What 'War Against Terrorism'?

Selective Support For Islamic Terrorism
As A Tool Of US and UK Foreign and Economic Policy

Majority of global hydrocarbon reserves critical to backward-looking
US and UK energy policy lie in the Islamic world

Enflaming conflict in those regions allows the world's only superpower
to intervene and secure control of reserves

FBI officers consistently obstructed by US Government in pursuit of terrorists
as British Government provides funds to al-Qaeda and turns blind eye to Sept 11 suspects

"You have been fantastic to the Bush family. I don't think anybody did more than you did to support [my son] George."
George Bush Snr, speaking to the President of Enron, January 1997
Associated Press, 16 Dec 2002

"Congratulations on the speed with which you, Dick and others have been able to place high-quality individuals in every cabinet post."
Letter from CEO of Enron, to Vice President Dick Cheney, Jan 8 2001
Los Angeles Times, 13 November 2002

"....in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. "
What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
John Loftus, Former Federal War Crimes Prosecutor, Press Release, 31 May 2002

"....the second strand in [the Bush administration's] global strategy is to secure greater supplies of foreign oil. An energy report by Vice-President Dick Cheney 18 months ago forecast that American oil imports would have to rise by more than half by 2020 - partly, of course, because the administration is not much interested in reducing consumption... the most obvious tool [for this] is the military one...To take one example, American military bases set up to fight al-Qaeda in central Asia may also serve to safeguard oil supplies, to back up the commercial exploitation of the Caspian basin."
Iraq crisis reflects global US strategy
BBC Online, 1 January 2003

"By 2010, Muslim nations could control 60 percent of the world`s oil production and, more importantly, 95 percent of the world`s oil exports."
THE SECRET: Oil Crunch is Coming
Iviews, 27 Nov 2002

"If we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge."
The Highest Patriotism Lies in Weaning U.S. From Fossil Fuels
Robert Redford, Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2002

The Bogus War Against Terrorism - Some Excerpts
(Detailed Chronology - See Table at Bottom)

"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

"... 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)

"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

"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

"This is the CIA's strategy .... you guys are in charge... we're just following you in..."
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of State for Defense, referring to CIA control over the war in Afghanistan
'The Inside story of US cabinet at war'
London Times, 23 November 2002

"Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist captured by the Taliban, this week makes the extraordinary claim that Western intelligence agencies tried to get her killed to bolster public support for the air strikes on Afghanistan."
Intelligence services wanted me killed, says journalist
Independent, 9 December 2001

"I've got the best job in government"
George Tenet, Director of the CIA - 'C.I.A. Chief Prospers From Bond With Bush'
New York Times, 17 December 2002

".....how could thousands of spooks who supposedly had Osama bin Laden in their cross hairs for a decade miss every single moving part? At some point, when the nation has moved beyond grief and vengefulness, CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller will have to explain how the $10 billion-a-year anti-terror system failed...."
Time Magazine 24 September 2001 on US intelligence services

"Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.... The report noted that an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a suicide jetliner mission. 'Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,' author Rex Hudson wrote in a report prepared for the National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies. The intelligence council is attached to the CIA and is made up of a dozen senior intelligence officers who assist the U.S. intelligence community in analysis of threats and priorities. The report contrasts with Bush administration officials' assertions that none in government had imagined an attack like Sept. 11 before that time...."
1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack
Associated Press, 17 May 2002

"British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.... The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000....."
MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'
Observer (UK), 10 November 2002

"So it would appear that the British Government considers it 'inappropriate' to comment on a situation which (if it results in the death penalty being delivered to Sheikh) will bury potentially vital evidence relating to al-Qaeda and the most infamous and unresolved terrorist act in history, the US and British response to which may have brought humanity to the edge of world war."
The 911 Omar Sheikh Files
'Fight Smart', 2 Jan 2002

The Shaylergate Files - Click here
Ultra Hot The 911 Omar Sheikh Files - Click here Ultra Hot

"Most of the top al-Qaeda leadership, including Osama Bin Laden, remain either at large or unaccounted for."
Bush vows to keep hunting militants
BBC Online, 28 Dec 2002

"Wishfully written off as dead by some senior American officials months ago, Mr. bin Laden has re-emerged like a nearly forgotten nightmare. It's still possible that the tape is a doctored compilation of clips from his previous utterances. But either way, someone is working hard to frighten us....."
War on Two Fronts
New York Times, 14 November 2002

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
Adolph Hitler on the creation of the Gestapo
'Welcome to the America Gestapo'
Capitol Hill Blue, 20 Nov 2002

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.... all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan... Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound."
Adolph Hitler - 'Mein Kampf', Chapter 6

"This is like being at a Nazi rally.”
Karle Rove, President Bush's political strategist, as he watches the crowd erupt to Bush making the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game in the New York Yankees stadium October 2001
'The Inside story of US cabinet at war'
London Times, 23 Nov 2002

(additional details available via 'From the Wilderness Publications' - click here and 'unasweredquestions.org' - click here)

Event Date	Media Report/Source Date	Event - Summary (Refer to link in second column for verbatim media report)
1950s/60s	London Times, 29 Oct 2002	The Times reports that the debate in Indonesia regarding the Bali bombing centres around whether the bombing was connected to al-Qaeda, or to the CIA in a plot to cause trouble and win support for US foreign policy. The Times reports that people are being asked to believe, without evidence, that popular Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was connected to the bombing. The Times comments that "Most liberal Indonesians do not. They remember the Fifties and the Sixties, when fundamentalist Muslims who revolted against the Government of the day were, indeed, supported by the CIA." (John Pilger provides a graphic description of the history of western backing for Islamic militants and terrorism in Indonesia in the Mirror 24 October 2002)
1961	Mail & Guardian, 28 Aug 1998	Documents discovered by South Africa's post apartheid 'Truth Commission' indicate that the alleged plot to murder UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was the brain-child of the CIA and MI5. (Reuters also reports on this story 19 August 1998 under the title 'Letters Say Hammarskjold Death Western Plot' following a press conference by Archbishop Desmond Tutu concerning the documents)
1962	ABC News, 1 May 2001	"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.... The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years."
1970s	Guardian, 26 March 2001	General Gianadelio Maletti, a former head of military counter-intelligence in Italy claims in a court of law that the CIA aided and abetted Italian terrorists during the 1970s. The claim is made at the trial of a man who killed 16 people in the bombing of a Milan bank in 1969. The alleged purpose of the CIA was to create public support for Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left.
1976	Central Intelligence Agency Web Site	George Bush Senior becomes Director of the CIA, the only President of the US to have held that position. Later the CIA's headquarters are named after Mr Bush and allegations are made of involvement in US election campaigns by existing and former CIA agents on behalf of the Republican Party.
1979	Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 Jan 1998	Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's former National Security Adviser, confirms US armed Mujahedin prior to (not after) Soviet invasion in order to draw Russia into its own 'Vietnam' and weaken it. Brzezinski attempts to justify the long term consequences of American efforts to create, in his words, 'Some stirred-up Moslems'. (This is the beginning of the modern strategy to use Islamic insurgents as a tool of US geo-politics. Eventually billions of dollars were funnelled by the CIA into Mujahedin via the ISI, the intelligence service of Pakistan. Bin Laden's connections with the Mujahedin go back to their American sponsorship in the 1980s which he describes as follows: "I settled in Pakistan, in the Afghan border region. There I received volunteers, trained by Pakistani and American officers. The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis". The Mujahedin began giving shelter once again to Bin Laden in 1996 after he left Sudan.).
1980	C-SPAN, 12 Nov 1991	C-SPAN releases video of former US National Security Council member Gary Sick discussing his recent book "October Surprise - America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan." Sick claims the 1980 Reagan/Bush Presidential election campaign team secretly negotiated with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages held in Tehran until after the US election. (The deal with the Iranians was done in return for an undertaking from the Reagan-Bush team for the illegal provision of arms to the regime in Iran. This was to ensure that Jimmy Carter, who was desperately trying to achieve the release of the US hostages before election day, would lose the election to Reagan and his Vice Presidential running mate, George Bush Snr. Further sources have also come to light supporting Sick's allegations. They indicate that this episode was the beginning of a relationship between the Reagan - i.e. Bush Snr - administration and extremist Islamic elements in Iran which eventually lead to the later Iran-Contra drugs-arms scandal).
1980s	London Times, 18 Oct 2002	With the backing of the CIA Saudi Arabia also funds the Afghan Mujahidin. At the same time Saudi Arabian bin Laden "was a volunteer that helped the Mujahidin against the Soviets with money and with equipment" according to the former head of Saudi intelligence who met bin Laden five times during the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
1980s	Washington Post, 23 March 2002	US government spent millions of dollars on books for schoolchildren in Afghanistan inciting violent Islamic jihad.
1980s	BBC Panorama, 19 June 2002	"Britain stands accused of helping known terrorists to assassinate suspected enemies of the state during the 1980s.... the distinguished investigative reporter John Ware exposes .... the lengths to which [British Intelligence] services have gone in their attempts to disguise such criminal activities."
1984	Shanti RTV news agency 11 April 1996	" Twelve years after the murder of British woman police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London-UK, a British television programme questioned whether we know the truth about how and why she was killed by USA intelligence agents. In a specially extended edition, Channel Four TV programme, 'Dispatches' used expert witnesses and the latest broadcasting and computer technology to re-examine the circumstances of the killing in central London-UK, and found serious flaws in the 'accepted', official version of what happened.....Her killing led to a severe deterioration in Britain's trade ties with Libya. The killing contributed to the British government's decision to provide essential logistical support to the USA air raid on Libya in April 1986. According to irrefutable evidence uncovered recently by investigative journalists, Fletcher was killed by USA agents hiding in a building next to the Libyan embassy in London. The evidence proves that British and American intelligence agents cooperated to kill Fletcher to help demonise and criminalise Libyans and impose UN embargo against Libyans. Tory MP Teddy Taylor is helping to expose the criminal scandal and murderers. A public meeting entitled 'Who are the real terrorists' is being held in central London-UK to mark the tenth anniversary of the American air raids on Libya."
1986	ZDF-TV, via American Free Press, 8 Dec 2001	A documentary on German public television aired in 1998 presents evidence that the main suspects in the 1986 La Belle disco bombing worked for American and Israeli intelligence, despite the criminal conviction of others - including a Palestinian and a Libyan. The bombing gave President Ronald Reagan the pretext to order the bombing of Libya (one of Africa's most oil rich states). According to the German TV programme: "It may come as a shock to many Americans, all the more so given the utterly venal and lying role of the U.S. media, but U.S. intelligence services are well versed in the most unscrupulous and bloody methods."
1989	The San Francisco Examiner, 19 April 2002	"Almost before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney called together a group of players to chart out a strategy for the post-Cold War world. The names should be familiar, because they run the present administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The goal was to 'shape' the world in order to, in the words of another team member, Zalmay Khalizad (now special envoy to Afghanistan), 'preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future.' In his book 'From Containment to Global Leadership?' Khalizad argues that it is 'vital' to prevent such a rival from developing and 'to be willing to use force if necessary.'.." (This strategy was formalised in the PNAC document prepared by largely the same people during the 2000 US presidential election which installed George W. Bush. This plan would have been implemented following the 1992 election when Bush Snr was seeking relection. However, he lost to Bill Clinton leading to an eight year delay in implementation. Bush junior 'won' the 2002 presidential election following the organisation of voter fraud in Florida by the office of the state Governmor, his brother Jeb Bush.)
1990s	BBC 'Correspondent' 22 June, 2001	Behind the back of the UN peace keeping mission the Bosnian Muslim army was covertly supplied with arms by the US using secret air drops during the Bosnian civil war. America was intercepting UN confidential peace keeping information and passing it on those fighting against the Serbs. UN Commander in Bosnia General Sir Michael Rose confirmed the Americans were secretly bugging his office. American covert support for the war against the Serbs prolonged the conflict by 2 years leading to an additional 15,000 dead and 600,000 additional refugees.
1990s	WorldNetDaily, 24 April 2002	Dutch Government report confirms US support for Islamic terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, during Bosnian war in order to destabilise Yugoslavia. The US Defense Department helped run the Islamic weapons smuggling operation in Bosnia. The Guardian, 22 April 2002 reports in more detail stating: "The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned.... Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims... in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.... Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was 'very closely involved' in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in... the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations."
1990s	Observer, 30 Sept 2001	Security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic repeatedly turned down the chance to acquire a vast intelligence database on Osama bin Laden and more than 200 leading members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network in the years leading up to the 11 September attacks according to an Observer investigation. They were offered thick files, with photographs and detailed biographies of many of his principal cadres, and vital information about al-Qaeda's financial interests in many parts of the globe. On two separate occasions, they were given an opportunity to extradite or interview key bin Laden operatives who had been arrested in Africa because they appeared to be planning terrorist atrocities. None of the offers, made regularly from the start of 1995, was taken up. The Observer has evidence that a separate offer made by Sudanese agents in Britain to share intelligence with MI6 has been rejected. This follows four years of similar rebuffs. In 2000 the CIA and FBI, following four years of Sudanese entreaties, sent a joint investigative team to establish whether Sudan was in fact a sponsor of terrorism. It gave Sudan a clean bill of health. However, even then, it made no effort to examine the voluminous files on bin Laden.
1990/1	BBC Online, 24 June 2002	In his letter from America Alistair Cooke reports that it was Margaret Thatcher who spearheaded the international political effort to attack Iraq simply in order to protect Gulf oil supplies (i.e. the 1991 Gulf war was not fought to protect Kuwaiti sovereignty, but to protect western energy requirements).
1992	New York Times, 23 May 1992	A leaked classified Pentagon memo drafted during the first Bush Administration under the supervision of Defence Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defence at the time) states: "In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." Uproar over the unilateral tone of the document leads to its redrafting. (However, the original aggressive style is later returned to by Wolfowitz, co-authored with Cheney and Rumsfeld, in a document prepared in 2000 just before his return as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the second Bush administration - see PNAC document below).
1996	Guardian, 18 Dec 2001	Sudan offers to extradite Bin Laden, but the US rejects the offer seemingly preferring his displacement to Afghanistan.
1996	Inter Press Service 15 Nov 2001 Irish Times, 19 Nov 2001	French intelligence experts (one of whom is former adviser to Jaque Chirac) confirm British intelligence collaboration with an Islamic fundamentalist group, and allies of bin Laden, Al-Muqatila in their attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffy in 1996 (as also confirmed in the allegations from former M15 officer David Shayler).
1996	Daily Telegraph, 11 Oct 1996	A vice-president of US oil corporation Unocal says that the victory of the Taliban could help the country if it brought stability, allowing international investors to fund a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea, and eventually bring billions of pounds a year in transit revenues to Afghanistan. Oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan. According to the Telegraph: "The evidence is already overwhelming that the Taliban, which originated as a group of 2,000 religious students in refugee camps and religious schools just inside Pakistan, have been funded and partly equipped by Pakistani intelligence agencies throughout the two-year campaign that has now led them to Kabul." (For more on history of CIA funding of Pakistani intelligence agencies - click here)
1996	Alexanders Oil and Gas Connections' Volume 3, issue #27 - 10-12-1998	Enron win the rights to explore 11 gas fields in the Surkhandariya and Bukhara region of Uzbekistan. The proposed project calls for an initial investment of $300 mn that would reach $1.3 bn over the next 20 years (in order to export the gas Enron require a pipeline to be constructed across Turkmenistan and Afghanistan down to the Indian ocean. The gas is required, amongt other markets, to supply a major Enron energy plant - via an additional spur - in northern India).
1997	US Energy Information Administration Web Site	"In July 1997, Turkmenistan signed a memorandum of understanding with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan to build a Central Asia Gas pipeline, dubbed 'Centgas,' to carry 0.7 Tcf of natural gas per year to Pakistan (and possibly to India as well) via Afghanistan. The $1.9-billion, 870-mile route to Multan, Pakistan, could share a common right-of-way for a portion of the route with the proposed Central Asian Oil Pipeline."
1997	BBC Online, 4 Dec 1997	A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan visits Unocal in Texas for talks with Unocal concerning the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The BBC reports that "the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea."
1997	United Press International, 30 Sept 2002	A former CIA officer reports that the CIA Counter-terrorist Center in the US ignored information that he supplied relating to the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 aeroplane hijackings and is now currently believed to be operational chief of al Qaida. During the course of his work in 1997 as a consultant the former officer found that there was a bin Laden cell being sheltered by the government of Qatar, an ally of the US. He was informed by the former police chief that two members of the cell were experts in hijacking commercial planes and that one of them "is going to hijack some planes." The CIA showed no interest in this information. (This is the same former CIA officer as reported in the Financial Times story, 12 January 2002 below. It appears Baer obtained the information Dec 1997 and passed it on to the CIA in 1998).
1997	Associated Press, May 1997 (via PBS)	John O'Neil, head of counter terrorism at the FBI, warns "A lot of these [Islamic] groups now have the capacity and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they chose to."
1996-98	Sunday Times, 24 March 2002	Records of Osama bin Laden's calls from his satellite phone reveal Britain was at the heart of the terrorist's planning for his worldwide campaign of murder and destruction. Bin Laden and his most senior lieutenants made more than 260 calls from their base in Afghanistan to 27 numbers in Britain. The Sunday Times states: "The most surprising omission is Iraq, with not a single call recorded."
1998	Financial Times, 12 Jan 2002	A former US intelligence agent alleges that the CIA ignored detailed warnings he passed on in 1998 that a Gulf state was harbouring an al-Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. When FBI agents attempted to arrest them, the Gulf state's government provided the men with alias passports.
Feb 1998	HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC FEB 12, 1998	Vice President of Unocal gives evidence to a US congressional committee that a strategic gas pipeline linking Caspian Sea region to the Indian Ocean cannot be built unless there is an acceptable regime in place in Afghanistan (The Taliban are in power and former Mujahedin are protecting Bin Laden whose own jihad is enflamed by the stationing of American troops in the country which hosts Islam's two most sacred sites - Saudi Arabia - to protect Gulf oil supplies). Post 11 Sept 2001 a political agreement for the construction of this pipeline will be announced.
June 1998	Guardian, 15 Nov 1998 - BBC, 4 Nov 2001	Taliban prepare to hand over bin Laden (believed to be unwelcome) but change course after America starts attacking Afghanistan with cruise missiles.
Aug 1998	Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, 8 Dec 1998	US strategic energy report "The Changing Geopolitics of Energy" shows rapidly diverging trends between energy consumption in the industrialised world and its ability to service that consumption from its own resources.
Sept 1999	US National Intelligence Council Report, Sept 1999 Associated Press, 17 May 2002	"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters....Yousef was planning simultaneous bombings of 11 U.S. airliners prior to his capture. Whatever form an attack may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way for the cruise missile attack against his Afghan camp in August 1998." (Later the Washington Post reports that on 5 July 2001 Richard Clarke, White House Terrorist Adviser, holds a meeting with multiple US security agencies and states "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon.")
Spring 2000	ABC News 6 June 2002	According to an ABC interview with her, alleged lead hijacker Mohammed Atta spoke to Johnelle Bryant, a government official at the US Department of Agriculture, for more than an hour in the spring of 2000 and: asked her for a loan of $650,000 to buy and modify a crop-dusting plane in an extraordinary way gave her his real name and allowed her to take notes during the interview told her he had just arrived from Afghanistan told her about his travel plans to Spain and Germany expressed an interest in visiting New York asked her about security at the World Trade Centre discussed al-Qaeda and its need for American membership told her how great he thought bin Laden was asked about US landmarks talked about the destruction of US government buildings asked to buy the aerial photograph of Washington hanging on her Florida office wall talked about cutting her throat According to CNN, ABC claim that Ms Bryant passed a lie detector test. Mrs Bryant's account directly contradicts the head of the FBI's post Sept 11 claim that "... the hijackers did all they could to stay below our radar.... They dressed and acted like Americans.... blending into the woodwork all the while.... [using] extraordinary secrecy...."
July 2000	Commission on America's National Interests, July 2000	Co-authored by amongst others, soon-to-be National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and soon-to-be Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a report from The Commission on America’s National Interests identifies the strategic need for the US to secure hydrocarbon reserves in the Caspian Sea region: ".... for the foreseeable future oil will remain an essential commodity. Greater attention must therefore be given to increasing supplies of oil in ways that diversify supplies from areas other than the Persian Gulf. The most promising new source of world supplies is the Caspian region, which appears to contain the largest petroleum reserves discovered since the North Sea."
Sept 2000	Sunday Herald, 15 Sept 2002	Sept 2000 (pre-Bush election) Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others prepare blueprint for new administration (via the PNAC think-tank - 'Project for the New American Century') including: Premeditated attack on Iraq Plans to seize military control of the Gulf region Maintaining US global pre-eminence Preventing others from aspiring to a larger regional or global role Delivery of US leadership via key allies such as the UK Peace keeping missions to be lead by US not UN Seeking regime change in China pressured through increased presence of American forces in south east Asia US domination of space Total US control of cyberspace (internet) Hints at US development of biological weapons (London Times reports - 3 Sept 2001 - that "The Pentagon has secretly built a germ factory capable of producing enough deadly bacteria to kill millions of people" whilst other reports indicate the 2001 anthrax attacks in US have been traced to a CIA/government source at which point the FBI investigation appears to fizzle out. A BBC report 18 Aug 2002 indicates obstruction by the CIA.) The report indicates that implementation of a process of transforming the US into *"Tomorrow's Dominant Force"* is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." (Many press reports later come to compare 911 to Pearl Harbor. Most are not aware that US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt had advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attacks but withheld this information from the US fleet in order to ensure that the Japanese strikes were successful. He needed a national outrage in order to persuade a reluctant US public to join the second world war).
Oct 2000	National Review Online, 12 Oct 2000	During the US election Bush gives a completely different version of his foreign policy intentions with strong (but completely bogus, in the light of the subsequently discovered PNAC report) emphasis on American 'humility'.
2000	Observer, 10 Nov 2002	Libyan al-Qaeda member, Anas al-Liby, responsible for the failed MI6 sponsored assassination attempt on Colonel Gadaffi (as alleged by former MI5 officer David Shayler) has been enjoying asylum in the UK. The Observer newspaper report implies that that this protection was provided by MI6, until al-Liby arouses the interest of the British police. He eludes a police raid on his house in Manchester (the Observer does not indicate whether or not he was tipped off) and moves abroad.
2000/1	Reuters, 20 Sept 2002	The CIA had information about three of the Sept. 11 hijackers, from Saudi Arabia, at least 20 months before the attacks occurred but failed to pass the information on to other agencies.
Jan 2001	Associated Press, 25 Jan 2001	Enron and its employees give up to $300,000 towards the inaugural ceremony of President Bush.
Jan 2001	House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, 19 April 2001	Priority of Bush administration is to establish the Cheney Energy Task Force meeting in secret with many members of the oil industry including Enron (Post Sept 11 Congress will attempt to sue the Executive for release of these papers - the first time this has happened in history).
Jan 2001	John Loftus Press Release, 31 May 2002	In May 2002 former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, claims that an al-Qaeda document shows that US facilitation of deal making between Enron and the Taliban lay behind the blocking of FBI investigations into bin Laden. He alleges that Vice President Cheney authorised a block in January 2001.)
April 2001	Sunday Herald, 6 Oct 2002	President Bush's Cabinet agrees in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US, 'military intervention' is necessary. A report commissioned from the (James) Baker Institute for Public Policy states: 'The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments.' Advised by (amongst others) Kenneth Lay, the Chief Executive of Enron, the report is delivered to Vice President Dick Cheney by James Baker, former Secretary of State to Bush's father. The report refers to the impact of fuel shortages on voters and that 'the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience'. It says that with the 'energy sector in critical condition, a crisis could erupt at any time [which] could have potentially enormous impact on the US...' Iraq is described as the world's 'key swing producer ... turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest''. The response is to put oil at the heart of the administration -- 'a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy' (This combination seems to be the most probable reason behind Cheney's unwillingness to release the details of his Energy Task Force to the Courts and Congress).
June 2001	US Defense Department Press Release, 5 June 2001	Secretary Rumsfeld visits US troops at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo who are there supposedly for peacekeeping purposes and tells them "You’re not a burden on our economy, you are the critical foundation for growth.” (Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia are all critical locations relative to oil pipeline transit corridors - known as the 8th and 10th corridors - linking Western Europe to the Caspian hydrocarbon reserves via the Black Sea region where the Bosphorus straits are an insurmountable shipping bottle neck. According to one commentator in March 2001 the U.S. Congress debated the construction of the 8th corridor pipeline which would supply the American market with crude oil to the value of 600 million dollars a month. He states: "The control over this future pipeline is of strategic importance and no doubt a reason for the American intervention in Kosovo". Others have pointed out that the co-operation of the Albanians, who have their own interest in the future of Kosovo, is fundamental to this project)
June 2001	U.S. News and World Report Dec 12, 2001	US introduces the 'Visa Express' program in Saudi Arabia, which allows any Saudi Arabian to obtain visas through their travel agent instead of appearing at a consulate in person. (This initiative coincides with what the Washington Post says were "The alerts of the early and mid-summer -- described by two career counterterrorist officials as the most urgent in decades". Not all the hijackers are in the US at this point, with key Saudi figure Khalid Almihdar not entering the country until 4 July. At least three of the hijackers use the new system. 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers are from Saudi Arabia as is bin Laden himself.)
July 2001	BBC Online, 18 Sept 2001	At a meeting in Berlin the US threatens the Taleban with military action. A former Pakistani foreign minister at the meeting says US was planning military action against Afghanistan for October to achieve regime change. Military advisers already in place in Tajikistan.
July 2001	Le Figaro, 11 Oct 2001	A local CIA agent meets with bin Laden during his stay at the American hospital in Dubai for treatment of his kidney illness between 4th and 14th of July. The officer does not attempt to detain bin Laden and after the meeting is called back to CIA headquarters in the US. During his stay bin Laden receives visits from many members of his family (despite the fact that the Bush Administration later claims that he is estranged from them when attempting to explain why members of the bin Laden family were allowed to be flown out of the US without serious interrogation immediately after 911). The head of the Hospital's urology department where bin Laden is treated, Dr Callaway, refuses to answer questions from Le Figaro. Le Figaro states that "Contacts between the CIA and bin Laden began in 1979 when, as a representative of his family's business, bin Laden began recruiting volunteers for the Afghan resistance against the Red Army". It also reports that in the course of investigating international terrorism the FBI had discovered "financing agreements" that the CIA had been developing with its "Arab friends" for years and that the Dubai meeting with bin Laden is then within the logic of "a certain American policy".
July/Aug 2001	Inter Press Service 15 Nov 2001 Irish Times, 19 Nov 2001	French intelligence specialists confirm head of counter-terrorism of FBI, John O'Neil resigned July 2001 because the Bush Administration was obstructing his efforts to investigate Islamic terrorism.. (O'Neil was in the World Trade Centre on 11 Sept and was killed). O'Neil confirms in interviews recorded before his death that obstruction of his investigations was due to pressure from the oil and gas lobbies who were attempting to do a deal with the Taleban over the trans-Afghan pipeline. At one point during the summer of 2001 the US government tells the Taliban that "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs".
Aug (?) 2001	Sky News, 9 Dec 2002	Blair sets up special cabinet secretariat to deal with unexpected emergencies
Aug 2001	Public Broadcasting Service, 2002	John O'Neil's last day at the FBI is 22 August. Even though it arrived in July O'Neil had not been shown the Phoenix memo concerning potential terrorist flight school training in the US. The memo recommends Agency-Wide Investigation of Flight Schools. Neither was O'Neil informed of the struggle of the Minnesota FBI office to investigate the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui (see below).
Aug 2001	Financial Times, 12 Jan 2002	A former CIA officer reports in a controversial new book, that after he left the CIA in 1997 he became a consultant in Beirut and an adviser to a prince in a Gulf royal family. A military associate of the prince had last year warned Mr Baer that a "spectacular terrorist operation" was being planned and would take place shortly. Mr Baer said the associate also provided him a computer record of "hundreds" of secret al-Qaeda operatives in the Gulf region, many in Saudi Arabia. Mr Baer says that he passed the information onto the Saudi government in August who ignored it (The FT report does not explicitly say that he passed the same information to the CIA although it would be extraordinary if he hadn't. This may not be recorded in the book because its contents were edited by the CIA during the course of acrimonious negotiations with the author. The book features blacked-out sections which obscure passages that the CIA's publications review board claimed were classified. However, Mr Baer does claim that the CIA previously ignored earlier information he gave them indicating that a Gulf state was harbouring an al-Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. A later report indicates that that state was Qatar and that one of the terrorists has since been accused by the US of being one of the master minds behind 911.)
Aug 2001	Die Zeit, 1 Oct 2002 Der Speigel, 1 Oct 2002	German press reports say that on August 23, 2001, the Israeli intelligence service 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. Four names on the list are known and were names of the 9/11 hijackers: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta. A spy ring within the US run by Mossad had been closely following these terrorists for many months. (A less detailed story of information given by the Israelis to the US was reported by the Daily Telegraph September 2001 a few days after the attack.) However, in relation to other information Die Zeit says the CIA "learned about plans for an attack 18 months before Sept. 11, and did nothing against the terrorists". An FBI agent in New York is blocked by his head office from investigating Almihdhar. In a frustrated email to his headquarters he states "Let's hope the National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL [Usama bin Laden], is getting the most 'protection.'.."
2001	PBS Online, 11 Dec 2002	Chairman of US Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence says there is 'compelling' evidence that a foreign government was involved in the 911 attacks, but that the information is classified. The information will not be released for 20 -30 years.
2001	Online Journal, 2 March 2002	"New evidence linking the owner of the Venice, Florida, flight school that trained Mohamed Atta to the Central Intelligence Agency surfaced last month. The new evidence adds to existing indications that Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre's flight training in this country was part of a so-far unacknowledged U.S. government intelligence operation which had ultimately tragic consequences for thousands of civilians on September 11. Far from merely being negligent or asleep at the switch—the thrust so far of allegations expected to be aired at joint Senate and House Select Committee hearings this month—the accumulating evidence suggests the CIA was not just aware of the thousands of Arab student pilots who began pouring into this country several years ago to attend flight training, but was running the operation for still-unexplained reasons."
2001	San Francisco Chronicle, 6 Oct 2002	The FBI had a confidential informer who rented rooms in Southern California to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Congressional investigators say the FBI's efforts to block their inquiry makes them sceptical of the bureau's assertions about the informer. They also say the Justice Department has joined the FBI in fighting the congressional requests for information related to the matter, escalating tensions.
Aug 2001	London Times, 3 Nov 2001	The main September 11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui in US custody had been picked up by immigration authorities in August but the FBI refused to let its field agents search his laptop computer which contained clues as to the September 11 mission.
Aug 2001	New York Post, 25 Sept 2002	A Minnesota FBI agent investigating Zacarias Moussaoui testified that he notified the Secret Service weeks before Sept. 11 that a terror team might hijack a plane and 'hit the nation's capital.' The FBI agent said that evidence in the case pointed to a broader hijack attack, but added that investigators were largely in the dark because they were blocked from getting access to Moussaoui's computer and handwritten notes.
Aug 2001	Seattle Times, Sept 20, 2002	FBI headquarters blocked an agent's request to aggressively pursue one of the future hijackers less than two weeks before Sept. 11. The agent had asked headquarters Aug. 29, 2001, to allow his office to use its 'full criminal investigative resources' to find Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of two hijackers who intelligence agents had identified as attending an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000.
Aug 2001	Independent, 17 May 2002	"The 'smoking gun' briefing received by President George Bush just a month before 11 September carried the heading, 'Bin Laden determined to strike in the US', and focused on al-Qa'ida's ability to strike within the US mainland, it was revealed yesterday. Despite White House claims that the briefing document related primarily to the threat of an attack on a US target overseas, the document also made very clear Mr bin Laden's desire 'to bring the fight to America'. It also emerged yesterday that the FBI had been aware for several years that al-Qa'ida was using US flying schools to train its pilots and, as early as 1996, it was told of a specific threat to use a plane in a suicide attack against the CIA's headquarters.The latest revelations could prove very damaging to Mr Bush, who has insisted that, had he known al-Qa'ida was planning such an attack, he 'would have done everything in [his] power to protect the American people'. Earlier last week, Mr Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters that the information given to the President was not specific."
Summer 2001 and earlier	London Guardian, 7 Nov 2001	"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".
Summer 2001	Various sources	Countries which provided advance warning of the 911 attacks to America include Argentina, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Israel and Afghanistan
Sept 2001	Newsweek, 20 May 2002	"One FBI memo, written by a Phoenix agent in July 2001, warned about suspicious activities by Middle Eastern men at an Arizona flight school. Last week, in little-noticed testimony before a Senate panel, FBI Director Robert Mueller referred to another internal document that may prove more explosive: notes by a Minneapolis agent worrying that French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui might be planning to 'fly something into the World Trade Center.'....The notes are especially eerie because Moussaoui faces charges that he was part of the 9-11 plot. Sources say the notes Mueller referred to were written in early September 2001—days before the attack. The author was part of a counterterrorism team desperately trying to figure out what Moussaoui was up to. He had been arrested in August on immigration charges after a Minnesota flight instructor reported that he showed a suspicious interest inlearning how to steer large airliners. When agents learned, from French intelligence, that he had radical Islamic ties, they sought a national-security warrant to search his computer—and got turned down.... The agents were 'in a frenzy,' 'absolutely convinced he was planning to do something with a plane,' said a senior official. One agent wrote that 'one possibility' was that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers."
Sept 2001	London Times, 27 September 2001	"The author Salman Rushdie believes that US authorities knew of an imminent terrorist strike when they banned him from taking internal flights in Canada and the US only a week before the attacks...The FAA confirmed that it stepped up security measures concerning Mr Rushdie but refused to give a reason.”
Sept 2001	ABC News, 5 Sept 2002	On 5 Sept 2001 FBI and CIA agents got a full briefing on Moussaoui's terror background from their counterparts at the French Ministry of the Interior in Paris. Former French Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant told ABCNEWS the French gave the Americans a complete dossier on Moussaoui. 'We did not hold back any information,' said Vaillant. 'This is the essential point I want to communicate to you. There was nothing held back. All the information was given just as soon as it became available in order to help American authorities pre-empt attacks' . Lawyers at FBI headquarters turned down requests for a special warrant to check Moussaoui's computer.
Sept 2001	London Times, 31 July 2002	Tony Blair's special adviser on national security flies to Washington for unspecified talks with Bush Administration just prior to the 911 attacks. (Pakistan's head of intelligence, General Mahmoud, is also in Washington at the same time).
Sept 2001	Karachi News,10 Sept 2001	"ISI Chief Lt-Gen. Mahmoud's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Marc Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centred around Afghanistan . . . [and] Osama bin Laden. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmoud's predecessor, was here, during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days."
Sept 2001	Newsweek 24 September 2001	"On Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
Sept 2001	CBSNews, 4 Sept 2002	Despite the rest of the country becoming focused on Bin Laden, within hours of the Sept 11 attack Rumsfeld instructs the CIA to find evidence linking them to Saddam (This was clearly an immediate step to implement part of the PNAC plan).
Sept 2001	BBC Online, 29 August, 2001	The BBC reports that only 4 US fighter jets were available to defend the whole of the North East United States on Sept 11. The BBC reports that "On September 11 America was wholly unprepared for an attack on its own soil. These two pilots - with call signs 'Duff and Nasty' - were the first to be scrambled on news planes were being hijacked. Yet incredibly there were just four fighter planes on standby in the north eastern United States... US pilots were forced to take to the skies without any weapons". Colonel Robert Marr, Commander of the North East Defence Sector on 911 states "That was the sense of frustration, of I don't have the forces available to do anything about this". (This was despite all the previous warnings of impending attacks including warnings of hijackings, and the existence of standard FAA protocols for miltary intercepts in such cases. Many have since questioned whether the lack of timely response on the day was a result of more than just incompetence. The Washington Post confirms that no order to execute a shoot down of any airliner on 911 was given by the President until at least 9.55am, well after the hits on the World Trade Centre (the second of which - clearly not an accident - was at 9.03am) and the Pentagon (approx 9.45am). This was despite the fact that the plane that hit the Pentagon had been hijacked for nearly an hour and was followed on radar to Washington. The need to issue shoot down orders where people on the ground are at risk from a plane had been publicly acknowledged in 1999 when the crew and passengers of a private jet seemingly lost consciousness during an internal US flight. Fortunately the plane eventually ran out of fuel and crashed in an unpopulated area. It was acknowledged at the time that the President had the necessary powers to order a shoot down.).
Sept 2001	Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12th Sept 2001	In an interview with Pravda a day after the 911 attacks the Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov states: "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.”
Sept 2001	New Yorker, 5 Nov 2001 - National Review, 12 Sept 2002	Bush Administration allows all members of Bin Laden family to be quickly collected up by charter jet and flown out of US following 911 attacks with only minor interrogation in the airport of final departure. The only member of the family to stay in the US at the time says he was not questioned in person.
Sept 2001	London Times, 29 Sept 2001	"Tony Blair has no plans to change the [pre-Sept 11] chain of command system under which he has to give personal authorisation to the RAF to shoot down a hijacked commercial airliner threatening London or other British cities, a government source said yesterday....The government source said the [British] Prime Minister was always instantly contactable under the special communications system wherever he was, at home or overseas. An RAF source said that even if an airliner was hijacked at Heathrow and then turned east towards London, there would still be time to act...."
Sept/Oct 2001	Daily Mirror 16 Nov 2001	In late September and early October, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiate bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September 11 attacks. The deal (reported in Pakistan and the Daily Telegraph) is rejected by the US. A US official says that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr bin Laden was captured".
Sept/Oct 2001	Toronto Star, 27 Nov 2001	Also reports on a pre-911 offer from the Taliban to extradite bin Laden, as well as on the 1996 offer from Sudan. Rather than accept the Sudanese offer it claims that US agreed to allow bin Laden to be deported to Afghanistan.
Oct 2001	Frontier Post, 10 Oct 2001	Pakistan petroleum Minister briefs the US Ambassador on the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project and says that this project opens up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation particularly in view of the recent 'geo-political' developments in the region.
Oct 2001	BBC Online, 1 Oct 2001	FBI discovers that Sheikh Saeed (also know under a number other names including Omar Sheikh) had transferred money to one of the 911 hijackers (at this point it is not reported that he is a British Citizen and connected to the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI). A few days later CNN reports that he was educated at the London School of Economics and the Pakistani and Indian press report his connection to the ISI.)
2001	BBC Newsnight, 6 Nov 2001/Guardian, 7 Nov 2001	FBI and military officials in Washington confirm they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into the Bin Laden family in the US prior to Sept 11 with restrictions becoming worse after the Bush administration took over. "There were particular investigations that were effectively killed".
Nov 2001	House of Representatives, 6 Nov 2001	Two members of the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform write to George W. Bush expressing their dismay at the President's sudden change to the Executive Order governing the release of Presidential records. Bush's new order places fresh restrictions on public access to such records. According to the letter's authors the new Executive Order even goes so far as to allow 'the sitting President to withhold the records of a former President, even if that President wants those records released'.
Nov 2001	London Times, 16 Nov 2001	During the post-911 fighting in Afghanistan General Dawood of the Northern Alliance reports that at least two large Pakistani planes had landed at Konduz airfield to extricate 'military personnel' one night, followed by at least two more flights the next. When 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...."
Nov 2001	London Times, 19 Nov 2001	The American air force complains that it has 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 (meanwhile over 3000 innocent civilians in Afghanistan are killed).
Nov 2001	Guardian, 9 Nov 2001	Tony Blair's closest aide, Anji Hunter, unexpectedly leaves 10 Downing St to join British Petroleum (Hunter had toured the world with Blair setting up the coalition to attack Afghanistan whilst foreign secretary Jack Straw was left at home).
Sept - Dec 2001	Boston Herald, 10 Dec 2001	US fails to clamp down on Saudi Arabia's support for terrorism (even though 15 of the 19 Sept 11 hijackers are from Saudi Arabia) because of US business interests in oil and arms sales in the country. (George Bush Snr is a leading 'Ambassador' for such trade on behalf of the Carlyle group. At least $2 million of Carlyle funding has come from the bin Laden family).
Dec 2001	Time Magazine, 7 July 2002	Described by some justice officials as the spiritual leader and possible puppet master of al-Qaeda's European networks, Abu Qatada has been missing since mid-December. But senior European intelligence officials say that Abu Qatada is tucked away in a safe house in the north of England, where he and his family are being lodged, fed and clothed by British intelligence services.
1997 - 2001	National Review Online, 9 Oct 2002	According to expert analyses of the visa-application forms of 15 of the 9/11 terrorists (the other four applications could not be obtained), all the applicants among the 15 reviewed should have been denied visas under then-existing law. Six separate experts who analysed the simple, two-page forms came to the same conclusion. Making the visa lapses even more inexplicable, the State Department claims that at least 11 of the 15 were interviewed by consular officers. Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence."
1997 - 2001	National Enquirer, Monday March 4, 2002	Reports that a prime beneficiary of the Afghan pipeline was to be Enron who needed to transport its hydrocarbon reserves in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean (so central to undisclosed US foreign policy was this interest that the National Security Council set up a special unit to deal with Enron's interests in a gas power plant in northern India - as confirmed by the Washington Post - that would have been supplied by the pipeline). Enron was employing CIA personnel to achieve its goals in Afghanistan and paid millions of dollars to the Taleban (later in May 2002 former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, claims that an al-Qaeda document shows that US facilitation of deal making between Enron and the Taliban lay behind the blocking of FBI investigations into bin Laden. He alleges that Vice President Cheney authorised a block.in January 2001)
1980s/90s/2K?	BBC Newsnight, 6 Nov	Michael Springman, the former US Government State Department official and head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) tells BBC TV's premier evening current affairs programme 'Newsnight' of linkages between the CIA and the bin Laden terrorist network.
1980s/1990s/2K	CBC, Jan 2002	In a radio interview with Canada's public broadcasting network, CBC, Michael Springmann reveals more of his story of a CIA operation which he claims brought large numbers of people from the Middle East to the US, issuing them visas and training them to be terrorists. Springmann says that the CIA is working closely with Bin Laden and his operatives in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and has been since 1987. (Fifteen of the 19 hijackers obtained their U.S. travel visas in Saudi Arabia).
1980s/90s/2k	CBS News, 29 Jan 2002	Donald Rumsfeld is forced to admit that the Department of Defense is unable to account for $2.3 trillion (yes, trillion) worth of US military transactions and the fact that the US defence establishment has not passed a government audit in a decade (thereby begging the question as to on what and on whom the missing money has been spent).
Early 2002	Daily Telegraph, 13 Oct 2002	Thousands of American troops scouring Afghanistan for Mullah Omar go looking for the wrong man. The CIA issues a photograph of someone else on a 'wanted' poster as part of $3 million reward leaflet drop campaign. The man in the photograph, Maulvi Hafizullah (a former protocol officer for the Taliban) has two eyes. It is long established (though not necessarily realised by US soldiers) that Omar lost an eye fighting the Soviets.
Feb 2002	BBC Online 20 Feb 2002	A new department is set up inside the Pentagon with the title of the "Office of Strategic Influence" for the explicit purpose of planting misleading stories in the international media.
Feb 2002	London Times, 25 Feb 2002	Omar Sheikh (otherwise known as Sheikh Saeed and by other names) is detained by Pakistani police and accused of the murder of Wall St Journalist, Daniel Pearl. (He is not charged for his involvement in the 911 hijackings as alleged by the FBI and to which the Times makes no reference).
Feb 2002	Time, 25 Feb 2002	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. 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.
Feb 2002	Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 18 Feb 2002	Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirms: ".......Central Asia now is a repository for a lot of oil. We have the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, places of that nature. It seems to me that this is going to give us many more choices and certainly lessen somewhat our dependency on the Persian Gulf but oil is a valuable commodity and any shortage anywhere affects all of us .... and it's going to be a factor for some time to come."
Feb 2002	Cabinet Office Energy Review, Feb 2002	Tony Blair's Performance and Innovation Unit reports on UK energy supplies and confirms that UK reliance on gas and oil imports will have to increase.
March 2002	CNN, 1 March 2002	Both Washington and Moscow say al Qaeda members and Chechen separatists are holed up in Pankisi Gorge, a mountainous region in northeast Georgia. Russian officials have claimed that military Islamic organisations, including al Qaeda, historically have supported Chechen fighters.
April 2002	Associated Press, 5 April 2002	US Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Myers confirms on CNN that "The goal has never been to get bin Laden."
April 2002	Miami Herald, 30 April 2002	Despite the biggest investigation in history, and inexplicably failing to refer to the capture of Moussauoi's laptop computer, head of FBI Robert Mueller claims ''In our [seven month] investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.... The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind... "
April 2002	London Times, 22 April 2002	Blair government rejects innovative proposals from BMW and other manufacturers to begin converting the motor industry away from it reliance on petroleum, after ministers decide that fossil fuels will not be phased out for at least another 50 years.
May 2002	Manila Times, 30 May 2002	Following an explosion in his Davao hotel suite in the Philippines on May 16 when US citizen Michael Meiring (also a British national) who lost both legs, it is reported that there have been attempts by authorities to keep the circumstances surrounding the incident secret. What is unusual is that he was reportedly whisked out of Davao on a chartered plane, accompanied by what immigration officials described as agents of the US National Security Council (a latter report indeed confirms that Meiring had been whisked away to America before being prosecuted in the Philippines on explosives charges. The overall implication is that Meiring, sponsored by the US, may have been preparing a bomb attack. This could then be blamed on Islamic groups in Davao providing the justification for further US military presence in southeast Asia as part of the the so called war against terrorism.