Antwerp, Amsterdam, New York, and Tel Aviv. These dealers and their lobbyists often circled in and out of House hearing rooms and McKinney's office when issues relating to stemming the flow of ill-gotten African diamonds came up for discussion. These diamond merchants also have a powerful ally in long- time Democratic Party fundraiser and diamond cartel magnate Maurice Tempelsman.

The 108th Congress, lacking the consciousness of Cynthia McKinney and the skepticism of Bob Barr, will be a far more dangerous place. I have had the pleasure of working and knowing both of them over the years - fighting battles, in the case of McKinney, against U.S. human rights offenses in Africa and elsewhere and in the case of Barr, against rampant U.S. government surveillance of the private lives and activities of American citizens. The next Congress will be full of complacent African-American parlor servants like Majette and Davis, dangerous extreme rightists like former cockroach exterminator DeLay and former sportscaster J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, pitiful morons like Florida's former Secretary of State and chief election rigger Katherine Harris, Republican moles and sleepers like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, and Democratic spineless amoebas like Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. They will stand ready to back Bush's military campaigns into Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, or wherever Bush's economic interests are at stake. The country stands on the brink of disaster. But we cannot count on the future Congress to save us. Lacking a spine or any guts, it will surely help to bury us.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative journalist. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@a...

Alexander Cockburn Taking Down Cynthia McKinney

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen0822.html

World Bank Secret Documents Consumes Argentina
Alex Jones Interviews Reporter Greg Palast

Infowars.com

Monday, March 4, 2002

(Courtesy of A Great Listener)

AJ: This is earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell us what the economists have done?

GP: Well, I'll tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with Guardian, basically spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me but I got some other sources. He would not give me inside documents but other people handed me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

AJ: So to insulate himself, somebody else did it.

GP: No, I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it but I really did get from completely independent sources a big stack of documents.

AJ: Just like you got W199I, from the same folks we got it from.

GP: And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.

AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott.

GP: Yea right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps, there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without borrowing some money and having some credit and ...

AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created.

GP: Yea, well, see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some...

AJ: Greg Palast dot com?

GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed.

AJ: Isn't it six now?

GP: Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system.

AJ: So they tax the people. They create big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer.

GP: That's right.

AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.

GP: So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron.

AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off.

GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988.

AJ: Unbelievable, Sir. Stay right there. We are talking to Greg Palast.

BREAK

AJ: We are talking to Greg Palast. He is an award-winning journalist, an American who has worked for the BBC, London Guardian, you name it, who has dropped just a massive bomb-shell on the Globalists and their criminal activity. There is no other word for it. You link through at inforwars.com, you can link to his web site - gregpalast.com, or any of the other great reports he has been putting out. He now has the secret documents. We have seen the activity of the IMF/World Bank for years. They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations - they then hand it over to them for nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is total slavery for the entire population. Of course, Enron, as we told you was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have had on. It's just incredibly massive and hard to believe. But it is actually happening. Greg Palast has now broken the story world-wide. He has actually interviewed the former top World Bank economist. Continuing Sir with all these points. I mean for the average person out there, in a nutshell, what is the system you are exposing?

GP: We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool. He told me, he went into countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these assets. And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars.

AJ: But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.

GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense.

AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune.

GP: Well the problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.

AJ: And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for this country.

GP: I've just been talking to, out in California just yesterday, from here in Paris, the chief investigators of Enron for the State of California. They are telling me some of the games these guys are playing. No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular.

AJ: Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks.

GP: Well yea, this stuff has really gone just like a three-card Monty game. I mean remember that there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back from now.

AJ: Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt and doing it over and over and over again.

GP: Yea, the system has gotten completely out of control and these guys knew exactly what was happening. Well, you have to understand that some of the guys who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after. In fact, here I'm in London right now and we have, the British has some responsibility here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord Wakeham. And this guy is a real piece of work, there isn't a conflict of interest that he hasn't been involved in.

AJ: And he is the head of NM Rothschild.

GP: There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty Boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. And in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants here in Britain. And they owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what this guy approved and then they gave him a job on the board. And on top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts.

AJ: Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.

GP: Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates me.

AJ: They are also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an 800-year old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans built that's on your property and they say we are putting a meter on it. You can't have your own water.

GP: Yea, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched here because like I say he actually regulates the media. So if you complain, he's got his hand on your pen.

AJ: Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. Go through these four points. I mean you've got the documents. The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people.

GP: Right. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills - we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your water. So then the prices go through the roof. Then open up your borders to trade - complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist, remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man and he was saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this.

AJ: Well look, China has a 40% tariff on us, we have a 2% on them. That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry to a country that the globalists fully control.

GP: Well, you know Walmart - I did a story, in fact, if you read my book. Let me just mention that I've got a book out, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" about how, unfortunately, America has been put up for sale. "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is coming out this week. But I have a story in there about how Walmart has 700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall.

AJ: Exactly, like 1984, then they have big flags saying "Buy American" and there's hardly anything --- it's Orwellian double-think.

GP: What's even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart. It's really....

AJ: And if an elitist needs a liver, they just call.

GP: (Laughs) I know, it's grim. In fact, I talked to a guy, Harry Wu, is his name and, in fact, he broke into, he's been in Chinese prison for 19 years. No one believed his horrible stories. He actually broke back into prison, took a camera with him and took pictures of the conditions and said this is the conditions of factories where Walmart is getting its stuff made at, it's all....

AJ: I was threatened to be thrown off TV here in Austin when I aired video of little girls 4-years old chained down, skinnier than Jews in concentration camps, to die. And I was threatened, if you ever air that again, you will be arrested.

GP: Well you know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately, I have been handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out and make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the documents. The documents really sealed it because it said this is what really happened. They really do say sign on the dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for each nation. And the public has no say; they don't know what the hell is happening to them. All they know....

AJ: Go back into privatization. Go through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians to hand everything over.

GP: Yea, he called it briberization, which is you sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he found was really creepy was that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer? And he was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the deal, well if we only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. And that's how it's done.

AJ: This is the ....

GP: I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and he said, yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush. He said, yea, November 1988, the guy called him up and said give a pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994. So, you know.....

AJ: So now they are having these white-wash hearings. You know I was at Enron yesterday in Houston because I'm now here in Austin. We were like 30-feet from the door, right on the sidewalk and I have it on video - goons came up and said you can't videotape. I said go ahead and have me arrested. I mean I'm talking on the sidewalk, Greg.

GP: Well, you know, I was there in May, telling people in Britain you've never heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured out how to (garbled) this government. In fact, we saw some interesting documents, a month before Bush took office, Bill Clinton, I think to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that worth for those guys. You know that has got to be worth, that paid off in a week all the donations.

AJ: Listen at the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing these ministers, former head of IMF/World Bank economist - all of this, you've got the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they start imploding?

GP: Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession that was created by these guys, you are really going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said we got to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy. We don't start cutting the budget, you start trying to save this economy. But they tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks - the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking. because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law.

AJ: But Greg, you said it yourself and the documents show it. They first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the entire climate that does this.

GP: Yea, and then they say, well gee, we can't lend you any money except at these loan-shark rates. We don't allow people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking.

AJ: Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that?

GP: Like I said, you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. And once you have destroyed an economy that can't produce anything, one of the terrible things is that they are forcing nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs - legal drugs. And by the way, that's how you end up with an illegal drug trade, what's there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack and that's how...

AJ: And the same CIA national security dictatorship has been caught shipping that in.

GP: You know, we are just helping our allies.

AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?

GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela.

AJ: And they install their own corporate government.

GP: What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies.

AJ: Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front, another shill, they would steal assets and then transfer it to other older global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds. Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear attack in the secret government, Washington Post -"Congress Not Advised of Shadow Government." We have the Speaker of the House not being told. This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it. We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are going to go all the way.

GP: I'm very sad about one thing. I report this story in the main stream press of Britian. I'm on the BBC despite Lord Wakeham. I know he doesn't like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main daily paper, which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever, and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry that we have to have an alternative press, an alternative radio network and everything else to get out the information that makes any sense. I mean this information should be available to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government.

###

At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight.

http://www.infowars.com

MEDIUM RARE

By Jim Rarey

April 23, 2002

HOMELAND HEALTH – AN UNHEALTHY ALLIANCE?

First it was Homeland Defense with a director appointed by the President to pull all of the government agencies together to protect the country against terrorism. Other than issuing occasional warnings of impending terrorist acts based on unknown sources, little has been done in the public view. For that matter, even the Congress is in the dark as the President refuses to let Homeland Defense Director Ridge talk to them

Now comes a new "cooperative" effort to provide protection against "bio-terrorism." But this one is quite different from Homeland Defense. It is a merging of government and the "private sector." Announced quietly without fanfare (the reader will soon understand why) the first notice was the appearance of new website on the Internet appropriately named Homeland Health.com. The website explains that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has joined with the pharmaceutical industry to develop defenses against biological threats.

Aside from the involvement of for profit companies in the effort, another major difference from Homeland Defense is that the man in charge is not a part of the government.

The nominal head of the industry’s effort comes through its trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). However, PhRMA’s president Alan F. Holmer announced that Dr.Michael Friedman would be the association’s Chief Medical Officer for Biomedical Preparedness and lead the initiative.

Friedman will interface with a number of government agencies including HHS, The Dept. of Defense, the FDA, NIH, and the CDC and, oh yes Homeland Security. Holmer did not say whether or not Friedman would be making use of the association’s lone consultant (as listed on its webpage) Arthur Anderson, LLP.

Friedman himself is a thirty-year veteran of government service in public health. He was a leader in the FDA and at one time its acting commissioner. Friedman was the FDA official that gave the Department of Defense the go ahead to use the anthrax vaccine in the Gulf war although the FDA had not found it to be safe or effective against inhalation anthrax.

But Friedman is no longer in government. He currently is a senior vice president of the pharmaceutical giant Pharmacia Corporation from which he will be drawing his paycheck (and bonuses and stock options?) Many, including this writer, would predict that the recommendations and agenda of Pharmacia might carry more weight with Friedman than those from the others. So what is Pharmacia and who runs it?

In April 2000 three well-known companies were combined to form the Pharmacia Corporation of today. Pharmacia and Upjohn Laboratories who had earlier combined acquired Montsano (chemical) Company. The combined companies have a pipeline of new drugs, a $2 billion Research and Development budget and leading sales force in the U.S. market. Additionally, with the acquisition of Montsano’s agriculture division, about 90% of the world’s genetically engineered foods will contain a Pharmacia (Montsano) gene.

The current Chairman of the Board and CEO of Pharmacia is a Pakistani named Fred Hassan. Hassan was President of Pharmacia-Upjohn at the time of the merger with Montsano and moved into his current position after Montsano’s CEO had served an interim 18 month period as head of the combined companies.

There are a couple of well-known names on the Pharmacia Board of Directors and one whose name has only recently come into the public consciousness.

William Ruckelshaus is a Harvard trained lawyer who came out of the Justice Department to become the first administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. He served another three-year term as EPA administrator during the Reagan administration. Ruckelshaus is currently a principal in the Madrona Investment Group

Michael (Mickey) Kantor is a close confidante of Bill Clinton and served in his administration first as the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Kantor took over as Commerce Secretary following the controversial death of Ron Brown. Kantor was one of the point men involved in blunting some of the Clinton personal scandals including the Kathleen Willey affair.

Dr. Philip Leder, although a virtual unknown outside of medical circles, has impressive credentials. He is Chairman of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). He was a contemporary of Dr. Don C. Wiley at Harvard. Wiley, who had made a breakthrough in genetic research, died in a mysterious plunge from a bridge in Memphis, Tennessee that was ruled an accidental death. Wiley also was funded as an investigator by HHMI.

Perhaps the most controversial member of Pharmacia’s board is Frank Carlucci. Carlucci is Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Carlyle Group, which describes itself as a "merchant bank." However its portfolio ranks it as one of the major defense contractors in the country.

The Carlyle Board of Directors reads like a class reunion of former cabinet members from past Republican administrations. However, Carlucci himself seemed equally at home under Democrat and Republican presidents during his checkered career in public service.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Carlucci was a foreign service officer ostensibly in the State Department although some alleged that was cover for his CIA activities. Indeed he served as Deputy Director of the CIA in the Carter administration. He served in foreign posts in the Congo and Brazil when Communist or pro-Communist governments were overthrown as well as ambassador to Portugal when that government fell.

Carlucci held several sub-cabinet level positions in the Nixon Administration. As Deputy Secretary of Defense under Caspar Weinberger in the Reagan administration he was responsible for development and procurement of new weapons. In that post he formed a number of associations that would prove to reap rewards for the Carlyle Group. He later was elevated to Secretary of Defense where he worked closely with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe. Crowe would become the "front man" in the takeover by the el Hibre family of the State of Michigan laboratory producing the only anthrax vaccine approved by the FDA.

Although Pharmacia will likely be first among equals in influencing PhRMA’s involvement in bioterrorism, there are plenty of other big shooters (don’t take that literally) in the association. Virtually all of the American and foreign pharmaceutical giants are members along with some smaller companies and subsidiaries of the giants.

Numbered among the sixty six members is Bayer, the German firm that returned to profitability through the surge in sales of its antibiotic Cipro following the mailed anthrax incidents last year.

Surprisingly, none of the companies involved in direct manufacture of anthrax and smallpox vaccines to be sold to the U.S. Government is a member of PhRMA. Currently Bioport in Michigan produces the only FDA approved anthrax vaccine. Acambis, supported by Baxter investments will be the supplier of a new smallpox vaccine. The FDA is said to have promised quick approval of Acambis’ vaccine shortcutting the normal approval cycle.

However, under the radar of the PhRMA umbrella there is a web of interlocking agreements, partnerships and alliances among members, for profit non-members, and tax-exempt foundations involved in bioweapon research and production. Ostensibly searching for defenses against biological attacks, the threats must be produced to measure the effectiveness of vaccines and antibiotics.

A common thread in the fabric of this web is the presence of two giant foundations; Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Billions of dollars have been funneled through these institutes to universities, private companies and individual researchers in the bio-genetic field of scientific effort. The money comes from government grants, contracts with various government agencies and from their own huge endowments. Both have extensive ties to the CIA and other government agencies involved in classified operations.

In a three part series (Anthrax, GOCO’s and Designer Germs) this writer detailed Battelle’s management, or co-management of four super-secret government installations, one of which (Dugway, Utah) stockpiles and has produced weaponized anthrax.

Researcher’s Leonard Horowitz and Patricia Doyle have catalogued the extensive involvement and control by HHMI of research on the human genome. At least six microbiologists in that field with ties to HHMI have been murdered or died mysterious deaths (five since 9/11/01).

One of the undercurrents in the development of the ability to change genes is the documented effort by scientists in several countries (including the U.S.) to turn the science into production of deadly designer diseases that attack only specific segments of the population.

According to an undercover FBI informant, American scientist Larry Ford (who had ties to the CIA) designed an agent for the South African bioweapon program that would affect only blacks. Ford later was considered a suspect in the attempted murder of his business partner and himself died from a shotgun blast that was ruled suicide.

One of the concerns of researchers, including this writer, is that such bioweapons may have been perfected and the spate of some fourteen or fifteen scientists’ deaths is merely a cleanup operation eliminating those who know too much or are potential whistle blowers.

A second concern is with the vaccines and other "defensive" agents being hastily contrived. Could any of them actually contain dangerous designer genes? As states adopt the model Emergency health legislation, combined with the 1996 interstate emergency assistance compact, procedures will be in place to compel vaccinations under threat of detention in a different state.

These (unconstitutional) "emergency" procedures only require the declaration of any emergency by states’ governors. In the case of a health emergency, only a perceived threat is necessary, not an actual outbreak. And who will announce the existence of a "threat?" Odds are it will be Homeland Health.

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please contact us at jimrarey@comcast.net .

Although not necessary, we would appreciate an indication of the city and/or state or country (If outside the USA) in which you are located to give us an idea as to where our articles are being received.

MEDIUM RARE

By Jim Rarey

June 30, 2002

MORE ANTHRAX SPIN FROM FBI AND NYT

A June 23rd article in the New York Times by reporters David Johnston and William J. Broad quotes (unidentified) investigators as saying the anthrax mailed to the office of Senator Leahy was no more than two years old. That determination was said to have been made using the radio carbon dating process.

William Broad seems to be the favorite of "investigators" (read FBI) as he has written numerous articles on the anthrax mystery laying out the current "thinking" of those investigators, even when they contradict earlier "leaks."

Another favorite of the FBI, although this time a critic, appears to be Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Program for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). Rosenberg seems to be privy to some inside information from the investigation but just enough to offer (justified) criticism of the investigation and to buttress the FBI’s pet theory. That theory, based on a "profile" issued by the FBI several months ago assumes the preparation of the weaponized anthrax as well as the mailings, are the work of one single individual. Rosenberg seems to have bought that scenario completely and thinks she knows the identity of that individual.

Evidently the carbon dating information was only fed to one source, the New York Times. The wide publicity given the information in other papers and on TV news is based on that Johnston/Broad article. There is no reason to question the authenticity of the carbon dating information. (It would be too easy to contradict.) Where the "spin" comes in is the conclusions to be drawn from that information. Here the "investigators" are clearly making an unwarranted "stretch."

The age of the anthrax specimens of no more than two years would rule out anyone who did not have access to the Ames strain developed at the army’s weapons program at Ft. Detrick in the last two years. However, the article points out that the "perpetrator" could prepare more anthrax given such recent knowledge and capability.

The rest of the article is devoted to lauding the intensity and scope of the FBI investigation. It cites over 5,000 interviews conducted and more than a thousand grand jury subpoenas served. According to investigators hundreds of polygraph (lie detector) tests have been administered including a three-hour session with William Patrick III.

The Patrick interrogation is curious in itself. Patrick is the inventor (or at least holds five secret patents) on the process that developed the unique anthrax spore concentration of one trillion per gram, the same concentration found in the mailed anthrax. He is the former chief of product development of bio-weapons at Ft. Detrick. Patrick also is a consultant to Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI); a CIA connected government contractor. (See this writer’s three-part series, "Anthrax, GOCO’s and Killer Germs" which covers BMI in depth including its involvement in managing or co-managing four secret government labs including the army’s Dugway, Utah facility where the anthrax is weaponized.)

Patrick is also a close friend and colleague of Ken Alibek. Alibek is the Americanized name of the former number two man in the Soviet Union’s bioweapon program. He "defected" to the U.S. in 1992. At the request of the CIA, Alibek was "debriefed" by Patrick and was subsequently welcomed with open arms into the U.S. intelligence community. Alibek is also a former employee of BMI.

On December 21, 2001 the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch newspaper reported that FBI Director Robert Meuller had assured Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio that no one with or formerly with Battelle is a suspect. BMI headquarters is in Columbus, Ohio.

A few short days after the Johnston/Broad article, the FBI narrowed its investigation to microbiologist Steven J. Hatfill. Through leaks to various news organizations, Hatfill’s involvement in research programs at Ft. Detrick appeared in numerous media. Camera crews were on hand to film the FBI hauling things away from Hatfill’s apartment near Ft. Detrick.

Stories revealed that Hatfill had been terminated from a research project at Ft. Detrick in August 2001. Hatfill says he was fired because of publicity about him being a possible suspect in the anthrax mailings. Other stories say his (top secret) security clearance either expired or was revoked for unknown reasons. (This, of course, would give a "revenge" motive, another part of the FBI "profile".)

Hatfill participated with William Patrick (said to be his mentor) in a 1999 study of the consequences of mailing anthrax. Some believe that study may have been the template for the anthrax mailings closely following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

However the study was flawed in two respects. It did not contemplate the use of the "new" one trillion-spore concentration whose diameter is smaller than the pores in the average envelope. Nor did it take into account the pressure exerted by mail sorting machines.

Barbara Rosenberg and others theorize that one scenario might be the mailings were intended to raise the public awareness of the need for biological and chemical warfare defensive measures and no deaths were expected. That it would also result in a huge increase in the demand for pharmaceuticals would not surprise industry officials involved in discussions of the subject in Washington.

Whether planned or not, the anthrax mailings have resulted in large government orders for pharmaceutical products and the passage of draconian laws by the Congress.

A puzzling Defense Department program in Nevada, whose only logical purpose was to buttress the FBI theory of lone individual "perpetrators" of chemical/biological "events" was disclosed in a New York Times article by Judith Miller just seven days before the 9/11 attacks and two weeks before the anthrax mailing to NBC.

Using the acronym BACHUS (Biotechnology Activity Characterization by Unconventional Signatures) the project had two ostensible purposes. Miller describes it:

"CAMP 12, NEVADA TEST SITE, Nevada -- In a nondescript mustard-colored building that was once a military recreation hall and barbershop, the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities.

Adjacent to the pool tables, the shuffleboard and the bar stands a gleaming stainless steel cylinder, the 50-liter (53-quart) fermenter in which germs can be cultivated.

The apparatus, which includes a latticework of pipes and other equipment, was made entirely with commercially available components bought from hardware stores and other suppliers for about $1 million -- a pittance for a weapon that could deliver death on such a large scale.

The factory was built by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to contain the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Officials said the project was intended to assess how hard it would be for a terrorist or rogue nation to assemble a germ factory. "

The second stated objective was to see if such a "homemade" lab would have an identifiable signature. The founder and first director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is Jay C. Davis. Among other things Davis is a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member, 30-year associate at the secret Lawrence Livermore weapons lab and a consultant to the CIA.

Davis made the astounding admission that the Pentagon had never revealed the existence of Project BACHUS to anyone at the Clinton White House nor to congressional intelligence committees. The program was started in 1997 under Defense Secretary William Cohen (CFR).

According to Miller’s article, the project never produced anything more than a couple of relatively harmless pesticides. However, this is a far cry from making a weaponized powder such as the mailed anthrax. That takes a lot more expertise and expensive equipment.

Miller says the Times requested information about the project and Davis got permission to bring her and an ABC camera crew out to the facility. There is no indication that ABC has done anything with the story that this writer can find.

If the intent of the Times article and the BACHUS program was to convince the public a lone individual could have been responsible for the mailed anthrax, they have earned "Maggie’s Drawers" (a military term for the flag waved when a shooter misses the target completely).

However a second program also begun in 1997 may be more relevant to the mailed anthrax mystery.

According to the BIOHAZARD NEWS publication, "a 1997 article in a scientific journal reported that Russian scientists had implanted into the anthrax microbe genes that cause food poisoning, producing a strain that was resistant to Russia's anthrax vaccine." (Could Alibek have planted the story?)

At any rate, U.S. authorities requested a sample from Russia with which to test the U.S. vaccine but were unsuccessful when Russia denied ever having produced such a strain. Thus was born the "Jefferson Project." The CIA was tasked with developing more deadly anthrax bacteria to use in testing U.S. vaccines. The CIA chose its often used contractor Battelle (BMI) to host the project.

Production was to be at Battelle’s state of the art facility for making aerosol products for commercial and military use. Some researchers believe this may be the facility at which William Patrick perfected the process that resulted in the one trillion-spore concentration rather than at the army’s Dugway, Utah facility, which is also controlled by Battelle. The aerosol facility is located in Jefferson, Ohio hence the name of the project. No results of the project have been announced.

Yet another CIA program, "Clear Vision" has no relevance toward solving the mailed anthrax question but has clear implications for future "events."

Again from BIOHAZARD NEWS, "In 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on the "Clear Vision" project, which focused on weapons systems that would deliver the germs.

First, CIA agents tried to find or buy a small Soviet-designed biological bomb, which releases germs in a fine mist. When the search failed the agency approved a plan to make a mock "bomblet", based on intelligence information, and study how efficiently such a weapon could disperse a load of microbes."

Once again BMI was chosen for the project. Two tests were completed on a prototype measuring dissemination characteristics and how the model performed under different atmospheric conditions. Does the term, much in the news of late, "dirty bomb" come to mind?

The CIA maintains, through spokesperson Bill Harlow, that the device does not violate the 1972 treaty on Chemical and Biological Weapons because, "it lacked a fuse and did not contain dangerous germs."

If FBI Director Mueller’s assurances to Senator DeWine are kept and no present or former BMI operatives will be pursued, and the CIA is obviously off limits to the FBI, there may be no resolution of the mailed anthrax case unless……unless a suspect can be found to fit the FBI "profile" or the perception can be created that some microbiologist is a "fit."

Perhaps the Hartford Courant newspaper’s headline on the FBI’s public "investigation" of Steven Hatfill sums it up best. It read, "The Case of Dr. Hatfill: Suspect Or Pawn"

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please contact us at jimrarey@comcast.net .

The Lie Won't Stand - Copyright Statement Included -- Please Distribute Widely----- Original Message ----- From: Michael C. Ruppert To: From The Wilderness Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 7:06 PM Subject: The Lie Won't Stand - Copyright Statement Included -- Please Distribute Widely

Please Distribute Widely...

THE LIE WON'T STAND

Bush Administration Explanations for Pre-9-11 Warnings Fail the Smell Test

Warnings Received From Heads of State, Allied Intelligence Services Specifically Warned of Suicide Attacks by Hijackers

Insider Trading Also Clearly Warned of Attacks

by Michael C. Ruppert

May 16, 2002, 19:00 PDT (FTW) -- Never in the history of scandals involving the United States government has an attempt to conceal criminal conduct by an administration been more transparently dishonest or more easily exposed. On May 15 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer -- while making the startling admission that President Bush received CIA and FBI intelligence briefings in August indicating Osama bin Laden might be planning hijackings -- told major news sources including CBS News, "All appropriate action was taken based on the threat information we had," Fleischer said. "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers."

In other statements Fleischer told the press, "The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9-11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile." According to a May 16 story by the New York Times, "Mr. Fleischer said the information given to the president in Texas [last August], had prompted the administration to put law enforcement agencies on alert."

Every major position taken by an administration in full retreat and on the defensive can be easily deconstructed and shown to be false.

For more than seven months FTW has been documenting specific warnings received by the U.S. government from both foreign intelligence services and, in one case, from Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicating commercial airliners were going to be used by terrorists to attack -- among other things -- the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. In order for Fleischer's statement to be credible he would have to assert then that George W. Bush either ignored or was not informed of a direct warning from a head of state and also from the German intelligence service, the BND.

As reported in the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14, the BND warned both the CIA and Israel in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.

No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ report indicates the information was received directly from BND sources.

According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.ie, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning U.S. intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the U.S. government for the story but refused to discuss additional details.

According to a story in Izvestia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.

In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Putin stated he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11. No credible information has emerged from any source indicating that Putin omitted the above information when issuing the warning.

Many other direct warnings were received by the U.S. government and have been documented in FTW's 9-11 timeline located at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html.

These stories give the immediate lie to Fleischer's statements that Bush had no inkling of airliners being used as weapons.

But there is more.

In 1996 -- as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6, and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7 -- Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called "Operation Bojinka." Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

FBI MEMOS TRIGGER WHITE HOUSE BACKSTEPPING

In "traditional" hijackings the hijackers have no need or desire to learn how to fly.

As reported by the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post (among others) the events leading to Fleischer's statements were the recent disclosure of FBI memoranda originated by field agents in Arizona and Minnesota that warned of a possible hijack attempt by bin Laden's followers. In both cases the suspects were taking flight lessons.

According to Newsweek and the New York Times, FBI agents in Phoenix submitted a classified memorandum in July naming Osama bin Laden and tracking the activities of possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects who had enrolled in local flight schools. The memo, according to the Times, stated bin Laden's followers "could use the schools to train for terror operations." The information in the Phoenix memo was not shared with FBI field agents in Minnesota who had uncovered other startling evidence.

Just days before the attacks in early-September, FBI agents in Minnesota wrote notes that subsequently became included in an internal FBI document warning that accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui "might be planning on flying something into the World Trade Center." A story from the May 20 issue of Newsweek by Michael Isikoff described how a local flight instructor had reported Moussaoui had "showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer [and not land] large airliners.The [FBI] agents were 'in a frenzy, absolutely convinced he was planning to so something with a plane.'"

A multitude of sources have reported the FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer but were denied by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. After the 9-11 attacks the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks.

This apparent lack of support from within the administration is consistent with reports released last fall by the BBC's Gregg Palast showing that in January 2001 the Bush Administration had issued direct orders to the FBI to curtail investigations of two of Osama bin Laden's relatives, Omar and Abdullah bin Laden. The two bin Ladens had been connected to possible terrorist activities and were living in Falls Church, Va., near CIA headquarters.

APPROPRIATE WARNINGS?

Fleischer's statement that adequate warnings had been given to appropriate federal agencies falls flat on its face. Two of the most "appropriate" agencies would have been the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard.

As documented by researchers like Jared Israel at www.tenc.net , it has been standard FAA procedure for more than 25 years to scramble U.S. fighters to intercept -- not shoot down -- any errant or non-responsive aircraft under FAA control. This protocol is even more stringent in the case of a hijacking. Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have stated publicly there were no fighters available in some cases, and there was no heightened state of alert on Sept. 11. For 50 minutes on 9-11, in direct contravention of established policy, no fighters were scrambled to intercept two outstanding hijacked airliners even though it was known attacks were in progress.

Given the above information, it would have been an obvious move to have placed fighter aircraft on a heightened state of alert in this time period. This unresponsiveness stands in contrast to the fact that, in October 1999 at a time when there was no heightened alert, the ill-fated Lear Jet occupied by golfer Payne Stewart had an F-16 fighter and an A-10 attack aircraft flying beside it within minutes of losing radio contact and veering off course.

INSIDER TRADING

FTW has spent months on this important story that proves foreknowledge of the attacks by people who also profited from them. This was a glaring warning signal, since such trades ran the risk of being detected by intelligence agencies that routinely monitor all market activity in real time.

The insider trading involves the placement of large numbers of "put" options on stocks of companies directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. They include United Air Lines, American Air Lines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, AXA Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance and Swiss Reinsurance. Put options are a leveraged bet that a stock's price will fall dramatically.

As CBS news noted on Sept. 26, the peak of trading activity occurred just before the attacks. There was a jump in United Air Line's put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It is uncontested that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying before the attacks. No other airlines were affected.

A May 13 story by the Washington Times' Insight Magazine attempted to explain the insider trading by stating higher numbers of put options had been placed on United and American stocks earlier in 2001. By relying only on the numbers of put options, Insight asserted that there was nothing unusual about the pre-9-11 trades.

However, FTW has contacted several experienced traders and reviewed existing documentation from financial experts, which indicate the alarm for insider trading is to look for any "imbalance" between the level of put options (a bet that a stock's price will fall) and the level of call options (a bet that a stock's price will rise). It is a significant imbalance in puts vs. calls that indicates criminal insider trading. The Insight piece did not address this point.

Several traders have stated that in a fairly flat market with high trading volumes, it has been a routine procedure for experienced traders to place roughly equal numbers of puts and calls on various stocks in order to generate a paper cash flow. They were quick to point out that by September, the market had gone into sharp decline and trading volumes were way down. Thus, lower numbers of put options did not mean that everything was normal. They stressed it was the imbalance in put-to-call ratios that signaled the insider trading. [Ed. Note: FTW has undertaken a more detailed investigation of this trading activity and hopes to have a more comprehensive report within 4-6 weeks].

Part of the problem in Insight's research stems from the fact that since Sept. 11, there has been no transparency from either the government or the financial sector on how the trades worked or how the markets tracked them. Secrecy is everywhere. Telephone calls have not been returned, and the government refuses to divulge any information about probes it admits are still ongoing. But simplistic dismissals from sources quoted in the Insight story contradict not only other evidence, but statements made by financial experts and major news sources just after the attacks.

"This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you've ever seen in your entire life.This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence," said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed Sept. 20 on Good Morning Texas.

"'I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,' said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle," reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19.

To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market."

Assertions that the reported number of puts involved were not abnormal also failed to analyze highly intricate shell games that involve the movement of put options to markets outside the U.S. or hidden in what traders refer to as "net positions." Serious financial experts have indicated the profits from insider trading could have been in the billions. Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German parliament responsible for oversight of Germany's intelligence services, estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.

A hasty conclusion reached by many is the insider trades were placed by bin Laden and his associates. Such a notion is flatly contradicted by the now absolute certainty that such insider trades would have -- and apparently did -- set off alarm bells. It makes little sense to argue bin Laden et al would have risked compromising at the last minute an operation planned in total secrecy for at least four years.

Also lacking credibility is the argument that many of the trades were what some brokers described as inconsequential amounts valued at $1 million or $2 million. This does not address the possibility that U.S. intelligence officials decided in a few cases to make a quick profit from attacks they knew were going to succeed. As distasteful as it may seem, this explanation is far more credible than an assumption that bin Laden made the trades himself and risked the exposure of what the world has been led to believe was his life's "masterpiece."

For more information on 9-11 insider trading please visit www.copvcia.com .

The explanations offered by the Bush Administration over the last 48 hours will not withstand even the slightest scrutiny if a major press organization asks any question about the warnings received from credible foreign government sources and heads of state. Other questions must inevitably follow that will implode an oil dictatorship whose sins and crimes are exposed and just waiting for someone to pick them up and run with them.

From:

http://www.counterpunch.org/

May 21, 2002

Follow the Money Bush, 9/11 and Deep Threat by Fran Shor

"What did the President know and when did he know it?" This question, evocative of the Watergate investigation, is now being posed by politicians and pundits seeking to determine what information the Bush Administration had prior to the incidents of September 11, 2001. No amount of denial and back-peddling by the Bush Administration can cover up the fact that Bush had advance knowledge of possible terror attacks on US targets by the followers of Osama bid Laden. While it's clear that Bush was personally briefed on August 6, 2001 about the possibility of those attacks, it remains unclear about the nature and extent of precautions, if any, taken to prevent such attacks.

Nonetheless, there is a welter of material that points to the Bush Administration's obstruction and neglect of important leads to link bin Laden to operations in the United States. Moreover, in the months and weeks leading up to 9/11 there were warnings and signs that some members of the Administration and its national security apparatus were anticipating something horrendous. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush Administration mobilized the war machine and repressive legislation to promote policies that secured its economic and ideological agenda. Thus, a more intriguing and significant question is: in light of what the Bush Administration gained from the fall-out of 9/11, how was that gain embedded in the actions and inactions by the Bush Administration prior to 9/11? To ask the question about the reaping of political advantage from the tragedy of 9/11 need not assume that there was a conspiracy by the Bush Administration; merely that certain players acted out of their personal interests at the expense of the safety and security of the nation.

To piece together the various activities of these players in the Bush Administration one should recall another key component of Watergate--the famous advice of "Deep Throat," the Washington insider, to Bob Woodward, the investigative reporter from the Washington Post. When Woodward was having trouble connecting all the dots and players, "Deep Throat" intimated: "Follow the money!" The money trail links Bush's oil background, his family's connections to Saudi investments, the politics of pipelines in Central Asia, and the military-industrial complex. By detailing Bush's background and fast-forwarding to the decisions of the Administration in its pursuit of war in Afghanistan, a possible war in Iraq, and a permanent war agenda, a money trail will unfold that will transform Deep Throat's admonition into a Deep Threat alarm concerning the lives and liberties of citizens of the United States and the world.

The Bushes, bid Laden and Carlyle

The Bush family's involvement with oil is not only deeply rooted in Texas oil wells, but also in the Middle East. George W's first experience in business was in the creation of the Arbusto Oil Company which eventually merged into Harken Oil. In 1986 Bahrain came to the rescue of the failing company by accepting a drilling contract with Harken even though Harken had no real background with drilling. When George W. sold his holdings in Harken for $848,000 in June of 1990, he cashed in at a point right before the company took a nose-dive in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. Questions about whether George W. had been given a warning by his father concerning what may have been the entrapment of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait have never been fully settled.

On the other hand, conflicts of interest were definitely developed in the 1990's by father and son through their involvement with the Carlye Group, an investment group filled with Reagan-Bush cabinet members. In 1990 with former Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci, as the CEO of Carlyle, George W. was appointed to the board of a Carlyle investment, Cateair. After his defeat in the 1992 Presidential election, George H. W. and James Baker, became Carlyle advisors and investors. Especially useful were the Bush and Baker connections to the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia. Those connections helped to generate large investments in Carlyle from the Saudi elite including the bin Laden family, a family made wealthy by an extensive construction business.

Although in the aftermath of 9/11 the bin Laden 2 million dollar investment in Carlyle was withdrawn, prior to that time Goerge W's administration had put up road-blocks to the investigation of the bin Laden family. The lead investigator of Osama bid Laden's involvement in terror actions against the US, from the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to the African embassy bombings in 1998 to the assault on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, was John O'Neill, a Deputy Director of the FBI. O'Neill had repeatedly been denied access to questioning the bin Laden family, including a January 2001 directive from the White House to desist from investigating two of Osama's brothers who were residing in Falls Church, Virginia at the time. In the face of such continuing obstruction, O'Neill resigned in protest from the FBI claiming that the "main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." Ironically, O'Neill became the chief security person at the World Trade Center shortly before 9/11 where he, along with between 2-3,000 others, perished in the destruction of the WTC on that fateful and tragic day.

If /911 was a tragedy to thousands of Americans and their families, Bush and his father's Carlyle cronies hit the jackpot, especially with renewed contracts for Carlyle defense investments. In particular, Carlyle had invested heavily in United Defense, the primary manufacturer of the Crusader artillery system. Although the Crusader faced a skeptical Congress before 9/11, Carlucci and his lobbyists certainly managed to line-up his old college buddy, Donald Rumsfeld, behind promoting the outmoded Crusader. When Carlyle went public with United Defense stock offerings in the fall of 2001, Carlucci, Bush, Baker, and other investors in Carlyle made out like bandits. However, when a possible paper trial and conflict-of-interest against Rumsfeld surfaced recently, he announced his opposition to Crusader. Of course, millions had already been made and Rumsfeld had to cover his own backside in light of the calls for the resignation of the Secretary of the Army, a former Enron executive already awash in dubious conflicts-of-interest.

The Taliban and Pipeline Politics

However, if the Saudi and Carlyle connections to father and son Bush don't raise alarms, then the whole history of the Bush Administration's dealings with the Taliban should. The primary focus of these dealings was the renewal of a planned pipeline from the natural gas rich fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to other Asian markets. Behind this whole operation was the Unocal company. Among the advisors to Unocal was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American academic, who in addition to being an advisor to Unocal in the 1990's was also part of the foreign policy think-tanks that included Frank Carlucci. Khalilzad joined the Taliban's lobbyist, Laila Helms (a relative of former CIA director, Richard Helms) in direct talks between representatives of the Taliban and the Bush Administration right up through July of 2001. When the Taliban broke off the talks, refusing the pipeline offers, the Bush Administration made known it's efforts to strike back at the Taliban as early as August of 2001.

Ostensibly attacking the Taliban for it's refusal to hand over Osama bid Laden, the Bush Administration refused any alternatives to the military option. During the whole military operation, the Pentagon has tried to establish security points that reflect the route of the proposed pipeline. Moreover, Harmid Karzai, the hand-picked US leader of Afghanistan, was, at one time, also a consultant for Unocal. Along with Khalilzad, who now is the US representative to Afghanistan's interim government, plans for the pipeline seem closer to realization.

The CIA and Other Deep Pockets

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a number of news stories appeared concerning investments in "put" options in United and American Airlines. Put options are shares that are bets on falling market prices for specific stocks. In the week before September 11 put options in United and American Airlines went through a furious and unprecedented spasm of investment. In addition put options for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, two of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Center, also saw abnormal activity. Most of the investments in these put options originated in Germany through the Deutsche Bank. Deutshce Bank had earlier acquired Banker's Trust, a investment banking firm whose Vice Chairman in charge of "private client relations" in the late 1990's was A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In March of 2001, Krongard was appointed Executive Director of the CIA.

Certainly, the CIA has a history of laundering money and dealings with shady investment characters. What becomes particularly relevant in the lead-up to 9/11 is the August CIA briefing of Bush concerning the potential threat of attacks by bid Laden using hijacked planes on certain sites, such as the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and the fact that the CIA had bugging equipment on bid Laden messages and international banking operations. Although no one has apparently claimed the money from the put options, questions remain about Krongard and the CIA's involvement.

Warning Signals and Criminal Negligence

The CIA's briefing for Bush wasn't the only warning coming from intelligence agencies about the possible attack by hijacked planes on targets like the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Both German and Russian intelligence agencies picked up signals during the summer of 2001 about bin Laden plans. The FBI in its investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's activities documented his desire to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. When those FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer, the civil liberties-minded Attorney General, John Ashcroft, turned them down. On the other hand, Ashcroft was worried enough about the hijacking of commercial airplanes that starting on July 26, 2001 he stopped flying on commercial aircraft. Of course, neither Aschroft nor anyone else in the Bush Administration bothered to warn airport authorities to be on heightened alert and to tighten airport security in the face of such warning signals.

To suggest that the Bush Administration arranged the 9/11 tragedy is to resort to wildly speculative conspiracy theories. On the other hand, there is a substantive and documented record of neglect and obstruction to warrant a charge of criminal negligence by Bush and his national security state apparatus. It may be that part of that apparatus, especially elements within the FBI, are angered by how they and their reports were cavalierly treated by the White House. They and other congressional sources may be leaking the kind of information that was essential in bringing down President Nixon. Instead of waiting, however, for what appears as inevitable congressional investigations, we should be doing everything in our power to raise questions in public forums and the courts, if possible, about the criminal negligence of the Bush Administration. Before another pretext is created for another war for oil and the advancement of the military-industrial complex, this Administration needs to be confronted for the duplicitous and corrupt self-serving elite they are.

Fran Shor teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is an anti-war activist and member of the Michigan Coalition on Human Rights. He can be reached at: aa2439@wayne.edu

From:

http://www.counterpunch.org/

June 14, 2002

American Journal
The Terrorism of Everyday Life

by Alexander Cockburn

Gangbangers with dirty bombs! Now we're talking. The big news about the latest suspected terror bomber is not that he now calls himself Al Muhajir but that he was formerly Jose Padilla, born a Puerto Rican, raised in Chicago. Padilla became a son of militant Islam in the slammer, the same way thousands of other young denizens in our Gulag do.

In the normal order of business suspected gangbangers don't have much purchase on the Bill of Rights. Their rights of assembly, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, were curtailed long since. Padilla's current status could foreshadow a trend. Pending challenge in the courts, he's classed as an "enemy combatant", locked up in a navy brig in Charleston, S.C. with no rights at all.

Tuesday June 11, all the way from Moscow, Attorney General Ashcroft fostered the impression that that Padilla/Muhajir had been foiled pretty much in the act of planting radioactive material taped to TNT in the basement of the Sears Building, or the Commodities Exchange or the Field Museum or some kindred monument of Chicago. "U.S.: 'Dirty Bomb' Plot Foiled" exulted USA Today.

Wednesday brought us a modified climb-down. "Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened" muttered USA Today's main head. It turned out Muhajir had ten grand in cash and maybe big dreams but nothing in the way of radioactive dirt or even TNT. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the press "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk." He should know. Nameless administration officials dumped on Ashcroft for grandstanding.

But at least we're now sensitized to the "dirty bomb" menace. USA Today (which has the advantage of being a Friedman-free zone) ran an exciting graphic put together by the Federation of American Scientists displaying the long term effects of ten pounds of TNT wrapped around a "pea-size" piece of cesium 137 from a medical gauge being exploded at the National Gallery of Art.

Anyone standing within three blocks downwind from the Gallery would stand a one-in-a thousand chance of getting cancer, An easterly breeze would put the Capitol within this radius.

We should be worried about this? I'd say it comes pretty low on the list of Major Concerns. Now suppose Al Qaeda was to plan something really nasty like shipping spent nuclear fuels by rail from every quarter of the United States to a fissured mountain in Nevada not that far from one of America's prime tourist destinations?

That's the Bush plan of course. The House has voted Aye. It now awaits approval by the US Senate. You can check out your own proximity to the contemplated nuclear shipping routes by going to www.mapscience.org, put together by a public interest group.

Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Salt Lake City will become hubs for the nuclear fuel shipments. Take Illinois. 1,063 schools will be within one mile of rail, barge and highway routes proposed by the Department of Energy. The White House is 1.1 miles from Union Station, through which shipments are expected to pass on the journey to Yucca Mountain.

But the scheduled Yucca Mountain nuclear dump is part of terror-as-normalcy, part of our domestic furniture.

What a gift to the powers-that-be the War on Terror is turning out to be as a subject-changer. Right now, across the United States from New York state to Oregon and Washington the final cut-offs for people on welfare are looming up. The guillotine blade ratcheted into position by Clinton's welfare reform of 1996 is plummeting down.

Take Oregon. It has a terrible recession, the worst unemployment rate in the country and the largest deficit in the state's history. Back in 1979, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy, 39 per cent of poor Oregonians were getting public assistance. These days the percentage is below 10 per cent.

Does that mean that the previously destitute are now in regular jobs? No. It just means you have to be a lot poorer to get any sort of handout. It means the usual story: exhausted mothers scrabbling for petty cash, doing occasional starvation-wage work. Over the first 14 months of the current recession eight Oregon counties had their combined unemployment grow by 92 per cent. At the same time the number of welfare recipients went down by 16 per cent.

This is the Terrorism of Everyday Life, at the most elemental level, aimed at the weakest in our midst: no money for food, for shelter, for the kids, and a President who actually wants to stiffen the work requirements. Thus do we nourish the next generation of Enemy Combatants on the home front.

Dershowitz Says Baby Killing
Plan Legitimate But Flawed

Nathan Lewin, a bigtime attorney in Washington DC, often tipped for a federal judgeship and legal advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told Forward, as reported there on June 7, 2002, that the families of suicide bombers should be executed, arguing that such a policy would offer the necessary deterrent against suicide attacks. Lewin magnanimously stipulates that family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative.

According to the Forward's reporter, Alan Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, argued that Lewin's proposal represented a legitimate attempt to forge a policy for stopping terrorism.

Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual proposal, citing his policy of deferring to Jerusalem on Israeli security issues. Exhibiting his habitual moral refinement, Dershowitz also an advocate of judge-sanctioned torture here in the US --argued that the same level of deterrence could be achieved by leveling the villages of suicide bombers after the residents had been given a chance to evacuate.

Lewin argues that the biblical injunction to destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are "ordinarily unacceptable" in the face of a mortal threat.

Those who care to consult the first book of Samuel will find the Amalekite precedent vividly described. First the divine injunction: "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass"

King Saul hastens to obey. "And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt. And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs."

Even though the animals were scheduled for sacrifice to Him, God is furious at the breach of orders and prompts the prophet Samuel to berate Saul, which he duly does: "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry."

"Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Agag the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As the sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal."

Now that's what I call getting back to fundamentals!

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.counterpunch.org/

The Independent

London, Thursday, June 6, 2002

Colonel who called Bush 'a joke' suspended

By Andrew Gumbel

AN American Air Force colonel has been suspended and could be court-martialled because he wrote to a newspaper describing George Bush as "sleazy and contemptible" and accusing the administration of ignoring advance warnings on the 11 September attacks for political gain.

Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Butler was suspended from his job at a military language academy in Monterey, California, under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Article 88, which dates back to the War of Independence, prohibits disparaging remarks about the President or senior figures in the White House or Congress. It stipulates a maximum punishment of dismissal and one year in military detention. Colonel Butler, who has been in the air force for 24 years and served in the Gulf War, called the President a joke who had taken advantage of the war on terrorism to deflect attention from his questionable election and the poor state of the economy.

"Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America," he wrote in The Monterey County Herald. "He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama ... His presidency was going nowhere."

The letter did not appear to be the result of any inside knowledge, merely the officer's forthright opinions.

Colonel Butler was suspended three days after it was published. The guidelines state it does not matter whether the accusations against a President are just. The issue is whether an officer spoke inappropriately, and publicly.

Nobody has been prosecuted under Article 88 since the Vietnam War, when a junior officer was court-martialled for holding up a sign describing President Lyndon Johnson as an ignorant fascist at an anti-war rally in Texas. He was discharged and sentenced to two years of hard labour.

Officers are periodically disciplined, including two who were forced into early retirement during the Clinton era for describing the President as a gay-loving, womanising, lying, pot-smoking draft dodger.

Reproduced gratefully from David Irving's Action Report

War on terror: FBI ‘guilty of cover-up’ over anthrax suspect

NICK PETERS IN WASHINGTON

AMERICAN investigators know the identity of the killer who paralysed the US by sending anthrax in the post but will not arrest the culprit, according to leading US scientists.

For several months the Federal Bureau of Investigation has claimed it has few leads and little evidence about the group or individual who targeted politicians and media organisations.

Their failure to arrest a suspect has compounded other failures of the American security agencies to take action which could have prevented the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

This week, the FBI and John Ashcroft, the attorney general, were at the centre of controversy when they claimed that they had apprehended an American citizen intent on detonating a ‘‘dirty bomb’’, a conventional bomb which would contaminate a large area with radioactive material. Both were forced to admit that there was no evidence that Jose Padile had done little more than associate with suspected al-Qaeda agents in Pakistan.

Last week scientists at Fort Detrick, the US Army’s top secret biological warfare research centre at Fort Detrick, Maryland said the FBI had looked at ways in which anthrax could have been smuggled out of the complex.

At a time when the Bush administration is beefing up America’s Homeland Security defences any indication of progress by the FBI should be good news, but one prominent and well-respected biowarfare expert believes the FBI has not only known the identity of the terrorist for months but has conspired with other branches of the US government to keep it secret.

Dr Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the biological warfare division at the Federation of American Scientists, first accused the FBI of foot-dragging in February with a scathing investigation that included a portrait of the possible perpetrator so detailed that it could only match one person.

Rosenberg said she knows who that person is and so do a top-level clique of US government scientists, th

American Journal The Terrorism of Everyday Life

American Journal
The Terrorism of Everyday Life