News Of Great Interest Page XVII
September 11, 2001
“Oh
Lucy! – You Gotta Lotta
‘Splainin To Do”
Yugoslavia And Afghanistan - How To Understand Media Spin By John Keller LewRockwell.com 11-3-1
The Top Five Lies About The 'War On Terrorism' 5-2-01
AMERICA'S PROBLEM / America's problem is ISRAEL and ZIONISM
Bush blocks public access to White House papers
The ties that bind: Barclays, a bin Laden relative, Carlyle and the BCCI boys
The
ex-presidents' club by Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger Wednesday October 31,
2001
The Guardian
MEDIUM RARE By Jim Rarey November 7, 2001 BREAKING BAD NEWS PIECEMEAL
MEDIUM RARE
By Jim Rarey
As Americans wait for another terrorist shoe to drop based on the recent (vague) warning by the FBI; talking head "experts" are assuring us that we needn’t fear nuclear weapons. While, they say, it is known that Osama bin Laden has made attempts to get nuclear materials, it is almost certain he has not been able to put a weapon together.
Are memories so short or our officials so timid that they are afraid to tell the truth. Almost two years ago to the day Representative Curt Weldon gave America a wake up call but we went back to sleep. The situation has not changed since then. But let the following article tell the story. It is a reissue of an article this writer published the day after Weldon made his speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.
October 29, 1999
KGB WEAPONS CACHES ACROSS U.S.
Are Suitcase Nukes Included?
On the floor of the House of Representatives last night, Representative Curt Weldon (Rep., Penn.) dropped a bombshell. He presented "chapter and verse" on underground caches of weapons and other implements of war the Soviet KGB secreted in underground storage locations across the United States and in western European Countries. The caches are still there today.
Weldon gave the names of several Russian sources for the information. Since this writer has not seen the names in print, no attempt will be made to use them in this article. The spelling would indubitably be wrong. However, the positions the sources held make their stories more than credible.
The main source of the information is a mountain of copies of documents spirited out of the Kremlin archives by a Russian defector, which were furnished to British intelligence in 1992. The documents spell out the general location of some of the caches in the U.S. but the information is not specific enough to lead to the actual locations. . However the defector was able to furnish specific locations of caches in Switzerland and Belgium.
Officials in those two countries found the underground sites (which, by the way, were booby trapped) and verified the storage of a range of weaponry, ammunition, and electronic communications equipment.
An open hearing was held in a House sub-committee about ten days ago at which several sources testified to the accuracy of the documents from the Kremlin archives. One was the highest ranked Russian defector to date, a former KGB station chief in London. Weldon stated his purpose in disclosing the information on the House floor was motivated by the fact that there had been no media coverage of that hearing.
Weldon expressed a concern that weapons hidden in the United States might include suitcase size nuclear devices in the one to ten kiloton ranges. (Ten kilotons is the size of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Several years ago, a story appeared in the media that Russia had "lost" a number of these nuclear devices and some speculated they might have been sold or transferred to "rogue" nations. Two years ago Yeltsin’s administration denied that such weapons even existed. A Pentagon spokesman, at the time, said the Defense Department has no reason to doubt that denial.
The Pennsylvania Congressman related private conversations he has had with a Soviet scientist, the former National Security advisor to Boris Yeltsin and a Russian general who is a former head of Yeltsin’s Defense Department. All three verified the existence of the "suitcase" bombs. The National Security Advisor admitted that he had been tasked (by Yeltsin) to locate the one hundred thirty two such devices known to exist and was only able to find forty -eight of them.
The former Defense Minister assured Weldon that Russia intended to destroy all of the "suitcase" weapons by the year 2000. The conversation took place over two years ago. The CIA told Weldon the U.S. Government has no idea whether or not that promise has been kept.
The Soviet scientist told Weldon that he understood that some of those nuclear devices were ticketed for delivery to the KGB for unknown use. That might account for the missing devices.
Representative Weldon said he has recently asked both the FBI and the Defense Department if they are aware of the KGB weapons caches. Both said they are aware of the information so far available but do not have the specific locations of the sites. Weldon asked the FBI and a reporter queried the Defense Department as to whether our government has asked the Russian government to furnish the specific locations. Both the FBI and Defense Department said no, Russia has not been asked to provide the specific locations of the sites.
Weldon (properly) considers it an outrage that the Clinton administration, which has provably known of the caches for at least three years, and probably for six or seven years, has not shown enough concern to even ask the Russians for the information. Particularly in view of the possibility that the caches might contain nuclear devices.
He opined that the reason might be they do not want to embarrass Russian officials who have worked closely with President Clinton and Vice-President Gore. (Wouldn’t it also embarrass Clinton and Gore?) This writer believes that is the most charitable construction that can be put on this obvious lack of concern for America’s national security.
Curt Weldon is no rabid "right wing extremist." While a hawk on national security matters, Weldon has been assessed by one conservative organization’s ratings at an overall fifty-eight percent on his voting record, which places him squarely in the "moderate" camp. One of the things this issue proves is that the "kept" media refuses to cover critical issues if they will reflect unfavorably on their leftist comrades in government, regardless of the source.
Weldon and Representative Jim Oberstar have sent a letter to Secretary of State Allbright demanding to know whether or not the specific site information has been requested of the Russian government, if so when and what was the response; and, if not, why not? Congressman Oberstar (Dem. of Minnesota) represents a district, which includes Brainerd, Minnesota, one of the "general" locations mentioned as an underground site of weapons and technology secreted during the cold war by the KGB.
The full text of the letter to Secretary Allbright, as well as Representative Weldon’s "Special Order" speech should be available (on the internet) in the House Journal for Thursday, October 28th. His speech was the last order of business just prior to adjournment for the day.
It is difficult to imagine that such extensive hiding of large quantities of weapons and other military technology could have been accomplished without the complicity of Americans, either inside or outside of the government. That may be the reason there appears to be such a reluctance to ask the obvious and critical question of the Russians.
We know, from sworn testimony of credible witnesses, that the KGB archives contain information on the specific location of these weapons caches. The archives might also contain the actual names of American collaborators. There is likely a "bipartisan" wish to prevent any such information from reaching the public.
Stay tuned.
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@provide.net.
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Yugoslavia And Afghanistan - How To Understand Media Spin
By John Keller LewRockwell.com 11-3-1
Propaganda has accompanied the majority of wars, as a precursor, during the war, and then as official history after the dust has settled and the conquerors (aka peacekeepers) move in. From Cato and Carthage down to Kuwaiti incubator babies, truth is indeed the first casualty. Arguably, the first defeat for the US military in the propaganda war was Vietnam. Being in the business of winning wars, the U.S. military concocted new ways to control the media, and has adapted new strategies for an increasingly connected world. The first test, and so far greatest victory for the New World Order spin- masters, was the Persian Gulf War. We saw the daily press briefing evolve into its current form as a carefully crafted propaganda session designed to give the media the good news about how well the war is going, and how the evil-doers are being punished. We saw the media assigned to specific press liaison officers, and trucked around from location to location under constant supervision. The press, as usual, ate it up.
The military employs multiple strategies (and a PR firm or two) to shape public perception of the news by controlling the information released to the media. Jared Israel wrote an excellent article describing how these techniques are used in print (and sometimes on TV). Words are chosen carefully based on the emotional response they elicit. Certain facts are referred to again and again, while others are completely ignored. Other "facts" are manufactured out of whole cloth, usually with the tag "unsubstantiated" attached to allow weasel room later. All events are scripted into a master storyline designed to paint the conflict as one of good against evil. The side of righteous America is pitted against the twisted Taliban, or Milosevic, or Iraq, or Noriega, etc.
Luckily (ha ha!), we have a very recent military engagement to compare to our current situation. The "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo gives us something to compare the selective use of images, interviews, and facts to understand how the military and the media shape opinion. Let me restate: the government and military use the media to shape your opinion, and they are very good at it. The current bombing of Afghanistan and the 1999 bombing of Kosovo have a common element that exposes the hypocrisy and selective reporting endemic to any war effort. In both situations, military activity caused a massive refugee crisis, but the way the refugees are portrayed is vastly different between the two wars.
Set aside whether the refugees were the result of ethnic cleansing or people fleeing a bombing zone. In Kosovo, close to two million refugees fled the province after the Nato bombing campaign started. The media broadcast the suffering of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the camps setup in neighboring Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro. Countless interviews, non-stop coverage of refugee columns, and an appeal to send food and money to help the innocents driven out by war were the common themes across all networks. Endless coverage of the refugees on TV made the war for "humanitarian intervention" seem like a noble goal. Americans were told that Slobodan Milosevic was carrying out his "final solution" on Kosovo Albanians. Never mind that the refugees started leaving Kosovo AFTER the bombs started falling.
During the bombing, the talking heads in the media chattered about how the evil Serbs had caused such misery. It was assumed that there was a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing. This was easy to do with CIA trained KLA fighters providing all the translation services, which invariably sounded like "They rounded us up and told us to leave. They took our papers." These reports were taken at face value. So, blame for the refugee crisis was placed squarely on the Serbs. There's plenty of evidence that the refugee crisis in Kosovo was the result of bombing, and scant little that it was an organized program. The Germans admitted as much when a top general came clean about how his spies faked "Operation Horseshoe". That and the fact that the body count on all sides has amounted to 3,200 instead of the 100,000 that James Rubin claimed. That's after the bombing, and includes military and civilian casualties on both sides. That's a forensics debate for another day, however. For this article, we can even assume (for the sake of all the Serb haters out there) that there was a program of ethnic cleansing.
Compare the non-stop coverage of the Kosovo refugee crisis to the coverage of Afghan refugees. It's estimated that over 80,000 refugees have made it into Pakistan since the bombing started. The Red Cross states that over 2 million refugees are inside Afghanistan, mostly headed for friendly Pakistan, but many have been turned away. Two million Afghan refugees already live in Pakistani refugee camps. Where are the camera crews in Pakistani refugee camps? I had to dig to turn up this Reuters photo. You won't find the same kind of non- stop film coverage of an even larger refugee crisis in Pakistan than the Kosovo refugees. Where is the non-stop CNNBCBSMSNBCABC coverage, complete with clucking tongue commentary on the cruelty of war? When the families of the dead are interviewed, or give accounts of being bombed in their sleep, the Pentagon instructed media flacks are quick to chime in with "those numbers of civilian casualties can't be independently verified," a phrase seldom heard in the Kosovo conflict.
Let's compare the government's handling of refugees in the Kosovo war with the current bombing of Afghanistan. When the refugees started leaving Kosovo, the U.S. government asked Macedonia, Montenegro, and (obviously) Albania to allow them across the border. In this war, the U.S. has aided a willing Pakistani regime in keeping the borders closed, and the refugees out. If too many refugees enter Pakistan, the U.S. will be unable to convince the world, and more importantly, the Pakistani government will be unable to convince their people, that this is a war of "targeted strikes against terrorists, and not a humanitarian catastrophe in the making. The war planners knew this and started dropping food packages early on. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the UNHCR agree that the food is more for public relations than relieving hunger. We are scattering water drops on a raging inferno of starvation, while blocking the fire trucks.
So, my question for the mass media is this. Where are the CNN camera crews, pressed in around the refugees? Where is Christiane Amanpore with her righteous indignation? Images are powerful things. Americans see people suffering on TV, and they don't like it. The military knows this. When it suited their purpose in Kosovo, they made sure to pack the airwaves with images of the displaced and hungry. "See. We're fighting to help save these people from oppression." When the story is obviously one of suffering CAUSED by our military, the story gets reported in print, if at all, and camera coverage is downplayed or outright spiked. No spin in the world can hide that fact that our military has caused a massive refugee crisis in Afghanistan. Will George W. Bush sit in the Hague kangaroo court with Slobodan Milosevic to answer charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing? Not very damn likely.
As I finish proofreading this article, CNN manages to illustrate my point perfectly by calling for more "balance" in reporting. Stop and think for a moment if you heard a call to limit the amount of coverage given to civilian casualties in the Kosovo war? Not for a second, because the Nato spin masters could pin it on the Hitler de Jour, Mr. Milosevic.
This war isn't going all that well. Americans are watching it while sitting in comfortable living rooms a few feet from the refrigerator. If they see enough images of Afghan refugees fleeing U.S. cluster bombs or digging for dead relatives in the remains of a hospital hit by a "Bunker Buster" bomb, they might realize that this war is not just. Don't be fooled by the media spin. Read for fact, verify facts, avoid the biased words, and draw your own conclusions.
Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/keller16.html
Reproduced From: LewRockwell.com
The Top Five Lies About The 'War On Terrorism'
http://www.oz.net/~vvawai/ain/top-five-lies.html
11-3-1
How many people do you know who claim to be skeptical, who pride themselves on their distrust for authority, who like to pretend that they're wise to the ways of the world -- and then, every time there's a war, they swallow the lies of the government with all the gullibility of a three-year-old child in the lap of a department store Santa Claus? Don't fall into that trap yourself! Learn to identify and refute official misinformation when you see it. Let's count down some of the common misconceptions about this war:
Lie #5: "We're not at war with the Afghan people -- look, we're bringing them food!"
Reality: Afghanistan is in the midst of a severe drought which threatens literally millions of people with starvation. Even before the threat of U.S. bombing, the World Food Program (WFP) said that nearly 6 million people were in need of immediate food assistance. When the threat of war caused massive movements of refugees and internally displaced people, the WFP raised that number to 7.5 million. UN agencies were keeping huge numbers of people alive, but the war danger -- as well as the U.S. demand that Pakistan seal its border with Afghanistan -- caused the WFP to suspend deliveries of wheat flour to the country. We have no idea how many people have already died as a result. Meanwhile, the U.S. dropped 37,000 individually-wrapped packages of food from the sky. You do the math. That's enough to feed about 37,000 people for one day, in a country where seven and a half million are in danger of starvation. Additionally, the spokesman for an international charity active in Afghanistan told the London Independent that "Random food drops are the worst possible way of delivering food aid. They cause more problems than they solve." Not the least of which is the fact that Afghanistan has the highest number of unexploded land mines in the world. There are already 10 or 15 mine incidents every day, and with people scrambling into mine-ridden areas to pick up random packages of food dropped from U.S. planes, that number is only going to go up.
Lie #4: "Oil? Who said anything about oil?"
Reality: The Caspian Sea region has potentially the world's largest oil reserves, likely making Central Asia the next Middle East. The problem is piping it out. Afghanistan occupies a strategic position between the Caspian and the markets of the Indian subcontinent and east Asia. It's prime territory for building pipelines, which is why the oil company Unocal -- as well as the U.S. government -- welcomed the Taliban's rise to power in 1996 as a promising source of "stability." That turned out to be a pipe dream (so to speak), but people like our Commander-in-Chief and the oil men around him have never given up on the tremendous profit possibilities that Central Asia offers. And if you don't think such considerations are crossing their minds at this time of crisis, may we suggest a refresher course in The Facts of Life?
Lie #3: "The U.S. is trying to liberate the people of Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny."
Reality: The U.S., Russia, and Iran have been aiding a rough coalition of armed groups called the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance's fighters are drawn mainly from ethnic minority groups in Afghanistan who have been persecuted by the Taliban. But their record is also a bloody one. Groups like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which have been fighting against fundamentalism and for democracy in Afghanistan for years, have publicly stated that the fundamentalist gangsters of the Northern Alliance are not an acceptable alternative to the fundamentalist gangsters of the Taliban. No wonder: Human Rights Watch implicates the Northern Alliance in "indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling, direct attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, persecution on the basis of religion or ethnicity, the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, and the use of antipersonnel landmines." By now everyone knows that Osama bin Laden was among the mujihadin recruited by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Meet the next generation.
Lie #2: "America is coming together."
Reality: Tens of thousands of people have been laid off in the airline industry alone. The government quickly responded to the airline industry crisis with a multi-billion-dollar bailout package for the companies in order to keep afloat the profits of shareholders and the salaries of CEOs, but when it came to aiding the thousands of workers laid off, Congressman Dick Armey said that that would be contrary to "the American spirit." Maybe it is. Maybe it's the "American spirit" to make common working people pay for a crisis and to bear the burdens of an expensive war. But it certainly doesn't have anything to do with "togetherness."
And the biggest lie of all . . .
Lie #1: "It's possible to win a 'war against terrorism.'"
Reality: Terrorism is a tactic, not a political or social force in and of itself. Anyone can use it, and the idea that you can wage a "war" against it is as dishonest as the idea behind the "War on Drugs." The use of food as a political weapon, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, and the arming of gangsterish groups of religious fanatics all count as "terrorism" by any reasonable definition of the word, and the United States has long employed all of them -- and more. This war is really about sordid material interests and power (see especially Lies numbers 2 and 4, above), and in defense of these interests the U.S. is prepared to shift the label "terrorist" as it sees fit, to apply to all manner of dissident political movements and not just marginal bands of fanatics like bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Conversely, it's willing to call its own terrorists "freedom fighters" (see Lie number 3 above). Maybe some of them will get transformed into "terrorists" again in a few years. It's a sick game and a charade, and the government is manipulating the very real grief and anger of the people of the United States after the September 11 atrocities to get us all to fall for it again. Don't believe them for a second. ___
Produced by the Anti-War Committee of Students in Solidarity at the University of Pittsburgh
By David Duke
America has a very big problem.
We have just experienced the shock of the most spectacular and deadly terror attack in modern history. In an almost surreal scene from a Hollywood movie, on September 11, 2001 hijacked passenger planes crashed directly into the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands of Americans were maimed and killed. The costs might even go over the one trillion dollar mark, and the event may even trigger worldwide economic depression.
These terrible acts of terrorism must be fought with every ounce of American resolve. And those who commit such heinous acts must be punished to the fullest severity of the law. No such acts must ever be permitted on American soil.
That being said, how then do we then protect ourselves from terror in the future?
Because of increased scientific knowledge around the world, the next terror could be far more deadly than what happened on September 11. The next horrific occurrence might not even entail an explosion of any kind, but the silent mass death of a biological or radiation attack.
The bad news is that no matter how many billions of dollars the government spends or how many bombs it drops, it is impossible to completely protect ourselves from these great dangers. In fact, the more bomb-dropping and devastation we do, the more likely a future terroristic response.
We have moved into an era in which even sheer military might is no protection. No longer can strong nations attack weak ones with impunity. The tiniest nation or political entity can easily revenge itself with mass terror. No nation is invulnerable, not even the strongest nation on earth.
Unless we understand the why of these terroristic acts, the motivation behind them, we can not prevent a repeat of such terrorism in the future. We Americans must ask ourselves why we now suffer such terror.
When a clock stops, we ask why.
Is it not plugged in? Is the battery dead? Is it broken? If so, why is it broken?
When you have a problem, if you don't ask why and get some good answers and act on them, it will persist. It may well even become a lot worse.
The American mass media has provided us in living color the gory details of this bloody attack on the American people. They have even told us who might be behind it, but the Zionist-dominated media so far have carefully avoided giving an understandable reason why the attack took place.
Calling the attackers "cowards" is, of course, untrue. The terrorists committed an indescribably horrible and ruthless act against the American people, but certainly they are not cowards. Kamikazes may be misguided, but sacrificing one's own life for a cause is not cowardice. And calling the perpetrators cowards or madmen doesn't answer the question of why these horrendous acts occurred, unless one thinks every coward and madman wants to blow up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Those descriptions prevent people from discovering the reasons why the event actually occurred. And, if we want to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future, it is absolutely vital that to understand "why."
Maybe a good first question to ask is why these "crazy," "cowardly," Arabs never attack Switzerland or Sweden? What could it be that those countries do or don't do that causes them to be ignored while we are targeted.
Let me be very, very blunt.
The ultimate cause of this terrorism stems directly from our involvement in and support of the criminal behavior of Israel.
TERROR IN RESPONSE TO TERROR
The Palestinians and many of their Arab allies have been the target of a half century of unrelenting Israeli terrorism.
In the late 1940s the Zionists took over Palestine and drove out 700,000 people from their homes through widespread acts of terrorism. Among those events was the sadistic massacre of 254 Palestinian mostly old men, women and children at Deir Yassin. It was an especially vicious, cold-blooded massacre characterized by Jews cutting apart the bellies of pregnant women. 1 After the bloodletting, the murderers then purposely publicized the event so as to make the people flee in panic from their homes and businesses from which they still haven't been allowed to return.
Former Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, a participant in this horrendous massacre, boasted of the importance of Deir Yassin in his book The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun. He wrote that there would not have been a State of Israel without the "victory" of Deir Yassin. "The Haganah carried out victorious attacks on other fronts... In a state of terror, the Arabs fled, crying, 'Deir Yassin. 2"
Nor did the massacres cease after the establishment of the Jewish State; they continued in times of both peace and war. Following are the names of some of them: Sharafat Massacre, Kibya Massacre, Kafr Qasem Massacre, Al-Sammou' Massacre, the Sabra And Shatila Massacre, Oyon Qara Massacre, Al-Aqsa Mosque Massacre, the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre, the Jabalia Massacre. 3
In a policy of ethnic cleansing, Israel continues to keep residents of Palestine who were born there and whose families lived there for countless generations, from returning home. At the same time, it gives generous incentives for genetic Jews who never lived in Palestine to immigrate from the far corners of the world.
The British also suffered greatly from Israeli terror, such as the horrendous bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Israeli terror has not stopped since. Israel has more prisoners per capita than any other nation of the world, more than Stalinist Russia, or Red China during its worst periods. It routinely tortures its Palestinian prisoners, and is in fact the only nation in the modern world that legally sanctions torture. In fact, a Jewish human rights group in Israel confirmed in a 60 page report that 85% of Palestinian detainees undergo torture while in custody. 4 Even a major New York Times article by the Jewish Joel Greenburg, stated matter-of-factly that Israel tortures 500 to 600 Palestinians every month. 5
Former Jewish Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the death of 500,000 Iraqi children from starvation due to UN sanctions, "acceptable."
Israel has targeted and assassinated thousands of Palestinian leaders, and this includes scholars, clerics, businessmen, philosophers and poets, anyone who inspires the Palestinian people to patriotism. These assassinations have occurred all over the world, even in the United States. In the process they have killed many thousands of women and children. They have even repeatedly bombed Palestinian refugee camps packed with women and children.
Not only did they establish their Israeli state over Palestinian land, (in 1948 Palestinians personally owned over 90 percent of it) the Jews took almost all of the Palestinian personal property: the land, farms, homes and businesses. After they drove out the Palestinian refugees and refused their return, they then passed an "abandoned property" law that confiscated Palestinian property and gave to the Jews. The law even has the chutzpah to forbid ever selling any of their stolen land to Palestinians. 6
In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon. During their invasion and 18 year occupation an estimated 40,000 civilians died. Israel relentlessly bombed and attacked cities and villages and also many hospitals and orphanages (as documented by the Norwegian Red Cross) and devastated the ancient and once beautiful city of Beirut.
The current Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, doesn't dare even step foot in Belgium or the Netherlands, fearing an indictment of the World Court for war crimes. Sharon is responsible for the murder of two thousand of refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon.
Israel shot down a Libyan passenger airliner over the Sinai Peninsula killing 111 people.
And it is has not just been the Palestinians who have suffered from Israeli terror.
ZIONIST TERROR AGAINST THE UNITED STATES
Americans have also suffered from Zionist terror. In fact, Israel has committed a number of acts of war against the United States.
Israel has a long record of terrorism against the United States going all the way back to 1954. In that year, the Israel government plotted to blow up American installations in Cairo and Alexandria and blame it on Egyptian nationals. By chance the plot failed and was uncovered. It was named the Lavon Affair after the man who supposedly set up the terrorism, Pinhas Lavon, the Israeli Defense Chief. He resigned in 1955 over the incident.
In 1967, Israel purposefully attacked with unmarked jet fighters and torpedo boats, the U.S.S. Liberty, an American Navy vessel of the Sinai Peninsula, even machine gunning the deployed life rafts of the ship. The attack killed 31 American servicemen and wounded over 170. 8 They sought to sink the ship, kill all the Americans and blame it on the Egyptians so they could have American support to conquer larger areas of the Arab world.
The attack on the Liberty was nothing short of a vicious act of war against the United States by Israel. In spite of the fact that U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and navy chief Admiral Moorer said that the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel was deliberate, the all-powerful Zionist Lobby prevented a formal Congressional investigation. If the Lobby can even cover up horrendous Israeli crimes against America, it's no wonder they can cover up Israel's endless crimes against the Palestinians. Yet, after the Liberty attack America didn't even reduce our billions of dollars of aid, in fact the story quickly vanished from the news after a few short days.
In 1986 Israel actually caused us to wrongly go to war and militarily attack another nation. The Mossad planted a transmitter in Tripoli, Libya and then broadcast terrorist messages in Libyan code indicating Libyan responsibility for killing two Americans in the bombing of the La Belle discothèque in Germany. 9 (It was later proven that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing) By use of this fraud, Israel induced the American bombing of Libya. American bombs wrecked havoc there. One of those killed was the infant daughter of the Libyan President. It is certainly a dastardly act of war against a nation to induce it into wrongly attacking another nation. Only a truly evil enemy of America would do such a thing.
Every Palestinian and Arab is aware that Israel's half century of terror could never have occurred without the active financial, military, and diplomatic support of the United States. They know that the Jewish Lobby has control of American Mideast Policy and the Zionists can get whatever they want from Congress on issues important to them.
It was American support of Israel's brutal invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s that led directly to the bombing of the U.S. Marine contingent, killing 300 American young men.
THE INVOLVEMENT OF AMERICA IN ISRAELI CRIMES
Arabs know that almost every bomb that kills their people comes from America, Every bullet, every tank, every fighter plane, is manufactured or paid for by American dollars. It is America's billions of dollars of support that have enabled the Jewish state to terrorize the Arab people for half a century.
Even though Israel invaded Lebanon and killed thousands of civilians, America never threatened to bomb Tel Aviv (as it did Iraq) if Israel refused to obey UN resolutions to withdraw. A comparison of America's reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to that of Israel's invasion of Lebanon is instructive.
America's one-sided policy foreign policy can be illustrated by the different treatment afforded Israel and Iraq. Iraq invaded Kuwait. Israel invaded Lebanon.
Perhaps 3000 Kuwait civilians died in the initial war with Iraq. 40,000 Lebanese died from the time of the invasion through the occupation.
Iraq disobeyed UN resolutions to leave Kuwait. Israel disobeyed UN resolutions to leave Lebanon. (for 18 years)
Iraq broke international conventions on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Yet Israel is a far greater offender, having one of the greatest stores of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the world
Iraq refused UN inspections. Israel has always refused UN inspection.
For these violations we bombed Iraq. In response to Israel's crimes, America just continued to send more billions of dollars.American foreign policy was and continues to be Israeli policy. Israel was not threatened with even a cutoff of U.S. aid as thousands of Lebanese civilians died from the Israeli actions. Iraq was once a friend of America with whom we bought oil and did much business. America actually supported Saddam Hussein and Iraq's war with Iran. Iraq did nothing against the United States, but it made the mistake of becoming a strong enemy of Israel. So the Jewish and the Jewish-controlled gentile bureaucrats, and Jewish-dominated media quickly made our former friend, Saddam Hussein, into our archenemy.
What is left of the USS Liberty after the Israeli military attacked it on June 8, 1967. Thirty four US soldiers lost their lives.
We dropped more explosives on Iraq in a few weeks than we had in the whole of the Second World War. We killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis including tens of thousands of civilians. Then we engaged in a blockade and embargo of Iraq that even the anti-Iraq United Nations says led to the deaths of at least 1,200,000 children and hundreds of thousands of elderly. Let those Americans who don't understand the why of this terrorism concentrate on this shocking fact. One million, two hundred thousand children have died as a direct result of our policy toward Iraq.
Some Americans reading my words will refuse to believe it, they will refuse to believe that America has purposely caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Here is the transcript of the interview of America's Jewish Secretary of State with Leslie Stahl of CBS on May 11, 1996: Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."And some Americans wonder why we are so hated.
The Jewish Lobby and the Jewish-dominated media are very careful not to let the American people fully understand the real reason for the Iraqi war or the true issues in the Palestinian question. They really don't want Americans to know why so many millions in the Arab world hate us and why the number grows larger every day.
They don't want us to know the real reasons why Americans are so hated -- because it is the Jewish bosses of American foreign policy who are the one's responsible for this growing hatred of America. Imagine the anger and feelings of despair that would drive men to sacrifice their own lives to get at us.
The Zionist bosses know that by America's supporting the criminal policies of Israel spawns hatred against America. They are certainly aware that bombing and going to war against nations solely for Israel's benefit creates dedicated and fanatical enemies against America, enemies who will seek revenge in American blood.
Of course, it is not in America's interest to go and kill people for Israel; but Jewish interests are always paramount. In actuality, they are fully aware that the brutal and stupid acts of terror that recently happened in New York and Washington only help the Zionist cause by engendering enormous American anger at Israeli enemies, and make Americans more easily manipulated to do the bidding of Israel.
Think about who really gained from this terror. Have the Palestinians benefited? This terrorist act destroyed all the progress the Palestinians have recently made with world opinion. It has blinded the world to Israeli terrorism. Israel is the only winner in this tragedy. They will now have a green light to do anything they want against the Palestinians. They can kill any of their foes whether they are violent or non-violent. They will get all the money they want from the American people, and no one will be thinking about their on-going suppression, murder and human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
No, the Zionists are the only benefactors of the horrendous day of terror on September 11, 2001. Ironic isn't it, that although Zionist criminal actions led to this terror, only the Zionists will benefit from it. Of course, the reason they benefit because the American mass media is completely in their hands 10 and it will never ask the proper questions of why these horrendous events are happening. Unfortunately, too few people will ever hear voices such as mine who dare to challenge the Zionist lies.
That's why we are in this mess, because a foreign power has become the most powerful lobby in the American government and controls the direction of the mass communication media in America.
Let me repeat that one more time. The primary reason we are suffering from terrorism in the United States today is because our government policy is completely subordinated to a foreign power: Israel and the efforts of worldwide Jewish Supremacism.
American Flags are flying everywhere in America in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That is good, for we need to be more patriotic. If we were more patriotic for the real interests of America rather than for Israel, we would not now suffer from terrorism.
And truly, what could be more patriotic than wanting our own country to be led by our own people in the service of America; not a foreign power or a powerful minority.
Yes, we must fight tooth and nail against any terrorists who attack our country. But, we must understand why this terror is occurring, and how it has been spawned. It has occurred because of long-standing treason against the United States and her people.
What has Zionism cost the American People?
The Jewish Lobby and media power has cost the United States about 6 billion dollars a year in foreign aid and weapons, almost one third of America's entire foreign aid budget during the last half century and as much money spent in America's drug war.
It has poisoned our relations with the oil-rich Mideast nations. In response to our policies, the Arabs came together and developed their "oil weapon" which has cost Americans at least ten at least ten trillion dollars in higher oil costs.
It has alienated the entire Arab world, leading to destruction or confiscation of billions of dollars of American property in those countries, kidnapping of American citizens, and generated enormous hatred for the American people.
How has Israel has paid us back for our support? They have continually spied on us on us (the Jonathan Pollard Case), sold our highest secrets (such as to the biggest nuclear threat to us currently in the world: the Communist Chinese) 11 and stolen our enriched uranium for their illegal nuclear weapons. 12
They have launched terrorist attacks against the United States such as the Lavon Affair and the Attack on the USS Liberty. Both these acts were nothing short of vicious acts of war against the United States. Providing false information for America to wrongly go to war against another country is also nothing less than an Israeli act of war against the United States. Yet, in response to these despicable actions against America, our Zionist controlled leaders did not even reduce our billions of dollars of financial and military aid to Israel. We give Israel about 6 billion dollars in aid each year, that is more than all the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and South America.
What is the latest cost of our subservience to the criminal actions of Zionism? The latest price we have paid is the horrendous acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001.
The powerful agents of Israel in American media and government are ultimately responsible for this terror against the United States just as surely as if they themselves had piloted those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
And now they cynically plan to use the terror that they themselves created inspired the cycle of violence against Israel's enemies. You can be sure that the Zionist powers plan to do far more than simply punish the perpetrators of these events. America will once again be used to strike against whoever Israel wants.
An indiscriminate or intemperate response from America would ultimately produce even more hatred against America, and bring more terroristic acts upon the heads of American people. The increasing cycle of hatred is exactly want the Zionists want, for their aim is that we will fight Israel's enemies for them, spilling our blood instead of theirs. They are only ones who truly benefit from America's pain. Rather than Israel, we will pay the ultimate price.
Fighting Terrorism with Terrorism
Many in the American media and government are screaming for mass destruction against America's newly perceived enemies. Recent opinion polls (CBS and CNN) show that 60 to 75 percent of the American people endorse warfare against suspected terrorists. They support these actions (and I quote the poll question precisely) "even if it causes the deaths of thousands of innocent people." It hurts my heart to think that a vast majority of the American people take exactly the same view toward innocent human life as did the terrorists of September 11.
So far, I have heard no one, not one of the great moral media pontificators, the President of the United States, our church leaders, or anyone else of prominence who is brave enough to point out this blatant moral hypocrisy.
So we are now going to fight terrorism. So what happens when America goes out and bombs the hell out of countries and indiscriminately kills "thousands of innocent people." Will we really end the threat of terrorism? America has done the same thing before. Let's take a look at how it has worked out for us.
As pointed out earlier, in 1986 the Israelis gave America false evidence against Libya and induced us to bomb the hell out of the country. We bombed a nation to "fight terrorism" for a crime it did not even commit. A year after our bombing, a few members of a radical group in Libya sought revenge and bombed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, causing one of the worst air disasters of all time, killing 270. We exact our revenge with B-1 bombers; they do it through suicide bombers.
There is no way to completely protect ourselves from those kinds of acts. Even one fanatic person, if he are willing to commit suicide, they can easily cause a plane to crash with a minimal amount of (non-detectible) explosives. We live in an era in which deadly biological agents of mass destruction can be made in anyone's basement. America must take heed; the next terroristic act can be committed by just one person and kill hundreds of thousands of people. The exercise of brute military force can no longer protect any nation.
Does anyone remember America's last "attack on terrorism?" Clinton promised to wage a "war on terrorism" by bombing Afghanistan and by bombing a pharmaceutical complex in the Sudan. These attacks were cynically launched by Clinton during critical days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. They failed to kill Bin Laden, but they caused the Taliban to vow bloody revenge against America for the death and destruction in his country. The events of September 11 may be a direct result of that "war on terrorism." Let me repeat, we send our B1 bombers and they send their suicide bombers. And now, unless cooler head prevail, we are ready to embark on another war on terrorism that may kill thousands of innocent people and escalate the cycle of violence.
HEAL THE WOUNDS AND PUT THE WELL BEING OF AMERICA FIRST
Unless we heal the wounds and give America a better course, every new missile and bomb we send will come back to us again. Every drop of blood we spill in foreign lands will result in more American blood lost here and abroad. America will sink more and more into uncertainty and fear.
After the events of September 11, a father who lost his daughter in the Lockerbie plane crash, John Mosey, wrote to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He pointed out that the 270 who died in the 1988 bombing were killed in reprisal for "aggressive" US policies in the Arab world. He went on to caution, "The utmost care must be taken that whatever path is eventually pursued is successful and does not harm innocent people, thus producing another batch of terrorists." 13
We must have cool heads now and break this cycle of violence.
Let us pray for the American victims of these events and for their suffering families. Let us go after the perpetrators of these dastardly acts with absolute precision.
But, even more importantly, let us understand why these events occurred and how we can heal the hatred against our nation.
Many traitors in our government have supported Zionism's criminal activities rather than the true interests of the American people. They have spawned the hatred that drove these terrible acts. Unless their power is broken Americans will be haunted by an increasing specter of terrorism.
Once we understand the reason why, then we will all agree on the sure way to prevent such terroristic acts in the future.
The solution to this huge problem is extremely obvious and it is very simple.
America must heed the farewell address of the Father of our Country and "avoid foreign entanglements."
Finally, we must always put America and the American People first.
FOOTNOTES
1. De Reynier, J. (1950). Chief Representative Of The International Committee Of The Red Cross In Jerusalem. (A Jerusalem Un Drapeau Flottait Sur La Ligne De Feu', Geneva. 2. Begin, M. (1964). The Revolt: The Story Of The Irgun. Tel-Aviv: Hadar Pub. p.162. 3. Erlich, G. (1992). Not Only Deir Yassin. Hebrew Daily Ha'ir. May 6. 4. Sami Sockol, Moshe Reinfeld (1998) May 20. the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz 5. Joel Greenberg (1993) Israel Rethinks Interrogation of Arabs Aug. 14 New York Times 6. Badi, J. (1960). Fundamental Laws Of The State Of Israel. New York. p.156. 7. Bar-Joseph, Uri (1995)Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States: The United States, Israel, and Britain. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 8. Ennes, J. (1979). Assault On The Liberty. New York: Random House. 9. Ostrovsky, Victor. (1995) The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda. New York: Harper 10. See the chapter on media control in my book, My Awakening. Also available online at Davidduke.com 11. Bill Gertz (1993) Washington Times and Michael R. Gordon, New York Times Oct.13 12. A & L Cockburn (1991) Dangerous Liaison 13. THE SUNDAY MAIL (2001) Sept. 16
“Oh
Lucy! – You Gotta
Lotta ‘Splainin To Do”
IF
CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN’T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE
THEY DOING?
Bin
Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked Away
by
Michael
C. Ruppert
[©
COPYRIGHT 2001, All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and
FTW,
In
1985 Oliver North – the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn’t
appear to have a hand in the current war - sent the Navy and commandos after
terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography “Under
Fire,” while describing terrorist Abu Abbas, North wrote, “I used to wonder:
how many dead Americans will it take before we do something?” One could look
at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have killed before
September 11 and ask the same question.
It
gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events both
before and after the September 11th suicide attacks, which have been
blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests
that there was criminal complicity on the part of the
One
wonders how these events could have been ignored by the major media or treated
as isolated incidents. Failing that, how could skilled news agencies avoid being
outraged, or at least even just a little suspicious?
- 1998
and 2000 - Former
President George H.W. Bush travels to
- May
2001 –
Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban
regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the
destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime.
[Source: The
- May,
2001 –
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and
former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director
George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader
General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence
connections and he is the recipient of the highest civil decoration awarded
by
- July,
2001 –
Three American officials: Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to
- Summer
2001 -
According to a Sept. 26 story in
- Summer
2001 (est.) –
Pakistani ISI Chief General Mahmud (see above) orders an aide to wire
transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was according to the FBI, the lead
terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Mahmud recently resigned after the
transfer was disclosed in
- June
2001 –
German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and
- Summer
2001 –
An Iranian man phones
- August
2001 –
The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in
- Summer 2001 – Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer.
- July
4-14, 2001 –
Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease at the American
hospital in
- August
2001 –
Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the
- August/September,
2001 – The Dow
Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to
the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.
- Sept.
3-10, 2001 – MS-NBC reports on
September 16 that a caller to a
- September
1-10, 2001 –
25,000 British troops and the largest British Armada since the Falkland
Islands War, part of Operation “Essential Harvest,” are pre-positioned
in
- September 6-7, 2001 – 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]
- September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT – above]
- September 6-11, 2001- No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, “Airline stocks may be poised to take off.”
- September
6-10, 2001 –
Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan
Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of
American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly
impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV,
No.7, October 18, 2001, http://www.copvcia.com/members/oct152001.html.
]
- It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden’s possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October 26, 2001, - http://www.copvcia.com/members/magic_carpet.html; FTW, Vol. IV, No.6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.copvcia.com/members/sept1801.html; FTW, Vol. 3, No 7, 9/30/00 - www.copvcia.com/stories/may_2001/052401_promis.html.
- September
11, 2001 – Gen
Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting
- September
11, 2001, For 35
minutes, from
- September
13, 2001 –
- September 15, 2001 – The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown unit of Deutschebank.
- September 29, 2001 – The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.
- October 10, 2001 – The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, is now back on the table “in view of recent geopolitical developments.”
- Mid
October, 2001 –
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop
has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak, and
vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a
massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for
“affected” industries and planned tax cuts for corporations.
Now,
let’s go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro – the one that has Osama
bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in
The
story says that, “Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden
received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he’s a
black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities
of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many
people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden’s room.
“Several
days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi
millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters
on July 15tth, the day after bin Laden’s departure for
“According
to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise
information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at
American interests in the world, including its own territory.”…
“Extremely
bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French
intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the
Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through
“On
further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put
together between the CIA and its “Islamic friends” over the years. The
meeting in
Even
though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin
Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1 contained quotes
from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On November 1, as reported
by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any
CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.
In
the most ironic twist of all, FTW has learned that Le Figaro is owned by the
Carlyle Group, the American defense contractor which employs George Bush Sr.,
and which had as investors – until they sold their stake on October 26 - the
bin Laden family.
Who
do you believe? In coming stories FTW will prove to you that this war, which
according to Dick Cheney, may not end in our lifetimes, has been in the works
for at least four years.
Mike
Ruppert
Reproduced gratefully from: www.copvcia.com
From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0%2C7369%2C586470%2C00.html
Bush blocks public access to White House papers
Sarah Left Friday November 2, 2001
The US president, George Bush, last night signed an executive order that allows either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and former president Bill Clinton. The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978 law that allowed journalists, historians and other interested parties to read presidential papers twelve years after the term of office finished.
The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the result of a lengthy legal battle over the papers of Watergate president Richard Nixon.
Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former president could veto the release of presidential papers.
The current president could not override a former president's veto, nor could a former president override the decision of sitting president.
Anyone seeking access to the papers could appeal the veto in court, but that would necessitate an expensive and potentially lengthy legal challenge.
The immediate provocation for last night's order is believed to be an outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald Reagan's papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in January.
The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain.
Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now working for Mr Bush.
They include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, the budget director, Mitch Daniels Jr, and the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card.
The White House defended the order as establishing a procedure for implementing the 1978 Act.
A White House official said: "History has shown that former presidents release virtually all of their documents and this executive order won't stand in the way of that."
However the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain secret in perpetuity.
Bruce Craig, the director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, called the order "blatantly unlawful top to bottom" and predicted a quick legal challenge.
"This is about confidential information - communication between a president and top people - that they would simply prefer not to be released to the public," he said.
Vanderbilt University historian Hugh Graham said the draft was a "real monster," and complained, "They [the administration] would reverse an act of Congress with an executive order."
According to a report in the Washington Post, a lawyer for Mr Clinton wrote to the White House objecting to the order.
The paper quotes an aide to Mr Clinton as saying, "A government's legitimacy is based on the trust of its people, and when decisions are made on behalf of the American people, citizens eventually have to be able to see the process of how those decisions came to be."
From:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Dowling110301/dowling110301.html
The ties that bind: Barclays, a bin Laden relative, Carlyle and the BCCI boys
By Kevin Dowling
November 3, 2001
Barclays plc is a "core investor" in a merchant bank set up by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law on Bergerac's beat—Guernsey in the Channel Islands.
Yemeni tycoon Khalid bin Mahfouz established the Middle East Capital Group (MECG) on the tax-haven island in 1996, only to be placed under house arrest in Saudi Arabia three years later.
In the wake of the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan that Mahfouz had channelled tens of millions into terrorist accounts in London and New York.
The maverick financier was no stranger to intrigue—he was the principal shareholder in BCCI ("the Bank of Criminals and Cocaine International")—when it perpetrated the biggest fraud in financial history.
Mahfouz had escaped unscathed in London and managed to plea-bargain his way out of civil and criminal liabilities amounting to more than $10 billion by agreeing to a $225 million settlement with prosecutors in New York.
But when a Saudi government audit found another $2 billion missing from the treasury of the world's largest private bank—the $21 billion National Commercial Bank (NCB), which Mahfouz owned—Khalid was forced to sell his shares and take early retirement.
U.S. intelligence services want to know how much of that missing money went to front groups secretly funneling money to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.
These are alleged to include:
The London-based Advice and Reformation Committee.
An Africa aid group called Blessed Relief, whose directors included Mr. Mahfouz's son;
A Kenya branch of Help Africa People, run by several men later convicted or indicted for the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania;
The International Islamic Relief Organization, linked to terrorist bomb plots in the Philippines and India;
The Kenya branch of war and famine relief group Mercy International, where key evidence used to convict the embassy bombers was found;
A host of other Islamic aid groups working from Afghanistan to Kosovo, some of which have already been named by U.S. President George W. Bush as terrorist fronts. Unable to travel abroad—the Irish Government said last month that the passport he bought from them for £20 million in 1994 has expired, and he won't be getting another—Khalid is living in luxury at a military hospital in the northern city of Taef, where he is allegedly undergoing treatment for a "drug problem."
The Saudis have allowed control of the NCB to pass to another family member, the current CEO Mohammed bin Mahfouz.
Two NCB directors, Sami M. Baarama and Omar Bajamal, represent the Mahfouz family interests on the Guernsey company's board.
Baarama was director of the NCB's International Division and its Investment Services Division when the money disappeared.
He now sits on the Saudi bank's Executive Management Committee and is advisor to Mohammed bin Mahfouz.
Baarama—his name is often spelled "Baarma" in English—is also chairman of Pakistan's Prime Commercial Bank, which Khalid bin Mahfouz owns, and a director of Lebanon's Credit Libanaise, which the family controls.
Intelligence sources state that he is a member of one of the $12.5 billion Carlyle Group's international advisory boards.
John Major, who was premier when BCCI's collapse rocked the City in 1991, is Carlyle's European chairman. Lord Geoffrey Howe, John Major's former Home Secretary and Deputy PM, sits on its European board.
Former members of the Reagan and Bush administrations who have been publicly associated with key BCCI players—including ex-President George Bush himself—have built Carlyle into the world's biggest private equity company and one of America's largest defence contractors.
Baarama's alleged role as a fixer for Carlyle and the level of the Mahfouz family's investments in the US company. if any, cannot be independently verified as the privately-held company is not required to provide the information to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Carlyle closed down its web site on October 4, denying public access to what little information that contained.
This followed articles on 27 and 28 September in The Wall Street Journal reporting that the Saudi BinLadin Group (SBG) does have investments in Carlyle, and has been earning 40 per cent per annum from them since 1995.
Henry M. Sarkissian, an Executive Board Member of SBG, sits on the Middle East Capital Group's British offshore board alongside Baarama and Barclays appointee Elie Khouri.
So what have the Bin Ladin-Mafouz clan been up to on Jim Bergerac's beat?
US and British forensic accountants are likely to run into a brick wall if they try to find out.
William P. Simpson, a partner in Guernsey's oldest law company, Ozannes, is a director of the Middle East Capital Group.
Mr. Simpson is a shareholder in the Legis Group of Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands—he has also worked in the Cayman Islands—and has spent his professional lifetime concealing the affairs of the wealthy from the Bank of England, the Inland Revenue and international authorities.
A 400-page French parliamentary report published on Wednesday, 10 October, contains a blistering attack on the financial centres that have thrived off Britain's shores, including the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, and Gibraltar.
"It is high time that Europe got worried about sheltering in its midst these veritable machines that launder criminal money," it said.
Bin Laden's terrorist financial network bears a striking similarity to that of the collapsed BCCI bank, according to the report.
Khalid bin Mahfouz, with whom Barclays went into business five years after the Bank of England shut BCCI, is directly linked to Osama Bin Laden through banks, holding companies, foundations and charities, at least one of which, the International Development Foundation, has its headquarters in London, the parliamentarians say.
Their investigation is based on interviews with senior Metropolitan police officers, leading City regulators and European judges.
"Those responsible for combating financial crime are depressed and discouraged by an archaic and dysfunctional system," said the author, Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist MP.
"The British authorities must realise that they have fallen badly behind."
SBG's spindoctors have spent the past month trying to distance their companies from the world's Most Wanted Man by denouncing Osama and the murderous jihad he stands for.
In the light of recent events, their efforts seemed to be unravelling fast.
Swiss Federal investigators have subjected the terrorist's half-brother Yeslam to several gruelling interrogations over the past two weeks.
Yeslam, a frequent visitor to Britain, runs the Geneva-based Saudi Investment Company (SICO), an international holding company that manages SBG's affairs in Europe.
He was granted a Swiss passport in May despite unprecedented advice by the Government of the Canton of Geneva, which "after mature reflection and on the basis of troublesome matters which have never been denied by anyone," advised against giving him one.
A "first secretary at the American mission in Geneva" reportedly offered to help his successful appeal to the Canton's Grand Council against the local government's decision.
The controversy was reignited, however, when Le Monde reported on 26 September that one of Yeslam's companies, Avcon Business Jets SA, had offered training courses for pilots at the same Florida flying school which several of the 9–11 kamikazes attended.
In a rare public statement, the business head of the Bin Ladin family explained that he had only invested in business aviation "because I am passionately fond of flying, tennis, skiing and the cinema."
Jürg Brand, one of Yeslam's lawyers and business partners, says that Avcon "is on the point of being liquidated."
SICO, the Bin Ladin's European holding company, is also being put to sleep. Its capital has been reduced by 90 per cent.
"The reduction is simply due to the fact that SICO, which was a financial company, has become a services company," a company statement said.
What impact these seismic changes in the financial landscape will have on MECG and Barclays shareholders and customers is still unclear.
A French intelligence report unearthed by PBS's investigative programme Frontline and posted on the Internet indicates that Osama is not the first of the Bin Ladin brothers to engage in terrorism.
In 1979, Moslem Brotherhood fanatics stormed the Grand Mosque at Mecca, using SBG trucks to smuggle in weapons.
Hundreds of innocent pilgrims were killed in a ten-day battle for control of Islam's holiest site before French anti-terrorist troops put down the insurrection.
"One of the bin Laden sons, Mahrous, was actually arrested on account of his ties with the Islamists, but was later freed," says the after-battle report.
"He is currently manager of the group's Medina branch.
"The reason is as follows: after studies in England, where he had kept company with Fadli (son of the ex-sultan of the Abdin region in South Yemen, now leader of a Yemeni fundamentalist group and arrested in Aden last January), Mahrous struck up friendships with a group of Syrian Moslem Brothers in exile in Saudi Arabia.
"The episode demonstrated the strength of the ties between the royal family and the bin Laden Group.
"Had it been some other group, there is no doubt that Mahrous—whether accomplice or patsy—would have been thrown into prison and the group barred from further economic activity in the kingdom, the sentence serving as a warning to others. This was not the case."
http://www.observer.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1501,587388,00.html
Torture, treachery and spies - covert war in Afghanistan
America may be carpet-bombing Afghanistan. But the real battle for power is being waged with bundles of cash and more sinister means.
Jason Burke in Peshawar Sunday November 4, 2001 The Observer
The men were sitting in a circle with their weapons beside them. One, a balding 47-year-old, was the centre of attention. Hamed Karzai, an urbane American businessman and a leader of one of the key Pashtun tribes, was gathering the clans. He had entered Afghanistan nearly a month ago, travelling from the Pakistani border city of Quetta across the rocky mountains that line the frontier and, on remote tracks too rough even for a four-wheel-drive jeep, deep into the rugged hills of the central Oruzgan province. There, in the desperately poor ancestral homelands of his branch of the Pashtuns, he began trekking from village to village, rallying for the attack he planned to launch against the ruling Taliban to clear the way for a return for the exiled king.
But last Thursday it was the Taliban who attacked him. Halfway through a traditional jirga - the debate by which a consensus among tribal leaders is reached - the alarm went up in the village of Dehrawut. Fighters from the Islamic militia were entering the town.
Karzai and his men escaped after a fierce gun battle during which, according to American military officials, US jets acting on a pre-arranged plan fired missiles at their opponents. Karzai is now in hiding, working his way across the hills towards the safety of opposition-held territory or back to Pakistan. He last spoke to his family at 11.10pm on Friday night. They were optimistic that he would make it unscathed. But his plan failed.
It was the second time in as many weeks that such an operation had run into grave difficulties. Ten days ago Abdul Haq, another prominent Pashtun opposition leader, was killed by Taliban forces after his own attempt to foment revolt, sanctioned and supported by American intelligence agencies, met with disaster.
Haq's frantic calls to the CIA resulted in a single unmanned aircraft firing missiles that missed the attackers, and he was executed soon after being captured. Now, for the first time, the efforts of the Americans to collapse the Taliban from the inside have been laid bare.
While the B52s and the F14s have rumbled and howled through the clear skies over Kabul and Kandahar, a quieter conflict has been taking place, pitting the intelligence services of the US-led coalition against the those of the Taliban. It is being fought in the air-conditioned lounges of the luxury homes of the top Afghan commanders, in the panelled chancelleries of foreign ministries, in dark corners of filthy bazaars and in rooms with mud floors in timber-roofed Afghan huts. But, though there is no obvious battlefield, it is a war as fiercely fought as its more overt counterpart.
Though on the map Afghanistan divides nicely - in the north there is the opposition alliance, largely composed of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, across the rest of the country are the Taliban, largely drawn from the Pashtun tribes which predominate - the ground reality is far more complex. It is a shifting three dimensional jigsaw of tribal, religious, ethnic and political allegiances, both national and international.
But where conventional military planners see challenges, less conventional operatives see opportunities. The warriors in the secret war are the spies and specialists of a dozen nations, ranging from Turkey to India, all vying for some advantage in the new 'Great Game'.
It's not a new situation. Just over a century ago the region was the playing field for the first 'Great Game' - fought out between the Russians and the British Raj. Both tried to manipulate Afghanistan for their own advantage through secret agents, subsidies and, only in the last resort, military intervention. The aim was to secure a government in Afghanistan that was in their own strategic interests. Now, as giant American bombers continue to pound Afghanistan, the second great game has secretly kicked off on the ground - with exactly the same motives for those involved.
This time, however, there are dozens of players. And, like the Afghans themselves, they too form a complex and shifting helix of agendas, interests, alliances and enmities.
The biggest players are the Pakistanis. With their large Pashtun population and sense of strategic insecurity, they are determined to secure a government in Afghanistan that is to their liking. Partly this is for commercial reasons - to access the big untapped markets, and oil and gas reserves, of Central Asia. Partly it is because Pakistani military planners, fearing an attack from India, say that 'strategic depth' (ie somewhere to retreat to) is essential.
Islamabad's military intelligence services, the ISI, have unparalled connections in the southern, Taliban-held parts of Afghanistan and, as the ISI were instrumental in creating the hardline Islamic militia, they are also the only people with contacts at the heart of the Taliban's leadership and thus any putative breakaway faction.
Islamabad has also traditionally been close to Saudi Arabia. Both are Sunni Muslim countries who have always been keen to restrict the influence of Shia Muslim Iran. Without the assistance of the two states the Taliban would never have grown so swiftly. Iran, predictably, has backed the opposition to the Taliban, funnelling aid to the Persian-descended Shia Muslims in the west of Afghanistan. In recent months Tehran has also helped train and arm the forces of Ismail Khan, one of the most promininent opposition leaders, in camps around the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad. Uzbekistan has helped General Abdul Rashid Dostum, himself an Uzbek, with funds and weapons. They too are worried about Pakistani and Saudi influence. So is Tajikistan which has helped the Tajik forces who have been holding out against the Taliban in the north and east of Afghanistan.
Bigger players are based further afield, with Russia and China both concerned about the Taliban's potential for spreading Islamic extremism into their own territory. Turkey has a natural affinity with the Turkic-descended Uzbeks. They sent 90 military advisers to Afghanistan last week, who are to fight alongside Dostum. A secondary aim of the Turks, and the Uzbeks, is to counter the Persian and Iranian influence in the region. India, which has sent money and a military delegation to the Afghan opposition, just wants to make sure that Pakistan doesn't gain - whatever it takes.
'The idea of anybody committing sizeable quantities of ground troops is anathema. It's a road to diplomatic and military disaster. Instead they do it with secret supplies and spooks,' one Western diplomat in Islamabad said last week. The overall losers, of course, are the Afghans.
The Taliban's fearsome intelligence agency is known as the Istakhbarat. For the past three years it has been run by Qari Ahmedullah, the hardline former Interior Minister. He reports directly to Mullah Omar, the reclusive one-eyed cleric who leads the Taliban from the southern desert city of Kandahar.
The Istakhbarat uses the facilities, offices and often even the former personnel of Khad, the feared KGB-trained secret police set up by the Communists when they were in power.
Qari Ahmedullah has been ruthless in cracking down on potential discontent, imprisoning and executing hundreds of alleged conspirators over the last three years. According to refugees interviewed in Peshawar, the former Khad torture centres in the Shashdarak quarter in Kabul are full of sobbing, screaming victims. So is the infamous Pul-e-Sharki prison on the city's outskirts.
In recent days the Istakhbarat have arrested dozens of people in Jalalabad who, they claim, were working for the return of Zahir Shah, the exiled king. There have also been similar purges in Kabul - where the Istakhbarat foiled an attempt by opposition forces to smuggle hundreds of guns into the city - and in the eastern city of Khost where, before the US-led air strikes, local tribes looked to be wavering.
Tactics similar to those used against Haq were employed. The Taliban drew out potential dissidents with offers of discussions and compromise. Then they were rounded up, imprisoned and their houses were demolished. The Taliban are no strangers to such 'black operations'. Over the past three years a series of opposition leaders have been assassinated at their homes in Pakistan. Abdul Haq's own wife and son were killed in one such attack three years ago. Others, including Hamid Karzai's father, have been shot dead in the southern Pakistani city of Quetta.
One man, arrested in the city after a shoot-out, told local police the Taliban had offered him 250,000 rupees (£2,800) to kill one senior opposition military commander. Last week a hit-list containing the names of 106 enemies of the Taliban was found on the premises of a makeshift and illegal embassy closed down by the German authorities.
The Istakhbarat have been helped by Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect for the 11 September attacks, who is currently hiding in Afghanistan. He is believed to be behind the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Northern Alliance's military commander, on the eve of the New York and Washington strikes and, in recent weeks, has launched what security sources in Peshawar call a 'cash counter-offensive', handing out large sums to ensure the loyalty of key frontline commanders. The sources also say that money is still reaching bin Laden and his organisation from rich sympathisers in the Gulf despite attempts by the Saudi Arabian regime to clamp down on the flow of funds.
Money is critical to any war in Afghanistan. Though there are a range of factors determining the allegiance of any one warlord, the prospect of financial gain is often key. The CIA was running operations to foment revolt in Afghanistan long before 11 September. Sources in Peshawar have disclosed that, as early as April, CIA operatives in Pakistan were attempting to exploit tribal and political differences between various Taliban commanders in the north-eastern province of Kunar, the eastern province of Paktia and among the Murzai tribe around Kandahar. At the time American diplomats told their contacts that the operation was hampered by a lack of funds.
Following the attacks, however, efforts to tempt Taliban commanders into defecting have been redoubled. Dozens of satellite phones accompanied by packets containing $10,000 have been sent to carefully selected warlords and tribal chiefs within Afghanistan. Several have been turned over to the Taliban who have kept the phone, but returned the money as a reward.
Meanwhile, the CIA prepares for a next phase in its war on terrorism on the ground, and the issue of torture comes to the fore as a legal and political hot potato in Washington.
Behind the scenes, reports from Washington say that the agency is now short of agents who know how to torture or to extract information. The CIA was amply staffed with people who developed torture expertise during the 'dirty wars' in Central and South America, but these agents have gone into retirement.
Now the agency is trying to redevelop and retrain agents in rough interrogation techniques. Among them are the use of high-decibel music, and recordings of dying people and animals.
One intelligence source told The Observer that former agents are being drafted back to advise the CIA on how to conduct 'interrogations involving an element of physical pressure'.
The Americans are also waging war by radio. In addition to broadcasts over Afghanistan from converted C130 transport planes the frequencies used by Kandahar for its 'Radio Shariat' are being jammed. In their place messages condemning the Taliban and Bin Laden's Arab fighters are being sent out and traditional instrumental music - banned by the Taliban - is being broadcast. In response Taliban sympathisers in Pakistan have set up their own radio stations. Opposition commanders are still sceptical however. 'It'll take more than light entertainment in bad Pashto to unseat Mullah Omar,' said one Peshawar-based former Mujahideen leader last week.
Infiltration
The two men thought they had done everything right. Wearing local clothes they had taken a bus from Peshawar and headed west up the Khyber Pass. It was only as they pressed through the throng of refugees and soldiers towards the blue steel gates of the border with Afghanistan that things went wrong. Suddenly, in sight of the ragged Taliban guards across the barbed wire, they were surrounded by heavily armed Pakistani police and agents from the Pakistani military secret spy agency, the Interservice Intelligence or ISI. Ibrahim Ghazi al-Hamzi and Saleh al-Hajaili, two young Saudi Arabians on their way to join al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, were under arrest.
It was late October. Their mistake had been not to keep up with the rapidly shifting politics of Pakistan. A cursory glance at the local newspapers would have told them that they were not the first such volunteers to be seized. In a raid in Peshawar's quiet University Town neighbourhood, where Bin Laden himself was based during the war against the Russians, five Arabs had been arrested a few days earlier. In recent weeks, ISI sources claim, dozens of young Muslims heading from the Middle East to Afghanistan have been stopped and held by Pakistani authorities. One large group, which the ISI say have links to al-Qaeda, were stopped on their way into Afghanistan the eve of the 11 September attacks.
The arrests of men like al-Hamzi and al-Hajaili is a clear indication of the determination of President Pervez Musharraf's government to crack down on extremists. So far several senior firebrand clerics have been arrested, a number of Islamic organisations banned and demonstrations of dissent swiftly dealt with. Yet, though he has the support of the vast bulk of the army and most civilians, Musharraf cannot be entirely certain of the backing of one key organisation: the ISI.
'They are a state within a state,' said one Western diplomat last week. 'The ISI is the only institution powerful enough to dare to disobey the President.' Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, diplomats say, makes that a serious cause for concern.
Musharraf himself is well aware that the ISI, set up on Pakistan's independence in 1948 and modelled on eastern bloc intelligence services, plays a crucial role in the current crisis. One of his first acts following 11 September was to replace its head with a personal friend. However he still cannot rely on the agency's total loyalty.
The ISI grew rich and powerful during the war against the Russians. The then President Zia ul Haq demanded, as a condition of his support, that the agency be charged with the distribution of American aid and weapons to the mujahideen.
That allowed the ISI to develop formidable contacts in Afghanistan as well as a lucrative sideline in arms and drug-dealing.
In 1989 the Soviet Union pulled out. To ensure Pakistani interests in the mayhem the ISI funnelled aid to their favourites, the hardliners of the Gulbuddin Hekmatyrar's Hezb-e-Islami. Then, from 1994, they backed the newly formed Taliban. Many Taliban recruits were trained in camps run by extremist religious organisations - many linked to the ISI - in Pakistan.
Now the same men who nursemaided the Taliban are the men the Americans hope will destroy the movement. The ISI are the only people with the contacts and knowledge - the CIA had only a single Afghan analyst until two months ago, and no one who spoke any of the various Afghan languages - the Americans so desperately need. Now the ISI is being asked to dismantle its creation and share all intelligence on the Taliban with Washington.
'Musharraf is asking Dr Frankenstein to kill the monster, a monster that shares its creators' flesh and blood and opinions,' said one Western diplomat. 'It's very hard for them to do it, and will be a very unpopular murder.'
To make matters worse there is considerable sympathy for bin Laden among many ISI elements. Bin Laden himself referred to 'government agencies' in Pakistan who 'have thankfully been guided by Allah'. It was clear whom he meant. The result has been a bizarre mixture of measures, some which have helped the Taliban, others which have hindered them. Though the ISI has been happy to arrest Arabs it has been equally happy to permit thousands of heavily armed pro-Taliban volunteers from Pakistan's Pashtun tribes to cross the border. In Afghanistan's Kunar province, a secret massive recruitment and fundraising drive for the Taliban has been undertaken by an extremist group called Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (the war party of the prophet) that is known for its close links to the ISI. The group was formed by the intelligence service to fight in Kashmir and has only recently switched its attention to Afghanistan. At least 5,000 Pakistani tribesmen have also been permitted to cross the border to fight for the Taliban in the past week.
And there has been material assistance, too. On 16 October, according to one border tribal chieftain, 35 top of the range twin-cab pick up trucks - the favoured mode of transportation for the Taliban military - were driven over the high mountain passes from Bajaur in Pakistan into Kunar. 'It could not have happened without ISI sanction,' the chieftain told The Observer .
Similarly, two attempts to buy weapons for Abdul Haq's ill-fated expedition into Afghanistan were foiled by Pashtun tribesmen from the fierce Afridi tribe - almost certainly acting on ISI orders. First 75 Haq supporters in a training camp near the border town of Parachinar were abducted and roughed up by the Afridis. Then, a few days later, men trying to buy weapons for the warlord's venture were 'arrested' by the tribesmen. However, when a poorly armed Haq set off for Afghanistan with a mere 19 followers, he successfully negotiated several Pakistani checkposts - and the Afridis - without difficulty.
Analysts say that Karzai's trip would have been similarly impossible without the involvement of the agency. ISI policy, according to Western diplomatic sources, is this: 'If they can get rid of Bin Laden and his Arabs and possibly Mullah Omar but keep everything else like it is now, they'll be happy.'
'That's why they've been arresting the foreign extremists but also making sure the Taliban aren't faced with any serious internal or external threat. The last thing the ISI want is the Northern Alliance, backed by the Indians, the Russians, the central Asian republics and the Iranians, making big gains at the Taliban's expense.'
Whatever happens, it is likely to be too late for the followers of Hamid Karzai. The Taliban claimed yesterday that they had hanged three tribal leaders who had backed his rebellion in Kandahar. Often the only visible evidence of the secret war are the corpses.
by Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger Wednesday October 31, 2001
The Guardian
It is hard to imagine an address closer to the heart of American power. The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very centre of the Washington establishment, but amid the frenetic politicking that has occupied the higher reaches of that world in recent weeks, few have paid it much attention. Elsewhere, few have even heard of it. This is exactly the way Carlyle likes it. For 14 years now, with almost no publicity, the company has been signing up an impressive list of former politicians - including the first President Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker; John Major; one-time World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi and several south-east Asian powerbrokers - and using their contacts and influence to promote the group. Among the companies Carlyle owns are those which make equipment, vehicles and munitions for the US military, and its celebrity employees have long served an ingenious dual purpose, helping encourage investments from the very wealthy while also smoothing the path for Carlyle's defence firms. But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $3.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden. The closest the Carlyle Group has previously come to public attention was last May, when a Seoul-based employee called Peter Chung was forced to resign from his £100,000-a-year job after sending an email to friends - subsequently forwarded to thousands of others - boasting of his plans to "fuck every hot chick in Korea over the next two years". The more business-oriented activities of Carlyle's staff have been conducted much more quietly: since it was founded in 1987 by David Rubenstein, a policy assistant in Jimmy Carter's administration, and two lawyer friends, the firm has been dispatching an array of former world leaders on a series of strategic networking trips. Last year, George Bush Sr and John Major travelled to Riyadh to talk with senior Saudi businessmen. In September 2000, Carlyle hired speakers including Colin Powell and AOL Time Warner chair Steve Case to address an extravagant party at Washington's Monarch Hotel. Months later, Major joined James Baker for a function at the Lanesborough Hotel in London, to explain the Florida election controversy to the wealthy attendees. We can assume that Carlyle pays well. Neither Major's office nor Carlyle will confirm the details of his salary as European chairman - an appointment announced shortly before he left the House of Commons after the election - but we know, for the purposes of comparison, that he is paid £105,000 for 28 days' work a year for an unrelated non-executive directorship. Bush gives speeches for the company and is paid with stakes in the firm's investments, believed to be worth at least $80,000 per appearance. The benefits have attracted political stars from around the world: former Philippines president Fidel Ramos is an adviser, as is former Thai premier Anand Panyarachun - as well as former Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pohl, and Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, the US stock market regulator. Carlyle partners, who include Baker and the firm's chairman, Frank Carlucci - Ronald Reagan's defence secretary and a former deputy director of the CIA - own stakes that would be worth $180m each if each partner owned an equal slice. As in many areas of its work, though, Carlyle is not obliged to reveal the details, and chooses not to. Among the defence firms which benefit from Carlyle's success is United Defense, a Virginia-based contractor which makes vertical missile launch systems currently on board US Navy ships in the Arabian sea, as well as a range of other weapons delivery systems and combat vehicles. Carlyle's other holdings span an improbable range, taking in the French newspaper Le Figaro and the company which bottles Dr Pepper. "They are big, and they are quiet," says David Mulholland, business editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. "But they're not easy to get information out of, [but] United Defense are going to do well [in the current conflict]." United also owns Bofors, a Swedish munitions manufacturer. Carlyle has said that it does not lobby the federal government, thus avoiding a conflict of interest when, for example, Carlucci met Rumsfeld in February when several important defence contracts were under consideration. But critics see that as a matter of definition. "It should be a deep cause for concern that a closely held company like Carlyle can simultaneously have directors and advisers that are doing business and making money and also advising the president of the United States," says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit-making Washington think- tank. "The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together. What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about US policy in the Middle East? What hat does he use when he deals with South Korea, and causes policy changes there? Or when James Baker helps argue the presidential election in the younger Bush's favour? It's a kitchen- cabinet situation, and the informality involved is precisely a mark of Carlyle's success." The world of private equity is an inherently secretive one. Firms such as Carlyle make most of their money buying firms which are not publicly traded, overhauling them and selling them at a profit, so the process by which likely targets are evaluated is much more confidential than on the open market. "These firms certainly don't go out of their way to get into the headlines," says Steven Bell, chief economist at Deutsche Asset Management. "They'd rather make a splash in Institutional Pensions Week. The aim is to realise very high returns for your investors while exerting a high degree of control over the company. You don't want to get into the headlines when you force the management to fire a director." The process has worked wonders at United, and this month the firm announced plans to go public, giving Carlyle the chance to cash in its investment. But what sets Carlyle apart is the way it has exploited its political contacts. When Carlucci arrived there in 1989, he brought with him a phalanx of former subordinates from the CIA and the Pentagon, and an awareness of the scale of business a company like Carlyle could do in the corridors and steak-houses of Washington. In a decade and a half, the firm has been able to realise a 34% rate of return on its investments, and now claims to be the largest private equity firm in the world. Success brought more investors, including the international financier George Soros and, in 1995, the wealthy Saudi Binladin family, who insist they long ago severed all links with their notorious relative. The first president Bush is understood to have visited the Binladins in Saudi Arabia twice on the firm's behalf. The Carlyle Group does not employ anyone at its Washington headquarters to deal with the press. Inquiries about the links with the Binladins (as most of the family choose to spell their name) are instead referred to someone outside the company, on condition he is referred to only as "a source familiar with the relationship". This source says: "I can confirm the fact that any Binladin Group investment in Carlyle has been terminated or is being terminated. It amounted to a $2m investment in the Carlyle II Fund, which was anyway a very small portion of a $1.3bn fund. In the scheme of the investments and in the scheme of the business of either party it was very small. We have to get this into perspective. But I think there was a sense that there were questions being raised and some controversy, and for such a small amount of money it was something that we wanted to put behind us. It was just a business decision." But if the Binladins' connection to the Carlyle Group lasted no more than six years, the current President Bush's own links to the firm go far deeper. In 1990, he was appointed to the board of one of Carlyle's first purchases, an airline food business called Caterair, which they eventually sold at a loss. He left the board in 1992, later to become Governor of Texas. Shortly thereafter, he was responsible for appointing several members of the board which controlled the investment of Texas teachers' pension funds. A few years later, the board decided to invest $100m of public money in the Carlyle Group. The firm's magic touch was already bringing results. Today, it is proving as fruitful as ever.
From:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html
Two days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, a delegation led by the head of Pakistan's military intelligence agency (ISI) Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, was in Washington for high level talks at the State Department.1 Most U.S. media conveyed the impression that Islamabad had put together a delegation at Washington's behest, and that the invitation to the meeting had been transmitted to the Pakistan government "after" the tragic events of September 11.
But this is not what happened.
Pakistan's chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad "was in the U.S. when the attacks occurred." 2. According to The New York Times, "he happened to be here on a regular visit of consultations." 3
Not a word was mentioned regarding the nature of his "business" in the U.S. in the week prior to the terrorist attacks. According to Newsweek, he was "on a visit to Washington at the time of the attack, and, like most other visitors, is still stuck there," unable to return home because of the freeze on international airline travel 4
General Ahmad had in fact arrived in the U.S. on the 4th of September, a full week before the attacks. 5 Bear in mind that the purpose of his meeting at the State Department on the 13th was only made public "after" the September 11 terrorist attacks, when the Bush Administration took the decision to formally seek the "cooperation" of Pakistan in its "campaign against international terrorism."
The press reports confirm that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad had two meetings with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, respectively on the 12th and 13th. 6 After September 11, he also met Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.
Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had "a regular visit of consultations" with U.S. officials during the week prior to September 11, --i.e. meetings with his U.S. counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon. 7
What was the nature of these routine "consultations"? Were they in any way related to the subsequent "post-September 11 consultations" pertaining to Pakistan's decision to cooperate with Washington, held behind closed doors at the State Department on September 12 and 13? Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and U.S .officials?
"The ISI-Osama-Taliban Axis"
On the 9th of September, the leader of the Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated. The Northern Alliance had informed the Bush Administration that the ISI was allegedly implicated in the assassination: The Northern Alliance had confirmed in an official statement that:
a `Pakistani ISI-Osama-Taliban axis' [was responsible] of plotting the assassination by two Arab suicide bombers.... `We believe that this is a triangle between Osama bin Laden, ISI, which is the intelligence section of the Pakistani army, and the Taliban,' 8
More generally, the complicity of the ISI in the "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis" was a matter of public record, confirmed by congressional transcripts and numerous intelligence reports.9
The Bush Administration Cooperates with Pakistan's Military-Intelligence
The Bush Administration consciously took the decision in "the post September 11 consultations" at the State Department to directly "cooperate" with Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) despite its links to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and its alleged role in the assassination of Commander Masood, which coincidentally occurred two days before the terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, the Western media --in the face of mounting evidence-- had remained silent on the insidious role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence agency (ISI). The assassination of Masood was mentioned, but its political significance in relation to September 11 and the subsequent decision to go to war against Afghanistan, was barely touched upon.
Without discussion or debate, Pakistan had been heralded as a "friend" and ally of America.
In an utterly twisted logic, the U.S. media had concluded in chorus that:
U.S. officials had sought cooperation from Pakistan [precisely] because it is the original backer of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic leadership of Afghanistan accused by Washington of harboring bin Laden. 10
From The Horse's Mouth
Nobody seemed to have noticed the obtrusive and unsubtle falsehoods behind the Administration's "campaign against international terrorism", with perhaps the exception of an inquisitive journalist who questioned Colin Powell at the outset of his State department briefing on Thursday September 13th:
[Does] the U.S. see Pakistan as an ally or, as the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" pointed out, a place where terrorist groups get training. Or is it a mixture?" 11
"Patterns of Global Terrorism" referred by the journalist is a publication of the U.S. State Department which confirms that the government of President Pervez Musharraf has links to international terrorism:
The United States remains concerned about reports of continued Pakistani support for the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan. Credible reporting indicates that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance, and military advisers. Pakistan has not prevented large numbers of Pakistani nationals from moving into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. Islamabad also failed to take effective steps to curb the activities of certain madrassas, or religious schools, that serve as recruiting grounds for terrorism. 12
Behind Closed Doors at the State Department
The Bush Administration had sought the "cooperation" of those, who were directly supporting and abetting the terrorists. Absurd, but at the same time consistent with Washington's broader strategic and economic objectives in Central Asia.
The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13 between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even involved in these crucial negotiations:
"Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over [to ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take".13 "After a telephone conversation between [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate." 14 President George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that the Pakistan government had accepted "to cooperate and to participate as we hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on America''. 15
Former Iran-Contragate Officials Call the Shots
Bear in mind that Richard Armitage had served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security under the Reagan Administration. "He worked closely with Oliver North and was involved in the Iran-contra arms smuggling scandal." 16
In many regards, the pattern of Bush Junior appointments replicate the Iran-Contragate team of the Reagan and Bush senior administrations:
The same kind of appointments are being made in foreign policy. Bush has been choosing people from the most dubious part of the Republican stable of the 1980s, those engaged in the Iran-Contra affair... Armitage served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan years, but a 1989 appointment in the elder Bush administration was withdrawn before hearings because of controversy over Iran-Contra and other scandals. 17
Armitage was one of the main architects behind U.S. covert support to the Mujahedin and the "militant Islamic base, both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well as in its aftermath. U.S. covert support was financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade.
This pattern has not been fundamentally altered. It still constitutes an integral part of U.S. foreign policy by the Bush Administration and the basis of CIA covert operations.
Pakistan's Chief Spy on Mission to Afghanistan
On September 13th, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf confirmed that he would send chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad to meet the Taliban and negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden. This decision was at Washington's behest, most probably agreed upon during the meeting between Dick Armitage and General Mahmoud at the State Department.
Pakistan's chief spy is rapidly whisked back from Washington to Islamabad:
At American urging, Ahmed traveled ... to Kandahar, Afghanistan. There he delivered the bluntest of demands. Turn over bin Laden without conditions, he told Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, or face certain war with the United States and its allies. 18
Mahmoud's meetings on two separate missions with the Taliban were reported as a "failure." Yet this "failure" to extradite Osama was part of Washington's design, providing a pretext for a military intervention which was already in the pipeline. If Osama had been extradited, the main justification for waging a war "against international terrorism" would no longer hold. And the evidence suggests that this war had been planned well in advance of September 11, in response to broad strategic and economic objectives.
Meanwhile, senior Pentagon and State Department officials had been rushed to Islamabad to put the finishing touches on America's war plans. And on Sunday prior to the onslaught of the bombing of major cities in Afghanistan by the U.S. Air Force (October 7th), Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was sacked from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as a routine "reshuffling."
"The Missing Link"
In the days following Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad's dismissal, a report published in the Times of India, which went virtually unnoticed by the Western media, revealed the links between Pakistan's Chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad and the presumed "ring leader" of the WTC attacks Mohamed Atta. In many regards, the Times of India report constitutes "the missing link" to an understanding of who was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11:
While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmoud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on Monday [8 October], the day the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan], the truth is more shocking. Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday [October 9], that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen. Mahmoud. Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.
A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous repercussions. The U.S. cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things. Evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake U.S. confidence in Pakistan's ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition. 19
According to FBI files, Mohamed Atta was "the lead hijacker of the first jet airliner to slam into the World Trade Center and, apparently, the lead conspirator" 20
The Times of India article was based on an official intelligence report of the Delhi government that had been transmitted through official channels to Washington. Agence France Press (AFP) confirms in this regard that:
A highly-placed government source told AFP that the "damning link" between the General and the transfer of funds to Atta was part of evidence which India has officially sent to the U.S. `The evidence we have supplied to the U.S. is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism,' the source said. 21
Pakistan's Military-Intelligence Agency behind September 11?
The revelation of the Times of India article has several implications. The report not only points to the links between ISI Chief General Ahmad and terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta, it also indicates that other ISI officials might have had contacts with the terrorists. Moreover, it suggests that the September 11 attacks were not an act of "individual terrorism" organised by a separate Al Qaeda cell, but rather they were part of coordinated military-intelligence operation, emanating from Pakistan's ISI.
The Times of India report also sheds light on the nature of General Ahmad's "business activities" in the U.S. during the week prior to September 11, raising the distinct possibility of ISI contacts with Mohamed Atta in the U.S. in the week "prior" to the attacks on the WTC, precisely at the time when General Mahmoud and his delegation were on a so-called "regular visit of consultations" with U.S. officials. Remember, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad arrived in the U.S. on the 4th of September.
U.S. Approved Appointee
In assessing the alleged links between the terrorists and the ISI, it should be understood that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad as head of the ISI was a "U.S. approved appointee". As head of the ISI since 1999, he was in liaison with his U.S. counterparts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Pentagon. Also bear in mind that Pakistan's ISI remained throughout the entire post Cold War era until the present, the launch pad for CIA covert operations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans 22
In other words, General Mahmoud Ahmad as head of the ISI was serving US foreign policy interests. His dismissal on the orders of Washington was not the result of a fundamental political disagreement. Without US support channeled through the Pakistani ISI, the Taliban would not have been able to form a government in 1996. Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI," which in turn was supported by the U.S.23 Moreover, the assassination of the leader of the Northern Alliance General Ahmad Shah Masood --in which the ISI is alleged to have been implicated-- was not in contradiction with U.S. foreign policy objectives. Since the late 1980s, the U.S. had consistently sought to side-track and weaken Masood who was perceived as a nationalist reformer, by providing support to both to the Taliban and the Hezb-I-Islami group led by Gulbuddin Hektmayar against Masood.
Corroborated by Congressional Transcripts
Corroborated by the House of Representatives Internaitonal Relations Committee, U.S. support funneled through the ISI to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden has been a consistent policy of the U.S. Administration since the end of the Cold War:
...[T]he United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban all along, and still is let me add... You have a military government [of President Musharraf] in Pakistan now that is arming the Taliban to the teeth....Let me note; that [U.S.] aid has always gone to Taliban areas... We have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department... At that same moment, Pakistan initiated a major resupply effort, which eventually saw the defeat, and caused the defeat, of almost all of the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. 24
Cover-up and Complicity
The existence of an "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis" is a matter of public record. The links between the ISI and agencies of the U.S. government including the CIA are also a matter of public record.
Pakistan's ISI has been used by successive U.S. adminstrations as "a go-between." Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus, constitutes the core institutional support to both Osama's Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Without this institutional support, there would be no Taliban government in Kabul. In turn, without the unbending support of the U.S. government. there would be no powerful military-intelligence apparatus in Pakistan.
Senior officials in the State Department were fully cognizant of General Mahmoud Ahmad's role. In the wake of September 11, the Bush Administration consciously sought the "cooperation" of the ISI which had been supporting and abetting Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
In other words, the Bush Administration's relations with Pakistan's ISI --including its "consultations" with General Mahmoud Ahmad in the week prior to September 11-- raise the issue of "cover-up" as well as "complicity". While Ahmad was talking to U.S. officials at the CIA and the Pentagon, the ISI allegedly had contacts with the September 11 terrorists.
According to the Indian government intelligence report (referred to in the Times of India), the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks had links to Pakistan's ISI, which in turn has links to agencies of the US government. What this suggests is that key individuals within the US military-intelligence establishment might have known about ISI contacts with the September 11 terrorist "ring-leader" Mohamed Atta and failed to act.
Whether this amounts to the outright complicity of the Bush Administration remains to be firmly established.
What is crystal clear, however, is that this war is not a "campaign against international terrorism." It is a war of conquest with devastating consequences for the future of humanity. And the American people have been consciously and deliberately misled by their government.
Ultimately the truth must prevail. The falsehoods behind America's war against the people of Afghanistan must be unveiled.
Notes:
1. The Guardian, 15 September 2001. 2. Reuters, 13 September 2001. 3. The New York Times, 13 September 2001. 4. Newsweek, 14 September 2001. 5. The Daily Telegraph. London, 14 September 2001, 6. The New York Times, September 13th 2001 confirms the meeting on September 12th 7. The New York Times, 13 September 2001. 8. The Northern Alliance's statement was released on 14 September 2001, quoted in Reuters 15 September 2001. 9. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate", Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), at globalresearch.ca, October 2001. 10. Reuters 13 September 2001. 11. Journalist's question to Secretary of State Colin Powell, State Department Briefing, 13 September 2001. 12. U.S. State Department, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," State Department, Washington 2000. 13. Reuters, 13 September 2001 14. Ibid. 15. Presidential Papers, Remarks in a Telephone Conversation With New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York Governor George Pataki and an Exchange With Reporters, 13 September 2001. 16. The Guardian, 15 September 2001. 17. United Press International, Face-off: Bush's foreign policy warriors,by Peter Roff and James Chapin, UPI, 18 July 2001. 18. The Washington Post, 23 September 2001. 19. The Times of India, Delhi, 9 October 2001 20. The Weekly Standard, Vol. 7, No 7, October 2001. 21. AFP, 10 October 2001 22. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001 23. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998. 24. U.S. House of Representatives: Statement by Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, Hearing of The House International Relations Committee on "Global Terrorism And South Asia", Washington, July 12, 2000.
Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is also the editor of the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), an independent research and media group of progressive writers, scholars and activists committed to curbing the tide of "globalisation" and "disarming" the New World Order.
MEDIUM RARE
By Jim Rarey
November 7, 2001
Yesterday President Bush told the American public that Osama bin Laden is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. He assured us there is no indication that bin Laden has been successful yet and vowed the U.S. would not wait until he had such weapons to act.
Some analysts (and this writer) see yesterday’s warning as laying the groundwork for future revelations (like next week?) that bin Laden has actually acquired nuclear weapons and intends to use them. This would justify a preemptive strike by the U.S. with tactical nuclear weapons already in place (according to a Debka file intelligence report last month).
Credible information has been received from two sources (India and Israel) that bin Laden has purchased 20 or more of the "suitcase nukes" that were delivered to the KGB during the cold war for terrorist purposes. (See the author’s article, "Short Memories on KGB Suitcase Nukes.")
According to both sources, the weapons were bought for $30 million in cash and two tons of Afghan heroin with a street value of $700 million. The transaction was said to have been brokered through bin Laden’s associates in Chechnya.
The Israel Report (for Sept./Oct. 1999) claims the information comes from intelligence sources in moderate Arab regimes. The New Delhi based Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) gives even more specific information divulging the two locations where the suitcase nukes are stored (in tunnels and caves near Khowst and Kandahar in Afghanistan).
These intelligence reports as well as similar information in a recent book by Yossef Bodansky corroborate the 1998 testimony of former Russian security chief, Alexander Lebed, on KGB suitcase nukes before a congressional committee. Bodansky is head of the Congressional Task Force on Non-conventional Terrorism.
The Israel Report also points out that U.S. nuclear policy, as spelled out in a Joint Chiefs of Staff publication (Doctrine for Joint Theater Nuclear Operation) identifies "likely targets" for U. S. nuclear weapons to include "non-state actors" i.e. terrorist organizations, that possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s).
The report quotes an unnamed Pentagon source as saying the nuclear strikes would be limited to situations where, "the U.S., or allies or our forces have been attacked with chemical or biological weapons." Isn’t that exactly what the anthrax attacks have been called?
Since this information has been available for at least two years, the question is, when will the government level with the American people about its knowledge and intentions. Yesterday’s stark warning appears to be the start of the process for justification of U.S. use of tactical nukes.
As they say, stay tuned.
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.
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