Repost: Not a Great PDF about 9//11 but basic

09/11/2001

Editor's Note: The following doesn't really cover the true "Inside Job" nature of 9/11.

9/11: WHO KNEW WHAT AND WHEN,
AND WHAT, IF ANYTHING, DID HE DO?
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001,
shocked the nation. But what may be nearly as
shocking is how much information the
government had beforehand, and how stupendous
were the incompetence and chicanery that
attended its failure to prevent that catastrophe.
I was less than a year old on December 7, 1941, but as the
youngest of eight children, I was later told the stories of where
and how we all learned about the attack on Pearl Harbor as a
part of our family’s oral history. Similarly, the events of
September 11, 2001 are imprinted in our consciousness.
We’ve had 60 years to figure out why the Japanese
government decided to start a war with the United States, but
we’ve yet to answer why the hijackers, primarily highly skilled,
well educated, middle-class professionals, acting contrary to
their own government’s policies, would want to simultaneously
commit suicide in violently attacking the most visible symbols of
American culture.*
We will never know why each individual terrorist
participated, since they all died in the plane crashes, but if we
are to begin to comprehend their motivation, we must try
* Although President Bush’s most common explanation is that the
terrorists hate freedom, a more thoughtful analysis by political scientist
Gilles Kepel reveals, “The terrorism of September 11 was above all a
provocation – albeit a provocation of gigantic proportions. Its purpose
was to provoke a similarly gigantic repression of the Afghan civilian
population and to build universal solidarity among Muslims in
reaction to the victimization and suffering of their Afghan brothers.”
(Miller, Mark Crispin, The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 331) The hijackers could
not seriously have expected to defeat America and eliminate our
freedoms, but as we will see, they were wildly successful in causing
our own government to take away our freedoms and to violently
repress the Afghan people.
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
84
looking at things from their point of view. If we are to make
rational decisions leading to peace with our neighbors and
security in our neighborhoods, we must be prepared to abandon
some deep-seated prejudices and to draw some uncomfortable
conclusions.
America is not blameless. We, regrettably, have a long
history of having violently interfered with the societies, cultures
and governments of other peoples, beginning with annihilation
of the indigenous inhabitants of this country. We enslaved
millions of Africans and we denied the rights of citizenship to
Asian immigrants. It was not that long ago that we colonized
Hawaii and the Philippines, killing hundreds of thousands of
natives; that we routinely rotated the leadership of the republics
of Central and South America at will; and, more recently, that
we conspired in the removal of lawfully elected leaders of
nations such as Chile and Iran.
We have allied ourselves with repressive regimes and
supported their brutal policies. Commencing in 1965, the United
States backed the Indonesian army as it took control of the
country and organized the slaughter of hundreds of thousands
of people, mostly landless peasants.209 Between 1984 and 1990,
the United States provided 80 percent of the arms for Turkey’s
counterinsurgency campaign against its Kurdish minority. Tens
of thousands were killed, and 2-3 million were driven from their
homes, leaving 3,500 villages destroyed.210
President Reagan came into office in 1980 proclaiming that
“international terrorism” sponsored by the USSR was the
greatest threat faced by the United States. To combat Russian
influence in Nicaragua, we mined its harbors and supported a
“Contra” army that regularly and routinely engaged in terrorist
activities.
After Nicaragua filed a lawsuit, the United States was
condemned by the World Court of Justice for its unlawful acts
and was ordered to desist and to pay reparations. We vetoed a
United Nations Security Council resolution calling on all states
(including the U.S.) to adhere to international law, and we and
only two other nations, Israel and El Salvador, voted against the
same resolution in the U.N. General Assembly.211
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85
In 1985, the United States sponsored the setting of a truck
bomb outside a mosque in Beirut, targeted at a Muslim cleric
who had angered us. The bomb was timed to kill the maximum
number of people as they left prayer services. It missed the
cleric, but it killed 80 and wounded 250, mostly women and
children. Wouldn’t we define this as an act of terrorism had it
occurred in the United States?212
There is more, much more, but this is enough. It is one thing
to acknowledge our past policies of failure, which we are slowly
doing, but it is another to understand that history and to adopt
successful policies for the future based upon that understanding.
Sowing the Wind and Reaping the Whirlwind
President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, claims that he instigated secret support for the
Mujahideen, who were fighting against the communist
government of Afghanistan in 1979, in an effort to draw the
USSR into what he called an “Afghan trap.”213 After the USSR
sent in its army to prop up the government, the United States
and its allies organized, trained, and armed a mercenary army of
more than 100,000 to resist the “invasion.” Many of the
Mujahideen were drawn from the most militant fighters
available, the radical Islamists, who viewed the Russians as
infidels and occupiers of Muslim lands. The United States
encouraged these extremist views as “war values” that made the
Mujahideen fierce fighters.
Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen, joined the fighters
sometime in 1980. He was one of nearly two dozen sons born to
Sheikh Muhammad bin Laden, who established a family
construction company that built roads, airports and other
infrastructure projects in the Middle East. The firm grew into a
conglomerate of companies and had become the largest private
construction contractor in the world by the time Sheikh
Muhammad died in a plane crash in Texas in 1966. One of his
older sons, Salem bin Laden took over control of the business.
Both the family and the Saudi government supported a younger
son, Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan as he and the family
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
86
company, under contract with the CIA, brought in engineers and
heavy equipment to build roads and warehouses for the fighters.
Osama bin Laden obtained millions of dollars from his
family and his own inheritance to fund the establishment of al
Qaeda* in 1985. Osama bin Laden went on to supervise
construction of an extensive tunnel complex near the Pakistan
border used to store armaments and as a training and medical
facility. He also established extensive funding networks, which
remained in existence after the USSR retreated from Afghanistan
in 1989. In all of this, bin Laden worked closely with his friend,
Saudi Prince Turki Bin Faisal al-Saud, head of the Saudi
intelligence service.214
Through al Qaeda, bin Laden continued to associate with
other fundamentalist Islamists, who believe they are fighting a
“Holy War” against the corrupt, repressive, and “un-Islamic”
regimes of the region and their supporters.† They believe it is
their duty to support Muslims everywhere who are defending
themselves against the invasion of infidels. It was for this reason
that Egyptian President Sadat was assassinated in 1981, and the
Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut in 1983, driving the
United States out of Lebanon. The Islamists consider the
governments of Saudi Arabia and others in the region, including
Iraq, to be corrupt, repressive, and not truly Islamic.
Following the Gulf War and the establishment of permanent
U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia (where Mecca, Islam’s holy
city is located), bin Laden and the organizations he was
associated with zeroed in on America as an infidel invader.
Not only did the USSR abandon Afghanistan in 1989, but
Bush Sr. did as well. Following the Russian withdrawal, the
United States did nothing as Afghanistan suffered through a
continuing civil war in which tens of thousands of civilians were
killed. A collection of warlords known as the “Northern
Alliance” brutally established limited control between 1992 and
* In Arabic, “al Qaeda” means a register (not “base”). It was a record
book of visitors to the bin Laden guesthouse in Peshawar.
† Islamists comprise a number of factions in Islam that want to rely
upon the Sharia (Islamic Law) to govern all aspects of their societies.
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87
1995. The Alliance engaged in drug trafficking into Tajikistan, a
major way station for drugs en route to Europe and the United
States. The Alliance left a trail of burned out villages, and
carried out such terror that the population generally welcomed
the Taliban, a movement of fundamentalist Islamists with which
bin Laden and his al Qaeda network became associated.215
The CIA was involved in the training and arming of Islamist
fighters against the USSR, bringing many of them to the United
States on visas issued in Saudi Arabia, and some of these
relationships were maintained. In 1990, during the
administration of President Bush Sr., a radical Islamist Egyptian
cleric by the name of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman entered the
United States with the full knowledge of CIA officials. Sheikh
Rahman was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had
affiliated itself with al Qaeda. Rahman, who was wanted by
Egypt on charges of terrorism, quickly attracted a following of
young radical Islamists.216
In 1993, the Pentagon commissioned a study that discussed
how airplanes could be used as suicide bombs by terrorists to
crash into national landmarks, such as the CIA headquarters, the
White House or the Pentagon. The study was circulated through
the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Federal
Emergency Management Service, but it was not publicly
released because of fears it might give terrorists ideas.217
On February 26, 1993, the group of Islamists associated with
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman parked a rented truck containing a
huge fertilizer bomb and tanks of hydrogen in the underground
parking basement of the World Trade Center, and set off an
explosion intended to topple one tower into the other. The
explosion killed six and injured a thousand.218
Within days, law enforcement authorities were able to trace
the vehicle to the Islamists associated with Sheikh Rahman and
to begin making arrests. One of the primary organizers, Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef, escaped and became a fugitive. During
subsequent criminal trials, ten of the conspirators, including
Sheikh Rahman, were convicted of conspiring to wage a war of
urban terrorism against the United States, including planned
attacks against the United Nations building and the bridges and
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88
tunnels leading into New York City. All were sentenced to
prison, with the Sheikh receiving a life term. Osama bin Laden
was named in the case as an unindicted co-conspirator.219
In 1994, Clinton directed an extensive review of the
administration’s terrorism policy. Once agreement was reached
between the various agencies and departments, Clinton signed
Presidential Decision Directive 39 (PDD-39), “U.S. Policy on
Counterterrorism.” The Directive outlined actions to “reduce
terrorist capabilities” in order to “reduce vulnerabilities at home
and abroad.” The Directive established there would be “no
greater priority than preventing the acquisition of weapons of
mass destruction” by terrorists. Failing that, there was no
greater priority than “removing that capability.”220
Although President Clinton was shrinking the overall federal
budget, he increased the counterterrorism budget from $5.7
billion in 1995 to $11.1 billion in 2000. During the same period,
he increased the FBI counterterrorism budget over 280 percent.221
Following the first World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi
Yousef escaped from the U.S. and lived for a time in a boarding
house in Pakistan operated by Osama bin Laden. In January
1995, Yousef was in the Philippines, where he and others were
conspiring to blow up eleven U.S. commercial airplanes in one
day, or as an alternative, to simultaneously crash the planes into
symbols of American culture, such as the CIA headquarters, the
Pentagon, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower in Chicago,
the TransAmerica Tower in San Francisco, and the White House.
One of the conspirators had obtained a commercial pilot’s
license from a U.S. flight school. Fate interrupted these plans
when Yousef accidentally started a fire while mixing explosives
in a Manila apartment. He had to flee, but computer data found
in the room led to his arrest a month later by Pakistani
authorities.222
Yousef was extradited to the United States and as a
helicopter transported him into New York City, an FBI agent
pointed out the World Trade Center towers and said, “They’re
still standing.” Yousef said, “Next time, if I have more money,
I’ll knock it down.”223 Yousef was tried and convicted of both
the World Trade Center bombing and the conspiracy to destroy
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89
the eleven aircraft. He was convicted on September 11, 1996 and
was sentenced to 240 years in federal prison.224 Exactly five
years later, the World Trade Center towers were no longer
standing!
In 1995, the United States began to back the Islamist Taliban
organization in its civil war against the Northern Alliance for
control of Afghanistan. While the Northern Alliance was
supported by Russia and Iran and was recognized by the United
Nations, the Taliban’s march on Kabul was encouraged by the
CIA and funded with Saudi petrodollars. The Taliban took
power in 1996, with the support of the Pakistani secret service.225
In 1996, the FBI began to investigate why so many Arab
students were attending flight schools in the United States to
learn how to fly commercial airplanes.226
On June 25, 1996, Islamist terrorists associated with the
radical Saudi Hezbollah group exploded a truck bomb loaded
with 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives at the Khobar Towers in
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The goal of the terrorists was to drive
the United States military from Saudi Arabia. The Towers were
used as dormitories for U.S. Air Force personnel, 19 of whom
were killed and 372 injured. Following a comprehensive FBI
investigation, 14 members of Hizballah were indicted.227 During
a trial of four defendants between February and July 2001, there
was testimony that two of bin Laden’s operatives had received
pilot training in the United States.228
Another seemingly unrelated event that was to become
critically significant in the future occurred on October 27, 1997,
when following a feasibility study by Enron Corporation, six
international oil companies (led by the Union Oil Company of
California (Unocal) and the Delta Oil Company, Ltd., of Saudi
Arabia) incorporated Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas)
along with the Government of Turkmenistan to build a 48-inch
pipeline across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban
had selected Unocal (which owned 46.5 percent of CentGas) over
a Brazilian competitor.229
In February 1998, bin Laden issued a religious
announcement known as a “fatwa,” which stated, “The ruling to
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90
kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an
individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country
in which it is possible to.”230
In May 1998, President Clinton appointed Richard A. Clarke
as the first National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure
Protection, and Counterterrorism. Clarke was the Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence in the Reagan
administration and was the Assistant Secretary of State for
Politico-Military Affairs in the Bush Sr. administration. He had
been a member of Clinton’s National Security Council staff with
the primary responsibility for counterterrorism.
Clarke chaired meetings of the Counterterrorism Security
Group and four committees made up of senior and midlevel
managers from the departments. The four committees reported
to the Cabinet-level Principals Committee, chaired by the
national security advisor, with cabinet-level representatives from
the departments and agencies. Clarke became a member of the
Principals Committee231
On August 7, 1998, Islamists bombed the U.S. embassies in
Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 257 people
and injuring thousands. A suspect, Mohammad Sadik Howaida,
escaped from Nairobi but was arrested soon after his arrival in
Karachi, Pakistan.232 Howaida, an associate of bin Laden, was
extradited to Kenya.
Two weeks later, the Clinton administration lashed out with
a barrage of ship-based Tomahawk missiles launched at al
Qaeda training bases in Afghanistan and at the al-Shifa
Pharmaceutical Company in Khartoum, Sudan, believed to be
linked to bin Laden, where the CIA thought a component of
nerve gas was being produced. It is not known what damage
was done at the training camps, but the pharmaceutical building
was destroyed. The Sudan attack was a horrible mistake
because the plant actually produced at least half of the nation’s
essential medicines for the Sudanese and their herds of cattle.233
On November 4, 1998, bin Laden was indicted in the
Manhattan federal district court for the embassy bombings and
for conspiring to kill Americans. The indictment alleged that bin
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91
Laden and four others were members of al Qaeda, and that they
conspired with a number of other terrorist organizations,
including one led by Sheik Rahman.234
President Clinton issued a presidential order authorizing bin
Laden’s assassination. President Clinton ordered two
Tomahawk cruise-missile submarines to remain on standby in
waters near Afghanistan, and he exhausted intelligence sources
attempting to pinpoint the time and location when bin Laden
could be hit with a missile attack.235
On December 4, 1998, in another seemingly unrelated event,
Unocal withdrew from the CentGas consortium for “business
reasons” and denied that it had ever entered into a commercial
agreement with the Taliban, although it had provided support.236
However, as we will see, the pipeline deal was not dead.
The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on
Afghanistan that further isolated the Taliban, whose
“government” was only recognized by three countries, Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.237
From at least 1998 forward, the Clinton administration was
entirely hostile to the Taliban regime. It made repeated requests
to the Taliban to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to the
United States. In April 2000, the Taliban were informed that “If
bin Laden or any of the organizations affiliated with him attacks
the United States or United States interests, we will hold you, the
leadership of the Taliban, personally accountable.”238
In 1999, the National Intelligence Council prepared a report
seeking to anticipate the al Qaeda response to Clinton’s bombing
of the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan. The report stated,
“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion
could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4
and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House.” The report
referred to Ramiz Yousef’s plans to engage in a suicide jetliner
mission.239
In December 1999, the CIA learned that al Qaeda was
planning an attack in the U.S. around the Millennium rollover.
President Clinton instructed his national security advisor to hold
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92
daily meetings with the attorney general and the directors of the
FBI and CIA to brief Clinton on what they had done and learned
in the last day about the al Qaeda terrorism threat.240
When a U.S. Customs agent attempted to question Ahmed
Ressam as he was crossing into the United States from British
Columbia, he ran from the ferry. Ressam was arrested after a
brief chase, and an intensive federal investigation ensued.
Information was developed which led to an al Qaeda sleeper cell
in Montreal. Other leads resulted in at least one additional
arrest of an al Qaeda member in New York City.241
Security planning for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,
Australia included the danger of a fully loaded, fueled airliner
crashing into the opening ceremony before a worldwide
television audience, and bin Laden was the top suspect. Similar
concerns had caused the prohibition of aircraft above event
venues in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games and the
deployment of military helicopters to intercept aircraft that
strayed into the restricted airspace.242
On October 12, 2000, al Qaeda operatives set off a bomb
alongside the USS Cole, which was being refueled in the harbor
at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed, and 39 were
injured. President Clinton, who had increasingly concentrated
on the terrorist threat during his administration by doubling
counterterrorism funding and by identifying, arresting and
convicting individual terrorists, turned to Richard Clarke, the
White House Chief of Counterterrorism, and instructed him to
develop a plan to destroy the al Qaeda terrorist network.243
Clarke immediately developed a comprehensive program to:
(1) target al Qaeda cells and arrest their members; (2) track and
attack al Qaeda financial networks; (3) freeze its assets and block
its funding through charity fronts; (4) support other
governments fighting against al Qaeda; (5) engage in covert
actions in Afghanistan against al Qaeda training camps; and (6)
go after bin Laden directly and forcefully.244
On December 20, 2000, Clarke presented the program to
President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger,
who immediately approved it. However, since the U.S. Supreme
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Court had just decided on December 12, 2000, that George W.
Bush could have the presidency as a gift, the Clinton
administration decided to hold off launching any immediate
attacks against bin Laden and al Qaeda to avoid spoiling Bush’s
Christmas and to allow him to implement the plan.
Two former counterterrorism officials of the Reagan
administration evaluated the Clinton administration’s fight
against terrorism. Robert Oakley said, “Overall, I give them
very high marks. ... The only major criticism I have is the
obsession with Osama, which made him stronger.” L. Paul
Bremer (the current administrator of Iraq) believed that Clinton
had “correctly focused on bin Laden.” The Washington Post
agreed, “By any measure available, Clinton left office having
given greater priority to terrorism than any president before
him. ... [It was] the first administration to undertake a
systematic anti-terrorist effort.”245
Neglect of Duty
On the day he left office, Bill Clinton took a few minutes to
discuss with the new president what he considered to be the
most urgent matters. “First,” he said, “There is bin Laden. He is
angry, and we have intelligence that indicates he is coming after
us, somehow. We’ve put together a plan to deal with terrorist
threats, and my people will brief you and your staff on its
details. I consider this the top priority.” Clinton went on to
warn about the dangers of the Israelis and Palestinians, North
Korea, and Pakistan and India. He concluded, “Lastly, I’d watch
Saddam Hussein very closely. He’s got oil money and anger
against the U.S.” Bush responded, “I think you’ve got your
priorities wrong, I’m putting Saddam at the top of the list.”246
At Clinton’s instructions, Sandy Berger met with Bush’s new
National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, during one of the
ten briefing sessions he arranged for her that was dedicated to
terrorism. He told her, “I believe that the Bush administration
will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda
specifically, than any other subject.” Rice continued the meeting
with Richard Clarke, who fully briefed her on the plan he had
developed to combat bin Laden and al Qaeda, and Rice decided
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94
to keep Clarke on as the head of counterterrorism.247 However,
Rice downgraded Clarke’s position and ordered that the
Counterterrorism Security Group would no longer report to the
Principals Committee.
In addition to Rice, Clarke also briefed her deputy, Steve
Hadley, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Powell.
Clarke provided the same warning to each: “al Qaeda is at war
with us, it is a highly capable organization, probably with
sleeper cells in the U.S., and it is clearly planning a major series
of attacks against us; we must act decisively and quickly,
deciding on the issues prepared after the attack on the Cole,
going on the offensive.”248
Immediately following the Inauguration, Clarke wrote to
Rice and Hadley urgently requesting a meeting of the Principals
Committee to discuss the imminent al Qaeda threat. Rice
decided that the Principals would not discuss terrorism policy
until it has been “framed” by the Deputy Secretaries.249
In the meantime, the Bush administration had other more
pressing priorities than terrorism. Bush’s Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, testified at his Senate confirmation hearing,
“We must develop the capabilities to defend against missiles,
terrorism and newer threats against our space assets and
information systems.” He said, “The American people ... must
be protected against the threats with which modern technology
and its proliferation confront us.” Rumsfeld said that improving
force readiness and strengthening intelligence and space
capabilities should be top priorities.250
On February 9, 2000, Robert Walpole, the National
Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programs, testified
in Congress that while missile defense was an issue, an attack
with weapons of mass destruction delivered by non-missile
means was a significant concern, because these weapons are less
expensive than ICBMs, they “can be covertly developed and
employed; probably would be more reliable, accurate and
effective” and they would “avoid missile defenses.”251
Undeterred, the Bush administration continued to go
forward with Rumsfeld’s expensive missile defense system and
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did nothing immediate to defend against the most critical threat,
the hijacking and use of civilian aircraft to crash into America’s
major cultural landmarks.
On February 7, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet testified
before Congress and stated Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
network were the single greatest threat to U.S. interests here and
abroad. He said: “Terrorists are also becoming more
operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order
to defeat counter-terrorism measures. For example, as we have
increased security around government and military facilities,
terrorists are seeking out “softer” targets that provide
opportunities for mass casualties. Employing increasingly
advanced devices and using strategies such as simultaneous
attacks, the number of people killed…Usama bin Laden and his
global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most
immediate and serious threats.”252
On February 15, 2001, former senators Gary Hart and
Warren Rudman issued the final report of their commission that
had studied national security over a period of years. The report
warned that “mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S.
homeland was of serious and growing concern,” and that
America was not prepared for a “catastrophic” terrorist attack.
The report concluded, “This commission believes that the
security of the American homeland from the threats of the new
century should be the primary national security mission of the
U.S. government.” The report called for better information
sharing between federal agencies, and called for the
establishment of a National Homeland Security Agency to
combine some of the government’s national security agencies
and departments. Bush opposed creation of such an agency, and
ignored the report.253
On April 30, 2001, Clarke presented his al Qaeda plan to a
meeting of second-tier deputies of the Vice President, the
Defense Department, State Department, and CIA. The deputies
agreed to a leisurely meeting schedule to individually consider
the issues of al Qaeda, Pakistan, and the India-Pakistan
relationship, and to then to meet a fourth time to integrate the
issues.254
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
96
Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz,
said, “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking
about this one man bin Laden.” Clark replied, “We are talking
about a network of terrorist organizations called al Qaeda, that
happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that
network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious
threat to the United States.”255 As the spring wore on, Clarke emailed
Rice and her deputies warning them that “al Qaeda was
trying to kill Americans, to have hundreds of dead in the streets
of America.”256
On May 1, 2001, Bush gave a speech in which he argued the
necessity of a missile defense system because “today’s most
urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in
Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands
of ... states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.
(emphasis added)”257 Bush was determined to spend billions of
dollars to fight a threat that did not exist, and to ignore,
generally, the most dangerous threat, the use of civilian aircraft
as fuel-loaded missiles.
To avoid congressional hearings on the Hart-Rudman report,
Bush announced formation of an antiterrorism task force on May
8, 2001. The task force was to be chaired by Vice President
Cheney to develop a plan to counter domestic terrorist attacks,
and Bush said that he would “periodically chair a meeting of the
National Security Council to review these efforts.” Cheney’s
task force never met, and Bush never chaired a meeting to
review the efforts. Instead, the national security agency deputies
began to attend their schedule of meetings and to leisurely talk
about the issues.258
In May 2001, the Bush administration made it easier for
Saudi visitors to come to the United States by allowing them to
arrange visas through 10 travel agencies, avoiding the necessity
of being interviewed and identified at the U.S. Embassy or
consulate offices.259
On June 7, 2001, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
addressed the Council on Foreign Relations on “Foreign Policy
Priorities and Challenges of the [Bush] Administration. While
she discussed the “values gap” and “strategic split” between the
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U.S. and Europe, she did not mention terrorism as a priority or
challenge of the Bush administration.260
On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent stationed in Phoenix, Arizona,
became concerned about the number of Middle Eastern students
attending a local flying school. He sent a report to Washington
D.C. in which he suggested al Qaeda operatives might be trying
to gain access to the United States civilian aviation system. He
recommended that the FBI contact other intelligence agencies to
determine if they had related information and to canvass other
flying schools to identify other Arab students.261 The report was
laid aside because it was too “speculative.”262 Nothing was
done.
In the meantime, Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet
were becoming increasingly concerned about the likelihood of
an imminent major domestic terrorist attack. America’s allies
were forwarding highly specific warnings that could not be
ignored. In June, Germany warned that Middle Eastern
terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as
weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli
culture.”
On June 13, Egypt warned that a plane stuffed with
explosives could be used as a weapon against Bush, possibly at
the Genoa summit of industrialized nations. Russia warned the
CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been specially trained to execute
suicide missions against civilian buildings.263 Tenet, “nearly
frantic” with worry, informed Rice in mid-July that there was
going to be a major attack.
On July 5, 2001, Clarke warned all of the domestic security
agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
and the FBI, to increase their security because of the impending
attack. The FAA, which had received specific warnings in the
past about the vulnerability of cockpit doors, failed to take any
steps to prevent hijackers from taking control of commercial
aircraft.264
In July 2001, the CIA issued an intelligence briefing to
“senior government officials” that predicted that Osama bin
Laden was going to attack “in the coming weeks.” The report
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stated “The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict
mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack
preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no
warning.”265 As you will see later, the names of the recipients of
the briefing (including you-know-who) have been classified.
In July 2001, several FBI agents contacted an attorney, David
Philip Schippers, the former head prosecutor of Clinton’s
impeachment trial, with their concerns about a massive attack
being planned by terrorists targeted against the financial district
of lower Manhattan (where the World Trade Center is located)
and their frustration at being restrained by their superiors.
Schippers attempted to personally contact Attorney General
Ashcroft with their concerns; however, his attempts were
rebuffed.
Prior to September 1, the FBI agents confirmed that such an
attack by bin Laden was imminent; however, they were ordered
by their superiors to shut down their investigation, and they
were threatened with prosecution under the National Security
Act if they went public with the information they had learned in
their investigation.266
On July 12, 2001, Osama bin Laden was in the American
Hospital in Dubai for treatment. He had received visits from
many members of his extensive family and from Prince Turki al
Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, but on this day his guest
was CIA agent Larry Mitchell, an Arab specialist.267 Although
bin Laden was wanted on an American arrest warrant for
murder, he was not arrested, nor did we hear about the visit.
On July 16, 2001, after three months of talking, the secondtier
national security agency deputies held their fourth meeting
and agreed to recommend Clarke’s program to the Principals
Committee, composed of Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Powell, and
Rumsfeld. An attempt was made to schedule the meeting in
August; however, too many of the participants were
unavailable.268
So what did Bush do? He did what he did best. On August
3, he took his dogs, Barney and Spot, on an extended vacation to
his Texas ranch. At this point in his term, when America’s “most
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productive workers on earth” are lucky to get a two-week paid
vacation, Bush had spent 42 percent of his first seven months on
the job taking it easy at his ranch, at Camp David, or the Bush
family retreat in Kennebunkport. He had earned another month
off.269
On August 6, 2003, the CIA delivered an intelligence report
entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” to Bush at his
ranch. Bush briefly interrupted his vacation to read the pageand-
a-quarter-long document. The briefing reported that al
Qaeda was active in the United States, that it was suspected of
recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York and that it
could be planning domestic hijackings. The report referred to
“patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with
preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.”270
Prior to 9/11, Tenet attempted to warn Bush in more than 40
briefings of threats involving al Qaeda. Among the titles of the
briefings were: “Bin Laden planning multiple operations,” “Bin
Laden network’s plans advancing,” and “Bin Laden threats are
real.”271
If you recall, when President Clinton was presented with
intelligence that warned of possible terrorist attacks during
December 1999, he ordered the heads of the FBI and the CIA to
report to the White House on a daily basis and account for what
they were doing to counter the threats. As a result, a terrorist
who was bringing explosives into the U.S. to attack the Los
Angeles airport was arrested, an intensive federal investigation
ensued, an al Qaeda sleeper cell was located in Montreal, and
another al Qaeda member was arrested in New York City. What
did President “What, me worry?” Bush do? He continued to
relax, played a little golf, cleared a little brush, and watched his
dogs chase the armadillos.272 Nothing too brain taxing.
In August, the Israeli Mossad warned the CIA and the FBI
that as many as 200 al Qaeda members were infiltrating the
United States and were planning a “major assault” in the U.S.
against “a large-scale target” where Americans would be “very
vulnerable.”273
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Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, did not list
counterterrorism as one of his seven goals in a draft of his
“Strategic Plan” dated August 9, 2001. Fighting terrorism was a
secondary subgoal under gun violence and drugs. In April 2000,
Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, had called terrorism “the
most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.”274 She
ordered the preparation of an elaborate counterterrorism plan
known as MAX CAP 05, or Maximum Capacity by 2005 that
called for a huge build-up in the FBI’s counterterrorism
operations. Ashcroft declined to adopt the plan once he took
office.275
On August 16, 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service arrested Zacharias Moussaoui, who had earlier flunked
out of a flight school in Oklahoma, and who was taking flight
simulator training for commercial airplanes at a flying school in
Minnesota. He was turned in by an instructor, who became
worried that Moussaoui had more interest in how much fuel a
commercial jet carried and how much damage it could do if it hit
anything and less interest in learning how to actually take off or
land an airplane. The instructor told agents, “Do you realize that
a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?” The arresting
agent wrote that Moussaoui was “the type of person who could
fly something into the World Trade Center,” and an FBI agent
seeking permission to obtain a search warrant to review
Moussaoui’s computer files suggested that a 747 airliner loaded
with fuel could be used as a missile.
FBI Headquarters refused to allow its agents to seek a search
warrant, even after France disclosed that Moussaoui had
connections with bin Laden and al Qaeda. Of the 12,000
applications for national security search warrants made since
they were authorized in 1978, only one had ever been denied.276
There was no plausible reason to not obtain a warrant to follow
up on Moussaoui’s arrest.
Another terrorist, who was subject to telephone surveillance
(by the Egyptian secret service) and whose movements were
being monitored by the FBI, Mohamed Atta, had been allowed
to reenter the United States on January 10, 2001, on an expired
tourist visa, even though he informed immigration officers that
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he was taking flying lessons in the United States, which violated
his expired visa. Moreover, Israel had earlier notified the United
States that Atta had been involved in a bombing there even
before he was issued his original visa.277
During the week before September 11, 2001, Lt. General
Mahmoud Ahmad, the Director-General of Pakistani military
intelligence, came to the United States to consult with high-level
officials of the CIA and the Pentagon. Before the trip, he had
ordered the transfer of $100,000 to Mohamed Atta in the United
States!278
Meanwhile, down in East Texas, Bush continued to laze
about with Barney and Spot.279
Back in Washington, Thomas J. Pickard, the acting Director
of the FBI, read a top-secret review of the Bureau’s
counterterrorism programs calling for a dramatic increase in
funding. Concerned, Pickard met with his boss, Attorney
General John Ashcroft, and requested an additional $58 million
to improve the Bureau’s capacity to deal with terrorist threats.280
Note what later happens to Pickard’s request in evaluating the
priority that the Bush administration placed on the
counterterrorism effort.
On September 4, 2001, the national security principals,
Cheney et al., met and discussed Clarke’s plan. They agreed to
implement it in phases by first demanding cooperation from the
Taliban and by establishing liaison with the Northern Alliance.281
In preparation for the meeting, Clarke asked Rice “to put herself
in her own shoes when in the very near future al Qaeda had
killed hundreds of Americans.” He asked her “What will you
wish then that you had already done?”282
On September 7, 2001, the U.S. State Department issued a
worldwide alert warning that “American citizens may be the
target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to the
al Qaeda organization.”283 However, the FAA did not take any
steps to put the domestic airline industry on high alert. Are you
beginning to get the feeling that there was little concern for the
safety of ordinary citizens? Read on.
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On September 9, 2001, Congress was considering an increase
of $600 million for antiterrorist programs, with the funds to be
taken from Rumsfeld’s missile defense program. Rumsfeld sent
a letter to Senator Carl Levin, then chairman of the Armed
Services Committee in response to Levin’s attempt to transfer
money to counterterrorism. Rumsfeld said he would urge Bush
to veto the measure.284
On September 9, 2001, two North African suicide bombers
posing as journalists from “Arabic News International”
exploded a bomb concealed in a video camera as they
interviewed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the popular leader of the
Northern Alliance and primary opponent of the Taliban.
Massoud died while being transported by helicopter to
Tajikistan.285
The National Security Agency began to intercept multiple
phone calls from Abu Zabaida, bin Laden’s chief of operations,
to the United States. The U.S. had broken the al Qaeda code;
however, the contents of these communications have never been
officially disclosed.286 However, Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI
translator has come forward with detailed information that
specific intelligence documents pointing to the use of aircraft
against skyscrapers in major U.S. cities were in existence in April
and May 2001.287
It has been revealed that bin Laden telephoned his mother on
September 9th and told her that “In two days you’re going to
hear big news, and you’re not going to hear from me for a
while.” The call was monitored by a foreign intelligence service
and was passed on to U.S. intelligence.288
On September 10, 2001, Ashcroft turned down Pickard’s
request for additional funding. The budget he did send to
Congress included spending increases in 68 different programs.
None had anything to do with terrorism.289 (A month after the
9/11 attack, the FBI requested an additional $1.5 billion to create
2,024 positions to staff an enhanced counterterrorism effort.
However, the White House Office of Management and Budget
cut that request to $531 million. In response, Ashcroft cut the
FBI’s request for “items such as computer networking and
foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request
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by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for
‘collaborative capabilities.’”)290
As for Ashcroft personally, he had stopped flying on
commercial jets, choosing to use a luxurious $40 million FBI
Gulfstream 5 intended for special investigations and the
transportation of terrorists instead.291An interesting coincidence?
The Pentagon had been on high alert for several weeks;
however, a particularly urgent warning was received on the
evening of September 10, 2001, causing a number of top officials
to cancel their air travel plans for the next morning.292 Why
wasn’t the American public given the same warning?
Without a doubt, if the American public were provided the
same information available to the top government officials,
many may also have chosen to avoid commercial air travel. The
airlines may have suffered a loss of revenue, but it is equally
likely that an informed and alert public might have focused
attention on some, if not all of the hijackers before they were able
to board the planes.*
On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered the first
major attack on its “homeland” since the War of 1812. The White
House escaped being burned this time, but in a 2-hour, 11-
minute attack, 19 Islamist terrorists simultaneously hijacked and
converted four commercial airliners into low-tech weapons of
mass destruction which they piloted into their targets, killing
over 3,000 in New York City, almost 200 in Washington, D.C.,
and 40 in Pennsylvania. The attack resulted in losses of
hundreds of billions of dollars to United States property and its
economy, and inflicted a massive blow to our collective sense of
security from which we may never recover. Certainly not, unless
we learn what went wrong and make changes for the future.
* Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the Congressional Committee that
subsequently investigated the 9/11 attacks, noted that “prior to
September 11th, the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities
were fighting a war against terrorism largely without the benefit of
what some would call their most potent weapon in that effort: an alert
and committed public. One need look no further for proof of the latter
point than the heroics of the passengers on Flight 93.”
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Do you think that Bush and his administration considered
the fight against terrorism to be a priority? Do you believe Bush
took all appropriate steps to protect the American people?
You’re not stupid! Get the truth.
The Attack
On September 10, 2001, President Bush spent the night at the
Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Florida, in
preparation for a political visit to Booker Elementary School in
Sarasota the next morning to push his education plan. His
schedule for the day was a matter of public record.
On September 11, 2001, Bush was awake at 6:00 a.m. and
preparing for his daily run when several Middle Eastern men
approached the Colony’s guard station. They told the guard
they had an appointment to conduct a “pool side” interview
with the president and asked for a particular Secret Service agent
by name. The message was relayed to a Secret Service agent
inside the Colony, who had never heard of the requested agent,
nor was he aware of any scheduled interview. He instructed the
guard to turn the van away and to tell the men to contact the
White House public relations office in Washington, D.C. for an
appointment.293
It is not known whether this was a suicide assassination
attempt similar to the one that had killed Ahmed Massoud two
days earlier in Afghanistan. However, once the men were
turned away without further investigation, they were never
identified or located. At the same time, a total of 19 hijackers
were preparing for and boarding at least four scheduled flights.
Nine of the hijackers were selected for special screening. Of
these, six were further selected for extra attention by a
computerized selection process to scan their checked baggage for
bombs or weapons, three because of irregularities in
identification documents. The names of two hijackers, who had
not been selected for special screening, were on a terrorists
watch list for international flights; however, the FAA had not
given this information to the domestic airlines. All 19 were
allowed to board their scheduled flights.294
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A brief summary of each flight and the day’s major events
follows:*
American Airlines Flight 11:
7:59 a.m. Departs Boston.
8:13 a.m. Becomes unresponsive to ground control.
8:20 a.m. Veers dramatically off course; considered to be
hijacked.
8:35 a.m. President Bush departs in motorcade for Booker
Elementary School (there are media reports that Bush
was informed of the hijacking of Flight 11 before he
departed the hotel).295
8:40 a.m. North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD) notified.
8:46 a.m. Plane piloted into the World Trade Center North
Tower; FAA establishes open line with Secret Service.
8:48 a.m. Presidential Spokesman Ari Fleischer notified of first
crash while presidential motorcade still en route to
school; CNN broadcasts first film.
8:55 a.m. President Bush arrives at school. Rice notifies him of
the first crash; however, he apparently was not advised
that it was the result of a hijacking nor that there was a
second hijacking, or he was so advised and failed to
comprehend. He engages in photo opportunities.
9:00 a.m. President Bush enters classroom and begins the
planned event.
9:03 a.m. Vice President Cheney is forcibly removed from his
office by Secret Service agents and moved to a secure
bunker.
9:07 a.m. President Bush notified of second crash in the
classroom. He continues with the reading program and
photo opportunity.
* Following the attack on September 11, 2001, there have been
numerous time lines published. For more detail, see: www.
cnparm.home.texas.net/911/911/911.html and www.geocities.com/
spdster2003/dtail3.html.
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9:12 a.m. President Bush leaves the classroom, goes to vacant
classroom, meets with staff, watches television, and
prepares speech.
9:26 a.m. National ground stop issued by FAA, freezing all
takeoffs.
9:30 a.m. President Bush gives a brief speech at the school to
students, teachers and reporters. He announces that two
airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an
apparent terrorist attack.
9:34 a.m. Presidential motorcade leaves school en route to
airport.
9:56 a.m. President Bush departs Saratoga airport on Air Force
One. He speaks to Vice President Cheney and approves
shooting down hijacked commercial flights.
10:28 a.m. North Tower collapses.
United Airlines Flight 175:
8:14 a.m. Departs Boston.
8:42 a.m. Hijacked and veers from its course over New Jersey,
makes U-turn.
8:43 a.m. NORAD notified.
9:03 a.m. Plane piloted into the World Trade Center South
Tower.
9:59 a.m. South Tower collapses.
American Airlines Flight 77:
8:20 a.m. Departs Dulles International Airport outside of
Washington, D.C.
8:46 a.m. Hijacked and changes course.
9:05 a.m. West Virginia flight control notes eastbound plane
without transponder.
9:24 a.m. NORAD notified.
9:33 a.m. Plane passes over Pentagon at 7,000 feet, executes
complete circle, spiraling down, passes near White
House.
9:38 a.m. Piloted into the Pentagon.
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United Airlines Flight 93:
8:41 a.m. Departs Newark en route to San Francisco.
9:00 a.m. United warns all aircraft of cockpit intrusions and to
barricade cockpit doors; Flight 93 pilots acknowledge;
however, hijacker in uniform pretending to be a pilot
may have already been in cockpit with permission.
9:27 a.m. (Or before) Three hijackers put red bandanas around
head, force way into cockpit.
9:30 a.m. Transponder turned off.
9:34 a.m. Hijacker pretending to be Captain tells passengers
there’s a bomb on board; passenger on cell phone learns
about other highjackings, determines plane is on suicide
mission.
9:36 a.m. Plane turns around near Cleveland, Ohio; heads
toward Washington, D.C.
9:47 a.m. Passengers vote to overcome hijackers;
9:50 a.m. Filling pitchers with hot water to use against hijackers;
9:57 a.m. Use galley cart in attempt to force cockpit door.
10:06 a.m. Plane crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The Cover-up
At 8:30 p.m., President Bush made a speech to the nation in
which he stated that, “We will make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor
them.” He also stated, “Immediately following the first attack, I
implemented our government’s emergency response plans.”
This was the first of many lies about 9/11.
What actually happened was that Bush did nothing for over
an hour between 8:46 a.m. (the time of the first crash and three
minutes after NORAD was notified of the second hijacking) and
9:56 a.m., when he approved shooting down hijacked airplanes.
He continued to read to the children and to posture for the
cameras. One can only wonder what he was thinking. Was he
in denial because he had blown off so many warnings of just
such an occurrence? Or is he just not that bright and failed to
comprehend what was taking place?
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When Bush was later asked about the attack, he stated, “I
was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an
airplane hit the tower–the TV was obviously on. And I used to
fly myself, and I said, well there’s one terrible pilot. I said, it
must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there.
I didn’t have much time to think about it.”
later said, “first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I
had seen this plane fly into the first building.”296 None of this
could be true. He wasn’t whisked off and he could not have
seen the first crash, because it wasn’t shown on television until
videotape later turned up. He said that his Chief of Staff,
Andrew Card, had informed him of the crash, saying, “here’s
what you’re going to be doing: You’re going to meet so-and-so,
such-and-such.’ Then Andy Card said, ‘by the way, an aircraft
flew into the World Trade Center.’”
What we do know is that during a substantial period of time,
while time stood still for the rest of us and when the nation was
entitled to aggressive leadership, Bush continued to dither and
did nothing. He did not order the nation’s commercial air fleet
grounded. It fell to a third-tier FAA manager, Ben Sliney, to take
that initiative.297
Fighter jets were dispatched in an attempt to intercept the
remaining hijacked airliners; however, the only person who
could have authorized the use of weapons was reading to the
children. President Bush finally left for the airport and took off
in Air Force One. He wandered around the country for much of
the day, perhaps thinking about what to say to the American
people. We don’t know. All we do know is that he lied about
taking immediate action, and he began to lie about his prior
knowledge concerning the likelihood of just such an attack.
In an attempt to cover for Bush’s all-day absence from duty,
Karl Rove leaked that U.S. intelligence had received information
that Air Force One was under threat of attack. The information
was a complete lie.298 The presidential communication codes
were not compromised; there was never any intelligence that
there was a risk to the airplane; Bush and Rove just needed time
to create a cover story.
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There were immediate calls for an independent investigation
of the attack. Initially Congress was unwilling to go against
White House suggestions that congressional hearings would
detract from the efforts to prevent further attacks and interfere
with the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
In the meantime, Bush began to take action that would
ensure that the truth would not come out. First, while air traffic
was still grounded, he allowed 11 members of Osama bin
Laden’s family to leave the United States for Saudi Arabia
without questioning.299
Next, although the FBI was miraculously able to identify all
of the hijackers, complete with backgrounds and photographs,
within a couple of weeks (which is strong evidence that it knew
exactly who and where they were before the attack), on October
10, 2001, less than a month after the attack, FBI agents were
ordered to close their investigation. The case was considered
closed: “The investigative staff has to be made to understand
that we’re not trying to solve a crime now.”300
The United States pressured Pakistani General Ahmad to
quietly announce his early retirement. He was never questioned
about his transfer of money to Mohamed Atta, the lead
hijacker.301
On November 1, 2001, President Bush signed Executive
Order 13233, which ended 27 years of congressional and judicial
efforts to make presidential papers and records available.*
Executive Order 13233 shifts the burden of proof from the
former president to the person requesting presidential materials,
to show why he should be given them; it makes the sitting
president, rather than the Archivist of the United States, the
judge of whether invocation of executive privilege by a former
president should be honored; it allows a former president to
indefinitely block access to presidential papers; it commits the
Department of Justice to defend the former president’s assertion
* Eleven months earlier Bush had transferred all of his Texas
gubernatorial papers to his father’s presidential library in College
Station, Texas, in an attempt to remove them from the jurisdiction of
the Texas freedom of information statutes.
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of privilege against legal attack; and it allows the sitting
president to withhold the records of a former president, even if
the former president wants the records released.302 What this
means is that we may never have access to any of the documents
that can tell us what Bush may have known or what he did or
did not do in regard to 9/11.
In December 2001, resolutions were introduced in the Senate
to establish an independent bipartisan commission to investigate
9/11. The Bush administration opposed such a commission and
decided that an investigation by the House and Senate
intelligence committees would be more narrowly focused and
more easily controlled than either an independent outside
commission (as in the Warren Commission) or a special
congressional committee (as in the Watergate Committee).
In January 2002, Cheney attempted to quash even a limited
congressional inquiry. He telephoned Senate Majority Leader
Tom Daschle to warn that the investigation would divert
resources from the “war on terrorism.” Later, on January 28,
Bush made the same request in person.303 Nonetheless, the
congressional “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community
Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,
2001” was convened on February 14, 2002.
The first bombshell exploded under Bush’s cover-up on May
16, 2002, when Condoleezza Rice revealed that beginning in May
2001, Bush’s daily briefings had included reports of increasing
numbers of general terrorist threats against the United States.
She said, “The most important and most likely thing was that
they would take over an airliner, holding passengers (hostage),
and demand the release of one of their operatives.” Rice added,
“I don’t think that anybody could have predicted that these
people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade
Center, take another and slam it into the Pentagon.”304
Apparently, serving on the board of directors of Chevron and
having a tanker named after you really do not qualify someone
to be the President’s National Security Advisor.
Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said “The president did
not receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by
suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that had not
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111
been foreseen.” In case you’re wondering about this newlyfound
candor after eight months of secrecy on the subject, be
reassured it didn’t occur because of an attack of conscience.
Congressional staffers had learned of the presidential briefing
documents, and members of the joint committee were seeking to
review them. The cat was out of the bag.
Suddenly, there was a shift of emphasis. Only a few months
before, Bush had personally stated, “Never did we realize that
the enemy was so well organized.”305 Now it became known
that specific evidence of a high level of organization had been
available, and that Bush was so informed. Senator Daschle said
he was “gravely concerned,” and asked President Bush to hand
over to Congress all the information he had received. Daschle
asked, “Why did it take eight months for us to receive this
information?” And secondly, “what specific actions were taken
by the White House in response?”
Rather than produce the information, the White House
unleashed an attack. Cheney warned Democrats “to be very
cautious” in blaming 9/11 on the Bush administration, saying
that it is “thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of
national leaders in a time of war” to criticize Bush.306 He
cautioned that the inquiry should be carefully handled because
“a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack
still exists.”307 Bush piled it on, saying, “Second guessing has
become second nature to Washington Democrats.” He said,
“Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill
on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my
power to protect the American people.”308 Remember those
words.
On May 21, 2002, a second bombshell exploded under the
cover-up when a letter written by FBI Special Agent Coleen M.
Rowley, a 21-year veteran and Minneapolis Chief Division
Counsel, to FBI Director Robert Mueller was made public.
Rowley wrote about her “deep concerns that a delicate and
subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others ... has
occurred and is occurring.” She continued, “I feel that certain
facts ... have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed
over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
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personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the
FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.”
Rowley’s 13-page letter detailed the abundant probable
cause that had existed to justify a search warrant for
Moussaoui’s computer disc and the improbable opposition of
the FBI headquarters’ staff to even approve an application for a
warrant. Specifically, she complained about news accounts
attributed to headquarters saying she had concurred that there
was inadequate probable cause, saying these accounts were “in
error (or possibly the leak was deliberately skewed in this
fashion?).” Rowley directly contradicted the public statement
made by Mueller that “if the FBI had only had any advance
warning of the attacks, we [the FBI] may have been able to take
some action to prevent the tragedy.”309
The joint congressional intelligence inquiry employed a
special staff under the direction of Eleanor Hill, a former federal
prosecutor and Pentagon inspector general. The staff reviewed
hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents and
conducted scores of interviews; however, investigators were not
allowed to interview Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld or
Colin Powell.
During a public hearing in September 2002, Hill exploded
another bombshell under Bush’s cover-up. An even earlier CIA
briefing in July 2001 had specifically predicted that bin Laden
was about to launch a terrorist attack “in the coming weeks” and
that “The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass
casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations
have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”
As Hill was about to disclose who, exactly, had received the
briefing, CIA Director Tenet quickly stepped in and said that the
names of the recipients were classified.310 Huh?!!!! Perhaps the
briefing can be classified, but the briefee? Hill was only allowed
to say it was given to “senior government officials.”
Now, remember Bush’s words, “Had I known that the
enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning,
I would have done everything in my power to protect the
American people.” Do you believe it?
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The joint congressional committee completed its 800-page
report in December 2002; however, it largely remained a secret
from the American people, and only a brief list of “findings” was
made public. The Bush administration reviewed the report and
blocked its publication by refusing to declassify many of its
major conclusions.
Moreover, Bush attempted to reclassify some material that
had been discussed openly in public hearings, such as the
Arizona FBI memo. Democratic Senator Bob Graham accused
the administration of covering up information that could be a
political embarrassment. Even Republican Representative Porter
Goss said, “Senior intelligence officials said things in public
hearings that they [administration officials] don’t want us to put
in the report. ... That’s not something I can rationally accept.”311
The report was finally published in July 2003 with glaring
omissions, including the most obvious conclusions. Either Bush
was, in fact, aware that terrorists were likely to fly hijacked
airplanes into major public buildings, or the CIA was criminally
negligent in not providing him the information it had that the
risk was real, specifically defined, and immediate. The report
reveals its formal request to Bush for copies of the relevant
President’s Daily Briefs and Bush’s denial on the grounds of
executive privilege. (Remember Nixon?)
In answering the question as to whether it was Bush or the
CIA who was criminally negligent, the report points out that on
May 16, 2002, Condoleezza Rice conceded that Bush’s August 6,
2001, briefing included “information about bin Laden’s methods
of operation from a historical perspective dating back to 1997.”
Going on to define an “historical perspective,” the report lays
out 36 instances of such information dating back to 1997,
including: (1) September 1998—“Bin Laden’s next operation
might involve flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S.
airport and detonating it”; (2) Fall 1998—“Bin Laden plot
involving aircraft in New York and Washington, D.C. areas”;
and (3) March 2000—“types of targets that operatives of bin
Laden’s network might strike. The Statute of Liberty was
specifically mentioned, as were skyscrapers, ports, airports, and
nuclear power plants.”312
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
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Needless to say, few outside the White House were satisfied
with the joint Congressional Committee on Intelligence report,
specifically the relatives of those murdered on September 11,
2001. They continued to lobby for an independent investigation,
and over Bush’s objections, Congress enacted legislation creating
and funding the “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
upon the United States” to prepare a full and complete account
of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The commission was funded through May 2004.
When President Bush signed the legislation creating the
commission on November 27, 2002, he said its investigation
should “carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the
facts, wherever they lead.”313 Remember these words.
Under the legislation, Congress selected the members and
Bush appointed the Chair. So whom did the President select?
Henry Kissinger, as being synonymous with “cover-up” in your
thesaurus? You’ve got to be kidding. Kissinger, the guy wanted
for questioning by judges in war-crime cases in Chile, France,
and Spain, who can’t even travel to Brazil because of protests by
human rights groups.314 Poor choice. At least, the relatives of
9/11 victims had a few questions about it. During a meeting
with them, Kissinger reassured them that he would privately
disclose to the commission’s members any “potential conflicts of
interests.” That was not enough, as all members had to comply
with Senate ethics guidelines, including financial disclosure
requirements. Kissinger declined to release the secret list of
clients served by his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates (more
about this later), and resigned from the commission.315
President Bush then appointed former New Jersey governor
Thomas Kean to take Kissinger’s place. Kean agreed to work
only one day a week on the commission and continued as
president of Drew University. Kean’s appointment posed a
significant conflict of interest as Kean also continued to serve on
the board of directors and executive committee at Amerada
Hess, an oil company extensively involved in Central Asia.
In 1998, Amerada Hess established a joint venture with the
Saudi oil company Delta Oil, which if you recall is involved with
Unocal in the Afghanistan pipeline venture. Delta is controlled
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by Khalid bin Mahfouz, who is Osama bin Laden’s brother-inlaw
and the financial benefactor of both Bush and al Qaeda.316
In another conflict of interest, Kean appointed Philip
Zelikow as the commission’s staff director. Not only had
Zelikow co-authored a book in the 1990's with Condoleezza Rice,
he also worked on Bush’s 2000 presidential transition team,
specifically in the area of reducing and redefining the role of the
National Security Council in the Bush administration. Following
9/11, Zelikow publicly praised Bush as having reached down
and found “the best elements in his character. He is being
authentic and plainspoken.”317
Thus, is there any surprise that the commission operated in a
“polite, friendly fashion”? Although Bush had promised
cooperation, requests for documents from the Department of
Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the White
House itself were met with delays and objections.
As time dragged on, and with the May 2004 cutoff date
approaching for delivery of the final report, the commission had
yet to use its subpoena power to obtain needed documents.
Advocates for the families of victims complained about the lack
of subpoenas, the lackluster hearings in which nobody testified
under oath, and staff comments that negotiations with the White
House over the production of documents were being carried on
in a “very congenial atmosphere.”* The families didn’t want
congenial, they wanted answers.318 Don’t you?
The commission was not given the power to issue subpoenas
unless the chairman approved. Thus, subpoenas were not
issued to the Federal Aviation Administration until October
* Ellen Mariani, the widow of Louis Neil Mariani, who died in the crash
of United Airlines Flight 175, has filed a lawsuit in the United States
District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, against Bush, Cheney,
Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and other members of the Bush
administration. The complaint, which was brought under the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), alleges
that the defendants failed “to act and prevent” the murder of her
husband “for financial and political reasons” and that the defendants
have since “obstructed justice” (www.nancho.net/911/mariani.html).
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
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2003, when it was learned that the FAA had withheld dozens of
boxes of requested documents concerning the 9/11 attack.319 On
November 8, 2003, the commission issued subpoenas to the
Department of Defense because it had experienced “serious
delays” in obtaining records involving the performance of
NORAD on the morning of the attack. The commission stated,
“In several cases, we were assured that all requested records had
been produced, but we then discovered, through investigation,
that these assurances were mistaken.”320
The White House continued to stonewall the commission,
even under the threat of a subpoena, citing executive privilege.
Commission member Max Cleland, the former senator from
Georgia, stated, “It’s obvious that the White House wants to run
out the clock here. ... It’s disgusting ... as each day goes by, we
learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these
terrorists before September 11th than it has ever admitted.”321
Fearing that a court battle over a rejected subpoena would
likely extend past the May 27, 2004 cutoff date, the commission
reached a wholly unsatisfactory agreement with the White
House by which four members of the commission will review
some of the documents, but only two of the four will get to
review others.* Moreover, the documents will be truncated
before they are turned over, and the White House will vet any
comments made by the members after reviewing the
documents.322 (Remember Nixon and the “expletives deleted”
tape transcripts?)
Initially, the White House attempted to run out the clock by
refusing to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify in public and under
oath and by refusing to allow more that the chairman and vice
chairman to privately question Bush and Cheney for only one
* The Commission has requested Congress to give it two additional
months, until July 26th, to complete its report, and Bush has relaxed his
previous opposition to an extension. Moreover, the Commission has
reached an agreement to allow all commissioners to review the White
House edited notes taken by three commissioners and Zelikow
summarizing their review of pre-9/11 briefing documents. (“9/11
Panel Is Granted More Access to Data,” Los Angeles Times, February 11,
2004, p. A32.)
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hour each. However, two things happened in March 2003 that
changed the situation. First, Richard Clarke testified under oath
in a public hearing of the 9/11 commission; second, his book,
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror was published
and immediately became a best seller.
In the book and in his testimony, Clarke reported that Bush
“failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda
despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political
windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the
attacks; and…launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq
that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist
movement worldwide.
Clarke said that “the administration had squandered the
opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda and instead strengthened our
enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the
invasion of Iraq. A new al Qaeda has emerged and is growing
stronger, in part because of our own actions and inactions. It is
in many ways a tougher opponent than the original threat we
faced before September 11 and we are not doing what is
necessary to make America safer from that threat.”323
On March 30th after the commission demanded that Rice
appear and testify under oath, Bush agreed on the condition that
she cannot be recalled for further questions and that the
Commission will not call any other White House aides as
witnesses. She appeared on April 8, 2004 and continued to insist
that the August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing was “historical
information based on old reporting—there was no new threat
information.” Despite the reports explicit reference to attacks on
America, she said, “all of the threat reporting that was actionable
was about threats abroad, not about the United States.”324 Bush,
who was on vacation in Texas, called Rice from his pickup truck
and congratulated her on her performance before the
Commission.
Although Bush agreed under pressure that he and Cheney
can be questioned by the entire commission, he insisted that they
appear together at the same time and that there be no transcript
made of the proceedings.325 One has to wonder if Bush can’t be
trusted to appear without his neocon handler, who, exactly, is in
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
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control of our government, and why are we not entitled to know
what Bush said to the Commission investigating his failures?
Although former President Clinton testified (alone) before
the Commission that he had ranked Osama bin Laden as the
number one problem the new administration would face, Bush
told the Commission that Clinton “probably mentioned”
terrorism as a national security threat but “did not make it a
point of emphasis.” Bush said that Clinton was more concerned
about North Korea’s nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.326 Since Bush was not under oath, he can’t be charged
with perjury; however, we don’t have to believe him.
We’re still waiting for answers. What do you think? Is there
a cover-up going on? You’re not stupid! Get the truth.
The Why
Why the dilly-dallying? Why did Bush completely ignore all
of the explicit warnings that a major terrorist attack using
hijacked commercial airplanes as flying bombs against United
States landmarks was imminent? Why the cover-up? The
answer is spelled “O-I-L.” It’s crudely spilled all over, Bush’s
stepped in it, and he can’t scrape it off his boots, no matter how
hard he tries.
The incoming Bush administration wanted to change the
aggressive tone of the Clinton administration into one more
accommodating toward Saudi Arabia. There was “a major
policy shift,” and investigators were told to “back off”
investigations into Saudi financing of terrorism if they involved
the Saudi royal family or their associates, including the bin
Laden family. Two of Osama’s brothers, who were associated
with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a suspected terrorist
organization, were able to slip out of the United States before the
9/11 attacks after agents were ordered to stay away from
them.327
If you recall, Bush Jr. earlier received bailouts in his failed
business endeavors through his bin Laden and Saudi
connections, one of whom was Khalid bin Mahfouz. One of
Saudi Arabia’s five wealthiest businessmen, Mahfouz diverted
over $3 million in pension funds to bank accounts linked to
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119
terrorism.328 Moreover, Bush Sr. continues to do business with
the bin Ladens through the Carlyle group, the massive but
largely unknown U.S. defense contractor.329 The bin Laden
family was a major investor in the Carlyle group until shortly
after 9/11. Since leaving office, Bush Sr. has been employed to
give speeches for Carlyle, which pays him $80,000 to $100,000
per speech. Bush Sr., along with former Secretary of State James
Baker and former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Carlyle’s
CEO), has visited the bin Laden family at their home in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, and called on Crown Prince Abdullah to discuss
Carlyle’s business interests.330
The FBI’s deputy director for counterterrorism, John O’Neill,
who was closing in on Osama bin Laden, quit in protest over the
Bush administration’s obstruction of his investigation. He
stated, “The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism
were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi
Arabia.” Tragically, O’Neill retired to become the World Trade
Center’s director of security and was killed in the 9/11 attack.331
More specifically, remember another clue–the gas pipeline
that Unocal and the Saudis wanted to build across Afghanistan.
It was terminated in 1998 because of the way the Taliban treated
their women and for other “business reasons,” back when
Clinton was sending cruise missiles to bin Laden in care of the
Taliban.332 Well, beginning in January 2001, things had changed:
an MBA was in charge of the White House, and he believed he
could do business with the Taliban.
The Administration commenced a series of meetings with the
Taliban. The objectives: to stabilize the country, establish a
coalition government, complete the Unocal pipeline, and have
the Taliban arrest and extradite bin Laden.333 The point of the
meetings was to convey to the Taliban that “if they did certain
things, then, gradually, they could win the jackpot, get
something in return from the international community.” The
meetings were intended to persuade the Taliban that once a
broader-based government (a coalition with the Northern
Alliance) was in place and the gas pipeline underway, there
would be billions of dollars in commissions, and the Taliban
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
120
would have its own resources.334 In other words, everything has
a price and everyone can be bought with money.
In March 2001, several Taliban officials, including Mullah
Omar’s personal advisor, came to Washington, D.C., where they
met with representatives of the CIA and the State Department.
The agenda included both the arrest and extradition of bin
Laden, as well as access to the Central Asian oil and gas reserves
by American oil companies. Subsequently, there were other
meetings outside the United States.335
In May 2001, Bush held out a carrot with his additional $43
million gift to the Taliban; however, in July 2001, during a
meeting in Berlin, the Bush administration arrogantly waved its
big stick. The Taliban were bluntly told, “Either you accept our
offer of a carpet of gold, or we will bury you under a carpet of
bombs.”
More diplomatically, the former U.S. ambassador to
Pakistan, Tom Simons, said, “either the Taliban behave as they
ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use
another option.”336 The other “option” was an open-ended
military operation from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This
was no idle threat. The Bush administration already had a war
plan in place to attack from the North in concert with Russia,
with Pakistan’s agreement and with logistical support from
India and Iran. General Franks had already visited Dushanbe,
Tajikistan on May 16, 2001; Army Rangers were training Special
Forces inside Kyrgyzstan; and 17,000 Russian troops were on
standby. The plan was to launch the attack before snow started
falling, no later than October 2001.337 The invasion was set: the
ultimatum had been given; all that was required was
provocation.
Although the Taliban walked out of the Berlin meeting after
the war threats, there was one further meeting in Islamabad,
Pakistan. In August 2001, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
for Central Asian Affairs, Christina Rocca, met with the Taliban
ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.338
Note that the emphasis had shifted from Clinton’s targeting
of bin Laden, and telling the Taliban to not assist him, to Bush’s
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targeting of the Taliban, telling them not to resist the pipeline,
and, by the way, to turn over bin Laden. This was essentially a
threat of war, not over terrorism but over oil. Unbelievable?
Perhaps a little more information will help you understand why
Bush’s Business Administration thought the payoff was worth
the risk.
We have to start with Vice President Dick Cheney, the man
who is just a beer and pretzel away from the presidency. After
he left government service with the first Bush administration,
Cheney was appointed as the CEO of the Halliburton
Corporation, a service firm that has worked the oil patch since
the dry hole was invented. With its subsidiaries, Halliburton
does just about every job connected with the production and
transportation of oil and gas, worldwide. Among its
subsidiaries is Bredero-Shaw, a Texas-based company that
provides anti-corrosion coatings for oil pipelines and which is a
joint partner of the Saudi bin-Laden Group, a pipeline
construction company owned by the bin Laden family.339
Other Halliburton foreign subsidiaries sold $23.8 million
(maybe as much as $73 million340) in oil field equipment to Iraq
in 1998 and 1999, even though U.S. oil companies were
prohibited from investing in or buying Iraqi oil, which is
probably why Cheney called for an end to the sanctions against
Iraq while he was still Halliburton’s CEO.341 Cheney has denied
any knowledge of these sales; however, Halliburton’s current
CEO stated that Cheney “unquestionably” knew.342 Cheney
received $162,392 in deferred salary from Halliburton in 2002,
and he continues to own 433,333 stock options in the company.
In a speech on June 23, 1998, Cheney proclaimed, “the good
Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are
democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States.
Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things
considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go
where the business is.” And the “business” that is at issue here
derives from the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Basin. In
1998, Cheney stated, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a
region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant
as the Caspian.”343
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
122
In 1999, Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act to assist
and support the “economic and political independence of the
countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.” Congress
noted that the region “could produce oil and gas in sufficient
quantities to reduce the dependence of the United States on
energy from the volatile Persian Gulf region” and that one of the
principal objectives was “to support United States business
interests and investments in the region.”344
The breakup of the USSR left a string of newly independent
nations arranged around and near the Caspian Sea and along the
southern border of Russia. These nations, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, have
vast oil and gas deposits. The problem is that these countries are
landlocked, and all of the existing pipelines run north into
Russia, which, while no longer a cold war enemy, is a competitor
in the worldwide energy business.
A 1997 study written by Zbigniew Brzezinski for the Council
on Foreign Relations noted that any nation becoming
predominant in Central Asia would pose a direct threat to U.S.
control of oil resources and that “it is imperative that no
Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and
thus of also challenging America. ... For America, the chief
geopolitical prize is Eurasia.”345
Cheney’s energy task force projected a doubling of the
United States’ consumption of fossil fuels over the next 25 years
and found that “A significant disruption in world oil supplies
could adversely affect our economy and our ability to promote
key foreign and economic policy objectives, regardless of the
level of U.S. dependence on oil imports.” With a projected
yearly drop in domestic crude oil production, the report predicts
the U.S. will become increasingly dependent upon imported oil,
with a corresponding doubling of imports over the same 25
years.346
Among the areas targeted by the plan was the Caspian
region with proven reserves of about 20 billion barrels of oil.
With the potential of 270 billion barrels, or almost one-fifth of the
world’s oil reserves, it also has natural gas potential of 665
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123
trillion cubic feet, almost one-eighth of the world’s gas reserves.
In 1997, all of this was estimated to be worth some $4 trillion.347
Development of the Caspian Basin became a priority of the
Bush administration and a foundation of Cheney’s energy
plan.348 In the early days of September 2001, the U.S. Energy
Information Administration confirmed Afghanistan’s strategic
“geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and
natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.”349
We have seen that Unocal was vitally interested in building
at least one pipeline across Afghanistan; however, it was not
alone in wanting to do business in the Caspian oil patch. In
1996, Enron signed a contract to explore gas fields in Uzbekistan,
to sell gas to Russia, and to link up with Unocal’s proposed
Afghanistan gas pipeline. In addition, Enron wanted to build a
gas pipeline north from its Dabhol generating plant in India to
connect with Unocal’s gas pipeline coming out of Afghanistan.
It badly needed the supply of cheap natural gas to prop up its
failing Dabhol operation.350
In 1998, Turkmenistan selected Enron to conduct a feasibility
study funded by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency for a
trans-Caspian gas pipeline, and in 1999, the country signed a
contract with Bechtel and GE Capital Services to build the
pipeline.351
While he was Halliburton’s CEO, Cheney also sat on
Kazakhstan’s oil advisory board and helped broker a deal
between that country and Chevron, at a time when Condoleezza
Rice was on its board of directors, for half ownership of the
Tengiz oil field. (We’ll later talk about a criminal bribery
investigation in this area.) Chevron and ExxonMobil are also
heavily invested in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas fields, and in 2001,
Halliburton signed a 12-year contract with Azerbaijan.
Because Azerbaijan has blockaded Armenia over the
disputed Nagorno-Karabakh area, Section 907 of the Freedom
Support Act adopted by Congress in 1992 prohibited the United
States from providing most forms of assistance to Azerbaijan.
However, after Bush met separately with the leaders of Armenia
and Azerbaijan in April and July 2001,352 and after Congress
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
124
granted Bush’s request post 9/11, he waived Section 907 and
extended $4.4 million in military assistance to Azerbaijan.353
Bush also met with Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the United
States.354
In November 2001, Bush proudly announced the opening of
a new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium: “The CPC
project also advances my Administration’s National Energy
Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian
pipelines.”355
Interestingly enough, John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice
President, testified before Congress on February 12, 1998, and
asked for the repeal or removal of Section 907. In addition to the
Afghanistan gas pipeline, he also discussed other proposed
pipeline projects involving American oil companies. One would
run west from the northern Caspian to the Black Sea and another
(to be built by Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and Pennzoil) would
either run to the Black Sea or to the Mediterranean port of
Ceyhan, Turkey. To accommodate the growing Asian energy
markets, Maresca proposed a pipeline through China and the
Afghanistan gas pipeline. In addition, Maresca discussed
another pipeline to gather oil from the existing pipeline
infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and
Russia, which would also run through Afghanistan to an export
terminal on the Pakistan coast. The 42-inch pipeline would have
a capacity of one million barrels of oil per day.
Maresca concluded, “We urge the Administration and the
Congress to give strong support to the U.N.-led peace process in
Afghanistan. ... U.S. assistance in developing these new
economies will be crucial to business success. ... Unocal and
other American companies like it are fully prepared to
undertake the job and to make Central Asia once again into the
crossroads it has been in the past.”356
When Unocal speaks, Bush listens. To more fully answer the
“Why” questions, we must continue to track Unocal’s demands
and Bush’s jumps. Immediately following the U.S. blitzkrieg in
Afghanistan, Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as his special
envoy to the country. Khalilzad was well informed about
Afghanistan’s oil issues because he and Henry Kissinger were
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125
originally employed by Unocal to arrange the details of its
Afghanistan pipeline. Yes, Henry “no conflict of interest”
Kissinger and his Associates, including the present Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Back in 1995, Kissinger had
helped put together the original pipeline deal between Unocal
and Turkmenistan, and he was present at the signing ceremony
in New York City.357 However, at that time, Afghanistan was
still in turmoil, and the Taliban needed a little help to capture
Kabul. Enter the CIA, arrange a visit by Saudi intelligence chief
Prince Turki to spread some Saudi petrodollars, and voilá!358
Khalilzad had served in Bush Sr.’s administration as a special
assistant to the president and as a senior Defense Department
official for policy planning. He was later employed as an
advisor to Unocal to draw up the risk analysis for its proposed
gas pipeline across Afghanistan, and to facilitate the talks
between Unocal and the Taliban in 1997. Prior to Khalilzad’s
appointment by Bush Jr. as his special envoy to Afghanistan,
Khalilzad worked for Condoleezza Rice in the National Security
Council and served as a counselor to Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld.359 (It’s a small, small world after all.)
Back in 1996, just after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban,
Unocal Vice President Chris Taggart described the takeover as a
“very positive step” and called for the United States to recognize
the Taliban. Shortly thereafter, Khalilzad wrote an article urging
the United States to work with the Taliban to form a broad-based
coalition government. He wrote “we should use as a positive
incentive the benefits that will accrue to Afghanistan from the
construction of oil and gas pipelines across its territory. ... These
projects will only go forward if Afghanistan has a single
authoritative government.”360 As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà
vu all over again.”
At about the same time that Bush was appointing Khalilzad
as his special envoy to Afghanistan, he also appointed another
former Unocal employee, Hamid Karzai, as Afghanistan’s
interim Prime Minister. Karzai had helped negotiate the
pipeline deal with the Taliban in 1997 on behalf of Unocal and
was closely associated with the CIA and its former director
William Casey.361
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
126
Karzai immediately set out to finish the job on behalf of his
former employers. On February 8, 2002, Karzai met with the
president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, who agreed to reinstate
the pipeline deal. He then met with President Saparmurat
Niyazov of Turkmenistan the next month to seal up the northern
end of the agreement. Niyazov stated the pipeline would allow
the export of his country’s vast natural gas resources, and he
hoped that peace in Afghanistan would allow the work to go
forward.362
With this agreement, Unocal may finally get to complete its
pipeline, but at what cost? Billions and billions of dollars and
thousands of lives? With this background information, we can
now begin to understand why Bush dilly-dallied around trying
to do business with the Taliban rather than stopping bin Laden.
We can better understand why he lied and denied, and perhaps
we are beginning to understand why Cheney refuses to turn
over documents relating to his energy task force.
Do you believe Bush acted in the best interests of the
American public, or did he act to defend oil company interests in
the Caspian Basin and the Afghanistan pipeline? You’re not
stupid! Get the truth.
209. Chomsky, Noam, 9-11 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001),
p. 67.
210. Ibid., pp. 44, 45.
211. Ibid., pp. 23, 73.
212. Ibid., p. 44.
213. Ahmed, op. cit. p. 22.
214. Ibid., pp. 176, 177, 191.
215. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 43.
216. Marshall, Andrew, “Terror ‘Blowback’ Burns CIA,”
The Independent, November 1, 1998, www.cooperativeresearch.org/
timeline/1990s/ independent110198.html.
217. Warrick, Joby and Joe Stephens, “Before Attack, U.S. Expected
Different Hit,” October 2, 2001, www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/
wp-dyn/A55607-2001Oct1/language=printer.
9/11:Who Knew What and When, and What, if Anything, did he do?
127
218. Williams, Dave, “The Bombing of the World Trade Center in New
York City,” 1998, www.interpol.int/Public/Publications/ICPR/
ICPR469_3.asp_38k_Jan2, 2004
219. Ibid.
220. Clarke, Richard A., Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on
Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 92.
221. Ibid., p. 97.
222. “Who is Ramzi Yousef?”
www.terrorismfiles.org/individuals/ramzi-yousef.html.
223. Waller, Douglas, “Inside The Hunt For Osama,” Time
December 21, 1998, www.time.com/time/magazine/
story/0,9171,1101981221-140773,00.html.
224. “Ramzi Yousef Gets 240 Years,” January 8, 1998,
www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=5.
225. “Afghanistan, Turkmenistan Oil and Gas, and the Projected
Pipeline,” October 21, 2001, http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/
~pdscott/q7.html; see also Cohn, Marjorie,
“The Deadly Pipeline War: US Afghan Policy Driven By Oil Interests,”
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1208-04.html.
226. Martin, Patrick, “Was the US government alerted to September 11
attack?” www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/sept-j16.shtml.
227. “U.S. Indicts Fourteen in Khobar Towers Bombing,” June 22, 2001,
http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=628.
228. Appleson, Gail, “US appeals court upholds cleric’s conviction,”
http://www.metimes.com/issue99-34/eg/us_appeals_court.html.
229. “Consortium formed to build Central Asia gas pipeline,” October
27, 1997, http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/97news/102797a.html.
230. “Family Affair: the Bushes and the Bin Ladens,”
www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html.
231. Clarke, op. cit., pp. 166-171.
232. “Pakistan hands over embassies bombing suspect to Kenya,”
August 16, 1998, www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9808/16/
embassy.bombings.
233. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 49; see also Riemer, Matthew, “The
Destruction Of The Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Company,” September 19,
2002, (http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=692).
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
128
234. Aita, Judy, “Bin Laden, Atef Indicted In U.S. Federal Court For
African Bombings,” November 4, 1998, usinfo.state.gov/topical/
pol/terror/98110402.html.
235. Gellman, Barton, “Broad Effort Launched After ‘98 Attacks,”
Washington Post, December 19, 2001, www.washingtonpost.com/
ac2/wp-dyn/A62725-2001Dec18?language=printer.
236. “Unocal statement on withdrawal from the proposed Central Asia
Gas (CentGas) pipeline project,” December 10, 1998,
http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/centgas.html.
237. Al-Issawi, Tarek, “Saudi Arabia severs ties with Afghanistan’s
Taliban,” September 25, 2001, www.timesargus.com/Archive/
Articles/Article/34434.
238. Gellman, op. cit.
239. Solomon, John, “1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack,”
Associated Press, May 17, 2002, www.commondreams.org/
cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines02/0517-06.htm.
240. “Interview: Richard Clarke,” Guardian, March 23, 2004,
www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1175817,00.html.
241. Clarke, op. cit., pp. 205, 211-212.
242. Martin, op. cit.
243. “Attack on the USS Cole,” The History Guy,
http://www.historyguy.com/uss_cole.htm.
244. Bernton, Hal, Mike Carter, David Heath and James Neff,
“The Past is Prologue,” The Seattle Times, June 23 - July 7, 2002,
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/nationworld/
terroristwithin/chapter1.html.
245. Franken, op. cit., pp. 107, 110.
246. Moore, Bush’s War for Reelection, op. cit., pp. 16, 17.
247. “9-11 Commission, Attack Was Preventable,”
www.dailykos.com/comments/2003/12/18/03850/244/27.
248. Clarke, op. cit., p. 225.
249. Ibid., p. 231.
250. Ferullo, Mike, “Rumsfeld urges missile defense system during
confirmation hearing,” January 11, 2001, www.cnn.com/2001/
ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/11/rumsfeld.hearing?
251. “Statement by Robert D. Walpole, National Intelligence Officer
for Strategic and Nuclear Programs,” February 9, 2000,
http://www.clw.org/coalition/walpole020900.htm.
9/11:Who Knew What and When, and What, if Anything, did he do?
129
252. Leopold, Jason, “CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before
9/11 Said Iraq Posed No Threat To U.S., Containment Was Working,
June 27, 2003, www.scoop.co.nz/mason/storiesHL0306/S00211.htm.
253. Franken, op. cit., p. 117.
254. Ibid., p. 118.
255. Clarke, op. cit., p. 231.
256. Ibid., p. 236.
257. Corn, op. cit., p. 126.
258. Franken, op. cit., p. 118.
259. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 106.
260. “Foreign Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration,
June 7, 2001, Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/pub5161/
condoleezza_rice/foreign_policy_priorities_and_challenges_
of_the_administration.php.
261. Frankel, op. cit., p. 118.
262. Flocco, Tom, “Bush May Invoke 9/11 Executive Privilege and
Secrecy,” www.tomflocco.com.
263. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 114.
264. Ibid., pp. 88, 90.
265. Corn, op. cit., p. 142.
266. Ahmed, op. cit., pp. 106-113; see also Davis, Walter E.,
“September 11th and The Bush Administration: Compelling Evidence
for Complicity,” 2003, (www.yuricareport.com/911/
davis_compellingEvidenceForComplicity.ltme).
267. Ahmed, op. cit., pp. 207-209.
268. Franken, op. cit., p. 119.
269. Ibid., pp. 119, 120.
270. Jehl, Douglas and David E. Sanger, “Pre-9/11 Secret Briefing Said
That Qaeda Was Active in U.S.,” The New York Times, April 11, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/politics/11NTE.html.
271. “Bush Contradicts Self At His Own Press Conference,” April 14,
2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2323986&1=28723.
272. Franken, op. cit., p. 120.
273. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 114.
274. Milbank, Dana, “FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11:Request for New
Counterterror Funds Cut by Two-Thirds,” Washington Post, March 22,
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130
2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13541-
2004Mar21?language=printer.
275. Shenon, Philip and Lowell Bergman, “9/11 Panel Is Said to Offer
Harsh Review of Ashcroft,” The New York Times, April 13, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13PANE.html.
276. Franken, op. cit., p. 121; see also Ahmed, op. cit., pp. 93-95.
277. Ahmed, op. cit., pp. 95, 96.
278. Ibid., pp. 218, 219, 224.
279. Franken, op. cit., p. 121.
280. Ibid., p. 121.
281. Ibid., pp. 121, 122.
282. Clarke, op. cit., p. 237.
283. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 116.
284. Kellner, op. cit., p. 9; see also Johnson, David and Eric Schmitt,
“Uneven Response Seen on Terror in Summer of 2001,” The New York
Times, April 4, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/politics/
04SUMM.html.
285. Wood, Allan and Paul Thompson, “It was an interesting day,”
www.talkleft.com/archives/003127.html.
286. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 89.
287. Harpter, Tim, “Ex-FBI worker challenges 9/11 ‘lie,’” Toronto Star,
April 5, 2004, www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1081
116611085&call_pageid=968332188854.
288. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 117.
289. Franken, op. cit., pp. 121, 122.
290. Milbank, Dana, op. cit.
291. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 125.
292. Ibid.
293. Wood, op. cit.
294. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 96.
295. IrvingShapiro.tripod.com/cgi.bin/flight_93/bush.html.
296. Alterman, Eric, “9/11/01: Where Was George?”
www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20031006&s=alterman.
297. Ibid.
298. Kellner, op. cit., p. 77.
9/11:Who Knew What and When, and What, if Anything, did he do?
131
299. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 184.
300. Ibid., p. 99.
301. Ibid., p. 226.
302. Flocco, op. cit.
303. Cornwell, Susan, “Daschle: Bush, Cheney Urged No Sept. 11
Inquiry,” May 26, 2002, www.newsfrombabylon.com/
article.php?sid=1680.
304. “White House ‘not warned of attacks,’” BBC News, May 17, 2002,
news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_19910000/
1991689.stm.
305. Eggen, Dan and Bill Miller, “Bush Was Told of Hijacking
Dangers,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2002,
www.washingtonpost.com.
306. “White House ‘not warned of attacks,’” BBC News, op. cit.
307. Kellner, op. cit., p. 238.
308. “Bush defends his actions before 9/11,” USA Today, May 17, 2002,
www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/05/17/bushdefense.
html.
309. “Coleen Rowley’s Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller,” May 21,
2002, www.zpub.com/notes/rowleymemo.html.
310. Corn, op. cit., p. 143.
311. Isikoff, Michael and Mark Hosenball, “The Secrets of September
11,” Newsweek, April 30, 2003, www.truthout.org/docs_03/
050203B.shtml.
312. Dean, John W., “The 9/11 Report Raises More Serious Questions,”
July 29, 2003, www.yuricareport.com.
313. “Commission in a hurry,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 28,
2003, http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/oct03/180742.asp.
314. Corn, David, “Kissinger’s Back ... As 9/11 Truth-Seeker,”
The Nation, November 27, 2002, www.thenation.com/capitalgames/
index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=176.
315. Grigg, William Norman, “Kean Steps in for Kissinger,”
The New American, January 13, 2003, www.thenewamerican.com/
tna/2003/01-13-2003/vo19no01_kean.html.
316. Alterman and Green, op. cit., p. 223.
317. Boehlert, Eric, “Is the 9/11 commission too soft?” October 10, 2003,
www.voicesofsept11.org/news/101003.php.
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132
318. Ibid.
319. Shenon, Phil, “White House Faces Subpoena Threat,”
International Herald Tribune, October 27, 2003, www.iht.com.
320. Shenon, Philip, “Panel Subpoenas Pentagon on 9/11,” New York
Times, November 8, 2003, www.twincities.com/mld/PioneerPress.
321. “The Daily Briefing: October 27,”
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20031027122859-17777.asp.
322. Harper, Tim, “What Did Bush Know Before 9/11?” November 4,
2003, www.commondreams.org; see also Shenon, Philip, “9/11
Commission ‘Deal’ With White House,” November 14, 2003,
(www.vermontindymedia.org/newswire/display/1832/indexphp).
323. Clarke, op. cit., pp. ix, x.
324. Shenon, Philip, “Members of the 9/11 Commission Press Rice on
Early Warnings,” The New York Times, April 9, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/politics/09PANE.html.
325. Shenon, Philip and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush Allows Rice To
Testify on 9/11 in a Public Session,” The New York Times, March 31,
2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/31PANE.html.
326. “Bush, Clinton differ on security issue before 9/11 panel,”
The Hindu, May 3, 2004, www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/
003200405031072.htm.
327. Palast, op. cit., pp. 96, 97.
328. “Family Affair: the Bushes and the Bin Ladens,”
www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html.
329. Palast, op. cit., p. 104.
330. Kellner, op. cit., pp. 36, 37, 119; see also Ahmed, op. cit.,
pp.180-183; see also Rampton, Sheldon and John C. Stauber,
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq
(New York: J.P. Tarcher, 2003), pp. 106, 107.
331. Rosebraugh, Craig, “Don’t Mess with Unocal: The war against
terrorism may really be a battle over oil,” Toward Freedom,
January 2002.
332. “Unocal statement on withdrawal from the proposed Central Asia
Gas (CentGas) pipeline project,” December 10, 1998,
http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/centgas.html.
333. Godoy, Julio, “U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil -
Authors,” November 15, 2001, www.truthout.org/docs_01/
11.17A.oil.taliban.html.
9/11:Who Knew What and When, and What, if Anything, did he do?
133
334. “Al-Qaeda monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban over oil
pipeline,” June 5, 2002, www.salon.com/news/feature/
2002/06/05/memo/index_np.html.
335. Steele, Jonathan, et. al., “Special Report: Pakistan,” September 22,
2001, www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Artilce/0,4273,4262511,00.html.
336. Godoy, op. cit.
337. Ahmed, op. cit., pp. 58-61.
338. Godoy, op. cit.
339. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 187.
340. “Halliburton Iraq ties more than Cheney said,” June 25, 2001,
NewsMax.com.
341. Solomon, Norman and Reese Erlich, Target Iraq: What the News
Media Didn’t Tell You (New York: Context Books, 2003), p. 110.
342. Kellner, op. cit., p. 251.
343. Cohn, Marjorie, “The Deadly Pipeline War: US Afghan Policy
Driven By Oil Interests,” www.commondreams.org/views01/
1208-04.html.
344. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 70.
345. Ibid., p. 73-77.
346. “U.S. Department of Energy Plans an Accelerated Dependence
Upon Foreign Petroleum Sources,”
www.rainbow.net/ongwhehonwhe/energy/poli.html.
347. Kellner, op. cit., p. 37.
348. Aslam, Abid, “Bush-Cheney Energy Plan Bears Watching,” July
2001, www.fpif.org/commentary/2001/0107energy_body.html.
349. Cohn, op. cit.
350. Neville, Harry, “Bush’s Homeland Security Pipeline,” March 29,
2002, www.buzzflash.com/contributors/
2002/03/29_homeland_security_pipeline.html.
351. “How Much Were Bush and Cheney Involved?”
www.alternet.org/letters_ed.html.
352. Aslam, op. cit.
353. “Section 907 of The Freedom Support act,” April 12, 2002,
www.aaainc.org/press/section907.pdf.
354. Neville, op. cit.
355. Ahmed, op. cit., p. 259.
You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth
134
356. “It’s All About Oil!” www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html.
357. “Kissinger, Unocal, Enron and Cheney,” December 3, 2002,
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/kissingerunocal.html.
358. “Afghanistan, Turkmenistan Oil and Gas, and the Projected
Pipeline,” October 21, 2001, (http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/
~pdscott/q7.html); see also Cohn, op. cit.
359. www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/zalmay-khalilzad.
360. “Al-Qaeda monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban over oil
pipeline,” June 5, 2002, (www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/05/
memo/index_np.html); see also Martin, Patrick, “USA: Unocal
Advisor Named Representative to Afghanistan,” January 3, 2002,
(http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=1149).
361. Madsen, Wayne, “Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil
Team,” 2002, http://www.globalresearch.ca/article/MAD201.A.html.
362. “Agreement On US 3.2 Billion Gas Pipeline Project Signed,”
December 28, 2002, www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.30A.afgh.pipe.htm;
see also Yant, Martin, “Enron played key role in events presaging war,”
Columbus Free Press, April 10, 2002, (www.freepress.org/journal.php?
strFunc=display&strID=54&strJournal=10).