'Fight Smart' - 11 March 2007

Don't Take the Bait - Fight Smart
ANIMATED 911 SUMMARY - CLICK HERE
Who is the enemy?

Rogue State Britain
UK Intercepts Commissioner
Wants State To Have Power To Phone Tap MPs
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATSurvSocTapping.htm
Security 'Needs' Of The Phantom 'War On Terror'
Being Lined Up As Trojan Horse

Bedroom Political Electronic Surveillance In Totalitarian East Germany As Featured In 'The Lives Of Others' Sony Pictures, 2006

"Britain's wiretapping watchdog urged Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday to scrap a decades-old law protecting lawmakers from eavesdropping, while at the same time revealing a number of mistakes by authorities who intercept data. Blair should scrap the convention known as the Wilson Doctrine, which forbids British intelligence agencies from monitoring phone calls, e-mails or letters involving lawmakers, said Interception of Communications Commissioner Swinton Thomas. The policy — introduced by Prime Minster Harold Wilson in 1966 — protects lawmakers in both the House of Commons and House of Lords from communications surveillance."
Wiretap commissioner urged British government to end exemption for lawmakers
Associated Press, 19 February 2007

"Harold Wilson's belief that he was the victim of a secret service plot to discredit him is well documented.... The then BBC journalist Barrie Penrose has outlined some of the detail of the new evidence in an article in this week's Radio Times.... Wilson told the journalists they 'should investigate the forces that are threatening democratic countries like Britain'.....Wilson went on to tell them about his distrust of a group of MI5 officers, who he said were trying to smear him by planting stories in the press about him being an adulterer and a Communist spy..... Penrose concludes his Radio Times article: 'You may ask, at the end of the programme, how much of it can be believed. My view now, as it was then, is that Wilson was right in his fears.... in answer to the question 'how close did we come to a military government'.  I can only say - closer than we'd ever be content to think.'"
Wilson 'plot': The secret tapes
BBC Online, 9 March 2006

"The resignation of Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, due to revelations published in the News of the World tabloid should give people who are thinking about amending the 'Wilson Doctrine' administrative ban on the interception of the phone calls of Members of Parliament , plenty to consider. How can the public be sure that if Members of Parliament (and therefore also their Constituents) are put under electronic surveillance for 'security' purposes, that information on scandalous, though not illegal activities such as this, which would have been gleaned in the this case, could not have been used for political purposes by those in power ? Will the Liberal Democrats still be united in their opposition to the Identity Cards Bill and the Terrorism Bill etc. after the resignations of Charles Kennedy and Mark Oaten ?"
Mark Oaten scandal and the Wilson Doctrine
Spyblog, 22 January 2006

"The Government was hit by a second legal marital scandal last night after it was revealed that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had an affair with Britain's leading Asian woman barrister. Cabinet Minister Lord Goldsmith, who is in charge of prosecutions ... is Tony Blair's senior legal adviser.... Lord Goldsmith's office declined to say whether it was going on during one of the biggest crises since Tony Blair took office when Lord Goldsmith changed his mind on the legal advice on the Iraq war. Having warned that the war could be illegal, he altered his opinion days before the conflict in 2003 under massive pressure from Downing Street. If it emerges that the affair was taking place at this time, it could prompt claims that his mind was on other matters or that he was more susceptible to pressure."
Another law chief admits affair with barrister
Evening Standard, 21 February 2007

"Sir Swinton said that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been under extreme pressure, and that crucial evidence had been uncovered from intercepts in the case of the July 7 suicide bombers."
Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000
London Times, 20 February 2007

"Sir Swinton explained intercept evidence is invaluable in combating terrorism..."
MPs 'above the law' with phone-taps
Politics.co.uk, 20 February 2007

"The failure of Messrs Bush and Blair and the neo-cons to understand Arab grievances has been translated into a 'clash of civilisations' and a threat to Western values 'by people determined to destroy our way of life', as the Prime Minister put it. But there is no clash of civilisations unless we are determined to create one. We are not going to live under a universal caliphate. Osama bin Laden and his gangsters have not the faintest chance of destroying our way of life, unless we do so ourselves..... " Lord Norman Lamont, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1990-93 America and Britain should quit Iraq as soon as possible Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2006

"Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people’s telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday. In the first report of its kind from the Interceptions of Communications Commissioner, it was also revealed that nearly 4,000 errors were reported in a 15-month period from 2005 to 2006. ..... He said it was time to lift a ban on tapping the phones of MPs and peers....."
Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000
London Times, 20 February 2007

"Anybody who objects to their personal details going on the new 'Big Brother' ID cards database will be banned from having a passport. James Hall, the official in charge of the supposedly-voluntary scheme, said the Government would allow people to opt out - but in return they must 'forgo the ability' to have a travel document. With one in every eight people saying they will refuse to sign-up, up to five million adults could effectively be refused permission to leave the country. .... The first ID cards will be issued in 2009, to anybody who applies for a passport. People will be required to give fingerprints, biometric details such as a facial scan and a wealth of personal details - including second homes, driving licence and insurance numbers. All will be stored on a giant ID cards Register, which can be accessed by accredited Whitehall departments, banks and businesses. While The ID Cards Bill was going through Parliament, peers agreed an 'opt out' with Ministers for people who needed a passport, but did not want to participate in the ID cards scheme. It was the only way the Lords would accept the legislation, amid howls of concern that it represents yet another move towards a surveillance society. But, as Mr Hall's comments this week make clear, the opt-out only applies to being physically issued with a card. In order to get a passport, people will still have to hand over all their personal details for storage on the ID cards Register - where they will be treated in the same was as those who agreed to sign-up.... It means that, despite the Government repeatedly insisting the scheme is voluntary, the only way to avoid signing-up is to never obtain or renew a passport.... Mr Booth said legal challenges were inevitable, as restricting the right of free movement is a grave breach of human rights law."
Don't like ID cards? Hand over your passport
Daily Mail, 9 March 2007

"There is no 'war on terror' on the streets of Britain, the country’s most senior criminal prosecutor said yesterday. Those responsible for atrocities like the July 7 bombings in London were not 'soldiers' in a war, but 'deluded, narcissistic inadequates' who should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, added. He gave warning against allowing the threat of terrorism to trigger a 'fear-driven and inappropriate' security response which damaged Britain’s traditions of freedom. Sir Ken’s comments to the Criminal Bar Association put him at odds with Tony Blair and the Home Secretary, John Reid, who have justified tighter security laws on the grounds of the threat posed to Britain by a new kind of terror. Instead of viewing the problem of terrorism as a 'war' threatening the very life of the nation, it should be dealt with as an issue of law enforcement, added Sir Ken, who leads prosecutors in England and Wales as head of the Crown Prosecution Service. One of the 'primary purposes' of the violent attacks carried out by supporters of international Islamist terror was to tempt countries like Britain to 'abandon our values'. He made clear his concern over the threat to civil liberties from repressive legislation introduced in response to a perceived terrorism emergency."
There is no war on terror in the UK, says DPP
London Times, 24 January 2007

In This Bulletin

Protecting 'Our Values' In Rogue State Britain Land Of The Phantom 'War On Terror'

The Phantom 'War On Terror' Timeline

The Post 9/11 Game That Is Being Played By The People Who Want The Right To Tap MPs Phones

'There Is No War On Terror' The 'War On Terror' Is A Geopolitical Scam

Surveillance Society - 'Your Papers Please' The War Is On Us

Challenging The 'Wilson Doctrine' With The East German And US Surveillance Models

All Especially 'Justified' Because Of What? Defending 'Our Values' In The Phantom 'War On Terror'

Our 'Values' 'Gang Culture' And 'Gun Crime' - New Labour, New Weapons

'Arms To Iraq' British Intelligence And The Astra Scandal

'It's The Oil Stupid'
What The Phantom 'War On Terror' Is Really About
Yes, Forget The Iranian Nuclear Question - Here's What Dick Cheney Says Is Really At Stake

Deja Vue

"Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that oil was one of the reasons for the US-led invasion of Iraq, a Swedish news agency reports. 'I did not think so at first. But the US is incredibly dependent on oil,' news agency TT quoted Blix as saying at a security seminar in Stockholm. 'They wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too hard.' Blix, who helped oversee the dismantling of Iraq's weapons programs before the war, said another reason for the invasion was a need to move US troops from Saudi Arabia, TT reported. Competition over oil is creating tension between the United States and China, Blix said........."
Blix says war motivated by oil
Australian Associated Press, 7 April 2005

'Fight Smart' - 16 March 2006 America's Battle Against China For Control Of Persian Gulf And Caspian Energy Resources www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATUSvChina.htm Iran And Syria Next In Firing Line In Global Energy War

The War On Terror Is A Geopolitical Scam

"New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the 'single most explosive' element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups. Hersh says the U.S. has been 'pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight' for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to 'stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.' Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of 'three Sunni jihadist groups' who are 'connected to al Qaeda' but 'want to take on Hezbollah.' Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: 'We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.'..... [Hersh said] 'Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money, for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the - we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.'"
Hersh: Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups
ThinkProgress.com, 25 February 2007

To View Hersh Talking About This On CNN - Click Here
To Read Extracts From His Report In The New Yorker - Click Here

"The People’s Mujahidin is seen by Washington as a possible instrument for 'regime change' in Tehran....The Marxist movement, which initially supported the Islamic revolution and then broke with the fundamentalist regime, was formally designated last year as 'terrorist' by the State Department and the EU but it is known to have links with the CIA and other US agencies."
France rounds up US-linked Iranian exiles
London Times, 16 June 2003

"Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers 'would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,' the Florida Democrat wrote. And in Graham's book, 'Intelligence Matters,' obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees. Graham also disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against Al Qaeda terrorism. He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Representative Porter Goss. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers. Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government."
9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book
Boston Globe, 5 September 2004

A Very Big Scam

"A lone U.S. ambassador compromised America's hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan for more than two years, The New York Sun has learned. Ambassador Nancy Powell, America's representative in Pakistan, refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America's $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. Instead, thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material - printed at taxpayer expense and translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages - remained 'impounded' on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois...... Mr. Kirk [a US congressman] discovered Ms. Powell's unusual order in January 2004 and, over the past year, launched a series of behind-the-scenes moves that culminated in a blunt conversation with President Bush aboard Air Force One, the removal of the ambassador, and congressional approval for reinvigorating the hunt for Mr. bin Laden......Mr. Kirk accidentally learned of Ms. Powell's impoundment policy as part of an official congressional delegation visiting Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in January 2004...... Security personel [at the Embassy] were unhappy with the decision, according to the congressman. 'There was a lot of discord among the staff,' he said...... Ms. Powell, now serving at the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington D.C., declined to comment directly....... The senior State Department official denied that Ms. Powell had restricted the distribution of materials touting the reward for Mr. bin Laden and other 'high value targets.' That program - known as Rewards for Justice - was discontinued in Pakistan prior to Ms. Powell's 2002 arrival because it was 'ineffective,' the senior official said. At the time, the Rewards for Justice program was widely used by other American embassies farther from the center of America's operations to kill or capture key Al Qaeda leaders. A career State Department functionary, Ms. Powell was sworn in as American ambassador to Pakistan on August 9, 2002. ......... In February 2004, he met with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Then, he began raising the issue with a growing array of White House officials. When Mr. Bush asked the congressman to join him aboard Air Force One for a campaign stop in Mr. Kirk's suburban Chicago district in July 2004, the lawmaker saw his chance. He told the president about his ambassador impounding materials that could lead to the capture of Mr. bin Laden. 'Bush was very cautious,' Mr. Kirk recalled. The president did not betray an immediate response. 'When one of his people is concerned, he likes to take his time and investigate.' Ms. Powell left her post as American ambassador in November 2004. State Department spokesman Noel Clay declined to comment on the timing of ambassadorial rotations.......The American Embassy in Islamabad now boasts a 24-hour call center to receive tips. ...... About 25 calls were received in February 2005, the center's first full month of operation. Congress recently passed legislation raising the reward for information on Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members to $50 million and revamping the Rewards for Justice Program. More than $57 million has been paid to 43 people who provided credible information about the whereabouts of known terrorists since the program's founding in 1984. But little has been paid since the September 11, 2001, attacks..........The American Embassy in Islamabad's Rewards for Justice program is now in high gear. Yet, if Mr. Kirk and some intelligence officials are correct, valuable time was lost."
How a Lone Diplomat Compromised the Hunt for Bin Laden
New York Sun, 28 March 2005

"Television ads promising that fortune in return for bin Laden ran on two Pakistani stations last weekend, and will run regularly on Pakistan's biggest station starting Tuesday. And last month, newspaper ads appeared for the first time in the country's major cities featuring the faces of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and other top al-Qaida lieutenants. The ads are the result of legislation written by U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and pushed into law late last year by fellow Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee. The two took action after learning that little had been done since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to publicize the rewards program aimed at capturing al-Qaida's leaders where they are believed to be hiding. Kirk, who in late January returned from a trip to the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, remembers the moment he realized the trail to bin Laden had gone cold, he said. On a trip to Islamabad in January 2004, he visited the U.S. Embassy and asked then-Ambassador Nancy Powell who was overseeing the publicity surrounding the rewards program. 'The ambassador said, `I don't know who is working the rewards program,' which was stunning to me,' Kirk said. On the same trip, Kirk and a senior staff member on the International Relations Committee noticed boxes of matchbooks with information about the rewards gathering dust in the basement of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. There were no radio ads about the program, even on the Voice of America station where they cost the government nothing, said the staff member, who asked not to be named. 'We came back saying, 'What a disaster,' ' he said. A State Department spokesman had no comment on why the rewards program was not being publicized in Pakistan or Afghanistan in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, but he said the department's approach has changed."
U.S. ad blitz targets bin Laden
Illinois lawmakers push $25 million bounty in Pakistan
Chicago Tribune Review, 12 February 2005

"We were attacked by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda [on 9/11]. What are we doing in Iraq? On Sept. 14, 2001, in a widely hailed appearance amid the still-smoking rubble of ground zero in Lower Manhattan, President Bush told rescue workers that 'the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.' He was answered with chants of, 'U.S.A.! U.S.A.!' But the administration's eye was already on Iraq. That's the war the president and his cronies wanted. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Iraq is where the bulk of our combat forces and most of the money and other resources would be committed. It seems incredible, but the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda - a wholly justified war against an enemy that had killed more than 3,000 Americans - was given short shrift. If you want a sense of this administration's priorities, and the tragic gap between the president's rhetoric and reality, think Tora Bora. Mr. Bush got a lot of attention with his Hollywood cowboy proclamation that he wanted bin Laden dead or alive. He had his chance. In December 2001, bin Laden was trapped in his mountainous hideout in Tora Bora, in eastern Afghanistan. You might have thought that Mr. Bush, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, would have used all the forces at his disposal to capture or kill the man responsible for the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. But if you thought that, you would have been wrong. Americans bombarded Tora Bora. But the all-important effort on the ground to surround and close in on bin Laden and his forces was contracted out by the administration to a clownish, quarrelsome group of Afghan thugs and miscreants. When a Marine general all but begged to be allowed to bring his men in to do the job, he was turned down. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan and hundreds of his followers scattered. The man Mr. Bush really wanted was Saddam Hussein. And he pulled out all the stops to get him. It is time for the American people to wise up. From the very beginning, the so-called war on terror was viewed by the Bush crowd as a magical smoke screen, a political gift from the gods that could be endlessly manipulated to justify all kinds of policies and behavior — including the senseless war in Iraq — that otherwise would never have been tolerated by the American people.... fear, and the patriotism felt by so many millions of Americans, have been systematically exploited by the administration. The invasion of Iraq was not about terror. It was about oil and schoolboy fantasies of empire and whatever weird oedipal dynamics were at work in the Bush family.... All of this should be kept in mind as we consider the fact that the administration that once had its hostile eye on Iraq now has it trained like a laser on Iran."
The Fear Factor
New York Times, 17 April 2006

"On the pretext of fighting international terrorism the United States is trying to establish control over the world’s richest oil reserves, Leonid Shebarshin, ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, who heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said in an interview for the Vremya Novostei newspaper.  Using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their 'democratic order' on the Greater Middle East, Shebarshin said. 'The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,' Shebarshin said.  Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: 'We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion. The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions,'  Shebarshin emphasized.  With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region — one of the world’s largest oil reservoirs."
U.S. Using Anti-Terror War to Gain World Oil Reserves — Soviet Intelligence Chief
Moscow News, 21 March 2005

"But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror.
Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden."
George W. Bush
Presidential Election Debate Against John Kerry, University of Miami
Transcript, Washington Post, 30 September 2004

Still An Issue Above, 9/11 placard at a Presidential hopeful Barack Obama campaign rally Austin, Texas, 23 February 2007 A New York Times/CBS Poll published October 2006 found that only 16 per cent of Americans believe the US government is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The Bush administration had warnings from at least 11 countries in advance which are not discussed in the official 9/11 report, including from Russia and Israel. "So many countries warned the US: Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, and Russia. Yet the two countries in the best position to know about the 9/11 plot—Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—apparently didn’t give any warning at all." They Tried to Warn Us: Foreign Intelligence Warnings Before 9/11 Cooperative Research, 30 January 2003 "Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. We had such facts too.  As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up [in our fighter aircraft]." Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12 September 2001 "'What's strange to me about these statements to the press on the ABC News special [which aired on September 11, 2002] and many other places is, you know, a year later and beyond, you have Cheney, Rove, Andrew Card, and you have military people continuing to talk about the fact that they were watching United 93 - they were deliberating,' [Michael] Bronner [of Vanity Fair] said. 'The reality is........there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes.'" New 9/11 Audiotapes Reveal U.S. Military's Information Breakdown ABC News, 2 August 2006 What Really Happened To The US Air Force On 9/11 - Click Here "This documentary produced by the BBC offers a revisionist look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it raises some tantalizing questions. It makes the incredibly serious and controversial claim that the U.S. government had definitive knowledge of the imminent Japanese attack, yet Franklin D. Roosevelt and other American leaders deliberately sacrificed Americans lives so they would have an excuse to enter World War II.... In this authoritative and suspenseful documentary, the BBC takes you inside the secret activities of the Americans, the British and the Japanese as each nation moved fatefully toward the 'date that will live in infamy'." 'Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor' BBC Warner - VHS Release Date: April 24, 2001 Amazon.com Senior US Military, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials who Question the 9/11 Commission Report - Click Here

"As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001: They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and 'sounded the loudest warning' to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden. Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, 'They felt the brushoff.' If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. ... According to Woodward’s book, Cofer Black exonerates them all this way: 'Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.' The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd. At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot."
Peter Rundlet, Counsel for the 9/11 Commission
Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission
Think Progress, 30 September 2006

Protecting 'Our Values' In Rogue State Britain
Land Of The Phantom 'War On Terror'

"It has been another awful week for Tony Blair, perhaps even worse than the mid-summer meltdown triggered by his fatally misjudged support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. First there was the craven surrender to Saudi Arabia’s demand for the suspension of Britain’s anti-corruption laws if they impinge on the personal finances of Saudi princes.... Mr Blair’s identification of Iran as the source of the 'ideological battle' that would dominate the 21st century came less than a week after his very personal interaction with the country that really is the financial and spiritual homeland of al-Qaeda, the 9/11 terrorists and the majority of foreign insurgents fighting in Iraq. This country is, of course, Saudi Arabia. That Saudi Arabia remains deeply involved in the terrorist nexus was implicitly acknowledged by Mr Blair himself when he declared last week that Britain would face a greater risk of terrorist attack if the Saudi Government withdrew its security co-operation. That the Saudi Government has made its security co-operation conditional on Mr Blair blocking any further investigations into the sweeteners paid to Saudi princes by British companies shows the shallowness of the country’s supposed commitment to the War on Terror...."
You're attacking the wrong nation, Mr Blair
London Times, 21 December 2006

"We found that there was compelling evidence that the Saudis played an active role in assisting two of the terrorists in Southern California, including being the means of substantial funding for those two terrorists."
Interview with Bob Graham, former chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee
MotherJones.com, 23 November 2004

"Last week the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, met the US president, George Bush, in Washington for emergency talks. It is believed a congressional investigation into the September 11 2001 attacks implicates the Saudi government in financing the hijackers. Bush has refused to publish the relevant 28 pages of the report, while Riyadh has angrily dismissed allegations that have not yet been officially levelled... Britain has kept an investigation about arms sales to Saudi Arabia secret for more than 10 years, without so much as a whimper of protest from the Saudis. Following allegations of corruption in massive arms deals between Saudi Arabia and Britain in the 1980s, the national audit office (NAO) launched an investigation in 1989. The resulting report remains the only NAO document never to have been published, despite promises to release it by New Labour while in opposition. That may be about to change. In his book Investigative Reporting: A Guide to Techniques, David Spark writes that uncovering the truth about alleged corruption and the Al Yamamah arms deal is the holy grail of investigative journalists.... In October 1994, MP Tam Dalyell submitted documents to parliament that he claimed proved Mark Thatcher was also involved. The same month, the Financial Times revealed the PAC had decided not to investigate allegations that Thatcher Jr had received up to £12m from the deal. There was no mention of Mark Thatcher in the report - it was beyond the committee's remit - and Sir Mark has always denied receiving this payment or exploiting his mother's connections in his business dealings. If the Britain's relationship with the US is special, then our relationship with Saudi Arabia is staggering. The kingdom is a non-democratic state where last year 'gross human rights violations continued', according to Amnesty International in their latest human rights report. Torture and ill-treatment remain rife, and executions are still meted out for 'crimes' such as being gay, or for protesting against the closure of a mosque.... According to the Labour government's own figures, in 2001 Britain authorised £20.5m worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Last year, the figure rose to £29m. Oil sales, arms sales and the kingdom's strategic position in the Middle East clearly take precedence over our government's policies towards non-democratic, corrupt and human rights abusing states.... Along with other questionable regimes, such as Indonesia, Colombia and Syria, the Saudi's were invited to shop for arms at the Defence Systems Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in both 1999 and 2001. The Ministry of Defence refused last week to say if they were invited this year, but if the last few years are anything to go by, the Saudi's will shop for arms at London Docklands over the week of 11 September. The rest of the world will be remembering the terrorist attacks of two years before, attacks it appears the US secret document will reveal could have been partly financed by the Saudi government."
Out of arms way
Guardian, 8 August 2003

Protecting 'Our Values' In Rogue State Britain Land Of The Phantom 'War On Terror' Oh Really? "The Security Service did not know that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had an extra-marital affair with a leading barrister. Details of the affair, of which the Prime Minister also claimed to be ignorant, immediately raised concerns over the potential threat to national security due to the highly sensitive nature of the Attorney General's position. Whitehall sources have admitted that MI5, the organisation responsible for Britain's national security, had no knowledge of Lord Goldsmith's affair with QC Kim Hollis.... Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security, claimed it was the responsibility of MI5 to know about the private lives of Cabinet ministers. He said: 'This is absolutely a matter for MI5. The Attorney General deals with top secret matters on a day-to-day basis. He has access to Cabinet briefings and top secret Government papers. His actions could easily have led to him being blackmailed, and that is a security matter.' Crispin Black, a former Army intelligence officer, said: 'The Security Service has a standing instruction to be aware of any difficulties in the lives of prominent politicians. It is not designed to be intrusive and is entirely protective. MI5 is a clearing house for gossip and information, so it beggars belief that they didn't know the Attorney General was having an affair." Spies oblivious to Attorney General's affair Sunday Telegraph, 25 February 2007 In the run up to the Iraq war the United States sought the support of British Intelligence in a bid to tap the phones of Security Council delegations at the United Nations in New York, a scandal exposed by GCHQ whistleblower Katherine Gun. According to the Observer 8 February 2004 "The operation, which targeted at least one permanent member of the UN Security Council, was almost certainly in breach of the Vienna conventions on diplomatic relations, which strictly outlaw espionage at the UN missions in New York....The information was intended for US Secretary of State Colin Powell before his presentation on weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council on 5 February [2003]. Sources close to the intelligence services have now confirmed that the request from the security agency was 'acted on' by the British authorities..... An operation of this kind would almost certainly have been authorised by the director-general of GCHQ, David Pepper. But the revelation also raises serious questions for Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has overall responsibility for GCHQ. Details of the operation were first revealed in The Observer on the eve of war last year, after the leaking of a top-secret memo from the NSA requesting British help. But until today it was not known whether British spy chiefs had agreed to participate." Later that month former Cabinet Minister Claire Short disclosed she had also seen transcript evidence of the UK's illegal bugging of the office of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Riding on the back of  'war on terror' generated public phobias, British intelligence is now seeking the power to tap the phones of MPs and Members of The House Of Lords, legitimising a practice that it would be naive to assume does not already take place given Britain's already known illegal surveillance of the UN. The latest version of this spurious 'war on terror' call comes via the 'Interceptions of Communications Commissioner', Sir Swinton Thomas. The proposal would formally end the banning of the practice introduced by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s. Wilson believed that MI5 was trying to discredit him by exposing him as an adulterer. Commissioner Thomas' new call arose during a week when the disclosure of an extra-marital affair by the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, raised questions as to whether he may have been compromised by his adultery during his time in office. Although it is unclear when Goldsmith's affair began it is known that the Attorney General changed his advice on the legality of the Iraq war between 7 March and 17 March 2003, with significant reservations removed between these dates.  The Attorney General's more recent role in the decision to abandon the investigation of the BAE oil-for-arms 'Al-Yamamah' corruption scandal in Saudi Arabia is also controversial. According to the BBC "Lord Goldsmith's insistence that the decision was taken by the SFO [Serious Fraud Office], not himself, is being treated with some scepticism." The decision to abort pre-dates public disclosure of Goldsmith's affair (but not the affair itself which ended 'more than two years ago'), placing the timing of the decision within a period of potential, if albeit reduced, vulnerability to coercive pressures. On the wider front an exceptionally strong stench continues to be emitted from the BAE-Saudi 'al-Yamamah' contract episode, whose second phase included the supply of 48 British Tornado military aircraft to the Saudi government. In the words of the London Times 21 February "because of the allegations raised, and the way that the investigation was shut down, there is an impression that something fishy must have been going on....The bribery suspicions intensified after the Government accidentally released to the National Archive documents detailing the cost of Tornados under al-Yamamah." A couple of days later the Guardian reported that "Ministers have begun working on proposals to disband the Serious Fraud Office, merging operations with other agencies... The plan comes three months after relations between the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and SFO director Robert Wardle reached an all-time low over the latter's two-year investigation into kickback allegations linked to a BAE Systems contract with Saudi Arabia.... Mr Wardle had only reluctantly been persuaded to drop the BAE inquiry after Lord Goldsmith insisted it could jeopardise 'national and international security'. When the case was abandoned, Lord Goldsmith infuriated him by adding that he considered a successful prosecution would have been unlikely.... Weeks later, with Mr Wardle's tenure as SFO director coming up for review, Lord Goldsmith extended his term by a year rather than the customary two.... Disbanding the SFO would prompt fresh criticisms that Lord Goldsmith has been pursuing a political battle with the agency as an EU anti-corruption watchdog is considering whether it was wrong for the attorney general to halt the BAE investigation." Although the most controversial allegations against BAE relate to Saudi Arabia, the Serious Fraud Office's continuing pursuit of BAE corruption charges in relation to other countries (Chile, Tanzania, South Africa, Czech Republic and Romania) exposes the application of a revealing double standard. The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, openly mocked this hypocrisy at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in January. The original Mark Thatcher embroiled $40 billion Saudi Al-Yamamah deal, already the largest export order ever signed by the UK,  is now due for another contract extension, known as 'Al-Salam'. This is worth a further $20 billion to BAE for 72 Eurofighter Typhoons. With so much money at stake the British 'security' services are no doubt continuing to 'monitor' with intense interest how political figures and public servants handle on-going developments. It is, of course, important that we protect 'our values' during the 'war on terror' (a counterproductive term that has now been quietly dropped by the Foreign Office) which Prime Minister Tony Blair says may take 'a generation' to end. Along with oil, the arms trade is at the pinnacle of this steaming heap of non-negotiable 'values'. The other major party to the West's corrupt relationship with the Saudi dictatorship (one which former CIA agent Robert Baer has described in his book  'Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude'), is the Arab kingdom's other major arms supplier, namely the United States of America. Since 1990 US Arms Sales to Riyadh have been worth  $40 billion or more. But it would appear the full nature of the relationship is much more corrosive than that. Bob Graham is a former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence in the United States. He maintains that the congressional joint inquiry into 9/11, conducted by both the House and the Senate in 2002 under his co-chairmanship, found "compelling evidence that the Saudis played an active role in assisting two of the [9/11] terrorists in Southern California, including being the means of substantial funding for those two terrorists. And this question of whether their support was limited to those two, or may have extended to others of the 17 terrorists, is still an unsolved mystery because the FBI did such an inept job of conducting that investigation". This was not just any old Saudi or two, but included government officials, as confirmed by Graham in the formal Congressional Record. Whilst the Saudi government as a whole (particularly since the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq) may have been engaged in a confrontation with Al Qaeda, a grouping which has sought to topple the House of Saud on account of its perceived traitorous relationship with the United States, it would appear that at least some individuals within the Saudi government have been involved with Al Qaeda. America's influential Council On Foreign relations reported 11 November 2003 that "Saudi Arabia has been blamed for financing terrorism while simultaneously fighting it .... The government agreed to cooperate with FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigations of Saudi terror funding, but [former FBI counterterrorism analyst Mathew] Levitt says the U.S. investigators have not received access to all the documents they need." However, it would appear the obstruction problem does not rest solely with the Saudi government. Bob Graham accuses the President Bush and the FBI of stonewalling his committee's investigation into 9/11, including requiring 27 pages of the inquiry's final report covering this area to remain classified (some believe the redacted text may also refer to involvement in 9/11 by Pakistan, in part because elsewhere Graham has also referred to more than one foreign government being involved in the attacks). The later official 9/11 Commission report also joined in the cover-up. Unrevealingly it simply concluded that "that the 19 operatives were funded by al Qaeda" and there was "no evidence that any foreign government—or foreign government official—supplied any funding." Which means that either the Commission didn't see the full text of the joint congressional inquiry report co-chaired by Graham, or it lied. Besides the Saudi dimension, the 9/11 Commission report also makes no mention of the alleged role of Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed, head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. The General is widely reported to have authorised the wiring of $100,000 to 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. The transfer is understood to have been conducted via Omar Sheikh, a British Pakistani recently described by President Musharraf of Pakistan as a former MI6 agent (already convicted in Pakistan for the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, neither Britain or the United States are pursuing Sheikh for his alleged role in 9/11). Within its supposedly comprehensive 585 page report, the 9/11 Commission includes a section headed "The Funding of the 9/11 Plot". This crucial subject is covered in just three short paragraphs, and is immediately preceded by the extraordinary statement that "To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance." Terrorism retaliated  jiggery pokery is not confined only to official circles in the United States, however. Downing St has refused to hold an inquiry into the London suicide bombings of July 2005, which appear to have been organised by Haroon Rashid Aswat, another alleged former MI6 asset. Aswat is now due, following an apparent tussle between Scotland Yard and MI6, to be extradited from the UK to the United States where his reported embarrassing history of involvement in British intelligence's covert sponsorship of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans before 9/11 is less likely to surface. All these skeletons in the cupboard can be expected to be promptly buried thanks to what will be Aswat's alien 'enemy combatant' status under the Military Commissions Act, which came into effect in the United States at the end of October 2006. The Act provides wide scope for the holding of trials in secret on the grounds of 'national security', with the cases of other detainees already being reviewed in conditions of complete secrecy. With only minimal press coverage, a British court approved Aswat's extradition to the United States in November 2006, although the decision may yet be subject to an appeal to the House of Lords. Meanwhile questions also remain on the British side of the 9/11 Saudi issue. Given the Anglo-American  'special relationship', how likely is it that British intelligence has not been fully aware of the contents of those 27 blanked out pages on Saudi Arabia (which also possibly covers other foreign governments) contained in Bob Graham's joint congressional report? If 37 Congressmen led by Senator Graham have seen those pages, it would seem improbable that such information has never reached MI6. Much more likely is the prospect that this information is known and understood in London, and that there is no one in Whitehall who is interested in taking the matter any further. To do so would all but guarantee the wrecking of all those giant oil and arms contracts nestling in lawyers' safes in London, Washington, and Houston. As Craig Unger's book "House of Saud, House of Bush" points out, "[Former US Secretary of State] James Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, represented both the giant oil companies who did business with the Saudis as well as the defense contractors who sold weapons to them." Baker Botts has also been hired to defend Saudi Arabia in a $1 trillion law suit brought by 9/11 families wishing to sue members of the Saudi Royal family and Saudi businessmen for their alleged role in 9/11 (Newsweek, 16 April 2003). The suit constitutes the biggest class action in legal history. Although later granted diplomatic immunity from prosecution in America under the US Foreign Service Immunity Act, the defendants in this case originally included Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, formerly head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency. Both were accused of knowingly contributing money and support to al Qaeda through Islamic charitable organisations (CNN, 17 October 2003). Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef was also named as a defendant, but immunity from prosecution was granted to him also because, like the others,  he was an official of the Saudi government. According to a court ruling, only the US president, not the courts, has the authority to label a foreign nation as a terrorist supporter. The suit is being conducted on behalf of the families of 1,431 of the people killed on 9/11 and 1,325 of the injured. More than 100 of the claimants are British. Over 100,000 documents from around the world tracking the financial links between the Saudis and Al Qaeda are reported to have been collected in the search for evidence, and the resulting database on Islamic terrorism is considered to be the best in world even though held in entirely private hands. The Sunday Times reported 13 February 2005 that investigators for the case had discovered that the July 2001 meetings of the 9/11 hijackers in Spain included individuals who later took part in the Madrid bombings of 2004. One of the lawyers involved told the Sunday Times that "We also discovered transfers from the Saudi ministry of interior directly to the Madrid cell”. Nevertheless, it is estimated that it may be several more years yet before the case against the remaining Saudi defendants, including the bin Laden family construction group and the International Islamic Relief Organization, reaches trial. The lead lawyer in the suit, Ron Motley (previously best known for winning a historic $350 billion settlement from the tobacco industry in the 1990s), told the Sunday Times that whilst his legal team had received government help in 19 countries, it had received none from the British government despite the considerable number of British claimants. So perhaps Britain has got something out of the post 9/11 'special relationship' after all.  It's just that Downing St can't talk about it. Judicious inaction or collusion on the US Saudi 9/11cover-up, combined with Britain's own BAE corruption stonewalling, is worth at least $20 billion in additional arms sales for Britain - or, if you like, just a little bit more than the newly inflated cost of the London Olympic games in 2012. As part of the effort to glorify Hitler's Third Reich, the now iconic Olympic torch ceremony was originally introduced at the Berlin games of 1936.  Each torch then bore the logo of Krupp, the huge steel and munitions conglomerate that armed Germany for two world wars. Despite its origins, the torch ceremony has continued ever since. On 6th July 2005 Britain won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic games in a surprise victory over France. It was probably the proudest moment of Prime Minister Tony Blair's office. A headline on the Downing St web site had proclaimed in anticipation a day earlier that the "Olympic legacy can last for generation". A day later, however, on 7 July, four 'home grown' Muslim suicide bombers detonated a series of bombs in central London killing 52 others and injuring many more. After decades of battling the IRA, an new era of international terrorism on English soil was immediately presumed to have begun. In a video recorded before his suicide and subsequently released after the bombings, one of the 7/7 bombers threatened more attacks "until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq".  This demand echoed that of Irish Republicans who had sought the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland in preceding decades. Although a traumatic experience for Britain, the number of people killed and maimed in the 7/7 attacks is small compared to the total losses endured in the earlier conflict over Northern Ireland (the last IRA bomb in mainland Britain was in 2001). That bitter struggle (also concerned with a perceived British occupation) cost the lives of thousands of Britons. Although most of those lives were lost in Ulster, 125 also died in attacks on the English mainland. Many more were maimed or injured. Each and every year from 1971 to 1994 the number of deaths in the Irish 'troubles' was greater than the total killings in Britain caused by Islamic militants during the whole of the now more than five year period arising since 9/11, when the new 'war on terror' was declared.  At that point most seemed to quickly forget that Britain had been calmly fighting another terrorist struggle for more than thirty years, and ironically against an Irish Republican movement that had been funded in substantial part from within the United States. During the course of the Irish conflict bomb attacks were executed against the London home of the Conservative leader of the opposition (used by Ted Heath in 1974), the House of Commons (killing shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Airey Neave in 1979), and 10 Downing St (during a Cabinet meeting lead by John Major in 1991). Most traumatic of all was an attempted attack on the British Cabinet at the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984. Five people were killed, including MP Anthony Berry. Among the injured were Trade and Industry Secretary, Norman Tebbit, and Government Chief Whip, John Wakeham. The bomb had been planted several weeks earlier by Patrick Magee, who was subsequently sentenced to thirty five years imprisonment (Magee was later released as part of a political settlement negotiated with the Irish Republican movement by the ensuing Blair government under the terms of the 1999 'Good Friday' agreement). Despite the carnage Margaret Thatcher was steadfast in the face of the unprecedented Brighton bombing, stating "This attack has failed. All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail." And, indeed, despite these direct attempts to strike at the very heart of constitutional government in Britain, the 'Wilson Doctrine' banning the interception of MPs communications by the security services remained in place. A very different approach is in danger of being taken today. But then the agenda is also very different. During the Irish troubles there was, after all, little economic incentive to politically exploit the fears arising from the conflict. Today, however, the world faces an immediately looming global energy crisis which has precipitated the projection of British and American military power into those parts of the globe where the bulk of the world's remaining conventional oil and gas resources are to be found. A campaign to combat Islamic terrorist threats is the ultimate 'politically correct' smokescreen for such interventions, provided a sufficient level of fear is maintained at home. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher promoted a climate of fearless resilience in response to the constant threat of terrorist attacks by Irish Republicans. In the new century by contrast, a more timorous Labour Party, easily frightened by real or imagined threats of on-going terrorist attacks, has been unwilling to call to account the government of Tony Blair which has promoted both a climate of fear, and a policy of subservience to the authoritarian tendencies of itself and the Bush administration. The consequences have been stark. The most visible has been the creation of the grotesque quagmire in Iraq, a country whose supposed threat to the 'free world' was conveniently propagandised by the likes of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld through what he called the 'prism' of 9/11. This 'prism' was essentially a bogus perspective strategically aimed at facilitating military action against Iraq, as part of a scheme of aggression which had been planned well before 9/11. Whilst the United States had been an al Qaeda target before 9/11 on account of its continued stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf oil war (witness the issuing of Bin Laden's Fatwa against the United States in 1996, and the attacks on the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000), Australia, Spain, Turkey and Britain only became targets after they had joined forces with America in its post 9/11 'war on terror' (since when 'al Qaeda' has adopted a strategy of attacks aimed at splitting allies off from the 'interventionist' coalition assembled by the United States, an approach which most notably precipitated the fall of the pro US government in Madrid in 2004). On 11 March 2007 the Observer drew attention to how British military interventionism has contributed to growing Islamic militancy stating that "Contrary to the British government's public claim, every source spoken to by The Observer, official or otherwise, in Britain and elsewhere believes the Iraq war has exacerbated the threat to the UK specifically and to the West generally. 'It is a huge part of the problem,' one senior British government counter-terrorism specialist said. However, contrary to exaggerated reports, the number of Westerners who have gone to Iraq to fight is said to be 'a handful'." The Observer also reported that "Significantly, the Taliban in Afghanistan is not considered to be closely linked to the al-Qaeda hard core....Only two of the 140 suicide bombers who have died in Afghanistan since mid-2005 have come from outside Afghanistan, Pakistan or Afghan and Pakistani communities living overseas." So what of the future, given that the primary cause of the intensifying 'jihad', namely the continuing Anglo-American occupation of Islamic countries in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions, is in reality a mission driven by a desire to ensure that these key areas do not fall under Chinese control as the global competition for oil and gas heats up? If dissolving the threat of Islamic terrorist attacks was the real priority then withdrawing from these countries would substantially reduce that risk. But as US Vice President Dick Cheney let slip in Australia in February when asked 'what are the stakes here' regarding Iran , the next target on America's interventionist list in the Middle East: "Well, remember where Iran sits. It's important to backup I think for a minute and set aside the nuclear question, just look at what Iran represents in terms of their physical location. They occupy one whole side of the Persian Gulf, clearly have the capacity to influence the world's supply of oil, about 20 percent of the daily production comes out through the Straits of Hormuz." Meanwhile the phantom 'war on terror' looks set to persist, with not even the retiring head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, believing that the fuel which enflames Islamic militancy is being tackled. As she recently put it "My service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism .... The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims - an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence. And their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in particular the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.” By the time the Olympic torch arrives in London from Greece in 2012, North Sea oil output is expected to have fallen to half its its 1999 peak. A similar fate awaits its gas production as well. By 2012, and always assuming a continuing failure to introduce a truly coherent national energy policy framework in the meantime, it can be expected that tension both within and beyond Britain's rogue state borders will be substantially greater than it is even today as a result. As a symptom of this security at the London games will be unprecedented, with the budget for that element alone already standing at at least £1 billion. Perhaps only then will we all be able to savour the true depth of the legacy of the Blair era, and to remind ourselves, as one of George Orwell's 1984 surveillance operatives would have put it, that  'war really is peace'. 'Fight Smart'

Rogue State Britain Before Arms To Saudi Arabia It Was Arms To Iraq "My company Astra gave rise to much of the circumstances which created the [Arms to Iraq] Scott Inquiry, the Supergun revelations (we reported it first), the Aitken affair, the murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels  in March 1990 and much else..... The story of Astra is too long to recount here but a summary is contained in my book, 'In the Public Interest' published by Little Brown UK hardback 1995, Warner paperback 1996, London. Astra became involved in covert weapons and ammunitions operations organised by MI5 and MI6 and the CIA, the MOD, DOD, FCO and the State Department and the DTI..... All these cases and others and the Astra case involved the gross abuse of power by Government and its agencies and servants, concealment of key evidence, intimidation, threats, false and selective prosecutions, manipulation of evidence, perversion of the course of justice.... As Douglas Hurd told a Commons Select Committee regarding nuclear proliferation they are but two tributaries of the main stream of intelligence..... Each regularly circumvents domestic laws for the benefit of the others under programmes like 'echelon' and agreements between UK and USA. Politicians and civil servants and other leading figures who get out of line can be surveyed or bugged and then threatened, blackmailed, framed up or worse." My Experiences, the Scott Inquiry, the British Legal System Gerald Reaveley James, former Astra Holdings PLC Chairman from 1980-90 Extract From Speech Given At The Environmental Law Centre, UK, 2000 (includes typographical transcript errors)

Arms To Protect Gulf Oil, Stupid

The Triangular Special Relationship
Britain, America, And Saudi Arabia
Oil, Arms, And Terror

"The Bush administration's talk of breaking its dependency on foreign oil is a political myth, Saudi Arabia's former envoy to Washington and royal family member said on Sunday. 'It has become very fashionable for (U.S.) politicians to use the word 'energy independence' or 'independence from foreign oil', and that is basically a political canard politicians and technocrats use,' Prince Turki al-Faisal told an economic forum.... Saudi Arabia, which has about a quarter of the world's oil reserves, is one of the top three crude suppliers to the United States."
Saudi royal says U.S. oil independence a myth
Reuters, 25 February 2007

"The Lockerbie saga is generally believed to have begun on July 3, 1988, when a 'missile-control specialist' aboard the US frigate Vincennes mistook an Iran Air airliner on a routine flight to Saudi Arabia for a MiG-25 and shot it down over the Persian Gulf, killing everyone on board. The Vincennes was escorting a Kuwaiti tanker carrying Iraqi oil and flying the Stars and Stripes, because of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. President Ronald Reagan mishandled the resulting furore, hesitating to apologise for the horrific mistake and even suggesting that the airliner should have identified itself - not normal protocol."
What if they are innocent?
Guardian, 17 April 1999

"Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad to embrace Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Reagan-Bush government in December 1983 was driven by similar motives. In particular they included preserving access to Gulf oil as Iran became a threat to US supplies following Tehran's Islamic revolution of 1979 which ousted the Shah, and led to the ensuing Iran-Iraq war.  One of Rumsfeld's specific goals during his 1983 visit, according to the New York Times 14 April, was to do a deal with Iraq over the building of an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian Port of Aqaba. The project was to be built by Bechtel, a company previously led by George Shultz who had become Secretary of State by the time of Rumsfeld's courtship of Saddam as special representative of the US government. According to the National Security Archive at George Washington University 'The U.S. promoted the Aqaba pipeline project strenuously for several years during the early to mid 1980s. It would have carried oil from northern Iraq to the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan, alleviating the disruptive effect on Iraq's oil output that resulted from Iran's attacks on oil transshipment facilities in the Persian Gulf and from Syria's closing of a pipeline that had transported Iraqi oil. The proposed project reflected the U.S.'s extreme nervousness about threats to the world oil supply resulting from the Iran-Iraq war.' In the end Saddam would not play ball with the US on the pipeline, but in the meantime the US offered some 'interesting' assistance to Iraq. In an article entitled 'Who Armed Iraq ' 17 April the highly respected and authoritative Jane's Defence News wrote 'An investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq, headed by Republican Congressman Donald Riegle and published in May 1994, listed some of the biological agents exported by US corporations with George Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as vice-president under Ronald Reagan. The Iraqis are reported to have acquired stocks of anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, E. coli and salmonella bacteria from US companies.'"
Iraqgate 2003
'Fight Smart', Special Report, October 2003

"The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began an investigation into BAE’s involvement in al-Yamamah in 2004 amid allegations of corruption, bribery and the use of a slush fund to entertain members of the Saudi royal family. The investigation ground on month after month, gaining little traction outside the antiarms industry lobby. However, when the SFO tried to gain access to Swiss bank accounts with Saudi links, all hell broke loose. The UK’s relationship with the oil-rich nation was in danger of breaking down and the Prime Minister decided late last year to put national interests before the pursuit of justice....The revolution in Iran and the subsequent war between Iran and Iraq convinced the Saudi royal family during the 1980s that it needed to bolster its armed forces. The Saudis had being buying planes from the British for years, but for most of the early 1970s had favoured the US, buying a large fleet of F-15 and F-5 fighter jets. When the Israeli lobby held up further sales of the F-15, the Saudis began negotiations with the French to buy Mirages and the British to buy Tornados. The French were the early front-runners, but Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, was determined that the order should go to the UK. She aggressively courted both King Fahd and his brother, the Defence Minister, Prince Sultan. Mrs Thatcher’s son, Mark Thatcher, was subsequently accused of receiving commission payments for helping to set up the deal, which he denied. Al-Yamamah 1, as the Tornado contract is called, was agreed in 1985 and signed by Prince Sultan and Michael Heseltine in February 1986. A further order, al-Yamamah 2, was completed in Bermuda in 1988. Last year Saudi Arabia announced its intention to go ahead with another defence contract with the UK. It will buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to replace the now ageing Tornados in a deal that could be worth £20 billion for BAE over the life of the aircraft."
Al-Yamamah an echo of 1980s sleaze
London Times, 21 February 2007

"For just so long Kuwait, a small country at the head of the Persian Gulf, had been set free and independent from its long-time British protector. And during that time Kuwait had developed its oil fields and become immensely rich. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq. To have and to hold it would put him on the way to achieving something that the Soviets had yearned for right after the Second War and been denied by the intervention of the United Nations, which was to be sovereign of the Gulf - and so, as Churchill foresaw and warned about, soon to be able to conquer Europe without a war by possessing 60% of the oil Western Europe lived by and so be able to dictate to countries like Britain, France, Germany, that they should abandon their precious democratic ways and get themselves governments friendly to Iraq.....[Following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is - called a dawn meeting of the National Security Council at which the likely commander of any military action, one General Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the United States might fight for Saudi Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the press there was no thought of American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted to impose a total embargo on Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half day out to keep a promise to the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in Aspen, Colorado, a resort town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting fettle than all but one of his own advisers. She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia from invasion later on. ..... What so swiftly transformed the views and policy of the United States and the onlooking allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi Arabia, that once he held Kuwait there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC Online, 24 June 2002

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy."
Dick Cheney, US Secretary of Defense 1990
New York Times, 24 February 2006

"Energy is vital to a country's security and material well-being. A state unable to provide its people with adequate energy supplies or desiring added leverage over other people often resorts to force. Consider Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, driven by his desire to control more of the world's oil reserves, and the international response to this threat. The underlying goal of the U.N. force, which included 500,000 American troops, was to ensure continued and unfettered access to petroleum...."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"The key holdout is Saudi Arabia -- and it is indeed aggravating that even though we went to war in 1991 principally to protect its oil, they are unwilling to let us launch air strikes [on Iraq] from their country."
James Woolsey - The Former CIA Director Speaks on Iraq
TIME, 18 February 1998

"[In 1981] Osama bin Laden, son of the founder of the Bin Laden Group, the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, travels to Afghanistan to help the mujahadeen in their bloody war against the Soviet Union.....[In 1989] The Soviets pull out of Afghanistan after the CIA spends (US) $3-billion on the largest covert operation in its history. Osama bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia, angry with how the Americans abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet retreat.... [In 1991] The first Gulf War occurs, whereby George H. W. Bush is determined to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait to ensure the Iraqi dictator doesn’t have a stranglehold on world oil markets. Osama bin Laden urges the Saudi royal family to find an Arab solution, by raising an army on their own to fight Hussein. When the royal family invites the U.S. in to do the job instead, Bin Laden becomes disenchanted with the House of al-Saud. His anger grows when after the war the US leaves 20,000 troops behind in Saudi Arabia. Soon Bin Laden makes a deal with the Saudi royal family: he is allowed to leave the kingdom with his fortune, and will receive funding for al Qaeda from various Saudi charities and banks, but in return he must not launch attacks against the royal family. Bin Laden settles in the Sudan, aiming his ire at the US."
The Saudi Connection
CBC News (Canada), 29 October 2003

"America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations in Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks. The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq. Withdrawal of 'infidel' American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was 'irrelevant'.... Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military 'footprint' in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of 'infidels' in the birthplace of Islam. That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks. Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been 'dictated' by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was 'irrelevant', there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia."
America to withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"America's announcement of its intention to withdraw its military bases from Saudi Arabia [following the moving of US troops into Iraq] answers Osama bin Laden's most persistent demand. More than any other cause it was the presence of 'crusader' forces in the land of Islam's holiest sites - Mecca and Medina - that turned bin Laden from Afghan jihadi [and US ally] into an international terrorist [and US opponent]. A wealthy Saudi with royal connections, bin Laden fell out with the House of Saud largely because it permitted US bases in the country. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered his own forces to the Saudi regime to help expel the Iraqis from the Gulf. He was enraged when the Saudi royal family turned instead to Washington and more than 500,000 US troops were sent. The same year the Americans arrived, bin Laden fled Saudi - where he faced house arrest - and established his base in Sudan. He and his al-Qa'eda forces moved to Afghanistan in 1996, issuing the first of his international fatwas through the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. After railing against the persecution of Muslims around the world, bin Laden stated: 'The latest and greatest of these aggressions incurred by Muslims since the death of the Prophet … is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places - the foundation of the House of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of Muslims, by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. We bemoan this and can only say 'No power and power acquiring except through Allah'. '.... The US withdrawal from Saudi will not be enough to satisfy bin Laden or his followers. It may, however, make life easier for the Saudi regime, which has been struggling to quell growing dissent within the kingdom over the presence of 'infidel' soldiers."
Bin Laden's main demand is met
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that oil was one of the reasons for the US-led invasion of Iraq, a Swedish news agency reports. 'I did not think so at first. But the US is incredibly dependent on oil,' news agency TT quoted Blix as saying at a security seminar in Stockholm. 'They wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too hard.' Blix, who helped oversee the dismantling of Iraq's weapons programs before the war, said another reason for the invasion was a need to move US troops from Saudi Arabia, TT reported. Competition over oil is creating tension between the United States and China, Blix said........."
Blix says war motivated by oil
Australian Associated Press, 7 April 2005

The Phantom 'War On Terror'
Timeline

Before 9/11

"This documentary produced by the BBC offers a revisionist look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it raises some tantalizing questions. It makes the incredibly serious and controversial claim that the U.S. government had definitive knowledge of the imminent Japanese attack, yet Franklin D. Roosevelt and other American leaders deliberately sacrificed Americans lives so they would have an excuse to enter World War II.... In this authoritative and suspenseful documentary, the BBC takes you inside the secret activities of the Americans, the British and the Japanese as each nation moved fatefully toward the 'date that will live in infamy'."
'Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor'
BBC Warner - VHS Release Date: April 24, 2001
Amazon.com

"...everything that the Japanese were planning to do [at Pearl Harbor] was known to the United States..."
ARMY BOARD, 1944

"A massive cover-up followed Pearl Harbor a few days later, according to an officer close to Marshall, when the Chief of Staff ordered a lid put on the affair. ‘Gentlemen,' he told half a dozen officers, ‘this goes to the grave with us.'"
INFAMY, by John Toland
(Order Book - Click Here)

"More than any other cause it was the presence of 'crusader' forces in the land of Islam's holiest sites - Mecca and Medina - that turned bin Laden from Afghan jihadi [and US ally] into an international terrorist [and US opponent]. A wealthy Saudi with royal connections, bin Laden fell out with the House of Saud largely because it permitted US bases in the country. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered his own forces to the Saudi regime to help expel the Iraqis from the Gulf. He was enraged when the Saudi royal family turned instead to Washington and more than 500,000 US troops were sent. The same year the Americans arrived, bin Laden fled Saudi - where he faced house arrest - and established his base in Sudan. He and his al-Qa'eda forces moved to Afghanistan in 1996, issuing the first of his international fatwas through the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. After railing against the persecution of Muslims around the world, bin Laden stated: 'The latest and greatest of these aggressions incurred by Muslims since the death of the Prophet … is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places - the foundation of the House of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of Muslims, by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. We bemoan this and can only say 'No power and power acquiring except through Allah'. '....."
Bin Laden's main demand is met
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"Beginning in 1998 and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received a modest, but relatively steady, stream of intelligence reporting that indicated the possibility of terrorist attacks within the United States..... the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.... Prior to September 11, the Intelligence Community had information linking Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), now recognized by the Intelligence Community as the mastermind of the attacks, to Bin Ladin, to terrorist plans to use aircraft as weapons, and to terrorist activity in the United States.... the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons.... Some, but apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community and to other agencies... KSM came to the attention of the Intelligence Community as a terrorist in early 1995 when he was linked to Ramzi Yousef’s 'Bojinka Plot' in the Philippines. One portion of that plot involved the idea of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters. Through additional intelligence and investigative efforts in 1995, KSM was also connected to the first World Trade Center bombing.  He was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in January 1996. The indictment was kept under seal until 1998 while the FBI and CIA attempted to locate him and arrange to take him into custody. Subsequently, indications were received that he might have been involved in the East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of training exercise scenario, a NORAD spokesman said Monday..... Military officials said the exercise involved simulating a crash into a building that would be recognizable if identified, but was not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. They emphasize it involved an airliner being hijacked as it flew into U.S. airspace from abroad, a slightly different scenario from what happened on September 11, 2001. The identity of the building named in the exercise is classified.... According to a statement from NORAD, 'Before September 11th, 01, NORAD regularly conducted a variety of exercises that included hijack scenarios. These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures.... At the NORAD headquarters' level we normally conducted four major exercises a year, most of which included a hijack scenario.'"
NORAD exercise had jet crashing into building
CNN, 19 April 2004

"Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz wrote to President Bill Clinton in 1998 urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a 'hazard' to 'a significant portion of the world's supply of oil'. In the letter, Rumsfeld also calls for America to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations and says the US should not be 'crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council'. Those who signed the letter, dated January 26, 1998, include Bush's current Pentagon adviser, Richard Perle; Richard Armitage, the number two at the State Department; John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, under-secretaries of state; Elliott Abrams, the presidential adviser for the Middle East and a member of the National Security Council; and Peter W Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. It reads: 'We urge you to seize [the] opportunity and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the US and our friends and allies around the world. 'That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power..... If Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil, will all be put at hazard."
Rumsfeld Urged Clinton to Attack Iraq
Sunday Herald, 16 March 2006

"Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected
terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks.... even after the [1998 African embassy] bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests."
Called Off the Trail?
ABC News, 19 Dec 2002

"When FBI counsel Colleen Rowley dropped her bombshell, a now-famous letter to the director, detailing how bureau higher-ups thwarted attempts to investigate accused 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, before the September 11 attacks, she set off a firestorm. The scorching produced a mea culpa of sorts in June from FBI Director Robert Mueller and a promise of reform. Now there's another whistle blower telling a similar pre-9/11 tale. And so far, the FBI has gone to great lengths to silence him.  The Weekly has learned that Chicago-based special agent Robert Wright has accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City.... Robert Wright's story is difficult ot piece together because he is on government orders to remain silent. And by extension so are his attorneys when it comes to confidential information. Wright has written a book, but the agency won't let him publish it or even give it to anyone. All of this is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her. ...Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels, sending his book off for an internal review and asking for permission to respond to reporters' queries. Neither of those efforts panned out, and he has since sued the agency over this publication ban. The best he could do was a May 30 press conference in Washington, D.C., where he told curious reporters that he had a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could.   Wright did say that FBI bureaucrats 'intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists.' And that 'FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the U.S.' Wright was careful not to illegally disclose any confidential details about what he knew, but tears filled his eyes as he apologized to the families of September 11 victims for the Bureau's mistakes leading up to 9/11. He also made a tantalizing reference to his removal from a money-laundering case that, he implied, had a direct connection to investigations into terrorism....Wright chronicled his allegations against the Bureau in a complaint filed with the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice. The FBI, in turn, has threatened to discipline or fire Wright if he publicizes the details of the complaint."
Another FBI Agent Blows the Whistle
LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 2-8 August 2002

"In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.... The suspected terrorist cell in Chicago was the basis of the investigation, yet Wright, who remains with the FBI, says he soon discovered that all the FBI intelligence division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists and file reports — but make no arrests.... 'The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me: 'You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,' Wright said. Even though they were on a terrorism task force and said they had proof of criminal activity, Wright said he was told not to pursue the matter.... Yet, even after the bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. 'Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they wanted to shut down the criminal investigation,' said Wright. 'They wanted to kill it.' ... The move outraged Chicago federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, who was assigned to the case despite efforts Wright and Vincent say were made by superiors to block the probe....'There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let it [the building of a criminal case] happen. And it didn't happen,' Flessner said. He said he still couldn't figure out why Washington stopped the case... On Sept. 11, 2001, the two agents watched the terror attacks in horror, worried that men they could have stopped years earlier may have been involved.'"
Called Off the Trail?
ABCNews, 19 Dec 2002

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, represents 'whistleblowing' FBI Special Agent (SA) Robert G. Wright, Jr., of the bureau’s Chicago Division, who said today that the FBI continues to dodge accountability and cover-up its negligence and dereliction of duty in pursuing terrorists who pose a direct threat to the United States. SAWright is the only FBI agent to seize terrorist funds (over $1.4 million) from U.S.-based Middle Eastern terrorists using federal civil forfeiture statutes, prior to the September 11th attacks. The original source of the funds was Yassin Kadi, a Saudi businessman, who is reportedly a financier of Osama bin Laden. SA Wright points to recent misconduct and falsifications of wiretap warrant applications by FBI agents (signed-off by the former FBI Director, Louis Freeh) to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Prior to September 11th, SA Wright alleged FBI intelligence agents lied and hid vital records from criminal agents for the purpose of obstructing his criminal investigation of the terrorists in order to protect their 'subjects,' and prolong their intelligence operations. SA Wright was stunned to learn recently that some of the FBI intelligence agents that had stalled and obstructed his criminal investigations of terrorists in Chicago had also lied to the judges of the FISA Court in Washington, DC... The FBI continues to illegally refuse the release of SA Wright’s 500 page manuscript, Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, that SA Wright submitted for prepublication review in October 2001. In fact, the FBI refused to turn the manuscript over to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Commitee, charged with investigating the FBI’s intelligence failures. The FBI falsely claims that the manuscript contains grand jury material, although SA Wright has publicly available, 'open source,' references for all of the material in the manuscript. Schippers, a former federal prosecutor, has suggested that the committee petition U.S. District Court Chief Judge Charles P. Kocoras to disclose any such grand jury material under Criminal Rule 6(e)(3)(D), as matter involving intelligence and counterintelligence."
FBI AGENT ROBERT WRIGHT SAYS FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS
CONTINUE TO PROTECT TERRORISTS FROM CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS
Judicial Watch, 11 September 2002

"There's so much more. God, there's so much more. A lot more."
FBI agent, Robert Wright, who is being officially prevented from telling the public about how his efforts to investigate al-Qaeda pre-911 were blocked by his supervisors
'Called off the trail?' - ABC News, 19 Dec 2002

More Internet Links On Robert Wright - Click Here

"Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years. The optimists who project large reserve quantities of over one trillion barrels tend to base their numbers on one of three things: inclusion of heavy oil and tar sands, the exploitation of which will entail huge economic and environmental costs; puffery by opec nations lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel; or assumptions about new drilling technologies that may accelerate production but are unlikely to expand reserves. Once production peaks, even though exhaustion of world reserves will still be many years away, prices will begin to rise sharply. This trend will be exacerbated by increased demand in the developing world.....  The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources....Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

"The unusual circumstances surrounding the doomed flight of a private Learjet that crashed and killed professional golfer Payne Stewart and five others has prompted questions about whether the U.S. military is prepared to shoot down a runaway plane if it were headed for a highly-populated area.... Several Air Force and Air National Guard fighter jets, plus an AWACS radar control plane, helped the Federal Aviation Administration track the runaway Learjet and estimate when it would run out of fuel.  And officers on the Joint Chiefs were monitoring the Learjet on radar screens inside the Pentagon's National Military Command Center. But even if an unguided plane were on a collision course with the center of a major city, military planes could not take aim and pull the trigger unless they received permission from the White House because only the president has the authority to order a civilian aircraft shot down. 'If the president's advisors had advised him that this airplane was a threat to either the aviation system, our national security, or populations on the ground, they might have been justified to make that kind of a decision,' said Susan Coughlin, an aviation analyst for CNN.  The Pentagon insists it never came to that, but a senior advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff did raise the question."
Pentagon never considered downing Stewart's Learjet
CNN, 26 October 1999

"For the authority to shoot down a commercial aircraft prior to 9/11, granted to NORAD but not used against Payne Stewart’s plane in 1999 after the pilot and passengers lost consciousness, see Richard Myers interview (Feb. 17, 2004)."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p457)

"A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged Thursday, when the Justice Department disclosed that about 20 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a CIA official had blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI that two known Al Qaeda operatives had entered the country. The two men were among the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.....If the FBI had received the official communique from the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit when it was ready for transmittal in January 2000, its agents likely could have tracked down the men, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with a newly declassified report of the Justice Department's inspector general. the report's conclusion that an agent had written a memo specifically designed for transmittal to the FBI to alert the bureau to the men's presence — and that a supervisor deliberately had prevented it from being sent — is new. The reason the CIA official, identified by the fictitious name 'John,' put a hold on the communique remains a mystery, the report said. It said the officials involved didn't recall the incident. Even when the author of the memo followed up a week later with an e-mail asking if it had been sent to the FBI, nothing was done. The memo was written by an FBI agent on assignment to the CIA's special Bin Laden unit. According to the report, rather than send his memo directly to the FBI, he sent it to the deputy chief of the CIA unit because only supervisors were authorized to send such memos to the FBI.... The CIA was unable to locate a response to the e-mail. Fine's report concludes that the CIA didn't turn over documentation of the electronic memo until Fine's investigators came across a reference and specifically asked for it in February 2004. That came so late in the investigation that it delayed release of the report and caused many more CIA and FBI officials to be interviewed, the report says. Ultimately, Fine's investigators gave up trying to find an explanation."
Memo on 9/11 Plotters Blocked
Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2005

"... the mideast will increasingly become the source of the world's oil, and this is a strategic problem for us and for many other countries."
James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA
Interview with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Post: June 7, 2000

"According to [Bob Woodward's book] Plan Of Attack, it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William S. Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious 'discussion about Iraq and different options.'"
Bush ordered secrecy on war plans, book claims
Guardian Weekly,  22-28 April 2004

"Insiders told [BBC] Newsnight that planning [against Iraq] began 'within weeks' of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US. An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in   the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat. Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors  to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration. The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in  production above Opec quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed  by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for   Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department. Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's 'back-channel' to Saddam, claims that  plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council  in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British  occupying forces."
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
BBC Newsnight, 17 March 2005

"FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11....the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year".
FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated
London Guardian, 7 Nov 2001

"Tension Between FBI Chiefs Ex-FBI director Louis Freeh's new book, 'My FBI,' has kicked up controversy over its stinging attacks on Bill Clinton. But it has also frayed relations with current director Bob Mueller. Freeh takes a little-noticed shot at his successor in the book, describing a testy encounter in the early days of the Bush administration with an 'acting deputy attorney general' - a clear reference to Mueller who at the time held that post. In Freeh's account, the acting deputy A.G. tells him the department now has  new top priorities - guns, drugs and juvenile crime. Freeh replies that terrorism and 'just about everything else' are more important. 'Those are our marching orders,' Mueller says, according to Freeh's account. 'Those aren't my marching orders,' Freeh shoots back. Freeh then writes that 'lockstep, blind obedience' by an FBI director to 'potentially unlawful or even 'dumb orders' is a 'formula for disaster.'  Mueller declined an invitation to attend Freeh's book party last week after telling one bureau official that Freeh was 'too controversial,' according to a Freeh associate who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.'"
Fabricated Links?
Newsweek, 26 October 2005

"Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday. The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers 'would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,' the Florida Democrat wrote. And in Graham's book, 'Intelligence Matters,' obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees. ..... According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers. Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government."
9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book
Boston Globe, 5 September 2004

"At least 13 of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were never interviewed by U.S. consular officials before being granted visas to enter the United States, according to a congressional report issued yesterday. The finding contradicts previous assurances from the State Department that most of them had been thoroughly screened. The General Accounting Office also found that, for 15 hijackers whose applications could be found, none had filled in the documents properly. Overall, few applicants from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates were required to submit to interviews..... State Department officials said previously that 12 of the Sept. 11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia had been interviewed by consular officials, and that the others probably would not have been denied if they had been interviewed. None of the hijackers' names was included on a terrorist watch list before their entry into the United States. The GAO report found that all 15 of the hijackers from Saudi Arabia applied for visas in Jeddah or Riyadh; two others applied in their native United Arab Emirates. The remaining two, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian citizen, applied as 'third-country' applicants in Berlin. None of 18 separate visa applications by 15 of the hijackers was completed properly, the report said. Thirteen of the 15, who were from Saudi Arabia or UAE, were never interviewed before being approved for a visa, the report found. Investigators were unable to review the applications for four other hijackers, including Atta, because they were destroyed."
Hijackers Got Visas With Little Scrutiny, GAO Reports
Washington Post, 22 October 2002

"Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman. 'In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.... What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets. The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?' [said Springman]"
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
BBC Newsnight, 6 November 2001

"The first two 9/11 hijackers arrive in the United States via Los Angeles international airport. Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were already suspected of involvement in al-Qaeda terrorist activities by the CIA, which had been monitoring their movement abroad. But the CIA does not inform the FBI, so the two terrorists do not appear on the terrorist Watchlist - and as they have valid visas are allowed in the country. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar settle in San Diego where they live openly, using their real names in official documents. One is listed in the local phone book. They start lessons at a local flying school, but are soon rejected because of their poor English. In August 2001, the CIA finally warns the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar may be in the United States, but by then the two terrorists have long gone from San Diego and cannot be traced.... Publication of report by the joint Congressional inquiry into intelligence failings leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Over 30 pages in the published version have been redacted by the government, because of national security concerns. It later emerges that most of the redacted pages relate to the activities of the first two hijackers in San Diego and to their possible connections with Saudi Arabian nationals living there. The inquiry's co-chairman, Senator Bob Graham, feels that the FBI, in particular, withheld evidence about the activities of the two hijackers who lived in San Diego."
Timeline: 9/11
BBC Online, 14 February 2007

"[911 hijackers] Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had numerous contacts with a long-time FBI counterterrorism informant while they were living in San Diego, California... In its November 18, 2002 written response to the [911 Congressional] Joint Inquiry, the FBI has acknowledged that there are 'significant inconsistencies' in the informant’s statements about these [counterterrorism] contacts [with the 911 hijackers before the attacks]. The FBI investigation regarding this issue is continuing.... The [Bush] Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s efforts to interview the informant in order to attempt to resolve those inconsistencies. The Administration also would not agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on the informant. Instead, written interrogatories from the Joint Inquiry were, at the suggestion of the FBI, provided to the informant. Through an attorney, the informant has declined to respond to those interrogatories and has indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of immunity prior to testifying."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"In June 2001, [***** ] disseminated a report to all Intelligence Community agencies, [**** ], military commanders, and components in the Treasury and Justice Departments emphasizing KSM’s [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] ties to Bin Ladin as well as his continuing travel to the United States. The report explained that KSM appears to be one of Bin Ladin’s most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the United States, on behalf of Bin Ladin. According to the report, he traveled frequently to the United States, including as recently as May 2001, and routinely told others that he could arrange their entry into the United States as well. Reportedly, these individuals were expected to establish contact with colleagues already there. The clear implication of his comments, according to the report, was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities. Although this particular report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, neither agency apparently recognized the significance of a Bin Ladin lieutenant sending terrorists to the United States and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there.  CTC [Counterterrorist Center] questioned this report at the time and commented: 'We doubt the real [KSM] would do this…because if it is [KSM], we have both a significant threat and an opportunity to pick him up.'"
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi attended a terrorist meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000.32 This meeting was known to – and surveiled by – the CIA, which already knew that al-Mihdhar possessed a multiple-entry visa permitting him to travel to the United States. The National Security Agency (NSA) also independently possessed information linking al-Hazmi to Al-Qa’ida. Neither the CIA nor NSA, however, saw fit to provide their names to the TIPOFF database.33 There is apparently some confusion over whether the CIA told the FBI anything about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. CIA e-mail traffic reviewed by the JIS, however, suggests that the CIA did brief the FBI in general terms . The CIA, however, still did not bother to tell the FBI that al-Mihdhar had a multiple-entry visa that would allow him to enter the United States.34 In early March 2000, the CIA learned that al-Hazmi had arrived in Los Angeles on January 15. Despite having just learned of the presence in this country of an Al-Qa’ida terrorist, the CIA told no one about this. The internal cable transmitting this information, in fact, contained the notation: 'Action Required: None, FYI.'35 This information came at the height of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s alarm over Al-Qa’ida’s 'Millennium Plot,' and al-Hazmi’s arrival had occurred at about the same time the CIA knew that Al-Qa’ida terrorist Ahmed Ressam was also supposed to have arrived in Los Angeles to conduct terrorism operations.36 Still, however, the CIA refused to notify anyone of al-Hazmi’s presence in the country. By this point, both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi – both terrorists known to the CIA – were living in San Diego under their true names. They signed these names on their rental agreement, both used their real names in taking flight school training in May 2000, and al-Mihdhar even used his real name in obtaining a motor vehicle identification card from the State of California.37 In July 2000, al-Hazmi even applied to the INS for an extension of his visa, sending in this application using both his real name and his current address in San Diego (where he would remain until that December).38 INS, of course, had no reason to be concerned, since the CIA had withheld the two terrorists’ names from TIPOFF. Nor did the FBI have any reason to look for them – e.g., by conducting a basic Internet search for their names or by querying its informants in Southern California – since the last it had heard from CIA was that these two terrorists were overseas. The CIA’s failure to watchlist al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi became even more alarming and inexplicable in January 2001, when the CIA discovered that the Malaysia meeting had also been attended by a suspect in the USS Cole bombing. This presumably made the two terrorists even more interesting to the CIA – and their known presence in the U.S. even more dangerous, by confirming their linkages to Al-Qa’ida operational cells – but the CIA still did not bother to inform TIPOFF. This failure was particularly damaging because al-Mihdhar was overseas at the time: putting his name on the watchlist would have enabled INS agents to stop him at the border.39 Even when given the opportunity to tell the FBI – in face to face meetings – about the presence of these two terrorists in the United States, the CIA refused. At a meeting in June 2001 with FBI officials from the New York Field Office who were working on the USS Cole case, a CIA official refused to tell them that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had come to the United States.40 Meanwhile, Khalid al-Mihdhar was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and applied for a new U.S.visa in June 2001. The State Department officials who took this application appear to have followed procedures and checked his name against their CLASS database, which incorporates TIPOFF watchlist information. Because CIA continued to refuse to put the name of this Al-Qa’ida terrorist into TIPOFF, however, no CLASS 'hits' occurred, and al-Mihdhar was given a visa and returned to the United States unmolested in July.41 The CIA only decided to watchlist al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in late August 2001, by which point they were already in the United States and in the final stages of preparing for the September 11 attacks.42 By this point, tragically, it was too late for the FBI – hamstrung by its own investigative regulations – to stop them. Although the FBI scrambled in late August and early September to locate the two terrorists in the United States,43 it denied itself the services of any of its own agents assigned to criminal work and refused even to conduct a basic Internet search that would have revealed al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar living under their true names in San Diego. (According to testimony from an FBI agent in New York who conducted just such an Internet search after the September 11 attacks, finding al-Mihdhar’s address 'within hours.'44) It also denied itself any assistance that could have been obtained from Treasury officials in tracking down al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi through their credit card or banking transactions. As it turned out, however, on September 11, 2001, the two men boarded American Airlines Flight 77, and helped fly it into the Pentagon.... Nor was this all. After the FBI was belatedly notified by the CIA in August 2001 that known Al-Qa’ida terrorists al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the United States, the Bureau began trying to track them down. Despite the urgency of this task, however, FBI Headquarters prohibited FBI criminal investigators in New York from participating in the search for these terrorists and refused even to tell them what little was known about the two men at the time. As one of the New York agents was informed in an e-mail from Washington, D.C., 'that information will be passed over the wall' only if 'information is developed indicating the existence of a substantial federal crime.' Perceiving there to be an unbridgeable gap between law enforcement and intelligence work, the FBI thus refused even to talk to itself in order to prevent mayhem by known Al-Qa’ida terrorists in the United States. Meanwhile, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the final stages of their preparations for the September 11 attacks."
Additional Views of Senator Richard C. Shelby - Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"On June 11, 2001, at a meeting of FBI and CIA officials, FBI field agents from New York investigating al-Qaeda’s responsibility for the deadly U.S.S. Cole bombing, pressed for information regarding the CIA’s interest in al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi and their attendance at the January 2000 Malaysia meeting of al-Qaeda terrorists, which included the person responsible for planning the U.S.S. Cole attack. The CIA official at the meeting denied the FBI agent’s request and withheld basic and relevant information about the suspected terrorists because he did not believe he had the authority to share the information. Two and half months after this June 11, 2001, meeting, and after the two terrorists had been determined to have entered the country and were watchlisted, a FBI New York agent pressed FBI headquarters to use full criminal resources to find these at-large members of al-Qaeda. The agent’s request was denied by the FBI’s National Security Law Unit which cited a 'wall' that prevented the sharing of intelligence information with criminal case agents. Invoking this so-called 'wall' was erroneous however, and, as a result, the FBI’s search for the terrorists in the two weeks leading up to the attacks was unnecessarily hamstrung."
Additional Views - Senator Carl Levin
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room. 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon,' the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack. That intensity -- defensive in nature -- did not last. By the time Bush received his briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had begun to stand down from the alert."
Before Sept. 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
Washington Post, 17 May 2002

"In mid-July, reporting started to indicate that Bin Ladin’s plans had been delayed, maybe for as long as two months, but not abandoned. On July 23, the lead item for CSG discussion was still the al Qaeda threat, and it included mention of suspected terrorist travel to the United States."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.259)

"On July 27, [Richard] Clarke informed Rice and Hadley that the spike in intelligence about a near-term al Qaeda attack had stopped. He urged keeping readiness high during the August vacation period, warning that another report suggested an attack had just been postponed for a few months 'but will still happen.'.."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260)

"Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism ....  In the book 'Bin Laden, la verite interdite ('Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July [2001] in protest over the obstruction.... "
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
Inter Press Service, 15 November 2001

"....[there] was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States..... [the briefing stated] 'FBI information since [1998]  indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'....No CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] or other NSC [National Security Council] meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this report.... We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford Texas, on August 17 and participated in PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented. Many officials told us that they knew something terrible was planned...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260 - 262)

"The head of the CIA [George Tenet] has told the 9/11 commission that ..... he did not speak to George Bush in the month before the attacks, when Mr Bush was on holiday in Texas. 'He's in Texas and I'm either here [in Washington] or on leave for some of that time,' Mr Tenet said in response to a question from [9/11] commissioner Tim Roemer. 'In this time period, I'm not talking to him, no.' "
US was 'unprotected' on 9/11
BBC Online, 14 April 2004

"CIA Director George Tenet met with President Bush at least eight times in the 42 days before the catastrophic terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a CIA spokesman said Thursday, correcting Tenet's testimony that he hadn't talked with the president during the entire month of August.... Tenet's contacts with Bush during that period are significant because the CIA director was the highest ranking U.S. official who was aware of both the FBI's arrest of flight student Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota and the CIA warning to Bush that Osama bin Laden was 'determined to strike' inside the United States.   The CIA warning memo to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, also noted that the FBI had detected 'patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.'.... Tenet learned of Moussaoui's arrest on Aug. 23 or Aug. 24 in a CIA memo entitled 'Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly,' investigators disclosed Wednesday.... Former Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard, who served as acting director for 10 of the 11 weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, told the inquiry Tuesday that he had learned of Moussaoui's arrest in Minnesota on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- after the attacks. Word of Moussaoui's arrest never reached the White House National Security Council's interagency Counterterrorism and Security Group, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke testified on March 24. After the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI agents obtained the legal go-ahead to examine the hard drive on his laptop. It contained information on using crop-dusting airplanes."
CIA's Tenet did speak to Bush before 9-11, spokesman says
Salt Lake Tribune, 16 April 2004

"This provocative memoir by former top White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke was published on the eve of the 9/11 Commission hearings. His book is shocking and revealing, and should be worrisome for all Americans..... The revelations in this book about Tenet's inadequate response to the terrorism threat, in addition to what he subsequently said at the 9/11 Commission hearings, suggest that Tenet's resignation is long overdue. I am astounded that Tenet did not pass on his own staff's discovery that an Arab terrorist was taking flying lessons."
Against All Enemies - Book Review
Forbes, 15 April 2004

Why Did Tenet Lie About His Meetings With The President In The Summer Of 2001? - Click Here

"[Attoney General John Ashcroft] did not ask the FBI what it was doing in response to the threats and did not task it to take any specific action. He also did not direct the INS, then still part of the Department of Justice, to take any specific action. In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.265)

"During the summer of 2001, the U.S. Intelligence Community was in a state of heightened alert, due to concern about an imminent al-Qa’ida attack. However, this concern was not reflected in the FBI’s National Law Enforcement Threat System (NLETS) reports, which are the means through which the FBI communicated terrorist threat information with state and local law enforcement entities."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"Eleanor Hill, staff director for the joint House-Senate inquiry into alleged intelligence failures ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, released a 30-page statement Wednesday that found information on possible terrorist strikes continued to filter through the nation's intelligence system in the months directly before the attacks... Hill's report details a July 2001 briefing for senior government officials that said a review of five months of intelligence information indicated 'that [Bin Laden] will launch a significant attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks... 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.'... Such intelligence information dated back as far as 1998, Hill's report said, citing intelligence information in the fall of 1998 saying bin Laden's 'next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it' and a separate dispatch warned of a bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas."
U.S. HAD 'STEADY STREAM' OF PRE-9/11 WARNINGS
PBS News, 18 September 2002

"Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United States last month that large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent. The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation...."
Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of large-scale terror attacks
Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2001

"At the same time that the FBI was getting close to investigating [911 hijackers] Alhazmi and Almihdhar, the Mossad, Israel's feared secret service, gave the US an urgent warning, according to recent reports from Germany. These reports say that on August 23, 2001, the Mossad gave the CIA a list of terrorists living in the US and said that they appeared to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. The list of terrorists contained 19 names. It is unknown if these are the same exact 19 names as the actual hijackers or if the number is a coincidence. However, four names on the list are known and were names of the 9/11 hijackers: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta. It appears that a spy ring run by the Mossad had been closely following these terrorists for many months. In December 2000, Mossad agents rented an apartment in Hollywood, Florida, close to where Atta and Alshehhi were staying and attending flight school. They were closely spied upon until at least April 2001, when many of the Israeli agents were thrown out of the country. [Die Zeit, 10/1/02, Der Spiegel, 10/1/02, BBC, 10/2/02, Haaretz, 10/3/02] It has not been stated how the Mossad knew of Alhazmi and Almihdhar, but a Drug Enforcement Administration report on the Israeli spy ring internally released in June 2001 (and leaked after 9/11) noted the presence of Israeli spies in San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona at times when Alhazmi and Almihdhar would have been in those cities. [DEA Report, 6/01] Yet, apparently this warning and list were not treated as particularly urgent by the CIA and also not passed on to the FBI. [Der Spiegel, 10/1/02]"
Alhazmi and Almihdhar: The 9/11 Hijackers Who Should Have Been Caught
Centre for Co-operative Research, 18 October 2002

"New revelations are putting the CIA in a tight spot. Apparently the Israeli intelligence service Mossad gave early warnings to their American counterparts about the terrorist group around Mohamed Atta. Furthermore, German investigators found out after the attacks that their U.S. colleagues had already known a great deal about the Hamburg students two years in advance of Sept. 11, 2001. The latest discoveries were made by the Hamburg weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, which on Thursday (Oct. 3) intends to publish an extensive dossier on the failures of the Central Intelligence Agency. Freelance author Oliver Schroem therein sums up the results of his research among various European and American agencies..... Apparently the CIA acquired very specific information on several of the later suicide pilots of Sept. 11. These clues were ignored, although the suspects were already in the United States. Two of the later pilots were on an FBI wanted list starting in August 2001. Nevertheless, they were able to move unrecognized around the country and get on to the death jets using their own real names. The hottest lead would have led the Americans straight to the Hamburg terrorists around Mohamed Atta - if they had listened to their colleagues from the Israeli Mossad. Israeli agents were observing several of the terror pilots in the United States. According to research by ZEIT, between December 2000 and April 2001 a whole horde of Israeli counter-terror investigators, posing as students, followed the trails of Arab terrorists and their cells in the United States. In their secret investigations, the Israelis came very close to the later perpetrators of Sept. 11. In the town of Hollywood, Florida, they identified the two former Hamburg students and later terror pilots Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi as possible terrorists. Agents lived in the vicinity of the apartment of the two seemingly normal flight school students, observing them around the clock. Not long after, however, the [Israeli] agents were discovered by the U.S. authorities and deported to Israel. As is usual in such cases, the discovery was not made public and caused much annoyance between the traditionally competitive intelligence services, Mossad and CIA. .... With the deportation of the agents, the observation of the later terrorists was terminated. The Israelis provided a list including the names of at least four out of the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, but this was apparently not treated as sufficiently urgent by the CIA and also not passed on to the FBI. What is clear is that the U.S. agencies did not react quickly in following up on the tips from the Israeli agents. The ongoing congressional joint investigation has also found out about the Israeli angle. However, the Israelis also had not yet found out about the specific plan for the Sept. 11 attacks. At the same time, they believed that the 19 persons named in their list were potential terrorists who 'were planning attacks in the United States,' as DIE ZEIT writes. Only later did the American police search for Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. Both were on the Israeli list, and both later sat in the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon in Washington. Although their names were on an FBI national watch list starting in the late summer of 2001, they traveled without trouble in the United States and also boarded the death jets on Sept. 11 with passports in their real names."
Mossad Agents Were On Atta's Tail
Der Spiegel (Germany), 1 October 2002
(original German click here)

"...the Central Intelligence Agency... learned about plans for an attack 18 months before Sept. 11, and did nothing against the terrorists. In the meantime, the joint investigation of the House and Senate intelligence committees is investigating this matter. ZEIT has acquired the testimonies and reports seen by the committee. Almost on a daily basis, the joint investigation is revealing new details that are slowly showing the certainty of what at first seemed like a nasty insinuation: The CIA could have prevented the attacks of Sept. 11, had it not committed a series of systematic mistakes..... [9/11 hijacker] Almihdhar is well-known to the CIA. Long before his appearance in Malaysia, the American spy agency knew his name, his passport number and other personal data. The CIA also knows that Almihdhar has for a long time  possessed the multiple re-entry visa that allows him to travel to the United States at will. He received the visa from the U.S. consulate at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.... Almihdhar and Alhazmi .... line up for passport control. Both have U.S. visas in their own names, which the CIA knows by now. Although they have come in under their own names, the passport control lets them through without problems. The Customs computers do not show that the two Saudi Arabian citizens are actually terrorists. For reasons still unknown to this day, the CIA did not inform either the FBI or the INS or the State Department that the two were something other than respectable students. This is surely the most fateful error in a whole chain of omissions and mistakes by which the American services allowed the later Sept. 11 hijackers to get away..... Although the CIA can see from its own reports that Almihdhar possesses a valid U.S. visa and Alhazmi must still be in the United States, the investigators do not set off any alarms, and they do not pass the names on to the FBI. Under the law, the CIA as a foreign intelligence agency is not allowed to be active within the United States.... New York, June 11, 2001. FBI agents from the New York office and from Washington headquarters meet to exchange information with CIA representatives, with the aim of advancing the investigation into the Cole bombing. The CIA agents show the photos from Malaysia to their colleagues from the FBI and name Khallad as the mastermind of the attack. The CIA agents also mention Almihdhar, who can see in one of the photos together with Khallad. When the FBI agents ask for more exact information, the CIA people fall silent. They do not tell their FBI colleagues that Almihdhar possesses a valid U.S. visa and is at that same moment presumably in the United States. One year later, one of the CIA agents will be on the brink of tears as he tells a congressional committee that his group were not yet authorized to tell this information to the FBI.... Crawford, Aug. 6, 2001. U.S. president George W. Bush is on vacation. He wants to spend the whole month at his ranch in Texas. Every morning, however, he still receives his Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, wherein the CIA informs the president about the country's security situation. On this morning, the report is straight from the CIA director. His PDB runs 11 and one-half printed pages, instead of the usual two to three, and carries the title, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' Therein the CIA chief explains that al Qaeda has decided to carry out attacks within the United States, and that presumably members of the terrorist organization have been in the country for some time. It is unclear whether the CIA director informed the president about the statements of arrested al Qaeda members. According to their confessions, the terrorist organization for some time has been thinking about hijacking planes and using them as missiles... Langley, Aug. 23, 2001. The Israeli intelligence service Mossad presents to its American counterpart a list of names of terrorists who are living in the United States and seem to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. According to documents obtained by DIE ZEIT, Mossad agents in the United States were following at least four of the 19 hijackers, including Almihdhar. The CIA now finally does what it should have done 18 months earlier. It informs the State Department, the FBI and the INS about Almihdhar and Alhazmi, who are immediately put on a watch list as presumed members of al Qaeda. In Almihdhar's case, the warning adds that he most likely participated in the Cole bombing. A response does not take long. The immigration service writes back that according to its documents, both of the wanted men are currently in the United States.... One of the New York FBI agents calls headquarters in Washington and asks for reinforcements. He wants to widen the dragnet cast for Almihdhar. The FBI agent knows how dangerous Almihdhar is, for he spent months working on the Cole case. As a result he met CIA agents who mentioned the name Almihdhar. When he reads the name again on the watch list, with the additional notation that Almihdhar is suspected of involvement in the Cole bombing, the FBI agent becomes annoyed at his CIA colleagues, for having previously kept this information from him. But he becomes even more annoyed when his own headquarters refuses any support.... Washington, D.C. June 4, 2002. The FBI does not want to serve as the sole scapegoat for what the CIA has burdened it with. After all, the CIA committed the decisive mistake by not passing on the information about Alhazmi and Almihdhar for 18 months. This information is leaked to NEWSWEEK, which quotes an FBI man, 'No question, if we had gotten the information in time, we would have bagged all 19 of the hijackers.' The spies have started to sling mud at each other. Did the CIA and FBI fail disastrously? A joint commission of Senate and House members is supposed to explore these questions.... Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2002. The joint investigation began its work more than three months ago, but is being torpedoed by the Bush administration, says the Republican Senator Richard C. Shelby, vice-chairman of the committee to the New York Times. The government refuses to reveal just what information was passed on to President Bush in advance of the attacks. 'I am certain that so far our questions have only scratched the surface,' says Shelby. 'I am sure that one or two bombshells are still going to go off.' As more information about mistakes and omissions of the CIA and FBI end up leaking to the media, an investigation is initiated against the congressional committee members. The FBI begins an investigation and asks the senators and House members if they are prepared to take polygraphs. Washington, D.C., Sept. 18, 2002. The joint investigation's public hearings begin. Relatives of the victims of Sept. 11 also get to testify. 1,300 of them have joined an interest group, their spokesperson is Stephen Push, who lost his wife. She sat in the plane that was hijacked by the group around Almihdhar. 'If the intelligence community had been doing its job, my wife would be alive today.' FBI and CIA agents then testify before the committee. They have been promised anonymity and testify from behind a wall that conceals them from the eyes of the attending public. Many relatives of the victims sit there, silently holding photos. As a few agents confess how they were kept from investigating by their superiors, the widow of a firefighter who died in the WTC is overwhelmed. 'These people are guilty of negligence in their jobs,' she says. 'They should be put in front of a court. They are at least partly responsible for the death of 3,000 people.'"
Deadly Mistakes
U.S. Investigators Knew About Planned Terror Attacks, Let the Suspects Get Away. More Clues That CIA and FBI Could Have Prevented the Attack on America
Die Zeit (Germany), 1 October 2002

What Did Israel Know Before 9/11 And What Did It Tell The CIA? - Click Here

"If, as has been reported, some of the terrorists used the names by which intelligence agencies knew them, the attacks could have been disrupted, perhaps completely defeated, simply by requiring all airlines to deny them boarding and report their reservations to law enforcement agencies. "
Cathal Flynn
FAA Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security 1993 - 2000
9/11 Commission, Seventh Public Hearing

"The federal government's 'no-fly' list had 16 names on it on Sept. 11, 2001.... The list...   identifies suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes....Every time a passenger books a ticket, the airline checks the traveler's name against two enormous government databases, or watch lists, of people the government believes pose a threat. The FAA created two lists in 2001: a no-fly list and a so-called selectee list, both of which airlines compare against reservation records. When the TSA was formed in 2002, it took over maintenance of the lists from the FAA. The no-fly list grew from 16 names supplied by the FBI in 2001 to 1,000 names by the end of 2002, according to the newly released TSA documents."
Faulty 'No-Fly' System Detailed
Washington Post, 9 October 2004

"Mossad chiefs insist the Israeli spy agency was tracking Osama Bin-Laden's terrorists in America before September 11 and that that the information was passed on to the CIA on Five separate occasions before the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. As late as August 24, less than two weeks before the attacks, a Mossad warning, confirmed by German intelligence, BND, said that 'terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.' The warning alert was passed to the CIA. The warning was also passed to MI6. The agency made its own checks and also informed the CIA. Frustrated by its inability to alert the CIA to an impending attack, Mossad arranged on September 1, according to Tel Aviv sources last week, for Russian intelligence to warn Washington 'in the strongest possible terms of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings.'... According to similar documents shown to the Sunday Express, Mossad was running a round-the-clock surveillance operation on some of the September 11 hijackers. The details, contained in classified papers, reveal that a senior Mossad agent tipped off his counterpart in America's Central Intelligence Agency that a massive terrorist hit was being planned in the US. A handful of the spies had infiltrated the Al-Qaeda organisation while a staggering 120 others, posing as overseas art students, launched  massive undercover operations throughout America... The spying operations first came to the attention of the DEA in January 2001 according to a classified 90-page dossier which has been seen by the Sunday Express."
BUSH: THE IGNORED WARNING THAT WILL COME TO HAUNT HIM
GLOBE-INTEL - NUMBER :- 104 DATE :- 21/05/02

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets."
Clues Alerted White House to Potential Attacks
Fox News, 17 May 2002

"'We had clearly warned them,' said Mr. Patrushev, who is head of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. He added that their U.S. counterparts 'did not pay the necessary attention' to their warnings, the Interfax news agency reported."
Russia Gave 'Clear Warning'
Agence France-Presse, 16 September 2001

"Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. We had such facts too.  As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up [in our fighter aircraft]."
Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov
Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12 September 2001

"The ex-police chief told [CIA veteran and terrorism expert Bob] Baer that [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed ' is going to hijack some planes.' The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence... Baer sent this information [before 911] to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said.... After Pearl's murder [for which Omar Sheikh has been convicted], Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest."
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International, 30 September 2002

"A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was 'an outrageous lie'. Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used 'state secrets privilege'. She told The Independent yesterday: 'I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.'".
'I Saw Papers That Show US Knew al-Qa'ida Would Attack Cities With Airplanes'
Independent, 2 April 2004

September 2001

"Reprising the scene in the White House on 9/11, [head of counter terrorism  Richard] Clarke says he took a call from Dale Watson, the FBI's counterterrorism chief. 'We got the passenger manifests from the airlines,' Watson said. 'We recognize some names, Dick. They're al-Qaida.' Clarke recalled: 'I was stunned, not that the attack was al-Qaida but that there were al-Qaida operatives on board aircraft using names that FBI knew were al-Qaida.' Watson told Clarke that 'CIA forgot to tell us about them.'"
Truth as a Weapon
New York Times, 25 March 2004

"North American Aerospace Defense Command did not have specific enough intelligence to warrant increasing their alert status or placing additional forces on alert."
General Richard Myers, Acting Chairman of Joint Chiefs Of Staff On 9/11
9/11 Commission, Twelfth Public Hearing, Written Statement

"NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill.”
We've hit the targets
NewsWeek, 13 September 2001

"On Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
Bush: ‘We’re At War’
Newsweek, 24 September 2001

"Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers [in Israel] received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on Sept. 11, 2001 predicting the attack would happen, according to a report on Haaretz.com. The company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack, said the report."
Report: Israeli Firm Got Warning of WTC Attacks
Newsmax, 8 April 2004

"Air Force Gen. Richard Myers [the most senior military commander in the country that day] .....said he was on Capitol Hill that morning [Sept 11] in the offices of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland to discuss his confirmation hearing to become chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] .... While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. 'They thought it was a small plane or something like that,' Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call. Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet. 'Nobody informed us of that,' Myers said. 'But when we came out [i.e nearly an hour later], that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit.' [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Army Gen. Henry Shelton, was 'somewhere over the Atlantic' en route to Europe when the attacks occurred, so it was critical for Myers to get back to the Pentagon."
Myers and Sept. 11: 'We Hadn't Thought About This'
American Forces Press Service, 23 October 2001

"At 9:44, NORAD briefed the conference on the possible hijacking of Delta 1989. Two minutes later, staff reported that they were still trying to locate Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman Myers. The Vice Chairman joined the conference shortly before 10:00; the Secretary, shortly before 10:30.The Chairmanwas out of the country."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p38)

"[On 911 Donald Rumsfeld] The Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning's key events were over."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"The Northeast Air Defense Sector, or NEADS, is located in an unlikely bunker in upstate New York. Seconds into the mundane conversation, a phone call came in from a civilian air traffic control center in Boston alerting NEADS to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11. The next 100 minutes of that fateful day were recorded on more than 30 hours of audiotapes, later obtained by Vanity Fair writer Michael Bronner.....  Bronner also said that he was amazed to learn that the United States had only four armed fighter jets in the entire Northeast to protect it -- two at Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Mass., and two at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.... This new timeline contradicts certain statements given by administration and military officials in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, made both publicly and before the 9/11 Commission. 'I was extremely troubled, and so were the other members of the commission,' Thomas Kean., chairman of the 9/11 Commission. 'This was one of the most troubling facts in the whole 9/11 investigation -- how our military failed to get the information and then, in testifying before us, didn't really give the truth. 'What's strange to me about these statements to the press on the ABC News special [which aired on September 11, 2002] and many other places is, you know, a year later and beyond, you have Cheney, Rove, Andrew Card, and you have military people continuing to talk about the fact that they were watching United 93 -- they were deliberating,' Bronner said. 'The reality is... there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes.'"
New 9/11 Audiotapes Reveal U.S. Military's Information Breakdown
Time-Stamped Recordings Contradict Testimony Given at 9/11 Commission
ABC News, 2 August 2006

"The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with preexisting training and protocols.... As it turned out, the NEADS air defenders had nine minutes’ notice [from a source outside protocol] on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third, and no advance notice on the fourth."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p31)

"[On 9/11] The tapes record that NEADS had intended to issue orders to F-15 fighter pilots to attack hijacked planes with AIM-9 missiles fired into the nose of the seized aircraft and had begun discussing the matter after the second plane hit the World Trade Center. But the order never came until the attacks were over."
Pentagon Caught Lying To Kean Commission And Congress
'Fight Smart', 4 September 2006

"Clarke reported that they were asking the President for authority to shoot down aircraft. Confirmation of that authority came at 10:25."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p37)

"For the authority to shoot down a commercial aircraft prior to 9/11, granted to NORAD but not used against Payne Stewart’s plane in 1999 after the pilot and passengers lost consciousness, see Richard Myers interview (Feb. 17, 2004)."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (footnote, p457)

"[Following communication problems] On Air Force One, the president was unable to reach most of the people or at least many of the people whom he tried to reach. He could not functionally lead the government from Air Force One at a time of great national stress and national emergency. He told us when we interviewed him that this was a source of enormous frustration, as you can imagine it would be. He gave instructions and orders for that to be fixed. We had some testimony about that today. That's not a good situation."
Jamie Gorlick, 9/11 Commissioner
Day of Horror
PBS, 17 June 2004

"After the second aircraft impacted the second tower, the [National Military] Command Center then became a focal point for coordinating information flow. And at that point I convened - by the procedures that existed on 9/11, I convened a conference called a Significant Event Conference.... FAA tried to be included in that conference and we had difficulty throughout the morning getting them in the conference.... Most of the time they were not in the conference.... I can say that it did hamper information flow because we were getting information in a more roundabout way from FAA... I understand on that day that there were some compatibility issues between their secure phone and ours in the Command Center that caused them to drop out of the conference. But I'm not aware of the technical aspects of it.... we were connected to the White House and I was satisfied with the communications to the White House..... We were hampered that day by communications.... I can't speak to the connectivity with Air Force One. I was connected to the White House. And my understanding is Air Force One was in contact with the White House Situation Room. I was not in contact with - [Leidig is interupted here but presumably he was going to say Air Force One]....Yes, sir, there is a capability to do that [to connect the NMCC directly with Air Force One]. On that day we were connected with the White House....I don't recall, sir [why we weren't using the capability to connect to Air Force One]....."
Testimony of Admiral Leidig
The officer in command of the NMCC during most of the attacks
9/11 Commission, Twelfth Public Hearing

"The [official 9/11 Commission] Kean report makes clear that 'the defence of US aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols . . . If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC) . . . The NMCC would then seek approval from the office of the Secretary of Defence to provide military assistance . . . '   Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority that there was no reason the procedure was not operating that morning. 'For my 30 years of experience . . .' said Monte Belger, 'the NMCC was on the net and hearing everything real-time . . . I can tell you I've lived through dozens of hijackings . . . and they were always listening in with everybody else.' But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC was never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was told, to America's top military brass.   Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, 'a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed'. As a result, Norad's commanders were 'left in the dark about what their mission was'. The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system that worked was in the White House where Vice-President Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or it could not."
Iraq: the unthinkable becomes normal
New Statesman, 15 November 2004

KEY MILITARY FIGURES NOT AVAILABLE TO PENTAGON'S NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTRE DURING HEIGHT OF 9/11 EMERGENCY 'The Incommunicado Response Team'
Name	Position	Availability During Height Of Crisis
George W. Bush	Commander In Chief	Air Force One not connected to NMCC conference call (The President has also since claimed that the communications systems on Air Force One itself failed generally on 9/11. According to 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick: "On Air Force One, the president was unable to reach most of the people or at least many of the people whom he tried to reach. He could not functionally lead the government from Air Force One at a time of great national stress and national emergency.")
Donald Rumsfeld	Secretary of Defense	Out of communication at Pentagon. "The Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning's key events were over." according to executive summary of 9/11 report
General Henry Shelton	Chairman of Joint Chiefs	Out of country 'somewhere over the Atlantic'.
General Richard Myers	Vice-Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff (Acting Chairman on 9/11)	Out of communication on Capitol Hill
Brigadier General Montague Winfield	Deputy Director for Operations, J3, in the National Military Command Center ("He was present as the General Officer in Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11" according to the official Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command US military web site. Winfield was Commander of JPAC).	Handed over NMCC command position at 8:30 am and didn't return until end of hijackings

"CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.... Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld."
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11
CBSNews, 4 September 2002

"On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to obtain quickly as much information as possible..... He thought the U.S. response should consider a wide range of options and possibilities. The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time......"
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p 334/335)

"[At Camp David on 15 September 2001] the Iraq strategy's principal advocate in the group was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He had been the department's third-ranking official under Cheney during the Gulf War and believed that the abrupt and incomplete end to the ground campaign, with Hussein still in power, had been a mistake. The Bush administration had been seeking to undermine Hussein from the start, with Wolfowitz pushing efforts to aid opposition groups and Powell seeking support for a new set of sanctions. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had been examining military options in Iraq for months but nothing had emerged. ....Wolfowitz argued that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 created an opportunity to strike.....Rumsfeld had helped raise the Iraq issue in previous meetings, but not as vehemently as his deputy. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: Is this the time to attack Iraq?.... Wolfowitz had persisted in making his arguments about Iraq and other issues, and had annoyed some of his colleagues by showing up at meetings that were called for principals only-not for deputies."
At Camp David, Advise and Dissent
Washington Post, 31 January 2002

"Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the methods - particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy - are definitely the same. Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an 'off-the-books' operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. They used the proceeds to sustain the Nicaraguan contras - U.S. sponsored rebels fighting Managua's left-wing government - in defiance of both a congressional ban and of official U.S. policy as enunciated by the State Department and President Ronald Reagan. It was never clear whether Reagan understood, let alone approved, the operation. The picture emerging from the latest reports about the manipulation of intelligence in the drive to war with Iraq, as well as efforts by administration hawks to deliberately aggravate tensions with Syria, Iran, and North Korea in defiance of official State Department and U.S. policy, suggest a similar but much more ambitious scheme at work. As with Reagan, in this case, too, it is difficult to determine whether Bush  or even his NSC director, Condoleezza Rice - fully understands, let alone approves, of what the hawks are doing.  There was some hint of a parallel policy apparatus dating back just after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001. It was known early on, for example, that the Pentagon leadership, without notice to the State Department, the NSC, or the CIA, convened its advisory Defense Policy Board (DPB), headed by Richard Perle, to discuss attacking Iraq within days of the attacks. The three agencies were also kept in the dark about a mission undertaken immediately afterward by former CIA director and DPB member James Woolsey to London to gather intelligence about possible links between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, as if the CIA or the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) could not be trusted."
  Iran-Contra, Amplified
Inter Press Service News Agency, 9 August 2003

"If you want to figure out whether the administration of President George W. Bush intends a crusade to 'remake the Middle East' in the wake of Washington's presumed military victory in Iraq, watch what happens with R. James Woolsey. A former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Woolsey is being pushed hard by his fellow neoconservatives in the Pentagon to play a key role in the post-Saddam Hussein U.S. occupation.... At a NATO conference in Prague last November, Woolsey declared 'Iraq can be seen as the first battle of the fourth world war,' in rhetoric that he has practiced and honed virtually since the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. 'After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were centered in Europe,' he said, 'the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East.' .... in January 1998 [he] signed a public letter to Clinton by the newly formed Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for the adoption of a 'regime change' as the main U.S. policy goal toward Iraq. In that same year, he lobbied hard for passage of the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which not only formalized regime change as the policy but allocated up to 100 million dollars for the Iraqi opposition, mainly the Iraq National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmed Chalabi. That lobby went into high gear immediately after Sep. 11. Within just a few days, [Richard] Perle convened the DPB [Defense Policy Board] to discuss how Washington could use the incidents as justification for attacking Iraq, and Woolsey was tasked to go to Europe to collect evidence that Hussein was linked to al Qaeda."
Woolsey's Role Crucial to Impact of Occupation
'Foreign Policy in Focus', 8 April 2003

"In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House. Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. ... But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th. This document is marked 'Secret'. Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of it's relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY.... The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail.... The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. 'This is not something that they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to'. [said Joe Trento, author of 'The Secret History Of The CIA'. "
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
BBC Newsnight, 6 November 2001

"George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan. In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: 'I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, 'said nothing to demur' at the prospect. Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September."
Blair Told US Was Targeting Saddam 'Just Days After 9/11'
Independent, 4 April 2004

February 2002

"Critics of the Bush administration have long argued that Bush appeared intent on invading Iraq long before Congress voted to authorize military action in October 2002 if Hussein didn't abandon his alleged illegal weapons programs. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who was chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee when Democrats ruled, has written in his book, 'Intelligence Matters,' about his visit to MacDill Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Central Command, on Feb. 19, 2002. He was going for a status report on Afghanistan, Graham wrote, but CENTCOM'S Gen. Tommy Franks called him aside to tell him, 'Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.' 'Excuse me?' Graham replied. 'Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,' Graham quoted Franks as saying.  Graham wrote: 'I was stunned. This was the first time I had been informed that the decision to go to war with Iraq had not only been made but was being implemented, to the substantial disadvantage of the war in Afghanistan.'"
British Memo Reopens War Claim
The Chicago Tribune, 17 May 2005

"The future context for energy policy will be different. The UK will be increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas... Increasingly policy towards energy security ...... will be pursued in a global arena, as part of an international effort.... energy security should be addressed by a variety of means, including enhanced international activity and continued monitoring.... The UK is currently one of just two G7 countries which is self-sufficient in energy..... The future for energy policy seems likely to be much less benign.... issues of energy security are likely to become more important. The UK will become increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas.... most other G7 countries already rely substantially on imported energy. ... [One way to maintain security is] to use international action to address global threats to energy security. On just about any scenario the UK will become more dependent on imports both for both its gas and its oil."
The Energy Review
A Performance and Innovation Unit Report - UK Cabinet Office - February 2002

March 2002

"NewsMax.com has learned that active FBI Special Agent Robert Wright Jr. is about to blow the whistle on his superiors for hindering investigations that might have prevented the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm, scheduled, then postponed, a press conference for Wednesday where Wright, cloaked in anonymity until now, was going to tell the entire story. The shocking details should be out in a few days. Wright complains that when he tried to continue and pursue certain terrorist investigations, he met with retaliation from his bosses and from the Justice Department, which made it clear that it wanted the probes to go no further. Prior to putting off the news conference, Judicial Watch said that 'based on the evidence, the FBI special agent believes that if certain investigations had been allowed to run their course, Osama bin Laden’s network might have been prevented from committing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 innocents.' Insiders believe that after this full story breaks, Wright’s career will be toast. Only public outrage can save him. Meanwhile, Judicial Watch, which is representing Wright, is requesting a full independent investigation. Assisting the law firm in this case is none other than David Schippers – the same Schippers whose quiet, methodical and damning leadership in the Clinton investigation led to the then-president’s impeachment."
Scandal Inside the FBI: Did G-Men Miss the Boat on 9-11?
NewsMax, 14 March 2002

More Internet Links On Robert Wright - Click Here

April 2002

"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of supply are, is a vital strategic question...The Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library, Texas
10 Downing St, 7 April 2002

"The level of interest in the now famous Downing Street Memo, published in the May 1 edition of The Sunday Times, and in the leaked documents published over subsequent weeks, has been extraordinary. This new web page is designed to give our readers access to all the stories we have written about three highly classified documents on the Iraq war that were leaked to The Sunday Times ahead of the British General Election on May 5, 2005. These three documents include the now famous Downing Street Memo which contains the minutes of a meeting, of what was effectively Tony Blair’s war cabinet, held in Downing Street, on July 23, 2002.... At the time, this was the most damaging part of any of the documents. Despite Blair’s repeated insistence throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken to go to war with Iraq, political analysts had long believed that the decision was in fact made at the Bush-Blair summit at the president’s range at Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002. Not only did this confirm it, but it did so in terms that were highly damaging to the prime minister."
The leaked Iraq war documents
Sunday Times, 19 June 2005

May 2002

"A veteran FBI agent Thursday charged that corruption inside the bureau derailed investigations that could have averted the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11. His lawyers said the FBI had evidence that the World Trade Center was a possible terrorist target. In a memo written 91 days before Sept. 11, Special Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. warned that Americans would die as a result of the FBI's failure to investigate terrorists living in this country. Wright went public at a press conference even though FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered him to stay in Chicago and threatened him with criminal prosecution if he spoke publicly about the agency's wrongdoing.... 'Knowing what I know,' Wright continued, 'I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are transferred from the FBI, I will not feel safe.' ... Even worse, he said, there is 'virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing in the United States.... By phone from his law office in Chicago, Wright’s lead attorney, David Schippers, who represented the House Judiciary Committee in its impeachment of Bill Clinton, chided the FBI for dropping the ball in dealing with domestic and international radical Islamic "charities" that were laundering money on American soil through U.S. financial institutions and other channels....When Wright attempted to travel to Washington on his own time during the week after Sept. 11, to meet with members of Congress about the FBI’s incompetence and dereliction of duty regarding terrorism, his attorneys were threatened by the Justice Department, which oversees the bureau....The Judicial Watch counsel said the FBI did have intelligence about terrorist activity planned against the World Trade Center and 'other monuments.'"
Agent: FBI Could Have Prevented 9-11
NewsMax, 31 May 2002

July 2002

"A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy. The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service. The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war. 'There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,' the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,' weapons of mass destruction. The memo said 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The White House has repeatedly denied accusations made by several top foreign officials that it manipulated intelligence estimates to justify an invasion of Iraq.... The principal U.S. intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, wasn't completed until October 2002, well after the United States and United Kingdom had apparently decided military force should be used to overthrow Saddam's regime. The newly disclosed memo, which was first reported by the Sunday Times of London, hasn't been disavowed by the British government. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington referred queries to another official, who didn't return calls for comment on Thursday. A former senior U.S. official called it 'an absolutely accurate description of what transpired' during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents. In July 2002, and well afterward, top Bush administration foreign policy advisers were insisting that 'there are no plans to attack Iraq on the president's desk.' But the memo quotes British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a close colleague of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as saying that 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action.' Straw is quoted as having his doubts about the Iraqi threat. 'But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran,' the memo reported he said."
British Memo Indicates Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy
Knight Ridder, 6 May 2005

September 2002

"This chapter sets out what we know of Saddam Hussein’s chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, drawing on all the available evidence. While it takes account of the results from UN inspections and other publicly available information, it also draws heavily on the latest intelligence about Iraqi efforts to develop their programmes and capabilities since 1998. The main conclusions [include] that.... Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability, in breach of UNSCR 687, which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents... Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons, in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in breach of UNSCR 687. Uranium has been sought from Africa that has no civil nuclear application in Iraq... Iraq’s military forces are able to use chemical and biological weapons, with command, control and logistical arrangements in place. The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so...."
IRAQ’S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION THE ASSESSMENT OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
British Government Dossier,  September 2002

November 2002

"Iraq can be seen as the first battle of the fourth world war. After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were centered in Europe, the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East."
Former Director of the CIA, James Woolsey
NATO conference, Prague, November 2002

December 2002

"Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq. On December 19th, Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials.... President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' He commented, 'Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.' Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. 'The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,' ElBaradei said.... The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office. It took Baute's team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake..... Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador’s return to Rome. Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, 'confronted the United States with the forgery: 'What do you have to say?' They had nothing to say.' ElBaradei’s disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei’s report, dismissed the subject by saying, 'If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved.' A few days later, at a House hearing, he denied that anyone in the United States government had anything to do with the forgery. 'It came from other sources,' Powell testified. 'It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.'.... Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections. Then as now, the Security Council was divided, with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese telling the United States and the United Kingdom that they were being too tough on the Iraqis. President Bill Clinton, weakened by the impeachment proceedings, hinted of renewed bombing, but, then as now, the British and the Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington. 'I knew that was going on,' the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts. 'We were getting ready for action in Iraq, and we wanted the Brits to prepare.' Over the next year, a former American intelligence officer told me, at least one member of the U.N. inspection team who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere.... The British propaganda scheme eventually became known to some members of the U.N. inspection team..... Asked to respond, Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had not obtained the actual documents until early this year, after the President's State of the Union speech and after the congressional briefings, and therefore had been unable to evaluate them in a timely manner. Harlow refused to respond to questions about the role of Britain’s MI6. Harlow’s statement does not, of course, explain why the agency left the job of exposing the embarrassing forgery to the I.A.E.A. "
Who Lied to Whom?
The New Yorker, 31 March 2003

January 2003

"The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday pinpointed for the first time security of energy sources as a key priority of British foreign policy. Mr Straw listed energy as one of seven foreign policy priorities when he addressed a meeting of 150 British ambassadors in London. The US and British governments officially deny that oil is a factor in the looming war with Iraq, but some ministers and officials in Whitehall say privately that oil is more important in the calculation than weapons of mass destruction.... Mr Straw told ambassadors that, following a review he ordered last year, the Foreign Office drew up a list of seven medium to long-term strategic priorities, including 'to bolster the security of British and global energy supplies'".
Straw admits oil is key priority
Guardian 7 January 2003

February 2003

".... our energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister
Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper, February 2003

April 2003

"The UK is a net exporter of oil, so we have no need of the Iraqi oil."
British Prime Minister
House of Commons, 14 April 2003

"Since US forces rolled into central Baghdad a week ago, one of the sole public buildings untouched by looters has been Iraq's massive oil ministry, which is under round-the-clock surveillance by troops. The imposing building in the Al-Mustarisiya quarter is guarded by around 50 US tanks which block every entrance, while sharpshooters are positioned on the roof and in the windows.... Baghdad residents have complained that US troops should do more to protect against the looters, most of them Shi'ite Muslims repressed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime who live in the vast slum known as Saddam City on the northern outskirts.But while museums, banks, hotels and libraries have been ransacked, the oil ministry remains secure. The symbolism is loaded, considering how vehemently the United States and Britain denied war opponents' accusations that the campaign to oust Saddam was driven by oil lust. 'They came from the other side of the world. Do you believe they're going to do much for me? They've just come for the oil,' fumed Salam Mohammad Hassan, a doctor who lives near the ministry. Residents noted that the irrigation ministry, just next door, was torched. US forces, who say they cannot prevent looting across the capital of five million, respond that they are not trying to seize Iraq's oil resources but preserve them."
Oil ministry an untouched building in ravaged Baghdad
Agence France Presse, 16 April 2003

US Marines Guard Iraq's Ministry of Oil
After The Invasion Of 2003

"....every morning for the past week, staff from the Ministry of Irrigation have arrived for work at their new office -- the parking lot of their charred government complex.  Little remains of the ministry, save massive metal desks too heavy for looters to carry and a toilet or two. The former minister has vanished. Years of records and plans literally went up in smoke when US missiles slammed into the 10-story building..... a tour of Baghdad's 22 ministries demonstrates just how complex the task of rebuilding the government will be. In some cases, the obstacles are physical: The Ministry of Trade, for example, is a blackened edifice still smoldering from fires set by looters.... Only a few agencies, such as the Ministry of Oil, are intact..... At the Ministry of Oil, staff members point out with some irony that theirs is the one ministry in town without a scratch. Inevitably, suspicions are raised that the ministry was deliberately spared, so that the United States can profit from Iraq's oil. The phalanx of US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division guarding the ministry and frisking all those coming in and out only heightens resentment. 'I am not happy because we are occupied by the Americans, in my country, in my city, and in my ministry, ' said Lawahith al-Qaissi, the chief of engineers. 'And if it is not for our oil, then why are they here?' Indeed, of all the ministries, it is the sprawling Oil Ministry that has the most hustle and bustle inside, as cleaners mop up dust from recent sandstorms and as newly returning employees hug and kiss one another for the first time since the war began. Plans are apace to get oil, Iraq's lifeblood, flowing fully again.... Now there are dreams to do far more at the Ministry of Oil, like woo foreign investment and technology to more than double the barrels of oil that Iraq could pump per day, to 7 million."
Rebuilding of ministries is key hurdle
Boston Globe, 29 April 2003

"America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations in Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks. The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq. Withdrawal of 'infidel' American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was 'irrelevant'.... Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military 'footprint' in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of 'infidels' in the birthplace of Islam. That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks. Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been 'dictated' by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was 'irrelevant', there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia."
America to withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that oil was one of the reasons for the US-led invasion of Iraq, a Swedish news agency reports. 'I did not think so at first. But the US is incredibly dependent on oil,' news agency TT quoted Blix as saying at a security seminar in Stockholm. 'They wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too hard.' Blix, who helped oversee the dismantling of Iraq's weapons programs before the war, said another reason for the invasion was a need to move US troops from Saudi Arabia, TT reported. Competition over oil is creating tension between the United States and China, Blix said........."
Blix says war motivated by oil
Australian Associated Press, 7 April 2005

June 2003

"We are writing to inquire and express concern about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) continued targeting of Special Agent Robert Wright, a situation we had hoped and believed had been resolved after we raised the issue last year... Recent internal documents of the FBI provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee escalate our concerns about retaliation against Agent Wright. According to the documents, after Agent Wright completed his June 2, 2003 press conference, the top two FBI OPR officials at the time discussed their plan to 'take him out,' for his public appearance and comments on a network television news program."
Letter to Director of FBI and the Attorney General, from Senator Chuck Grassley and  Senator Patrick Leahy
14 July 2004

More Internet Links On Robert Wright - Click Here

July 2003

"I see the intelligence which is relevant to my expertise which is in the area of chemical and biological weapons..... I have no idea whether there were weapons or not at that time [of the September dossier].... It is possible it was not the case... I have referred to that: the issue of the 30 per cent probability of Iraq possessing chemical weapons. That is the sort of statement that I do make and may well have made to [Andrew Gilligan of the BBC]..."
Dr David Kelly, Britain's Leading Adviser On Biological and Chemical Weapons
Evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, 15 July 2003

March 2005

"The British Government intervened to help UK and US energy giants in their attempts to secure lucrative contracts to exploit Iraq's ruined oilfields. The Foreign Office delivered a report by the International Tax and Investment Center (ITIC) - a Washington-based think-tank backed by a host of multinationals, including oil companies such as Shell and BP - to Iraqi officials in Baghdad, it has emerged. The British ambassador to Iraq formally sent the 'road-map' study on the Iraqi oil industry to the then Iraqi minister of finance, according to documents seen by The Independent on Sunday. The study recommended the Iraqi government sign long-term production-sharing agreements with foreign oil companies. Emails between civil servants also showed that the Foreign Office helped the ITIC secure an audience with senior officials from the Iraqi Oil Ministry so that it could present its report. The ITIC hosted a conference in Beirut in January 2005 to give a formal presentation to Iraqi ministers. Executives from BP, Shell, ChevronTexaco, the Italian oil company ENI and its French rival Total attended. A diplomat from the Foreign Office, who helped the ITIC further its relationship with the Iraqis, was also present. The story of the envoys' involvement was revealed on Friday night by the Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera as part of its People and Power documentary series. Greg Muttitt, the co-director of the campaign group Platform, said: 'There is no question that the British Government is exploiting its position as an occupation power to push its own oil interests and those of multinational companies.'... Production-sharing agreements allow companies to make vast profits once they have recouped their costs. Because of the controversy caused by the inclusion of the term in early drafts of the hydrocarbon law, it has now been dropped. It is not clear what will replace this."
Foreign Office helped set up Iraqi oil deals
Independent, 11 March 2007

March 2006

"... we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being."
General John Abizaid, Commander of the United States Central Command overseeing US operations in Iraq,
confirming to a US Congressional Committee 14 March  2006 that the United States needs permanent military bases in Iraq in order to maintain access to Gulf oil

November 2006

"The case for reducing the United States' dependence on oil is most often argued by environmentalists concerned about global warming and ozone depletion. But a growing number of people are drawing what they consider to be a crucial link between oil and national security. They argue that America's reliance on oil is the number one security threat facing the country. One figure who has emerged in this debate is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger and former director of the CIA, R. James Woolsey, who spoke in New York this week at an event sponsored by the Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank that seeks to define and promote America's interests in the Middle East. Woolsey argues that America's reliance on oil as the primary source of fuel is one of the greatest barriers to national security and threatens both the US and Israel."
Former CIA chief: 'Oil dependence threatens US, Israel'
Jerusalem Post, 3 November 2006

February 2007

"Iraq's government last night agreed a landmark deal on sharing the country's formidable oil wealth among the country's ethnic minorities... Under the draft oil law, regional administrations will be empowered to negotiate contracts with international oil companies....Fewer than a quarter of its fields have been developed ...The Bush administration, facing growing pressure to end the Iraq conflict, has been urging the Iraqis to finish the new oil law...."
Iraqi cabinet agrees deal on sharing oil revenues
Guardian, 27 February 2007

"Iraq's draft hydrocarbon law, the centerpiece in the development of the country's shaky oil industry, details dozens of untouched oil fields loaded with proven reserves and scores of exploration blocks that may prove a magnet to international oil companies, according to a document. Development of the long-delayed draft law has suddenly picked up pace in recent weeks, with hopes that it may be approved by lawmakers later this month. It is expected to open the country's 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the world's third largest, to foreign investors."
Iraq Oil Law Details Untouched Fields
Wall St Journal, 4 March 2007

"In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian yesterday at his Sydney hotel, [Dick] Cheney outlined the case against Iran... Cheney also points out that 20 per cent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and is vulnerable to Iranian military action."
No retreating and no regrets
The Australian, 24 February 2007

"They clearly frighten most of their neighbors in the region out there. I've heard from most of them about their concerns about Iran trying to assert itself and dominating the region. They also occupy one side of the Persian Gulf. And that gives them the capability to interfere with about 20 percent of the world's daily supply of oil, 18 million barrels a day that flows in the Straits of Hormuz. And obviously a large part of the world's oil production is within range of Iranian military capabilities. So if you add to all of that nuclear weapons, I think it would, in fact, constitute a significant danger -- not just on a regional basis, but clearly to the potential to have an impact far beyond that."
Interview of Vice President Cheney
The Australian, 23 February 2007

"Q: And what are the stakes here? The diplomatic effort has been going on for a long time and it has not worked. In fact, Iran has gone in the other direction. So what are the stakes here?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, remember where Iran sits. It's important to backup I think for a minute and set aside the nuclear question, just look at what Iran represents in terms of their physical location. They occupy one whole side of the Persian Gulf, clearly have the capacity to influence the world's supply of oil, about 20 percent of the daily production comes out through the Straits of Hormuz."
Interview of Vice President Cheney
ABC News (Australia), 23 February 2007

Summary
9/11 Was The Start Of America's Oil War With China

'Fight Smart' - 16 March 2006 America's Battle Against China For Control Of Persian Gulf And Caspian Energy Resources www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATUSvChina.htm Iran And Syria Next In Firing Line In Global Energy War

"The ex-police chief told [CIA veteran and terrorism expert Bob] Baer that [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed ' is going to hijack some planes.' The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence... Baer sent this information [before 911] to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said.... After Pearl's murder [for which Omar Sheikh has been convicted], Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest."
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International, 30 September 2002

Still An Issue Above, 9/11 placard at a Presidential hopeful Barack Obama campaign rally Austin, Texas, 23 February 2007 A New York Times/CBS Poll published October 2006 found that only 16 per cent of Americans believe the US government is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The Bush administration had warnings from at least 11 countries in advance which are not discussed in the official 9/11 report, including from Russia and Israel. "So many countries warned the US: Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, and Russia. Yet the two countries in the best position to know about the 9/11 plot—Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—apparently didn’t give any warning at all." They Tried to Warn Us: Foreign Intelligence Warnings Before 9/11 Cooperative Research, 30 January 2003 "Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. We had such facts too.  As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up [in our fighter aircraft]." Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12 September 2001 "'What's strange to me about these statements to the press on the ABC News special [which aired on September 11, 2002] and many other places is, you know, a year later and beyond, you have Cheney, Rove, Andrew Card, and you have military people continuing to talk about the fact that they were watching United 93 - they were deliberating,' [Michael] Bronner [of Vanity Fair] said. 'The reality is........there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes.'" New 9/11 Audiotapes Reveal U.S. Military's Information Breakdown ABC News, 2 August 2006 What Really Happened To The US Air Force On 9/11 - Click Here "This documentary produced by the BBC offers a revisionist look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it raises some tantalizing questions. It makes the incredibly serious and controversial claim that the U.S. government had definitive knowledge of the imminent Japanese attack, yet Franklin D. Roosevelt and other American leaders deliberately sacrificed Americans lives so they would have an excuse to enter World War II.... In this authoritative and suspenseful documentary, the BBC takes you inside the secret activities of the Americans, the British and the Japanese as each nation moved fatefully toward the 'date that will live in infamy'." 'Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor' BBC Warner - VHS Release Date: April 24, 2001 Amazon.com Senior US Military, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials who Question the 9/11 Commission Report - Click Here

"As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001: They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and 'sounded the loudest warning' to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden. Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, 'They felt the brushoff.' If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. ... According to Woodward’s book, Cofer Black exonerates them all this way: 'Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.' The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd. At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot."
Peter Rundlet, Counsel for the 9/11 Commission
Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission
Think Progress, 30 September 2006

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The Post 9/11 Game That Is Being Played By The People Who
Want The Right To Tap MPs Phones

It's The Money Stupid!

"Britain came under unprecedented pressure from its European partners yesterday to reveal the extent of its involvement in a US-led spying network said to be used for industrial espionage. Portugal, the current holder of the European Union presidency, announced it would raise the issue at a forthcoming meeting of interior ministers, despite formal insistence from London that nothing illegal was taking place. Britain and the US both wrote to the EU's enterprise commissioner, Erkki Liikanen of Finland, to say that they were doing no wrong, but a heated European parliament debate on the Echelon electronic surveillance system left open the possibility that MEPs would demand a formal investigation into the allegations. And Britain's letter, written by its EU ambassador Sir Stephen Wall, fuelled speculation by referring to 'safeguarding the nation's economic well-being' as one of the reasons for which telecommunications could be legally intercepted. But he denied that British facilities were used by other states to gain commercial advantage. Echelon, established during the cold war and operated by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is reportedly capable of intercepting millions of telephone, fax and email messages. James Woolsey, who headed the CIA from 1993-95, has already admitted what to many had long seemed obvious - that the US secretly collects information on European firms.... Until yesterday, Echelon was a minor issue rumbling along almost unnoticed in the European parliament. But Portugal's surprise decision to raise it in the council of ministers puts it into a different league. It will alarm British ministers concerned about the image of an either-or-choice between the US or Europe. It will also boost interest in the intelligence services at a time when allegations about Libyan dirty tricks and the loss of laptops by secret agents is attracting unwelcome attention.... Duncan Campbell, the British investigative journalist, has claimed that the US used Echelon to beat the European consortium Airbus to a major plane deal with Saudi Arabia in 1994... Robert Evans, a Labour MEP, said British MEPs would block calls for an investigation."
Britain accused of aiding industrial espionage by US
Guardian, 31 March 2000

"A retired MI6 officer has been appointed to a top post at BP-Amoco, the British-based oil company..... John Gerson was director of security and public affairs at the agency and was embroiled in attempts to suppress disclosures by the former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. Mr Gerson took early retirement from what was effectively the post of deputy head of MI6 at the end of last year. Last month he became one of BP's vice-presidents for government and public affairs. His appointment was approved by the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. MI6 has close links with oil companies, the 'revolving door' syndrome, in the same way as armed forces officers have close links with defence companies. Rolls-Royce has employed former MI6 officers to help win contracts in the Middle East, and merchant banks have taken some on. During the first reading of the intelligence services bill, Lord Mackay, the conservative lord chancellor, told peers in 1994 that MI6 protected the 'economic wellbeing' of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil...'"
Former MI6 officer gets top post at BP
Guardian, 8 May 2000

"Duplicity and chicanery are their stock-in-trade, so is it any surprise that spies sometimes break their own rules? More surprising is the mess that [MI6] the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has made of dealing with Richard Tomlinson, a renegade spook whom it fired in 1995. Running a secret intelligence organisation is a difficult business, now that the moral discipline of the cold war has crumbled: when spying for your country is about making its big businesses richer, rather than subverting totalitarianism, patriotism may not be enough to keep a disgruntled ex-employee quiet."
Breach birth
The Economist, 25 January 2001

"There may be something even more frightening here. What if Blair believes this stuff - if you have a leader who can be led around by the nose by a few bureaucrats with a right-wing agenda? That's what scares me... I've got all these inside documents, showing what's really going on behind the closed doors of these huge empires of finance. But instead, we get pictures of green-haired kids throwing chairs through the windows of McDonald's. That is what the press considers a discussion of globalisation".
Interview with BBC Newsnight award winning investigative reporter, American Greg Palast
Metro, 18 June 2003

"[The invasion of Iraq was] an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages."
Mike Scheuer, Head of CIA Bin Laden Unit 1996 - 1999
'Imperial Hubris'
Christian Science Monitor, 12 November 2004

"Insiders told [BBC] Newsnight that planning [against Iraq] began 'within weeks' of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.   An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in   the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat. Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors  to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration. The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just  before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in  production above Opec quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed  by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert    Ebel. Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for   Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department. Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's 'back-channel' to Saddam, claims that  plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council  in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British  occupying forces."
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
BBC Online, 17 March 2005

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'There Is No War On Terror'
'The War On Terror' Is A Geopolitical Scam

"There is no 'war on terror' on the streets of Britain, the country’s most senior criminal prosecutor said yesterday. Those responsible for atrocities like the July 7 bombings in London were not 'soldiers' in a war, but 'deluded, narcissistic inadequates' who should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, added. He gave warning against allowing the threat of terrorism to trigger a 'fear-driven and inappropriate' security response which damaged Britain’s traditions of freedom. Sir Ken’s comments to the Criminal Bar Association put him at odds with Tony Blair and the Home Secretary, John Reid, who have justified tighter security laws on the grounds of the threat posed to Britain by a new kind of terror. Instead of viewing the problem of terrorism as a 'war' threatening the very life of the nation, it should be dealt with as an issue of law enforcement, added Sir Ken, who leads prosecutors in England and Wales as head of the Crown Prosecution Service. One of the 'primary purposes' of the violent attacks carried out by supporters of international Islamist terror was to tempt countries like Britain to 'abandon our values'. He made clear his concern over the threat to civil liberties from repressive legislation introduced in response to a perceived terrorism emergency."
There is no war on terror in the UK, says DPP
London Times, 24 January 2007

The Scam

"New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the 'single most explosive' element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups. Hersh says the U.S. has been 'pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight' for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to 'stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.' Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of 'three Sunni jihadist groups' who are 'connected to al Qaeda' but 'want to take on Hezbollah.' Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: 'We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11."
Hersh: Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups
ThinkProgress.com, 25 February 2007

THE REDIRECTION The New Yorker, 25 February 2007 By Seymour Hersh [Extracts] "To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.... .....Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki..... The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is 'a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,' separating 'reformers' and 'extremists'; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were 'on the other side of that divide.' (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, 'have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.' Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said..... The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser..... Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that 'there is nothing coincidental or ironic' about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. 'The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,' Leverett said. 'This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.'.... The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, 'of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.'... .....In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours. In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change. The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed..... The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a 'Shiite crescent'—especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.... The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province.... The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain. [Vali] Nasr [a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations] compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988 .... The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings...."

"The Pentagon is considering a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs... The proposal, sources say, includes ... backing armed Iranian dissidents and employing the services of the Mujahedeen e Khalq, a group currently branded as terrorist by the United States..."
The Iran Debate
ABC News, 29 May 2003

"The People’s Mujahidin is seen by Washington as a possible instrument for 'regime change' in Tehran....The Marxist movement, which initially supported the Islamic revolution and then broke with the fundamentalist regime, was formally designated last year as 'terrorist' by the State Department and the EU but it is known to have links with the CIA and other US agencies."
France rounds up US-linked Iranian exiles
London Times, 16 June 20035

"A lone U.S. ambassador compromised America's hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan for more than two years, The New York Sun has learned. Ambassador Nancy Powell, America's representative in Pakistan, refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America's $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. Instead, thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material - printed at taxpayer expense and translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages - remained 'impounded' on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois...... Mr. Kirk [a US congressman] discovered Ms. Powell's unusual order in January 2004 and, over the past year, launched a series of behind-the-scenes moves that culminated in a blunt conversation with President Bush aboard Air Force One, the removal of the ambassador, and congressional approval for reinvigorating the hunt for Mr. bin Laden......Mr. Kirk accidentally learned of Ms. Powell's impoundment policy as part of an official congressional delegation visiting Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in January 2004...... Security personel [at the Embassy] were unhappy with the decision, according to the congressman. 'There was a lot of discord among the staff,' he said...... Ms. Powell, now serving at the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington D.C., declined to comment directly....... The senior State Department official denied that Ms. Powell had restricted the distribution of materials touting the reward for Mr. bin Laden and other 'high value targets.' That program - known as Rewards for Justice - was discontinued in Pakistan prior to Ms. Powell's 2002 arrival because it was 'ineffective,' the senior official said. At the time, the Rewards for Justice program was widely used by other American embassies farther from the center of America's operations to kill or capture key Al Qaeda leaders. A career State Department functionary, Ms. Powell was sworn in as American ambassador to Pakistan on August 9, 2002. ......... In February 2004, he met with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Then, he began raising the issue with a growing array of White House officials. When Mr. Bush asked the congressman to join him aboard Air Force One for a campaign stop in Mr. Kirk's suburban Chicago district in July 2004, the lawmaker saw his chance. He told the president about his ambassador impounding materials that could lead to the capture of Mr. bin Laden. 'Bush was very cautious,' Mr. Kirk recalled. The president did not betray an immediate response. 'When one of his people is concerned, he likes to take his time and investigate.' Ms. Powell left her post as American ambassador in November 2004. State Department spokesman Noel Clay declined to comment on the timing of ambassadorial rotations.......The American Embassy in Islamabad now boasts a 24-hour call center to receive tips. ...... About 25 calls were received in February 2005, the center's first full month of operation. Congress recently passed legislation raising the reward for information on Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members to $50 million and revamping the Rewards for Justice Program. More than $57 million has been paid to 43 people who provided credible information about the whereabouts of known terrorists since the program's founding in 1984. But little has been paid since the September 11, 2001, attacks..........The American Embassy in Islamabad's Rewards for Justice program is now in high gear. Yet, if Mr. Kirk and some intelligence officials are correct, valuable time was lost."
How a Lone Diplomat Compromised the Hunt for Bin Laden
New York Sun, 28 March 2005

Two Congressmen Had To Do This

"Television ads promising that fortune in return for bin Laden ran on two Pakistani stations last weekend, and will run regularly on Pakistan's biggest station starting Tuesday. And last month, newspaper ads appeared for the first time in the country's major cities featuring the faces of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and other top al-Qaida lieutenants. The ads are the result of legislation written by U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and pushed into law late last year by fellow Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee. The two took action after learning that little had been done since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to publicize the rewards program aimed at capturing al-Qaida's leaders where they are believed to be hiding. Kirk, who in late January returned from a trip to the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, remembers the moment he realized the trail to bin Laden had gone cold, he said. On a trip to Islamabad in January 2004, he visited the U.S. Embassy and asked then-Ambassador Nancy Powell who was overseeing the publicity surrounding the rewards program. 'The ambassador said, `I don't know who is working the rewards program,' which was stunning to me,' Kirk said. On the same trip, Kirk and a senior staff member on the International Relations Committee noticed boxes of matchbooks with information about the rewards gathering dust in the basement of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. There were no radio ads about the program, even on the Voice of America station where they cost the government nothing, said the staff member, who asked not to be named. 'We came back saying, `What a disaster,' ' he said. A State Department spokesman had no comment on why the rewards program was not being publicized in Pakistan or Afghanistan in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, but he said the department's approach has changed."
U.S. ad blitz targets bin Laden
Illinois lawmakers push $25 million bounty in Pakistan
Chicago Tribune Review, 12 February 2005

What Hunt For Bin Laden?

"'The goal has never been to get bin Laden,' [US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General] Myers said Friday in an interview with CNN's 'Novak, Hunt & Shields' program to be aired Saturday. In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush had said the United States would bring bin Laden to justice, 'dead or alive.'"
No large anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan looming, Gen. Franks says
Associated Press, 5 April 2002

"The world may be better off if Osama Bin Laden remains at large, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s recently departed executive director.  If the world’s most wanted terrorist is captured or killed, a power struggle among his Al-Qaeda subordinates may trigger a wave of terror attacks, said AB 'Buzzy' Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior executive."
Let Bin Laden stay free, says CIA man
London Times, 9 January 2005

"The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said. The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice 'dead or alive.' ... 'This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda,' [Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit]..."
C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden
New York Times, 4 July 2006

"The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show.  In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations.  In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro's regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission. The figures, included in a lengthy letter OFAC sent to Congress late last year and provided to The Associated Press this week, prompted Republicans and Democrats alike to question whether OFAC has failed to adjust from the Cold War to the war on terrorism. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., threatened Thursday to start an effort in Congress to eliminate some funding for OFAC if more resources weren't put toward the bin Laden and Saddam efforts. 'This is really astounding.' Dorgan said. 'I hope somebody in the administration will soon come to his or her senses and start directing our resources where they are needed. Politics is clearly diverting precious time, money and manpower away from the war on terrorism here.' Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, requested the figures, which showed that at the end of 2003, OFAC had 21 full-time agents working Cuba violations and just four full-time workers hunting bin Laden's and Saddam's riches. 'Rather than spending precious resources to prevent Americans from exercising their right to travel, OFAC must realign its priorities and instead work harder to keep very real terrorist threats out of our country,' said Baucus, D-Mont.  Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the tax-writing Senate panel, agreed. 'OFAC obviously needs to enforce the law with regard to U.S. policy on Cuba, but the United States is at war against terrorism, and al-Qaida is the biggest threat to our national security,' Grassley said. 'Cutting off the blood money that has financed Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden must be a priority when it comes to resources.'  The Treasury Department, which oversees OFAC, said its workers 'fully utilize the resources and tools available to us to protect our nation and the good-willing people around the world from those who seek to harm us, be they terrorist thugs or fascist dictators.' In a statement, Treasury said the Bush administration was 'steadfast in fighting the financial war on terror and honoring our commitment to the United States and the United Nations to uphold our economic sanctions against rogue nations.'  But the department last month signaled it wasn't completely satisfied with its terror-fighting effort, announcing a reorganization that placed four historically autonomous offices -- OFAC, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of Asset Forfeiture and the Office of Intelligence Support -- under the control of a new undersecretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Treasury Secretary John Snow wrote Grassley that the initiative will, by 2005, double the resources OFAC had just four years ago if President Bush's budget is approved. Still, Snow acknowledged change was needed. 'In a post-Sept. 11 world it was crucial that we took a good, hard look at the capabilities we had available as well as question what changes needed to be made in light of that attack,' Snow wrote. In its letter late last year to the Senate committee, OFAC said it 'has no information that any foreign government is knowingly sheltering Saddam's personal wealth.' The agency added that the deposed Iraqi dictator 'almost certainly used front companies and trusted associates outside Iraq to hold and manage assets.' As for bin Laden, OFAC wrote that its dealings with Saudi officials and bin Laden's family since 1999 have led it to conclude that the al-Qaida leader did not have a fortune of $300 million or more, as some media reports have suggested. 'He may have had some wealth, but not in this range,' OFAC wrote. Instead, OFAC said bin Laden used his status as a 'trusted person'' from a wealthy Saudi family to collect and distribute charitable funds in the name of radical Islam, essentially underwriting a recruiting and training network that became al-Qaida. OFAC is charged with freezing the bank accounts and other financial assets of countries, companies and individuals who are U.S. enemies. Though obscure to most Americans, the office has encountered significant controversy. Last Christmas, Grassley and Baucus accused the agency of failing on at least two occasions to freeze the money of people identified by U.S. allies as terrorist financiers.    Richard Newcomb, the career official who has run OFAC for years under both Republican and Democratic presidents, was the subject of an internal investigation in the mid-1990s that concluded he improperly met outside the office with representatives of companies under investigation by his agency and took uncoordinated enforcement actions that potentially compromised criminal investigations."
More Agents Track Castro than Bin Laden
Associated Press, 30 April 2004

After 9/11 The Supposed 'War On Terror' Lasted A Mere 5 Months For PR Purposes
In Order To Keep Coalition Partners Happy On The Advice Of Colin Powell
And Then The Campaign Moved Onto The Main Agenda - Iraq

"CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.... Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld."
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11
CBSNews, 4 September 2002

"[At Camp David on 15 September 2001] Afghanistan's history nagged at the president's advisers. Its geography was forbidding and its record of rebuffing outside forces was real. Bush asked his advisers: What are the worst cases out there? What are the real downside risks? One was triggering chaos in Afghanistan that would spill over into Pakistan. This was seen as a great danger by many, particularly Rice and Cheney. Afghanistan was already a mess, Cheney noted....Another risk they faced was getting bogged down in Afghanistan. Rice knew it had been the nemesis of the British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th. She wondered whether it might be the same for the United States in the 21st. These fears were shared by others, which led to a different discussion: Should they think about launching military action elsewhere as an insurance policy in case things in Afghanistan went bad? They would need successes early in any war to maintain domestic and international support. Rice asked whether they could envision a successful military campaign beyond Afghanistan. In this context, the issue of Iraq once again was on the table. The full sequence is not clear from the recollections and notes of several key participants. But all agree that the Iraq strategy's principal advocate in the group was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz....Wolfowitz argued that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 created an opportunity to strike.....Rumsfeld had helped raise the Iraq issue in previous meetings, but not as vehemently as his deputy. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: Is this the time to attack Iraq?.... Powell objected. You're going to hear from your coalition partners, he told the president. They're all with you, every one, but they will go away if you hit Iraq. If you get something pinning Sept. 11 on Iraq, great - let's put it out and kick them at the right time. But let's get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq - if we can prove Iraq had a role.... "
At Camp David, Advise and Dissent
Washington Post, 31 January 2002

"George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan. In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: 'I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, 'said nothing to demur' at the prospect. Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September."
Blair Told US Was Targeting Saddam 'Just Days After 9/11'
Independent, 4 April 2004

So What Really Happened During The Afghanistan PR Exercise?

"The goal has never been to get bin Laden"
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Myers
Associated Press, from CNN, 5 April 2002

"Mr. Bush got a lot of attention with his Hollywood cowboy proclamation that he wanted bin Laden dead or alive. He had his chance. In December 2001, bin Laden was trapped in his mountainous hideout in Tora Bora, in eastern AfghanistanYou might have thought that Mr. Bush, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, would have used all the forces at his disposal to capture or kill the man responsible for the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. But if you thought that, you would have been wrong. Americans bombarded Tora Bora. But the all-important effort on the ground to surround and close in on bin Laden and his forces was contracted out by the administration to a clownish, quarrelsome group of Afghan thugs and miscreants. When a Marine general all but begged to be allowed to bring his men in to do the job, he was turned down. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan and hundreds of his followers scattered. The man Mr. Bush really wanted was Saddam Hussein. And he pulled out all the stops to get him. It is time for the American people to wise up. From the very beginning, the so-called war on terror was viewed by the Bush crowd as a magical smoke screen, a political gift from the gods that could be endlessly manipulated to justify all kinds of policies and behavior — including the senseless war in Iraq — that otherwise would never have been tolerated by the American people.... fear, and the patriotism felt by so many millions of Americans, have been systematically exploited by the administration. The invasion of Iraq was not about terror. It was about oil and schoolboy fantasies of empire and whatever weird oedipal dynamics were at work in the Bush family."
The Fear Factor
New York Times, 17 April 2006

"... in late September and early October [2001], leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiated bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September 11 attacks. The deal was that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar. According to reports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this had both bin Laden's approval and that of Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader.... Later, a US official said that 'casting our objectives too narrowly' risked 'a premature collapse of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr bin Laden was captured'.... And yet the US and British governments insisted there was no alternative to bombing Afghanistan because the Taliban had 'refused' to hand over Osama bin Laden. "
THIS WAR OF LIES GOES ON
Daily Mirror 16 November 2001

"American warplanes have had al-Qaeda and Taleban leaders in their sights as many as ten times over the past six weeks, but have been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough, US Air Force officials complained yesterday..."
Pilots had leaders of al-Qaeda 'in their gunsights'
London Times, 19 November 2001

"[Northern Alliance commander] General Dawood said that Alliance intelligence sources in the city had reported that at least two large Pakistani planes had landed at Konduz airfield to extricate 'military personnel' on Tuesday night, followed by at least two more flights on Wednesday night..... Asked why the US, which controls the skies over Afghanistan, should have allowed such flights, he replied: 'That is a question that you will have to put to the Americans'...."
Alliance threatens to massacre Taleban's foreign fighters
London Times, 16 November 2001, p3 print edition (click here to access scanned image)
(on-line version excludes the question put to General Dawood)

Al-Qaida fighters airlifted to safety - 5-night operation rescued 3,000 terrorists from Afghanistan - click here

"Pakistani fighters trapped in the besieged city of Konduz have been airlifted to safety in Pakistan with the apparent consent of the United States... The deserters are believed to have been joined by some retired soldiers, including operatives of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s main spy agency....It is not thought that many of those who were flown back to Pakistan, including deserters, were detained on their return...."
 US 'allows Pakistani fighters to escape'
London Times, 24 Nov 2001

More on 'The Escape From Afghanistan' - click here

"Mullah Haji Abdul Samat Khaksar, the No 2 Taliban official in U.S. custody, has been waiting months for the CIA to talk to him. The former Taliban deputy interior minister says he has valuable information for the U.S. - and may be able to help locate former Taliban leader Mullah Omar.... but no senior intelligence official has come for a full interview. The CIA will not comment... he says he has sent five letters to the US embassy in Kabul offering to pass on information about al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan... " 'The Taliban Guy the CIA Won't Question' Time Magazine, 25 February 2002, European print edition, p21

"Thousands of American troops scouring Afghanistan for Mullah Omar have been looking for the wrong man, according to an Afghan villager who claims that it is his face on the CIA's wanted poster and not that of the fugitive Taliban leader. Maulvi Hafizullah, a former protocol officer for the Taliban, has been hiding in fear for his life in a remote part of southern Afghanistan since his photograph appeared as Omar on a CIA leaflet...  Hafizullah has two eyes while Omar has only one, having been half-blinded in a Soviet rocket attack in 1986...."
'I'm not Mullah Omar' says the man on CIA wanted poster
Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2002

"U.S. Special Forces soldiers said that in late July, a Green Beret A-Team, backed by about 20 local Afghan fighters, apprehended Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani as he left his compound at daybreak in a town west of Kandahar.... Osmani, among the top six most-wanted Taliban, was flown to a detention center at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, for interrogation, the Special Forces soldiers said. He was one of the Taliban's top generals, leading thousands of troops as coalition forces ousted the hard-line regime. But, according to these soldiers, Task Force 180 — the overall command in Afghanistan — released Osmani a few weeks later..... A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which runs operations in Afghanistan, declined to comment on questions submitted by The Times."
Soldiers say U.S. let Taliban general go
Washington Times, 18 December 2002

"Some Special Forces soldiers have expressed frustration with Task Force 180 for turning down their written concept of operations, or 'conops,' to attack suspected Taliban. The soldiers said in interviews that they gained information on several occasions last summer on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar. But, they said, commanders turned down the missions..."
Soldiers say U.S. let Taliban general go
Washington Times, 18 December 2002

"Why has the CIA ignored for 11 consecutive months the only anti-al Qaida Pakistani tribal leader who had tracked bin Laden's movements ever since his escape from Tora Bora last Dec. 9? In late November 2001, this tribal chief contacted us via a mutual friend. He said his people knew where bin Laden was in the Tora Bora mountain range.... [Later] Bin Laden, he informed us, had indeed come out through the Tirah Valley on horseback two days before we got there, on Dec 9..... The U.S. intelligence community has been aware of the tribal leader's name and reputation, but did not contact him. .....  Members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board who were asked by us to ask the question [why this man was not contacted] have simply been told, 'We'll get back to you on that.' They're still waiting."
Conspiracy of silence?
United Press International, 18 November 2002

Because If Bin Laden Was Found (Dead Or Alive) It Would Risk The Public Thinking The 'War On Terror' Was Over
And The Purpose Of The 'War On Terror' Is To Control The Oil Assets Of The Middle East And Central Asia

"On the pretext of fighting international terrorism the United States is trying to establish control over the world’s richest oil reserves, Leonid Shebarshin, ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, who heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said in an interview for the Vremya Novostei newspaper.  Using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their 'democratic order' on the Greater Middle East, Shebarshin said. 'The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,' Shebarshin said.  Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: 'We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion. The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions,'  Shebarshin emphasized.  With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region — one of the world’s largest oil reservoirs."
U.S. Using Anti-Terror War to Gain World Oil Reserves — Soviet Intelligence Chief
Moscow News, 21 March 2005

"The CIA is squelching publication of a new book detailing events leading up to Osama bin Laden's escape from his Tora Bora mountain stronghold during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, says a former CIA officer who led much of the fighting.  In a story he says he resigned from the agency to tell, Gary Berntsen recounts the attacks he coordinated at the peak of the fighting in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001, including how US commanders knew bin Laden was in the rugged mountains near the Pakistani border and the Al Qaeda leader's much-discussed getaway.... 'When I watched the presidential debates, it was clear to me . . . the debate and discussions on Tora Bora were - from both sides - completely incorrect,' said Berntsen, who will not provide details until the agency finishes declassifying his book. 'It did not represent the reality of what happened on the ground.'"
CIA Blocks Book on Tora Bora, Author Says
Associated Press, 29 July 2005

"... in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora - intelligence operatives had tracked him - and could have been caught. 'He was there,' Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. 'We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,' Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. 'Bin Laden was never within our grasp.' Berntsen says Franks is 'a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was.' In his book - titled 'Jawbreaker' - the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a 'strategic disaster' because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora 'was not necessarily just the number of troops.'"
CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away
Newsweek, 15 August 2005

"A senior CIA official says the number of agents assigned to bringing down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is shrinking, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Michael Scheuer, one of the most senior intelligence officers in the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit told the newspaper more than 50 percent of those working on terrorism and against bin Laden are assigned to the job temporarily, for 30 to 90 days at a time. Some of the most experienced officers have been assigned to Iraq or sent to the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security's new terrorist threat information center, he said."
Official: Fewer CIA working on bin Laden
Washington Times, 9 November 2004

"But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror.
Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden."
George W. Bush
Presidential Election Debate Against John Kerry, University of Miami
Transcript, Washington Post, 30 September 2004

The Result

"The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaeda agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001, secret intelligence documents reveal..... Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of MI5, warned recently that there were more than 1,600 'identified individuals' actively engaged in plotting terrorist attacks..... Entitled Extremist Threat Assessment, the document, which was drawn up this month, also discloses that Afghanistan, where more than 7,000 British troops will be based by the end of May, is expected to supersede Iraq as the location for terrorists planning Jihad against the West.......Dr Jonathan Eyal, the director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the al-Qaeda revival was down to the West's inability to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made matters worse."
Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11
Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2007

Don't Believe 'The War On Terror' In Afghanistan Was Abandoned In February 2002?
Then Just Ask Bob Graham And Tommy Franks

"Critics of the Bush administration have long argued that Bush appeared intent on invading Iraq long before Congress voted to authorize military action in October 2002 if Hussein didn't abandon his alleged illegal weapons programs. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who was chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee when Democrats ruled, has written in his book, 'Intelligence Matters,' about his visit to MacDill Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Central Command, on Feb. 19, 2002. He was going for a status report on Afghanistan, Graham wrote, but CENTCOM'S Gen. Tommy Franks called him aside to tell him, 'Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.' 'Excuse me?' Graham replied. 'Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,' Graham quoted Franks as saying.  Graham wrote: 'I was stunned. This was the first time I had been informed that the decision to go to war with Iraq had not only been made but was being implemented, to the substantial disadvantage of the war in Afghanistan.'"
British Memo Reopens War Claim
The Chicago Tribune, 17 May 2005

" The U.S. Central Command, which has military responsibility for the Middle East and Central Asia, is based in Tampa, Fla. I’ve had a practice of going there during military operations to get a briefing. On that particular day [in February 2002], the subject was the war in Afghanistan. At the conclusion of a fairly upbeat briefing, Gen. Tommy Franks -- who was the commander of Central Command and subsequently the commander of the war in Iraq -- took me into his office and said... that some of the military personnel and equipment which had been most important in the early successes in Afghanistan were being relocated to get ready for a war in Iraq. He then went on to describe how he thought the war on terrorism should be conducted: staying in Afghanistan until we crushed Al Qaeda there, then moving to other areas, such as Somalia and Kenya, where there were large numbers of Al Qaeda cells. He was also suspicious of the intelligence that was coming out of Iraq, and said that the Europeans knew more about weapons of mass destruction there than we did. That was my first recognition that we were about to abandon the war on terror....."
Interview with Bob Graham, former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
Mother Jones, 23 November 2004

But It Gets Worse

"... earlier this afternoon a declassified version of the report of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on the events of September 11, 2001, (was) released to the public.... I, for one, am committed to see this report is not forgotten or overlooked. In my view, the delay reflects the excessive secrecy with which this administration appears to be obsessed and which is keeping important findings of our work from the American people. Such censorship also saps the urgency of reform and precludes the American peoples' ability to hold its leaders accountable. The most serious omission, in my view, is part 4 of the report, which is entitled 'Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.'' That section of the report contained 27 pages between pages 396 through 422. Those 27 pages have almost been entirely censured...The declassified version of this finding tells the American people that our investigation developed 'information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.' In other words, officials of a foreign government are alleged to have aided and abetted the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11, which took over 3,000 lives. I would like to be able to identify for you the specific sources of that foreign support but that information is contained in the censured portions of this report, which are being denied to the American people. What are the consequences of this? It significantly reduces the information available to the public about some of the Government's most important actions, or more accurately, inactions prior to September 11."
Transcripts of remarks by Senator Bob Graham, Co-Chairman of the joint Congressional Inquiry into the attacks of 9/11
US Congressional Record, 23 July 2003

MotherJones.com interview with Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 23 November 2004 [Excerpts] "The Al Qaeda attacks of September 11 prompted a flood of questions as to why the U.S. intelligence community had failed to see them coming; and Sen. Bob Graham wanted some answers. The Florida Democrat, then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, joined 36 other House and Senate members to form the 2002 congressional joint inquiry into where the intelligence agencies went wrong. In his recent book, Intelligence Matters, Graham provides an inside account of what this inquiry found..... he takes the Bush administration to task for disengaging from the war against Al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq, a decision Graham voted against and memorably criticized on the Senate floor..... Graham, a former governor of Florida, chose not to seek re-election to the Senate this year, after 18 years' service (10 of them on the intelligence committee). He recently spoke by phone with MotherJones.com." MJ.com: How cooperative were President Bush and his administration with your inquiry? BG: They started out with a lot of representations of how helpful they would be, in the same way that they did to the citizens’ 9/11 Commission that followed us. But when you actually started to dig close to sensitive information -- the most sensitive being the role of the Saudis -- they began to erect barriers. ...... ..... If the president wants to deny the American people knowledge as to what the Saudis did to support the terrorists, that’s the president’s prerogative. And if the American people accept that, as they did on [the election of] Nov. 2, 2004, that pattern will continue.... ..... The 9/11 Commission had a somewhat broader jurisdiction than we did; they were also looking at things like the FAA and other non-intelligence agencies. In the matter of findings, the biggest disagreement we had with the 9/11 Commission was on the role of Saudi Arabia. We found that there was compelling evidence that the Saudis played an active role in assisting two of the terrorists in Southern California, including being the means of substantial funding for those two terrorists. And this question of whether their support was limited to those two, or may have extended to others of the 17 terrorists, is still an unsolved mystery because the FBI did such an inept job of conducting that investigation.

"The first two 9/11 hijackers arrive in the United States via Los Angeles international airport. Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were already suspected of involvement in al-Qaeda terrorist activities by the CIA, which had been monitoring their movement abroad. But the CIA does not inform the FBI, so the two terrorists do not appear on the terrorist Watchlist - and as they have valid visas are allowed in the country. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar settle in San Diego where they live openly, using their real names in official documents. One is listed in the local phone book. They start lessons at a local flying school, but are soon rejected because of their poor English. In August 2001, the CIA finally warns the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar may be in the United States, but by then the two terrorists have long gone from San Diego and cannot be traced.... Publication of report by the joint Congressional inquiry into intelligence failings leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Over 30 pages in the published version have been redacted by the government, because of national security concerns. It later emerges that most of the redacted pages relate to the activities of the first two hijackers in San Diego and to their possible connections with Saudi Arabian nationals living there. The inquiry's co-chairman, Senator Bob Graham, feels that the FBI, in particular, withheld evidence about the activities of the two hijackers who lived in San Diego."
Timeline: 9/11
BBC Online, 14 February 2007

"Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers 'would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,' the Florida Democrat wrote. And in Graham's book, 'Intelligence Matters,' obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees. Graham also disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against Al Qaeda terrorism. He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Representative Porter Goss. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers. Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government."
9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book
Boston Globe, 5 September 2004

"The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document. One U.S. official who has read the classified section said it describes 'very direct, very specific links' between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators 'that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental.' Said another official: 'It's really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the [Saudi] government' as well.... senior leaders of the CIA, FBI, Treasury Department and other agencies involved in the U.S. counter-terrorism effort have begun to raise strenuous behind-the-scenes objections to some of the assertions made in the classified section of the report.... The nearly 900-page report, released last week, concluded that a series of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence failures preceded the Sept. 11 attacks and that there was evidence of financial support for the hijackers by an unnamed foreign government. U.S. officials have confirmed that that government is Saudi Arabia, but nearly all the details supporting that claim are contained in the lengthy redacted section of the document.... officials refused to discuss the classified sections of the report but confirmed that they detailed additional allegations about Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, two Saudi men, and their suspicious activities in the United States.... 'If this comes out, it will blow the top off the relations with [the Saudi] government because the American people will just be outraged,' said one source familiar with the report.  'People don't know how much is in there and how specific it is,' the source said. 'The public hasn't gotten anywhere near the meat of it.'"
Saudi Government Provided Aid to 9/11 Hijackers, Sources Say
Los Angles Times, 2 August 2003

Senator accuses White House of 9/11 coverup Union Tribune, San Diego, 7 September 2004 [Extracts] "Reviving a controversy that has festered since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee alleged Tuesday that the White House covered up possible Saudi Arabian government connections to two of the terrorists who lived in San Diego. The FBI was also acting at the direction of the Bush administration when it refused to let congressional investigators question an informant with whom the terrorists – Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar – lived, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said. 'I find that the actions in San Diego present a compelling case that there was Saudi assistance,' Graham said in a conference call with reporters that coincided with the release of his book 'Intelligence Matters,' which concludes that President Bush directed the FBI 'to restrain and obfuscate' the investigation, possibly to protect U.S.-Saudi relations. .... Graham co-chaired the exhaustive congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks and is privy to still-classified information about the probe. His book is the latest in a string of examinations of alleged Saudi ties to the hijackers. ..... At the center of Graham's allegations are two former San Diego men whom he identifies as Saudi intelligence agents – Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan. Graham describes a web of complex financial and personal relations between the two men and Alhazmi and al-Midhar, who, like 13 of the other hijackers, were Saudi nationals. Al-Bayoumi helped the future hijackers get settled in San Diego and, Graham says, his income from Saudi sources rose significantly during their stay in the area. '... That increase came from two sources, a Saudi government contractor and a member of the Saudi royal family. From these two sources, al-Bayoumi was funneled in excess of $40,000 above his usual salary – somewhere between one-sixth and one-twelfth the estimated total amount needed to fund the September 11 attacks,' Graham wrote. He indicates that much more light would be shed on the matter if the Bush administration would agree to declassify 27 pages of the congressional report that remain secret. Releasing the information would do no harm to national security, Graham said. 'Having spent a significant amount of time with those 27 pages, I can say unequivocally that the information they contain raises serious questions about Saudi Arabia's governmental support for at least some of the terrorists' he wrote. Graham also discusses at length the congressional investigators' unsuccessful attempts to question the FBI informant, identified as Abdussattar Shaikh, a retired professor and community leader from Lemon Grove. FBI officials would not deliver a congressional subpoena to Shaikh, with FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft arguing it would compromise the bureau's ability to cultivate sources in the Muslim community, according to Graham. The FBI also failed to give Shaikh, whom Graham says had been relocated by the FBI, a list of written questions from the investigators until he had hired a prominent attorney with ties to the Justice Department. The attorney demanded immunity from prosecution for Shaikh, which the congressional intelligence committees refused to grant so the questions went unanswered. 'It was as if in an effort to protect their informant, the FBI had secured counsel for him,' Graham wrote, adding that Shaikh was having financial difficulties at the time. Later, Graham said he and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., received a 'candid letter' from a senior member of the FBI's congressional affairs staff that said 'the (Bush) administration would not sanction an interview with the source. Nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena or a notice of deposition on the source.'"

"[911 hijackers] Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had numerous contacts with a long-time FBI counterterrorism informant while they were living in San Diego, California... In its November 18, 2002 written response to the [911 Congressional] Joint Inquiry, the FBI has acknowledged that there are 'significant inconsistencies' in the informant’s statements about these [counterterrorism] contacts [with the 911 hijackers before the attacks]. The FBI investigation regarding this issue is continuing.... The [Bush] Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s efforts to interview the informant in order to attempt to resolve those inconsistencies. The Administration also would not agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on the informant. Instead, written interrogatories from the Joint Inquiry were, at the suggestion of the FBI, provided to the informant. Through an attorney, the informant has declined to respond to those interrogatories and has indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of immunity prior to testifying."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi attended a terrorist meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000.32 This meeting was known to – and surveiled by – the CIA, which already knew that al-Mihdhar possessed a multiple-entry visa permitting him to travel to the United States. The National Security Agency (NSA) also independently possessed information linking al-Hazmi to Al-Qa’ida. Neither the CIA nor NSA, however, saw fit to provide their names to the TIPOFF database.33 There is apparently some confusion over whether the CIA told the FBI anything about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. CIA e-mail traffic reviewed by the JIS, however, suggests that the CIA did brief the FBI in general terms . The CIA, however, still did not bother to tell the FBI that al-Mihdhar had a multiple-entry visa that would allow him to enter the United States.34 In early March 2000, the CIA learned that al-Hazmi had arrived in Los Angeles on January 15. Despite having just learned of the presence in this country of an Al-Qa’ida terrorist, the CIA told no one about this. The internal cable transmitting this information, in fact, contained the notation: 'Action Required: None, FYI.'35 This information came at the height of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s alarm over Al-Qa’ida’s 'Millennium Plot,' and al-Hazmi’s arrival had occurred at about the same time the CIA knew that Al-Qa’ida terrorist Ahmed Ressam was also supposed to have arrived in Los Angeles to conduct terrorism operations.36 Still, however, the CIA refused to notify anyone of al-Hazmi’s presence in the country. By this point, both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi – both terrorists known to the CIA – were living in San Diego under their true names. They signed these names on their rental agreement, both used their real names in taking flight school training in May 2000, and al-Mihdhar even used his real name in obtaining a motor vehicle identification card from the State of California.37 In July 2000, al-Hazmi even applied to the INS for an extension of his visa, sending in this application using both his real name and his current address in San Diego (where he would remain until that December).38 INS, of course, had no reason to be concerned, since the CIA had withheld the two terrorists’ names from TIPOFF. Nor did the FBI have any reason to look for them – e.g., by conducting a basic Internet search for their names or by querying its informants in Southern California – since the last it had heard from CIA was that these two terrorists were overseas. The CIA’s failure to watchlist al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi became even more alarming and inexplicable in January 2001, when the CIA discovered that the Malaysia meeting had also been attended by a suspect in the USS Cole bombing. This presumably made the two terrorists even more interesting to the CIA – and their known presence in the U.S. even more dangerous, by confirming their linkages to Al-Qa’ida operational cells – but the CIA still did not bother to inform TIPOFF. This failure was particularly damaging because al-Mihdhar was overseas at the time: putting his name on the watchlist would have enabled INS agents to stop him at the border.39 Even when given the opportunity to tell the FBI – in face to face meetings – about the presence of these two terrorists in the United States, the CIA refused. At a meeting in June 2001 with FBI officials from the New York Field Office who were working on the USS Cole case, a CIA official refused to tell them that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had come to the United States.40 Meanwhile, Khalid al-Mihdhar was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and applied for a new U.S.visa in June 2001. The State Department officials who took this application appear to have followed procedures and checked his name against their CLASS database, which incorporates TIPOFF watchlist information. Because CIA continued to refuse to put the name of this Al-Qa’ida terrorist into TIPOFF, however, no CLASS 'hits' occurred, and al-Mihdhar was given a visa and returned to the United States unmolested in July.41 The CIA only decided to watchlist al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in late August 2001, by which point they were already in the United States and in the final stages of preparing for the September 11 attacks.42 By this point, tragically, it was too late for the FBI – hamstrung by its own investigative regulations – to stop them. Although the FBI scrambled in late August and early September to locate the two terrorists in the United States,43 it denied itself the services of any of its own agents assigned to criminal work and refused even to conduct a basic Internet search that would have revealed al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar living under their true names in San Diego. (According to testimony from an FBI agent in New York who conducted just such an Internet search after the September 11 attacks, finding al-Mihdhar’s address 'within hours.'44) It also denied itself any assistance that could have been obtained from Treasury officials in tracking down al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi through their credit card or banking transactions. As it turned out, however, on September 11, 2001, the two men boarded American Airlines Flight 77, and helped fly it into the Pentagon.... Nor was this all. After the FBI was belatedly notified by the CIA in August 2001 that known Al-Qa’ida terrorists al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the United States, the Bureau began trying to track them down. Despite the urgency of this task, however, FBI Headquarters prohibited FBI criminal investigators in New York from participating in the search for these terrorists and refused even to tell them what little was known about the two men at the time. As one of the New York agents was informed in an e-mail from Washington, D.C., 'that information will be passed over the wall' only if 'information is developed indicating the existence of a substantial federal crime.' Perceiving there to be an unbridgeable gap between law enforcement and intelligence work, the FBI thus refused even to talk to itself in order to prevent mayhem by known Al-Qa’ida terrorists in the United States. Meanwhile, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the final stages of their preparations for the September 11 attacks."
Additional Views of Senator Richard C. Shelby - Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"On June 11, 2001, at a meeting of FBI and CIA officials, FBI field agents from New York investigating al-Qaeda’s responsibility for the deadly U.S.S. Cole bombing, pressed for information regarding the CIA’s interest in al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi and their attendance at the January 2000 Malaysia meeting of al-Qaeda terrorists, which included the person responsible for planning the U.S.S. Cole attack. The CIA official at the meeting denied the FBI agent’s request and withheld basic and relevant information about the suspected terrorists because he did not believe he had the authority to share the information. Two and half months after this June 11, 2001, meeting, and after the two terrorists had been determined to have entered the country and were watchlisted, a FBI New York agent pressed FBI headquarters to use full criminal resources to find these at-large members of al-Qaeda. The agent’s request was denied by the FBI’s National Security Law Unit which cited a 'wall' that prevented the sharing of intelligence information with criminal case agents. Invoking this so-called 'wall' was erroneous however, and, as a result, the FBI’s search for the terrorists in the two weeks leading up to the attacks was unnecessarily hamstrung."
Additional Views - Senator Carl Levin
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Censored Edition, December 2002

"It has been established that two of the 9/11 hijackers had a support network in the U.S. that included agents of the Saudi government, and that the Bush administration and the FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship. In his book, 'Intelligence Matters,' Senator Bob Graham [former Chairman of the Senate Select Committe On Intelligence] made clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties in the House and Senate intelligence committees. Here is an excerpt from Senator Graham’s statement from the July 24, 2003 congressional record on the classified 27 pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11: 'The most serious omission, in my view, is part 4 of the report, which is entitled Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters. Those 27 pages have almost been entirely censured. . . . The declassified version of this finding tells the American people that our investigation developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. In other words, officials of a foreign government are alleged to have aided and abetted the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11, which took over 3,000 lives.' In his book Graham reveals, 'Our investigators found a CIA memo dated August 2, 2002, whose author concluded that there is incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government. On September 11, America was not attacked by a nation-state, but we had just discovered that the attackers were actively supported by one, and that state was our supposed friend and ally Saudi Arabia.' He then cites another case, 'We had discovered an FBI asset who had a close relationship with two of the terrorists; a terrorist support network that went through the Saudi Embassy; and a funding network that went through the Saudi Royal family.' The most explosive revelation in Graham’s book is the following statement with regard to the administration’s attitude on page 216: 'It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety.' Further, he states that he asked the FBI to undertake a review of the Riggs Bank records on the terrorists’ money trail, to look at other Saudi companies with ties to al-Qaeda, to plan for monitoring suspect Saudi interests in the United States; however, Graham adds: 'To my knowledge, none of these investigations have been completed . . . Nor do we know anything else about what I believe to be a state-sponsored terrorist support network that still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States.' What Graham is trying to establish in his book and previous public statements in this regard, and doing so under state imposed ‘secrecy and classification’, is that the classification and cover up of those 27 pages is not about protecting ‘U.S. national security, methods of intelligence collection, or ongoing investigations,’ but to protect certain U.S. allies. Meaning, our government put the interests of certain foreign nations and their U.S. beneficiaries far above its own people and their interests. While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified."
The Hijacking of a Nation - Part I: The Foreign Agent Factor 
Sibel Edmonds, Former FBI Language Specialist
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, 15 November 2006

"A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was 'an outrageous lie'. Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used 'state secrets privilege'. She told The Independent yesterday: 'I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.'".
'I Saw Papers That Show US Knew al-Qa'ida Would Attack Cities With Airplanes'
Independent, 2 April 2004

"....the Bureau [FBI] is being asked by the State Department not to pursue certain investigations or certain people or certain targets of an investigation--simply citing 'diplomatic relations.' And what happens is, instead of targeting those people who are directly related to these illegal terrorist activities, they just let them walk free.... I have seen several, several top targets for these investigations of these terrorist activities that were allowed to leave the country -- I'm not talking about weeks, I'm talking about months after 9/11... I can tell you that there is so much involvement, that if they did let this information out, and if they were to hold real investigations--I'm not talking about this semi-investigation they're holding under this 'Joint Inquiry'--the pure show of the 9/11 Commission that has been getting the mass media's attention. If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country..."
Sibel Edmonds Interview
Baltimore Chronicle, 7 May 2004

More On Sibel Edmonds - Click Here

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Surveillance Society - 'Your Papers Please'
The War Is On Us

'War Is Peace'

"President Bush has strongly defended the US-led war on terror, casting it as a struggle between freedom and tyranny similar to World War II."
Bush: War on terror 'like WWII'
BBC Online, 2 June 2004

".... are journalists really performing their duty when they either refer to President Bush as 'the leader of the Free World' or allow White House representatives to do so with impunity? In examining and criticizing political language, journalists would do well to read George Orwell's analytical essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' in which Orwell defines and illustrates a number of abuses of political language. ... [Orwell] illustrated such manipulations of language in his best known and most widely read works, '1984' and 'Animal Farm.' In '1984,' for example, Big Brother uses slogans such as 'Freedom is slavery' and 'War is peace.'"
Dump 'Free World' in sea of dated words
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12 February 2007

Dare You Challenge The Orwellian 'War On Terror' Propaganda?
It's Likely To Be At Your Own Peril

"There is no 'war on terror' on the streets of Britain, the country’s most senior criminal prosecutor said yesterday. Those responsible for atrocities like the July 7 bombings in London were not 'soldiers' in a war, but 'deluded, narcissistic inadequates' who should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, added. He gave warning against allowing the threat of terrorism to trigger a 'fear-driven and inappropriate' security response which damaged Britain’s traditions of freedom. Sir Ken’s comments to the Criminal Bar Association put him at odds with Tony Blair and the Home Secretary, John Reid, who have justified tighter security laws on the grounds of the threat posed to Britain by a new kind of terror. Instead of viewing the problem of terrorism as a 'war' threatening the very life of the nation, it should be dealt with as an issue of law enforcement, added Sir Ken, who leads prosecutors in England and Wales as head of the Crown Prosecution Service. One of the 'primary purposes' of the violent attacks carried out by supporters of international Islamist terror was to tempt countries like Britain to 'abandon our values'. He made clear his concern over the threat to civil liberties from repressive legislation introduced in response to a perceived terrorism emergency."
There is no war on terror in the UK, says DPP
London Times, 24 January 2007

Less Than A Month After His Attack On The Phantom 'War On Terror'
Details Of Macdonald's Extra-Marital Affair Are Out In The Public Domain
Who Tipped The Daily Mail Off About This?

"For months, I can reveal, Sir Ken has been using his official car and chauffeur to ferry him to and from Miss Brimelow's riverside apartment. He instructs his driver to park discreetly around the corner, and is also picked up a short distance around the corner from Miss Brimelow's flat in a trendy block of 20 apartments on London's South Bank. After his visits, he is then driven to his office near the Old Bailey."
The DPP, a legal blonde and the wife who'll give him a very cross examination
Daily Mail, 13 February 2007

"Exhausted and tearful, the wife of Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald emerged from their home yesterday following claims of her husband's affair. Lady Linda, 51, left for work at 9am with swollen, bloodshot eyes, refusing to comment on allegations that the dad-of-three has been seeing Kirsty Brimelow - a blonde barrister 17 years his junior. Clearly distraught and not wearing her wedding ring, she stumbled into her VW Polo and sped off.... His wife of 27 years, who runs independent TV company Illuminations, is thought to have had no inkling of the affair until now."
WIFE'S TEARS AS DPP REFUSES TO DENY AFFAIR CLAIM
Daily Mirror, 14 February 2007

And Who Tipped Off The News Of World In The Oaten Episode?
Was His Real Downfall His Opposition To ID Cards?

"The resignation of Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, due to revelations published in the News of the World tabloid should give people who are thinking about amending the 'Wilson Doctrine' administrative ban on the interception of the phone calls of Members of Parliament , plenty to consider. How can the public be sure that if Members of Parliament (and therefore also their Constituents) are put under electronic surveillance for 'security' purposes, that information on scandalous, though not illegal activities such as this, which would have been gleaned in the this case, could not have been used for political purposes by those in power ? Will the Liberal Democrats still be united in their opposition to the Identity Cards Bill and the Terrorism Bill etc. after the resignations of Charles Kennedy and Mark Oaten ?"
Mark Oaten scandal and the Wilson Doctrine
Spyblog, 22 January 2006

"Former Liberal Democrat leadership challenger Mark Oaten has stood down as the party's home affairs spokesman over an alleged affair with a rent boy.... Married Mr Oaten, 41 and the MP for Winchester, dropped out of the Lib Dem leadership race this week.... Lib Dem chief whip Andrew Stunell said Mr Oaten had stood down 'with immediate effect' as home affairs spokesman."
Oaten resigns over rent boy claim
BBC Online, 21 January 2006

"Commenting on yesterday's MORI poll, which suggests public support for ID cards, Mark Oaten MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, said: 'If the public have a choice between spending billions on a piece of plastic or employing more police and MI5 officials, I am convinced they will reject ID cards. The public want their money spent in a way that will be more effective in tackling terrorism and crime. Sadly, ID cards did not prevent the bombings in Madrid or attacks in New York. Mr Blunkett should not use the threat of terror as an opportunity to push forward a scheme that would change the character of this country and waste billions of pounds."
Mark Oaten, MP: Public would reject ID cards in favour of more police
Public TechnologyNet, 23 April 2004

The War Is On Us

"How can the public be sure that if Members of Parliament (and therefore also their Constituents) are put under electronic surveillance for 'security' purposes, that information ..... could not have been used for political purposes by those in power ?"
Mark Oaten scandal and the Wilson Doctrine
Spyblog, 22 January 2006

Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk Watching Them, Watching Us Click Here "This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems. The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented, especially in these times of increased alert over possible terrorist or criminal activity. If the systems which should help to protect us can be easily abused to supress our freedoms, then the terrorists will have won. We know that there are decent, honest, trustworthy individual politicians, civil servants, law enforcement, intelligence agency personnel and broadcast, print and internet journalists etc., who often feel powerless or trapped in the system. They need the assistance of external, detailed, informed, public scrutiny to help them to resist deliberate or unthinking policies, which erode our freedoms and liberties." Spy Blog 'Wilson Doctrine' Archive - Click Here

If It Applies Even To Such Unlikely Figures As John Major, John Prescott, Paddy Ashdown, and David Blunkett
Then How Many Politicians Aren't Vulnerable To Political Surveillance Blackmail Or Career Sabotage As A Result Of Purely Personal Indiscretions?
There Are Few Boundaries On This

"Britain helped America to conduct a secret and potentially illegal spying operation at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war, The Observer can reveal. The operation, which targeted at least one permanent member of the UN Security Council, was almost certainly in breach of the Vienna conventions on diplomatic relations, which strictly outlaw espionage at the UN missions in New York....The information was intended for US Secretary of State Colin Powell before his presentation on weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council on 5 February [2003]. Sources close to the intelligence services have now confirmed that the request from the security agency was 'acted on' by the British authorities..... An operation of this kind would almost certainly have been authorised by the director-general of GCHQ, David Pepper. But the revelation also raises serious questions for Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has overall responsibility for GCHQ. Details of the operation were first revealed in The Observer on the eve of war last year, after the leaking of a top-secret memo from the NSA requesting British help. But until today it was not known whether British spy chiefs had agreed to participate."
Observer, 8 February 2004

"The United Nations said alleged British spying on Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office, if true, is illegal and must stop immediately. Commenting on allegations by former British Cabinet minister Clare Short, Eckhard said such actions would be 'illegal' under international conventions... Earlier Thursday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called Short's claims 'deeply irresponsible' and said they threatened the security of the country.... Blair said intelligence agents 'always act in accordance with domestic and international law.' ......Short, who resigned as international development secretary following the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, said in a radio interview Thursday morning that she had read transcripts of Annan's conversations. 'The UK in this time was also getting, spying on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on,' she told the BBC. 'I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations. In fact I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking 'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying.' Asked explicitly whether British spies had been instructed to carry out operations within the United Nations on people such as Kofi Annan, she said: 'Yes, absolutely.'... Short's comments came a day after charges were dropped against a British government translator accused of leaking a memo on an alleged U.S. 'dirty tricks' campaign ahead of the Iraq war. Katharine Gun, 29, a former Mandarin translator with Britain's Government Communications Headquarters listening station, allegedly leaked a memo from U.S. intelligence officers asking their British counterparts to spy on members of the U.N. Security Council before the Iraq war."
U.N.: UK spying 'illegal' if true
CNN, 26 February 2004

"My company Astra gave rise to much of the circumstances which created the [Arms to Iraq] Scott Inquiry, the Supergun revelations (we reported it first), the Aitken affair, the murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels  in March 1990 and much else..... The story of Astra is too long to recount here but a summary is contained in my book, 'In the Public Interest' published by Little Brown UK hardback 1995, Warner paperback 1996, London. Astra became involved in covert weapons and ammunitions operations organised by MI5 and MI6 and the CIA, the MOD, DOD, FCO and the State Department and the DTI..... All these cases and others and the Astra case involved the gross abuse of power by Government and its agencies and servants, concealment of key evidence, intimidation, threats, false and selective prosecutions, manipulation of evidence, perversion of the course of justice..... As Douglas Hurd told a Commons Select Committee regarding nuclear proliferation they are but two tributaries of the main stream of intelligence..... Each regularly circumvents domestic laws for the benefit of the others under programmes like 'echelon' and agreements between UK and USA. Politicians and civil servants and other leading figures who get out of line can be surveyed or bugged and then threatened, blackmailed, framed up or worse." My Experiences, the Scott Inquiry, the British Legal System Gerald Reaveley James, former Astra Holdings PLC Chairman from 1980-90 Extract From Speech Given At The Environmental Law Centre, UK, 2000 (includes typographical transcript errors)

"I think in a democracy it's extremely important that members of Parliament can operate without the suspicion that what they say on the telephone can be collected by the security services... "
Norman Baker, MP
MP phone tap ban 'may be lifted'
BBC Online, 15 January 2006

"Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website....As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing 'stealth taxes' or introducing 'Big Brother' surveillance..... let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing...."
Prime minister Tony Blair's statement on the petition signed by nearly 1.8m people opposed to road pricing
BBC Online, 21 February 2007

"The level of interest in the now famous Downing Street Memo, published in the May 1 edition of The Sunday Times, and in the leaked documents published over subsequent weeks, has been extraordinary. This new web page is designed to give our readers access to all the stories we have written about three highly classified documents on the Iraq war that were leaked to The Sunday Times ahead of the British General Election on May 5, 2005. These three documents include the now famous Downing Street Memo which contains the minutes of a meeting, of what was effectively Tony Blair’s war cabinet, held in Downing Street, on July 23, 2002.... At the time, this was the most damaging part of any of the documents. Despite Blair’s repeated insistence throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken to go to war with Iraq, political analysts had long believed that the decision was in fact made at the Bush-Blair summit at the president’s range at Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002. Not only did this confirm it, but it did so in terms that were highly damaging to the prime minister."
The leaked Iraq war documents
Sunday Times, 19 June 2005

"Surveillance and its potential for diminishing the human experience and robbing individuals of political power is one of the most pressing issues of our time. We stand on the boundary between two societies - one where freedom and privacy are the norm; the other in which our movements, habits and transactions are monitored for signs of aberrant behaviour. Let there be no misunderstanding: the surveillance society is one that necessarily reduces us all from citizens to subjects.... While this government has been exceptionally deft in avoiding serious public debate on the issues of surveillance, the Conservatives have failed to find the principled outrage with which to challenge such actions as making every adult's personal health record available to the police and the security services. Undoubtedly the Conservatives have been mesmerised by the need to appear on the side of law and order, but this doesn't quite explain their failure to stand against the tide of authoritarian measures. Parliament has not only been sidelined by a presidential prime minister who believes that there should be a national database containing everyone's DNA, and who regards the ID card as a symbol of modernity rather than state intrusion, but MPs have absented themselves from the debate because they do not always understand the power and reach of the technology.... Richard Thomas is right to call for a national debate before things go too far, but where is that debate going to crystallise into policy that protects us and future generations, if not in parliament?"
Henry Porter, London editor of Vanity Fair
We are already at the gates of the surveillance society
Guardian, 6 November 2006

"Anybody who objects to their personal details going on the new 'Big Brother' ID cards database will be banned from having a passport. James Hall, the official in charge of the supposedly-voluntary scheme, said the Government would allow people to opt out - but in return they must 'forgo the ability' to have a travel document. With one in every eight people saying they will refuse to sign-up, up to five million adults could effectively be refused permission to leave the country. .... The first ID cards will be issued in 2009, to anybody who applies for a passport. People will be required to give fingerprints, biometric details such as a facial scan and a wealth of personal details - including second homes, driving licence and insurance numbers. All will be stored on a giant ID cards Register, which can be accessed by accredited Whitehall departments, banks and businesses. While The ID Cards Bill was going through Parliament, peers agreed an 'opt out' with Ministers for people who needed a passport, but did not want to participate in the ID cards scheme. It was the only way the Lords would accept the legislation, amid howls of concern that it represents yet another move towards a surveillance society. But, as Mr Hall's comments this week make clear, the opt-out only applies to being physically issued with a card. In order to get a passport, people will still have to hand over all their personal details for storage on the ID cards Register - where they will be treated in the same was as those who agreed to sign-up.... It means that, despite the Government repeatedly insisting the scheme is voluntary, the only way to avoid signing-up is to never obtain or renew a passport.... Mr Booth said legal challenges were inevitable, as restricting the right of free movement is a grave breach of human rights law."
Don't like ID cards? Hand over your passport
Daily Mail, 9 March 2007

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Challenging The 'Wilson Doctrine'
With The East German And US Surveillance Models

"Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people’s telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday. In the first report of its kind from the Interceptions of Communications Commissioner, it was also revealed that nearly 4,000 errors were reported in a 15-month period from 2005 to 2006. While most appeared to concern 'lower-level data' such as requests for telephone lists and individual e-mail addresses, 67 were mistakes concerning direct interception of communications. Sir Swinton Thomas, the report’s author, described the figure as 'unacceptably high'.  The disclosures came as Tony Blair admitted that the fingerprints of everyone obtaining identity cards could be checked against nearly a million unsolved crimes. Human-rights campaigners described the twin revelations yesterday as signs of a 'creeping contempt for our personal privacy'.... Sir Swinton said that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been under extreme pressure, and that crucial evidence had been uncovered from intercepts in the case of the July 7 suicide bombers. He said it was time to lift a ban on tapping the phones of MPs and peers, which has been in place for the past 40 years. Ministers and MPs had failed to give a good reason why politicians should be immune.  The nonbugging policy for MPs and peers was introduced by the Government of Harold Wilson 40 years ago, and is known as the Wilson Doctrine. Successive prime ministers have upheld the doctrine. "
Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000
London Times, 20 February 2007

Well The Simple 'Good Reason' Is
That We Don't Want To Live In A New 'East Germany'
And We Expect Parliament To Be Free From Blackmail And Subversion From Unaccountable Intelligence Services
Who May Use Phone Tapping For Political And Criminal Purposes Under The Bogus Cover Of 'National Security'

The Power Of Surveillance For Political Purposes

"Harold Wilson's belief that he was the victim of a secret service plot to discredit him is well documented.... The then BBC journalist Barrie Penrose has outlined some of the detail of the new evidence in an article in this week's Radio Times.... Wilson told the journalists they 'should investigate the forces that are threatening democratic countries like Britain'.....Wilson went on to tell them about his distrust of a group of MI5 officers, who he said were trying to smear him by planting stories in the press about him being an adulterer and a Communist spy..... Penrose concludes his Radio Times article: 'You may ask, at the end of the programme, how much of it can be believed. My view now, as it was then, is that Wilson was right in his fears.... in answer to the question 'how close did we come to a military government'.  I can only say - closer than we'd ever be content to think.'"
Wilson 'plot': The secret tapes
BBC Online, 9 March 2006

"The Government was hit by a second legal marital scandal last night after it was revealed that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had an affair with Britain's leading Asian woman barrister. Cabinet Minister Lord Goldsmith, who is in charge of prosecutions ... is Tony Blair's senior legal adviser.... Lord Goldsmith's office declined to say whether it was going on during one of the biggest crises since Tony Blair took office when Lord Goldsmith changed his mind on the legal advice on the Iraq war. Having warned that the war could be illegal, he altered his opinion days before the conflict in 2003 under massive pressure from Downing Street. If it emerges that the affair was taking place at this time, it could prompt claims that his mind was on other matters or that he was more susceptible to pressure." Another law chief admits affair with barrister Evening Standard, 21 February 2007 "[Opposition leader] Mr Howard said: 'It is now obvious from this legal advice that on 7 March 2003, the attorney general raised specific reservations about the legality of war in Iraq. But Mr Blair has said that the attorney general's advice to the Cabinet on 17 March was 'very clear' that the war was legal, and that the attorney general had not changed his mind. It is obvious that he did. 'So what the public must now have an answer to is this: what, or who, changed the attorney general's mind?'" Early Iraq legal opinion leaked BBC Online, 28 April 2005 No Surveillance On Goldsmith - Oh Really? "The Security Service did not know that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had an extra-marital affair with a leading barrister. Details of the affair, of which the Prime Minister also claimed to be ignorant, immediately raised concerns over the potential threat to national security due to the highly sensitive nature of the Attorney General's position. Whitehall sources have admitted that MI5, the organisation responsible for Britain's national security, had no knowledge of Lord Goldsmith's affair with QC Kim Hollis.... Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security, claimed it was the responsibility of MI5 to know about the private lives of Cabinet ministers. He said: 'This is absolutely a matter for MI5. The Attorney General deals with top secret matters on a day-to-day basis. He has access to Cabinet briefings and top secret Government papers. His actions could easily have led to him being blackmailed, and that is a security matter.' Crispin Black, a former Army intelligence officer, said: 'The Security Service has a standing instruction to be aware of any difficulties in the lives of prominent politicians. It is not designed to be intrusive and is entirely protective. MI5 is a clearing house for gossip and information, so it beggars belief that they didn't know the Attorney General was having an affair." Spies oblivious to Attorney General's affair Sunday Telegraph, 25 February 2007

"The European Parliament is on the verge of adopting a law that would extend the electronic surveillance powers of member states. The Parliament has voted to allow member states to ignore data protection regulations for security reasons. These data protection rules state that communications data must not be kept for longer than is needed for billing purposes.The new law would give police new powers to store communications for investigation purposes for months or even years. The text of the proposed EU Telecommunications Directive says this must be a 'necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society'. Any data retention must also respect the European Convention of Human Rights. Some Members of the European Parliament are strongly opposed to the new powers. The outspoken German left-wing MEP Ilka Schroeder said in a statement: 'From today on, the fundamental right to privacy is questioned for everyone using electronic means of communication. Western democracies surpass the surveillance achievement of the Eastern Germany's former Stasi by far.'"
Europe approves long-term electronic surveillance
New Scientist, 30 May 2002

"East Germany’s secret police force, the Stasi, held power from 1950 to 1990. Established with Soviet help by German communists in the years directly following World War II, the Stasi was responsible for both political surveillance and espionage. The Stasi’s intent was to monitor 'politically incorrect' behavior among all citizens of East Germany."
'The Lives of Others' -   Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
A SONY PICTURES CLASSICS RELEASE, 2006

Or Should That Be The American Model
Facilitated By 9/11?
Privacy For The President But Not For The People

"The US president, George Bush, last night signed an executive order that allows either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and former president Bill Clinton. The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978 law that allowed journalists, historians and other interested parties to read presidential papers twelve years after the term of office finished. The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the result of a lengthy legal battle over the papers of Watergate president Richard Nixon. Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former president could veto the release of presidential papers. The current president could not override a former president's veto, nor could a former president override the decision of sitting president....The immediate provocation for last night's order is believed to be an outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald Reagan's papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in January. The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain. Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now working for Mr Bush.... the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain secret in perpetuity."
Bush blocks public access to White House papers
Guardian, 2 November, 2001

"Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the head of the National Security Agency met his workforce at the nation's eavesdropping and code-breaking headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., near Washington, for a pep talk. 'I told them that free people always had to decide where to draw the line between their liberty and their security,' Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden told lawmakers a year later. 'I noted that the attacks would almost certainly push us as a nation more toward security.' Within weeks of Hayden's talk, Bush did just that, directing the NSA to use its immense eavesdropping power on targets within the USA without the warrants required by a 1978 law. Bush used his Saturday radio address to confirm his actions, which were first reported last week in The New York Times. 'This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists,' Bush said, adding that it was legal and constitutional. Lawmakers of both parties have disputed that last point. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has promised hearings; House Democratic leaders want Speaker Dennis Hastert, D-Ill., to name a bipartisan panel to look into the program. The surveillance program has sparked concerns about civil liberties not only because of the lack of warrants, but also because of the NSA's extraordinary information-collecting power. Based in a heavily guarded modern complex, the NSA is the 'ear' of the nation's intelligence system. It uses a system of satellites and other means to listen in on friend and foe alike, decoding and translating communications and reporting the results to key recipients in government, such as the president and Pentagon. In his book Body of Secrets, James Bamford calls the NSA's information storage capacity 'near bottomless,' capable of holding the equivalent of 5 trillion pages of text, or a stack of paper 150 miles high. For the NSA, Bush's executive order authorizing the interception of electronic communication without warrants, signed in late 2001, represents a dramatic shift from restrictions on domestic spying imposed after exposure in the mid-1970s of NSA operations against U.S. citizens. The White House says the president has legal authority granted by a congressional joint resolution passed Sept. 14, 2001, that allows the president to use whatever force he deems necessary to stop acts of terrorism. A 2002 Justice Department legal brief argued the president can authorize wiretaps without a warrant in cases of national security."
NSA's surveillance of citizens echoes 1970s controversy
USA Today, 18 December 2005

"In Tuesday evening's State of the Union speech, President Bush defended his warrantless wiretap program by giving one example of where it might have saved American lives: 'It is said that prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late.' Vice President Dick Cheney made a similar assertion three weeks ago. Both refer to two of the 19 hijackers who lived in San Diego in 2000: Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar. In these two sentences the president has committed two sins. He has stretched the truth, and he has distracted the American people from the steps we need to take to truly make us more secure from terrorist attacks. During the Joint Inquiry of the Congressional Intelligence Committees, which I cochaired, we determined the following to be some of the major failures involving the San Diego two: In December 1999, the CIA was alerted that a summit of terrorists would be held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and that two Saudis, Hazmi and Midhar, would participate.... By March 2000, the CIA also had information indicating that Hazmi had traveled to Los Angeles, but information about the travel of either man was not given to the FBI until late August 2001. By March 2000, the CIA also had information indicating that [9/11 hijacker] Hazmi had traveled to Los Angeles, but information about the travel of either man was not given to the FBI until late August 2001. By June 2000, the two Saudis who had been living in San Diego for five months were boarders in the home of Abdussattar Shaikh. Hazmi listed his number in the San Diego telephone directory. Unknown to them, Shaikh was a paid informant of the FBI, assigned to oversee and report on the activities of young Muslims in San Diego. Because the FBI did not know of the CIA's information on Midhar and Hazmi, Shaikh was not tasked to keep an eye on the two. Shaikh's handling agent testified that, had he known that the CIA had identified the two as Al Qaeda operatives, he would have done a 'full court press' in terms of surveillance, informant tasking, and investigation -- and believes he could have uncovered the plot and potentially foiled the 9/11 attacks. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, the director of the FBI office in San Diego stated that the fundamental mistakes were a failure of his agency and the CIA to communicate. 'If we knew what the CIA knew, we'd have been in an ideal situation to locate these people.' He made no suggestion that by following the law, securing a search warrant before wiretapping, was a detriment. It is wrong to suggest that the events of 2000 justify warrantless eavesdropping. Just the opposite. It is by correcting institutional and personal incompetence, rather than sacrificing the rights of Americans, that our safety can be best secured."
The Truth Behind the San Diego Two
Boston Globe, 5 February 2006

"The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) has obtained a copy of an official complaint filed by a veteran FBI Special Agent, Gilbert Graham, with the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (DOJ-OIG). SA Graham’s protected disclosures report the violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in conducting electronic surveillance of high-profile U.S. public officials. Before his retirement in 2002, SA Gilbert Graham worked for the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) Squad NS-24. One of the main areas of Mr. Graham’s counterintelligence investigations involved espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States. On April 2, 2002, Graham filed with the DOJ-OIG a classified protected disclosure, which provided a detailed account of FISA violations involving misuse of FISA warrants to engage in domestic surveillance.  In his unclassified report SA Graham states: 'It is the complainant’s reasonable belief that the request for ELSUR [electronic surveillance] coverage was a subterfuge to collect evidentiary information concerning public corruption matters.'  Graham blew the whistle on this illegal behavior, but the actions were covered up by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s office..... William Weaver, NSWBC Senior Advisor noted that, 'These abuses of power are precisely why we must pay attention to whistleblowers.  Preservation of the balance of powers between the branches of government increasingly relies on information provided by whistleblowers, especially in the face of aggressive and expanding executive power.  Through illegal surveillance members of Congress and other officials may be controlled by the executive branch, thereby dissolving the matrix of our democracy.  The abuse of two powers of secrecy, FISA and the state secrets privilege, are working hand in hand to subvert the Constitution. In an abominably perverse arrangement, the abuse of FISA is being covered up by abuse of the state secrets privilege. Only whistleblowers and the congressional and judicial oversight their revelations spawn can bring our system back into balance.'"
Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, 5 March 2007

"A White House privacy board has determined that two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs -- electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking -- do not violate citizens' civil liberties......Democrats criticized the findings, which they said were questionable given some of the board members' close ties with the Bush administration. After operating mostly in secret for a year, the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Board is to release its first report to Congress next week. The report finds both the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program and the Treasury Department's monitoring of international banking transactions have sufficient privacy protections, three board members said in telephone interviews...... The warrantless program monitors phone calls and e-mails between the United States and countries suspected to be linked to Al Qaeda agents. In August, a federal judge in Detroit ruled the program unconstitutional. Government attorneys have since asked an appeals court to dismiss the suit, arguing the case is moot because the surveillance is now monitored by a secret court."
Bush spy rules OK'd
Associated Press, 6 March 2007

"The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department's Inspector General. The report, in classified and unclassified versions, remains closely held, but Washington officials who have seen it tell ABC News it documents 'numerous lapses' and describe it as 'scathing' and 'not a pretty picture for the FBI.' FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to brief Congress on the report at noon. The officials say the inspector general found the FBI underreported by at least 20 percent the use of the controversial provision, known as National Security Letters, NSLs, in required disclosures to Congress. The Patriot Act gave FBI agents the ability to demand telephone, bank, credit card and library records by issuing an administrative letter, bypassing the need to seek a warrant from a federal judge.Civil liberties groups have long opposed the provision, saying the lack of oversight could lead to the kinds of problems apparently uncovered by the inspector general.In a report last year, the Justice Department said there were 9,254 NSL requests on 3,501 persons in the calendar year 2005. Some officials say the actual number is substantially higher."
Report Says FBI Violated Patriot Act Guidelines
ABC News, 8 March 2007

"Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the project called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement -- was requested by Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The investigation focuses on whether the program violates privacy laws, and the findings will be released after completion of the Iraq war supplemental spending bill, possibly as early as this week, a panel aide said... The technology is expected to analyze more than 3 million 'relationships' or connections per hour, says the report, which included an example of how friends, family members, locations and workplaces can be linked by pinging the data."
Homeland Security revives supersnoop
Washington Times, 8 March 2007

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All Especially 'Justified' Because Of What?
Defending 'Our Values' In The Phantom 'War On Terror'

"Facing calls from MPs to take responsibility for the chaos that came after the [Iraq] invasion, Blair declared that terrorism would be defeated 'when we do not apologize for our values but stand up for them.'"
Prince Harry Receives Iraq Deployment Orders
London Times, 21 February 2007

Unfortunately For Delusional 'Controller' Blair
The People He Wishes To Confront In 'The War On Terror'
Are As Likely As Not To Consider Those Professed Values More Important Than He Does

"Labour had to apologise to an 82-year-old activist last night after he was roughly thrown out of the party conference for heckling Jack Straw on Iraq.The leadership faced angry protests from MPs and party members who accused it of stifling dissent and abandoning traditions of free speech. The Foreign Secretary was telling the conference that Britain was in Iraq 'for one reason only' - to help the elected Iraqi government - when Walter Wolfgang shouted: 'That's a lie and you know it.' Mr Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Labour Party member since 1948, was immediately surrounded by security staff in full view of the television cameras and ejected from the hall in Brighton as officials revoked his pass. When he tried to re-enter the secure zone, he was stopped by a police officer citing the Terrorism Act. Steve Forrest, the chairman of Erith and Thamesmead Labour Party, was also thrown out after complaining about Mr Wolfgang's treatment. He said that five security guards moved close to him in an intimidating manner after he shouted 'Hear, hear' during an anti-war speech in debate. A few minutes later, as Mr Wolfgang was being escorted away, he protested: 'Leave him alone, he's an old man.' At that point he was hauled out himself. He said: 'Where is the democracy in this party? It seems that the leadership is full of paranoia.' Mr Wolfgang, a vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said the episode showed how intolerant the Labour Party had become.... At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act. Mr Wolfgang said: 'We have reached a situation where freedom of expression has been threatened. I am not surprised, because the Labour Party has been taken over by a gang of adventurers who are on their way out.'... Linda Riordan, the current MP for Halifax, said: 'We have had one speaker in this debate on Iraq and we have 8,000 troops there. The silence on Iraq at this conference is deafening, absolutely deafening.'"
Heckler, 82, who dared called Straw a liar is held under terrorist law
Daily Telegraph, 30 September 2007

"David Cameron described the incident as 'one of those moments which lays bare the full absurdity of the Orwellian New Labour project'.   He said the use of the Terrorism Act in preventing Mr Wolfgang's return was 'profoundly depressing'."
Hero's return for Labour heckler
BBC Online, 29 September 2005

"The War on Terror has radicalised Muslims around the world to unprecedented levels of anti-American feeling, according to the largest survey of Muslims ever to be conducted... Gallup’s Centre for Muslim Studies in New York carried out surveys of 10,000 Muslims in ten predominantly Muslim countries. One finding was that the wealthier and better-educated the Muslim was, the more likely he was to be radicalised.... A large number of Muslims supported the Western ideal of democratic government. Fifty per cent of radicals supported democracy, compared with 35 per cent of moderates. Religion was found to have little to do with radicalisation or antipathy towards Western culture. Muslims were condemnatory of promiscuity and a sense of moral decay. What they admired most was liberty, its democratic system, technology and freedom of speech.... Researchers set out to examine the truth behind the stock response in the West to the question of when it will know it is winning the war on terror. Foreign policy experts tend to believe that victory will come when the Islamic world rejects radicalism. 'Every politician has a theory: radicals are religious fundamentalists; they are poor; they are full of hopeless-ness and hate. But those theories are wrong,' the researchers reported.....Gallup says that because terrorists often hijack Islamic precepts for their own ends, pundits and politicians in the West sometimes portray Islam as a religion of terrorism.  'They often charge that religious fervour triggers radical and violent views,' said John Esposito, a religion professor, and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup’s Muslim studies director, in one analysis. 'But the data say otherwise. There is no significant difference in religiosity between moderates and radicals. In fact, radicals are no more likely to attend religious services regularly than are moderates.' They continue: 'It’s no secret that many in the Muslim world suffer from crippling poverty and lack of education. But are radicals any poorer than their fellow Muslims? We found the opposite: there is indeed a key difference between radicals and moderates when it comes to income and education, but it is the radicals who earn more and stay in school longer.' In fact, the surveys found that the radicals were more satisfied with their finances and quality of life than moderates."
Anti-American feelings soar among Muslims, study finds
London Times, 21 February 2007

"Those who engage in suicide missions are by no means usually poor or ill-educated, although they may come from poor and marginalised communities. The father of one of the July 7 bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, was a prominent local businessman. Two of them had attended Leeds Metropolitan University."
Understanding what drives suicide missions could help make us safer
Guardian, 18 May 2006

"The London School of Economics, known for its far-Left radicalism in the 1960s, has been host to at least three al-Qa'eda-linked terrorists, The Telegraph has been told.... The three - including one man called Ahmed Omar Sheikh - have been revealed as having links with the LSE in an intelligence file seen by this newspaper and now being studied by police. Omar Sheikh, 28, a former mathematics student at the LSE, is said to have been linked to last week's drive-by shooting in Calcutta that killed five policemen. He has also been named as one of the key financiers of Mohammed Atta, the pilot of one of the jets that hit the World Trade Centre on September 11. Sheikh, who went to a private school in Snaresbrook, east London, became involved with radicals while at the LSE."
Al-Qa'eda terror trio linked to London School of 'Extremists'
Daily Telegraph, 27 Jan 2002
(Who is Omar Sheikh and why isn't the British government pursuing him for his reported involvement in 9/11 - Click Here)

So What Does Motivate Them Then?

"I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job. I speak not as a politician, nor as a pundit, but as someone who has been an intelligence professional for 32 years..... There has been much speculation about what motivates young men and women to carry out acts of terrorism in the UK. My service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaeda has developed an ideology which claims that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended.  This is a powerful narrative that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the West's response to varied and complex issues, from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and Kashmir to more recent events as evidence of an across-the-board determination to undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide. The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims - an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence. And their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in particular the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Speech by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, Head Of Britains Interior I