Frankenstein Redux
U.S.S. Cole attack, like Libya & The Gulf War, is a rogue monster of our own creation; yet more are our shibboleths.

Until we insist on financing peace ¹ ² ³   in place of more
  war , cruel & implacable retribution will haunt us.

The U.S. is "running out of demons. I'm down to Fidel Castro & Kim Il Sung"   Colin Powell.
former JCoS chair & millennial Sec•State   per
  Robt. Borosage   Inventing the Threat: The Clinton Defense Pgm" World Policy Journal winter 1993-94
Just as we looked the opposite direction when Saddam Hussein used U.S. Agriculture Dept loans to buy biochemical weapons & strategic munitions, so is Osama bin Laden a manifestation of blowback from Ronald Reagan era machismo foreign policy & vestigal cold war colonialism. As Bertold Brecht said of an earlier time "the murderers are among us..."
Experts are almost unanimous in saying that bin Laden is a creature of a US foreign policy which recklessly fed and nurtured him and his Islamic warriors with million of dollars worth of money and arms to fight the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Under a little known document called the National Security Directive 166 of 1985, President Ronald Reagan ordered a stepped up U.S. covert aid to militant groups fighting the Soviets. The order resulted in the CIA providing, lavishly and, as it turned out, recklessly, arms & training via money funnelled largely through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Even at that time, Bin Laden and his holy warriors had made it clear that the US was as much anathema to them as the communists. "bin Laden learnt a lot of tricks from the CIA, which is glad to help him fight the Russians. We all helped him. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States were united in the view that the Russians must be defeated. He was the point man,'' an unnamed Saudi intelligence official was quoted as saying in the US media. Washington conceived a plan to make Moscow pay the maximum price for its occupation of Afghanistan while turning Islamic radicalism against the communists and, as a spin-off, against the Iranian Shia.
(Chidanand Rajghatta "U.S. Frankenstein monster behind Kenya blasts?" Indian Express 8/15/98)

The idea was to encourage a specifically Sunni radicalism aiming at full application of the sharia but avoiding any hint of Islamic "revolution". This suited Saudi Arabia perfectly, since it was anxious to strengthen its Islamic credentials in opposition to Iran. As for the Pakistani intelligence services, they had and still have the wider aim of playing the Sunni Islamist card to gain control of Afghanistan and achieve a breakthrough in Central Asia.
( Barry Smerin "Fundamentalists without a common cause" Le Monde diplomatique 10/98)

The CIA is now trying to destroy the same camps it helped set up, Robert Fisk, a British writer who covered the region and who met bin Laden at his camp, said in an interview on National Public Radio.
(Chidanand Rajghatta India Express 8/22/98 ¹ )

According to Bakhat Zamin, a fundamentalist commander in Khost, it takes very little to rebuild the camps that were struck in the U.S. attack. He said to rebuild "All one needs are mud and stones and there are plenty of them out here."
(London Times 12/20/98)

Osama bin Laden & his al-Qaeda organization is credited with U.S. embassies' bombings in Africa; funding Philippines terrorist training camps and Chechniyan, Tajikistan & Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist forces' training; assassination plots against President Clinton, the Pope, Egyptian President Mubarak & Jordanian king Hussein; the World Trade Center bombing; arming Somalian war lords' opposition to U.S. military peacekeeping; bomb attacks on U.S. servicemen in Yemen in 1992, at a Saudi National Guard Base in 1995, & at Dhahran's Khobar Towers in 1996; financing Egyptian terrorists' 1999 slaughter of 58 tourists; suicide bombs in Israel; and, most recently, the murder of U.S.S. Cole crew. (Martin Sieff, Washington Times 8/21/98)

State Dept terrorism experts describe bin Laden as a skilled businessman and fund raiser. A 1996 report said his Sudanese empire included a $50 million stake in an Islamic bank, an investment company and an import-export firm; land holdings that gave him a near monopoly in Sudanese agriculture, notably gum, Arabic corn, sunflower and sesame products, and a construction company that built roads and airports in the Sudan and Afghanistan. Soon after bin Laden's CNN interview, the Clinton administration cut off Sudanese exports to the U.S., hoping to squeeze bin Laden's business interests. His ties to funds from his family's construction firm, largest in Saudi Arabia, were cut in 1994 when his citizenship was revoked.
(Daryn Kagan, CNN Morning News 8/20/98)

He started organizing Afghan Muslim guerillas against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. The Klashnikov that he carries with him is the one which he took from a Russian soldier on a battlefield. The Klashnikov to him is now a sacred symbol.
(M. Hassan Kakar, "Afghanistan Fdtn's White Paper or Dark Paper ?" Online Center for Afghan Studies 8/99)

Still based in Afghanistan under protection by a Taliban faction after having been stripped of Saudi citizenship in 1994, expelled from the Sudan in 1996, and renounced even by some Afghans who "blame Pakistan and the U.S. for helping radical Islamic groups to flourish during the resistance to Soviet occupation and then washing their hands of the consequences"   (Pamela Constable, Wash.Post 8.21.98)

bin Laden founded al-Qaeda to provide funds and soldiers to the Afghan resistance in 1988 eight years after joining the mujahedeen at age 22. Four years later, he allied with Iran's Shiite Muslim terrorist organization Hezbollah in expressly targeting the U.S. and its allies foremost. Another four years later, he made his anti-U.S. goals public in a Declaration of Jihad or War in August 1996.   (PBS Frontline).

It was at his very beginning in 1980 that bin Laden, one of many Arab Muslims who traveled to Afghanistan to fight Soviet invasion, used Saudi funding and U.S. military arms & training from the Pakistan border.   (Reuters 10.25.96)

Osama bin Laden, CIA creation & its "blowback"
"Terrorist" connected to CIA, drugs. … ¹
9.98   Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publ.
On 8.20.98 the U.S. launched a series of cruise missile attacks against alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, both of which were said to be under the control of a rabid Islamic fundamentalist leader and arch terrorist named Osama bin-Laden. I did some checking on bin-Laden and what I found out leads me to suspect that the CIA and the U.S. government would rather have this evil terrorist hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan than answering questionswhich might embarrass them.

Shortly after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the young and wealthy Saudi Arabian named bin-Laden rushed to Afghani mountains to fight a Muslim holy war against Godless Communism. Having inherited more than thirty million dollars from his father's construction business he was in a position to lend immediate help to the struggling Afghani freedom fighters. He formed quick alliances among the half dozen or so major factions of the Mujahedeen led by Afghani Sheik Hekmatyar.
US records indicate that we spent nearly $3 billion dollars over the next eight years to train and equip the Afghan rebels. We even supplied them with Stinger missiles, which caused great concern in later years as we began to fear they would be turned against us. The U.S. Congress appropriated ransom money to buy them back in the early 90s. Few were recovered. In addition the CIA, under Bill Casey, sponsored an explosion in the heroin trade to finance the war. This was nothing new.

In 1979, when the Soviet invasion occurred, virtually none of the heroin entering the US came from the so-called Golden Crescent in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time it was coming from Mexico and Southeast Asia. By 1982 the region was producing exportable opium base equivalent to 20-30 tons of heroin a year. Of that, at least 4.5 tons reached the U.S. By 1988 those numbers had increased to 70 to 80 tons of heroin of which 15 to 20 tons reached the U.S. According to Alfred McCoy, in his outstanding book The Politics of Heroin (Lawrence Hill Books, 1972, 1991), Hekmatyar controlled no less than six heroin refineries in the Khyber District of Pakistan alone. At his side was Osama bin-Laden.

Around the time that Osama bin-Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1980 he was also curiously able to found a series of investment companies under the umbrella SICO which he headquartered in Geneva. Sources formerly in the intelligence community have confirmed to me that, as bin-Laden established branches in the Cayman islands and the Bahamas, he employed law firms and consultants connected to Langley, Virginia and the CIA. Throughout the Afghan war bin-Laden grew in reputation as a fearless leader and devout Muslim. His wealth also increased rapidly. I wonder why? By the end of the war and the Soviet withdrawal he was known throughout Africa and the Middle East as a radical fundamentalist leader who had turned his sights against the U.S. But this was not without creating enemies both in Afghanistan and his home country of Saudi Arabia, which drew ever more securely into the U.S. sphere, especially during and after the Gulf War.

In the early 1990s bin-Laden took up sanctuary in the Sudan and was afforded a kind of safe haven. He threw himself into massive construction projects including road building. The Sudanese government has admitted that it had an agreement with the U.S. to monitor bin-Laden and to curtail his terrorist activities. In exchange for this Sudan received unspecified rewards. It is, therefore, mystifying as to why, with bin-Laden under scrutiny in the reasonably accessible and penetrable Sudan, the U.S. government forced the Sudanese government to expel him in 1995. This drove him back into the arms of the increasingly hostile Taliban militia in Afghanistan. There, he re-established relations with Afghani drug lords in the towns of Jhost and Jalalabad.
When the U.S. cruise missiles struck the El-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, a host of conflicting stories appeared as to who owned the plant and when it was built. The British turned up a man named Tom Carnaffin who claimed to have helped build the plant and manage it from 1992 through 1996. Other records and sources indicated, however, that the plant was not built until 1996. Carnaffin claimed that he was intimately familiar with the plant and that it could not have produced nerve agents as the U.S. claimed. Later the U.S. backed down and said that it didn't have proof that bin-Laden owned the plant. In the meantime about four other people were named who reportedly did. Some of them didn't know each other.

What really got my attention was the fact that the French Internet publication, Indigo, reported that bin-Laden had been a London guest of British Intelligence as recently as 1996 and his treasurer, last year, defected to the Saudis as different factions shifted alliances for new campaigns in the Middle East. …

As my good friend, Producer Marc Levin, points out, the CIA has a term for it when one of their operations goes awry and turns ugly, "It's called 'Blowback'." Levin produced an outstanding 1997 six hour documentary on CIA for PBS entitled, "CIA, America's Secret Warriors". … Special thanks to Ralph McGehee's CIA BASE Program, Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin and various unnamed sources who prefer it.]

    Taliban slammed over bin Laden appt
    8.30.01   UPI
MOSCOW … This month, Russian media quoted Pakistan's Nation daily as saying that the Taliban had named bin Laden commander of their troops. …
"We knew him as one of the Saudi benefactors who took care of widows and orphans" of the U.S. backed Afghan rebels who fought off Soviet invaders in the 1980s, said a retired U.S. official who helped fight that long battle. bin Laden spent millions supporting Afghan guerillas, financing thousands of volunteer foreign soldiers who came to Afghanistan from throughout the Islamic world, and creating a network of guest houses and charities to support them and their families. "He had a common cause with the U.S.," said Zalmay Khalilzad ², former State Dept and Pentagon official of Afghan descent who monitored the war. "But with the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989, his struggle became the struggle against the U.S., the dominant power in the world and in the Middle East."
bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1989 and began to support militant Islamic groups opposing moderate Islamic governments. His rage against the U.S. took root during the 1991 Gulf War, with the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. "He regarded that as an occupation of the Islamic holy places by the U.S.," Khalilzad said, and bin Laden swore vengence against what he called "the crusaders" of Christianity trespassing on Mecca and Medina. "What this man thinks about every day is: How do I get the U.S. out of my home in Saudi Arabia, and how do I get those corrupt pharaohs out of power?" said Kenneth Katzman, former CIA analyst and Congressional Research Service resident expert on Middle Eastern terrorism.
(Tim Weiner NYTimes 8/21/98)

In the mid-1980s, bin Laden co-founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) or Services Office to help funnel fighters and money to the Afghan resistance in Peshawar. The MAK ultimately established recruitment centers around the world, including in the U.S., that enlisted, sheltered and transported thousands of individuals from over 50 countries to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. It also organized and funded paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. bin Laden imported heavy equipment to cut roads and tunnels and to build hospitals and storage depots in Afghanistan.
(U.S. Information Agency factsheet, 8/20/98)

"After a brief relative disengagement, the US, much to its disbelief and dismay, discovered in 1993 that many of its past Afghan policies had started to boomerang against the US interests. Many of the mujahideen, including the Americans' own favourites and proteges like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorists. … Past policies that had begun to backfire on American interests."
(P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA "The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security" Strategic Analysis IDSA monthly journal, Aug. 1999 vol XXIII No.5 p719-747)

Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the CIA had each their own reason for creating and backing the Taliban. A company with which Asif Zardari, her husband, was connected, had the exclusive contract for the import of cotton from Turkmenistan for Pakistan's textile industry and the Taliban protected the cotton convoys from attacks by other mujahideen groups. The CIA was interested in using the Taliban for its operations against Iran and for facilitating the construction of oil and gas pipelines by UNOCAL, the US oil company, from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. When the Sudan asked Bin Laden to quit its territory in May,1996, Maj.Gen. Babar persuaded Benazir to agree to a request from Burhanuddin Rabbani, then in power in Kabul, to let Bin Laden travel to Jalalabad via Pakistani territory on condition that he would not act against the US and Saudi Arabia from Afghan territory. Maj.Gen. Babar, through the IB and the ISI and with the support of the Taliban which had reasons to be grateful to him, ensured this. First, the failure of the agencies to effectively control the Taliban and Bin Laden, both of whom became Frankensteins. No Government of any Islamic State would accept him lest they fall foul of the US. The only way out, in Pakistani calculation, is to help him flee to a country where Muslim insurgent elements control some territory.
(R. Raman, Dir. Inst. for Topical Studies 12/18/98)

There is a strong body of Bin Laden supporters among the Pakistan army & intelligence services and also, obviously, among increasingly powerful clergy. However, many moderate politicians realise Pakistan cannot jeopardise its relationship with U.S., and the continuing drip-feed of IMF & World Bank loans, by overtly obstructing efforts to capture him.
(Jason Burke & Harinder Baweja India Today 10/4/99 ³ )

"If there is a message that I may send through you, then it is a message I address to the mothers of the American troops who came here … To these mothers I say if they are concerned for their sons, then let them object to the American government's policy and the American president. Do not let themselves be cheated by his standing before the bodies of the killed soldiers describing freedom fighters in Saudi Arabia as terrorists. It is he who is a terrorist who pushed their sons into this. … " Osama bin Laden, March 1997 interview, Peter Arnett, CNN

"One should go to the refugee camps throughout Pakistan and find out how many boy children have been named Osama since last August (1998), that's scary," said former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the agency's covert campaign to arm the Afghan mujadeen fighting Soviet troops in the 1980's. Missiles (fired at Afghanistan and Sudan) inflicted little lasting damage but helped to make bin Laden "a revered figure" in the Islamic world a senior counterterrorism official said. "People feel they have no voice," said Robert B. Oakley, former American Ambassador in Pakistan and former State Dept counterterrorism coordinator. "They look at a people with great wealth while they live in deep poverty. They resent the personal corruption of the Saudis" and the power of the U.S. American counterterrorism officials ruefully agree that bin Laden's oratory also rings true in Saudi Arabia. "His attacks on the Saudi royal family's repression and corruption are factually similar to State Dept human rights reports and CIA economic analyses". But they differ sharply in blaming the U.S. for shoring up the House of Saud by stationing troops in the Arabian Peninsula. "And if we make it into a war, we lose,'' said Mr. Oakley, the former Ambassador. ''We'll swell their numbers enormously.'' That further increases the political threat that bin Laden presents, American officials concede.
(Vernon Loeb "U.S. Harassment Campaign May Backfire" WashPost 7/29/99)

Now bin Laden's dark eyes stare out of posters displayed proudly in thousands of Pakistani & Afghan shops & tea kiosks. (Jason Burke & Harinder Baweja India Today 10/4/99)

1) http://www.india-today.com/itoday/19991004/cover.html
2) Zalmay Khalilzad said that "the US should actively assist the Taliban because even though it is fundamentalist, it does not practise the anti-US style fundamentalism of Iran". Within less than a month of the Taliban's take-over of Kabul, the US made a U-turn in its position, when it abandoned the plan to send an envoy to Kabul. The US policy shift came amidst mounting international criticism against the Taliban's appalling policies. The savagery and arbitrary medieval rule, while imposing a strict Islamic social code, banning women from working and shutting down girls schools, turned off the international community, drawing condemnation even from the orthodox Iranian clergy. Washington's denouncement of the Taliban action also came in the backdrop of the presidential election in the US, as supporting a regime that had no respect for human rights would have negatively affected Clinton's position. Robin Raphel said that the "US had little influence in Afghanistan, and supports none of the warring factions, and has no plan for bringing the conflict to an end." Another senior official of the US Administration denied that the US had assisted the Taliban in capturing Kabul. The official asserted that "as far as US policy is concerned, we have always maintained that peace and security in Afghanistan can only be achieved through the establishment of a broad coalition government." Washington got rattled not only with the Inter-Services Intelligence's ill conceived plan but also horrified and ashamed at the Taliban's defiance. The US Taliban policy evoked mounting criticism for being too dependent on Pakistani inputs and analyses. (P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA "The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security" Strategic Analysis IDSA monthly journal, August 1999 Vol XXIII No. 5 pp.719-747)
3) http://dawn.com/2000/01/02/op.htm#1

counterpoint op-ed C.L. Staten exec. dir. Emergency Response & Research Institute

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan   Warning that Muslims worldwide are under siege by a corrupted West, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden urged a gathering of hardline Muslims to prepare the next generation for holy war. Bin Laden's statement was issued to coincide with 3 day convention that ends Wednesday. About 200,000 Muslim men at the gathering celebrated the Deoband Dar-ul-Uloom Islamic teachings, which inspired the Taliban religious militia, who govern most of Afghanistan. The 143-year-old school in Deoband, India, is also the ideological inspiration of most hardline Islamic groups in Pakistan, including the conference organizers, Jamiat-e-Ulema or Organization of Islamic Clerics. Bin Laden's statement, which was sent to Pakistani news organizations earlier this week, was not read out at the convention.
The statement urged wealthy Muslims to support the Taliban and use their money to rebuild their war-shattered nation. It also urged the new generation to train for holy war, or jehad. "Issue a call to the young generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in Afghanistan," he said. "I appeal to you to teach Muslims that there is no honor except in jehad in the way of God." Successive speakers at the conference were sharply critical of the U.S. and the UN. They loudly denounced the sanctions imposed against the Taliban in January, an attempt to press them to hand over bin Laden for trial. The Taliban say it would betray Islamic tenets to hand over bin Laden to a non-Muslim country for trial. They also say the U.S. has not provided proof of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism.

In a taped address played Wednesday at the convention, the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar called the UN a tool of Washington, which he said wants to see the destruction of Muslims worldwide. The latest expression of intl outrage against the Taliban came in Feb. when Omar issued an edict ordering the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, including 2 mammoth ancient mountain carvings hewn from a Bamiyan cliff face. He called them idolatrous and offensive to Islam, which outlaws images. In his statement, Bin Laden praised Omar's edict, calling it a "great Islamic decision." Afghanistan has been battered by civil war, a drought, famine and the U.N. sanctions aimed at forcing Bin Laden's handover. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- CA, said he had met with Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil to offer a peace plan that would end more than two decades of fighting. Rohrabacher declined to elaborate on the proposal, which he said is his own initiative and does not represent the position of the U.S. govt. He spoke to The AP from the Qatari capital of Doha, where he met Muttawakil.
Rohrabacher, member of the HIRCommittee and former special asst for Afghanistan in the Reagan administration, said Muttawakil's response was "thoughtful and inquisitive." Rohrabacher said Muttawakil would present the plan to the Taliban leadership, and that he was prepared to travel to the Afghan capital Kabul if they showed interest.

SANAA, Yemen   Police today arrested several new suspects in the bombing of the warship USS Cole, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed last year, a Yemeni official said. The security official said an unspecified number of suspects believed to be Islamic militants were held in the southern port city of Aden, site of the apparent suicide bombing that crippled the destroyer on Oct. 12. "They will be interrogated to see if they were involved in the attack on Cole," the official said.Yemen had earlier arrested six suspects in the attack, some of whom are reportedly Muslim militants. But officials have said the main suspect has apparently fled to Afghanistan. The security official said a team of Yemeni investigators left for the U.S. today to continue their probe. One of the suspects, Ali Mohammed Omar Kurdi, was arrested and his house was searched by security forces on Friday, a relative told the Associated Press. Authorities gave no explanation for the arrest of Kurdi or for the search.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is based in Afghanistan, might have been involved in the attack. Bin Laden, who is also accused by Washington of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 people, has denied involvement in the Cole bombing. But Arab news media have reported that he publicly praised the Cole attack in a poem in February. The Taliban Islamic militia that controls most of Afghanistan has refused to surrender bin Laden to the U.S. despite U.N. sanctions. The Taliban says Washington has not provided proof of his guilt and that it is against Afghan tradition to hand over a guest to his enemies.

    "ground zero Wall St."    
     
"There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing."
ex•Sec.State Lawrence Eagleburger, CNN 9.11.01
9.11.01   20K dead in 99 minutes est. Hunter S. Thompson
10:10 am   A portion of the Pentagon collapses.   per CNN
10:08 am   Secret Service agents armed with automatic rifles deployed into Lafayette Park across from White House.
First year pilot on American Eagle, commuter arm of American Airlines, receives around $15K/yr in annual pay
per Michael Moore
Fed to provide funds to banks
9.11.01   AP "APO/Attacks- Fed"

WASHINGTON   The Federal Reserve, seeking to provide assurances that the nation's banking system will be protected following the terrorist attacks, said Tuesday it stood ready to provide additional money to banks if needed. "The Federal Reserve System is open … operating. The discount window is available to meet liquidity needs,'' the Fed said in a two-sentence statement. The promise to supply additional money to the banking system was similar to a pledge that the Fed issued on the morning after the October 1987 stock market crash, when the market plunged by more than 500 points in one day of trading. That statement in 1987 was given a large amount of credit for helping to restore calm to badly shaken financial markets.

Before the statement was released, Fed officials had said that Greenspan was out of the country attending a banking conference in Switzerland but was being kept apprised of developments. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson, the No. 2 official at the Fed, was monitoring banking and financial market developments along with a team of top Fed officials. The 1987 crash occurred only two months after Greenspan was sworn in as Fed chairman. He received a large amount of praise for his handling of that financial crisis. His quick response in letting banks know that they should keep lending despite the huge loses investors had suffered on Wall Street was credited with helping spur a stock market rebound.

While the October 1929 stock market crash helped usher in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Greenspan's quick response in 1987 helped to stabilize the stock market and keep the country out of a recession. Fed spokesman Dave Skidmore said Greenspan was taking part in a regularly scheduled meeting of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. The bank serves as a coordinating body for central banks around the world. Skidmore refused to discuss whether extra security measures were being deployed to protect Greenspan in light of the attacks or when he would return to Washington. "We don't discuss or provide details of his travel plans at any time for security reasons,'' said Skidmore. Greenspan travels with a security detail supplied by the Fed.

As the Fed sought to reassure the country that the nation's banking system was safe, officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement saying that they supported the decision by stock exchanges to halt trading Tuesday. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt said his agency had been "in constant communications with each of our organized security markets and exchanges. As a safety precaution while the tragic events of today are sorted out, the securities markets have decided not to open for trading today.'' Pitt said regulators strongly support this decision. "It is a responsible course of action in light of the current situation. We are continuing to monitor the situation, along with the securities markets, and investors should be assured that the disruption to normal trading patterns is a temporary phenomenon; trading will resume as soon as it is practicable to do so. We will keep the public advised,'' Pitt said.

At the Treasury Department, officials announced that the regular weekly auction of four-week bills that was scheduled for Tuesday would be delayed until Wednesday. The Treasury Department, next to the White House, was evacuated after the report of a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

    They bet against America
    9.19.01   John Balzar L.A.Times
… Wall Street and its disciples: that grim gambler's den that rushed to bet against us. The profiteers failed the first test of patriotism in 2001. They short-sold their country. Cowards, they ran. … We needed to shake off our collective cynicism about ourselves. Many tried. Not the profiteers. A curse on their house. I'll be quick to acknowledge the mixed blessings of patriotism. It can run away with us and blind us to good judgment. … many of us on the sidelines asked for a little backbone among the investor clique. Congress rushed to signal that it would bail out the airlines. The Fed cut interest rates for the eighth time this year. Investors grabbed what they could from the moment and skittered off. They didn't think red, white and blue, only green. In a far-off bunker somewhere, Osama bin Laden had a second reason to rejoice.

… If other Americans answered to market forces alone, TV networks would have showed ads for toilet paper last week instead of absorbing huge losses to carry the story uninterrupted. Newspapers would have shrunk instead of expanded. The "liberal media" sacrificed at the bottom line. Hustlers of the stock markets couldn't even hold fast. … Investors served up a record number of sell orders. … Some who stood firm were dragged down by the overpaid mutual fund managers who led the retreat, by the brokers who churned orders as they spread fear, by the hedge fund players who could see no further than the closing bell, by the individual investors who let themselves be stampeded. … Wall Street troops only yielded 7% of the value of this nation's publicly held industry on the first day they were summoned to battle. … This is blood money. …

Reporting restrained coverage of horrific scenes
9.12.01   Howard Rosenberg L.A.Times

Even as GWBush was initially kept from risky Washington, America's presidents of the airwaves were right where they were expected to be early Tuesday, addressing the nation in admirably measured tones about the epic television images of our time. "You are looking at live pictures of the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsing," said NBC's Katie Couric coolly as the 110 stories of steel, concrete and glass crumbled in an explosion of dust and debris that sent pedestrians running and blanketed lower Manhattan … newscast titles seemed to have the entire U.S. "under attack," … First the terror, then the talk. … Late in the afternoon, however, all news operations but the Fox News Channel picked up a live report with pictures from CNN's Nick Robertson in Kabul, Afghanistan, saying that explosions were occurring in that capital city. … Brokaw saying, "We're vulnerable because of the things that make us so great."

  Business world left reeling
Forecasters fear the shock could send the teetering U.S. economy into a recession and drag other countries down with it.
9.12.11   Peter G. Gosselin, L.A.Times

WASHINGTON   Beyond the awful carnage they wrought, Tuesday's terrorist attacks struck at the very heart of the American economy, threatening the open, connected, computerized order that's widely credited with having delivered the longest prosperity in U.S. history. The most immediate economic problem was how to get the huge communications, transportation and production systems that were brought to a near halt by the suicide crashes up and running again. The attacks and ensuing security alert shut virtually every U.S. airport, many ports and rail lines, and the nation's financial markets. Concerned families and friends jammed the telephone network that serves the East Coast with close to half a billion calls, more than twice the usual volume, according to managers with AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications, the major carriers.

… "It's going to take a tremendous amount of skill to prevent an absolute panic and rout when trading resumes," said Gary C. Hufbauer, a veteran economist and senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. Even if such immediate problems are solved, several respected forecasters said Tuesday that the attacks will drive an already stumbling U.S. economy into contraction, a move that could drag other economies down with it. "A full-blown, global recession is highly likely," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist with Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. "Who's going to feel like going out and buying a car now?" added David Levy of the Levy Economics Institute in Mount Kisco, N.Y. And beyond recession loomed the question of the economy's long-term prospects.

Several analysts warned that the attacks threaten the very first principle of the nation's recent growth, that its economy could run in an increasingly global fashion without risk of assault. "We've been living in a kind of delusional sleepwalk that we're invulnerable," said Graham T. Allison, former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It's as if we thought we were living on a different planet from the rest of the world." The attacks came as a special shock to the corporate and financial worlds, whose symbolic and practical center is lower Manhattan. Benchmark indexes in England and France posted their steepest declines since the stock crash of 1987. Trading in U.S. Treasury bonds, which continued for some time after the initial attack, stopped dead after the twin World Trade Center towers collapsed, destroying Cantor Fitzgerald, which handled almost one-quarter of the Treasury market.

Corporations evacuated workers from skyscrapers across the country, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Transamerica Building in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the John Hancock Tower in Boston. Analysts' worries about getting the economy back up and running were somewhat similar to those that surrounded the Y2K computer glitch, which many feared would slow so many elements of the nation's and the world's economic dance that it would prove hard to get them quickly moving in sync again. "The whole planet is almost hard-wired so it's all affected," said Ian Mitroff, a USC analyst. "It's like the total work stoppage of a nation." The global stock tumble that followed Tuesday's attacks came atop a financial drubbing the night before and left some analysts fearful about a repeat of the kind of financial seize-ups that briefly afflicted the globe in 1998, in the wake of Russia's debt default.

Economists … pointed to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War ¹, which pushed the economy into a nine- month contraction and the country into a weakened condition through the middle of the 1990s. "The productive capacity of the economy has not been damaged," said Wells Fargo's Sohn. "The primary concern is confidence. The economy has been on a high-wire act straddling between a recession and an anemic growth; the damage to confidence will push us into a recession," he predicted. But some analysts' concerns went well beyond the immediate ups and downs of growth and focused on whether the nation can sustain its recent productivity gains-- the improvement in how much workers can produce for each hour of work. "This is going to force people to add locks [to increase security] all over the economy and locks are a tremendous waste of money," said Robert E. Litan, an economist with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Right off the bat, it will add an hour to every flight in the United States," he predicted. … Hufbauer said. "This is going to trigger sweeping security increase, and by the time you finish there may not be much left of the open economy."

Sense & nonsense about Sept. 11
9.12.01   Alex Cockburn & Jeff St Clair CounterPunch

… In 1965 CIA officer George Carver wrote an infamous article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Faceless Vietcong", which rationalized the US campaign of assassination and torture of civilians in South Vietnam that came to be known as the Phoenix Program. … September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq … & also the anniversary of the Camp David accords. … GWBush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds ¹ to give more money to the Defense Dept

Who done it: "Muslim militants" or "our" govt?   Brief history of U.S. Govt directed & fomented terror
cit. "Secret Societies & Psychological Warfare" 2001 ed. Michael A. Hoffman II Independent History & Research
box 849, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816

… the FBI was fully aware ¹ of the 1993 bomb plot of the World Trade Center in New York before the attack took place. The Muslim group involved had been infiltrated by Emad Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence agent who was hired by the FBI and ultimately paid $1 million. The FBI even provided the Egyptian with a timer for the bomb. ²
"FBI tipster said he built bomb" 12.15.93 Chicago Tribune
"The Other Trial: As Sheik Omar case nears end, neither side looks like winner" 9.22.95 P.Waldman & F.A. McMorris WSJ

U.S. equipped terror sponsors   Clinton exported NSA-ducking phone, high-tech encryption devices to Syria
9.12.01   Paul Sperry WorldNetDaily

Washington   … high degree of communications activity their mission required at each stage. … They also apparently studied passenger traffic patterns of airlines in order to pick flights with relatively few people aboard. … More key, the terrorists needed to select transcontinental flights with big fuel loads to turn the planes into giant petro-bombs. …   Synchronized terrorists
… Peter M. Leitner, Defense Dept senior strategic trade adviser , who reviews commercial license applications for exports of some of the most sophisticated military-related technology, thinks he knows the answer. "The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily. Leitner says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security. … "We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said. …

Asked Tuesday if he had any inkling of the plot, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dodged the question: "We don't discuss intelligence matters." Three weeks ago, some overseas papers quoted bin Laden saying that a major strike against the U.S. was coming soon. But there were no specifics. And bin Laden reportedly sent an e-mail to unknown government sources three days ago warning holy hell would break out. But again, he didn't say how, when or where. … Leitner asserts … "Now we're going to have to knock out their [terrorist] camps, just like we had to bomb the Iraqi's several times now to try to take out the fiber-optics network that the Chinese are installing in Iraq's air-defense systems. Yet, it was the Clinton administration that gave the Chinese the technology to give to Iraq," he noted. The Bush administration apparently hasn't woken up, either.

  Wake-up call
In June, Leitner was asked by the Commerce Department to OK a new round of exports of dual-use telecom equipment to Syria. He denied the request, and was asked to reconsider. He denied it again, arguing in a letter to Karen Vogel, the Commerce export licensing officer who requested the approval, that: "Doing so vastly upgrades the C3 and C41 systems of the Syrian military and Intelligence Services. My concerns are also obviously compounded by the fact that Syria is one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism." … Vogel argued in an earlier letter that her request came on the heels of eight previous approvals of licenses for similar exports to Syria.

Emergency Response in High Gear
9.11.01   Stratfor

… Because the attacks occurred within U.S. borders, the FBI is primarily responsible for coordinating response teams. According to a Federal Emergency Management Agency press release, the FBI's Strategic Operation Information Center has been activated. Local emergency agencies are in charge of disaster assistance, such as emergency medical services. Sources in New York report that off-duty police have been called up and that 10,000 rescue personnel are deployed in lower Manhattan. For the first time in its history, the FAA has shut down the nation's air grid, … The U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico have been closed to ground & air traffic.
The military is officially under direction of the FBI. … The National Security Council is the primary crisis team for the president. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's NSC adviser, has already convened the group. … Extra security was added at the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons & research complex in Oak Ridge, TN, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Security was also beefed up at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, home to the Army's main germ warfare defense laboratory.

Report: FBI ignored French warning on extremist
9.13.01 04:48 ET   Reuters

PARIS   The FBI arrested an Islamic militant in Boston last month and received French intelligence reports linking him to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden but apparently did not act on them, a French radio station said on Thursday. Europe 1 radio reported that U.S. police arrested a man with dual French and Algerian nationality who had several passports, technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. The man had been taking flying lessons, it added. Asked for information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, French security services provided a dossier clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with bin Laden.

"He has a pedigree as long as your arm, an investigator said,'' the radio reported. "He belongs to the Pakistani- Afghan network that trains Osama bin Laden's soldiers.'' … Two of the four commercial airliners hijacked in the suicide operation took off from Boston. Many Algerian militants fought against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and have since used their military background for guerrilla attacks in Algeria, France and other countries, intelligence sources say. French officials could not immediately confirm the Europe 1 report. It said the man, who is in jail but has refused to cooperate with investigators, was a "soldier without borders'' who had made several trips to potential hotspots around the world in recent months.

"He has the profile of someone who could prepare or lead terrorist operations,'' it said. "This information was transmitted by French security services to the FBI but apparently got lost in the enormous American police machinery,'' it added. "The inquiry that might have been able to avoid everything was not started. There was no special alert transmitted to airport authorities in the U.S.,'' it concluded.

Were Feds Warned Before OKC Bomb Built ?
2.6.97   Lou Kilzer & Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News
The fuel dealer reported the purchasing attempt to the ATF, but the agency did not follow up.

Destined to shadowbox with the Devil
9.18.01   Robert Scheer L.A.Times

… terrorists have already won, immobilizing the world's greatest democracy and that much of what we are doing as a nation is simply stomping our feet in frustration. … deal rationally with the mayhem that much of the world has long endured, some of it even inflicted by us. … measures required to totally eliminate terrorism would turn the world into a police state. …

    Lawmaker becomes lightening rod in terrorism policy debate
    Calif. congresswoman praised& condemned after voting to deny Bush broad authority to deal with crisis.
    9.18.01   M. L.LaGanga, J.M.Glionna, D.Morain (Sacramento), M.Schultz (DC) L.A.Times
World Trade Ctr 9.11.01 … When the WTC towers were built, there was extensive controversy over their safety in emergencies. The NYC Fire Dept protested, as did a host of other agencies & professional associations. The buildings were constructed in bulk & height far in excess of what municipal constuction & zoning codes allowed. However, the Port Authority, a quasi-governmental agency with exceptional powers inherited from the regime of Robt. Moses, was specifically exempt from compliance with municipal codes. Real estate, construction and finance industries were powerful supporters of the project.
Aside, I add that in 30 some years of examining buildings in New York, I have found none, zero, which are fully compliant with municipal building codes. It is a terrible, little reported scandal of the city in which it is considered to be bad business to fully comply with codes. … NYC has an entire industry, separate from design professionals, which negotiates compliance due to large costs involved and what are believed to be arcane, even corrupt provisions in regulations. …
    NYC architect John Young, Cryptome
    Twin terror attacks stagger U.S.
    9.11.01   CNBC "Market Dispatches"
…
  Buildings shut down; Fed open
The attacks that paralyzed New York and Washington also shut down buildings and offices across the nation. But the Federal Reserve stayed open. Across the country, skyscrapers like Chicago's Sears Trade tower were being evacuated as a precaution. Buildings were also being evacuated in London. Ford was closing and evacuating its Dearborn, Mich., offices. Major league baseball also shut down for the day, canceling games across the country. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is not currently at the Fed's Washington building, the central bank said on Tuesday following a series of devastating attacks on Washington and New York landmarks. "The chairman is not at the board,'' said Fed spokesman David Skidmore. "We do not discuss or provide details of his travel plans.'' CNBC reported that Greenspan was safe and that he was still in Basel, Switzerland, where he had been attending a central bankers' meeting. The U.S. Federal Reserve said it was open and operating and that its discount window will provide liquidity to financial markets as needed.

  Bond market closes
Stock trading never opened this morning, and U.S. Treasuries were frozen at higher levels this morning when the Bond Market Association recommended an immediate close. Prices had opened mixed with long-dated securities on the weaker side, but the disaster that subsequently engulfed downtown Manhattan inspired a flight to quality that pushed prices of U.S. government debt higher. In Europe, shares in insurers plunged after the landmark attacks, a possible sign of what will happen when U.S. markets eventually reopen. The Dow Jones European Stoxx insurance sector <.SXIP> fell 8.5%, while the Eurotop insurance index dived 9.64%.
Insurance companies could face claims running into billions of dollars stemming from the incident. A U.S. insurance industry official told Reuters damage could cost insurers billions of dollars. U.S. airlines could face similar claims.

  Dollar keeps sliding, gold and oil surge
The dollar and some bonds continue to trade, because they are not bound to any particular exchange. By midday, the dollar lost about 1% against the euro, 1.5% against the Japanese yen and more than 2% versus the Swiss franc. Global investors clearly are parking their money in countries perceived as removed from today's attacks. Commodities prices have soared. Benchmark crude-oil futures surged about $1.85 to close at $29.30, lifted by knee-jerk fears of an oil shortage. And gold, traditionally viewed as the safest hedge against market adversity, soared some $17 an ounce in European trade. "There is panic buying of metals, gold & oil; it is complete pandemonium,'' said Robin Bhar, metals analyst at Standard Bank London. "Gold & oil have gone up and it is a drive toward safe haven territory.''

  European stock indexes slide
The pan-European FTSE Eurotop 300 has lost 4.5% of its value, and indexes in major European capitals were lower. Some European markets closed temporarily, while others remained open.

  Insurance burden will be huge
The human and political damage of today's attack is impossible to calculate, but one corporate casualty is sure to be the insurance industry. Claims will easily reach into the billions of dollars, according to industry experts quoted by the news services. "It is safe to assume claims will be in the billions," Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters. He says losses from intentional attacks generally would be covered. Among the largest property/casualty insurers are AIG, Allianz and Allstate.   CNBC on MSN Money staff

  Options exchange joins trading probe
Inquiry seeks evidence of manipulation by people with advance knowledge of attacks
9.19.01   M.Levin & H.Weinstein L.A.Times & Bloomberg News

The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the world's biggest options market, has joined a widening probe of whether terrorists may have profited from bearish trades in airline, insurance and brokerage stocks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Officials with the exchange said Tuesday that they are investigating an unusually high volume of sales of "put" options on stocks such as UAL Corp. and AMR Corp., parent companies of United Airlines and American Airlines, in the days before their jets were used to destroy the World Trade Center and severely damage the Pentagon. Buyers of put options are guaranteed the right to sell stocks at a targeted price, and they make a profit if the shares' value goes down. "CBOE is conducting an investigation of trading prior to the news event," said Lynne Howard-Reed, a spokeswoman for the exchange. She declined to give further details.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and securities regulators in Europe and Japan also are looking into whether shares in particularly vulnerable industries could have been subject to a ghoulish form of insider trading by people with advance knowledge of the attacks. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt said the agency's enforcement division "has been looking into a variety of market actions that could be linked to these terrible acts." In a letter Tuesday, New York Rep. John J. LaFalce, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Financial Services, urged Pitt to ask Congress "for any additional powers or resources you may require" to get to the bottom of the matter.
"To the extent that individuals or entities may have manipulated the broader markets or have successfully devised schemes to profit from acts of terror, the SEC must use all its resources to find those responsible," the letter said. But some analysts said they have seen little evidence so far of market manipulation. Given the general weakness of the stock market, it is "not surprising to see that there were people buying puts, basically making bearish bets on these stocks," said Joseph Sunderman, manager of research at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.
Reports of suspicious trading activity began circulating over the weekend in Europe, involving three big reinsurance firms, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance and AXA. Reinsurers sell backup insurance to protect major insurers from big losses. In the days leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, the companies' shares were hit hard by "short" selling by investors who were counting on the prices to drop. In short selling, an investor borrows and sells shares, but has a deadline by which to replace them. If the price falls, the seller profits from the difference between the price he got for the shares and what he had to pay for replacement shares.

In a report Tuesday, Bloomberg News said 3 trading days before the attack, the volume of put option contracts sold for UAL was 285 times higher than average. According to Bloomberg, the day before the two American Airlines jets were hijacked and crashed, the number of option contracts for AMR was 60 times the daily average. Options volume for some brokerage and insurance firms was also high. Trading in put options for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of one of the trade center towers, was 25 times the usual volume, Bloomberg said. Some analysts said the market moves probably resulted from the economic slump and the fact that market weakness has been accelerating in September. The airline industry was already in the dumps, and brokerage stocks always fall when the market is down, they said.
Others described the short selling of reinsurance stocks as more curious. "The insurance sector … was one of the brightest spots in a very difficult market," said Pete Gallo, New York bureau chief of HedgeWorld.com, which tracks hedge funds and other alternative investments. If, indeed, terrorist groups were involved in market manipulation, it would mean they are trying to finance a campaign of terror against Western capitalism "by using its very core institutions, the markets," said John C. Coffee, a Columbia University law professor. If terrorists were involved, "I can only speculate on how many entities there could be between the mastermind and the purchase," said James L. Sanders, former regional administrator of the SEC in Los Angeles. Experts said it would be hard to permanently conceal the identities of those who took part in the trades. Said a market regulator who would not speak for attribution: "It's very hard to pull something like this off and not leave a paper trail someplace."

  Individual investors face difficult choice:
  stay the course or run
Selling into panic usually a bad move, but shareholders' mood already gloomy after 18 months of losses.
9.12.01   W.Hamilton, K.M. Kristof & J.Friedman LATimes

… But some mutual funds and brokerage firms said that they received calls Tuesday from worried investors seeking to sell shares. "The initial reaction by individual investors was they wanted to sell and to sell immediately," said Jon Brorson, director of equities at Northern Funds, the money-management arm of Northern Trust in Chicago. … Equity markets across Europe and Latin America dived Tuesday as news of the attacks spread worldwide. But experts say history shows selling into a panic is usually a bad move. Though there are no direct historical parallels to the worst-ever terrorist assault on U.S. soil, experts note that stocks often have moved higher within weeks or months of calamities, even if prices fell initially. For example, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 9.7% three months after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, but it recouped virtually all of that drop within a year. The Dow was up 25% a year after tumbling nearly 3% the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

"It has always, in retrospect, proven to be a foolish thing to sell in the aftermath of these [types of] events," argued Mark Keller, chairman of the investment strategy committee at brokerage A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. "My advice is to sit tight and not panic." … behind the high price-to-earnings valuations that investors afforded many U.S. stocks in recent years included that the world had changed, economic growth would continue without interruption and America's position in the world was unchallenged. … "The reason you head for the exits is you think there is something to be saved. You want to beat other people out the door," said A.C. Moore of money management firm Dunvegan Associates in Santa Barbara. "Here, [the event is] a done deal. There's likely not another shoe to drop." … initial reaction was move investments to safe havens. But by early afternoon, already reconsidered. … Mark Anker, a Los Angeles waiter, said he simply needed a little cash to get through the week. He said he anticipates that few people will be going out to eat this week, so he expects his business will come to a near-standstill.

Global recession likely to develop, experts say
Slowing trade, falloff in tourism and loss of confidence will hasten decline; defense spending will increase.
9.12.01   James Flanigan L.A.Times

A stark indicator … at the Ports of Los Angeles & Long Beach as ships were held outside the docking areas of the nation's largest port complex so vessels could be intensely inspected. … Government spending on defense, budgeted at $301 billion for this year, will increase. Government outlays will surge for many other purposes, as well, including rebuilding the devastated areas of New York and other crash sites. "Our whole concept of security will now change. This means a shift of resources to defense of the homeland," said Loren Thompson, managing director of the Lexington Institute, a defense policy firm in Arlington, Va. … The effect of insurance industry losses on the economy will be broad and long term. Insurance rates will rise for every business and risk. Insurance companies needing funds to honor claims will call upon the Federal Reserve to make sure funds are available. The Fed will keep interest rates down and money plentiful to prevent financial panic.

Paradoxically, inflation may be a side effect of the coming recessionary period, as there will be a strain on supply lines for many goods and services. The easy flow of materials in the global economy has always depended on an atmosphere of peace and security, experts pointed out Tuesday. … Flows of capital, which have financed the growth of the global economy and been of special benefit to the U.S. economy, also will slow in the absence of trust and security. Prices of basic materials, particularly oil and gas, will rise for the immediate future, said Joseph Tovey, an investment banker in the energy industry. Tovey was on his way to a meeting Tuesday of the New York Society of Security Analysts at Tower 1 of the World Trade Center when the plane crashed into it. He phoned The Times from a pay phone on a Manhattan street. Attempts to increase production of natural gas and other energy resources in the United States will be reinforced, Tovey said. … Projects to liquefy natural gas in Indonesia, Algeria and other countries, which have been under consideration by companies and financial markets, look much less likely to be constructed, Tovey said.

Expenditures are sure to rise for research and development of high-tech surveillance and intelligence systems, such as those produced by Northrop Grumman and TRW. Some experts theorized that centralized installations such as the Pentagon itself would be replaced over time by decentralized military planning and management facilities. "The Internet was developed to provide just such decentralized protection," Thompson noted. Yet, on Tuesday, Internet communication lines were not able to handle the flood of traffic. Several defense experts predicted that President Bush would now encounter less opposition, in Congress and from foreign governments, … all ideas for defense and security shields will get a receptive hearing. …

    Cries of 'war' stumble over the law
    9.13.01   Jonathan Turley, law professor
        Geo.Washington Univ. L.A.Times
… Some commentators have insisted that precedent for declaring war on Bin Laden and his organization can be found in the war against the Barbary pirates in the early 1800s. The Barbary pirates, however, were the effective governing body of Tripoli, and it was the dey of Algiers who declared war on the U.S. The closest analogy would be to declare war on Afghanistan, which is the base of operations or host nation for Bin Laden.

Of course, the framers were largely unfamiliar with the modern concept of terrorist. Threats on citizens by sub- state actors were largely committed by pirates. The Constitution specifically gave Congress the right to "define and punish" pirates without a declaration of war, … One complaint is that a law prohibits assassinations while a state of war allows for such personal retribution. In reality, neither federal law nor the Constitution prohibits the president from ordering the assassination of a foreign national who is a threat to the United States. It is not a law but an executive order that prohibits political assassinations. This order was signed in 1976 by President Gerald Ford after years of abuses by our intelligence agencies.

… In the past, Ford's executive order encouraged the use of military strikes in thinly veiled efforts to kill terrorists. The result was unnecessary collateral damage to targets (including killing civilians such as Moammar Kadafi's 3-year-old adopted daughter in a 1986 bombing raid) and the escalation of a conflict with a military strike. Conversely, efforts to capture someone like Bin Laden for trial could place Americans or our foreign intelligence assets at risk. … While legal principles prefer due process, the law does not require a trial for foreign terrorists. …

  Deadly attacks may loosen CIA shackles ¹ ²
Curbs recruiting informants with 'dirty hands' could lift
  9.12.01   Susan Sward, Bill Wallace SF Chronicle

… Only one year ago, the congressionally mandated National Commission on Terrorism sharply criticized some rules barring U.S. agents from collecting information from unsavory sources. "Intelligence is our first line of defense because it is the way we find out what the bad guys are doing," said Michael Swetnam, president of the nonprofit Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, in Arlington, Va., who testified before the commission last year. He said concerns over human rights abuses prompted bans against "the Central Intelligence Agency recruiting informants who were known terrorists, human rights abusers or dictators when the whole business of spying at the CIA had been getting in bed with them so you know what they are doing."

Swetman, who spent a quarter of a century in the CIA and naval intelligence, said many of the commission's recommendations have not been implemented fully, in part because of the cost. Now "the priority for implementing the report will be much greater because the United States is historically far more vigorous in reacting the day after, " he said. "People were leaning over backwards to avoid dealing with those who had committed crimes when those rules were adopted," said Fred Ikle, a former undersecretary of defense and director of the U.S. Disarmament Agency who served on the terrorism commission. "I think that is likely to be rectified now."
The National Commission on Terrorism's June 2000 report and a similar report this year by the U.S. Commission on National Security (known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) both pointed to a widespread lack of coordination among the 45 agencies involved in U.S. intelligence work. …

Logan's security chief an aviation field novice
9.18.01   Elizabeth Mehren L.A.Times

BOSTON   Among the surprises to emerge from last week's terrorist attack is the fact that Logan International Airport's chief of security had no background in aviation before assuming his job. Former state trooper Joseph Lawless, 43, was then-Gov. William F. Weld's personal driver 8 years ago when Weld tapped him for the $125,000-a-year job. "On paper, you can laugh about [Lawless] being a driver, but he was a state police guy, and he had done investigative work. It wasn't a ridiculous idea on the face of it," said former Weld advisor Martin Linsky, now a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "But it is hard to defend in retrospect." Massachusetts Port Authority officials would not permit Lawless to be interviewed for this story.
But with international attention focused on Boston's busy airport, Lawless suddenly became a media presence. … "Logan is as secure as any other airport in this country," he steadfastly maintained. Lawless did admit, however, that FAA guidelines allow 5% of employee identification badges to "go missing" at any time. About 12,000 Massport employees carry such badges at Logan. At least one real or fraudulent Logan identification badge was reported to have been found in a car the hijackers abandoned at the airport here. Lawless also sparked an embarrassing dispute by telling federal agents their help was not needed in putting in place new FAA security measures. Sidestepping Lawless, senior federal officials informed airport administrators that they intended to lend a hand. … Lawless' boss, Massport President and CEO Virginia Buckingham, also has no aviation experience. Buckingham is a former Weld press aide who in 1998 managed the successful gubernatorial campaign of Weld's Republican successor, Paul Cellucci. Her predecessor, former Republican congressman Peter I. Blute, a Weld appointee, also had no experience running an airport. …

OAKLAND   … Rep. Barbara Lee … received 20,000 e-mail missives in last 3 days; painclothes police officers guarded her Wash. DC office after casting the lone vote against giving President Bush broad authority to combat terrorism … "we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target." … California's 9th Congressional District, home to … Berkeley & Oakland … 420-1 vote against war powers … [Alameda constituent] Glenn Forster: 'There's a word for people like her: peacenik." Sandre R. Swanson, Lee's chief of staff in Oakland home office, … "This isn't a popularity contest vote."
… Lee is not the first member of Congress to take a solo stand against going to war. Jeannette Rankin, Montana's lone representative at the time and the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, cast the only votes against World War I and World War II. Although a statue of Rankin stands in the Montana State Capitol, she paid the price for her convictions. She was defeated for reelection after each vote. …

falconer Christopher Boyce, Orange Cty CA "TRW Security, Keystone Cops" Christopher Boyce to his NatSec interrogators

C.BOYCE: Well, I have no problems with the label traitor, if you qualify what it's to, and I think that eventually the U.S. Govt is going to involve the world in the next world war. And being a traitor to that, I have absolutely no problems with that whatsoever.

RAY MARTIN, 60 Minutes tv pgm (Australia) 5.23.82:
Had you ever been one of those "my country right or wrong" kids?

C.BOYCE: Absolutely. I was brought up in a very conservative home, the right of Kubla Khan. As I got older, I came to see that most everything that I believed in was hypocrisy in this country. Things just aren't as they appear.

per Alex Constantine:
"Bin Laden Comes Home To Roost"   Michael Moran, MSNBC Intl Ed. 1998
"Osama bin Laden's American Business Ties"   WorldNetDaily 9.2.98
"So let's get this straight. Osama blows up our facilities, and his family gets the contract for rebuilding them."
… reputed partners? The family of Sharon PERCY Rockefeller. wife of John D. Rockefeller 4th D.- WV, great grandson of Standard Oil ¹ founder that used to bomb their own obsolete buildings to falsely blame their competitors. Bin Laden's so-called "secret" accounts, which the White House has said they would like to freeze, are or have been actually reportedly in the Harris Bank, Chicago, joint accounts with the family of Sharon PERCY Rockefeller. The Saudi Royal Family actually consists of some 5000 members, …
America's Reichstag Fire S.H. Skolnick 9.11.01
 … Once lost, the Romans & Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people. Remember that when Crassus tells you Sparticus approaches, when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear, when the Reichstagg burns down.

UNHOLY WARS: Afghanistan, America & Intl Terrorism by John K.Cooley. London, Pluto Press. reviews
Afghanistan, The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response by M. Hassan Kakar, University of California Press, 1995
Bin Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky "based on bin Laden's interview with Robt. Fisk, British newspaper Independent, early July 1996 shortly after he arrived from the Sudan to the Ningrahar province in Afghanistan."
Pak Proxy War: A Story Of ISI, Bin Laden and Kargil by Rajeev Sharma

Spider's Web Secret History of How White House Illegally Armed Iraq Alan Friedman Fin.Times London (1994, Bantam)
Shell Game Peter Mantius (1995, St. Martin's Press)
Evidence is clear U.S. assisted Iraq in obtaining cluster bombs, nuclear enrichment technology, U.S. designed munitions, missile technology, $5billion in loan guarantees & much more in spite of Saddam's open hatred of U.S. and his wanton use of poison gas against his own civilian population.
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, by Antony C. Sutton 1986
Opiates & Political Power in America Story of How the Drug Enforcement Administration Came to Be
  Edward Jay Epstein, 1977 cf. Peter Dale Scott

Chinese space pgm   Thread of the Silkworm   auth. Iris Chang (BasicBooks, 1995) re Tsien Hsue-shen, chinese pioneer of U.S. space age. When rejected by U.S. after his aid, became father of Chinese missile pgm.
  Qian Xuesen (Tsien Hsue-shen). Graduated Jiao Tong Univ., Shanghai and went to MIT for further study in 1935. Then involved in early US rocket pgm with Theodore von Karman & other scientists. Accused of being Communist, put under house arrest & and eventually deported to China in 1955. Chinese space pgm started one year later. As chief designer and one of major leaders, Qian played key role in Chinese space pgm Early Chinese rockets were developed from Soviet R-2 missile but Qian's knowledge & experience undoubtedly helps China launched its first ballistic missile, first ICBM and put first satellite into space.

In 1949 Tsien Hsue-shen, leading expert in high-speed aerodynamics working in America, applied knowledge learned from German rocket developments to design a practical intercontinental rocket transport. He proposed a 5,000 km single stage winged rocket clearly derived from V-2 aerodynamics. The 22,000 kg rocket would carry 10 passengers from NY to LA in 45 minutes. It would take off vertically, with the rocket burning out after 60 seconds at 14,740 kph at 160 km altitude. After a coast to 500 km, it would re-enter the atmosphere and enter a long glide at 43 km altitude. Landing speed was to be 240 kph. Tsien's fundamental theoretical work on this concept lead to him being called the 'Father of the Dyna- soar' (1950's/1960's delta winged spaceplane that was the ancestor of the space shuttle).
cf
The China Cloud Wm L. Ryan & Sam Summerlin
The Wind & Beyond Theo. von Karman 		Qian Xuesen Pu Shuying & Wei Gengfa in Chinese
Qian Xuesen Library Xi'an Jiaotong Univ.

    Timothy McVeigh   ¹ ²
    Key to truth about Oklahoma City bombing may be enigmatic W.German immigrant
    6.19.01   Michael Collins Piper Spotlight ¹
A federal undercover informant, Andreas Strassmeir, was operating alongside Timothy McVeigh for a long time prior to the Oklahoma bombing. That's the big secret the major media and the government are keeping under wraps. Slowly but surely the truth is emerging. While the media devoted endless coverage to Timothy McVeigh's execution, the media censored the fact that growing numbers of bombing survivors and families of victims doubt that McVeigh acted alone. Those who doubt McVeigh and the FBI base their suspicions on solid evidence that continues to emerge-in particular, long-suppressed FBI documents just re cently uncovered. Instead of reporting all of this, the me dia provided vast attention to advocates of the "lone bomber" theory-such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Morris Dees-allowing ADL and SPLC spokesmen to speculate about other potential terrorists who might bomb another building in the future. The ADL and the SPLC agree with McVeigh and the FBI that McVeigh was a "lone bomber."
 Who done it: "Muslim militants" or "our" govt?
Brief history of U.S. Govt directed & fomented terror
cit. "Secret Societies & Psychological Warfare" 2001 ed. Michael A. Hoffman II Independent History & Research
box 849, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816

… appt of D.A. Robt Macy, prosecutor who allegedly stymied all efforts to get to the bottom of Oklahoma City conspiracy Grand Jury delivered no indictments of ATF agents or of shadowy right wing, neo-Nazi "useful idiots" like Chevie Kehoe … of Yaak, Montana & his partner, Danny Lee of Yukon, Oklahoma, while "dressed in FBI raid outfits", killed the gun dealer William Mueller and his entire family in Arkansas in 1996 because Mueller had inside information on Timothy McVeigh and the OK City bombing conspiracy. (Spokesman-Review, Spokane WA 4.8.99 pB3). … Only one indicted was the investigative journalist David Hoffman, author of the seminal book, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (Feral House, 1998). … The entire remaining stock of David Hoffman's book was pulped and destroyed under legal threat from lawyers for agents of the FBI. …

While the media shifts attention to the grief of those who suffered, the media ignores devastating evidence that federal undercover agents operated alongside McVeigh in the bombing, having had him under close surveillance for probably several years. The SPOTLIGHT determined long ago that the key to uncovering the truth about the tragedy lay in unmasking the enigmatic German national Andreas Strass meir. This, in fact, now seems to be a consensus among a diverse group of independent investigators including, among others: In addition, McVeigh's former attorney, Stephen Jones, as well as his most recent attorneys, Rob Nigh, Richard Burr, Na than Chambers and Christopher Tritico, have charged that Strassmeir was a key player in the scenario. Well-known media figures such as Robert Novak and Sam Francis also raised questions about Strassmeir. The evidence indicates that Strassmeir, if not a participant in the bombing conspiracy, was certainly a longtime deep-cover informant for some federal agency, whether the FBI, the CIA or the BATF.

ADL foreknowledge
For its own part, The SPOTLIGHT has documented that the aforementioned ADL had early, inside knowledge of McVeigh's activities, possibly provided by its contacts in one or more federal agencies, based on data probably provided by Strassmeir and his close associates. That Strassmeir was an undercover in formant also suggests that his close friend and sponsor (and attorney) Kirk Lyons was aware of Strassmeir's status and was, in fact, his "handler." Since, for the past eight years, Lyons has been engaged in intelligence agency-orchestrated efforts to destroy The SPOTLIGHT-predating public reports of his in volvement with Strassmeir-this adds further fuel to the belief that Lyons is a deep cover operative with a hidden agenda.
Lyons sounds like McVeigh prosecutor Beth Wilkinson claiming that allegations about Strassmeir are an "Elvis Presley" theory (referring to the claim that the singer is still alive). Along with Lyons, the FBI, the ADL and Morris Dees, it has been elite media voices such as The New York Times, The Wash ington Post and Newsweek that have dismissed allegations regarding Strass meir. Yet, while the Strassmeir connection has been suppressed in the American me dia, foreign news sources have been more forthcoming.

The June 8 issue of The Times of London featured a revealing story about Strassmeir, saying that he could be "the missing piece in the puzzle." The authors clearly believe Strassmeir knows more than he is telling and that Strassmeir probably was an undercover intelligence operative. The Times comments that "the syringe that executes McVeigh will also drain Strassmeir of significance; give him the status of a footnote"-in other words, eliminate forever the one confessed conspirator who could finger Strassmeir. The London newspaper adds revelations pointing toward Strassmeir's strange connections. For example, it turns out that Strassmeir can read Hebrew-Israel's state language-as a consequence of having had an Israeli army girlfriend, "not exactly the typical choice of a neo-Nazi," the Times adds knowingly.
In addition, the Times notes that when Strassmeir first arrived in this country that this so-called neo-Nazi extremist "found friends easily-retired Army officers, CIA veterans, history buffs-and became part of a network" which the Times said "is powerful in the U.S., a web of influence that stretches into the Pen tagon and the federal agencies, in churches and boardrooms, on the oil rigs and building sites." Again, hardly the profile of your average grass-roots "extremist" but certainly the profile of an intelligence operative. The Times concludes its remarkable re port saying that "we don't believe Strass meir is John Doe II"-few people do-but adds, "there is a feeling, though, that in the huge cast of characters, all the losers, and fanatics that make up the opera bouffe of the Oklahoma investigation, only Strassmeir has the brain to be the brains."

Strassmeir claimed he is "really glad" that the missing FBI papers were uncovered, saying, "maybe they will show what garbage people have been talking about me." However, when McVeigh's attorneys appealed to block McVeigh's execution, they cited newly-released FBI documents which suggested that, in the attorneys' words, "There was . . . evidence, withheld by the government, that another person could well have been the mastermind be hind the bombing." The attorneys specifically named Strass meir and one of his friends, Dennis Ma hon of Oklahoma, as possible co-conspirators and charged that the FBI had engaged in a "scheme to suppress evidence" of their roles in the bombing. While the names of Strassmeir and Ly ons were revealed by the European-based Reuters News Agency on June 7, their names were totally suppressed by elite U.S. news sources despite a media frenzy over the midnight hour effort to block McVeigh's execution.
The American press continued to hype Mc Veigh's claim of having acted alone, censoring evidence that others were involved. Also telling is that McVeigh's attorneys said information in the FBI documents "suggested that one of the other participants in the bombing was an informant for federal law enforcement officers." Not only do most investigators seem to have concluded Strassmeir (more so than Mahon) was the likely candidate but Mahon's own statements suggest that Mahon-involved in the bombing or not-now believes Strassmeir was a government man all along.

Another strike against Strassmeir has also been leveled by an ex-Marine officer, Roger Charles, a former producer of ABC's 20/20 who resigned in disgust when 20/20 canceled his scheduled report on Strass meir some years ago. In the July 2001 issue of Soldier of For tune, Charles says that there is "compelling evidence" that Strassmeir had "access to prior knowledge regarding the bombing." Noting that Strassmeir, in several interviews, while proclaiming his own in nocence of any involvement, had claimed knowledge (after the bombing) that 1) there were actually two yellow trucks connected to the bombing; and 2) that federal authorities had placed a tracking device on one of those yellow trucks approaching Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing. Charles reports three different sets of witnesses told of seeing SWAT-dressed per sonnel with what were described as "hoops" near the Murrah building in the pre-dawn hours prior to the bombing, and on the interstate near Oklahoma City.
Noting that these so-called "hoops" are direction-finding devices used to triangulate the location from which an electronic emitter was active, Charles concludes authorities were tracking the bombers-having foreknowledge of their plans-and this was the activity seen by witnesses. Charles avers that while the authorities were following a "decoy" truck, the truck used to deliver a bomb to the Murrah building made it to the site. Charles points out that even The Denver Post conducted a six-month investigation of its own-never referred to in national news accounts- which concluded that not one, but two yellow trucks were involved in the bombing, and that the extra truck (that the government says never existed) "could hold the key to unlocking one of the most enduring mysteries of the case- how many people were involved in the bombing."
Where, asks Charles, did Strassmeir get inside information about a vehicle-tracking device used by federal officials? That the ADL and Morris Dees of the SPLC are adamant in discounting the involvement of purported "neo-Nazis" such as Strassmeir in the bombing raises the question as to why these professional "nazi-hunters" are determined to discount the Strassmeir connection. The only logical explanation is that Strassmeir was not really a "neo-Nazi" but instead, a classic "snitch" reporting back to federal intelligence agencies allied with the ADL-or that Strassmeir was an ADL asset all along.

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