The following interview between Al-Jazeera television correspondent Tayseer Alouni and Osama Bin Laden took place in October 2001. Al Jazeera decided not to broadcast it, but CNN did. It is chilling - as Bin Laden justifies terrorism, including the killing of innocent women and children (because his enemies have done so). Importantly, he admits to inspiring the 9/11 hijackers but he does not admit - but rather denies - directly masterminding 9/11. Perhaps this is why he was never on the FBI Most Wanted list for 9/11. But the mainstream media have NEVER given any attention to this fact. Perhaps for some this is not significant, because inciting terrorism is also a crime. To me, it seems very significant, especially given his execution on Obama's orders. He was guilty for inspiring countless innocent deaths, especially in Iraq - but if he had ever stood trial, would the whole 9/11 'story' have collapsed like a house of cards? His death ensures we will never know.
The following transcript of the interview, which was done in Arabic, was by a translator hired by CNN.
TAYSEER ALOUNI: Dear viewers, welcome to this much-anticipated interview with the leader of the al Qaeda organization, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden.
Sheikh, the question that's on the mind of many people around the world: America claims that it has convincing evidence of your collusion in the events in New York and Washington. What's your answer?
OSAMA BIN LADEN: America has made many accusations against us and many other Muslims around the world. Its charge that we are carrying out acts of terrorism is an unwarranted description.
We never heard in our lives a court decision to convict someone based on a "secret" proof it has. The logical thing to do is to present a proof to a court of law. What many leaders have said so far is that America has an indication only, and not a tangible proof. They describe those brave guys who took the battle to the heart of America and destroyed its most famous economic and military landmarks.
They did this, as we understand it, and this is something we have agitated for before, as a matter of self-defense, in defense of our brothers and sons in Palestine, and to liberate our sacred religious sites/things. If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists.
Q: Sheikh, those who follow your statements and speeches may link your threats to what happened in America. To quote one of your latest statements: "I swear that America won't enjoy security before we live it for real in Palestine." It is easy for anyone following developments to link the acts to your threats.
BIN LADEN: It is easy to link them.
We have agitated for this for years and we have issued statements and fatwas to that effect. This appeared in the investigations into the four young men who destroyed the American center in Ulayya in Riyadh, as disclosed and published by the Saudi government. The [Saudis] reported that they were influenced by some of the fatwas and statements that we issued. Also, apart from that, incitement continues in many meetings and has been published in the media. If they mean, or if you mean, that there is a link as a result of our incitement, then it is true. We incite because incitement is our [unintelligible] today. God assigned incitement to the best of all mankind, Mohammed, who said, "Fight for the sake of God. Assign this to no one but yourself, and incite the faithful."
[Bin Laden recites verses from the Quran.]
This is a true response. We have incited battle against Americans and Jews. This is true.
Q: Al Qaeda is facing now a country that leads the world militarily, politically, technologically. Surely, the al Qaeda organization does not have the economic means that the United States has. How can al Qaeda defeat America militarily?
BIN LADEN: This battle is not between al Qaeda and the U.S. This is a battle of Muslims against the global crusaders. In the past when al Qaeda fought with the mujahedeen, we were told, "Wow, can you defeat the Soviet Union?" The Soviet Union scared the whole world then. NATO used to tremble of fear of the Soviet Union. Where is that power now? We barely remember it. It broke down into many small states and Russia remained.
God, who provided us with his support and kept us steadfast until the Soviet Union was defeated, is able to provide us once more with his support to defeat America on the same land and with the same people. We believe that the defeat of America is possible, with the help of God, and is even easier for us, God permitting, than the defeat of the Soviet Union was before.
Q: How can you explain that?
BIN LADEN: We experienced the Americans through our brothers who went into combat against them in Somalia, for example. We found they had no power worthy of mention. There was a huge aura over America -- the United States -- that terrified people even before they entered combat. Our brothers who were here in Afghanistan tested them, and together with some of the mujahedeen in Somalia, God granted them victory. America exited dragging its tails in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.
America left faster than anyone expected. It forgot all that tremendous media fanfare about the new world order, that it is the master of that order, and that it does whatever it wants. It forgot all of these propositions, gathered up its army, and withdrew in defeat, thanks be to God. We experienced combat against the Russians for 10 years, from 1979 to 1989, thanks be to God. Then we continued against the communists in Afghanistan. Today, we're at the end of our second week. There is no comparison between the two battles, between this group and that. We pray to God to give us his support and to make America ever more reluctant. God is capable of that.
Q: You said you want to defeat America on this land. Don't you think that the presence of al Qaeda on Afghanistan soil is costing the Afghan people a high price?
BIN LADEN: This is a partial point of view. When we came to Afghanistan to support the mujahedeen in 1979, against the Russians, the Saudi government asked me officially not to enter Afghanistan due to how close my family is to the Saudi leadership. They ordered me to stay in Peshawar, because in the event the Russians arrested me that will be a proof of our support of the mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. At that time, the whole world was scared of the Soviet Union. I didn't obey their order. They thought my entry into Afghanistan was damning to them. I didn't listen to them and I went into Afghanistan for the first time.
We sacrificed a lot in order to keep the Muslim faith alive and save the children. This is a duty for every Muslim, in general, not the Afghans especially. If I run to the rescue of my brothers in Palestine, it doesn't mean it's Osama's duty alone. This is a duty of all Muslims. The jihad is a duty for everyone, not just for the Afghans. The Afghans are suffering, that's true, but this is their Islamic duty. As far as the bombing of Afghanistan, this is not a personal vendetta. America didn't take my money or hurt me in any way. The bombing is a direct effect of our inciting against the Jews and the Americans.
America is against the establishment of any Islamic government. The prophet has said, "They will be target because of their religion." Not because Osama bin Laden is there. When I came here the first time it was because of a desire to revive the Muslim spirit and an attempt at rescuing the children and the powerless. The British attacked Afghanistan before Osama bin Laden was here, Russians came here before me and now the Americans. We pray that god will defeat them just like he did their allies before them. We ask God to give us the power to defeat them as we did others before.
Q: Let's get back to what happened in New York and Washington. What is your assessment of the attacks on America? What's their effect on America and the Muslim world?
BIN LADEN: The events of Tuesday, September the 11th, in New York and Washington are great on all levels. Their repercussions are not over. Although the collapse of the twin towers is huge, but the events that followed, and I'm not just talking about the economic repercussions, those are continuing, the events that followed are dangerous and more enormous than the collapse of the towers.
The values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed. Those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed. They have gone up in smoke.
The proof came when the U.S. government pressured the media not to run our statements that are not longer than very few minutes. They felt that the truth started to reach the American people, the truth that we are not terrorists as they understand it but because we are being attacked in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, the Philippines and everywhere else. They understood the truth that this is a reaction from the youth of the Muslim nation against the British government. They forgot all about fair and objective reporting and reporting the other side of the issue. I tell you freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general will enter an unbearable hell and a choking life because the Western leadership acts under the Zionist lobby's influence for the purpose of serving Israel, which kills our sons unlawfully in order for them to remain in their leadership positions.
Q: What is your assessment of the Arabic reaction and the effects on the Islamic world? Some were joyous. Others said, "We can't accept this. This is terrorism, not Islam."
BIN LADEN: The events proved the extent of terrorism that America exercises in the world. Bush stated that the world has to be divided in two: Bush and his supporters, and any country that doesn't get into the global crusade is with the terrorists. What terrorism is clearer than this? Many governments were forced to support this "new terrorism." They had to go along with this although they knew that we are defending our brothers and defending our sacred values. Many Western and Eastern leaders have said that the true roots of terrorism should be dealt with; they meant the Palestinian cause. Then we have a righteous cause, but they couldn't admit this out loud of fear of America. They say we are terrorists but solve the Palestinian cause. All of a sudden, Bush and Blair declared, "The time has come to establish an independent state for Palestine." Throughout the past years the time hasn't come, until after these attacks, for the establishment of the Palestinian state. They only understand the language of attacks and killings.
Just as they're killing us, we have to kill them so that there will be a balance of terror. This is the first time the balance of terror has been close between the two parties, between Muslims and Americans, in the modern age. American politicians used to do whatever they wanted with us. The victim was forbidden to scream or to moan. [unintelligible]
Clinton has said, "Israel has the right to defend itself," after the massacres of Qana. He didn't even reprimand Israel. When the new President Bush and Colin Powell declared in the first few months of their taking office that they will move the American embassy to Jerusalem. They said Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of Israel. They got a standing ovation in Congress and the Senate. This is the biggest bigotry, and this is tyranny loud and clear.
The battle has moved to inside America. We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God before that occurs.
Q: Sheikh, I see that most of your answers are about Palestine and the Palestinian cause. In the beginning, your focus on killing the unfaithful and the Jews ... and you specified then that the Americans should be sent out of the Arabian Peninsula. Now you're turning your attention to Palestine first and the Arabian Peninsula second. What's your comment?
BIN LADEN: Jihad is a duty to liberate Al-Aqsa, and to help the powerless in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon and in every Muslim country. There is no doubt that the liberation of the Arabian Peninsula from infidels is a duty as well. But it is not right to say that Osama put the Palestinian issue first. I have given speeches in which I encourage Muslims to boycott America economically. I said Americans take our money and give it to Israel to kill our children in Palestine. I established a front a few years ago named The Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders. Sometimes we find the right elements to push for one cause more than the other. Last year's blessed intifada helped us to push more for the Palestinian issue. This push helps the other cause. Attacking America helps the cause of Palestine and vice versa. No conflict between the two; on the contrary, one serves the other.
Q: Sheikh, now let's talk about Christians and Jews. You issued a fatwa for jihad against the Christians and the Jews. As we can see, some other clerics also issued fatwas. There might be some who share your views, and some who oppose them and said this is against the teachings of Islam They ask how can you kill a Jew or a Christian or a Catholic just because of his religion? They say that your statements contradict what Muslim clerics teach.
BIN LADEN: God bless Allah, many fatwas have been declared on these issues, especially in Pakistan. Sami Zai in Pakistan is a very well known authority on this. He has written many times on the subject. So did the famous Abdullah bin Ohkmah Al-Shehebi of Saudi Arabia. I read a book titled "The Truth About The New Crusades." They all wrote about and allowed the fighting of Americans and Israelis in Palestine and allowing their killings and destroying their economies and properties.
Q [interrupting]: How about the killing of innocent civilians?
BIN LADEN: The killing of innocent civilians, as America and some intellectuals claim, is really very strange talk. Who said that our children and civilians are not innocent and that shedding their blood is justified? That it is lesser in degree? When we kill their innocents, the entire world from east to west screams at us, and America rallies its allies, agents, and the sons of its agents. Who said that our blood is not blood, but theirs is? Who made this pronouncement? Who has been getting killed in our countries for decades? More than 1 million children, more than 1 million children died in Iraq and others are still dying. Why do we not hear someone screaming or condemning, or even someone's words of consolation or condolence?
How come millions of Muslims are being killed? Where are the experts, the writers, the scholars and the freedom fighters, where are the ones who have an ounce a faith in them? They react only if we kill American civilians, and every day we are being killed, children are being killed in Palestine. We should review the books. Human nature makes people stand with the powerful without noticing it. When they talk about us, they know we won't respond to them. In the past, an Arab king once killed an ordinary Arab man. The people started wondering how come kings have the right to kill people just like that. Then the victim's brother went and killed the king in revenge. People were disappointed with the young man and asked him, "How could you kill a king for your brother?" The man said, "My brother is my king." We consider all our children in Palestine to be kings.
We kill the kings of the infidels, kings of the crusaders, and civilian infidels in exchange for those of our children they kill. This is permissible in law and intellectually.
Q: So what you are saying is that this is a type of reciprocal treatment. They kill our innocents, so we kill their innocents.
BIN LADEN: So we kill their innocents, and I say it is permissible in law and intellectually, because those who spoke on this matter spoke from a juridical perspective.
Q: What is their position?
BIN LADEN: That it is not permissible. They spoke of evidence that the Messenger of God forbade the killing of women and children. This is true.
[Break in tape.]
Q: This is exactly what I'm asking about.
BIN LADEN: However, this prohibition of the killing of children and innocents is not absolute. It is not absolute. There are other texts that restrict it.
I agree that the Prophet Mohammed forbade the killing of babies and women. That is true, but this is not absolute. There is a saying, "If the infidels killed women and children on purpose, we shouldn't shy way from treating them in the same way to stop them from doing it again." The men that God helped [attack, on September 11] did not intend to kill babies; they intended to destroy the strongest military power in the world, to attack the Pentagon that houses more than 64,000 employees, a military center that houses the strength and the military intelligence.
Q: How about the twin towers?
BIN LADEN: The towers are an economic power and not a children's school. Those that were there are men that supported the biggest economic power in the world. They have to review their books. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and our innocent people, we will kill their women and their innocent people until they stop.
Q: Media organizations as well as intelligence information says that you run a big network in some 40 to 50 countries. There is information that al Qaeda is very influential and powerful and it is behind attacks and Islamic foundations and terrorist organizations. How much is al Qaeda dependent on Osama Bin Laden?
BIN LADEN: This has nothing to do with this poor servant of God, nor with the al Qaeda organization. We are the children of an Islamic nation whose leader is Mohammed.
We have one religion, one God, one book, one prophet, one nation. Our book teaches us to be brothers of a faith. All the Muslims are brothers. The name "al Qaeda" was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al Qaeda [meaning "the base" in English]. And the name stayed. We speak about the conscience of the nation; we are the sons of the nation. We brothers in Islam from the Middle East, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and as far as Mauritania.
Those men who sacrificed themselves in New York and Washington, they are the spokesmen of the nation's conscience. They are the nation's conscience that saw they have to avenge against the oppression.
Not all terrorism is cursed; some terrorism is blessed. A thief, a criminal, for example feels terrorized by the police. So, do we say to the policeman, "You are a terrorist"? No. Police terrorism against criminals is a blessed terrorism because it will prevent the criminal from repeating his deed. America and Israel exercise the condemned terrorism. We practice the good terrorism which stops them from killing our children in Palestine and elsewhere.
Q: What's al Qaeda's strategic plan in the Arab world. Some countries had commented about what's going on while others supported the Americans in their position toward you. The Saudi interior minister warned people against you, and against what you say, and against what you do and the path you follow. What's your reaction to his statement?
BINLADEN: We are a part of that nation. We work hard to lift it out of oppression, and to stop those who want to manipulate its book and its God. I heard some of what the Saudi interior minister said when he said that we are turning Muslims to atheists, God forbid. Our goal is for our nation to unite in the face of the Christian crusade. This is the fiercest battle. Muslims have never faced anything bigger than this. Bush said it in his own words: "crusade." When Bush says that, they try to cover up for him, then he said he didn't mean it. He said "crusade." Bush divided the world into two: "either with us or with terrorism." Bush is the leader; he carries the big cross and walks. I swear that every one who follows Bush in his scheme has given up Islam and the word of the prophet. This is very clear. The prophet has said, "Believers don't follow Jews or Christians." Our wise people have said that those who follow the unfaithful have become unfaithful themselves. Those who follow Bush in his crusade against Muslims have denounced God.
[Bin Laden recites verses from the Quran on same subject.]
Those who support Bush, even with one word, have fallen.
Q: Even with one word: You are putting a big group of Muslims in the circle.
BIN LADEN: Know the truth and its roots. The book of God is our guide. Either Islam or atheism.
Q: Can small countries like Qatar, or Bahrain or Kuwait, which don't have much control, be excused? The Qatari foreign minister said, "I am surrounded by superpowers that will very easily wipe me off the map. That's why I have to ally myself with Americans and others."
BIN LADEN: In the subject of Islam and the killing of the faithful, what those people are doing cannot be excused. If the emir of Qatar orders someone to kill your child, and you ask this person why he did it, he'll say, "Look, brother Tayseer, I like you very much, but I was forced to do it." Nothing will excuse him for aiding the tyrant to kill your child. Your child's blood goes to waste like this. They claim that they don't have much control. Their claim that they were forced into it is not considered righteous in Islam. People's blood is being wasted in this case.
Q: What do you think of the so-called "war of civilizations"? You always keep repeating "crusaders" and words like that all the time. Does that mean you support the war of civilizations?
BIN LADEN: No doubt about that: The book mentions this clearly. The Jews and the Americans made up this call for peace in the world. The peace they're calling for is a big fairy tale. They're just drugging the Muslims as they lead them to slaughter. And the slaughter is still going on. If we defend ourselves, they call us terrorists. The prophet has said, "The end won't come before the Muslims and the Jews fight each other till the Jew hides between a tree and a stone. Then the tree and stone say, "Oh, you Muslim, this is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him." He who claims there will be a lasting peace between us and the Jews is an infidel. He'll be denouncing the book and what's in it. Begin, the leader of the massacre of Kfar Yassin, and the traitor, Anwar Sadat, who sold the land and the blood of the mujahedeen both were given the Nobel Peace Prize. There will come some deceiving times where the liars will be believed and the truthful won't be believed. That's the situation in the Arabic world with its great leadership. They are lying to people. But god's relief and victory is coming soon.
Q: As you call it, this is a war between the crusaders and Muslims. How do you see the way out of this crisis?
BIN LADEN: We are in a decisive battle with the Jews and those who support them from the crusaders and the Zionists. We won't hesitate to kill the Israelis who occupied our land and kill our children and women day and night. And every person who will side with them should blame themselves only. Now how we will get out of the tunnel, that is the [unintelligible] of the other side. We were attacked, and our duty is to remove this attack. As far as the Jews are concerned, the prophet has announced that we will fight them under this name, on this land. America forced itself and its people in this [unintelligible] more than 53 years ago. It recognized Israel and supported its creation financially. In 1973, under Nixon, it supported Israel with men, weapons and ammunition from Washington all the way to Tel Aviv. This support helped change the course of history. It is the Muslim's duty to fight. ...
[America] made hilarious claims. They said that Osama's messages have codes in them to the terrorists. It's as if we were living in the time of mail by carrier pigeon, when there are no phones, no travelers, no Internet, no regular mail, no express mail, and no electronic mail. I mean, these are very humorous things. They discount people's intellects.
We swore that America wouldn't live in security until we live it truly in Palestine. This showed the reality of America, which puts Israel's interest above its own people's interest. America won't get out of this crisis until it gets out of the Arabian Peninsula, and until it stops its support of Israel. This equation can be understood by any American child, but Bush, because he's an Israeli agent, cannot understand this equation unless the swords threatened him above him head.
Q: Do you have anything to do with anthrax that is spreading around the world?
BIN LADEN: These diseases are a punishment from God and a response to oppressed mothers' prayers in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine. There is no wall between the prayer of the oppressed and God. This is God's response to these prayers.
Q: Do you have a message for the viewers of Al-Jazeera? You know Al-Jazeera is now translated into so many languages and transmitted around the world.
BIN LADEN: In this fighting between Islam and the crusaders, we will continue our jihad. We will incite the nation for Jihad until we meet God and get his blessing. Any country that supports the Jews can only blame itself. If Sheik Suleiman Abu Gheith spoke specifically about America and Britain, this is only an example to give other countries the chance to review their books.
What do Japan or Australia or Germany have to do with this war? They just support the infidels and the crusaders.
This is a recurring war. The original crusade brought Richard [the Lionhearted] from Britain, Louis from France, and Barbarus from Germany. Today the crusading countries rushed as soon as Bush raised the cross. They accepted the rule of the cross.
What do the Arab countries have to do with this crusade? Everyone that supports Bush, even with one word, is an act of great treason. You change your name and you help the enemy to kill our children, and you are telling me we are facilitating things between us and the Americans. What are they talking about? Those who talk about the loss of innocent people didn't yet taste how it feels when you lose a child, don't know how it feels when you look in your child's eyes and all you see is fear, don't know how it feels when, in Palestine, our brothers are being hunted by army helicopters in the middle of their own homes with their families and children. Everyday. They show you the injured and the dead, and they shed tears, but no tears are shed for our women and children killed in Palestine. Are they not afraid that one day they get the same treatment?
[Bin Laden recites verses from the Quran on same subject.]
The Europeans are free, but when they side with the Jews, that their [unintelligible]. I tell Muslims to believe in the victory of God and in Jihad against the infidels of the world. The killing of Jews and Americans is one of the greatest duties.
[More Quranic verses.]
Remember the saying, "If they want to exile you, they can't exile you unless it is written by God." Don't ask anyone's opinion when it comes to the killing of Americans, and remember your appointment with God and the best of the prophets.
[More Quranic verses.]
As far as Pakistan siding with the crusaders, our brothers in Pakistan and their actions will facilitate our attack on the coalition of crusaders. Everyone supporting America, even medically, is considered renouncing Islam. Our brother in Pakistan should react pretty quick and strong in order to praise God and his prophet. Today, Islam is calling on you to act quickly.
[Quoting the farewell speech of Mohammed] "Oh, Islam, oh, Islam, there is no other god than God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God."
Monday 29 August 2011
BBC Conspiracy Files 9/11
The new Conspiracy Files documentary on BBC2 tonight very much took the line that the 9/11 'conspiracy theories' were just that, and set out to demolish them. This is of course what you would expect the BBC to do. There was some solid journalism ie talking to credible sources - the thing that those who question the official theory sorely lack. It had at least 2 very convincing sources. First of all, the architect of WTC 1 and 2 said that the planes hitting the towers and the fuel released were sufficient to bring down the buildings in the manner that they collapsed. The steel in the buildings did not need to melt in order to give way, merely to become weak and then buckle. This could happen at lower temperatures than the demolition theorists have claimed. I have long thought this. However, it was seriously remiss of the programme not to interview anyone from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (1500 signatories) or Pilots for 9/11 Truth. In regard to flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, they had the convincing account of the airforce pilot who witnessed the American Airlines jet hitting the Pentagon from the air. This is hard to refute - although the FBIs's failure to release lots of CCTV footage does still raise questions. They interviewed Niels Harrit, the Danish co-author of the 2009 paper on the WTC7 collapse, which found thermitic materials in the WTC dust - and they found 2 American scientists who did an unconvincing job of refuting his work. No scientific paper has refuted the Harrit paper in the 2 years since it was published.
The programme used the effective but unfair technique of only interviewing the more unconvincing or out there 'conspiracy theorists' while ignoring the credible ones. In particular, going to the Loose Change film makers was a clear effort to discredit those who question the official theory. (The film takes in so many claims that they tend to undermine the more credible claims.) And Dylan Avery himself, Loose Change director, comes over like an wannabe upstart in this film. They then wrapped up the programme by saying that the victims' families would have to continue suffering the indignity of these theories for some time to come. This is an outrageous slur on the very same families who have supported calls for a new investigation of 9/11 - there are a large number of these. Are they all just conspiracy fools too? Disappointingly, the film makers decided not to interview any 9/11 family members calling for a new investigation.
The programme just scratched the surface of the massive evidence that the intelligence services and their masters in government knew that there was a plot to use jets to hit the WTC and the Pentagon. Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial jets on news of a threat. There are credible insider witnesses they could have interviewed but chose not to - although they did give a few seconds to one senior Bush official, Richard Clarke, who has recently suggested that the government did not act on the information it had. All in all, some good journalism, but a basic failure to give air to the most convincing advocates and witnesses to a cover up. It is true there is no real hard evidence of an 'inside job' - with the possible exception of building 7 - but there is hard evidence that some in the government knew what was planned and did not act to stop it.
Furthermore, by focusing on the idea of a Bush led plot to use the attacks to start wars, it sets up a premise that cannot be proven without an investigation. It is one thing to say the official narrative is a false one - another to set up another narrative that is also unproven. The only thing that can be proven is that the official account does not add up and hence a new investigation is needed.
The programme used the effective but unfair technique of only interviewing the more unconvincing or out there 'conspiracy theorists' while ignoring the credible ones. In particular, going to the Loose Change film makers was a clear effort to discredit those who question the official theory. (The film takes in so many claims that they tend to undermine the more credible claims.) And Dylan Avery himself, Loose Change director, comes over like an wannabe upstart in this film. They then wrapped up the programme by saying that the victims' families would have to continue suffering the indignity of these theories for some time to come. This is an outrageous slur on the very same families who have supported calls for a new investigation of 9/11 - there are a large number of these. Are they all just conspiracy fools too? Disappointingly, the film makers decided not to interview any 9/11 family members calling for a new investigation.
The programme just scratched the surface of the massive evidence that the intelligence services and their masters in government knew that there was a plot to use jets to hit the WTC and the Pentagon. Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial jets on news of a threat. There are credible insider witnesses they could have interviewed but chose not to - although they did give a few seconds to one senior Bush official, Richard Clarke, who has recently suggested that the government did not act on the information it had. All in all, some good journalism, but a basic failure to give air to the most convincing advocates and witnesses to a cover up. It is true there is no real hard evidence of an 'inside job' - with the possible exception of building 7 - but there is hard evidence that some in the government knew what was planned and did not act to stop it.
Furthermore, by focusing on the idea of a Bush led plot to use the attacks to start wars, it sets up a premise that cannot be proven without an investigation. It is one thing to say the official narrative is a false one - another to set up another narrative that is also unproven. The only thing that can be proven is that the official account does not add up and hence a new investigation is needed.
Friday 26 August 2011
AE911 Truth new video - hard to ignore
The most authoritative video yet calling for a new 9/11 investigation made by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. No doubt narrated by that well known conspiracy nut Ed Asner and featuring dozens of engineers, architects, explosive experts and 9/11 family victims will be dismissed as a bunch of gullible, misguided 'Truthers' by supporters of the official conspiracy theory. But the tide is turning...
Chile's new student hero
The Chilean students have a beautiful leader - they are leading the fight for quality education for all. The country is in upheaval and the government is on its knees. As she says: "We do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the state provides a guarantee.
"Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute."
This is the message we need to send in the UK to a government that in education has put a price on everything and values nothing other than profit. It has also probably inadvertently created a system more expensive for students and taxpayers in its crazed pursuit of a US style higher education 'market'.
"Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute."
This is the message we need to send in the UK to a government that in education has put a price on everything and values nothing other than profit. It has also probably inadvertently created a system more expensive for students and taxpayers in its crazed pursuit of a US style higher education 'market'.
Thursday 18 August 2011
We don't do this sort of thing, do we?
Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down, reports The Guardian. Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes. Hammarskjöld was an independent minded secretary general who annoyed America, Britain and other great powers.
The new evidence was collected by a Swede, Göran Björkdahl, who works for the Swedish international development agency, Sida. His investigation was carried out in his own time and his report does not represent the official views of his government. However, his report echoes the scepticism about the official verdict voiced by Swedish members of the commissions of inquiry.
Björkdahl concludes that:
• Hammarskjöld's plane was almost certainly shot down by an unidentified second plane.
• The actions of the British and Northern Rhodesian officials at the scene delayed the search for the missing plane.
• The wreckage was found and sealed off by Northern Rhodesian troops and police long before its discovery was officially announced.
• The one survivor of the crash could have been saved but was allowed to die in a poorly equipped local hospital.
• At the time of his death Hammarskjöld suspected British diplomats secretly supported the Katanga rebellion and had obstructed a bid to arrange a truce.
• Days before his death, Hammarskjöld authorised a UN offensive on Katanga – codenamed Operation Morthor – despite reservations of the UN legal adviser, to the fury of the US and Britain.
The most compelling new evidence comes from witnesses who had not previously been interviewed, mostly charcoal-makers from the forest around Ndola, now in their 70s and 80ss.
The new evidence was collected by a Swede, Göran Björkdahl, who works for the Swedish international development agency, Sida. His investigation was carried out in his own time and his report does not represent the official views of his government. However, his report echoes the scepticism about the official verdict voiced by Swedish members of the commissions of inquiry.
Björkdahl concludes that:
• Hammarskjöld's plane was almost certainly shot down by an unidentified second plane.
• The actions of the British and Northern Rhodesian officials at the scene delayed the search for the missing plane.
• The wreckage was found and sealed off by Northern Rhodesian troops and police long before its discovery was officially announced.
• The one survivor of the crash could have been saved but was allowed to die in a poorly equipped local hospital.
• At the time of his death Hammarskjöld suspected British diplomats secretly supported the Katanga rebellion and had obstructed a bid to arrange a truce.
• Days before his death, Hammarskjöld authorised a UN offensive on Katanga – codenamed Operation Morthor – despite reservations of the UN legal adviser, to the fury of the US and Britain.
The most compelling new evidence comes from witnesses who had not previously been interviewed, mostly charcoal-makers from the forest around Ndola, now in their 70s and 80ss.
Tuesday 16 August 2011
Prophet of the crash says Marx was right.
Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the Great Crash, said something very interesting in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Marx, to put it more simply than he ever did, saw capitalism's market logic as producing recurring, ever more dangerous crises, precisely because of its tendency to channel most of the wealth produced in society into the pockets of a wealthy elite -- and seeking to increase profits by cutting costs, i.e. the wage bill -- leaving growing numbers of people no longer able to afford to buy what was being produced, forcing a slowdown and contraction of the economy.
That sounds suspiciously like what we're seeing in the U.S. and other Western economies right now -- an economic crisis rooted in low and diminishing demand, which meant that even once the financial crisis was averted, the economy has remained effectively stagnant, at best, as depressed U.S. demand creates a vicious cycle in which corporations see no point in expanding production (and creating new jobs) if consumers can't afford to buy them, and unemployment and poverty expands, further depressing demand.
The "greed is good" mantra may drive Wall Street, but greed can be bad for the wider capitalist economy. The depressed demand in the U.S. economy, for example, may be a product of decades of growing economic inequality. While real household incomes of working people have remained largely static or fallen since the late 1970s the rich have, to put it mildly, gotten a lot richer -- incomes of the richest 1% has grown by more than 176% over the same period. Today one in four dollars earned in the United States accrues to just one in 100 Americans -- or, by a different measure, half of the income earned in the U.S. want to just one in five Americans.
American society, of course, has never had a moral problem with inequality in principle, and there's a widely-held -- if naive -- assumption that anyone who works hard and shows drive and ingenuity can become rich in the U.S. Perhaps, but for every Horatio Alger story there are tens of thousands born on the wrong side of the tracks who are destined to die on the wrong side of the tracks. But the problem posed by inequality, now, is a structural rather than simply a moral one, because of its impact on depressing demand in the economy.
Housing bubbles and cheap credit may have compensated for many years, with the robust consumer-driven economy essentially based on American households living beyond their means, their government borrowing money from China for them to spend on American brand-name products manufactured by low-wage Chinese workers. But when the sub-prime mortgage bubble ruptured in 2008, it was no longer possible to defer the consequences of a massive long-term redistribution of wealth to the rich.
Capitalist societies, including the U.S., have found, through their political systems, the means to avert collapse and its potentially dangerous political consequences by redistributing some of society's wealth back down to poorer sections of the population, spending money to build infrastructure, provide basic health care and education to a population that would otherwise struggle to afford them, by ensuring that working people earned enough to maintain viable consuming households, by creating a welfare support system that allows people to survive unemployment and continue consuming to provide a domestic market, and so on.
"To enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can, we need to return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods," writes Roubini. "That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken.
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/08/16/dr-doom-warns-wall-street-and-washington-heed-karl-marxs-warning/#ixzz1VEO9oUFo>
It seems now the capitalists, including Warren Buffett, are talking about taxing the rich, redistribution and approving Marx. Things must be getting really bad.
WSJ: So you painted a bleak picture of sub-par economic growth going forward, with an increased risk of another recession in the near future. That sounds awful. What can government and what can businesses do to get the economy going again or is it just sit and wait and gut it out?
Roubini: "Businesses are not doing anything. They're not actually helping. All this risk made them more nervous. There's a value in waiting. They claim they're doing cutbacks because there's excess capacity and not adding workers because there's not enough final demand, but there's a paradox, a Catch-22. If you're not hiring workers, there's not enough labor income, enough consumer confidence, enough consumption, not enough final demand. In the last two or three years, we've actually had a worsening because we've had a massive redistribution of income from labor to capital, from wages to profits, and the inequality of income has increased and the marginal propensity to spend of a household is greater than the marginal propensity of a firm because they have a greater propensity to save, that is firms compared to households. So the redistribution of income and wealth makes the problem of inadequate aggregate demand even worse.
"Karl Marx had it right. At some point, Capitalism can destroy itself. You cannot keep on shifting income from labor to Capital without having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. That's what has happened. We thought that markets worked. They're not working. The individual can be rational. The firm, to survive and thrive, can push labor costs more and more down, but labor costs are someone else's income and consumption. That's why it's a self-destructive process."
Anger at poverty, unemployment and despair is driving popular protest across the industrialized world, he notes, and "even the world's middle classes are feeling the squeeze of falling incomes and opportunities."
Marx, to put it more simply than he ever did, saw capitalism's market logic as producing recurring, ever more dangerous crises, precisely because of its tendency to channel most of the wealth produced in society into the pockets of a wealthy elite -- and seeking to increase profits by cutting costs, i.e. the wage bill -- leaving growing numbers of people no longer able to afford to buy what was being produced, forcing a slowdown and contraction of the economy.
That sounds suspiciously like what we're seeing in the U.S. and other Western economies right now -- an economic crisis rooted in low and diminishing demand, which meant that even once the financial crisis was averted, the economy has remained effectively stagnant, at best, as depressed U.S. demand creates a vicious cycle in which corporations see no point in expanding production (and creating new jobs) if consumers can't afford to buy them, and unemployment and poverty expands, further depressing demand.
The "greed is good" mantra may drive Wall Street, but greed can be bad for the wider capitalist economy. The depressed demand in the U.S. economy, for example, may be a product of decades of growing economic inequality. While real household incomes of working people have remained largely static or fallen since the late 1970s the rich have, to put it mildly, gotten a lot richer -- incomes of the richest 1% has grown by more than 176% over the same period. Today one in four dollars earned in the United States accrues to just one in 100 Americans -- or, by a different measure, half of the income earned in the U.S. want to just one in five Americans.
American society, of course, has never had a moral problem with inequality in principle, and there's a widely-held -- if naive -- assumption that anyone who works hard and shows drive and ingenuity can become rich in the U.S. Perhaps, but for every Horatio Alger story there are tens of thousands born on the wrong side of the tracks who are destined to die on the wrong side of the tracks. But the problem posed by inequality, now, is a structural rather than simply a moral one, because of its impact on depressing demand in the economy.
Housing bubbles and cheap credit may have compensated for many years, with the robust consumer-driven economy essentially based on American households living beyond their means, their government borrowing money from China for them to spend on American brand-name products manufactured by low-wage Chinese workers. But when the sub-prime mortgage bubble ruptured in 2008, it was no longer possible to defer the consequences of a massive long-term redistribution of wealth to the rich.
Capitalist societies, including the U.S., have found, through their political systems, the means to avert collapse and its potentially dangerous political consequences by redistributing some of society's wealth back down to poorer sections of the population, spending money to build infrastructure, provide basic health care and education to a population that would otherwise struggle to afford them, by ensuring that working people earned enough to maintain viable consuming households, by creating a welfare support system that allows people to survive unemployment and continue consuming to provide a domestic market, and so on.
"To enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can, we need to return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods," writes Roubini. "That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken.
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/08/16/dr-doom-warns-wall-street-and-washington-heed-karl-marxs-warning/#ixzz1VEO9oUFo>
It seems now the capitalists, including Warren Buffett, are talking about taxing the rich, redistribution and approving Marx. Things must be getting really bad.
Thursday 11 August 2011
What class of scum are you?
Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson:
I don`t think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men.
As members of the Bullingdon dining club, which dates back more than 150 years, David Cameron and his friends were obliged to wear the outfits for their annual photograph. But within hours of the photo being taken, the 10 young men were wreaking havoc on Oxford, where they were all at university. One of them, said to be Ewen Fergusson, threw a plant pot through a restaurant window and the police were called. ``The party ended up with a number of us crawling on all fours through the hedges of the botanical gardens, and trying to escape police dogs,`` said Boris Johnson, who was among those arrested. ``And once we were in the cells we became pathetic namby-pambies.`` Twenty years later most of the young men in this photograph are facing their 40s. Ewen Fergusson is a successful corporate lawyer and Boris Johnson is the shadow spokesman for higher education. Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party, who said recently: ``Like many young people, I did things when I was young that I should not have done and that I regret.``:
What we have is a society of Bullingdon Boys...only without a rich daddy to bail them out when they trash a business, steal or cause general mayhem, or attack an innocent bystander.
I don`t think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men.
As members of the Bullingdon dining club, which dates back more than 150 years, David Cameron and his friends were obliged to wear the outfits for their annual photograph. But within hours of the photo being taken, the 10 young men were wreaking havoc on Oxford, where they were all at university. One of them, said to be Ewen Fergusson, threw a plant pot through a restaurant window and the police were called. ``The party ended up with a number of us crawling on all fours through the hedges of the botanical gardens, and trying to escape police dogs,`` said Boris Johnson, who was among those arrested. ``And once we were in the cells we became pathetic namby-pambies.`` Twenty years later most of the young men in this photograph are facing their 40s. Ewen Fergusson is a successful corporate lawyer and Boris Johnson is the shadow spokesman for higher education. Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party, who said recently: ``Like many young people, I did things when I was young that I should not have done and that I regret.``:
What we have is a society of Bullingdon Boys...only without a rich daddy to bail them out when they trash a business, steal or cause general mayhem, or attack an innocent bystander.
Wednesday 10 August 2011
The looting stage of capitalism
Three years ago the banks pulled off the biggest act of looting in history. Having built a pyramid scheme and creamed of billions in fees, the banks faced collapsed. Then they pulled on the banker's version of the smash and grab - they got the governments of the West to bail them out, with $2 trillion bill to the public purse. Within a year the bonus culture returned, this time with a public guarantee.
A year later the politicians got caught pilfering £1 million - a pittance really. Meanwhile since the recession began, Britain's chief executives have been paying themselves double digit pay increases every year - trousering millions, while the economy tanks and their workers are laid off or face a pay freeze. Looting by another name.
Now, a new wave of looting takes place, in the inner cities. As some foreign journalists have pointed out, it is hardly surprising that this wave of violence and theft started in London, a city of huge extremes of wealth and poverty. Something we are supposed to just get used to. The Prime Minister says the looters are part of a 'sick society'. So tell us Mr Cameron, where did that sick society come from?
A year later the politicians got caught pilfering £1 million - a pittance really. Meanwhile since the recession began, Britain's chief executives have been paying themselves double digit pay increases every year - trousering millions, while the economy tanks and their workers are laid off or face a pay freeze. Looting by another name.
Now, a new wave of looting takes place, in the inner cities. As some foreign journalists have pointed out, it is hardly surprising that this wave of violence and theft started in London, a city of huge extremes of wealth and poverty. Something we are supposed to just get used to. The Prime Minister says the looters are part of a 'sick society'. So tell us Mr Cameron, where did that sick society come from?
Friday 5 August 2011
The identity of the passengers is the key
This post follows my recent thinking - found on Zero Hedge. Others are way ahead of me. Truly scary.
Paranoid? Here is Killtown's full list of Flight 77 passengers - which makes strange reading. Of course it could well be a coincidence that 10 of the 53 passengers had military backgrounds with a high concentration (7) in Navy ballistic, radar and engineering technologies, all strangely relevant to a (of course non existant) conspiracy to use planes in a remote controlled attack. Of course they could all have been going to the same meeting in LA when they took the flight from Dulles Airport.
Then there are the others working for organisations closely related to the Bush administration (senior lawyers etc) who happened to be on the plane - another 10 individuals. Again, a coincidence. Then the big one - Flight 77 hit the Navy command centre in the Pentagon, killing many of its staff. So many of the same group of people in navy military technology and intelligence were in the plane - and also, coincidentally, in the part of the Pentagon the plane hit. Another fascinating coincidence. Sorry, nothing to see. Move on, people.
During a routine homicide investigation, the standard procedure is to research the backgrounds of the murder victim or victims as in the majority of cases the murderer knows their victims.
On 9/11/01, there was one absolute group of victims that day, those passengers aboard the four commercial airliners.
Not those last minute passengers, especially that group aboard the plane that went down over Shanksville, but several aboard that one and the other three, specifically those passengers with ahead-of-time reservations.
Amazingly, little is known about those passengers! In fact, there appears to have been a concerted effort to cloak the background of those passengers, beginning with the FBI's classifying of the passenger lists.
Recently, a book titled Among the Truthers, aimed at proliferating the Cheney-Rumsfeld conspiracy theory on 9/11 while attacking its critics, was written by Jonathan Kay and financed by the foundation he happens to be a fellow at, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, better known as PNAC, version 2.0 (Project for a New American Century).
Why the sudden appearance of this pre-financed drivel?
Because the critics of the Cheney-Rumsfeld conspiracy theory on 9/11 have reached critical mass; now everyone from pro football players, populist and former governor, Jesse Ventura, and stoned out TV stars (Charlie Sheen), along with engineers, professional pilots, retired intelligence and military professionals, former foreign heads of state, etc., dismiss and reject the official story.
So why not do the obvious, and investigate the backgrounds of those unfortunate passengers, and obvious murder victims, that fateful day?
What might we find?
Some of those poor souls were aboard the wrong planes at the wrong time, but others had been scheduled for various seminars and meetings and were meant to be aboard precisely that day (my emphasis).
Two of the four airliners were DoD Special Charter, meaning they had to take off at the scheduled time, with specific reservations, but any open seats could be filled by commercial passengers. Also, as Special Charter flights they wouldn't appear on the FAA's commercial flight registry, which two of those four airliners didn't.
Those others aboard who were meant to be there, fell into three unique groups, and there were three other unique individuals who were meant to be aboard also.
Those three groups: 1) individuals involved in the creation of a counter terrorist scenario at the Pentagon several years previously; a scenario remarkably similar to what took place that day (this included an Israeli counterterrorist expert and one of the plane pilots who was retired US Navy, and several others ---- an improbable confluence of passengers on the very same day); 2) individuals involved in with the development of remote piloting hardware and software; and, 3) individuals involved in the investigation of Flight 800.
An incredibly improbable confluence; all in the same very same time frame.
Along with these three groups, there was the highly insured Wife Number Three of the solicitor general of the Bush administration, after whose tragic death he would quickly move on to Wife Number Four.
Another unique person, a young and attractive lady attorney from a rightwing D.C. law firm which was involved in successfully defending Rupert Murdoch's Fox News in two lawsuits regarding their broadcasting of fictionalized "news" -- the court ended up ruling that Fox could fictionalize the news.
This lady was rumored to be involved in an affair with a senior married partner of this firm; not only an upper echelon contributor to the Bush campaign, but he himself had been a member of the investigation of the strange crash of TWA Flight 800 (an attorney with zero aviation experience).
The third individual, a physicist with the Directed Energy Section of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. During Reagan's star wars program, officially the Strategic Defense Initiative, two phony and contrived operations were developed to mislead the Soviet Union: (1) an artificial earth-based missile strike against an orbiting satellite, and (2) an airborne "death ray" exploding a building below it (pre-set pressure charges in the building were detonated by a laser above which altered the barometric pressure in the building).
The physicist had been involved in this operation.
How very convenient that these three groups, and three individuals, were aboard those four planes on that fateful day?
Highly compartmentalized, they had no idea what was to take place, and how their talents would be utilized by those at the highest levels who could pull all the strings like evil puppet masters.
Paranoid? Here is Killtown's full list of Flight 77 passengers - which makes strange reading. Of course it could well be a coincidence that 10 of the 53 passengers had military backgrounds with a high concentration (7) in Navy ballistic, radar and engineering technologies, all strangely relevant to a (of course non existant) conspiracy to use planes in a remote controlled attack. Of course they could all have been going to the same meeting in LA when they took the flight from Dulles Airport.
Then there are the others working for organisations closely related to the Bush administration (senior lawyers etc) who happened to be on the plane - another 10 individuals. Again, a coincidence. Then the big one - Flight 77 hit the Navy command centre in the Pentagon, killing many of its staff. So many of the same group of people in navy military technology and intelligence were in the plane - and also, coincidentally, in the part of the Pentagon the plane hit. Another fascinating coincidence. Sorry, nothing to see. Move on, people.
Iron Man - DoD insider becomes 911's Deep Throat
Whistleblowers and investigative journalists are necessary to expose the truth of any coverup. 9/11 may have found one - Iron Man headed up the US defence Department unit that tracked Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. He warned specifically about a plan to use planes to hit the WTC and Pentagon. His warning was ignored. Now, after being suspended for allegedly abusing classified information, he is coming out, as reported by TruthOut in late June.
This is more evidence of foreknowledge by the Bush adminsitration of imminent attacks on 9/11. Information that was so specific, as reported by Bob Woodward in his book State of Denial, that Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying chartered jets in the weeks before 9/11. Condoleesa Rice denied Woodward's claims, but she has been shown to have lied. They knew - as this excellent article makes abundantly clear. This section jumps out in particular:
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission:
"During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President … the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?"
They knew.
This is more evidence of foreknowledge by the Bush adminsitration of imminent attacks on 9/11. Information that was so specific, as reported by Bob Woodward in his book State of Denial, that Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying chartered jets in the weeks before 9/11. Condoleesa Rice denied Woodward's claims, but she has been shown to have lied. They knew - as this excellent article makes abundantly clear. This section jumps out in particular:
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission:
"During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President … the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?"
They knew.
Thursday 4 August 2011
Cover up: did Al Qaeda blow up TWA flight 800 over New York 1996?
Now, the somewhat convincing argument of those who deny any government involvement in 911 is: where are the witnesses? By contrast, read below to see how many people saw TWA800 being hit by a missile in New York harbour in 1996, and how many whistleblowers there have been exposing the FBI/Navy coverup. The mastermind of the original 1993 WTC attack orchestrated this operation - the second worst terror attack in the US - from prison! The missiles came from a CIA operation in Bosnia to support Muslim terror groups fighting the Serbs. Unbelievable - but convincing. What appears to have happened was a monumental blowback disaster caused by CIA arms running and training of terror groups. But the same groups already got caught plotting a 9/11 type event from the Philippines in 1995, including KSM. Counsel to 9/11 commission Dietrich “Dieter” Snell was the man who led the conviction of Abdul Hakim Murad fr the original Bojinka plot to blow up 12 planes over the US and crash one into CIA HQ in Langley. Bojinka was the blueprint for 911. He had a lot of covering up to do by the time he was put in charge of 'managing' the 9/11 investigation.
What TWA800 evidence points to is powerful institutional will within government and military to cover up self-inflicted catastrophes, as well massive bureaucratic incompetence and unintended consequences of support for global terror-linked groups. It also shows that there were elements within the security establishment prepared to train and hand over high tech weaponry to terror groups. As Welcome to Terrorland has shown, Arabs and Pakistanis with jihadi links were being trained at flight schools with long links to CIA front companies. By covering up TWA800, the FBI and other agencies were able to continue with various covert operations that in some way bring us to 911. Then another cover up began.
Possible link of stinger missiles given to Al Qeada by the CIA to the shooting down of TWA flight 800
From 1993 to 1995, money, arms and expertise flooded from the United States to al Qaeda military networks in Bosnia-Herzegovina . Gen. Michael V. Hayden accompanied U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on a trip to Croatia in November 1994, during which Holbrooke told the Bosnian government that the U.S. would encourage third-party countries to make covert shipments of arms and supplies for the use of al Qaeda's Bosnian network, in violation of a U.N. embargo.
On Hayden's watch, illegal arms ran through the U.N. embargo like water through a sieve, with the implicit or explicit blessing of the U.S. government, and arms and other supplies frequently ended up in the hands of known al Qaeda members.
In early 1995, Hayden's sophisticated intelligence apparatus somehow failed to interdict the "black flights" – in which C-130 aircraft (accompanied by fighter jet escorts) transported arms and supplies. This was reported by British and Norwegian military officers. Arms also came from Sudan and Iran to mujahideen forces fighting on behalf of the Bosnian government. The shipments included "weapons, ammunition, uniforms, helmets, new anti-tank weapons and Stingers," according to the Dutch intelligence survey. Lt. Col. Christopher Le Hardy wrote in a British Intelligence report dated Feb. 15, 1995.
http://intelwire.egoplex.com/hayden-bosnia.htm"
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Macedonian National Liberation Army (M-NLA) were trained in Macedonia by British Special Forces and equipped by the CIA. The M-LNA is a nationalist/separatist organization which, is not an army but rather a loosely-organized terrorist group which calls for the unification of ethnic Albanian areas of the Western Balkans, including part of Macedonia and southern Serbia. The M-LNA was founded in the fall of 1999, It conducted a guerrilla war against the Republic of Macedonia.
The M-NLA was estimated to comprise around 7,000 men at its peak and some of its members were trained by British SAS and Parachute Regiment officers.As was the case with the KLA, they were fairly lightly armed - generally with small arms and mortars - though there were also reports that they had acquired FIM-92, Stinger and SAM-7anti-aircraft missiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Macedonia)
US-backed Croatian Army during the Balkans war and was trained by Military Professional Resources Inc., (MPRI) a private paramilitary firm and based in Alexandria, Virginia. Croatia approached MPRI to restructure its military. Congressional investigators looked into MPRI's role in the region, but their final report, much of which remains classified.
The US State Department temporarily suspends cooperation between the Bosnian army and the US private mercenary company MPRI. No official reason is given, but media reports indicate that the Bosnian Muslims being trained by MPRI were caught sending weapons to Muslim rebels in the regions of Kosovo and Sandzak in Serbia.
Source: April 22, 1999 "http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=military_professional_resources_inc".
President Bill Clinton and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake decide that they will give the Bosnians a "green light" for the arms supply pipeline from Iran to Croatia. The CIA is not consulted. Lake passes the word on to US ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith by "cleverly" telling him that they have "no instructions" for him with regard to the Iranian arms shipments.
NOTE: Why the CIA was not consulted? Because this covert operation than would have to reported to the Senate intelligence Oversight Committee.
Source: April 27, 1994 http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=military_professional_resources_inc.
Washington's envoy Ambassador (Colonel) James Pardew. Pardew started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channelling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the "Bosnian pattern" in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia.
Source: 9,October2001 "http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996.
On July 17, 1996, a man and his friend were on Long Island attempting to videotape the sunrise , when they saw and recorded "a grey trail of smoke ascending from the horizon at an angle of approximately 75 degrees." So compelling was the visual that the fellow made a comment to his friend, heard on the tape, "They must be testing a rocket." The fellow calculated that object was heading towards the Atlantic Ocean.
"On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis of both the videotape as well as a number of still photographs taken from various portions of the tape, the phenomenon captured by [name redacted] appeared to be consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD [Man-portable air-defense] missile."
Authorities not only removed all reference to this video from the official record, but they also removed just about all reference to the DIA. There was no reference at all to the video analyzed by the DIA. In fact, there was no public mention of the DIA. The MSIC analysis was relegated to a footnote.
An important component of the DIA is the Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), which is located in Huntsville, Alabama, and is charged with gathering intelligence on enemy surface-to-air missiles and short-range ballistic missiles.
During a Senate inquiry in May 1999, the FBI's number two man on the investigation, Lewis Schiliro, conceded that MSIC analysts had arrived on the scene in Long Island just two days after the July 17, 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and interviewed eyewitnesses. "They reported to us," Schiliro told the senators of the MSIC analysts, "that many of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses were very consistent with the characteristics of the flight of [surface-to-air] missiles.". . .
http://www.cashill.com/twa800/twa_foia.htm
1997 THE NEW YORK POST reports that "more than 150 'credible' witnesses -- including scientists -- have told the FBI and military experts they saw a missile destroy TWA Flight 800." Said one top federal official. "Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible."
U.S. attorney Valerie Caproni as head of the Justice Department Criminal District, Eastern District of New York, knew that the FBI was the subordinate agency. She knew that the NTSB could not legally be restricted in its pursuit of information. Still, in spite of the law, she used the full weight of the Justice Department, and the intimidating presence of the FBI, to order the NTSB witness group to cease and desist all of the critical eyewitness interviews.
The relevant law [Title 49, section 1131(a)(2)] reads as follows: "An investigation by the Board ... has priority over any investigation by another department, agency or instrumentality of the United States Government." The "Board" in question is the National Transportation Safety Board. In other words, a "parallel" FBI investigation is by law inferior to the NTSB investigation.
http://www.cashill.com/twa800/top_fbi_lawyer.htm
"IMPORTANT RADAR TAPES were given to the White House before they were provided the National Transportation Safety Board. The FBI assumes roles normally carried out by the NTSB. The FBI had also gags an Air National Guardsman who witnessed the explosion of TWA 800 and repeatedly told authorities he thought a missile had hit the plane.
AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY reports that two Air National Guard pilots, "with the best view of the crash of TWA Flight 800" both believe a violent explosion tore the plane apart. Over 150 persons saw a streak of light heading for the plane before it exploded. These included two airline pilots, and two National Guard pilots…. two helicopter pilots also witnessed the streak, described initially by one as a missile…. The other pilot, still employed by the government, has been barred from elaborating on the matter.
The FBI had also gags an Air National Guardsman who witnessed the explosion of TWA 800 and repeatedly told authorities he thought a missile had hit the plane.
Meyer and Bauer were making an approach to the Hampton airport in a Blackhawk National Guard
helicopter, when they visually picked up the missile fire. From the south, US Air approached and was to cross overhead of Flight 800 about 8,000 feet above it. Brumley, from his vantage of a window seats on the right side and ahead of the wing of his aircraft ), saw a missile rise up and arc over
towards Flight 800. … the two missiles intersected, almost dead on.
One missile entered Flight 800 just below the left wing, traversed the center of the aircraft through rows 17, 18, and 19, and exited the right side of the fuselage,5 bringing debris with it. Just after (or before) that missile sliced through the aircraft. the second missile exploded outside the aircraft's lower left side,
collapsing the nose gear doors inward, completely
1999 SEATTLE TIMES: Boeing said this week that the lack of evidence as to what sparked the blast that downed TWA Flight 800 three years ago points to an "external source," such as a bomb or missile. Boeing's statement in court documents Tuesday is the strongest to date revealing an aggressive legal defense that blames the 747 crash on a bomb or missile.
On a panel of some 70 airlines industry executives and federal officials rejected suggestions that U.S. airlines use a process called "inverting" – that is the pumping of nonflammable gases into jet fuel tanks to prevent explosions. The panel of aviation professionals told the Federal Aviation Administration that the process is too costly for commercial use. They contended that the odds against a future fuel tank explosion are far too great to justify the price tag.
NOTE: Jet fuel is as about as easy to light on fire as peanut butter. It is not like gasoline which is very easily ignite and explodes.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24075
A missile expert, who was extremely fearful of losing his job -- for more than 20 years he's been a military engineer who specializes in infrared missile technology. He says he was made privy to evidence suggesting that TWA 800 could have been shot down He believes the investigation of TWA Flight 800 is a cover-up . The missile expert has also been in contact with military labs where, he says, the chemists have been unable to make jet fuel vapor explode as the NTSB says it did in TWA 800's center fuel tank. "The labs told the NTSB there's a big problem -- it can't happen." … "70 percent chance" that TWA 800 was downed by a shoulder-launched missile.
"In December 1996, FBI missile team members told military experts that two separate commercial fishermen dredged up and threw back a MANPADS first stage, the missile ejector-motor can. The ejector motor, about the size of a Coke can, fires in the tube, ejecting the missile, then drops in the water when the missile 2nd stage booster ignites." – The NTSB, contracted with civilian scallop boats through the Navy Supervisor of Salvage from 4 November 1996 until it was suddenly terminated on 30 April 1997.
FBI agents got the word via cell phone to shut down the operations. On two of the boats, when the captains refused to stop until the Navy contractor on board told them to, the agents threatened force to make the captains shut down.
Source note: The source, James Sanders, is a former police officer turned investigative reporter, co-writes this report with Jack Cashill. Sanders is the author of "The Downing of TWA Flight 800" and "Altered Evidence," among other books.
NOTE: The FBI went after the investigative reporter Sanders and his wife forcing them to give up their source, Terry Stacey. See information below:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24734
In his book, investigative author Pete Lance (http://www.peterlance.com) claims that in 1996, high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials turned a deliberate blind eye on documentary evidence provided by a high-ranking mob snitch that a key Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, behind bars for the original bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, was actively plotting to blow up what turned out to be TWA Flight 800, which exploded 13,000 feet in the air above Long Island in the summer of 1996, killing all 230 passengers and crewmembers on board.
There are hundreds of Navy and Coast Guard personnel, as well as some FBI, CIA, FAA, NTSB and former White House employees who know that the real cause of the crash of TWA 800 was papered over with a tissue of lies. Two of them, James Kallstrom and George Stephanopoulos, have made statements that indicate an official cover-up
Journalists and private investigators were not allowed inside the Calverton hangar to inspect the bulk of the recovered wreckage, but even members of the official investigating team were not allowed into a special area where the FBI secreted items that they didn't want the representatives of the NTSB, TWA, Boeing and the interested unions to see.
http://www.prorev.com/twa800.htm
Terry Stacey one of the crash investigators and airline pilot, removed two samples/pieces of seatback that had a reddish-orange residue trail on it and this reddish-orange stuff was streaked across a narrow section of the plane's interior. . He ultimately lost confidence in the integrity and competence of the Justice Department investigation and he got the small samples of a suspicious residue analyzed at a private lab.
The FBI had lifted samples in early September 1996, then refused to share the test results with the NTSB. Those tests today remain classified under the guise of national security
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31495
The lab results of Stacey's samples, found that the reddish-orange residue contained elements
consistent with exhaust from a solid-fuel missile and more than 98 percent of the volume of the residue was commonly found in incendiary warheads.
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@.../msg33774.html
The aircraft's right wing was not rebuilt because the damage to its mid-spar near the fuselage offered additional evidence of a missile strike in the area. Portions of the right wing in the area of the mid-spar had blast holes and tested positive for explosive residue. They were removed from the hangar.
The aircraft's right wing was not rebuilt because the damage to its mid-spar near the fuselage offered additional evidence of a missile strike in the area. Portions of the right wing in the area of the mid-spar had blast holes and tested positive for explosive residue. They were removed from the hangar.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3884da0240b8.htm
In Florida, retired United Airlines pilot Richard Russell says FBI agents came to his Daytona Beach home Monday and seized a videotape. Russell claims the video is a copy of a Federal Aviation Administration radar tape showing a missile speeding toward the Boeing 747 aircraft minutes before the plane exploded. "
Following the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, Gore was entrusted by President Clinton to investigate airline safety. He was named chairman of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety.
The Gore commission produced what most observers considered to be a tough preliminary report unveiled Sept. 9 of that year – one that included tough counter-terrorism procedures.
But within days, according to an insider on the commission, the airline industry jumped all over Gore. As a result, 10 days later, Gore sent a letter to airline lobbyist Carol Hallett promising that the commission's findings would not result in any loss of revenue.
In what can only be seen as a pure political payoff, the Democratic National Committee received $40,000 from TWA the next day. Within two weeks, Northwest, United and American Airlines ponied up another $55,000 for the 1996 campaign.
But the money trail didn't stop there. In the next two months leading up to the November elections, American Airlines donated $250,000 to the Democrats. United Airlines donated $100,000 to the DNC. Northwestern put $53,000 more into the kitty.
Following the election, in January, Gore floated a draft final report that eliminated all security measures from the commission's findings, according to the insider
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24638
Comment: I have a confidential source (CS #2) who spoke to a person with whom he had a business relationship with for over two years. I'll call this person confidential source #1 (CS #1) .
According to CS #2:
CS #1 said that within hours of flight 800 crash, the FBI asked him to go to New York to help in the investigation of the crash. CS #1 said he was put on recovery ship in the crash area and was working several other people. After working for a period of time, CS#1 said that he was approached by his supervisor and was asked what he thought. CS #1 said that he told his supervisor that thought the cause of the crash was a "powder explosion". CS #1 said this supervisor took him to her supervisor.
As a result of these conversation with the supervisors, CS#1 said he was told that he was fired, but that he would receive be paid for ten years at his currently yearly wage. The conditions of this arrangement were that he was not to work for anyone, for himself (in field of scientific expertise for which he was trained, not tell anyone what he saw in New York.
My source confidential source (CS#2) is a person whose word I fully trust.
Comment: Theories as to why the cover-up. The incident was right before the Democratic convention and the Atlanta Olympics. A terrorist attack, identified as such, would have wreaked havoc on air travel, in addition to exposing our vulnerability to terrorism in the middle of a campaign season.
Also related to this case, is the justice department action to trying to destroy the journalist who broke the story about the residue from the exhaust from a solid-fuel missile
"The Justice Department also concedes there is no defense for the 32-counts of federal lawlessness committed in pursuit of destroying a journalist James Sanders and his wife, Elizabeth Sanders." Jim Sanders, the investigative reporter who was (wrongly) prosecuted by the Justice Department for digging up evidence that proved that the FBI was lying about the crash.
The Justice Department in as much acknowledges that the TWA Flight 800 investigation has been corrupted.
The Justice Department now admits Clinton Justice Department "conspired to print factually false information in a Justice Department letter to deprive James Sanders of his civil rights.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31495
What TWA800 evidence points to is powerful institutional will within government and military to cover up self-inflicted catastrophes, as well massive bureaucratic incompetence and unintended consequences of support for global terror-linked groups. It also shows that there were elements within the security establishment prepared to train and hand over high tech weaponry to terror groups. As Welcome to Terrorland has shown, Arabs and Pakistanis with jihadi links were being trained at flight schools with long links to CIA front companies. By covering up TWA800, the FBI and other agencies were able to continue with various covert operations that in some way bring us to 911. Then another cover up began.
Possible link of stinger missiles given to Al Qeada by the CIA to the shooting down of TWA flight 800
From 1993 to 1995, money, arms and expertise flooded from the United States to al Qaeda military networks in Bosnia-Herzegovina . Gen. Michael V. Hayden accompanied U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on a trip to Croatia in November 1994, during which Holbrooke told the Bosnian government that the U.S. would encourage third-party countries to make covert shipments of arms and supplies for the use of al Qaeda's Bosnian network, in violation of a U.N. embargo.
On Hayden's watch, illegal arms ran through the U.N. embargo like water through a sieve, with the implicit or explicit blessing of the U.S. government, and arms and other supplies frequently ended up in the hands of known al Qaeda members.
In early 1995, Hayden's sophisticated intelligence apparatus somehow failed to interdict the "black flights" – in which C-130 aircraft (accompanied by fighter jet escorts) transported arms and supplies. This was reported by British and Norwegian military officers. Arms also came from Sudan and Iran to mujahideen forces fighting on behalf of the Bosnian government. The shipments included "weapons, ammunition, uniforms, helmets, new anti-tank weapons and Stingers," according to the Dutch intelligence survey. Lt. Col. Christopher Le Hardy wrote in a British Intelligence report dated Feb. 15, 1995.
http://intelwire.egoplex.com/hayden-bosnia.htm"
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Macedonian National Liberation Army (M-NLA) were trained in Macedonia by British Special Forces and equipped by the CIA. The M-LNA is a nationalist/separatist organization which, is not an army but rather a loosely-organized terrorist group which calls for the unification of ethnic Albanian areas of the Western Balkans, including part of Macedonia and southern Serbia. The M-LNA was founded in the fall of 1999, It conducted a guerrilla war against the Republic of Macedonia.
The M-NLA was estimated to comprise around 7,000 men at its peak and some of its members were trained by British SAS and Parachute Regiment officers.As was the case with the KLA, they were fairly lightly armed - generally with small arms and mortars - though there were also reports that they had acquired FIM-92, Stinger and SAM-7anti-aircraft missiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Macedonia)
US-backed Croatian Army during the Balkans war and was trained by Military Professional Resources Inc., (MPRI) a private paramilitary firm and based in Alexandria, Virginia. Croatia approached MPRI to restructure its military. Congressional investigators looked into MPRI's role in the region, but their final report, much of which remains classified.
The US State Department temporarily suspends cooperation between the Bosnian army and the US private mercenary company MPRI. No official reason is given, but media reports indicate that the Bosnian Muslims being trained by MPRI were caught sending weapons to Muslim rebels in the regions of Kosovo and Sandzak in Serbia.
Source: April 22, 1999 "http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=military_professional_resources_inc".
President Bill Clinton and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake decide that they will give the Bosnians a "green light" for the arms supply pipeline from Iran to Croatia. The CIA is not consulted. Lake passes the word on to US ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith by "cleverly" telling him that they have "no instructions" for him with regard to the Iranian arms shipments.
NOTE: Why the CIA was not consulted? Because this covert operation than would have to reported to the Senate intelligence Oversight Committee.
Source: April 27, 1994 http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=military_professional_resources_inc.
Washington's envoy Ambassador (Colonel) James Pardew. Pardew started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channelling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the "Bosnian pattern" in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia.
Source: 9,October2001 "http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996.
On July 17, 1996, a man and his friend were on Long Island attempting to videotape the sunrise , when they saw and recorded "a grey trail of smoke ascending from the horizon at an angle of approximately 75 degrees." So compelling was the visual that the fellow made a comment to his friend, heard on the tape, "They must be testing a rocket." The fellow calculated that object was heading towards the Atlantic Ocean.
"On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis of both the videotape as well as a number of still photographs taken from various portions of the tape, the phenomenon captured by [name redacted] appeared to be consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD [Man-portable air-defense] missile."
Authorities not only removed all reference to this video from the official record, but they also removed just about all reference to the DIA. There was no reference at all to the video analyzed by the DIA. In fact, there was no public mention of the DIA. The MSIC analysis was relegated to a footnote.
An important component of the DIA is the Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), which is located in Huntsville, Alabama, and is charged with gathering intelligence on enemy surface-to-air missiles and short-range ballistic missiles.
During a Senate inquiry in May 1999, the FBI's number two man on the investigation, Lewis Schiliro, conceded that MSIC analysts had arrived on the scene in Long Island just two days after the July 17, 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and interviewed eyewitnesses. "They reported to us," Schiliro told the senators of the MSIC analysts, "that many of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses were very consistent with the characteristics of the flight of [surface-to-air] missiles.". . .
http://www.cashill.com/twa800/twa_foia.htm
1997 THE NEW YORK POST reports that "more than 150 'credible' witnesses -- including scientists -- have told the FBI and military experts they saw a missile destroy TWA Flight 800." Said one top federal official. "Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible."
U.S. attorney Valerie Caproni as head of the Justice Department Criminal District, Eastern District of New York, knew that the FBI was the subordinate agency. She knew that the NTSB could not legally be restricted in its pursuit of information. Still, in spite of the law, she used the full weight of the Justice Department, and the intimidating presence of the FBI, to order the NTSB witness group to cease and desist all of the critical eyewitness interviews.
The relevant law [Title 49, section 1131(a)(2)] reads as follows: "An investigation by the Board ... has priority over any investigation by another department, agency or instrumentality of the United States Government." The "Board" in question is the National Transportation Safety Board. In other words, a "parallel" FBI investigation is by law inferior to the NTSB investigation.
http://www.cashill.com/twa800/top_fbi_lawyer.htm
"IMPORTANT RADAR TAPES were given to the White House before they were provided the National Transportation Safety Board. The FBI assumes roles normally carried out by the NTSB. The FBI had also gags an Air National Guardsman who witnessed the explosion of TWA 800 and repeatedly told authorities he thought a missile had hit the plane.
AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY reports that two Air National Guard pilots, "with the best view of the crash of TWA Flight 800" both believe a violent explosion tore the plane apart. Over 150 persons saw a streak of light heading for the plane before it exploded. These included two airline pilots, and two National Guard pilots…. two helicopter pilots also witnessed the streak, described initially by one as a missile…. The other pilot, still employed by the government, has been barred from elaborating on the matter.
The FBI had also gags an Air National Guardsman who witnessed the explosion of TWA 800 and repeatedly told authorities he thought a missile had hit the plane.
Meyer and Bauer were making an approach to the Hampton airport in a Blackhawk National Guard
helicopter, when they visually picked up the missile fire. From the south, US Air approached and was to cross overhead of Flight 800 about 8,000 feet above it. Brumley, from his vantage of a window seats on the right side and ahead of the wing of his aircraft ), saw a missile rise up and arc over
towards Flight 800. … the two missiles intersected, almost dead on.
One missile entered Flight 800 just below the left wing, traversed the center of the aircraft through rows 17, 18, and 19, and exited the right side of the fuselage,5 bringing debris with it. Just after (or before) that missile sliced through the aircraft. the second missile exploded outside the aircraft's lower left side,
collapsing the nose gear doors inward, completely
1999 SEATTLE TIMES: Boeing said this week that the lack of evidence as to what sparked the blast that downed TWA Flight 800 three years ago points to an "external source," such as a bomb or missile. Boeing's statement in court documents Tuesday is the strongest to date revealing an aggressive legal defense that blames the 747 crash on a bomb or missile.
On a panel of some 70 airlines industry executives and federal officials rejected suggestions that U.S. airlines use a process called "inverting" – that is the pumping of nonflammable gases into jet fuel tanks to prevent explosions. The panel of aviation professionals told the Federal Aviation Administration that the process is too costly for commercial use. They contended that the odds against a future fuel tank explosion are far too great to justify the price tag.
NOTE: Jet fuel is as about as easy to light on fire as peanut butter. It is not like gasoline which is very easily ignite and explodes.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24075
A missile expert, who was extremely fearful of losing his job -- for more than 20 years he's been a military engineer who specializes in infrared missile technology. He says he was made privy to evidence suggesting that TWA 800 could have been shot down He believes the investigation of TWA Flight 800 is a cover-up . The missile expert has also been in contact with military labs where, he says, the chemists have been unable to make jet fuel vapor explode as the NTSB says it did in TWA 800's center fuel tank. "The labs told the NTSB there's a big problem -- it can't happen." … "70 percent chance" that TWA 800 was downed by a shoulder-launched missile.
"In December 1996, FBI missile team members told military experts that two separate commercial fishermen dredged up and threw back a MANPADS first stage, the missile ejector-motor can. The ejector motor, about the size of a Coke can, fires in the tube, ejecting the missile, then drops in the water when the missile 2nd stage booster ignites." – The NTSB, contracted with civilian scallop boats through the Navy Supervisor of Salvage from 4 November 1996 until it was suddenly terminated on 30 April 1997.
FBI agents got the word via cell phone to shut down the operations. On two of the boats, when the captains refused to stop until the Navy contractor on board told them to, the agents threatened force to make the captains shut down.
Source note: The source, James Sanders, is a former police officer turned investigative reporter, co-writes this report with Jack Cashill. Sanders is the author of "The Downing of TWA Flight 800" and "Altered Evidence," among other books.
NOTE: The FBI went after the investigative reporter Sanders and his wife forcing them to give up their source, Terry Stacey. See information below:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24734
In his book, investigative author Pete Lance (http://www.peterlance.com) claims that in 1996, high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials turned a deliberate blind eye on documentary evidence provided by a high-ranking mob snitch that a key Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, behind bars for the original bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, was actively plotting to blow up what turned out to be TWA Flight 800, which exploded 13,000 feet in the air above Long Island in the summer of 1996, killing all 230 passengers and crewmembers on board.
There are hundreds of Navy and Coast Guard personnel, as well as some FBI, CIA, FAA, NTSB and former White House employees who know that the real cause of the crash of TWA 800 was papered over with a tissue of lies. Two of them, James Kallstrom and George Stephanopoulos, have made statements that indicate an official cover-up
Journalists and private investigators were not allowed inside the Calverton hangar to inspect the bulk of the recovered wreckage, but even members of the official investigating team were not allowed into a special area where the FBI secreted items that they didn't want the representatives of the NTSB, TWA, Boeing and the interested unions to see.
http://www.prorev.com/twa800.htm
Terry Stacey one of the crash investigators and airline pilot, removed two samples/pieces of seatback that had a reddish-orange residue trail on it and this reddish-orange stuff was streaked across a narrow section of the plane's interior. . He ultimately lost confidence in the integrity and competence of the Justice Department investigation and he got the small samples of a suspicious residue analyzed at a private lab.
The FBI had lifted samples in early September 1996, then refused to share the test results with the NTSB. Those tests today remain classified under the guise of national security
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31495
The lab results of Stacey's samples, found that the reddish-orange residue contained elements
consistent with exhaust from a solid-fuel missile and more than 98 percent of the volume of the residue was commonly found in incendiary warheads.
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@.../msg33774.html
The aircraft's right wing was not rebuilt because the damage to its mid-spar near the fuselage offered additional evidence of a missile strike in the area. Portions of the right wing in the area of the mid-spar had blast holes and tested positive for explosive residue. They were removed from the hangar.
The aircraft's right wing was not rebuilt because the damage to its mid-spar near the fuselage offered additional evidence of a missile strike in the area. Portions of the right wing in the area of the mid-spar had blast holes and tested positive for explosive residue. They were removed from the hangar.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3884da0240b8.htm
In Florida, retired United Airlines pilot Richard Russell says FBI agents came to his Daytona Beach home Monday and seized a videotape. Russell claims the video is a copy of a Federal Aviation Administration radar tape showing a missile speeding toward the Boeing 747 aircraft minutes before the plane exploded. "
Following the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, Gore was entrusted by President Clinton to investigate airline safety. He was named chairman of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety.
The Gore commission produced what most observers considered to be a tough preliminary report unveiled Sept. 9 of that year – one that included tough counter-terrorism procedures.
But within days, according to an insider on the commission, the airline industry jumped all over Gore. As a result, 10 days later, Gore sent a letter to airline lobbyist Carol Hallett promising that the commission's findings would not result in any loss of revenue.
In what can only be seen as a pure political payoff, the Democratic National Committee received $40,000 from TWA the next day. Within two weeks, Northwest, United and American Airlines ponied up another $55,000 for the 1996 campaign.
But the money trail didn't stop there. In the next two months leading up to the November elections, American Airlines donated $250,000 to the Democrats. United Airlines donated $100,000 to the DNC. Northwestern put $53,000 more into the kitty.
Following the election, in January, Gore floated a draft final report that eliminated all security measures from the commission's findings, according to the insider
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24638
Comment: I have a confidential source (CS #2) who spoke to a person with whom he had a business relationship with for over two years. I'll call this person confidential source #1 (CS #1) .
According to CS #2:
CS #1 said that within hours of flight 800 crash, the FBI asked him to go to New York to help in the investigation of the crash. CS #1 said he was put on recovery ship in the crash area and was working several other people. After working for a period of time, CS#1 said that he was approached by his supervisor and was asked what he thought. CS #1 said that he told his supervisor that thought the cause of the crash was a "powder explosion". CS #1 said this supervisor took him to her supervisor.
As a result of these conversation with the supervisors, CS#1 said he was told that he was fired, but that he would receive be paid for ten years at his currently yearly wage. The conditions of this arrangement were that he was not to work for anyone, for himself (in field of scientific expertise for which he was trained, not tell anyone what he saw in New York.
My source confidential source (CS#2) is a person whose word I fully trust.
Comment: Theories as to why the cover-up. The incident was right before the Democratic convention and the Atlanta Olympics. A terrorist attack, identified as such, would have wreaked havoc on air travel, in addition to exposing our vulnerability to terrorism in the middle of a campaign season.
Also related to this case, is the justice department action to trying to destroy the journalist who broke the story about the residue from the exhaust from a solid-fuel missile
"The Justice Department also concedes there is no defense for the 32-counts of federal lawlessness committed in pursuit of destroying a journalist James Sanders and his wife, Elizabeth Sanders." Jim Sanders, the investigative reporter who was (wrongly) prosecuted by the Justice Department for digging up evidence that proved that the FBI was lying about the crash.
The Justice Department in as much acknowledges that the TWA Flight 800 investigation has been corrupted.
The Justice Department now admits Clinton Justice Department "conspired to print factually false information in a Justice Department letter to deprive James Sanders of his civil rights.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31495
Wednesday 3 August 2011
Pilots for 9/11 truth - experts who say no
This list of brave individuals is probably the most convincing rebuke to anyone who says most experts accept the official 9/11 narrative. All these do not and many explain why.
Then there's the words of the people who wrote the 9/11 Commission Report itself. It's even been adapted into graphic novel form for easy reading. If it makes sense to you, go with God. If it doesn't--and you take what members of the 9/11 Commission themselves say--then it's a cover-up. If it's a cover-up, then something was covered up. What? I don't know. So, while I don't throw my faith behind a "conspiracy theory," I throw the full power of my doubt and scorn on the official "conspiracy theory."
Some things to consider:
The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) said that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our investigation".
The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn't bother to tell the American people.
Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.
9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only "the first draft" of history.
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."
9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up".
9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way - conflicts of interest".
The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry, said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true."
Then there's the words of the people who wrote the 9/11 Commission Report itself. It's even been adapted into graphic novel form for easy reading. If it makes sense to you, go with God. If it doesn't--and you take what members of the 9/11 Commission themselves say--then it's a cover-up. If it's a cover-up, then something was covered up. What? I don't know. So, while I don't throw my faith behind a "conspiracy theory," I throw the full power of my doubt and scorn on the official "conspiracy theory."
Some things to consider:
The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) said that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our investigation".
The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn't bother to tell the American people.
Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.
9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only "the first draft" of history.
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."
9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up".
9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way - conflicts of interest".
The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry, said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true."
Get a bible and a gun - a Tea Partier speaks
Finally - the authentic voice of a Tea party believer (or a brilliant sendup), buried in a comment page on the Guardian. It chills the blood, and let's you understand what this movement is about:
"I have been to a tea party rally and I can assure you that everybody there was a patriotic. I only heard a couple of racist jokes. I also only heard a couple of people make death threats....the rest were fairly civilized. It is a movement about anger and there will be blood spilled if voices aren't heard. I think the Tea Party should get some seats in the House this year. Rush said Liberty was on the way out if the Dems and Libs get there way....I say the Tea Party is bringing it home. Sean said FREEDOM will ring from coast to coast and free speech is alive and well with the teabaggers. This country was founded by people that didn't want to pay taxes and that is what I am for....a tax free America with no government services or handouts. Beck said that the Framing Founders that Fathered the constitution would soil their pants if they saw this America. We are becoming Canada or worse yet France...soon we will only be the Swiss. We are screwed at that point. Get a bible and gun."
So there you have it. Their simple idea of balancing the budget may seem barmy, but it is common sense to many. Rather than ignoring the deficit, the answer is to cut the $ trillion military and security budget. No social programme needs to be cut. Unfortunately most US federal spending is welfare for the corporate sector, none more so than the 'defence' budget. Which brave patriot will stand up and say cut down this monstrous beast feeding on America? But if this comment represents the average tea party view, then it requires a strenuous fightback against it. No modern state can exist without taxes - this is no different than the promise of Osama bin Laden to take people back to the 7th century when only alms were paid to maintain the poor. It is a fantasy but a highly appealing one to Americans brought up believing in the rugged frontiersmen of old. I've heard it many times spoken by intelligent Americans.
The rich have had it all their way for a long time in America (as in most other so-called democracies). Now a fanatical reactionary group is on the rise. Compromise and appeasement will not work with this group. They will always take more, to achieve their agenda of a return to the early 19th century. The only question is what force or class in America can resist this, because it is nothing less than an intensification of class war against the poor and working/middle class. History shows this is typical of when a bourgeois society enters a severe crisis (think Germany in the 1920s). It is possible to imagine that the Bush era was merely a rehearsal for something much more radical to come.
In the 1930s the left and the working class were mobilised and FDR was elected as a populist democrat prepared to take on the rich oligarchy. In 2008 Obama was elected with the support of the financial oligarchy. Social democracy has been in retreat in the US since the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the election of Nixon in 1968. Democrats have never been the a party of the masses. Whereas FDR went on the offensive against the forces of reaction, Obama has been on the defensive from day one - he got elected saying he wanted to make peace with the Republicans and has never changed tact. The whole deficit 'drama' is something of a charade.
As one Chicago-ite puts it:
"I have been to a tea party rally and I can assure you that everybody there was a patriotic. I only heard a couple of racist jokes. I also only heard a couple of people make death threats....the rest were fairly civilized. It is a movement about anger and there will be blood spilled if voices aren't heard. I think the Tea Party should get some seats in the House this year. Rush said Liberty was on the way out if the Dems and Libs get there way....I say the Tea Party is bringing it home. Sean said FREEDOM will ring from coast to coast and free speech is alive and well with the teabaggers. This country was founded by people that didn't want to pay taxes and that is what I am for....a tax free America with no government services or handouts. Beck said that the Framing Founders that Fathered the constitution would soil their pants if they saw this America. We are becoming Canada or worse yet France...soon we will only be the Swiss. We are screwed at that point. Get a bible and gun."
So there you have it. Their simple idea of balancing the budget may seem barmy, but it is common sense to many. Rather than ignoring the deficit, the answer is to cut the $ trillion military and security budget. No social programme needs to be cut. Unfortunately most US federal spending is welfare for the corporate sector, none more so than the 'defence' budget. Which brave patriot will stand up and say cut down this monstrous beast feeding on America? But if this comment represents the average tea party view, then it requires a strenuous fightback against it. No modern state can exist without taxes - this is no different than the promise of Osama bin Laden to take people back to the 7th century when only alms were paid to maintain the poor. It is a fantasy but a highly appealing one to Americans brought up believing in the rugged frontiersmen of old. I've heard it many times spoken by intelligent Americans.
The rich have had it all their way for a long time in America (as in most other so-called democracies). Now a fanatical reactionary group is on the rise. Compromise and appeasement will not work with this group. They will always take more, to achieve their agenda of a return to the early 19th century. The only question is what force or class in America can resist this, because it is nothing less than an intensification of class war against the poor and working/middle class. History shows this is typical of when a bourgeois society enters a severe crisis (think Germany in the 1920s). It is possible to imagine that the Bush era was merely a rehearsal for something much more radical to come.
In the 1930s the left and the working class were mobilised and FDR was elected as a populist democrat prepared to take on the rich oligarchy. In 2008 Obama was elected with the support of the financial oligarchy. Social democracy has been in retreat in the US since the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the election of Nixon in 1968. Democrats have never been the a party of the masses. Whereas FDR went on the offensive against the forces of reaction, Obama has been on the defensive from day one - he got elected saying he wanted to make peace with the Republicans and has never changed tact. The whole deficit 'drama' is something of a charade.
As one Chicago-ite puts it:
The "tea party" is rather small considering its effect on American politics. Even their largest rallies early on only drew a few thousand protesters, and most since have drawn mere dozens. However, the media has made sure to give complete coverage to every one of those rallies, making it look (on TV at least) as if they're a constant and overlarge presence. Meanwhile, left-leaning demonstrations and rallies numbering tens and hundreds of times as many go mainly unreported.
Furthermore, local security officials have also treated them with kid gloves, allowing them to openly carry firearms in the vicinity of the President, for example. Contrast this with the treatment of left wing protesters leading up to the 2008 Republican national convention, when organizers had their homes raided before the event, or the 2004 Republican convention, when protesters were rounded up en masse and detained without charges (on an NYC wharf) then later released with no due process whatsoever. Imagine how these tea party protesters would squawk if subjected to the treatment that left-leaning protesters deal with as a matter of course!
As to the money, the funding of the Koch brothers and many others is quite transparent. Pointing to Soros as a counterbalance is insufficient, since there are hundreds of deep-pocket donors on the right for every one of him.
They aren't a grassroots movement in any sense; their success is entirely driven by an establishment which has all but handed it to them.
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Death of a street vendor
It was just such an incident involving the death of a street vendor in Tunisia a few months ago that sparked the Arab revolutions. In that case, a street vendor immolated himself in protest at state harrassment. Last week in China, it was violence by state officials that sparked the protests.
Vendor’s death sparks riot in southern Chinese city
Thu, Jul 28, 2011 - Page 1
Angry residents in a southern Chinese city went on the rampage after officials reportedly beat to death a disabled fruit vendor, state media said yesterday, in the latest incident of social unrest in the world’s second-largest economy.
The China Daily said that thousands of people gathered on the streets of Anshun City in Guizhou Province on Tuesday afternoon, throwing stones at police and overturning a government vehicle.
The riot was sparked after urban management officers — a quasi-police force that enforces laws against begging and other petty offences — were suspected of beating the vendor to death, the newspaper said.
“The unidentified vendor died in front of the gate of a market ... which led to the gathering of the local people,” it cited a government statement as saying.
“Before the incident occurred, urban management officers were working in the area,” it added, saying the statement gave no other details.
The newspaper showed a picture of an urban management vehicle that had been overturned, along with smashed windows and doors that had been torn off.
Xinhua news agency said about 30 prοtesters and 10 police officers were injured in the unrest.
The elder brother of the dead man has “consented to [an] autopsy and asked police to seek justice,” it added. “Police are questioning six city management staff members involved in the case.”
Footage on China’s popular Youku.com Web site, the country’s answer to YouTube, showed a large crowd gathered in the street, and what seemed to be a body on the ground shaded by umbrellas.
An overturned vehicle could be seen in the distance, along with many police officers and a black armored car used by China’s riot police.
Reuters could not authenticate the footage, nor when it was taken. Calls to the Anshun government seeking comment went unanswered.
“It was a total mess,” one onlooker surnamed Jiang told the China Daily. “The people threw stones at the police officers and my feet were hit by flying rocks.”........
Vendor’s death sparks riot in southern Chinese city
Thu, Jul 28, 2011 - Page 1
Angry residents in a southern Chinese city went on the rampage after officials reportedly beat to death a disabled fruit vendor, state media said yesterday, in the latest incident of social unrest in the world’s second-largest economy.
The China Daily said that thousands of people gathered on the streets of Anshun City in Guizhou Province on Tuesday afternoon, throwing stones at police and overturning a government vehicle.
The riot was sparked after urban management officers — a quasi-police force that enforces laws against begging and other petty offences — were suspected of beating the vendor to death, the newspaper said.
“The unidentified vendor died in front of the gate of a market ... which led to the gathering of the local people,” it cited a government statement as saying.
“Before the incident occurred, urban management officers were working in the area,” it added, saying the statement gave no other details.
The newspaper showed a picture of an urban management vehicle that had been overturned, along with smashed windows and doors that had been torn off.
Xinhua news agency said about 30 prοtesters and 10 police officers were injured in the unrest.
The elder brother of the dead man has “consented to [an] autopsy and asked police to seek justice,” it added. “Police are questioning six city management staff members involved in the case.”
Footage on China’s popular Youku.com Web site, the country’s answer to YouTube, showed a large crowd gathered in the street, and what seemed to be a body on the ground shaded by umbrellas.
An overturned vehicle could be seen in the distance, along with many police officers and a black armored car used by China’s riot police.
Reuters could not authenticate the footage, nor when it was taken. Calls to the Anshun government seeking comment went unanswered.
“It was a total mess,” one onlooker surnamed Jiang told the China Daily. “The people threw stones at the police officers and my feet were hit by flying rocks.”........
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