[The recent 'suicide bombings' in London and the hideous internecine feuds alleged among the various religious, ethnic and national groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Africa, Russia and Palestine, sent me back to this seminal essay from 2003 by Professor George Pumphrey on the nature of what has come to be known as 'terrorism'--and, as with 'conspiracy theory', an ironclad word partnership has been formed, so that when one hears 'terrorism' today, one unreflexivesly understands 'Arab terrorism'. Each word evokes the other--much like 'Hutu Genocidaires', 'Serb Nazis' or 'Israeli (Jewish) victims'.
Even one of this blog's favorite causes, the defense of President Slobodan Milosevic, has fallen victim to this conditioned response. While the comprador class that exercises power at the behest of Western militarism in Serbia today has created a pogrom against those former members of the old government (and their families) who sought to defend Yugoslavia from US/EU aggression during the entire last decade of the 20th Century (e.g., Me Markovic, banished to god know where seemingly for being the President's politically active and outspoken wife; Mr Milanovic, doing a nine year bit for not warning his co-workers at RTS of the NATO terror bombing that killed 16 of them; Mr Markovic, former head of intelligence for President Milosevic during the NATO assault on Kosovo--and The Hague's prosecution witness who flipped on Mr Nice and the late Judge May and accused the Tribunal of ordering his torture inorder to extort more false testimony against 'the accused'--caught a dime for some humbug complicity in Vuk Draskovic's traffic {not to say 'trafficking'} accident; and even President Milosevic, himself, is being tried in absentia in Serbia on charges that, four years ago when he was locked down in Belgrade's central prison, they couldn't make stick even with all Freddy Belitnikoff's Stick-em--why the late quisling PM Zoran Djindjic traded the President to The Hague for a million seven {deferred} and some futures on German seaside property--; but all of this goes unmentioned in ICDSM circles!).
Today, the defense of Slobodan Milosevic is so caught up in post-911 Islamophobia ('Two 911 Hijackers Fought In Bosnia--phlegm @ 11'; 'Bosnian Muslim Presidnet Izedbegovic, Former SS Handzar Div Leader, Ordered Massacre at Srebrenica While Sharing Cigar with Clinton'; and one that I flogged like this blog: 'Osama bin Laden Travels on Bosnia Passport and Assembled Bombs Used in African Embassy Bombings in Albania and Sudan'--kinda stuff'd give an asprin a headache)--and so gracelessly concerned with maintaining good relations with The Rich (rich American's, rich Serbs, rich Israelis, Marc Rich . . .), that they cannot feel the unlubricated, rubber-gloved hand of US imperialism being forced into the deepest control centers of their being.
By collaborating in the impetuous erasure of the terms 'Yugoslavia' and 'Yugoslavs' from the lexicon of debate, and replacing them with 'Serbia' and 'Serbs', the forces of national defense have allowed themselves to be caricatured as 'Serb nationalists', thus no better, no different from Croatian nationalist or Bosnian Muslim nationalists. And all the victims of this war of aggression have been relegated to one national or religious or ethnic sub-set or another. Vis à vis the victims in and around Srebrencia, since 'tis the season: they were either Muslims or Serbs--but never Yugoslavs slaughtered in the war to destroy Yugoslavia. How many ethnically pure families were there in Yugoslavia in 1991? Or in 1995? And what are the origins of the terror that cause Yugoslav families to foresake their UN-founding nationalities and break off into fetishized mono-national/religious/ethnic identities?
This externally encouraged, or even coerced, redefinition of Yugoslav citizenship, forced on the people by the agitation and propaganda of the Catholic Church, various Soros anticommunist NGOs, the UN, the EU and US/German/UK intelligence networks, all in the service of the international arms trade and financial markets, was just the co-signature the 'plenty-of-atrocities-to-go-around' people need to cash in--and these were all very different sorts of people, people like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore (both of whom wrote of how Balkan folks, in general, and Serbs, in particular, were congenitally brutal), Ed Herman and Marlise Simons (he beat her like a red-headed future-ex-wife), George Bogdanich and Natasa Kandic (stomping every $ they could out of 'the thug' Milosevic and his 'Greater Serbia'), but they were all getting paid from the same big old slush fund.
To see how the real importance of the US role in the destruction of Yugoslavia is being obfuscated by the forces of degraded geopolitical criticism, one need only ask one's self how many giant military bases the Kosovo Albanian Muslims or Bosnian Muslims (or the Croat/Bosnian Federation, for that matter) have created on the territory of the 'former-', 'ex-', 'nation once known as-' Yugoslavia? Exactly none. But Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo (the largest US base outside the States built since Vietnam) and the US airbase in Tuzla (the town to which all the Srebrenica 'genocide survivors' supposedly fled and now the site of one of the lynch pins in the network of military installations that guarantees the US's 'rain of terror' over the Middle East and Central Asia).
Nebojsa Malic, one of the good kids over at antiwar.com, said that you can't understand the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without first understanding what happend in the Balkans. Yugoslavia continued to be an allie and friend of Iraq even after it ceased to be 'Yugoslavia'. One of the reasons the Yugoslav Federation had to be done away with was that its electrical power and arms industries posed serious competition to the EU and US. Actually, France and Dussault Aerospatial made out like bandits when, after the break-up began, they 'assumed' the Yugoslav aeronatucal r and d on the 'Arrow' jet fighter, a prototype for the Rafale Euro-fighter. But the Milosevic defense forces would just as soon ignore that Iraqi (or Palestinian) friendship because it might not go down too well with their money people (may be as difficult for the various 'Israels' to digest as was the President's letter of condolence on the death of Arafat).
You can either do it right, or you can do it polite. But the only way to fight terrorism is to recognize it and its origins--and that's where this solid essay by Prof Pumphrey comes in. Yet still and all, you'll never be able effectively to fight the real terror that has driven world consciousness deeper and deeper into delusion as long as you depend on those very same terrorists for your pay check. --mc]
THREE TYPES OF TERRORISM AND 9/11
George Pumphrey*
[* The author is co-author of Ghettos und Gefaengnisse; Rassismus und Menschenrechte in den USA, Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne, Germany 1982 and numerous articles]
Berlin June 2003
If one wants a reliable measurement of the health of a democracy, one should examine not the halls of parliament, to hear the speeches, but the courtrooms. Justice is democracy's primary concept. It is the degree of justice found in the courtroom that is reflected in the degree of democracy found in the society at large. The role of the court is to impartially determine if the evidence against the accused is sufficient to find him/her guilty as charged.
The court in a democracy must reach its verdict after having guaranteed that the rights of the defendant have been respected. The burden of proof resides with the prosecution. It is just this principle that raises a republican democracy above the feudal order of the natural superiors. This democratic principle – in as far as it is applied – stands guard against the creation of scapegoats. It was this principle that made lynching a crime.
The state has many more means at its disposal than the defendant, a simple citizen. Over the years these principles have been eroded both in judicial practice – see the thousands in prison and on death row who never received a fair trial – but also in the general public's view of justice. The "war on crime" is presented as a "body count" of those convicted – regardless of their guilt or innocence.
In more than 90% of "trials" in US courtrooms, there is no examination of evidence. A plea is bargained: "Because I cannot prove my innocence, I will plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to escape a heavier conviction. If I insist upon my rights, I will be given even more serious charges and found guilty of them also."
This concept of "justice" is reflected also in broad sectors of what remains of US democracy. Today, it is generally accepted that the objective of the efforts of police/courts/prisons is no longer that of finding, judging and punishing those guilty of the crimes committed, but rather to punish someone – anyone – for crimes committed. Somebody has to pay. Therefore, if a "suspect" dies with a policeman's bullet in the back, or under torture in the precinct, the case is closed regardless of who actually committed the crime. Vengeance has replaced the concept of justice.
The pervasiveness of this injustice becomes particularly apparent in a society suffering a state of shock, paralyzed by fear, as was the case following the terror attacks September 11, 2001. Like a lynch mob with modern means, the whole of the US society has been called out to take part in a dragnet against everything Muslim and Arab. There is no proof that Arabs – much less "THE Arabs" – are responsible for the terror acts that took place. On the contrary, in the 20 months since the attacks, nearly every piece of evidence presented by the government – and its media – has been proven either faulty, false or faked.[1] And all of the "evidence" proceeds from the premise that the attacks were committed by Arabs.
Most dangerous in this development is that this Arab scapegoat tendency has been receiving support from unexpected sectors. Progressives, anti-racists and even anti-Globalizationists have accepted the bait "the Arabs did it" and continue in their publications and speeches to base their analysis – which may otherwise be well founded – on the assumption that Arabs were behind the attacks Sept. 11, 2001. After all would it not be logical, even understandable that the victims of imperialism would one day rise up and strike back – even if the means that they use may not meet with our approval?
The following is simply a look at how the government arrived at the conclusion that Arabs were behind the 9/11 terror attacks from the perspective of the characteristics of the various kinds of terrorism. It is not intended to provide a neatly packaged "hudonit" case.
The intention here is to appeal for justice. Hasty assumptions from corrupted officials, propagated further, without question, not only lends credibility in the targeting of a people, already bad enough, but adds also credibility to the destruction of the notion of justice in US society and beyond. But before beginning to pin the blame, one should first become clear about what kind of terrorist attack took place on Sept. 11.
THREE TYPES OF TERRORISM
Professor Eqbal Ahmad, once declared: "I have examined at least twenty official documents on terrorism. Not one defines the word. All of them explain it, express it emotively, polemically, to arouse our emotions rather than exercise our intelligence."[2]
Another author observed: "It is no accident that there is no agreed definition of 'terrorism,' since the word is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning. At the same time, the word is extremely dangerous, because people tend to believe that it does have meaning and to use and abuse the word by applying it to whatever they hate as a way of avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior."[3]
The US federal statutes define terrorism as:
"… the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."[4]
This definition – through its use of the word "unlawful" – reduces terrorism to only the kind that is done outside the realm of the state. For obvious reasons, it does not include today's most common forms of terrorism. Being that these are either deliberately allowed, instigated or committed by the state itself, it would be absurd to define them as being "unlawful" since that would be at counter purposes of the state to declare that it would repress its own criminal actions.
The 3 kinds of terrorism are: "revolutionary"[5] terrorism, (to which the above definition refers, and which most generally comes to mind when the word 'terrorist' is heard), friendly fire terrorism and false flag terrorism.
"REVOLUTIONARY" TERRORISM
"Revolutionary" terrorism is terrorism that is planned and executed outside the power of direct influence by state organs on the terrorists. The terrorists alone decide how, when and where they are going to strike. "Revolutionary" terrorists – for the most part intellectuals – impatiently break off from the main body of the mass struggle for reforms. They revert to tactics of spectacular violence, in the hopes of extorting concessions from the ruling elite in order to take a "shortcut to revolution." They labor under the illusion that the ruling circles can be "terrorized" into giving up power or, at least, making meaningful concessions to the movement of the "powerless."
This form of terrorism is not to be confused with the national liberation struggles and their guerilla warfare carried out in countries of the Tricont. This amalgam was/is often used by propaganda organs in order to justify foreign imperialist intervention to repress a popular uprising against a client or puppet regime under a "war on terrorism" banner. The point of difference between terrorism and a national liberation struggle is that the national liberation struggle moves on to the phase of armed struggle at a point where it already controls an organized infrastructure capable of replacing the current social order.
Terrorism, on the other hand, lacks the support of the population, has no viable social structure that it is both defending and solidifying and is incapable of building one through terrorist actions. In essence, "revolutionary" terrorism is conservative, because it in end effect relies on meaningful change being "granted" by those in power rather than being built by the currently powerless.
What begins resembling Robin Hood in spectacular actions, soon degenerates into a mere struggle for personal survival of those who have now become "outlaws" hunted by the repressive structures of their nation.
The "revolutionary" terrorists sealed their exclusion from the movement, from which they came and in whose name they claim to speak, when they stepped into the underground with their first action. Their contacts to the movement had to be broken both for protection of the movement and their own personal security. Through the heightened repression, the overall movement is made to suffer, often splitting and being put on the defensive. From this point on, the terrorists' war becomes more personalized and less political. They focus first and foremost on not getting caught, finding shelter, food and maintaining their mobility.
The problems enumerated above played an important role in the demise of "revolutionary" terrorism as a means of struggle. Another element that played a role was the general transformation of both the domestic struggles in the industrialized world – becoming more institutionalized and less civil disobedient – and the state's methods for fighting them. But perhaps the most important role was played by the demise of the revolutionary national liberation struggles that had been the greatest source of inspiration for "revolutionary" terrorists. "Revolutionary" terrorism, as an independent form of terrorism, had all but vanished by the end of the 1970s.
Some of the groups that had engaged in this form of terrorism were the Weathermen the Black Liberation Army (USA), the RAF, aka Baader-Meinhof Group (West Germany).
It is generally assumed that all terrorism is of this type. When one hears the word "terrorist attack" one thinks automatically of relatively small groups engaging in "armed struggle" against a state apparatus in order to provoke a change in the social situation. The official version of the events around 9/11 presuppose that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are engaged in this form of terrorism. The official version suggests that vengeance rather than extortion was the motivation behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Vengeance, as a motive, is not very typical of revolutionary terrorism.
Drawing on this notion as well as on the ambiguity of what "revolutionary" terrorism represents, particular state organs decided to artificially keep the "terrorist threat" alive, transforming it into friendly fire and false flag forms of terrorism to extort from their political rivals and the population concessions granting themselves more power in determining the affairs of the country.
Terrorism is by nature a very high-security conspiracy necessitating strict structures of small groups with extremely limited contact between the groups but, above all, a large amount of blind confidence in the "comrades".
These aspects also make the terrorist organization vulnerable to infiltration and manipulation by state agents – or the recruitment of terrorists to become agents of the state.
Since the mid-1970s many if not all terrorist organizations and groups have been heavily infiltrated. Many have agents of the state as their leaders. Some were even founded by government "anti-terrorist" agents.
Individual "revolutionary" terrorists have been in short demand since the late 70s. A few isolated hot-heads can be instigated by government agents and end up in prison or dead as cannon fodder in the government's "war on terror". Members of targeted groups – targeted because of their political, or religious beliefs or even their membership in ethnic or racial groups – are incited by undercover government agents to commit – even discuss committing – terrorist attacks, for which they will be arrested.
To do this the state first of all has to infiltrate its agents into the cell structure of the "revolutionary" terrorists. Someone who applauds the actions of terrorists in the right circles and shows his/her willingness to "get involved" can soon become a candidate recruit. Once infiltrated into the terrorist cells, these agents can easily work their way into decisive positions by showing that one is competent in necessary military tasks and through having the original leaders arrested, to become themselves first in line to fill the vacuum. Having taken over leadership, the state can proceed to determine both targets and methods that win sympathy for the state's "struggle against terrorism."
The Red Brigades in Italy is a good example. Originally a leftist "revolutionary" terrorist organization, they were infiltrated by various secret services, and had the leadership taken over by secret service agents. The objectives became those of the reactionaries.
One example is the terrorist assassination of Aldo Moro. The Italian Communist Party having scored a major election victory of 34% (1973/74 elections), made the Christian Democratic government, under the leadership of Aldo Moro, dependent upon the support of the communist vote in parliament. Fanatical anti-Communist red lights began flashing in Washington. The Israeli government became worried that, under the influence of the communists, the Moro government would become more "pro-Arab."[6] Like the CIA, the Mossad also sought to instrumentalize the left extremist Red Brigades for their anti-Moro policy.[7]
The Red Brigades were already infiltrated by different services, both Italian and foreign, ranging from the carabinieri, the secret service SISMI, the police, the CIA, and the US military secret services. The book "Agenten, Terror, Staatskomplott" offers the following example:
"Antonio Nirta, a confidence man" of the carabinieri General Francesco Delfino, [had been infiltrated into the Red Brigades]. In 1976, with the help of Silvano Girotto, a police agent in[side] the Red Brigades, they were able to have the moderate Red Brigade leader, Renato Curcio, arrested, which made it possible for Mario Moretti, suspected by Red Brigade members to also have collaborated with the secret services, to become the leader."[8]
Earlier, in order to establish contact with the Red Brigades, the Mossad warned the Brigades that the infiltrated agent, Girotto, planned the arrest of Renato Curcio. The warning that Moretti was to have passed on, never reached Curcio. Curcio fell into the trap as planned and was arrested. With Curcio behind bars, the CIA, through its influence agents, was able to effectuate a change of leadership which brought Moretti to the top.
The Israelis were surely aware of this plot. The warning was only a ruse. It was to be expected that Moretti would let Curcio step into the trap resulting in his arrest. It was following the arrest of Curcio that the active cooperation with the Mossad began. Camouflaged as being from groups of radical Palestinians, among them the group around George Habash, the Israelis organized weapons transfers for the Brigades. These transfers passed only over Moretti. "Palestinian weapons" were being handed over in Southern Lebanon – where the Israeli army exercised absolute control.[9]
Alberto Franceschini, one of the founders of the Red Brigades, reflected in an interview from his prison cell:
"Some of our comrades went to Rome to do a political/military action. Following the judge's kidnapping, we wanted a politician. We had planned Andreotti. But we could not carry out the plan because we were suddenly arrested, Renato [Curcio] and I. There had been an agent, by the name of "Brother Mita," infiltrated into our ranks. He had been in the organization for about a year. We had even proposed to have him supervise the military training camp. Had he accepted, he would have become acquainted with all of our underground members.
"(...) We all knew what significance [Aldo] Moro had and which positions he, as President of the Christian Democrats, had taken. We were astonished and didn't believe that our comrades were capable of accomplishing such a complex military operation like the Moro case. We were shocked at the evolution of the Red Brigades. At the beginning, this organization of youth had had no military experience at all. And now, within a few years, it demonstrates that it is capable of accomplishing a complex military action such as Moro's kidnapping and neutralizing his bodyguards in the center of Rome.
"I want to know why I am spending 17 years in prison. What or who has used me? Could be that whenever I thought I was going in one direction, that I was being pushed in the other. I didn't even realize it."[10]
Like Franceschini, many "revolutionary" terrorists realized their mistake too late. They realized how their struggle for progress had been taken out of their hands and was running in the opposite direction, long after they had been neutralized. The assassination of Aldo Moro was a good example. He was assassinated in order to prevent the "Historical Compromise," a government coalition of Christian Democrats and Communists.
Another method of infiltration was to buy or blackmail terrorists to become agents. Some terrorists having realized their mistake and wanting to leave the life of being hunted, accepted to remain in the terror scene, giving information about its structure, planned attacks, and eventually even become an influence agent for state-planned friendly fire terrorist attacks. In exchange they were promised freedom from prosecution when members of the terrorist organization were brought to trial.
Still others become "walk-in" agents. Out of various reasons, revenge, change of opinion, etc. former terrorists offer their services to the government. One such case is that of Alfredo Scappaticci of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland. (See below)
At the point where the state takes over effective control of the terrorist organization, that terrorism is transformed into friendly fire terrorism.
"FRIENDLY FIRE" TERRORISM.
Friendly fire and false flag terrorism share the same objectives: have terrorist attacks carried out in order to strike fear in the population, on the one hand, and to create a "public enemy" on the other. This creates a "circle up the wagons" sentiment in the population, which the government can exploit to win acceptance for restrictions of civil rights. The population hopes these restrictions will bring a bit more personal security. The boogey man created by the government's terrorism can at any time be pulled out and dangled, whenever the government wants more concessions or the citizens try to get those lost rights back again. (One need only count the number of times the terror alert color codes have gone up in the US.)
Unlike the usual cases of "revolutionary" terrorism, the targeting in this type of terrorism becomes the wanton, media-spectacular, indiscriminate destruction of both human life and property.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism "expert", and Vice President at the Rand Corporation, the largest private center for strategic and organizational military research in the world, describes the transformation of goals and methods that has taken place over the years. These are introductory remarks to a talk presented in March 2001, 6 months before 9/11, at a conference published by the US Air Force Academy:
"Essentially you see a greater willingness by groups to inflict massive indiscriminate casualties. You have to pause here and think for a moment, go back to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Now, putting aside whether it was possible to actually topple the North Tower onto the South Tower and kill 60,000 people, consider the goal. Just pause to compare that to the previous decade, to heinous acts of international terrorism—committed by the sorts of guys we thought were the really bad terrorists, public enemies number one, such as Abu-Nidal, Baader, Meinhof, and others. Very rarely, if at all, do we have evidence of these groups contemplating World Trade Center types of very grand, very ambitious terrorist events. They planned incidences of hijacking, planted bombs on planes, but still those types of things would kill at most in the low hundreds, and more likely, only a handful of deaths. They weren’t contemplating incidences of violence that were expected to kill tens of thousands. So that is an important difference too."[11]
This transformation corresponds to the evolution from "revolutionary" to friendly fire/false flag terrorism that have today become the most prevalent forms of terrorism. The objective is the creation of a widespread "everyone can become a victim" type of insecurity in the population, not just among the rulers, as was the case with the "revolutionary" terrorists. To the chaos of fear of deadly coincidence, the government proposes the solution of a dictatorial "complete order." The ultimate beneficiary is the military organs of state. State executive organs – the police, the secret services and the armed forces – become the primary forces running the society as the nation slips ever further down the slope into fascism. Civilian government structures are forced more and more to the sidelines. Liberties of expression and assembly are viewed as threatening. The citizen becomes the potential enemy, the potential "terrorist" or potential "terrorist accomplice".
The agency credited with the arrest of terrorists is hailed as "hero of the day." The citizens breathe easier, thankful for such an "attentive, all-seeing state. " For the citizen, it is irrelevant whether the arrested suspect is guilty or simply a scapegoat. For the government agency, it is always easier to "thwart" attacks one helped plan. The state can show that it is "doing something" for the security of the citizens, and the citizens are grateful.
Through the media fanfare around the arrest of "dangerous terrorists" and the show trials that follow, the government can convince both population and parliament to give up more "democratic rights in exchange for more security". When it is deemed necessary to have a sweeping cut back in democratic rights, the "forces of order" simply see to it that the planned attacks actually take place. The agencies can always complain that democratic rights had gotten in the way of their efficiency. The state's monopoly on information surrounding the attack, makes it very difficult to be able to piece together the parts of the puzzle.[12]
(In many cases, it is questionable if the "terrorists" were not in fact simply instigated, furnished with the tools and intelligence information to commit the act by agent provocateurs in order to be arrested for the benefit of showing that terror is a threat.)
For effective friendly fire terrorism, it suffices that the state has control over two or three top terrorists in an organization.
THE CASE OF ALFREDO "STAKEKNIFE" SCAPPATICCI
Observers of the conflict in Northern Ireland may have often wondered, why, every time a peace plan is negotiated, a Catholic terrorist attack deflates the hopes of an end to the bloodletting. The answer is simple, the terrorist organizations of the Republicans as well as those of the Loyalists are teeming with spies, who stoke the fires of revenge every time the possibility of a negotiated settlement comes to within reach. (Attacks from the Loyalists are always played down as "re-"actions to Republican actions.)
One example of just how far governments will go in their promotion of terrorism through infiltrators is the case of Alfredo "Stakeknife" Scappaticci recently exposed as an Agent of the British Army's undercover squad, the Force Research Unit (FRU) (since renamed the "Joint Services Group").
The Sunday Herald, of Glasgow reports:
"Stakeknife's long and bloody career as a double-agent[13] for the British began in 1978. As a young IRA volunteer, Freddy Scappaticci had fallen out of favour with one of Belfast's top Provos [member of the Provisional IRA] and received a brutal beating. Motivated by revenge, he decided to get even. In British intelligence parlance he became a 'walk-in'—a para military who walks in off the street and offers their services to the army as an informer.[14]
"The Force Research Unit (FRU), the army's shadowy spy wing," explains the Guardian, "could not believe their luck, and before long they had engineered Scappaticci's "promotion" to a senior role in the Nutting Squad, where he not only interrogated, tortured and killed suspected informers but vetted hundreds of would-be recruits to decide if they were suitable IRA material."[15]
"Even to his fellow IRA men," explains the Sunday Herald, "shocked at the revelations of the traitor in their midst, Alfredo 'Scap' Scappaticci has a fearsome reputation as a ruthless psychopath. (...) Yesterday, as west Belfast reeled from the news that Scappaticci and the British army agent known as Stakeknife were one and the same, an IRA source said: "He was the bogeyman of the IRA: judge, jury and executioner. He didn't have to attend brigade meetings. He didn't get involved in the politics or talking. But whenever something went wrong, Freddy Scappaticci was sent for."
"His [British] military handlers allowed him to carry out up to 40 murders to keep his cover and keep passing information. He was involved in planning a variety of terrorist assassinations, including the murders of police officers, soldiers, civilians and terrorists. However, it was in his role as the IRA's 'tout-finder [spy-catcher] general' that Scappaticci did most of his killings.
"In some cases, the IRA men who Scappaticci executed for being British agents were set up by the FRU. They were seen by the British as too dangerous to be allowed to remain at large and too well protected to be arrested. Covert army units would hamper their operations and ensure planned bombings or shootings in which they were involved went wrong—suspicion would fall on them as possible double-agents and Scappaticci would move in, kidnap them, torture them, tape their confessions and kill them.
"One FRU source said: 'He was the FRU's fixer. If there was an IRA man they needed taken care of, or if there was an agent who was past his sell-by date then Stakeknife would be used to get rid of them. He was there to do the FRU's dirty work and tie up loose ends.'
"The FRU, now known as the Joint Services Group, has possibly moved Scappaticci to Chicksands in Dorset where the FRU's L-Branch—which re-settles compromised agents—is based. A dedicated team, known as 'The Rat Hole', was set-up within the FRU solely to handle Scappaticci due to the top-grade nature of his intelligence. MI5 are now to take control of his resettlement.
"The worst collusion between the state and terrorists involving Scappaticci came in October 1987. Loyalists were planning a hit on Scappaticci. The FRU uncovered the plot from agents they were running inside loyalist paramilitaries. Intent on not losing their prime IRA asset to loyalist gunmen, the FRU planted information—via double agents in the Ulster Defence Association—that made loyalists redirect their attentions towards a 66-year-old retired taxi driver, Francisco Notorantonio;" concludes the Sunday Herald.[16]
"The death of Notarantonio, 66, was an apparently bewildering event. Masked men with a shotgun burst into his house and killed him as he lay in bed, in front of his wife. The next day his Ulster Defence Association killers were reported to have held a celebration to mark their successful execution of "the head of the IRA in Ballymurphy". But although Notarantonio had been in the IRA in the 1940s, he had not been politically active for many years.
"More than 10 years later", writes the Guardian, "it was alleged he had been the innocent victim of an FRU plot. An army officer is alleged to have forged an intelligence dossier falsely implicating him as a senior IRA man. This was passed to FRU's agent in the loyalist ranks, Brian Nelson, who used it to persuade loyalist gunmen to kill the old man, instead of Scappaticci, who the gunmen had originally been planning to target."[17]
"(...) Scappaticci was also involved in setting up Danny Morrison, Sinn Fein's former director of publicity, for arrest. The security forces allowed a suspected informer called Sandy Lynch to be abducted by the IRA in the hope that Morrison would arrive at the house where Lynch was being interrogated. This would allow the police to move in and arrest the high-profile republican.
"While Lynch was tortured by Scappaticci and his team for three days in 1990, the FRU staked out the house, willing to take the chance that Lynch could be killed. Morrison did arrive at the house and was later sentenced to eight years for false imprisonment.
"Security sources who know Scappaticci do not believe money was his prime motivator. 'He started out looking for revenge and got caught up in the whole game,' said one. 'He's a vicious bastard who got addicted to the whole adrenaline rush; and who knows now if he will ever get to spend his cash?'"[18]
That could be one psychological explanation. The adrenaline may explain his sadism, but it does not explain the systematic damage done to the Republican cause in their struggle against British colonial rule, for their human and civil rights.
The Irish Republican movement is a movement of national liberation. It was in the interests of British colonialism to reduce the image of this liberation movement to that of a group of terrorists. As can be seen the colonists were at least in part successful. Splinter groups began to politically work against the movement's goals. Irish Republicans, in the belief they were headed in one direction – to use the analogy of Franceschini – were being pushed by British agents in the other. The liberation movement was constantly having to rebuild the political momentum torn down by terrorists manipulated by the Crown.
More enlightening in this case is the fact that the British authorities were willing not only to sacrifice innocent people, but were just as willing to have their own infiltrators tortured and assassinated in order to maintain the fear and the excuse of a "terrorist threat" emanating from Northern Irish Catholics. This fact should be kept in mind not only when thinking of the thousands of victims of the World Trade Center but also Muslims, both as scapegoats, and as victims of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
True to its nature, the British government justifies its methods (he "provided voluminous information to military intelligence"[19]) and gives the criminal refuge. It is as good as certain that Scappaticci will not be prosecuted. The British authorities responsible will not have their day in court either. Even if they were brought to trial, it is hardly imaginable that they would be treated as the terrorists they are. German secret services, it was learned in 2001, also had infiltrators in the Irish National Liberation Army.[20] A reasonable question is whether so much terrorism would have taken place had it not been under friendly fire instigation.
THE 1993 WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING
September 11, 2001 was not the first time someone attempted to topple the tallest landmarks in the USA. 1993 a bomb set off in the basement garage of the World Trade Center killed 5 and injured more than 1,000 people. A closer look at the facts surrounding this case shed an interesting light both on how the attack was organized and executed, but also on the role of US officials, their media and links to foreign powers operating on US territory.
Within moments of the explosion, James Fox, assistant FBI director, declared that Mohammed A. Salameh was the person who planted the explosives using a yellow Ford Econoline van for the purpose. His biography was widely distributed, and the New York Times declared him a "Suspect Tied to an Islamic Fundamentalist Sect."[21]
According to one source this terrorist attack was initiated by a Josie – or Guzie – Hadas, an Islamist, who, according to the International Herald Tribune, was "long established as a Mossad operative."[22] She had hired 2 Arabs, who were later arrested, Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian, and Nidal Ayyad.
Salameh was Hadas' driver. In this function he was directed by Hadas to rent a transport van. Salameh rented the van in his own name.[23] The telephone number and apartment listed on the rental contract were those belonging to Hadas.[24]
The man who proposed the bombing to followers of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (an Egyptian dissident) was Emad Ali Salem "a high level double agent working for Egyptian intelligence and an FBI informant/provocateur. It was Salem, who provided the FBI with taped conversations and all other evidence for the trial. It was Salem who had the idea and drew up the plans to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations and other targets and also commit assassinations.
The FBI/ Egyptian intelligence agent "provided the safe houses in which the bombs were manufactured, helped purchase the firearms and materials to be used in the attacks." (Muslim World Monitor, July 4, 1993)[25]
Shortly after Salameh rented the vehicle, the van disappeared. Salameh reported the "theft" immediately to the police, no reaction. He reported the "theft" a second time. When the police also refused to record the theft, he went to the police station to personally ask that the theft be recorded. He was outraged that the police officers – using "formal grounds" – still refused to make a record of the theft.
The bomb exploded the next day. Pieces of the van were discovered in the rubble. The day following the explosion, Salameh returned to the rental office to ask to have his deposit returned. He received a portion and was arrested a couple hours later.
The FBI found "tools and wiring, and manuals concerning antennae, circuitry and electromagnetic devices"[26] during their search of Hadas' apartment. "One expert interpreted these as evidence that a 'bombmaker' had been in the apartment—the more so because 'a dog trained in the detection of explosives' sniffed around and 'responded positively.'"[27] Yet Josie Hadas was never brought to trial. Where she is today is not known. It seems not to have even interested the Judge.
Time Magazine remarked: "If Salameh is guilty, it still must be determined how to account for what looked like his extraordinary stupidity in renting a van under his own name, presenting a valid New York driver's license with a real and traceable phone number and, instead of disappearing after the bombing, calling attention to himself by repeatedly trying to recover the deposit."[28]
The FBI had had all documents relating to plans to blow up the World Trade Center, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and other targets in their possession since 1990. Fifty storage boxes of documents concerning detailed plans to blow up the World Trade Center were in police and FBI possession, as Los Angeles Times confirmed July 4, 1993. Every time Salem met with his stooges to discuss these operations, he was "wired" and the FBI was fully aware that the actions were Salem's idea.[29]
In fact according to the NY Times, it was the FBI that decided to have the bomb explode. The Times writes:
"Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.
"The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.
"The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers."[30]
This is a triple case of friendly fire terrorism. The Egyptian was able to implicate an Egyptian dissident in this terrorist attack, and thus have the US put him in prison. Israel could implicate Arabs as fanatic, blood-thirsty terrorists, thus boosting the Israeli myth of being a besieged fortress fighting with its back to the wall. The FBI is happy to show that terrorism is a threat also to the US and therefore Congress should heighten the means of repression on Arabs.
A successful friendly fire terrorist attack that discredited the cause of the terrorists is the case of the Palestinian hijacking of the Italian cruse ship, "Achille Lauro" in 1985. This operation was ordered by the Israeli secret service and organized by their Palestinian agents inside Palestinian terrorist organizations. The details of the preparations are related by an insider to the upper echelons of the Israeli secret services, Ari Ben-Menashe, former special intelligence advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir –in his book, "Profits of War."
"Radi [a Jordanian military officer who was unaware that he, since some time had already been smuggling arms for the Israeli secret service] went back to his drinking and womanizing and the money he made selling arms for Pearson all drained away. At that very vulnerable point, in 1978, Pearson stepped in again and offered Radi a £200,000 loan. This time, Pearson made it quite clear to him that the money was coming from an Israeli source. The desperate Radi accepted the loan and was recruited to work for an antiterrorist group in Israel run by Rafi Eitan. The group's methods were rather unconventional, one could say heinous, but it had operated successfully for years. An example is the case of the "Palestinian" attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That was in fact, an Israeli "black" propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were. The operation worked like this: Eitan passed instructions to Radi that it was time for the Palestinians to make an attack and do something cruel, though no specifics were laid out. Radi passed orders on to Abu'l Abbas, who, to follow such orders, was receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. Abbas then gathered a team to attack the cruise ship. The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man [Leon Klinghoffer] in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel it was the best kind of anti-Palestinian propaganda."[31]
Interesting in this account is that in order to "show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were" Israelis activated their agents among Palestinians terrorists to tell them to be particularly brutal to Jews, as Jews. What Ben-Menashe does not mention in this anecdote is the second objective sought by Israel: convince Jews of the merits of Zionism and Israel as their sole "protector" on the planet.
Ben-Menashe mentions the "success" that Eitan's methods were having. A major aspect lending to this success is Israel's credibility. One would not suspect that particularly the Israeli government would be so cold-blooded toward Jews. Have them murdered to be able to point at their adversaries and cry "anti-Semitism". They feign indignation at the fate of Jews, who refuse to come live in Israel, where they are "protected."
The international crisis created by the hijacking was designed to capture headlines of the world's press for about a week. The hijackers finally agreed to surrender to Egyptian authorities. (Abu Abbas, who himself was not among the hijackers, helped negotiate their surrender.) The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung, recently furnished additional information of what happened:
"The Egyptians wanted to send Abbas and the hijackers to the PLO headquarters in Tunis. The plane was intercepted in flight by US fighters and forced to land in Sicily, where the hijackers were put on trial.
"The prosecution indicted the actual hijackers, but Abu Abbas was called merely as a "witness" and permitted to flee the country. The US had made a demand for Abbas' extradition for murder of a US citizen. An Italian court convicted Abbas in absentia to five life terms. The US withdrew its extradition demand. And Abbas remained free.
"In 1998 Abu Abbas was given official permission of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu to visit the Gaza Strip. Israeli authorities justified the official permission with the fact that Abbas had in 1996 already been allowed to visit the Gaza Strip to participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections. He had also voted at that time for the resolution legally eliminating the clause from the PLO Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. Israeli Supreme Court also protected Abbas by refusing the law suit calling for Abbas' expulsion from Israel and being turned over to the US brought by the Klinghoffer family."[32]
The leader who had planned and organized the hijacking was sitting in safety and on the enemy payroll. Those who carried out the action believed they were "helping the cause". They had no idea that the murder of an innocent, invalid reduced their "cause" in the public's eye from a struggle against occupation and ethnic cleansing to one against Jews per se, from a struggle for justice for the Palestinians to an unjust "anti-Jewish" struggle. It would take the Palestinian struggle a long time to overcome this setback.
The background of the Achille Lauro hijacking and the international immunity enjoyed by Abu Abbas provides useful insight into the workings of friendly fire terrorism. A close look at many of the "suicide bombings" taking place in Israel, would also raise doubts about many official versions of the attacks.
FALSE FLAG" TERRORISM:
False Flag terrorism is where the state has no "terrorists" available and must make the attack itself, to blame it on an existent or a fictitious terror organization.
Suicide bombings can fit into any of the 3 categories of terrorism. "Revolutionary" terrorists could have independently decided to make the attack. Would-be terrorists could be manipulated into sacrificing their lives "for the cause" making it a case of friendly fire terrorism. But there is also the possibility that a bombing was disguised to appear to be a suicidal act. Suspicions concerning a false flag background to "suicide bombings" arise particularly when – like clockwork – a series of "suicide attacks" occur at the most unfavorable conjunctures for the Palestinian struggle, attacks where Israel alone is the side to benefit from such an attack. Consider the case of the bombing in Rishon Lezion.
RISHON LEZION MAY 7, 2002:
On May 7, 2002 a "suicide bombing" took the lives of 16 people, wounding 57 in a billiard hall in Rishon Lezion a suburb to the south of Tel Aviv. According to Israeli police reports, a man with a suitcase ran to the middle of the room on the 3rd floor of the building and set off his bomb. The explosion was so powerful that a large part of the casino caved in. Unlike the rest of Israel, there were no guards stationed at the doors.[33] An investigator at the scene explained that mainly those engaged in illicit gambling frequented the parlor. The fact that the parlor had no gambling license was reason enough for the police to keep an eye on it.[34] The billiard parlor was particularly full on the evening of the attack: A soccer team's fan club was celebrating their team's victory.[35]
There are several aspects about the May 7, attack that raise questions about the Palestinian authorship of the attack. Was the blast really detonated by a Palestinian?
No news has been leaked that a Palestinian's body had been identified at the scene. (It usually suffices simply to launch the presumption that it was a "suicide bomber" for all possibilities of there having been another background to the explosion to be discarded.)
No one playing at the tables, sitting at the bar, or lounging in the easy chairs noticed "a small man who entered carrying a large suitcase".[36] Even the police who "keep an eye" on the place, seemed to have been asleep. Yet nothing is more outstanding than a small man at eleven o'clock at night, lugging a large suitcase into a billiard hall. EVERY Palestinian knows that, even without a bomb in hand, ANY Palestinian caught in Israel at 11 o'clock at night cannot expect to be greeted with flowers. What's more, if NO ONE noticed him, how does ANYONE know that he was "small" or carrying a suitcase, or even that (s)he was a man? Even more strange is that there is no insistence in the media reports of him/her being Palestinian.
Since it is said that everyone knows everyone else in this town, it would follow that either (s)he was known to the patrons of the billiard parlor or that no one brought a bomb in from outside, therefore that there was no suicide, but rather murder: that the bomb had been planted earlier on the premises and detonated by remote control. This is also a possibility that should not be excluded.
The political aspect lends also reason for suspicion.
The explosion happened precisely at the time the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was meeting in Washington with President George W. Bush.[37] Sharon, upon receiving news of the attack, cut the meeting short and returned home, swearing "Israel will not surrender to blackmail." [38]
A meeting was in progress in Cairo, of foreign ministers from eight Arab states and the Palestinian territories. They were reviewing events since the latest Arab League's summit meeting in Beirut in March. At this summit a Saudi-drafted offer of Arab peace with Israel was unanimously adopted."[39] (Sharon immediately responded to this peace proposal with war against the Palestinian territories.)
The NY Times wrote in its commentary concerning the visit and the bombing:
"The suicide bombing at a billiards hall (...) coincided, probably not by chance, with the Oval Office meeting between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush. The aim of the terrorists is to prevent any effort to negotiate an end of the Middle East conflict. (...) Hostages to enmity and afraid of being brought down by their unyielding political rivals, Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and Prime Minister Sharon seem unable to look beyond the bloodshed that has convulsed the Middle East for the last 18 months. What they must negotiate could not be clearer: dividing the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean so that the states of Israel and Palestine can coexist in dignity and security."[40]
Anyone familiar with the Middle East political situation knows that it is absurd to juxtapose the peace policies of Arafat and Sharon. It is Israel that refuses any concessions demanding unilateral concessions from its Palestinian negotiating partner. But leaving politics and history aside, who, besides the US State Department, the White House, the Israeli embassy and the Prime Minister's entourage, knew the hour Sharon was scheduled to meet with Bush? Would Palestinians have been given information on Sharon's schedule in Washington?
Of course, as with all terrorism, the timing of the explosion was planned for effect. And for effect there would have to be a certain number of casualties, otherwise there would be no justification for Sharon to break off his visit to his most important "supporter" to return home. But Sharon had another reason for cutting the visit short.
He was under pressure to give an appropriate answer to the myriad of peace initiatives and attempts to at least give the impression that the two sides were going to talk peace. Even George W. Bush had promised to exert influence on "his Friend" Ariel Sharon. Like the fisherman describing in detail the whale that got away, the press was given a list of what George W. had had on his chest to tell his guest:
ÿ Show more flexibility in the Middle East peace process,
ÿ Ease economic restrictions on the Palestinians,
ÿ Curb the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories and
ÿ Help find ways to bolster the Palestinian security apparatus to more effectively curb terrorism so that the two sides could return to negotiations[41]
What did Sharon tell Bush in the few minutes preceding the news of the bomb that made him change his mind? After his guest had gone home, George W. expressed to the media that he was "never going to tell my friend, the prime minister, what to do or how to handle his business. That's his choice to make."[42] But US taxpayers are footing the bill keeping Israel afloat to the tune of between $3 - $10 billion (tendency rising) for the choices that the Israeli government is making.
Who had an interest in letting the US government save face in NOT having to confront Sharon so that he would have had to give an answer – of some kind? That the Saudi peace proposal never had a chance with the Israelis is irrelevant to the question, but not to the answer. What interests would Palestinians have had in sabotaging a US demand for easing economic sanctions on Palestinians, curbing settlements, aid in combating "Palestinian" terrorism – or at the maximum – support for the Saudi initiative that would restore the occupied territories to the Palestinians, bring the complete dismantling of the Israeli settlements? In other words, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, why would Palestinians – or for that matter any other Arab political force – go out of its way to create an image of Israel as "victim"?
Whether George Bush Jr. was willing to apply economic sanctions on Israel to impose a change is not sure. What is sure is that Sharon's breaking off the meeting with his guest swearing that "Israel will not surrender to blackmail"[43] could have been directed at any plans Bush might be harboring for pressuring Israel into peaceful coexistence with its neighbors as well as to the supposed Palestinians who were to take the blame for the attack at the billiard hall.
As could be expected, even before investigations could be carried out, the Israeli Prime Minister, his cabinet and security forces immediately supposed that it had been a "suicide bombing" and accused the Palestinian President, Yassir Arafat, of responsibility for the attack, even though Arafat's opposition, Hamas, a former protégé of Israeli authorities,[44] had claimed responsibility. The Israeli government began preparing for the next massive attack against the infrastructure and people of the Palestinian autonomous territories.
No matter who commits an attack in Israel, the Palestinian Authority will be held responsible. The Oslo Agreements – which Israel has rejected – stipulates that the Palestinian Authority takes on the responsibility for the protection of Israel from attacks originating in the Palestinian Territories. (This must be the first time in history that an occupied country takes on the responsibility to protect the occupier from acts of resistance against its occupation.) But if Israel carries out a false flag attack, instigates a friendly fire attack against its own citizens, the Palestinian authorities will be held responsible. Israel will "respond" destroying more of the Palestinian infrastructure, summarily executing more "terrorist suspects" and creating heightened humiliation and frustration which form the basis for the true suicide bombers.
In early March, two months before the bombing in Rishon Lezion, at around the time that both the Saudi proposal was about to be tabled as well as the special Middle East negotiator, General Anthony Zinni, was heading for a new round of negotiations, another series of "suicide bombings" took place. As a "reaction" to these attacks, the Israeli army invaded the Palestinian territories, massacred many Palestinian civilians, destroyed homes and infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp and held Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat hostage in his headquarters.
Placing the question of Israel's "reaction" to terrorist attacks into a context, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, reminded the viewers, in an interview on CNN, that one should keep in mind the historical setting of the situation being observed.
BRZEZINSKI: You have shown some very dramatic footage, some very dramatic sound bites as well. And they give you a sense of the immediacy of the tragedy that's unfolding. But I think it's important to step back and to remember that yesterday was a day of historic opportunity in the Middle East as well as a criminal calamity.
The historic opportunity is that, for the first time in 50 years, the Arab states have indicated they are prepared to live in peace with Israel. And they've indicated a more or less equitable framework, subject to negotiation, for such peace.
The calamity, of course, is the criminal act of terrorism. I find it baffling that the United States is focusing almost entirely on the calamity.
And while Chairman Arafat may be winking at terrorism, and therefore deserves to be castigated for it, and while some Israeli reaction against the perpetrators themselves is justified, the (Bush) administration can't ignore the fact that for the last 10 years, Mr. (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon has opposed the Oslo peace process, he has contributed to the political climate in Israel that subsequently led to the killing of (then) Prime Minister (Yitzhak) Rabin.
He (Sharon) has been determined to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and he is using every act of terrorism as an excuse to try to destroy the Palestinian Authority.
That is not the way toward peace. And the absence of any meaningful American strategy and a sense of direction is a part of this appalling reality that we are now watching.[45]
To get a better idea of the arguments Ariel Sharon can use to "convince" George W. to see things his way, one must refer back to the arguments used with George Bush, Sr. leading up to the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference in 1991.
Victor Ostrovsky, a Canadian born former Mossad agent, recounts a very good example of the preparation of a false flag terrorist operation. In his book "The Other Side of Deception"[46], Ostrovsky explains the preparations for an assassination during the Madrid, Middle East Conference in the fall of 1991:
"In the months leading up to [the Madrid Peace Conference], the American president had truly believed he'd be able to bring about a change in the hardheaded attitudes that had prevailed in the [Middle East] for decades. In an effort to bring the right-wing government of Yitzhak Shamir to the negotiating table in what was to be an international peace conference, the president had applied the kind of pressure that an American president rarely has been brave enough to apply. Against the wishes of an angry Jewish community, George Herbert Bush had put a freeze on all loan guarantees to Israel; which were to come to a total of ten billion dollars over the next five years. This freeze was not intended to punish Israel for the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip (regarded by the United States as illegal,) but to force the cash-strapped Likud government to the negotiating table.
"Upon making that decision, the president was instantly placed on the blacklist of every Jewish organization in the United States, and regarded as the greatest enemy of the state of Israel. In Israel, posters depicting the president with a pharaoh's headgear and the inscription "We have overcome the pharaohs, we will overcome Bush" were pasted across the country. Shamir called the president's action "Am-Bush."
"Israeli messengers in all the communities across the United States immediately went into high gear, launching attacks against the president. They fed the media an endless stream of criticism, while trying at the same time to make it clear to Vice President Dan Quayle that he was still their sweetheart and that what the president was doing in no way affected their opinion of him.
"(...) The right-wingers' silent cry was to somehow stop the [peace] process, which they believed would lead to a compromise that would force Israel to return more land. Refusing to believe that such a compromise would ever be made settlers in the Occupied Territories had launched a new wave of construction, with the unrelenting help of Ariel Sharon, the minister of housing.[47]
"A certain right-wing clique in the Mossad regarded the situation as a life-or-death crisis and decided to take matters into their own hands, to solve the problem once and for all. They believed that Shamir would have ordered what they were about to do if he hadn't been gagged by politics. Like many others before them, in countless countries and administrations, they were going to do what the leadership really wanted but couldn't ask for, while at the same time leaving the leadership out of the loop – they were going to become Israeli versions of Colonel Oliver North, only on a much more lethal level.
"To this clique, it was clear what they must do. There was no doubt that Bush would be out of his element on October 30 when he arrived in Madrid to open the peace talks. This was going to be the most protected event of the year, with so many potential enemies meeting in one place. On top of that, there were all those who were against the talks: the Palestinian extremists and the Iranians and the Libyans, not to mention the decimated Iraqis with their endless calls for revenge for the Gulf War.
"The Spanish government had mobilized more than ten thousand police and civil guards. In addition, the American Secret Service, the Soviet KGB, and all the security services of all the countries involved would be on hand.
"The Madrid Royal Palace would be the safest place on the planet at the time, unless you had the security plans and could find a flaw in them. That was exactly what the Mossad planned to do. It was clear from the start that the assassination would be blamed on the Palestinians - perhaps ending once and for all their irritating resistance and making them the people most hated by all Americans.
"Three Palestinian extremists were taken by a Kidon unit[48] from their hiding place in Beirut and relocated incommunicado in a special detention location in the Negev desert. The three were Beijdun Salameh, Mohammed Hussein, and Hussein Shahin.
"At the same time, various threats, some real and some not, were made against the president. The Mossad clique added its share, in order to more precisely define the threat as if it were coming from a group affiliated with none other than Abu Nidal. They knew that name carried with it a certain guarantee of getting attention and keeping it. So if something were to happen, the media would be quick to react and say, "We knew about it, and don't forget where you saw it first."
"Several days before the event, it was leaked to the Spanish police that the three terrorists were on their way to Madrid and that they were probably planning some extravagant action. Since the Mossad had all the security arrangements in hand, it would not be a problem for this particular clique to bring the "killers" as close as they might want to the president and then stage a killing. In the ensuing confusion, the Mossad people would kill the "perpetrators," scoring yet another victory for the Mossad. They'd be very sorry that they hadn't been able to save the president, but protecting him was not their job to begin with. With all the security forces involved and the assassins dead, it would be very difficult to discover where the security breach had been, except that several of the countries involved in the conference, such as Syria, were regarded as countries that assisted terrorists. With that in mind, it would be a foregone conclusion where the breach was.
"As far as this Mossad clique was concerned, it was a win-win situation.[49]"
Ostrovsky goes on to relate in his book how he helped foil the plot by simply making it known, first of all to a congressman close to the president, and that information concerning the plot was leaked to the national press. Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson presented the whole story in his column as well as Jane Hunter, in her newsletter. Public exposure of the plot prohibited it from being carried out. Ostrovsky concludes:
"I heard later that after the president had landed in Madrid, the American embassy there received a bomb threat on the phone, and that a section of he embassy was evacuated while the president was in the building. But the rest of the plan was called off, and even though the Spanish police received the names and descriptions of the three supposed assassins, they were never let out of the holding facility in the Negev. Later, they were transferred to the Nes Ziyonna research facility, where they were terminated."[50]
Though Ostrovsky published his book in 1994, few of the facts he exposes have made it into the common knowledge of the general public. Given the above related incident, it should come as no surprise that George Bush, Jr., is reluctant to pressure Israel to seriously engage in the peace process. As this episoed shows, Israel is not only an ally, it can also be a deadly enemy.
9/11: A CASE OF FALSE FLAG TERRORISM?
These are examples of the 3 types of terrorism. Each has its own characteristics. Al Qaeda made no demands on the US.
Bin Laden is accused of having been behind the attack. What evidence is this accusation based on?
At the end of January 2002, the Washington Post ran a series of articles tracing day by day for 10 days following the morning of Sept. 11. Authored by Dan Balz and Bob Woodward this series is purportedly "an inside account of what happened from Sept. 11 to Sept. 20, based on interviews with the principals involved in the decision-making, including the president, the vice president and many other key officials inside the administration and out. The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council meetings made available to The Washington Post"[51].
These articles provide a valuable insight, spin notwithstanding, into how Bin Laden became the "prime suspect".
September 11,
"This is the time for self-defense," [George W. Bush] told his aides, according to National Security Council notes. Then, repeating the vow he had made earlier in the evening in a televised address from the Oval Office, he added: "We have made the decision to punish whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators."
13 hours after the attack neither the president nor anyone else knew who had made the attacks. Would the US have been "punished" for having "harbored" Timothy McVeigh? Was Bush going to bomb the US, if it turned out later that the attacker(s) were avengers of McVeigh?
"That afternoon, [still Sept. 11] on a secure phone on Air Force One, Bush had already told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he would order a military response and that Rumsfeld would be responsible for organizing it. "We'll clean up the mess," the president told Rumsfeld, "and then the ball will be in your court."
"Intelligence was by now almost conclusive that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, based in Afghanistan, had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the aides gathered in the bunker – the "war cabinet" that included Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and CIA Director George J. Tenet -- were not ready to say what should be done about them. The war cabinet had questions, no one more than Rumsfeld."
Even before any investigation could possibly have been initiated – much less born fruit – intelligence (sic) has looked into its crystal ball and seen Bin Laden grinning back at it. At this meeting neither FBI Director Mueller nor Attorney General Ashcroft were present. Was the possibility of domestic suspects simply a priori excluded?
According to the Washington Post series, the threat to Air Force One on Sept. 11, was false. They add: "It took days for the incident to be sorted out and weeks before the White House publicly acknowledged it." Yet a mere 13 hours after a major terrorist attack of this complication "intelligence" determines who the culprit is going to be.
Sept. 11, 3:30 p.m.:
"CIA Director Tenet reported that he was virtually certain bin Laden and his network were behind the attacks. A check of the passenger manifests of the hijacked flights had turned up three known al Qaeda operatives on American Airlines Flight 77, which had struck the Pentagon. One of them, Khalid Al-Midhar, had come to the CIA's attention the previous year, when he traveled to Malaysia and met with a key al Qaeda suspect in the 2000 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole. The FBI had been informed about Al-Midhar and he had been put on a watch list, but he had slipped into the United States over the summer and the bureau had been looking for him since. Tenet said al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization in the world that had the capability to pull off such well-coordinated attacks."
But what Tenet, the head of intelligence, evidently did not know was that Khalid Al-Midhar was still alive and well in Saudi Arabia, having had nothing to do with 9/11[52]. This fact was known almost immediately following the publication of the list of "hijackers." Yet, months later, the director of intelligence has not updated his facts, before speaking to the journalists writing the story.
When at 9:30 a.m., Sept. 12, at the morning meeting of the National Security Council FBI director Mueller began to describe the investigation underway to identify those responsible for hijacking the four planes he was interrupted by Attorney General Ashcroft:
"Mueller said it was essential not to taint any evidence gathered so that if accomplices were arrested, they could be convicted. But Attorney General John D. Ashcroft interrupted him. Let's stop the discussion right here, he said. The chief mission of U.S. law enforcement, he added, is to stop another attack and apprehend any accomplices or terrorists before they hit us again. If we can't bring them to trial, so be it. The president had made clear to Ashcroft in an earlier conversation that he wanted to make sure an attack like the ones on the Pentagon and World Trade Center never happened again. Now, Ashcroft was saying, the focus of the FBI and the Justice Department should change from prosecution to prevention, a fundamental shift in priorities."[53]
This shift in priorities leaves the realm of due process of law. Law is based on solving crimes that have been committed. This can only be the results of an investigation. Was Attorney General Ashcroft prohibiting an FBI investigation? Was the administration afraid that the FBI could have come closer to learning who really was behind the attacks?
Sept. 14, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced at the morning "war cabinet" meeting that the Justice Department would identify the 19 hijackers later that day.
Since it is clear that the FBI never investigated the events of 9/11, the question arises where did the FBI get the 19 names and photos? Nearly half of them were proven false almost immediately: at least 7 of them are alive, one died before Sept. 11 and Mohammed Atta, himself telephoned his family in Egypt on Sept. 12th and 13th.?
Can one suppose that at this rate possibly none of the men in this list had had anything to do with the events of 9/11? Can one suppose that the list was pulled together simply because a group of Arabs were needed as scapegoats to deflect attention from the real culprits? When it was made public that several of the 19 men on the list were in fact still alive, the FBI used a lapidary excuse, that some of the terrorists may have used false identities. The FBI has yet to correct its list.
But this raises a supplementary question: Where are the other men on the list? They have vanished, never to be seen again.
Even more disturbing is the fact that Congress was not interested in investigating this debacle. On the contrary, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney called for an independent congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration had received before the terrorist attacks and why it had not done more to protect the citizens, she was publicly vilified with racist and sexist diatribes, had her patriotism and intelligence put into question, as well as her sense of responsibility.
Only after being pressured, mainly by relatives of victims of the attacks, did Congress agree to form a "bipartisan, bicameral" congressional review of the United States intelligence capabilities. According to its chairman, Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican from Florida, the committee would be "forward looking."[54] "This is not a who-shall-we-hang type of investigation," insists Goss, "it is about where are the gaps in America's defense and what do we do about it type of investigation."[55] Congress seemed not really to be interested in "connecting the dots" to find out what went wrong, and where.
The committee's report was completed December, 2002. By this time, the committee had uncovered interesting insights that should – also in their opinion – be made public. Interviewed Dec. 11, 2002 on Public Broadcasting System, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Bob Graham stated:
[A]lso I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.
I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots.
To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action.
[Interviewer] GWEN IFILL: Are you suggesting that you are convinced that there was a state sponsor behind 9/11?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively in the United States.
GWEN IFILL: Do you think that will ever become public, which countries you're talking about?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today.[56]
Described by Newsweek as "only a bare-bones list of 'findings' with virtually no details." Newsweek explains further: "But nearly six months later, a 'working group' of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of [May, 2003], congressional and administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to “reclassify” some material that was already discussed in public testimony—a move one Senate staffer described as 'ludicrous.'”[57]
Who are these "foreign governments?" What is this "compelling evidence" that has been "overly-classified"? But the most important question is why is the US administration protecting this "foreign government?" If the government would be Iraq, or Afghanistan, Iran or Syria the government would be happy to shout what it knows from the rooftops. One can safely assume that the foreign government is not of the Arab/Muslim world.
WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?
Often in preparation for false flag terrorist attacks, a trail of "evidence" is laid. Conveniently overlooked before the attack, ("the dots were not connected") the trail is just as conveniently "discovered" after the fact. This lends public credibility to the accusations of the designated scapegoat.
One of these pieces of "evidence" was Mohamed Atta's (or his associate's) testament, found in an auto parked near the Boston airport. A closer examination of the testament's text leads one to believe that it was not even written by a Muslim, but someone who would like to appear to be a Muslim.[58]
Another of these trails was the increased radio-communications picked up by "intelligence" about two months before the attack, hinting that an attack was being planned. The International Herald Tribune reports:
"American officials now look back to intelligence received in June and July as the starting point in their efforts to try to reconstruct the events leading up to Sept. 11.
"Officials familiar with the intelligence said the CIA got a series of intercepted communications and other indications that Qaida might be planning a major operation. In some of their communications, the terrorists used code words and double-talk to disguise their plans.
"The communications clearly showed increased activity, including indications of the movement of Qaida operatives. But the timing and location of any attack were unclear.
"(...)Today officials are still divided about the meaning of the summer intelligence. Some officials speculate that the communications traffic was deliberately devised to throw analysts off the trail of the real operation."[59]
But what the Herald Tribune does not tell, is that this is an old trick of intelligence agencies aimed at manipulating other intelligence agencies. It is surprising how gullible even some intelligence officials appear to be.
Victor Ostrovsky explains the trick of the "Trojan" relay system in order to create a false flag terrorist incrimination. Israel used the Trojan to pin the blame for the bombing of the "La Belle" discotheque in Berlin on Libya, which led the US into bombing Israel's enemy. Ostrovsky explains:
A Trojan was a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit in the Mossad, called LAP, and intended to be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up only by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain.
(...)The listeners would have no doubt they had intercepted a genuine communication, hence the name Trojan, reminiscent of the mythical Trojan horse. Further, the content of the messages, once deciphered, would confirm information from other intelligence sources, namely the Mossad.
(...) By the end of March, the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world (or, as they were called by the Libyans, Peoples' Bureaus). As Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What's more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it.
The French and the Spanish, though, were not buying into the new stream of information. To them, it seemed suspicious that, suddenly, out of the blue, the Libyans, who'd been extremely careful in the past, would start advertising their future actions. They also found it suspicious that in several instances, Mossad reports were worded similarly to the coded Libyan communications. They argued further that, had there truly been after-the-fact Libyan communications regarding the attack, then the terrorist attack on the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin on April 5 could have been prevented, since surely there would have been communications before, enabling intelligence agencies listening in to prevent it. Since the attack wasn't prevented, they reasoned that it must not be the Libyans who did it, and the "new communications" must be bogus. The French and Spanish were right.
(...)Heads of the Mossad were counting on the American promise to retaliate with vengeance against any country that could be proven to support terrorism. The Trojan gave the Americans the proof they needed. The Mossad also plugged into the equation Qadhafi's lunatic image and momentous declarations, which were really only meant for internal consumption. It must be remembered that Qadhafi had marked a line in the water at that time, closing off the Gulf of Sidra as Libyan territorial waters and calling the new maritime border the line of death (an action that didn't exactly give him a moderate image). Ultimately, the Americans fell for the Mossad ploy head over heels, dragging the British and the Germans somewhat reluctantly in with them.
Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad's greatest successes. It brought about the air strike on Libya that President Reagan had promised – a strike that had three important consequences. First, it derailed a deal for the release of the American hostages in Lebanon, thus preserving the Hizballah (Party of God) as the number one enemy in the eyes of the West. Second, it sent a message to the entire Arab world, telling them exactly where the US stood regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Third, it boosted the Mossad's image of itself, since it was they who, by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the US to do what was right.[60]
It cannot be excluded that a "trojan operation" may have been used to create a Bin Laden scapegoat.
A long-standing complaint among CIA agents down through the years, has been that intelligence was being "politicized" – being tailored to fit a planned policy rather than planning a policy to fit the knowledge of the subject. CIA Director, George Tenet was accused of doing just that, when he publicly affirmed that the CIA had evidence supporting the allegation of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda.
"The outrage among the intelligence professionals" writes the International Herald Tribune, "is so widespread that they have formed a group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that wrote to President George W. Bush this month to protest what it called 'a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions. (...) While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes,' the letter said, 'never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war.'"
One can suppose that the "intelligence" that reaches the public concerning 9/11 is also of this 'politicized' nature.
THE INTELLIGENCE OF OTHERS:
Other intelligence officials have given their appraisal of the capabilities of Bin Laden concerning such a complicated and perfectly executed military operation. Their appraisal is very different from that of those expressed by the higher echelon of the Bush administration.
But of course, if the US administration had reason not to heed the warnings of an impending attack, the same reasons would prevent them from heeding the warnings that they are are barking up the wrong tree in their search for those responsible for the attacks.
One intelligence expert, Gad Schimron, former agent of the Israeli Mossad, merely shakes his head at the thought of Bin Laden being the main instigator behind the attacks. Interviewed Sept. 15 by the German daily, Die Welt. He answers:
Die Welt: The circle of suspects is becoming more and more concrete. Secretary of State Colin Powell has recently officially designated Osama Bin Laden as the main suspect. Do you also believe that he is behind these attacks?
Gad Schimron: The name Bin Laden is like a mantra. He is the "customary suspect", much like Carlos was in the 70s. As far as I know, he is sitting somewhere in Afghanistan – a country devoid of any kind of infrastructure. He has a cellphone that is being bugged by the Americans. Maybe these acts of terror were his idea, but the execution of them – of this I am certain – was led by others, perhaps from organizations. But they had to have had the support of sovereign states.
DW: Which state do you have in mind?
GS: My hunch is Iraq. But I have no proof. Afghanistan is out of the question, because it is not even a sovereign state."[61]
Only a state would be likely to have the infrastructure to accomplish such an attack as occurred on Sept. 11. But not just any state. As Shimron notes, Afghanistan is out of the question as a country that could have organized the attack. The exclusion of Afghanistan means at the same time that Bin Laden is excluded and therefore the whole "Arab connection" behind 9/11 falls flat on its face. Rightfully pointing to the cellphone surveillance ruse, Shimron hints at the possibility that the "intelligence" gleaned from this surveillance could have been manipulated, as the case of the "Trojan" device mentioned above shows.
But if Afghanistan – because of it lacking sovereignty – is ineligible to be a candidate, how eligible is Iraq? Iraq since 1991 has no longer been a fully sovereign state. Under murderous international sanctions and surveillance, it would hardly have the means to accomplish such a terrorist action – even if this would have been its policy.
On Sept. 19, the same journal published an interview with August Pradetto, professor at the German Military University in Hamburg. Pradetto shed light on the type of terrorism Sept. 11 represented.
He responded to the question, "What objectives were the terrorists trying to attain?":
"This attack was not motivated by a blind destructive rage, but rather by calculation. The attacks carried out against the most important symbols of the sole remaining superpower are a deliberate provocation. Secret services know to foresee the probable reaction of the opponent. The objective could be to draw NATO into a war against the Islamic world. And we are in the process of stepping into a horrible trap."
In the interview he gives the following indications as well:
"For years Bin Laden has been on the run from secret services, his camp was even bombed with cruise missiles in 1998. In order to prepare for such a series of attacks, and to be able to build up the necessary logistics one needs years of preparation. That is impossible from Afghanistan. Bin Laden may perhaps be an element in the overall terror commando, but not an essential one."[62]
Which "Secret services" (sic) have an interest in staging "a deliberate provocation," so that "the sole remaining superpower" would wage "war against the Islamic world?"
Contrary to what one would have us believe "Terror is not sadism, people are killed in order to reach certain goals, fulfill the objectives of beliefs and ideologies" is how Schlomo Shpiro, an Israeli secret service expert and political science teacher at the Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv describes it in an interview with a Berlin newspaper. He also addresses the question of Bin Laden being behind the attacks.
"Bin Laden with his organization could not have done it alone. It could be that he was involved, for example, collected the financing. He could have recruited the terrorists. But for years now, he's been nailed down in Afghanistan, he can not travel. And besides that, the secret services have been having success – also in Germany – in fighting his organization.[63]
These are only samples of the considerations of possibility and capability that are being made by intelligence agencies around the world.
1998: EMBASSY BOMBINGS IN EAST AFRICA[64]
Bin Laden was catapulted from his role as an Islamist Ally of the US in the wars against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and against the Serbs in Yugoslavia into the limelight as a terrorist in the aftermath of the bombs exploding Aug. 7, 1998, at US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These bombs caused hundreds of deaths and more than 5,000 people being wounded. Though a very small percentage of the victims were US citizens – the overwhelming majority being African – the western media played up the bombing to be a massacre directed at the US.
The US ambassador in Kenya was not on the premises at the time of the explosion, and the ambassador to Tanzania had been absent for months.[65]
The building in Dar Es Salaam had once been an Israeli compound (diplomatic relations having been suspended following the 1973 war). The truck that contained the bomb was the Embassy's water truck, used to deliver fresh water to embassy staff around town. It was parked on the Embassy compound when the bomb exploded.[66] Neither the surveillance cameras in Dar Es Salaam nor in Nairobi were set to film. So there is no record of the moments preceding the explosion.
Who planted the bomb in the truck? Who shut down the cameras? Hardly Bin Laden.
Several weeks before the blast, Israeli intelligence had reassured the U.S. that the bomb threat, received by the Embassy, had come from an unreliable source. No follow-up precautions had been taken. The first western soldiers on the scene were special units of the Israeli armed forces and high level agents of the Mossad.[67] Magen David Adom, something similar to what would be the Israeli version of the Red Cross, sent Emergency Aid to Nairobi. MDA Paramedics, members of the Israeli Defense Force Rescue team, were involved in searching for survivors in the rubble of the building which was demolished by the terrorist bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi."[68]
An American team of forensic specialists sent from Virginia was turned away by the Israeli team on site in Tanzania (ABC News, Aug. 12, 1998). The FBI first arrived two days after the blast, on Sunday Aug. 9. [69]
The Pentagon was quick to declare that it would take months of sifting through the debris and of intelligence work to determine the authorship of the bombings. Two previously unknown Muslim groups took credit immediately for the bombing.[70] The story was quickly dropped in the media.
Linking Bin Laden to the modern Al-Shifa pharmaceutical complex in Khartoum, Sudan, (accounting for satisfying 80% of the medicinal needs of the country) and alleging that this factory was involved in the production of chemical weapons, the US attacked and completely demolished the factory Aug. 20, 1998, and fired cruise missiles into training camps in Afghanistan.
The Washington Post reported that, in fact, the attacks against Afghanistan and the Sudan had nothing to do with the incidents at the embassies. The attacks had been planned 2 months earlier at the highest levels of the administration.[71] Another example of terrorism to justify military aggression?
One British journal cast doubt on the excuse given by Washington for bombing the factory. "It has now emerged that the UNSCOM charged with the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had investigated the factory and reported that there was no evidence of transfers of material for military use. The British government reiterated these findings and when asked about the transfer of mass destruction technology from Iraq to Sudan, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook stated: 'I am not aware of these reports. It would be a very difficult transfer to effect.' In the House of Lords, Baroness Symons stated: 'We are monitoring the evidence closely, but to date we have no evidence to substantiate these claims. Nor has UNSCOM any evidence of such transfers... further ... the defense intelligence staff in the Ministry of Defense have similarly written a critique which does not support (such) findings.'"[72]
In fact "The al-Shifa factory had been working on contracts for Iraq. One contract with the Iraqi government, which had been approved by the UN Sanctions Committee under UN Resolution 986 (the 'oil for food' program), was to produce veterinary medicines for Iraq. Iraqi livestock and poultry had been up to 80% destroyed during the bombing of 1991 – and further devastated due to lack of any veterinary treatments, withheld by the sanctions Committee before implementation of SCR 986 in 1996."[73]
It can be supposed that the main reason for the destruction of the al-Shifa factory complex was to prevent the shipment of medicine, Shifzole, Albndazole, and Lavamisole to Iraq. All 3 solutions were to combat the screwworm fly epidemic that had ravaged Iraq's livestock since Oct. 1997. There are indications that the epidemic was deliberately introduced, as a means of biological warfare, by the US and its allies. According to the Sanctions Committee invoice SIAC. 25/1998/986/comm. 1401, dated Jan. 6, 1998, Al-Shifa was due to export these counter measures on Aug. 21, 1998, had the factory not been destroyed the day before.
As can be seen with the destruction of "dual-use" facilities in Iraq under the UN "weapons inspection" program, any facility capable of producing a medicine – even aspirin – or an insecticide will be classified a "chemical" weapons facility and rendered inoperable, also because these facilities are capable of counteracting biological or chemical weapons used by the US and its allies against that country.
US News gives an indication of just how rushed the US had been to destroy al-Shifa factory: "At the time the missiles were launched, FBI investigators were still debriefing a key witness and had insufficient evidence to lodge criminal charges."[74] Bomb 'em now & look for evidence later has become the standard method in "preemptive warfare".
The pretext for these attacks was the claim that a terrorist organization masterminded by Osama Bin Laden had not only bombed the two U.S. embassies but was harboring imminent plans to attack targets in the United States and around the world. Secretary of Defense, at the time, William Cohen, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and Congressman, Lee Hamilton orchestrated these claims with the ominous assertion that the United States had launched the first strike in a protracted war. They claimed, as cited in The Washington Post (Aug. 21, 1998), that Osama Bin Laden "was linked to the mastermind of the [1993] World Trade Center bombing and to [a] plot to blow up New York City landmarks."[75]
The German Zionist, Raphael Seligmann, spelled out the ultimate plan behind the attacks. He wrote:
"The USA seems to be determined to assert its claims to maintaining its global hegemony. It wishes to facilitate the international effectiveness of its and other's endeavors and to support the survival of western oriented states, Israel included. This brings it in confrontation with expansionist Islam. European democracies, particularly those, such as Germany, with strong Islamic minorities will be necessarily drawn into this conflict. The war will be long and bloody.(...) Surgical air strikes will, in the long run, not be sufficient. Neither will a short "glorious" armed incursion, as in the Golf war. Western nations have to prepare themselves. There is no alternative. European isolationism would amount to a capitulation to fundamentalism."[76])
But Bill Clinton backed off this " long and bloody" war for "maintaining its global hegemony". He limited the attacks to the Al Shifa factory and the training camps in Afghanistan.
At the time of the Embassy attacks, Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu's intransigence in the peace question, the Israeli takeover of Jerusalem, the Mossad's poisoned gas attempt to assassinate a Palestinian functionary in Jordan, had created an international outcry of indignation and isolated Israel on the international scene – even with its protector in Washington. The embassy bombings furnished the Israeli government with an opportunity to play the "western world's" hero of the day in the war against "expansionist Islam."
The official public accusations were not followed up with international legal steps. No international warrant was issued for the arrest of Osama Bin Laden. On the contrary, the US government maintained contact.
Osama Bin Laden was treated for a kidney ailment at the American Hospital in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). He was hospitalized from July 4, - 14, 2001. During his stay in the hospital, a secret meeting took place with an operative of the local CIA station. The CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited Bin Laden a few days following the visit. Authorized sources say that on July 15th, the day following Bin Laden's return to Quetta, the CIA agent was called back to the headquarters in McLean, Virginia.[77] According to Radio France International, the CIA agent, Larry Mitchell, "consular agent" met with Osama Bin Laden July 12.[78]
The timeframe of this meeting follows closely the period – June - July 2001 – where "dots" were being placed to support a "Arab fundamentalists" and Bin Laden conspiracy theory being behind the attacks of 9/11 that were yet to take place.
BIN LADEN: "I AM NOT INVOLVED IN THE 11 SEPTEMBER ATTACKS"
Terrorism is by definition a form of extortion. "I do harm to you, to get your attention. If you don't give in to my demands, I will do harm to you again." One can usually suppose which sort of terrorist act – whether "revolutionary," friendly fire or false flag – has taken place, when examining the target of the attack, the response most likely hoped for, the professionality of execution (which includes the logistics and degree of it have been an inside job) and the contents of the communiqué.
The choice of purely symbolic targets, aimed at indiscriminate mass murder, carried out with such precision and insider knowledge of the civil aviation procedures - and appearing to have top-level command control of air defense - but with no communiqué to say who did it with which demands, makes it difficult to believe that "revolutionary" sort of terrorism is in play.
False flag terrorism is designed to create a scapegoat, against whom one can disguise aggression as defense or retribution. Had the scapegoat furnished on his own, a good reason for being attacked, false flag terrorism would not have been necessary.
If Muslim "fundamentalists" were really behind the attacks, they would hardly hide the fact. Such a "masterful" demonstration of their power could have been the final punctuation to their "call to the Jihad," as "western" propaganda would have us believe. But this did not take place.
One important aspect has been largely disregarded in the search for who was responsible: Bin Laden and the Taliban. They are constantly talked about but never talked or listened to. What does Bin Laden have to say? He was asked about his involvement in this attack. His answer was widely ignored.
The Pakistani newspaper Ummat, in its Sept. 28, issue, published an interview with Bin Laden, in which the question was asked: "You have been accused of involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington. What do you want to say about this? If you are not involved, who might be?"
USAMA BIN LADEN: "(...) I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. (...) Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. (...) The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the U.S. system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be anyone, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the U.S. itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American-Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.
"Then there are intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the [in]existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taleban and then this incident happened. (...) Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United States? That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks."[79]
By Sept. 12, 2001 Bin Laden was already being billed as the "prime suspect" and this without even a whiff of an investigation. In a Sept. 12, article in the Telegraph, the Taliban refuted the charges:
The Taliban (...) said bin Laden was not responsible for yesterday's attacks. "What happened in the United States was not a job of ordinary people. It could have been the work of governments. Osama bin Laden cannot do this work, neither us," said spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen, in Kandahar.
He added: "We are not supporting terrorism. Osama does not have the capability. We condemn this. This could have been the act of either internal enemies of the United States or its major rivals. Osama cannot do this work."[80]
In the mainstream media – even the progressive media – such exonerating indications have been largely ignored.
Without a 9/11 link to Osama Bin Laden, the entire thesis of a Muslim fundamentalists attack on the "western world" falls apart. All of the links between members of the Bush entourage and the Bin Laden family are useless in trying to learn who really was behind the events on September 11, 2001.
Recognition of this fact will not bring back the thousands in New York, Washington, Afghanistan or Iraq. But it could help prevent more people from sharing their fate.
But even more important the search for the culprits is still an open question, and no quarter is exempt from suspicion.
Refuse lynch mob justice. Look for the real culprits.
Yours for Peace and Justice
George Pumphrey
*************************************************************
Notes:
1 For a list of obstructions of a congressional investigation into 9/11 by the Bush Administration, the CIA and the FBI see: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=31963
2 Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, spoke these words in an address given on 12 October 1998.
3 By Whitbeck, John V., Special Report “Terrorism”: The Word Itself Is Dangerous, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs March 2002, http://www.wrmea.com/archives/march2002/0203052.html
4 28 Code of Federal Regulations Section 0.85
5 "Revolutionary" terrorism does not infer an appraisal of the ideological motivation of the terrorist, but rather the fact that the terrorists subjectively in good faith seek a social change. "Revolutionary" terrorists could be present in all 3 types of terrorism.
6 In Israeli government speech, anything that is not absolutely subservient to the needs and demands of Israeli government policy is "pro-Arab".
7 Feldbauer, Gerhard, Agenten, Terror, Staatskomplott, PapyRossa pg. 99
8 ibid pg. 61
9 ibid pg. 99
10 Transcribed and translated from "Operation 'Gladio'" – Die Unsichtbare Macht, A 3 part documentary BBC film shown on German TV "VOX" in August 1993
11 Hoffman, Bruce, Twenty-First Century Terrorism http://www.usafa.af.mil/inss/foreword.htm
12 Very good web sites concerning 9/11 can be found at Global Free Press: , Serendipity: , http://www.rense.com/general36/hoax.htm and Unanswered Questions: http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
13 The use of the term "double-agent" is misleading. A double-agent is one that gives information in both directions. Here it could be argued that Scappaticci was only in the employ of the British colonialists working against the interests of the Irish Republicans.
14 Mackay, Neil, "The Bloody Life of a Deadly Double Agent", Sunday Herald, Glasgow, May 5, 2003
15 Cowan, Rosie, He did the IRA's Dirty Work for 25 years - and Was Paid 80,000 pounds a Year by the Government, Guardian, London May 12, 2003
16 Mackay op cit
17 Leigh, David, Two Innocent Victims May Have Died To Protect Informer, The Guardian, London, May 12, 2003
18 Cowen, op cit
19 McKittrick, David, IRA double agent 'Stakeknife' forced to flee Ireland as cover is blown, Independent, 12 May 2003
20 Sotscheck, Ralf, "Deutscher Spion bei nordirischer INLA," Tageszeitzung, Berlin, Jan. 9, 2001 and Helm, Siegfried, "Ein 'Bond' der Krauts fuer die Queen" Die Welt, Berlin, Jan. 10, 2001
21 Schoenman, Ralph, "Resist US Aggression! Who are the Real Terrorists?" http://www.igc.org/workers/to/terror.htm
22 NYT, Reuters, AP, "Police Focus on Mosque Links; Blast Suspect Possibly Tied to Islamic Jihad," International Herald Tribune, March 8, 1993
23 ibid
24 Schoenman op cit
25 ibid
26 Church, George J, "A Case of Dumb Luck" Time Magazine, Mar. 15, 1993
27 ibid
28 ibid
29 Schoenman op cit
30 Blumenthal, Ralph, "Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast," New York Times, October 28, 1993
31 Ben-Menashe, Ari, , Sheridan Square Press, 1992, p. 122
32 Schmitz, Thorsten, "Der reuige Entfuehrer" Sueddeutsche Zeitung, April 17, 2003
33 AP/DPA; Israel beschliesst Vergeltung; Tageszeitung (Berlin) 10.5.2002
34 Dix-sept morts à Rishon-le-Tzion et "la peur est revenue", Libération, May 9, 2002
35 Jaulmes, Adrien; Les Israéliens trient leurs morts dans les ruines du Spiel Club; Le Figaro, May 9, 2002
36 Jaulmes, Adrien; Figaro op cit.
37 Attentat-suicide meurtrier au sud de Tel-Aviv; Libération, May 8, 2002
38 Erlanger, Steven; "Sharon holds crisis talks after Suicide Attack," International Herald Tribune May 9, 2002
39 Schneider, Howard; Attacks show US must press Israel, Arabs say; IHT May 9, 2002
40 NYTimes Commentary Hostages to enmity, IHT (NYTimes) May 5.2002
41 Knowlton, Brian, "Suicide blast in Israel as Bush sees Sharon" IHT 8.5.2002
42 Tyler, Patrick E. President Bush is sucked into the Maelstrom of the Mideast, NYT reprint in Le Monde May 12, 2002
43 Erlanger, Steven; Sharon holds crisis talks after suicide attack" IHT 9.5.2002
44 Sale, Richard, "Hamas history tied to Israel" UPI June 18, 2002, see also Rupp, Rainer, "Gegengewicht zur PLO" Junge Welt, Berlin, June 21, 2002
45 Brzezinski: U.S. mishandling Mideast, CNN, 03.29.2002, http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/03/29/brzezinski.calamity.cnna/index.html
46 Ostrovsky, Victor, "The Other Side of Deception", Harper Collins 1994.
47 The International Herald Tribune reported July 3, 1991: "Ariel Sharon; the Israeli housing minister; laid the cornerstone to enlarge a West Bank Jewish settlement Tuesday and declared, "We will continue to build" in the occupied territories. His remark came a day after President G. Bush criticized Israeli settlement building as counterproductive to peace and implored Israel to stop its policy of "settlement after settlement" on captured land." (Note added by GP)
48 Kidon: Loosely translated means "bayonet." A sub-unit of the Mossad assigned to carry out assassinations and special operations behind enemy lines. It consists of several squadrons. All assassinations carried out by the Mossad are the work of Kidon squadrons. Ostrovsky, footnote
pg. 5.
49 ibid pgs. 277 - 280
50 ibid pg. 283
51 Balz, Dan and Woodward, Bob, America's Chaotic Road to War: Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours After Attack, Washington Post January 27, 2002.
52 Seven of the WTC Hijackers found alive!
53 Woodward, Bob and Balz, Dan 'We Will Rally the World' Bush and His Advisers Set Objectives, but Struggled With How to Achieve Them Washington Post January 28, 2002.
54 NY Times, Lawmakers to Investigate U.S. Failures in Attacks, February 12, 2002.
55 ibid.
56 Interview with Sen. Graham, Shelby, Levin, Rep. Pelosi, Goss, and CIA Director Tenet, "IMPROVING INTELLIGENCE," PBS-News Hour, Dec. 11, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/july-dec02/intelligence_12-11.html
57 Isikoff, Mark, Hosenball, Mark, "The Secrets of September 11" Newsweek, May 1, 2003, http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp
58 Fisk, Robert, "What Muslim would write: 'The time of fun and waste is gone'?," The Independent, 29 September 2001, also to be found at http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0929-07.htm
59 Risen, James, US Spy Chief Demand End to Agency Turf Wars, (NYTS) International Herald Tribune, Oct. 8, 2001.
60 Ostrovsky Victor; The Other Side of Deception, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994, pgs.: 113, 115 – 116
61 Schimron, Gad / Muehlmann, Sophie, "Der Terror wird von einem souveraenen Staat unterstuetzt" Die Welt, Sept. 15, 2001.
62 Pradetto, August / Iken, Matthias, "War es wirklicht Bin Laden?" Die Welt, Sept. 19. 2001.
63 Shpiro, Schlomo/Zweigler, Reinhard "Bin Laden Didn't do it alone" Berliner Morgenpost Sept 30, 2001.
64 This information was compiled with the help of my colleague JD in personal correspondence Aug. 13, 1998.
65 "An Ordinary Day, Then Horror" Washington Post, Aug. 10, 1998.
66 "149 Confirmed Dead in Embassy Blasts" Washington Post Aug. 9, 1998.
67 Schoenman, Ralph, "Resist US Aggression! Who are the Real Terrorists?" http://www.igc.org/workers/to/terror.htm
68 http://www.magendavidadom.org/newsflash3.html#Nairobi
69 Vick, Karl, Reid, T. R., FBI Teams Inundate Bomb Sites, Embassy Camera Wasn't Set to Tape, Washington Post, August 12, 1998.
70 Vick, Karl, "149 Confirmed Dead in Embassy Blasts", Washington Post, August 9, 1998.
71 AFP/AP/JW, "Argumente broeckeln: US-Angriffe in Sudan und Afghanistan lange vor Anschlaegen vorbereitet", Junge Welt Aug. 31, 1998.
72 Arbuthnot, Felicity, "Air attacks motive coming under fire", The Universe, Sept. 13, 1998.
73 ibid.
74 Duffy, B., Newman, R.J., "The Price of Payback" U.S. News Sept. 7, 1998.
75 ibid.
76 Seligmann, Raphael, "Es wird ein langwieriger, blutiger Krieg werden" Die Welt, 27.8.1998.
77 Richard, Alexandra, "La CIA aurait rencontré Ben Laden en juillet" Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001, (globalresearch.ca le 2 novembre 2001)
78 Bryant, Elizabeth (UPI), Radio reports new CIA-Bin Laden details, The Washington Times, Nov. 1, 2001.
79 special correspondent, Usama bin Laden Says the Al-Qa'idah Group had Nothing to Do with the 11 September Attacks, Interview published in newspaper Ummat, Karachi, Sept. 28, 2001.
80 Rashid, Ahmed, "Bin Laden seen as the prime suspect" Telegraph, Sept. 12, 2001.
