Saving the Saudis

KC & Associates Investigations Research Associates
Quinault Valley Guns & Blades / Urban Escape & Evasion Course For 1st Responders
International Relations * Military * Terrorism * Business * Security
www.kcandassociates.org [email protected]
Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652
From the desk of Craig B Hulet?
Saving the Saudis
Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup
Murdoch’s NY Post Today Backs Michael Moore Bush-Saudi Claims from “Fahrenheit 911″
5 Places You May Not Know the U.S. Military Operates
Bush / Obama Crimes Exposed: Warning: Pictures of Torture You Are About To See Are Illegal”
The 6,000-Page Report on CIA Torture Has Now Been Suppressed for 1 Year
The FBI Goes To Disturbing Lengths to Set Up Potential Terrorists
Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders /27 years later,
CIA pilot tells of using secret Costa Rican airstrip to traffic guns, cocaine
White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership
Obama
administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement under which a single military official is
permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s cyberwarfare command despite an
external review panel’s recommendation against doing so, a panel Obama brought into being! According to
U.S. officials.
An Act of War: CIA Leak Gives “Incontrovertible Evidence” That 9/11 Was State
Sponsored
Mac Slavo
December 16th, 2013
If you have ever questioned the official narrative for the September 11th attacks then you have,
without a doubt, been dubbed a conspiracy nut by the establishment media and those who hang
on their every word.
Like the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination, the 9/11 Report assembled by a
Congressional investigation is unraveling and being revealed for what it really is – nothing more
than a cover story.
This is no longer a conspiracy theory… it’s conspiracy fact.
After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.
But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on
9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were
Saudi nationals.
It was kept secret and remains so today.
President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just
blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely
blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood
A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at
the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.
…
Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and
FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.
The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found
“incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi
hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom —
helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the
report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in
the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.
The New York Post investigation reveals that Saudi agents, officials and operatives in Virginia,
Florida, California and D.C. provided direct support by way funding or intelligence to those
involved in bringing down the towers.
Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker succinctly argues that this was, in fact, an act of war:
It’s obvious given what happened, the logistical and funding requirements and where the
hijackers came from along with inexplicable actions immediately following the attacks
– unless our government explicitly let certain people flee.
Yet we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan while helping the Saudis — the very people who
attacked us.
And Obama, to this day, kisses the Saudi King.
Over three thousands Americans are dead – yet President Obama bows to Saudi King Abdullah,
whose government had direct ties to 9/11 hijackers:
It makes a very convincing case that the Saudi Government was involved in an act of
war against the United States. Not simply terrorism — remember, the Pentagon, a military
target, was one of the locations hit. The other intended target for the plane that went down in PA
was the Capitol.
You awake yet America?
You damn well should be.
It’s about damn time that the mainstream media started talking about this — you’re only a
decade late, *******s. And no, people like myself who have been saying this all along are
not nuts.
We’re right.
In addition to this startling, yet unsurprising, revelation is even more evidence that those within
the Saudi government knew what was coming. Somebody made a ton of money shorting airline
stocks by positioning themselves for stock prices to crash in the aftermath of 9/11 and according
to Infowars, that may well have been the Chief of Saudi Intelligence and other government
officials. Moreover, after all flights within the continental United States were grounded there was
one – just one – airplane that was allowed to fly over U.S. soil to, you guessed it, Saudi Arabia.
On board that plane were – and this has been confirmed by an official Freedom of Information
request – the members of Osama Bin Laden’s extended family.
And these are but a few of the hundreds of inconsistencies surrounding the September 11th, 2001
attacks.
As it turns out, the “conspiracy theorists” are the ones who accurately detailed the series of
events and those involved in the attacks. The “official story” itself, it seems, is the “conspiracy
theory.”
They’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on securing the United States and preventing
another act of terror on U.S. soil. They’ve turned their massive surveillance infrastructure
inwards on the American people under the pretext of preserving our safety. They’ve identified
hundreds of thousands of Americans and included them on watch lists that restrict their travel or
flag them as potential threats to national security.
Yet the real threat, the one that has been validated by scores of reports and investigations, is
being redacted and ignored by our government.
We know that there is more to 9/11 than the official story.
It doesn’t just involve the Saudis. America’s air defense, for example, were seemingly disarmed
minutes before the attack occurred. Moreover, intelligence agents from Israel were reportedly
spotted in New York on the day of, arrested by NYPD, and then released under suspicious
circumstances.
All of this is highly suspect, especially that a mainstream news source like the New York Post
would start releasing these details to the general public. As with 9/11, most people couldn’t make
sense of it or why. A decade on we have a better perspective because we’ve seen the
implementation of initiatives all across America as a result of what happened that day.
Call it a conspiracy, call it whatever you like, but look around.
If they lied – yes, lied – about the assassination of a President of the United States, or about
Benghazi, or Fast and Furious, or the benefits of new health care laws, then what else are they
hiding from us? How much do you trust your government? How much do you trust the official
narrative peddled by the establishment? How much do you trust that the powers that be have our
best interests at heart?
The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible
evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level
diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both
financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy
in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but
an act of war.
"Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the
FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He
says it’s a coverup.
A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are absolutely shocked at
the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks. Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen
Lynch (D-Mass.) can’ reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’vee
proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report,
A Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of
September 11, 2001. These are credible men who should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Considering the circumstances I give their words even more weight. These men have seen the
redacted pages.
Saving the Saudis
Just days after 9/11, wealthy Saudi Arabians, including members of the bin Laden family,
were whisked out of the U.S. on private jets. No one will admit to clearing the flights, and
the passengers weren’t questioned. Did the Bush family’s long relationship with the Saudis
help make it happen?
By Craig Unger
On the morning of September 13, 2001, a 49-year-old private eye named Dan Grossi got an
unexpected call from the Tampa Police Department. Grossi had worked with the Tampa
force for 20 years before retiring, and it was not particularly unusual for the police to
recommend former officers for special security jobs. But Grossi’s new assignment was very
much out of the ordinary.
Two days earlier, terrorists had hijacked four airliners and carried out the worst atrocity in
American history. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers had been from Saudi Arabia. “The police had
been giving Saudi students protection since September 11,” Grossi recalls. “They asked if I
was interested in escorting these students from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky.”
Grossi was told to go to the airport, where a small charter jet would be available to take him
and the Saudis on their flight. He was dubious about the prospects of accomplishing his
task. “Quite frankly, I knew that everything was grounded,” he says. “I never thought this
was going to happen.” Even so, Grossi, who’d been asked to bring a colleague, phoned
Mañuel Perez, a former F.B.I. agent, to put him on alert. Perez was equally unconvinced. “I
said, ‘Forget about it,’” Perez recalls. “‘Nobody is flying today.’”
The two men had good reason to be skeptical. Within minutes of the attacks on 9/11, the
Federal Aviation Administration had sent out a special notification called a NOTAM—a
notice to airmen—ordering every airborne plane in the United States to land at the nearest
airport as soon as possible, and prohibiting planes on the ground from taking off. For the
next two days, commercial and private aviation throughout the entire United States ceased.
Former vice president Al Gore was stranded in Austria when his flight to the U.S. was
canceled. Bill Clinton postponed travel as well. Major-league baseball games were called off.
For the first time in a century, American skies were nearly as empty as they had been when
the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk.
Nevertheless, at 1:30 or 2 p.m. on the 13th, Dan Grossi received his phone call. He was told
the Saudis would be delivered to Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar at Tampa
International Airport.
When he and Perez met at the terminal, a woman laughed at Grossi for even thinking he
would be flying that day. Commercial flights had slowly begun to resume, but at 10:57 A.M.
the F.A.A. had issued another notice to airmen, a reminder that private aviation was still
prohibited. Three private planes violated the ban that day, and in each case a pair of jet
fighters quickly forced the aircraft down. As far as private planes were concerned, America
was still grounded. “I was told it would take White House approval,” says Grossi.
Then one of the pilots arrived. “Here’s your plane,” he told Grossi. “Whenever you’re ready
to go.”
Unbeknownst to Dan Grossi, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the 52-year-old Saudi Arabian
ambassador to the United States, had been in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about
140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, two
enormous families. One was the House of Saud, the family that rules the Royal Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia and that, owing to its vast oil reserves, is the richest family in the world. The
other was the ruling family’s friends and allies the bin Ladens, who, in addition to owning a
multi-billion-dollar construction conglomerate, had spawned the notorious terrorist Osama
bin Laden. Thanks to the bin Ladens’ extremely close relationship with the House of Saud,
the family’s huge construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, had won contracts to
restore the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, two of the greatest icons in all of Islam.
The repatriation of the Saudis is far more than just a case of wealthy Arabs being granted
special status by the White House under extraordinary conditions. For one thing, in the two
years since September 11, a number of highly placed Saudis, including both bin Ladens and
members of the royal family, have come under fire for their alleged roles in financing
terrorism. Four thousand relatives of the victims of 9/11 have filed a $1 trillion civil suit in
Washington, D.C., charging the House of Saud, the bin Ladens, and hundreds of others with
wrongful death, conspiracy, and racketeering for having contributed tens of millions of
dollars to charities that were al-Qaeda fronts. Newsweek has reported that Prince Bandar’s
wife, perhaps unwittingly, sent thousands of dollars to charities that ended up funding the
hijackers. In addition, F.B.I. documents marked “Secret” indicate that two members of the
bin Laden family, which has repeatedly distanced itself from Osama bin Laden, were under
investigation by the bureau for suspected associations with an Islamic charity designated as
a terrorist support group.
Most recently, in July, the administration asked Congress to withhold 28 pages of its official
report on 9/11. According to news reports, the classified section charges that there were ties
between the hijackers and two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who had
financial relationships with members of the Saudi government. Saudi officials deny that
their government was in any way linked to the attacks. The Saudis have asked that the pages
be declassified so they can refute them, but President Bush has refused.
Terrorism experts say that the Saudis who were in the U.S. immediately after the attacks
might have been able to shed light on the structure of al-Qaeda and to provide valuable
leads for investigating 9/11. And yet, according to sources who participated in the
repatriation, they left the U.S. without even being interviewed by the F.B.I.
Officially, the White House declined to comment, and a source inside asserted that the
flights never took place. However, former high-level Bush-administration officials have told
Vanity Fair otherwise.
How was it possible that, just as President Bush declared a no-holds-barred global war on
terror that would send hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and
just as Osama bin Laden became Public Enemy No. 1 and the target of a worldwide
manhunt, the White House would expedite the departure of so many potential witnesses,
including two dozen relatives of the man behind the attack itself?
The incident is particularly important in light of the special relationship the Saudis have
long had with the United States—and the Bush family in particular. For decades, Saudi
Arabia has been one of America’s two most powerful allies in the Middle East, not to
mention an enormous source of oil. The Bush family and the House of Saud, the two most
powerful dynasties in the world, have had close personal, business, and political ties for
more than 20 years. In the 80s, when the elder Bush was vice president, he and Prince
Bandar became personal friends. Together, they lobbied through massive U.S. arms sales to
the Saudis and participated in critical foreign-policy ventures. In the 1991 Gulf War, the
Saudis and the elder Bush were allies.
In the private sector, the Saudis supported Harken Energy, a struggling oil company in
which George W. Bush was an investor. Most recently, former president George H. W. Bush
and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, his longtime ally, have appeared before
Saudis at fund-raisers for the Carlyle Group, arguably the biggest private equity firm in the
world. Today, former president Bush continues to serve as a senior adviser to the firm,
whose investors allegedly include a Saudi accused of ties to terrorist support groups.
“It’s always been very clear that there are deep ties between the Bush family and the
Saudis,” says Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.,
foundation that examines issues of ethics in government. “It creates a credibility problem.
When it comes to the war on terror, a lot of people have to be wondering why we are
concerned about some countries and not others. Why does Saudi Arabia get a pass?”
On a humid July day, Nail al-Jubeir, director of information for Saudi Arabia, sits in his
office in the Saudi Embassy in Washington and recalls the morning of September 11, 2001.
Like many people, al-Jubeir was on his way to work that morning, and as soon as he heard
that a second plane had crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, he realized
that terrorists had attacked.
Over the next few days, the Saudi Embassy was in turmoil. Innocent Saudi citizens in the
United States were arrested. “That created an issue,” al-Jubeir says. “How do we protect the
Saudis who are being rounded up? Our concern was the safety of Saudis here in the United
States.”
Initially, Prince Bandar had hoped that early reports of the Saudi role in the attacks had
been exaggerated—after all, al-Qaeda terrorist operatives were known to use false passports.
But at 10 p.m. on the evening of September 12, about 36 hours after the attacks, a highranking C.I.A. official—according to Newsweek, it was probably C.I.A. director George
Tenet—phoned Bandar and gave him the bad news: 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.
After two decades as ambassador, Bandar had long been the most recognizable figure from
his country in America. Widely known as “the Arab Gatsby,” with his trimmed goatee and
tailored double-breasted suits, Bandar embodied the contradictions of the modern, jetsetting, Western-leaning member of the royal House of Saud. He knew that public relations
had never been more crucial for the Saudis.
With the help of P.R. giant Burson-Marsteller, Bandar launched an international media
blitz. He placed ads in newspapers across the country condemning the attacks and
disassociating Saudi Arabia from them. On TV, he hammered home the same points: Saudi
Arabia would support America in its fight against terrorism. The hijackers could not even be
considered real Saudis, he asserted, because “we in the kingdom, the government and the
people of Saudi Arabia, refuse to have any person affiliated with terrorism to be connected
to our country.” That included Osama bin Laden, Bandar said, since the government had
taken away his passport in response to his terrorist activities.
Osama bin Laden, however, was a Saudi, and not just any Saudi. Bandar knew the members
of his prominent family well. “They’re really lovely human beings,” he told CNN. “[Osama]
is the only one.... I met him only once. The rest of them are well-educated, successful
businessmen, involved in a lot of charities. It is—it is tragic.... He’s caused them a lot of
pain.”
The bin Laden family neatly exemplifies the dilemma the United States faces in its relations
with Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, the bin Ladens are products of Wahhabi
fundamentalism, a puritanical Islamic sect that has helped make Saudi Arabia a fertile
breeding ground for terrorists. Contrary to popular belief, Osama was not the only member
of the immense bin Laden family—there are more than 50 siblings—with ties to militant
Islamic fundamentalists. As early as 1979, Mahrous bin Laden, an older half-brother of
Osama’s, had befriended members of the militant Muslim Brotherhood and had played,
perhaps unwittingly, a key role in the Mecca Affair, a violent uprising against the House of
Saud in 1979 which resulted in more than 100 deaths.
Later, the Saudi Binladin Group became part of what was known as “the Golden Chain,” a
list of wealthy Saudis who nurtured al-Qaeda at its inception in the late 80s, some time
before it was perceived as an international threat.
On the other hand, the bin Ladens years ago had disassociated themselves from Osama and
his horrific terrorist acts. These were the Saudi billionaires who banked with Citigroup,
invested with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, and did business with such icons of
Western culture as Disney, Snapple, and Porsche.
The young bin Ladens and members of the House of Saud who were living in the United
States in September 2001 were mostly students attending high school or college and young
professionals. Several bin Ladens had attended Tufts University, near Boston. Sana bin
Laden had graduated from Wheelock College, in Boston. Abdullah bin Laden, a younger
brother of Osama’s, was a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School and had offices in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two bin Ladens—Mohammed and Nawaf—owned units in the
Flagship Wharf condominium complex on Boston Harbor.
Wafah (sometimes spelled Waffa) Binladin, a 26-year-old graduate of Columbia Law School,
lived in a $6,000-a-month loft in New York’s SoHo and was considering pursuing a singing
career. Partial to hip Manhattan nightspots and restaurants such as Lotus, the Mercer
Kitchen, and Pravda, she happened to be in London on September 11 and did not return to
the United States. Kameron bin Laden, in his 30s and a cousin of Osama’s, also frequented
Manhattan nightclubs and, less than two months after 9/11, reportedly spent nearly
$30,000 in a single day at Prada’s Fifth Avenue boutique. He elected to stay in the United
States. But half-brother Khalil Binladin decided to go back to Jidda. Khalil, who has a
Brazilian wife, had been appointed Brazil’s honorary consul in Jidda, though he also owns a
sprawling 20-acre estate in Winter Garden, Florida, near Orlando.
As for the Saudi royal family, its members were scattered across the United States. Some
had gone to Lexington, Kentucky, for the September horse auctions, which were suspended
on September 11 but resumed the next day. Saudi prince Ahmed Salman, a regular in
Lexington, stayed and bought two horses for $1.2 million on September 12. “I am a
businessman,” Salman said. “I have nothing to do with the other stuff. I feel as badly as any
American.”
Others felt more personally threatened. Shortly after the attacks, one of Osama bin Laden’s
brothers frantically called the Saudi Embassy in Washington seeking protection. He was
given a room at the Watergate Hotel and told not to open the door. King Fahd, the aging and
infirm Saudi monarch, sent a message to his emissaries in Washington: “Take measures to
protect the innocent.”
If any foreign diplomat had the clout to pull strings at the White House in the midst of a
grave national-security crisis, it was Prince Bandar. The Saudis were famously adept at
currying favor with U.S. administrations—they have contributed to every presidential
library built in the past 30 years—but no one did it better than Bandar. He had played
racquetball with Colin Powell years earlier. He had run covert operations for the late C.I.A.
director Bill Casey that were kept secret even from President Ronald Reagan. He was the
man who had stashed away dozens of locked attaché cases that held some of the deepest
secrets in the intelligence world.
But it was his intimate friendship with the Bushes that truly set him apart. When George H.
W. Bush became vice president in 1981, Bandar saw him for what he was—a Texas oilman
who had enormous respect for the Saudis’ vast oil reserves and was not a knee-jerk defender
of Israel. The two began to have lunch regularly, and in the mid-80s, at a time when the
press was assailing Bush as a “wimp,” Bandar staged an extravagant soirée in his honor.
After Bush became president in 1989, Bandar acted as an envoy between him and Saddam
Hussein, assuring Bush that the U.S. could count on Saddam to provide a bulwark against
extremist Islamic fundamentalism. In August 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bandar
joined Bush at the president’s family retreat in Kennebunk-port, Maine, where the two men
discussed going to war together against Saddam. A few months later, at Bush’s urging,
Bandar persuaded King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to join Bush as an ally in the Gulf War. In
1992, Bandar took Bush’s defeat by Bill Clinton as a personal loss. And after the 2000
election, Bandar flew off on his Airbus jet to go hunting in Spain with former president
Bush, General Norman Schwarzkopf, and former national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft.
Now, in the wake of 9/11, the Saudi-U.S. relationship was being tested, and Bandar went
into overdrive. For the 48 hours after the attacks, he stayed in constant contact with
Secretary of State Colin Powell and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Before 9/11, coincidentally, President Bush had invited Bandar to come to the White House
on September 13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process. The meeting went ahead
as scheduled, but in the wake of the terrorist attacks the political landscape had changed
dramatically. According to The New Yorker, Bush told Bandar at the meeting that the U.S.
would hand over to the Saudis any captured al-Qaeda operative who could not be made to
cooperate, implying that the Saudis could use any means necessary to get suspects to talk.
Nail al-Jubeir says he does not know if Prince Bandar and the president discussed getting
the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
But the job began to get done all the same. In Tampa, on the same day that Bandar and
Bush were meeting in the White House, private investigator Dan Grossi says, he and Mañuel
Perez waited until three Saudi men, all apparently in their early 20s, arrived. Then the pilot
took Grossi, Perez, and the Saudis to a well-appointed eight-passenger Learjet. They
departed for Lexington, Kentucky, at about 4:30 p.m.
Grossi did not get the names of the students he was escorting. “It happened so fast,” he says.
“I just knew they were Saudis. They were well connected. One of them told me his father or
his uncle was good friends with George Bush Sr.”
Both the Tampa Tribune and sources familiar with the flight say that one of the young men
was either the son or nephew of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi minister of defense
and Prince Bandar’s father. Another passenger was said to have been the son of a Saudi
army commander. But the Saudi Embassy declined to confirm their identities. The Tribune
reported that the request to repatriate the Saudis had been made by a different Saudi royal,
Prince Sultan bin Fahad.
According to Grossi, about an hour and 45 minutes after takeoff they landed at Blue Grass
Airport in Lexington. There the Saudis were greeted by an American who took custody of
them and helped them with their baggage. On the tarmac was a Boeing 747 with Arabic
writing on it, apparently waiting to take them back to Saudi Arabia. “My understanding is
that there were other Saudis in Kentucky buying racehorses at that time, and they were
going to fly back together,” Grossi says.
The Tampa-to-Lexington flight, which was reported in the Tampa Tribune in October 2001,
is the only documented incident in which Saudis had been granted access to American
airspace when U.S. citizens were still restricted from flying privately—access that required
special government approval.
How did the phantom flight from Tampa get permission to take off? At the time, the F.A.A.
denied the flight had taken place at all. “It’s not in our logs,” Chris White, a spokesman for
the F.A.A., told the Tampa Tribune. “It didn’t occur.” On the record, the White House
declined to comment, but privately a source there said the administration was confident
that no secret flights took place and that there was no evidence to suggest that the White
House had authorized such flights. According to Nail al-Jubeir, however, the repatriation
had been approved “at the highest level of the U.S. government.”
The process began in the bowels of the White House. At the time, the Bush administration
was holed up in the Situation Room, a small underground suite with a plush, 18-by-18-foot
conference room in the West Wing. Live links connected the room’s occupants to the F.B.I.,
the State Department, and other relevant agencies. Vice President Dick Cheney, NationalSecurity Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other officials hunkered down and devoured
intelligence, hoping to ascertain if other terrorist attacks had been planned. The most
powerful officials in the administration came and went, among them Colin Powell, C.I.A.
director George Tenet, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Within the cramped confines of that room, the White House terrorism czar, Richard Clarke,
the head of the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council, chaired
an ongoing crisis group making hundreds of decisions related to the attacks. A true
Washington rarity, Clarke was a civil servant who had ascended to the highest levels of
policymaking. As characterized in The Age of Sacred Terror, by Daniel Benjamin and
Steven Simon, Clarke was a man who broke all the rules. Beholden to neither Republicans
nor Democrats, he refused to attend regular National Security Council staff meetings, sent
insulting e-mails to his colleagues, and regularly worked outside normal bureaucratic
channels. One of only two senior directors from the administration of the elder George Bush
who were kept by Bill Clinton, Clarke, abrasive as he was, had continued to rise because of
his genius for knowing when and how to push the levers of power.
In the days immediately after 9/11—he doesn’t remember exactly when—Clarke was
approached in the Situation Room about quickly repatriating the Saudis.
“Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis,
including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country,” Clarke says. “My role was to
say that it can’t happen until the F.B.I. approves it. And so the F.B.I. was asked—we had a
live connection to the F.B.I.—and we asked the F.B.I. to make sure that they were satisfied
that everybody getting on that plane was someone that it was O.K. to leave. And they came
back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, ‘Fine, let it happen.’” Clarke, who has
since left the government and now runs a consulting firm in Virginia, adds that he does not
recall who initiated the request, but that it was probably either the F.B.I. or the State
Department. Both agencies deny playing any role whatsoever in the episode. “It did not
come out of this place,” says one source at the State Department. “The likes of Prince
Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done.”
“I can say unequivocally that the F.B.I. had no role in facilitating these flights one way or
another,” says Special Agent John Iannarelli, the F.B.I.’s spokesman on counterterrorism
activities.
With just three Saudis on it, the Tampa flight was hardly the only mysterious trip under
way. All over the country, members of the extended bin Laden family, the House of Saud,
and their associates were assembling in various locations.
According to The New York Times, bin Laden family members were driven or flown under
F.B.I. supervision first to a secret assembly point in Texas and later to Washington. From
there, the Times reported, they left the country when airports reopened on September 14.
The F.B.I. has said the Times report is “erroneous.”
Meanwhile, the Saudis had at least two other planes on call. Starting in Los Angeles on an
undetermined date, one of them flew first to Orlando, Florida, where Khalil bin Laden
boarded. From Orlando, the plane continued to Dulles International Airport, outside
Washington, D.C., before going on to Boston’s Logan International Airport on September
19, picking up members of the bin Laden family along the way. Other stops for the Saudis
are said to have included Houston, Cleveland, and Newark. Altogether, about 140 Saudis
were on the flights, according to an F.B.I. source.
By this time, the lockdown on air travel had begun to lift. The F.A.A. was allowing airlines to
operate as long as they followed certain security rules. Private aviation was subject to more
constraints, but even there the F.A.A. had begun to allow flights by charter-service planes
when the pilots filed flight plans. The F.A.A. has given all its records of air travel during the
period in question to the Department of Homeland Security. A Freedom of Information Act
request has been filed, but the documents have not yet been released.
Richard Clarke’s approval for repatriating the Saudis had been conditional upon the F.B.I.’s
vetting them. “I asked [the F.B.I.] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving,” he
says. “I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event—to Saudis leaving the
country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying.” Clarke adds that he assumed the
F.B.I. had vetted the bin Ladens prior to September 11. “I have no idea if they did a good
job,” he says. “I’m not in any position to second-guess the F.B.I.”
In fact, the F.B.I. had been keeping an eye on some of the bin Ladens. A classified F.B.I. file
examined by Vanity Fair and marked “Secret” shows that as early as 1996 the bureau had
spent nearly nine months investigating Abdullah and Omar bin Laden, who were involved
with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a charity that
has published writings by Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb, one of Osama bin Laden’s
intellectual influences. But, according to Dale Watson, the F.B.I.’s former head of
counterterrorism, such investigations into Saudis in the United States were the exception.
“If allegations came up, they were looked into,” he says. “But a blanket investigation into
Saudis here did not take place.”
At times, the Saudis who had assembled for departure tried to get the planes to leave before
the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them. “I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar’s
office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane,” says one
F.B.I. agent. “Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that that plane was
not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it.”
In the end, the F.B.I. decided it was simply not practical to conduct full-blown
investigations. “They were identified,” says Dale Watson, “but they were not subject to
serious interviews or interrogations.” The bureau has declined to release their identities.
Some participants in the repatriation insist that the failure to interview the Saudis was
insignificant, and, indeed, a persuasive case can be made that neither the bin Ladens nor the
Saudi royals would have knowingly aided terrorists. “For groups like al-Qaeda, their
objective is to overthrow the Saudi government,” says Nail al-Jubeir, the Saudi Embassy
spokesperson. “People say we pay [al-Qaeda] off, but that’s simply not the case. Why would
we support people who want to overthrow our own government?”
Most of those who were leaving were either students or young businessmen. The bin
Ladens, moreover, had forcefully broken with Osama by issuing a statement expressing
“condemnation of this sad event, which resulted in the loss of many innocent men, women,
and children, and which contradicts our Islamic faith.” An F.B.I. agent says that they had a
right to leave and that being related to Osama did not constitute grounds for investigation.
But 9/11 was arguably the biggest crime in American history. Nearly 3,000 people had been
killed. A global manhunt of unprecedented proportions was under way. Attorney General
John Ashcroft had asserted that the government had “a responsibility to use every legal
means at our disposal to prevent further terrorist activity by taking people into custody who
have violated the law and who may pose a threat to America.” All over the country Arabs
were being rounded up and interrogated. By the weekend after the attacks, Ashcroft had
already proposed broadening the F.B.I.’s power to arrest foreigners, wiretap them, and trace
money-laundering to terrorists. Hundreds of people were detained by the government while
U.S. agents performed extensive background checks. Some were held for as long as 10
months at the American naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba.
“It’s a natural part of any investigation to seek out people who know the alleged suspect in
the murder,” says John L. Martin, who, as chief of internal security in the Criminal Division
of the Justice Department, supervised the investigation and prosecution of national-security
offenses for 18 years. “In the case of the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald’s family,
including his wife and mother, while not culpable, were looked upon for information about
his background. In the case of Timothy McVeigh, McVeigh’s family became a center of
attention.”
How could officials bypass such an elemental and routine part of an investigation during an
unprecedented national-security catastrophe? At the very least, wouldn’t relatives have been
able to provide some information about Osama’s finances, associates, or supporters?
A number of experienced investigators expressed surprise that the Saudis had not been
interviewed. “Certainly it would be my expectation that they would do that,” says Oliver
“Buck” Revell, former associate deputy director of the F.B.I.
“Here you have an attack with substantial links to Saudi Arabia,” John Martin says. “You
would want to talk to people in the Saudi royal family and the Saudi government,
particularly since they have pledged cooperation.”
Did a simple disclaimer from the bin Laden family mean that no one in the entire family had
any contacts or useful information whatsoever? Not long after 9/11, Carmen bin Laden, an
estranged sister-in-law of Osama’s, told ABC News that she thought members of the family
might have given money to Osama. Osama’s brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa was
widely reported to be an important figure in al-Qaeda and was accused of having ties to the
1993 World Trade Center bombing, to the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and to
the funding of a Philippine terrorist group. (Khalifa was rumored to be in the Philippines in
September 2001.) Khalil bin Laden, who boarded a plane in Orlando that eventually took
him back to Saudi Arabia, won the attention of Brazilian investigators for possible terrorist
connections. According to a Brazilian paper, he had business connections in the Brazilian
province of Minas Gerais, not far from the tri-border region, an alleged center for training
terrorists.
Then there were the secret F.B.I. documents detailing Abdullah and Omar bin Laden’s
involvement with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. Indian officials and the Philippine
military have both cited WAMY for funding terrorism in Kashmir and the Philippines.
“WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity,” says a security official who served under
George W. Bush. “There’s no doubt about it.”
F.B.I. officials declined to comment on the investigation, which was reported in Britain’s
The Guardian, but the documents show that the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened
on September 19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was still under way. “These documents
show there was an open F.B.I. investigation into these guys at the time of their departure,”
says David Armstrong, an investigator for the Public Education Center, the Washington,
D.C., foundation that obtained the documents.
In the 1980s, with the support of the American government, the House of Saud and
prominent Saudi businessmen had eagerly contributed to the fight against the Soviets in
Afghanistan by sending money and weapons to Islamic-fundamentalist rebels who were
battling alongside local mujahideen forces. Both the Saudis and the Americans supported
these militants. But after helping to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, these guerrillas, led
by Osama bin Laden, morphed into the terrorist network known as al-Qaeda. Vexing
questions remain about the extent to which the Saudis continued to support militant Islamic
fundamentalism after bin Laden and al-Qaeda began attacking U.S. targets in the 1990s.
During the Clinton administration, the Saudis repeatedly resisted attempts by the United
States to track the funding of terrorism within the kingdom. According to Richard Clarke,
who led that initiative, there were several reasons for resistance from the Saudis. “Some of
them were clearly sympathetic to al-Qaeda,” he says. “Some of them thought that if they
allowed a certain degree of cooperation with al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda would leave them alone.
And some of them were merely reacting in a knee-jerk, instinctive way to what they believed
was interference in their internal affairs.”
Again and again, the U.S. Treasury Department has gone after the directors of various
Islamic charities for providing support to terrorists. In October 2002 the Council on Foreign
Relations asserted that, more than a year after 9/11, al-Qaeda continued to raise funds from
wealthy Saudi supporters.
Last November, Newsweek reported that thousands of dollars in charitable gifts from
Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, had indirectly ended up in the hands of two of the
September 11 hijackers. And many members of the royal family, along with several members
of the bin Laden family, are now defendants in the $1 trillion class-action lawsuit filed on
behalf of 4,000 relatives of 9/11 victims.
Documents filed in the suit allege that Prince Bandar’s father, Defense Minister Prince
Sultan, has contributed at least $6 million since 1994 to four charities that finance Osama
bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Sultan’s own attorneys acknowledge that for 16 consecutive years
he approved annual payments of about $266,000 to the International Islamic Relief
Organization—a Saudi charity whose U.S. offices were raided by federal agents. Casey
Cooper, an attorney for Prince Sultan, says, “The allegations have no merit.” He adds that
Prince Sultan authorized the grants as part of his official governmental duties and did not
knowingly fund terrorism.
The allegation against Prince Sultan is just one of hundreds included in the lawsuit. In
addition to Osama bin Laden, the family company, the Saudi Binladin Group, has been
named as a defendant in the suit. At the heart of the allegations is the charge that the
defendants knew some of their money was going to al-Qaeda and therefore had some
responsibility for the September 11 attacks.
Many of the Saudis acknowledge that they contributed to the charities in question but say
they had no knowledge that the money would end up in the hands of al-Qaeda. “The biggest
problem we have with Saudi charities is poor and sloppy management,” says Nail al-Jubeir.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys do not consider that a satisfactory answer. In addition, they believe
that, by interviewing the bin Ladens and members of the royal family before they left the
country, the government could have answered some key questions. “They should have been
asked whether they had contacts or knew of any other Saudi contacts with Osama bin
Laden,” says Allan Gerson, co—lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case. “What did they
know about the financing of al-Qaeda? What did they know about the use of charitable
institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere as conduits for terrorism financing? Why was the
Saudi government not responsive to U.S. pleas in 1999 and 2000 that they stop turning a
blind eye to terrorist financing through Saudi banks and charities?”
All of which leads to the question of who made the decision to let the Saudis go. And why?
Could the long-standing relationship between the Saudis and the Bush family have
influenced the administration?
National-security experts such as Richard Clarke find that suggestion dubious. “Prince
Bandar played a very key role during the first Gulf War,” Clarke says. “He was very close to
the Bush family. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that he plays that role now. There’s a
realization that we have to work with the government we’ve got in Saudi Arabia. The
alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to
be more hostile—in fact, extremely hostile—to the U.S. That’s probably the reason the
administration treats it the way it does—not any personal relationship.” With the war on
terror getting under way, the U.S. wanted Saudi cooperation, and repatriation was clearly a
high priority at the highest levels of the kingdom.
Still, the Bush-Saudi relationship raises serious questions, if only because it is so
extraordinary for two presidents to share such a long and rich personal history with any
foreign power, much less one that is both as vital to U.S. economic interests and as
troublesome as Saudi Arabia.
It began in the mid-70s, when two young Saudi billionaires—Salem bin Laden, Osama’s
older brother and the head of the Saudi Binladin Group, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, a
billionaire Saudi banker—first came to Texas hoping to forge political relationships. To
represent their American interests, they chose a Houston businessman named James R.
Bath, who knew George W. Bush from the Texas Air National Guard. Bath invested $50,000
in Bush’s new oil company, Arbusto. He denies, however, that his investment represented
the Saudis’ interests.
In 1986, George W. Bush sold the latest incarnation of his failing oil company to Harken
Energy, an independent Texas oil company that was struggling itself, and took a seat on its
board of directors. By then, Khalid bin Mahfouz had become the largest stockholder in the
Bank of Commerce & Credit International, or B.C.C.I., an international bank which financed
drug dealers, terrorists, and covert operations and which became known as the most corrupt
financial institution in history.
Once Bush was with Harken, a phantom courtship by Khalid bin Mahfouz and B.C.C.I.
began. Neither George W. Bush nor Harken ever had any direct contact with bin Mahfouz or
B.C.C.I. Yet once Bush took his seat on the board, wonderful things started to happen to
Harken—new investments, unexpected sources of financing, serendipitous drilling rights.
Among those with links to B.C.C.I. who came to Harken’s aid were the Arkansas investment
bank Stephens Inc., Saudi investor Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, and the Emir of Bahrain, who
unexpectedly awarded Harken exclusive offshore drilling rights. In 1991, a Wall Street
Journal investigation into Harken’s B.C.C.I. ties concluded, “The number of B.C.C.I.connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on
board—likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a
presidential son.”
After George H. W. Bush and James Baker returned to the private sector in 1993, they
finally began to reap the benefits of their friendship with the Saudis. That year, Baker took a
position as senior counselor with the Carlyle Group, the $16 billion private-equity firm. Two
years later, Bush signed on as senior adviser. In 1998, former British prime minister John
Major joined the firm as well.
On several occasions, Bush, Baker, and Major flew to Saudi Arabia with Carlyle executives to
meet with and speak before members of the royal family and wealthy businessmen such as
the bin Ladens and the bin Mahfouzes, Saudi Arabia’s richest banking family.
As world leaders who had defended the Saudis during the Gulf War, Bush, Baker, and Major
had the potential to be star rainmakers for Carlyle, and the firm’s practices allowed them to
do so without sullying their hands by asking for money directly. “Bush’s speeches are about
what it’s like to be a former president, and what it’s like to be the father of a president,” says
Carlyle C.E.O. David Rubenstein. “He doesn’t talk about Carlyle or solicit investors.” After
Bush’s speeches, Rubenstein and his fund-raising team would come in for the money.
“Carlyle wanted to open up doors,” one observer told The Independent, “and they bring in
Bush and Major, who saved the Saudis’ ass in the Gulf War. If you got these guys coming in
... those companies are going to have it pretty good.” Rubenstein says Bush and Baker were
not given special treatment in Saudi Arabia. “They were well received there, as they are
throughout the world.”
A source close to the Saudi government says that the royal family viewed investing in the
Carlyle Group as a way to show gratitude to President Bush for defending the Saudis in the
Gulf War. “George Bush or James Baker would meet with all the big guys in the royal
family,” the source says. “Indirectly, the message was ‘I’d appreciate it if you put some
money in the Carlyle Group.’”
According to The Washington Post, Prince Bandar was among those who invested. In 1995
the bin Ladens joined in. Khalid bin Mahfouz’s sons Abdulrahman and Sultan became
investors as well, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky. Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz was
a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury
Department as “an al-Qaeda front.” “Abdulrahman and Sultan made an investment in one
of the Carlyle funds in 1995 which is in the neighborhood of $30 million,” Sedky wrote in an
e-mail. “The investment is held for their benefit by Sami Ba’arma,” an investment manager
who has often worked with the bin Mahfouz family. Sedky added that the bin Mahfouz
family condemns terrorism and denies that funds it has given to charities have been used to
finance terror. Carlyle categorically denies that the bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever
been investors. Reached on vacation in Michigan, Cherif Sedky stood by his original
statement. “I assume that Carlyle has records of investments from somebody on the bin
Mahfouz side, whether it is with Sami Ba’arma as a nominee or someone else,” he said. He
added that Ba’arma was a first cousin of the bin Mahfouz brothers.
In all, Carlyle officials say that the Saudis have invested $80 million in the firm. It is unclear
how much of that was raised following meetings attended by former president George Bush
or James Baker. The bin Ladens put $2 million in the Carlyle Partners II Fund, a relatively
small sum that was said to be part of a larger package. One family member, Shafig bin
Laden, was attending an investor conference held by the Carlyle Group in Washington on
September 11, 2001. But after the attacks of that day, Carlyle bought out the bin Ladens’
interest. “At first I felt it was unfair to blame the other 53 half-siblings because of this guy
they haven’t seen in 10 years,” Rubenstein says. “But then I realized, life isn’t fair at times.”
There is no evidence to suggest that Carlyle played any role in the repatriation of the Saudis,
but public advocates argue that the Bush-Saudi ties create at least the appearance of a
conflict of interest. “You would be less inclined to do anything forceful or dynamic if you are
tied in with them financially,” says the Center for Public Integrity’s Charles Lewis. “That’s
common sense.”
On September 18, 2001, a specially re-configured Boeing 727 flew at least five members of
the bin Laden family back to Saudi Arabia from Logan airport.
On September 19, President Bush’s speechwriting team was working on a stirring address to
be delivered the next day, officially declaring a global war on terror. “Our war on terror …
will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and
defeated,” he would vow. At the Pentagon, planning was already under way to take this new
war on terror all the way to Iraq.
That same day, the plane that had originated in Los Angeles and made stops at Orlando and
Dulles airports arrived at Logan. It is unclear how many members of the bin Laden family or
other Saudis had boarded prior to its arrival in Boston, but once it landed, at least 11
additional bin Laden relatives boarded the aircraft.
At the time, Logan was in chaos. The airport was reeling from criticism that its security
failures had allowed the hijackings to take place. After all, the two hijacked planes that had
crashed into the World Trade Center had departed from Logan. As a result, exceptional
measures were now being taken. Several thousand cars were towed from the airport’s
parking garages. “We didn’t know if they were booby-trapped or what,” says Tom Kinton,
director of aviation at Logan.
The F.A.A. had allowed commercial flights to resume on September 13, as long as they
complied with new security measures. Logan, however, because of various security issues,
did not reopen until September 15, two days later. Even then, air traffic resumed slowly. So
when a call came into Logan’s Emergency Operations Center in the early afternoon of
September 19 saying that the charter aircraft was going to pick up members of the bin Laden
family, Kinton was incredulous. “We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history,”
he says, “and here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens!”
Bush, Baker, and Major flew to Saudi Arabia with Carlyle executives to meet with members
of the royal family.
Like Kinton, Virginia Buckingham, then the head of the Massachusetts Port Authority,
which oversees Logan, was stunned. “My staff was told that a private jet was arriving at
Logan from Saudi Arabia to pick up 14 members of Osama bin Laden’s family living in the
Boston area,” she later wrote in The Boston Globe. “‘Does the F.B.I. know?’ staffers
wondered. ‘Does the State Department know? Why are they letting these people go? Have
they questioned them?’ This was ridiculous.”
Only a few days earlier, some planes, such as the one carrying a heart to be transplanted to a
deathly ill cardiac patient in Olympia, Washington, had been forced down in midflight.
According to F.B.I. spokesman John Iannarelli, F.B.I. counterterrorism agents pursuing the
investigation were stranded all over the country, unable to fly for several days. Yet now the
same counterterrorism unit was effectively acting as a chaperone for the Saudis.
Astonishingly, the repatriation was routed through Logan and Newark, two of the airports
where, just a few days earlier, the hijackings had originated.
As the bin Ladens began to approach Boston, the top brass at Logan airport were agog at
what was taking place. But federal law did not allow them much leeway to restrict individual
flights. “I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington,” says Tom Kinton. “This
was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had
been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal
authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come.”
Kinton and his co-workers were also told to let the other bin Ladens board and to allow the
plane to leave and return to Saudi Arabia. As Virginia Buckingham put it, “Under the cover
of darkness, they did.”
It was an inauspicious start to the just-declared war on terror. “What happened on
September 11 was a horrific crime,” says John Martin, the former Justice Department
official. “It was an act of war. And the answer is no, this is not any way to go about
investigating it.”
Craig Unger is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.
Murdoch’s NY Post Today Backs Michael Moore Bush-Saudi Claims from “Fahrenheit 911″
by Roger Friedman - December 15, 2013
UPDATE- Paul Sperry responds: “Unger and Moore have their own agendas. mine aligns with the
FBI WFO case agents and FCPD* detectives who say they’ll never forgive the Bush admin for
throttling their investigation of leads back to Saudi Embassy and Bandar himself in McLean. they
view the former POTUS as a traitor.”
Earlier this afternoon:
Shock: today’s Murdoch owned highly conservative New York Post features an opinion piece
backing Michael Moore‘s Bush-Saudi claims from “Fahrenheit 911.” It’s the main story on the Post’s
website with a huge photo and prominent placement. The story is also featured in a color block
headline on the front page of today’s paper.
Moore must get a lot of satisfaction out of this. It’s only taken a decade for a conservative pundit
writing in a conservative newspaper to endorse his movie.
Indeed, Paul Sperry’s editorial is a direct echo of a 2003 Vanity Fair story by Craig Unger, author
of the book that was the underlying information for the Oscar winning movie. That book was called
“House of Bush, House of Saud” and it still available for Kindle. The Vanity Fair article was called
Saving the Saudis, publishing ten years ago. Here’s the link:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2003/10/saving-the-saudis-200310
Today’s piece by Sperry is shocking first because he is a conservative. But second, Sperry’s piece
questions why huge portions of a Congressional report about 9/11 remain redacted– blacked out–in
his piece called “Inside the Saudi Cover Up.” http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911coverup/
The story could just as easily have been called “Inside the Bush Cover Up.” It’s amazing that NY
Post editor Col Allan ran it, and that Rupert Murdoch would have approved it. The Post has always
mocked Michael Moore, and certainly backed George W. Bush endlessly.
For conservatives, Sperry suddenly endorsing Moore and Unger and “Fahrenheit 911″ has to be a
slap in the face.
Sperry writes:
“President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blackedout here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except
for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000
words).
A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the
level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.”
He adds:
“Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the
United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made
the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with
the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the
attacks.”
Even stranger, the NY Post via Sperry is now featuring Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida.
Sperry writes: “Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has
asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released.
He says it’s a “coverup.”
Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup
By Paul Sperry December 15, 2013 | 5:13am
September 11
Negligence not cause of 3rd WTC collapse: court
9/11 cop's kidney plea
Former CIA Deputy Director gets book deal
Warren Buffett's 9/11 payday
After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.
But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11
dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi
nationals.
It was kept secret and remains so today.
President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just
blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely
blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by
comparison is about 1,000 words).
A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at
the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.
Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it
without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President
Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community
Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”
Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and
FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.
The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible
evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level
diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both
financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi
embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act
of terrorism, but an act of war.
The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a
minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks
inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast:
LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance
team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they
arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi
intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left
the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi
Arabia after 9/11.)
SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a
forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided
rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would
later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb.
They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the
attacks.)
WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling
some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the
checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way
into the hijackers’ hands.
Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004
Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client.
The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled
Bandar.
“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with
the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal
reasons.”
FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again
— this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from
the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam,
Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to
help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.
Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in
Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also
served as the official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy
sites.
Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.
As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudisponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi
representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the
previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.
HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen
checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers
who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel.
Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,”
one agent recalled. (Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report,
which clears the Saudis.)
SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned
by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the
connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags
matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi
luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the
driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.
Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the
FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He
says it’s a “coverup.”
Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called
off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House
and FBI responses to the attacks.
Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from
the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar
made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he
met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while
discussing the attacks.
Bill Doyle, who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks and heads the Coalition of 9/11
Families, calls the suppression of Saudi evidence a “coverup beyond belief.” Last week, he sent
out an e-mail to relatives urging them to phone their representatives in Congress to support the
resolution and read for themselves the censored 28 pages.
Astonishing as that sounds, few lawmakers in fact have bothered to read the classified section of
arguably the most important investigation in US history.
Granted, it’s not easy to do. It took a monthlong letter-writing campaign by Jones and Lynch to
convince the House intelligence panel to give them access to the material.
But it’s critical they take the time to read it and pressure the White House to let all Americans
read it. This isn’t water under the bridge. The information is still relevant today. Pursuing leads
further, getting to the bottom of the foreign support, could help head off another 9/11.
As the frustrated Joint Inquiry authors warned, in an overlooked addendum to their heavily
redacted 2002 report, “State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of
successful and more lethal attacks within the United States.”
Their findings must be released, even if they forever change US-Saudi relations. If an oil-rich
foreign power was capable of orchestrating simultaneous bulls-eye hits on our centers of
commerce and defense a dozen years ago, it may be able to pull off similarly devastating attacks
today.
Members of Congress reluctant to read the full report ought to remember that the 9/11 assault
missed its fourth target: them.
Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim
Mafia.”
5 Places You May Not Know the U.S. Military Operates
BY HAYES BROWN
ON DECEMBER 14, 2013 AT 9:00 AMShare this:
President Barack Obama on Friday sent to Congress his biannual report on just where he’s deployed
U.S. military personnel without their direct approval, including several locations that might surprise
most casual observers.
The president is required under the War Powers Act of 1973 to detail to Congress any ongoing
activities occurring without a declaration of war from the legislature. In the five page letter, Obama
described several highly reported military operations taken over the last few months, including a
daring raid into Somalia and the capture of a suspected terrorist in Libya. Alongside these feats and
descriptions of the progress in Afghanistan, several lesser-known engagements are detailed, where
hundreds of U.S. forces are currently stationed. Here’s five of them:
Jordan
The United States’ desire to see the Assad regime removed in Syria is no secret, nor is their support
for several of the rebel groups working to oust the Syrian president. Friday’s letter to Congress
served as a remind of just how much the U.S. is doing to bring this about, having left behind at the
request of Jordan “a combat-equipped detachment of approximately 700 U.S. personnel remain in
Jordan following participation in a training exercise that ended on June 20, 2013.” Among the
equipment they are stationed along the Syrian border with includes “Patriot missile systems, fighter
aircraft, and related support, command, control, and communications personnel and systems.” Their
presence brings the total number of U.S. troops in Jordan to 1,500, among which are U.S. Special
Forces of them are engaged in training Syrian rebels in tactics and providing military advice as
needed.
Niger
“As indicated in my report of June 14, 2013, U.S. military personnel in Niger continue to provide
support for intelligence collection and to facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting
operations in Mali and with other partners in the region,” Obama wrote to Congressional leaders.
According to the White House, there are currently approximately 200 personnel deployed there at the
time. The Sahel became noted as a prime area for counter-terrorism operations following al-Qaeda
affiliate group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) managed to takeover of most of northern
Mali last year. In the aftermath of France’s intervention, the region has faded off the radar again, but
the Washington Post in March of this year reported that the U.S. was establishing a drone base to
conduct surveillance operations in West Africa.
Kosovo
Even though the intervention in Kosovo was more than a decade ago, the United States still has a
sizable number of forces still in the former Serbian enclave. Once former Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic capitulated, ending the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the region, NATO opted
following combat operations to leave behind a force known as KFOR to help keep the peace. “The
U.S. contribution to KFOR is approximately 670 U.S. military personnel out of the total strength of
approximately 4,900 personnel,” Obama informed Congress.
Central Africa
Made infamous through the social media campaign #Kony2012, the Lord’s Resistance Army leader
Joseph Kony has been dubbed a primary target of the United States, leading to the deployment of
military personnel to aid African nations in the hunt for him. First deployed in 2011, the U.S.
contingency of approximately 120 personnel is spread across the Republic of South Sudan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic in the hunt for Kony and other
senior LRA leaders. “These forces, however, will not engage LRA forces except in self-defense,”
Obama made clear in his letter.
Egypt
As part of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, a multinational force has been
deployed between the two along the Sinai peninsula for decades. Originally meant to be a United
Nations peacekeeping force, the U.N. was unable to comply due to the threat of a veto from the
Soviet Union. In response, the U.S. worked with Egypt and Israel in setting up the Multinational
Force and Observers. The U.S. joins Australia, Canada, Norway, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Fiji,
Hungary, New Zealand, Columbia, Uruguay, and France in patrolling the region. 715 military
personnel are assigned to the MFO currently, according to Obama.
Obama Crimes Exposed: “Warning: The Pictures That You Are About To See
Are Illegal”
Breaking News | December 14, 2013 | 27 Comments
(ASheepNoMore) These are the Pictures Your Government does
not want you to see. Remember when the progressives/Liberals where all
over George Bush for torture pictures that were released from
GITMO? Well you haven’t seen anything yet.
Anything George Bush can do, Barack Obama can do better and here are the
pictures to prove it. And do you know why Obama can torture just like Bush if not better?
Because there is no left vs right or right vs left …only tyranny vs freedom. And, people
need to WAKE UP and stop defending some party purposely perpetrated on them and then
they become unconsciously indoctrinated into this divide and conquer agenda which is the
how a small amount of elitists continue their reign over their larger slave population.
Understand that voting just ensures the continuation of one corrupt party or the other. The
puppets in charge (So Called Politicians) are just that-puppets. The Republican party and
the Democratic party are to heads of the same beast. They continue with the same actions,
the same agendas, only the names are changed. And if people can’t grasp this divide and
conquer agenda and continue to defend the one party oligarchy which always results in
more infighting, please know that one of the individuals in these photos could be you or one
of your loved ones some day in the near future. For those who are not awake and aware of
the NDAA or DHS purchases or police state that is slowly creeping upon the US, this won’t
make sense …but we are hoping they get the message to unite and stop the division.
The pictures of torture under the Obama adminstration are below. Warning: You maybe
offended by some of these pictures, they are very graphic in nature.
One recent example is from The Guardian June 22, 2013: Increasingly brutal tactics are
being used in an attempt to break the hunger strike by detainees at Guantánamo Bay,
according to fresh testimony from the last British resident still held in the camp.
The following torture photos are from General Strike USA. You can clearly see that the
tactics G.W. Bush used are still being used today and then some. Would you rather be
water boarded or beat Black n Blue?
After pledging to run the most transparent administration in history, President Obama is
blocking the release of RECENT detainee abuse photos.
The Pentagon admits to 34 deaths
caused by torture, we have counted over 100. Pentagon admits to holding 8 children ages
12-17 at Gitmo, we count 21.
Q. What’s worse than a TERRORIST? A. a TYRANT.
Tyranny of the people does not happen violently or suddenly. Tyranny is gradual and
silent. President Obama says America does not torture. This is a lie. We were told that
Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were only used on 3 high level terrorists. We were told
that the worst was WATERBOARDING. These are all lies designed to protect the guilty.
We were told that the prisoner abuse in Iraq was an aberration, not systematic. This is a
lie.
Tyranny is the complete absence of limits of
government. As things stand now, President Obama and every President thereafter has the
authority to deem anyone, whether they are a U.S. citizen or not, a terrorist. And to
kidnap, detain without charges, deny bail, trial, legal reps and torture anyone. The
government claims sweeping authority under the Patriot Act to collect a record of every single
phone call made by every single American “on an ongoing daily basis.” This program not only
exceeds the authority given to the government by Congress, but it violates the right of privacy
protected by the Fourth Amendment, and the rights of free speech and association protected
by the First Amendment.
The Justice Department filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to overturn an
appeals court decision requiring the Pentagon to disclose the photos, which depict abuse of
prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo and elsewhere. In
September, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a
district court decision requiring the photos to be released.
“The appeals court soundly rejected all of the government’s arguments for withholding the
photos, and it’s unfortunate that the government has chosen to contest that decision,”
Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “These photos
would provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but
widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib. As disturbing as the photos may
be, it is critical that the American people know the full truth about the abuse that occurs in
their name.
“WARNING: The pictures that you are about to see are ILLEGAL
Would any member of the U.S. Senate confront President Obama about his actions to
conceal photographs of torture by the U.S. military? The Senate passed S. Amdt. 1157 to
H.R. 2346, a bill that provides supplementary military spending for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Amendment 1157, entitled the Censorship of Photographs of Future
Torture Amendment and creates a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act. With this
loophole, the Secretary of Defense is granted the power to conceal photographs of any
torture of prisoners whether those photographs were taken in the past, or will be taken in
the future.
Fact: this amendment was approved unanimously
This legislation marks the end of the Democrats’ claim of opposition to torture. What I’m
about to show you is illegal. It does us no good to write to our Representatives in
Washington. Voting only ensures the continuation of one corrupt party or the other. We’ve
thrown out the whole top tier of government, but the crooks & thugs are still there. Still in
power, as brutal as ever.
WARNING: These are actual pictures of torture
The CIA admits it misled the White House, the Department of Justice, and Congress about
the “effectiveness” of waterboarding, wall-slamming, shackling in painful positions, and
other methods of torture and abuse.
Prisoners are held in isolation and secrecy locked into a system of punishment before any
evidence of guilt is established. These techniques, born in the gulag, only elicit false
confessions, not actionable intelligence.
The Uniform Code of Military justice prohibits U.S. Armed Forces from engaging in
cruelty, oppression or maltreatment of prisoners, assaulting prisoners and communicating
a threat to wrongfully injure a detainee.
We must not allow them to brazenly trample on everything that this great country stands
for, everything that our fathers fought and DIED for. Only a politician would have the gall
to brag about his crimes and still get away with it.
President Barack Obama says he will: keep in place the secret rendition program Bush
used to torture detainees; keep the government spying on citizens; deploy nuclear carriers
with enough firepower to annihilate any country, refuse to investigate & prosecute the war
and torture crimes of the Bush regime.
WARNING: What I’m about to show you is GRAPHIC
2,500 juveniles detained in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay since 2001
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/u-s-military-treatment-of-juveniledetainees-undergoes-international-scrutiny/
CIA Promotes Person Who Destroyed Torture Tapes
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/cia-promotes-person-who-destroyedtorture-tapes/
CIA/Torture Whistleblower sent to prison
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/ciatorture-whistleblower-sent-to-prison/
C.I.A. TORTURES CHILDREN
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/c-i-a-tortures-children/
(What is) Torture
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/what-is-torture/
The U.S. is holding 27,000 kidnapped people in secret prisons
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/the-u-s-is-holding-27000-kidnappedpeople-in-secret-prisons/
CIA Promotes Person Who Destroyed Torture Tapes
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/cia-promotes-person-who-destroyedtorture-tapes/
General Petraeus guilty of “acts of torture” in Iraq
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/general-petraeus-guilty-of-acts-oftorture-in-iraq/
Army Now Says G.I. Was Beaten in Role
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/army-now-says-g-i-was-beaten-in-role/
Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/former-interrogator-rebukes-cheneyfor-torture-speech-2/
C.I.A. in contempt
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/cia-in-contempt/
(A Congressional report reveals) The C.I.A is a criminal Enterprise
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/a-congressional-report-reveals-the-c-i-ais-a-criminal-enterprise/
C.I.A.s Real Role in the Afghan Heroin Trade
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/c-i-a-s-real-role-in-the-afghan-herointrade/
C.I.A & the MAFIA & the Global Drug Trade (Then & Now)
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/c-i-a-the-mafia-then-now/
Hinchey Report SUBJECT: CIA Activities in Chile FOIA U.S. Dept. of State
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/hinchey-report-subject-cia-activities-inchile-foia-u-s-dept-of-state/
Syrian Revolution or CIA coup?
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/syrian-revolution-or-cia-coup/
Must see
video- http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=118440be48c880abab0bc7d&skin_id=1602
&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
Pres. Barack Obama has condoned TORTURE
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/pres-barack-obama-has-condonedtorture/
Torture Pics BANNED by Obama-Obama has effectively decriminalized torture
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/512/
Guantanamo HUNGER STRIKE and genital searches to continue
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/guantanamo-hunger-strike-and-genitalsearches-to-continue/
New report: Gitmo costs U.S. $2.7 million per prisoner
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/new-report-gitmo-costs-u-s-2-7-millionper-prisoner/
Soldier admits Afghan massacre
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/soldier-admits-afghan-massacre/
Leaked CLASSIFIED Report: U.S. Drone Strikes not against al-Qaeda
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/leaked-classified-report-u-s-dronestrikes-not-against-al-qaeda/
Strike Updates: Hunger Strike: Guantanamo force-feedings
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/strike-updates-hunger-strikeguantanamo-force-feedings/
US Marine demoted for urinating on corpses
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/us-marine-demoted-for-urinating-oncorpses/
Traitors (How Congress Profits from Never ending War)
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/traitors-how-congress-profits-fromnever-ending-war/
237 Millionaires in Congress
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/237-millionaires-in-congress/
6 Brave Govt. Whistleblowers Charged Under the Espionage Act by
Obama’s Administration
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/6-brave-govt-whistleblowers-chargedunder-the-espionage-act-by-obamas-administration/
CIA finally admits it was behind 1953 Iran coup
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/cia-finally-admits-it-was-behind-1953iran-coup/
Obama Defends Right to Take All Your Phone Records
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/obama-defends-right-to-take-all-yourphone-records/
NSA Spies on Merkel, the Pope, the U.N., and the Rest of Us
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/nsa-spies-on-merkel-the-pope-the-u-nand-the-rest-of-us/
Verizon is turning your phone records over to the government
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/verizon-is-turning-your-phone-recordsover-to-the-government/
U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/u-s-intelligence-mining-data-from-nineu-s-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/
How Google and Facebook Cooperated with the NSA and PRISM
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/how-google-and-facebook-cooperatedwith-the-nsa-and-prism/
Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/google-pressure-cookers-and-backpacksget-a-visit-from-the-feds/
Secretive DEA Unit Illegally Spies On Americans, Covers Up Actions
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/secretive-dea-unit-illegally-spies-onamericans-covers-up-actions/
DEA Agents Urged to Cover Up Use of NSA Intel in Drug Probes
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/dea-agents-urged-to-cover-up-use-ofnsa-intel-in-drug-probes/
The Supreme Court Decided Your Silence Can Be Used Against You
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/the-supreme-court-decided-your-silencecan-be-used-against-you/
Warrantless Surveillance: Project SHAMROCK
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/warrantless-surveillance-projectshamrock/
U.S. government to fight for warrantless GPS tracking
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/u-s-government-to-fight-forwarrantless-gps-tracking/
Know Your Rights: CISPA Passes
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/cispa/
Who’s a TERRORIST? Pentagon Says: You Are
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/whos-a-terrorist-pentagon-says-you-are/
Know Your Rights: FISA passes
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/know-your-rights-fisa-passes/
CISPA and the NSA’s Ability to Read Your Emails
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/cispa-national-security-and-the-nsasability-to-read-your-emails/
What should be done about this? I would love to hear from you below. In case you haven’t
seen enough pictures, there are more here Obama War Crime Torture Pics.
Critical Reads: More News Mainstream Media Chooses To Ignore By Josey Wales, Click
Here!
- See more at: http://govtslaves.info/obama-crimes-exposed-warning-pictures-seeillegal/#sthash.Yj8iP4w5.D8Ry0v5O.dpuf
Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders
Posted: Friday, December 06, 2013 - By John McPhaul
Former DEA El Paso boss: Agent Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the
Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle
on the covert operation.
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan meets with Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, Ed Meese
and Don Regan to discuss the president's remarks on the Iran-Contra affair, in the Oval Office on
Nov. 25, 1986. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library, official government record/Wikimedia
Commons
First in an exclusive Tico Times series in two parts
Two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and a former U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency contract pilot are claiming that the Reagan Administration was complicit in
the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena at the hands of Mexican drug lord
Rafael Caro Quintero.
The administration’s alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican
drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when
official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to
Camarena’s kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA’s El
Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into Camarena’s kidnapping, torture
and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee.
“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the “consensual
relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking”
contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national
security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the
murder of one our agents,” Jordan said.
Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by
U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle
on the covert operation, Jordan alleged.
Berrellez said two witnesses identified, from a photo lineup, two or three Cuban CIA operatives
who participated in Camarena’s interrogation.
Plumlee said he and three other pilots ran tons of cocaine into U.S. military bases on return trips
from delivering weapons to Contra rebels in Central America, and was warned by Camarena that
he would be busted. Plumlee has a long and colorful history of working for the CIA, beginning
with flying arms to Cuba before Fidel Castro’s takeover in the 1950s.
Jordan said the cover story Plumlee had been told by his CIA “handler” William Bennetee – that
his cocaine flights into U.S. military bases were part of a drug interdiction program to penetrate
and dismantle the cocaine routes of Colombian drug lords Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa – was
unimaginable, since the DEA, which would have had to approve the program, had no knowledge
of it.
“I don’t know of any DEA administrator that I worked for who would have sanctioned cocaine
smuggling into the United States in the name of national security, when we are out there risking
our lives,” Jordan told The Tico Times.
The CIA reacted indignantly to the allegation of complicity in Camarena’s murder. “It’s
ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a U.S. federal agent or
the escape of his killer,” an agency spokesman told Fox News.
The DEA said only that U.S. justice has gotten to the bottom of the Camarena case.
“DEA believes that the individuals responsible for the torture and murder of Special Agent Kiki
Camarena have been identified and indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District
of California. They include Rafael Caro-Quintero and 15 others,” said the agency in a statement.
An agency spokeswoman declined to elaborate.
Mexican former drug cartel boss, Rafael Caro Quintero, was serving his conviction at Puente Grande prison in Guadalajara when he was
released last July. The U.S. government is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and prosecution in the United
States.
AFP
Plumlee said he worked undercover as a CIA contractor for the civilian aviation company
SETCO, flying between points in Mexico, South and Central America and the United States,
delivering arms for the Contras.
Various investigations, including one by the CIA’s Inspector General, established that SETCO
was an airline controlled by Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros, and also was the
principal company used to traffic arms to the Contra rebels.
Matta Ballesteros is currently serving time in a U.S. federal prison.
Plumlee said he flew a C-130 transport plane in and out of Caro Quintero’s ranch in Veracruz,
Mexico, to Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, and to a secret
airstrip on the Santa Elena Peninsula in Costa Rica, among other locations, carrying arms south
from the U.S. to the Contras and cocaine north to U.S. military installations, including El Toro
Marine Air Base in southern California and Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.
Plumlee estimated that among them, the four pilots smuggled about 40 tons of cocaine in the
operation.
The pilot said he had no worry about being caught by civilian aviation or military authorities
because he carried “coded transponders” that identified his plane as a “spooky” flight warning
off any official scrutiny. The transponders permitting such flights could only have come from the
White House, Plumlee said.
The programs were code-named “Grasshopper,” for the El Toro route and “Roosterhop,” for the
Homestead route, Plumlee added.
Berrellez said he’s convinced the drugs were taken from the airbases by traffickers with
connections to the Contras and sold on the streets.
In fall 1984, Plumlee met at the Oaxaca Café in Phoenix, Arizona, with agents from the Phoenix
Organized Crime Detail and the Arizona Tri-State Task Force, including Camarena, to discuss
his SETCO flights.
When Plumlee told the agents the flights were sanctioned by the U.S. government, “Kiki said,
‘That’s horseshit. You’re lining your pockets,’” Jordan recalled. “He could not believe that the
U.S. government could be running drugs into the United States.”
Alarmed by Camarena’s threats to bust the operation, Plumlee went to Bennettee and told him
about Camarena’s warning, saying that he had no intention of going to jail and would blow the
whistle if indicted.
Bennettee told Plumlee not to worry. “Camarena isn’t going to do anything,” he reassured the
pilot.
DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who was tortured and murdered in 1985. Courtesy of U.S. Justice Department.
About five months later, on Feb. 7, 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Mexico by agents of the
Federal Security Directorate (DFS by its Spanish acronym), which the former DEA agents say
were both the eyes and ears of the CIA in Mexico and at the same time at the beck and call of
Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.
According to Plumlee, the DEA agent had written a series of memos complaining about official
lethargy in bringing the gunrunning operation under control.
“Kiki said, ‘What do we have to do, does someone have to get killed to do something about
this?’” Plumlee said.
Jordan added that the use of a drug dealer’s property by the CIA for the purpose of helping the
Contras didn’t sit well with the DEA agents.
“That’s the way we’re brought up, so to speak,” he said. “When we see someone running drugs,
we want to bust them, not work with them.”
Three weeks after he disappeared, Camarena’s decomposing body was found on a ranch. He had
been tortured, it was later learned, in a brutal three-day ordeal that ended in his death. Officials
blamed Caro Quintero, who, they said, had exacted revenge on Camarena for busting Caro
Quintero’s multimillion-dollar marijuana plantation in Chihuahua, Mexico.
But Berrellez charges the CIA with complicity in the murder, based on the cozy relationship
between the CIA and DFS, and between the DFS and the Guadalajara drug cartel, the timing of
Camarena’s threat to Plumlee, and the fact that the CIA was able to produce two or three of the
tapes of Camarena’s interrogation, but failed to provide three or four other similar tapes.
“Kiki was sacrificed because it was thought that he was on to them,” Berrellez said.
Plumlee said the White House was concerned about a leak that might have incriminated officials
in the illegal arming of the Contras. He said he knows this because he was given access to
intelligence reports and briefing materials during his testimony in 1990 to the Senate committee
chaired by then-Senator and now-Secretary of State John Kerry. Much of Plumlee’s testimony
was given in closed session and remains sealed as a national security secret, the pilot said.
“They wanted to talk to Kiki about the arms, not drugs,” Plumlee said.
The alleged support for the Contras by Mexican drug kingpins, including Caro Quintero and
Miguel Félix Gallardo, is not new. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post reported
on the relationship between the Reagan government and the drug lords in 1990, according to the
book “Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America,” by Peter Dale Scott
and Jonathan Marshall.
But the alleged connection between the Reagan Administration’s Contra policies and
Camarena’s murder has only surfaced after the release in July of Caro Quintero from prison –
where he served 28 years of a 40-year jail term – and has been widely reported in the Mexican
and Central American press.
Some in the Mexican press went so far as to say that the CIA, not Caro Quintero, killed
Camarena.
The Contra's Southern Front, April 22, 1983. Mario Castillo/La República/Tico Times
The fact that witnesses have placed CIA operatives at the scene of Camarena’s kidnapping and
interrogation tells Jordan that the CIA operatives should have told their handlers ahead of time
and stopped it.
“If it were the other way around and it were DEA operatives with knowledge of a possible
kidnapping of a CIA agent, the DEA would never allow it to happen,” Jordan said.
Plumlee said he is talking now because he wants to cover himself now that the issue has come
into public view, and also to set the record straight, as some news sources, especially in Mexico,
have blamed the CIA directly for murdering Camarena.
Plumlee produced a letter dated Feb. 11, 1991, written by former Sen. Gary Hart to then-Sen.
Kerry saying that Plumlee had been in contact with his office about the arms and drug trafficking
between 1983 and 1985, and that Hart’s staff had informed the Senate Foreign Relations and
Intelligence Committees but “no action was initiated by either committee.”
Bill Holden, Hart’s national security adviser and now a county commissioner in Arapaho
County, Colorado, said he met with Plumlee several times.
“I have no reason not to believe Plumlee,” Holden said. National Security Council adviser Lt.
Col. Oliver North “was involved in a lot of nefarious activities that led the Reagan
Administration into Iran-Contra.”
Iran-Contra was the scandal that rocked the Reagan Administration when it was revealed that the
government had sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance the Contras.
Berrellez said the 76-year-old pilot is risking a lot to speak out, as he could still be prosecuted for
the drug trafficking and even as an accessory to murder for flying Caro Quintero from Veracruz
across the border to Guatemala when the drug lord made his escape from Mexico en route to a
short-lived stay in Costa Rica in March 1985.
Even before the Iran-Contra scandal broke, two reporters from the Associated Press, Brian
Barger and Robert Parry, had published a series of articles reporting on alleged drug trafficking
by Contra rebels.
The articles focused on companies that served as fronts for both aiding the Contras and running
drugs, but did not hint at drug running on the scale alleged by Plumlee.
In 1996, Gary Webb, reporting for the San Jose, California-based Mercury News, broke a story
linking Contra drug running to the proliferation of crack cocaine in Los Angeles that had bred
addiction and gang-related violence.
Though the “Dark Alliance” series was based on a case that had already been aired, the series hit
a nerve by implying that the a U.S. government-backed rebel group (the “CIA’s army” as the
series repeatedly stated) was responsible for a crack epidemic that began in L.A. and spread to
other communities, especially black communities, across the country.
Soon thereafter, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all
published articles shooting down Webb’s reporting, saying that the amount of drugs run by the
ring in Webb’s article could not by itself have sparked an epidemic on a scale experienced by
U.S. cities.
Reporter Gary Webb wrote the "Dark Alliance" series linking Contra drug running to the proliferation of crack cocaine in Los Angeles. He
committed suicide in 2004, although the cause of death has been highly disputed. Screenshot from interview by School of Authentic
Journalism 2002 seminar in Merida, Mexico
The particular ring written about by Webb, headed by Nicaraguan drug traffickers Norwin
Meneses and Danilo Blandon, was not big enough to have fueled the crack epidemic and
provided relatively little money to the Contra cause, the news reports said.
Berrellez admitted that he can’t make a firm connection between the Contra drug flights into
southern California, but said he is convinced the Meneses-Blandon drug ring had access to
cocaine flown into El Toro Marine Air Base, adding that the ultimate buyer of the drug for street
sales in Los Angeles, “Freeway” Ricky Ross, dealt in tons of cocaine and had Meneses and
Blandon as his suppliers.
“I was working in Los Angeles at the time, and I can tell you we knew of no interdiction
program at El Toro,” Berrellez said. “The Contras were running drugs from Central America and
the Contras were providing drugs to street gangs in Los Angeles. That’s your connection.”
Initially supportive, Webb’s editors, in the face of the criticism, backed off the story, saying the
articles had overreached. Webb was demoted to a backwater suburban beat and eventually quit
the newspaper. Unable to find work at another major daily, he committed suicide in December
2004.
But outrage over Webb’s allegations prompted the CIA to assign the agency’s inspector general,
Fredrick Hitz, to investigate the extent of the CIA’s knowledge of cocaine trafficking by the
Contras.
The Hitz report found no evidence the CIA was involved in the trafficking, but did ascertain that
individuals and companies related to Contra operations were involved in the trafficking, and that
the CIA did not act in an expeditious manner to stop it.
As for Caro Quintero, since his release, the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for
information leading to his capture and prosecution in the United States.
Said Jordan: “From my own opinion, he has to worry more about CIA operatives than he does
the Mexican government or the CIA.”
27 years later, CIA pilot tells of using secret Costa Rican airstrip to traffic guns, cocaine
Posted: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - By John McPhaul
They seemed like isolated events unfolding in the chaos of Central America in the 1980s. But
now, the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together.
The Tico Times
Former CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee says he trafficked cocaine and weapons in and
out of a secret airstrip in northern Costa Rica in the 1980s to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. The
cocaine came from Colombia and was shipped to consumers in the U.S.
Second in a series. Read the first part here.
Costa Rica’s Santa Elena Peninsula in the northwestern province of Guanacaste was the site of a
smoking gun in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, the scandal that rocked the administration of former
U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Santa Elena also was the site of extensive drug trafficking back
then, according to pilot who now says he trafficked cocaine and guns to a secret airstrip on the
peninsula.
The airstrip was located in Potrero Grande, a 1.6-kilometer valley on the coast some 15 km south
of the Nicaraguan border. According to former CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, drug
smugglers used the airstrip for years, even before U.S. Lt. Col. Oliver North came looking for a
staging area for arms flights into Nicaragua’s “Southern Front.”
A team of journalists, including Tico Times reporters, discovered the airstrip in September 1986.
“Santa Elena had been on a drug-running route long before we started using it to help arm the
Southern Front,” Plumlee told The Tico Times.
Somehow, North fell in with the owner of the property, the Santa Elena Development
Corporation, represented by North Carolina native Joe Hamilton. North took out a $5 million
mortgage on the property for an unknown purpose.
“Men with maps” approached former Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge to obtain his
blessing to create a full-scale air base at Potrero Grande, arguing that it would be needed if
Sandinistas attacked Costa Rica. After he left office, Monge told The Tico Times he assumed the
men were U.S. officials. He readily agreed.
A phantom Panamanian company, Udall Resources, set up by retired U.S. Gen. Richard Secord
and “owned” by a “Robert Olmstead” – the pseudonym of William Haskell, a Maryland
accountant and North’s Vietnam buddy – was contracted to extend the airstrip in 1984 to enable
it to accommodate large C-130 transport aircraft.
Iran-Contra investigators discovered that a “cabal” had elaborated a plan to conceal the backing
of Nicaraguan Contras by the U.S. government at a time when the U.S. Congress had prohibited
the Reagan Administration from aiding the Contras.
Plumlee said he flew to the Potrero Grande airstrip before North dubbed it “Point West,”
beginning in 1983, in a smaller C-123 transport plane.
Plumlee estimated that he trafficked up to 30,000 kilograms of cocaine from Medellín and
Bogotá, Colombia, out of Potrero Grande.
When Óscar Arias became president of Costa Rica in May 1986, he ordered U.S. Ambassador
Lewis Tambs to shut down the site. But the refurbished airstrip had become operational the same
month Arias took office, and remained open for business, Plumlee said.
Residents in the neighboring communities of Liberia and La Cruz spotted airplanes flying low
over the hills of Santa Rosa National Park, which bordered the airstrip.
A team of journalists set out to find the airstrip in September 1986. When they traveled to Santa
Rosa National Park to ask about the mysterious flights, a U.S. scientist working in the park said,
“It’s about time.”
If the U.S. government was running a drug interdiction operation through Potrero Grande, it was
a secret to the Costa Rican government. After journalists discovered the airstrip, then-Public
Security Minister Hernán Garrón said Costa Rican police had seized the airstrip the previous
month.
“We didn’t know if we’d find Contras or armed drug traffickers,” Garrón told The Tico Times at
the time.
Nicaraguan guerrilla fighters led by Edén Pastora, known as "Comandante Cero," pictured here in 1983.
The Tico Times
In October 1986, the Sandinista army shot down a C-130 carrying arms to the Contras and
captured a cargo kicker named Eugene Hasenfus, the only crew member with a parachute.
Journalists given access to documents found aboard Hasenfus’ airplane linked the flight to the
CIA. A Tico Times reporter determined that two phone numbers found in logs in the wreckage
belonged to the home and the embassy office of CIA San José station chief Joe Fernández (codenamed Tomás Castillo), a foreshadowing of the Iran-Contra scandal that erupted the following
November, when U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that the U.S. government had
sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to help arm the Contra rebels.
The chain of events raised questions over how much the U.S. government, in general, and the
CIA, in particular, had aided the Contra cause when a congressional prohibition was in place.
In Costa Rica, a Legislative Assembly commission, acting on findings richly informed by the
U.S. Senate Committee investigating Contra involvement in drugs and chaired by then-Senator –
now-Secretary of State – John Kerry, prohibited a number of former U.S. officials – including
North and Ambassador Tambs – from entering Costa Rica.
Eventually, the Arias administration expropriated the Potrero Grande land and it became a part
of Santa Rosa National Park – but not before a protracted court battle with the airstrip owners
and the direct intervention of then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who held up an InterAmerican Development Bank loan to Costa Rica to prod the Arias administration over the
“investment issue.”
The Costa Rican government ended up paying about $13 million for the property, after
negotiations arbitrated by the World Bank.
The fact that Mexican drug cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero was a supporter of the U.S.backed Nicaraguan rebels, providing a training and staging area for arms flights to the Contras at
his Veracruz, Mexico, ranch, also casts a different light on the drug lord’s escape to Costa Rica
and the circumstances surrounding his short stay in the country.
In early March 1985, tipped off that Caro Quintero was about to fly out of Guadalajara to escape
the manhunt that had prompted U.S. President Ronald Reagan to close the U.S. border with
Mexico, DEA agents raced to the city’s airport to find agents from Mexico’s Federal Security
Directorate (DFS) protecting Caro Quintero’s Gulf Stream jet.
According toHéctor Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into agent Enrique “Kiki”
Camarena’s 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder, Caro Quintero appeared in the doorway of the
airplane holding a bottle of champagne and shouting to the outgunned DEA agents: “My
children, next time bring more guns.”
Caro Quintero was flown north to Sonora by Costa Rican pilot Warner Lotz – another CIA
contract employee, according to Plumlee – to see his brother Miguel before Lotz flew the cartel
boss to his ranch in Veracruz. Plumlee said he was waiting there to take Caro Quintero across the
border to Guatemala, where yet another pilot, Luis Carranza, flew him to Costa Rica.
Caro Quintero and his entourage, which included several cronies and his girlfriend Sara Cosio,
passed through Customs unchecked upon arriving in San José. According to some reports, they
may have first landed at an unsupervised provincial airstrip, making their arrival in San José a
domestic flight exempt from passing through Customs.
The participation of so many CIA contractors in Caro Quintero’s escape raises questions about
whether the CIA might not have arranged for Caro Quintero to come to Costa Rica, where he
could be more readily nabbed.
“Absolutely not,” Berrellez said. “The only reason the Costa Rican government moved to arrest
him was because we [the DEA] told them exactly where he was.”
The DEA had pinpointed the drug lord’s location by tapping a telephone at the Mexican home of
Cosio’s parents. Cosio had called home and tipped off the DEA, Berrellez said.
A clandestine airstrip in Potrero Grande, in Costa Rica's northwestern province of Guanacaste. The airstrip was used to traffic guns and
drugs, according to a former CIA pilot. Julio Laínez/Tico Times
In the early morning hours of April 4, 1985, Costa Rican cops, accompanied by DEA agents,
stormed Finca California, a mansion in the Ojo de Agua area of Alajuela near Juan Santamaría
International Airport, and arrested Caro Quintero and his cohorts.
According to press reports, Caro Quintero complained to the arresting officers that he had paid
handsomely for refuge in Costa Rica.
Later that morning at the DEA’s office in the U.S. Embassy, DEA-agent-in-charge Don Clemens
was on the telephone to Costa Rican officials trying to convince them to hold Caro Quintero for
extradition to the United States, to no avail.
Instead, the Monge administration loaded Caro Quintero and his entourage onto an airplane and
deported them to Mexico the same day the drug lord was captured.
Another Costa Rican Legislative Assembly commission, which investigated the circumstances
surrounding Caro Quintero’s stay in Costa Rica, concluded that a “superior political authority”
was responsible.
As for Caro Quintero, the drug kingpin vanished after his release last Julyfrom a Mexican prison.
Mexican authorities ignored a U.S. extradition request.
In the ’80s, no one imagined the link between Caro Quintero’s ranch in Veracruz, Mexico, and
the Santa Elena airstrip in Costa Rica – two pieces of a puzzle that on the surface had little do
with each other.
While reporters have focused on isolated incidents, the entire picture of the Contra drug saga has
yet to come into focus, according to Celerino Castillo, a former DEA agent and author of
“Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War.”
“All this is very well documented, but no one has put the pieces together,” Castillo said. “But the
pieces do fit together.”
An aerial view of the U.S. government's secret airstrip in Santa Elena Peninsula, northern Costa Rica.
The Tico Times
The FBI Goes To Disturbing Lengths To Set Up Potential Terrorists
Paul Szoldra Mar. 11, 2013, 5:31 PM 32,453 11
James Cromitie, center, is led by police officers from a federal building in New York after being
arrested for plotting to bomb New York synagogues and shoot down military aircraft.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has busted an impressive number of homegrown terror plots
over the past decade, but many people don't realize how these plots materialize. In some cases,
they are hatched not from a cave-dwelling fanatic, but actually from the Bureau itself.
Ever since 9/11, the task of thwarting terrorist plots has consumed the majority of the FBI's
budget — $3.3 billion compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime, according to a report written
for Mother Jones by Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory.
The once exclusively investigative bureau has morphed into a counterterrorism agency, with
field agents tapping into a nationwide network of informants that infiltrate mainly-Muslim
communities.
The FBI targets the "disgruntled few" who would participate in a terrorist plot if given the
opportunity, according to Aaronson. In many cases, the FBI recruits potential terrorists and
provides them with plans, equipment, and weapons — before finally shutting them down and
getting credit for thwarting another attack.
One example surfaced in December 2005, when the FBI arrested Michael Curtis Reynolds after he
tried to meet an FBI informant whom he believed to be an al Qaeda contact. Authorities said he
expected to receive $40,000 to finance an alleged plot to blow up pipelines and refineries, according
to Fox News.
The charges and his later conviction stemmed mostly from online conversations he was having
with a Montana judge (and FBI informant) he believed was a terrorist leader.
But would Reynolds have gone that far on his own? An FBI official speaking to Fox News on
condition of anonymity said "that the agency has since concluded that Reynolds might be mentally ill
and not as serious a threat as originally believed."
Another case in May 2007 involved men who certainly weren't fans of the United States, but had
scarce means of carrying out an attack.
Five foreign-born men, described by federal authorities as "radical Islamists," along with a sixth
man who helped get them weapons, were charged in May 2007 in a plot to attack a U.S. Army
base in Fort Dix, N.J.
Officials later admitted the men had no apparent connection to any terrorist organization. The
Washington Post writes:
At the same time, a 26-page indictment unsealed Tuesday indicates that the group had no
rigorous military training and did not appear close to being able to pull off an attack. The arrests
in the case began Monday night after two defendants arrived at a local home to buy assault
weapons, which had been supplied and disabled by the FBI, officials said.
"Obviously, these guys had some radical beliefs and the stuff they downloaded from the Web
was very serious," said a law enforcement source close to the case, speaking to The Washington
Post. "But it's not like they were going to be able to get rocket-propelled grenades and blow
things up."
What's more, the case relied on the controversial use of paid informants, one of whom had a notable
criminal past, and the other who undermined the case (to no avail) by admitting in court that at least
two of the suspects later jailed for life had no knowledge of the supposed plot.
A federal jury found five of the six alleged plotters guilty of conspiracy to commit murder
but cleared them of attempted murder.
Perhaps the most extreme case of the FBI setting up potential terrorists involved the "Newburgh
Four."
On May 20, 2009, law enforcement arrested four black Muslim men in connection with a
bombing plot in the Bronx, and an attack on military aircraft in Newburgh, N.Y.
The men had set explosives in cars outside of local synagogues, and obtained a missile launcher
to take down planes, but their plan was disrupted before it happened.
Although all the weapons the men used were fakes obtained from FBI agents, it certainly seemed
like a slam-dunk case.
But The Guardian reports a stark difference between this group and other terrorists:
... far from being active militants, the four men [the FBI informant] attracted were impoverished
individuals struggling with Newburgh's grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One
had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed
Florida was a foreign country.
At one point during the sting, James Cromitie, the leader of the four-man group, reportedly tried
to thwart the plan himself.
For weeks, he pretended to leave Newburgh to avoid his terrorist contact Hussain (a paid FBI
informant). He stopped going to the mosque, and ignored Hussain's phone calls and voice mails.
He even went so far as to pretend not to be in when he showed up at his house.
The Guardian reports:
Only when Cromitie lost his job, and became desperate for money, did he contact Hussain again.
"I told you, I can make you $250,000, but you don't want it, brother," Hussain told him.
Now Cromitie agreed and set about finding lookouts. "Ok, f--- it. I don't care. Ah, man.
Maqsood, you got me," he said, using Hussain's fake name.
A quick $250,000 seemed rather enticing to the four men living in poverty. After their arrest and
trial, they were given a minimum 25-year sentence, but even the judge lambasted
the government's handling of the case, according to the New York Daily News:
"The essence of what occurred here is that a government understandably zealous to protect its
citizens from terrorism came upon a man both bigoted and suggestible, one who was incapable
of committing an act of terrorism on his own," McMahon said, referring to Cromitie.
And although Judge Colleen McMahan would reject Cromitie's claims of entrapment, she still
called the FBI's handling of the case a "fantasy terror operation," as The New York Times
reported:
“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is
positively Shakespearean in its scope."
The arrests and convictions of men who didn't have the means to conduct an attack without FBI
help certainly raises ethical questions. While they have been able to stop actual threats — it
seems that in some other cases, the line between real and contrived has often blurred.
Some defense attorneys agree, as CBS News later reported:
"When the government supplies a fake bomb and then thwarts the plot, this is insanity. This is
grandstanding," said Susanne Brody, one of the defense attorneys for another terror case in
Portland, Ore.
"The people they repeatedly come up with continue to be people who have no ability to do
something on their own," said Samuel Braverman, a defense attorney in the Newburgh case.
In spending all of this time concocting terrorist plots, the FBI may be wasting resources and
ignoring the real threats. As one terrorism analyst at Stanford University writes, the priority for
Islamic fighters now is actually to expel Westerners from their lands, not attack them in their own:
Many assume that jihadists all want to attack the West, and that those who leave do so for
training. I argue the opposite, namely, that most Western jihadists prefer foreign fighting, but a
minority attacks at home after being radicalized, most often through foreign fighting or contact
with a veteran.
US aviation worker arrested in FBI sting operation trying to set off car bomb in Kansas
airport
Heather Saul Saturday 14 December 2013
Authorities said the planned assault by Terry Lee Loewen at Wichita's Mid-Continent Regional
airport was to demonstrate his support for al-Qa'ida.
Loewen, 58, who worked at the airport for Hawker Beechcraft, was arrested before dawn as he
tried to drive into the tarmac. The materials in the car were inert, and no one at the airport was in
any immediate danger, authorities said.
Loewen planned to die in the explosion in his quest to become a martyr in a jihad against
America, according to court documents.
Police said they had been investigating Loewen, of Wichita, for approximately six months after
he made statements online about wanting to commit "violent jihad" against the United States, US
Attorney Barry Grissom said. Eventually, an undercover FBI agent befriended Loewen, striking
up conversations about terrorism and Loewen's admiration for those who plotted violence against
American interests.
Authorities said Loewen spent months studying the layout of the airport, its flight patterns and
other details to maximize fatalities and damage in an attack. During that time, he developed a
plan with other 'conspirators' to use his employee access card to pull off the attack, who were
actually undercover FBI agents.
Loewen made an initial court appearance on Friday afternoon, answering "yes" to various
procedural questions. A US magistrate ordered that Loewen is detained until a hearing next
Friday after prosecutors said he was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Authorities said they believe Loewen acted alone. No other arrests are expected. His wife and
attorney declined comment after the hearing.
Wide use of FBI sting operations has prompted frequent controversy over balancing the needs of
law enforcement and civil liberties. One involved an undercover agent pretending to be a
terrorist who provided a teenager with a phony car bomb, watched him plant the bomb in
downtown Chicago and press a trigger.
Civil rights groups have criticised such tactics and argued the FBI is systematically violating
peoples' constitutional rights by luring targets into committing crimes. The FBI however argues
such operations are a vital law enforcement tool that has averted potentially deadly terrorist
attacks.
Investigators said Loewen also frequently expressed admiration for Anwar Al-Awlaki, the
American-born al-Qa'ida leader who was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Al-Awlaki
emerged as an influential preacher among militants living in the West and called for jihad, or
holy war, against the US during his English language Internet sermons.
In August, an undercover agent offered to introduce Loewen to someone who could help him
engage in jihad. A few days later, he mentioned providing a "tour" of the airport for one of the
undercover agents.
In September, the undercover agent told Loewen he had returned from overseas after meeting
with individuals connected with al-Qa'ida. The agent told him the "brothers" were excited to hear
about his access to the airport and asked Loewen if he would be willing to plant some type of
device, according to court documents.
"Wow! That's some heavy stuff you just laid down. Am I interested? Yes. I still need time to
think about it, but I can't imagine anything short of arrest stopping me," Loewen told the agent,
adding that he needed to let Allah guide him.
The documents allege that he also asked for reassurances that he wasn't being set up, saying his
greatest fear was not completing the operation.
The criminal complaint also details a meeting in November with other undercover agents in
which they discussed executing the plan prior to Christmas in order to cause the greatest physical
and economic damage. He also provided components from his employer that the agents
requested to wire the fake explosive device, according to court documents.
On Wednesday, Loewen met with another undercover agent and helped assemble the false bomb,
court documents allege.
Loewen was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempting to damage
property and attempting to provide support to terrorist group al-Qa'ida.
Hawker Beechcraft spokeswoman Nicole Alexander confirmed Friday that Loewen worked at
the company's aircraft maintenance facility at the airport, but she said he has been suspended
amid the investigation.
The 6,000-Page Report on CIA Torture Has Now Been Suppressed for 1 Year
It cost $40 million to produce, documents serious wrongdoing, and doesn't threaten national security.
Team Obama won't release it.
Conor Friedersdorf Dec 13 2013, 12:01 AM ET
One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 6,000-page report on the
CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program that led to torture. Its contents include
details on each prisoner in CIA custody, the conditions of their confinement, whether they were
tortured, the intelligence they provided, and the degree to which the CIA lied about its behavior
to overseers. Senator Dianne Feinstein declared it one of the most significant oversight efforts in
American history, noting that it contains "startling details" and raises "critical questions." But all
these months later, the report is still being suppressed.
The Obama Administration has no valid reason to suppress the report. Its contents do not
threaten national security, as evidenced by the fact that numerous figures who normally defer to
the national-security state want it released with minor redactions. The most prominent of all is
Vice President Joe Biden.
Another is Senator John McCain.
"What I have learned confirms for me what I have always believed and insisted to be true—that
the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a
stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering
intelligence," he said in a statement. "... It is therefore my hope that this Committee will take
whatever steps necessary to finalize and declassify this report, so that all Americans can see the
record for themselves, which I believe will finally close this painful chapter for our country."
They are hardly alone.
In order to mark the one-year anniversary of the report being adopted (only to be suppressed),
the Center for Victims of Torture has assembled a list of 58 figures of note who insist that the
public ought to be able to read the important document. It includes a total of eight U.S. senators
and numerous former Obama Administration officials, including Harold Koh and Ambassador
Thomas R. Pickering.
Former CIA employees who want the report released include John Rizzo, former CIA general
counsel; Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s
Counterterrorism Center; and Glenn Carle, 23-year veteran of CIA (among others). If it's former
military flag officers that will sway you, here are fewer than half of the ones who want the report
on CIA imprisonment released:
General Joseph P. Hoar, former Commander, U.S. Central Command; General Charles C.
Krulak, former Commandant of the Marine Corps; General David M. Maddox, former
Commander in Chief, U.S. Army, Europe; General Barry McCaffrey, former Assistant
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Merrill A. McPeak, former Chief of Staff, U.S. Air
Force; Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard Jr.; Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, former Inspector
General, Department of the Navy; Lieutenant General Arlen D. Jameson, former Deputy
Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Command; Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, former
Deputy Chairman, NATO Military Committee; Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, former
Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; Lieutenant General James M. Thompson, former
Director for Estimates, Defense Intelligence Agency; Major General Paul D. Eaton, former
Commanding General of the command charged with reestablishing Iraqi Security Forces.
Despite all these figures calling for the report's release, the Obama Administration, which
promised voters that it would be the most transparent in history, has bowed to pressure from a
faction within the CIA to keep secret the most thorough accounting we have of the agency's
lawless, immoral behavior during the Bush years. In doing so, Team Obama makes it less
likely that we learn the lessons of CIA torture, and more likely that America tortures again
one day.
Latest from National Security U.S. to maintain unified NSA, Cyber Command leadership
Ex-FBI agent who disappeared in Iran worked for CIA Adam Goldman Officials say
disappearance of Bob Levinson in 2007 prompted major internal investigation at Langley
White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership
By Ellen Nakashima,
The Obama administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement under which a
single military official is permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s
cyberwarfare command despite an external review panel’s recommendation against doing so,
according to U.S. officials.
The decision by President Obama comes amid signs that the White House is not inclined to place
significant new restraints on the NSA’s activities and favors maintaining an agency program that
collects data on virtually all phone calls of Americans, although it is likely to impose additional
privacy-protection measures.
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander said Wednesday that his organization is implementing
changes to prevent a leak comparable to that committed by Edward Snowden from happening
again.
Some officials, including top U.S. intelligence officials, had argued that the NSA and Cyber
Command should be placed under separate leadership to ensure greater accountability and avoid
an undue concentration of power.
“Following a thorough interagency review, the administration has decided that keeping the
positions of NSA Director and Cyber Command commander together as one, dual-hatted
position is the most effective approach to accomplishing both agencies’ missions,” White House
spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail to The Washington Post.
The announcement comes as an external panel appointed by Obama to review U.S. surveillance
policies submitted its report on Friday. According to some U.S. officials, the panel was expected
to recommend that the NSA-Cyber Command leadership be split and that the agency’s phone
program be modified by having the phone companies or a third party hold the records, not the
NSA.
The five-member panel made more than 40 recommendations, which the White House is free to
reject or modify as it conducts its own review of NSA surveillance. That review is expected to be
completed in January.
“The big picture is there’s not going to be that much [additional] constraint” by the White House,
said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“They’re really not hurting [the NSA] that much.”
NSA officials declined to comment.
Hayden said the internal review focuses on the NSA’s activities around the world, with an
emphasis on the collection of intelligence about heads of state, coordination with close U.S.
allies and partners, and the issue of whether the process of setting national intelligence priorities
should be modified.
She declined to discuss details, saying the review was ongoing.
Some officials familiar with the decision to keep one person in charge of both the NSA and
Cyber Command expressed disappointment. They say the missions of the two organizations are
fundamentally different: spying and conducting military attacks. “It’s a mistake,” said another
U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Cyber Command and NSA each
needs its own full-time head, and [Obama] could have continued the coordination and close
working relationship between the two organizations without them being led by the same
individual.”
But Mike McConnell, a former NSA director and director of national intelligence, said: “I think
it’s the right decision. Combining the skills and capability of the NSA is essential for the
successful operation of Cyber Command in its war-fighting mission.”
Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who is due to retire as NSA director in March after more than eight
years at the helm, has long advocated maintaining the “dual hat” arrangement for the NSA and
Cyber Command.
The NSA “plays a unique role in supporting Cyber Command’s mission, providing critical
support for target access and development, including linguists, analysts, cryptanalytic
capabilities and sophisticated technological infrastructure,” Hayden said.
The NSA has been the focus of new public scrutiny since June, when The Washington Post and
other news outlets began disclosing documents leaked by a former agency contractor, Edward
Snowden. One document revealed the existence of an agency program to collect billions of
phone- call records of Americans for counterterrorism purposes.
Congress is debating whether to rein in that program or endorse it explicitly in legislation. Civil
liberties groups have sued the government, alleging that the data collection violates privacy laws
and the Constitution. The external panel, formally known as the Review Group on Intelligence
and Communications Technology, was expected to recommend that phone companies or a third
party retain the records and have the NSA transmit numbers suspected of terrorism links to be
run against them.
The Senate Intelligence Committee rejected that approach in drafting legislation to codify the
data-collection program. Industry officials have said that they do not wish to be custodians of
such large amounts of data, which they said would become the target of local law enforcement
and lawyers seeking information in divorce and criminal cases.
Significantly, sources said, the White House is not likely to terminate the program or to adopt the
panel’s recommendation to have phone companies hold the data. Under the program, the NSA
collects information such as when phone calls were made and how long they lasted, but not the
content of the conversations.
The review panel also weighed whether to recommend that the federal court overseeing
surveillance programs release significant opinions to companies that receive court orders to
furnish data to the FBI or the NSA for domestic surveillance programs. These opinions are
generally classified and would still not be released to the public.
Obama has said that he wants to improve public confidence in the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court’s oversight of the NSA by “ensuring that the government’s position is
challenged by an adversary.” The review panel was expected to make such a recommendation.
The White House also has been under considerable fire from European allies over revelations
based on Snowden disclosures that the NSA had monitored phone calls of foreign leaders over
the past decade, including those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Although collecting
intelligence on “leadership intentions” is what Director of National Intelligence James R.
Clapper Jr. has called “a basic tenet” of espionage, the White House is expected to include a new
level of review of such collection to assuage allies, sources said.
A third and separate review of NSA surveillance is being conducted by the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board, an independent executive branch agency. It hopes to have its report
completed by the end of the month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzmW8c66UaI
Wesley Clark - This Country was Taken Over by a Group of People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzP9YJpBubk
Richard Clarke: 50 CIA personnel knew AQ entered the country before 9/11 and
were helped by Saudi Arabian intelligence - [12:53]
New World Order – The Endgame Has Begun
By Richard K. Moore
Global Research, December 16, 2013 News Beacon 13 December 2013
The nature of power in today’s world: The central bank system
“Let me issue and control a nation‘s money and I care not who writes the laws.” – Amschel
Rothschild
Perhaps the single most important thing to know about power in the world today is that most
nations do not have control over their own currencies. Instead privately owned, for-profit central
banks – such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the US – create money out of nothing and then loan
it at interest to their respective governments. This is an incredibly profitable scam, but that’s not
the worst of it.
Not only do the central banks have the power to create money for free, they also have the power
to set interest rates, to decide how much credit is issued, and to decide how much money is put
into circulation. With this power central banks can – and do – orchestrate boom and bust cycles,
enabling the super-wealthy owners of the banks to profit from investments during the booms, and
buy up assets at bargain prices during the busts. And that still isn’t the whole story.
The most profitable of all central bank activities has been the financing of major wars, particularly
the two World Wars. When nations are engaged in warfare, with their very survival at stake, the
governments stretch their resources to the limit in the competition to prevail. The struggle to get
more financing becomes as important as the competition on the battlefield. Moneylenders love a
desperate borrower, and vast fortunes have been made by extending credit to both sides in
conflicts: the longer a war continues, the more profit for the central bankers.
A very good introduction to the history of central banking, and in particular the Rothschild dynasty:
The Money Masters (1996) [FULL DOCUMENTARY]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtBSiI13fE
Centralized wealth leads to centralized power
“Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power
somewhere, so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that
they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
– Woodrow Wilson
Our political systems, based on parties competing to get elected, are inherently prone to corruption.
Just as the struggle for financing is important in military campaigns, so is it important in political
campaigns. Wealthy donors are able to get special treatment, when it comes to legislation and
regulation that affects their business interests. This kind of corruption, however, is only the tip of
the iceberg.
A more effective way that wealth translates into power is by the placing of agents – individuals
loyal to wealthy backers – into positions of influence and power. For example, when the
Rothschilds and Rockefellers joined forces to establish the Federal Reserve, they recruited an
unknown professor, Woodrow Wilson, promised to make him President, and secured a return
promise that he would sign the Federal Reserve bill when the time came. With their influence over
party bosses, their control of newspapers, and unlimited funding, they were able to get Wilson
elected. He may have later regretted his bargain with the devil, as suggested in the above quotation.
A more modern example is Obama, long time protégé of Henry Kissinger, himself a key agent of
the Rockefellers. Like Wilson, Obama appeared out of political nowhere, was rocketed into the
Presidency, and proved his loyalty in office. In Obama’s case, this involved promptly turning the
White House over to central-banker agents from Wall Street – Timothy Geithner and his buddies.
They make the policy; Obama makes the speeches.
This kind of thing has been going on for centuries, first in Europe and later in the US. What began
as the placement of a few key agents has evolved over time. What we have now is an international
web of control, with key agents placed in political parties, governments and their agencies, the
media, corporate boards, intelligence services, and the military. At the center of the web are the
central banking dynasties – the Gods of Money – who remain mostly behind the scenes, pulling
the strands of real power.
Read the complete article at http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=15435
Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack
Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of
Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations and
philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law - An
Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000 hours of TV and
Radio: The History Channel “De-Coded”; He is a regular on Coast to Coast AM w/ George Noory and
Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American Dream" and The Arsenio Hall
Show; The Carl Nelson Show live in DC and Trending with Carl Nelson syndicated live; he has written
for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet
served in Vietnam 1969-70, 101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at
Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and
consultant in various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs.
Hulet lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.