Sourcebook on 9/11 and its Aftermath
Second 9/11?
11 September 2007
Table of Contents
Gen. Peter Pace on Military Duty
Second 9/11 “Imminent”
Cheney’s Remarks
“Operation Noble Resolve”: Response Triggered by Bomb or Hurricane
Conservative Media Predict Urban Nuclear Explosion
Sears Tower? Larry Silverstein is its New Owner
Defazio Denied Access to HSC Plans
Increased Reports of “Terrorist Activity”
It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral. …
[Soldiers] will be held accountable for the decisions they make. So they should in fact not obey the illegal and immoral orders to use weapons of mass destruction. …
I believe that a lot of the commanders, in fact, do recognize that they do have a free choice in [the matter of the use of WMDs], that they should not execute orders that are illegal and immoral, such as any order to use any kind of a weapon of mass destruction. …
[Though they are normally obliged to carry out an order of their superior] they can still not commit crimes against humanity. They can still not execute any kinds of orders that might tell them to use weapons of mass destruction. …
[Though their decisions may affect their careers,] they still have very clear choices to make, and their choices will have major impact, both on the troops who look to them for leadership right now and on their own personal fate when this is all over. (Jorge Hirsh, “Gen. Pace to Troops: Don’t Nuke Iran. Illegal, Immoral Orders Should Not be Obeyed,” Anti-war.com, 10 March 2006, downloaded from https://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8678, 6 Sept. 2007.)
A warning about the prospect of an imminent but staged “9/11” attack followed by a strike on Iran and imposition of martial law in the US has been issued by Cynthia McKinney, Webster Tarpley and others. Known as “The Kennebunkport Warning” (26 August 2007), it has drawn support from Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
According to its founder, James H. Fetzer, not only are there multiple indications the United States is about to attack Iran, but a series of rather odd events suggest that martial law may be near at hand. “The threat is not from our own military, the strength of which is being depleted by the ongoing occupation of Iraq, but from privatized armies, such as Blackwater USA, which appear to be growing stronger as the US Army is growing weaker.”
According to The Kennebunkport Warning, extensive evidence suggests that those allied with the neo-con faction headed by Vice President Cheney “are determined to orchestrate and manufacture a new 9/11 terror incident . . . (to) be used as a pretext for launching an aggressive war against Iran and for imposing a regime of martial law here in the United States. . . . We solemnly warn the people of the world that any terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction taking place inside the United States or elsewhere in the immediate future must be considered the prima facie responsibility of the Cheney faction.”
Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, observes that the privatization of military force has created a new problem for the citizens of this nation. “In the past, we have had confidence that the US military, our national guard, our local police and armed citizens had the combined ability to withstand threats to our liberty from our own government. But our military is broken, the National Guard has been placed under the President’s control, and our access to ammunition now appears to be being cut off, which compromises our capacity to resist tyranny.”
That our level of engagement in Iraq cannot be continued has been conveyed by many sources. Associated Press reporter Lolita C. Baldor (August 19, 2007) has written that our level of engagement in Iraq cannot be sustained. “Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next year.” Many general officers and National Guard commanders have said similar things, but the effects of a depleted military may have unexpected ramifications.
The control of the National Guard has been placed directly at the disposal of the President of the United States over the opposition of all fifty governors. “I can’t imagine a more blatant violation of states’ rights than this,” Fetzer said. “It used to be the case that the Republican Party stood for states’ rights. But then it also stood for balanced budgets, Constitutional government, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and keeping the government out of our personal lives. I simply do not understand why any principled Republican would support this administration. Maybe there aren’t any left.”
An article by Reuters (August 26, 2007) confirms that the US is the most heavily armed nation in the world, with 90 guns per 100 people. According a Small Arms Survey conducted by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, each year about 4.5 million of some 8 million new rifles, shotguns and hardguns are sold to US citizens, who own about 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms. “Ordinarily, I would consider this to be a source of security,” Fetzer observed, “but the Second Amendment is meaningless if our access to ammunition is cut off.”
Fetzer was recently startled to read in The Capital Times (August 28, 2007) that police departments across the country are so starved for ammunition that they are resorting to target practice with paint-ball guns. “This is quite shocking,” he said. “Most police ammunition is .38 and 9mm caliber, not the kind that our military requires. The profit margin on the sale and manufacture of bullets is so great and the demand is so strong that it is difficult to imagine how this could happen absent a deliberate policy to curtail access to ammo. Without bullets, those vast stocks of weapons are useless. This appears to be a very clever, insidious plan.”
Other developments raise Fetzer’s concern, including a report (wesh.com, August 22, 2007) that members of the 1st Battalion, 265th Air Defense Artillery are being deployed from Florida to the nation’s capital for a year’s duty, “where they will operate high-tech weapons systems against any potential air threat.” He finds that strange. “I am not aware of any threat from the sky to the White House,” Fetzer said. “Is this to protect Bush and Cheney from foreign terrorists or are they concerned that US citizens may rise up in opposition to their suspension of the Constitution”?
And a disturbing report has just appeared on the internet (nworeport.com/blackwater.htm ) that Blackwater, USA, the private security contractor that has assembled a large mercenary force in Iraq (as part of a governmental privatization scheme to keep the official count of American forces involved artificially low) is now building its own air force in the United States, including the purchase of Super Tucano light combat aircraft from Embraer, a Brazilian company. According to the article, it has one new private military base in San Diego, another in Mount Carroll, IL, and has applied for operating licenses in every coastal U.S. state.
“If you believe in coincidence,” Fetzer said, “then perhaps you consider it to be a remarkable improbability that, just as the American military is being weakened in Iraq, the National Guard is being placed under the President’s direct control, and that ammunition is being cut off from police departments and armed citizens, while air defense units are being deployed to Washington, D.C., and mercenaries are developing their own air force. I’m not so sure. If we have the most capable air force in the world, then why is this one needed? To do things our own air force would not do? All of these developments are troubling and lead me to think that the Kennebunkport Warning may be even better founded than its signers realize.? (Jim Fetzer, Scholars endorse “The Kennebunkport Warning”: Report ominous signs of a privatized takeover of the nation,” OpEdNews, 30 Aug. 2007, downloaded from https://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jim_fetz_070830_scholars_endore__22the.htm, 9 Sept. 2007.)
Half of the American people believe that the Bush administration is on the hunt for Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. Another half believe that 9/11 was a Bush administration inside job, attributable not to Al-Qaeda, but to “Al-CIA-duh.” Both halves, though, agree on one thing, and aren’t shy about saying it: This summer we are likely to suffer another terror attack, a “911-2B.”
The list of notables’ quotables begins with the springtime warning of the vice president to NBC’s Tim Russert on Meet the Press:
April 15, 2007, Dick Cheney: “The greatest threat now is ‘a 9/11’ occurring … with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities.”
June 3, 2007, Dennis Milligan, Chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party: “I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001].”
July 1, 2007, ABC News: “A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror “spectacular” this summer.”
July 11, 2007, Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security chief: “I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk.”
July 20, 2007, Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury: “Whether authentic or orchestrated, an attack will activate Bush’s new executive orders [NSPD-51], which create a dictatorial police state in event of national emergency.”
July 24, 2007, Peter DeFazio, House Homeland Security Committee member: “I just can’t believe they’re going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack . Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right.” (Captain Eric H. May, “A Dawning Dictatorship? (911-2B & NSPD-51),” Price of Liberty, 11 August 2007. downloaded from https://www.thepriceofliberty.org/07/08/06/may.htm
11 Sept. 2007.)
The greatest threat now is “a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities. (Dick Cheney on Face the Nation, CBS, April 15, 2007 cited in Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
The military preparations have been made, but what is still needed is a pretext for war. That is the significance of Cheney’s remarks, reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, to yesterday’s breakfast with select members of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. The issue arose of the Democrats’ opposition to the Bush administration’s war policies, and the far more deep-seated hostility of the majority of Americans to the Iraq war.
Cheney was completely unfazed. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, “It is understood he said the Democrats in the US were riding public opposition to the war that could end up prejudicing their leadership credentials. He said the mood could easily shift if there was another terrorist attack.”
These remarks reflect more than Cheney’s utter contempt for public opinion and democratic norms. He recognises that the beleaguered Bush administration requires more than its present litany of lies to wage a new war of aggression against Iran. To drown out and intimidate widespread public opposition and to energise its own fascistic social base, the Bush administration desperately needs a new terrorist outrage.
In congressional testimony on February 1, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski openly warned of “some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran culminating in a ‘defensive’ military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
No one should be in any doubt that the gangster cabal in the White House, with Cheney in the lead, is more than capable of exploiting a new terrorist attack as the pretext for launching a reckless and criminal war on Iran. (Peter Symonds, “US Vice President Cheney menaces Iran with military aggression,” Global Research, 25 February 2007.
“Second 9/11”: Cheney’s “Contingency Plan”
While the “threat” of Iran’s alleged WMD is slated for debate at the UN Security Council, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. This “contingency plan” to attack Iran uses the pretext of a “Second 9/11” which has not yet happened, to prepare for a major military operation against Iran.
The contingency plan, which is characterized by a military build up in anticipation of possible aerial strikes against Iran, is in a “state of readiness”.
What is diabolical is that the justification to wage war on Iran rests on Iran’s involvement in a terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred:
The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.
Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning [for an attack on Iran] are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War, The American Conservative, 2 August 2005.)
Are we to understand that US military planners are waiting in limbo for a Second 9/11, to launch a military operation directed against Iran, which is currently in a “state of readiness”?
Cheney’s proposed “contingency plan” does not focus on preventing a Second 9/11. The Cheney plan is predicated on the presumption that Iran would be behind a Second 9/11 and that punitive bombings would immediately be activated, prior to the conduct of an investigation, much in the same way as the attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001, allegedly in retribution for the role of the Taliban government in support of the 9/11 terrorists. It is worth noting that the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan had been planned well in advance of 9/11. As Michael Keefer points out in an incisive review article:
“At a deeper level, it implies that “9/11-type terrorist attacks” are recognized in Cheney’s office and the Pentagon as appropriate means of legitimizing wars of aggression against any country selected for that treatment by the regime and its corporate propaganda-amplification system…. (Keefer, February 2006).
Keefer concludes that “an attack on Iran, which would presumably involve the use of significant numbers of extremely ‘dirty’ earth-penetrating nuclear bombs, might well be made to follow a dirty-bomb attack on the United States, which would be represented in the media as having been carried out by Iranian agents” (Keefer, February 2006 ) (Michel Chossudovsky, “Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?” Globalresearch.ca, 22 Feb. 2006, downloaded from https://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060222&articleId=2032, 26 Aug. 2007.)
This is a wake-up call that we are about to experience another 9/11-WMD experience. (Paul Craig Roberts, “My wake-up call: Watch for Another 9/11 WMD Experience,” Online Journal, 20 July 2007.)
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of “executive orders” that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, “terrorist” events in the near future. …
William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is “praying for a terrorist strike” to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008. ..
If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the “unitary executive” at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush’s declaration of “national emergency” and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.
A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives’ Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel’s complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.
Think about it. If another 9/11-type “security failure” were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has “a gut feeling” that America will soon be hit hard?
Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that “between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s (sic) going to have a very different view of this war.” …
The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming “terrorist” events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy? (Paul Craig Roberts, “Impeach Now Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy,” CounterPunch, July 16, 2007, downloaded from https://counterpunch.org/roberts07162007.html, 6 August 2007.)
Alternatively, false flag “terrorist” strikes could be orchestrated in the US. The Bush administration has already infiltrated some dissident groups and encouraged them to participate in terrorist talk, for which they were arrested. It is possible that the administration could provoke some groups to actual acts of violence. This is a wake-up call that we are about to experience another 9/11-WMD experience. (Paul Craig Roberts, “My wake-up call: Watch for Another 9/11 WMD Experience,” Online Journal, 20 July 2007.)
The Bush administration is preparing us for more terrorist attacks. The latest intelligence report says that Al Qaeda has regrouped, rebuilt, and has the ability to come after us again.” Al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” says the report.
Security operatives, such as Michael Chertoff , and various instruments of administration propaganda have warned that we will be attacked before next year’s election. Chertoff is not a person who wants to be known as Chicken Little for telling us that the sky is falling.
Bush has the Republican Party in such a mess that it cannot survive without another 9/11. Whether authentic or orchestrated, an attack will activate Bush’s new executive orders, which create a dictatorial police state in event of “national emergency.” [See here . ]
The UK government is hand-in-glove with the Bush administration and will provide cover or verification for whatever claim the Bush administration advances. So will the right-wing governments in Canada and Australia. That takes care of the English-speaking world from which contrary explanations might reach the American people.
It is possible that Bush is now too weak, that suspicion is too great, and that there is too much internal resistance in the federal bureaucracy and military for any such scenario. If so, then my prediction prior to the invasion that the US invasion of Iraq will destroy Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement will be proven true. The Democrats’ strategy of doing nothing except making sure Bush gets his way will produce the landslide that they expect.
However, this assumes that Cheney, Rove, and their neoconservative allies have lost their cunning and their manipulative skills. It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous assumption for Democrats and the American people to make.
Once the US experiences new attacks, Bush will be vindicated. His voice will be confident as he speaks to the nation:
“My administration knew that there would be more attacks from these terrorists who hate us and our way of life and are determined to destroy every one of us. If only more of you had believed me and supported my war on terror these new attacks would not have happened. Our security efforts were impaired by the Democrats’ determined attempts to surrender to the terrorists by forcing our withdrawal from Iraq and by civil libertarian assaults on our necessary security measures. If only more Americans had trusted their government, this would not have happened.”
And so on. Anyone should be able to write the script. (Paul Craig Roberts, “My wake-up call: Watch for Another 9/11 WMD Experience,” Online Journal, 20 July 2007.)
About a quarter hour into my half hour interview with her Wednesday, Penny Dodge, chief of staff for Oregon’s Congressman Peter DeFazio, asked me what a “false flag” attack was. I explained it in a few words.
A false flag attack is one in which you attack your own people, then blame it on a group of people you want to attack. It’s a radical stratagem for instantly creating hatred, and it’s common, historically speaking, all the way from ancient to modern times. For example:
- · The Roman Emperor Nero burned Rome, then blamed it on emerging Christianity.
- · The German Fuhrer Hitler burned the Reichstag, then blamed it on communist Jewry.
- · The American President Bush demolished the World Trade Center, then blamed it on radical Islam.
At present, “false flag” is a highly relevant term, as Ms. Dodge and her boss Rep. DeFazio have learned from their constituents back home in Oregon. Folks in the Pacific Northwest, especially around Portland, believe that they may be the victims of a false flag attack by the Bush Administration under cover of an upcoming government terror exercise, Operation Noble Resolve.
Atomic August
As I pointed out in my column last week, Next 9/11, Summer 2007?, Operation Noble Resolve, to be conducted in August, will involve extensive mobilization of Homeland Security and U.S. military forces to simulate a wide range of catastrophic terror events in Oregon. The grand finale will be the simulation of a ten kiloton atomic bomb in Portland.
But what if they decide to use a real bomb rather than simulate it?
No doubt 99 percent of the participants in Noble Resolve believe it is a mere readiness exercise, but what if one percent — inserted by Bush cronies — believe it is the perfect cover for setting off a real nuke? This is, after all, what happened on 9/11/01, when U.S. military commands were simulating terror airline strikes on U.S. skyscrapers — which is exactly what happened. It’s also what happened on 7/7/05, when London police were simulating terror subway strikes — which is exactly what happened.
The criminal one percent effectively hijacked those exercises while the 99 percent of honest participants were as shocked as the general public, and simply carried on with the scenario they had been practicing, which had now become “live.”
When the horrific events that government exercises are supposed to be practicing against turn out to be the exact events that occur, then it is insanity to continue to put blind faith in the motives of the government. On the other hand, it is highest sanity to document, organize, and protest against a possible false flag attack, as the constituents and congressional folk of Oregon are now doing.
Prayers for Portland
An effective grassroots movement is growing in Oregon, and it has pushed Congressman DeFazio in the right direction. Early summer anxiety by his constituents concerned him little, as he then issued assurances that all was on the level with pending federal terror exercises, and the recently enacted National Security Presidential Directive 51, which allows Bush to establish a dictatorship if there is a catastrophic natural event or terror attack.
DeFazio’s assurances didn’t convince his constituents, though, and soon they didn’t even convince him. Just to make sure that everything was on the level with NSPD-51, he asked to see the secret annexes of the document. This was his right as a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and in his 20 years in Congress he had never been refused access to classified documents.
There’s a first time for everything, though. After initially granting DeFazio permission to check into NSPD-51, the White House reversed itself on 7/18/07, and refused to let him take a look. Friday, DeFazio, along with House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bernie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Chris Carney, sent a letter to the White House. In it, they demand the access so far denied DeFazio — or a written explanation as to why access has been refused — by Thursday. This is the day before Congress — and Congressman DeFazio — recess and return to their home districts to answer emphatic questions.
Portland has more than a prayer if it and the rest of Oregon keep up the pressure on their local, state and national leaders. At this stage of the Bush regime and its terror-driven global war, there’s no shame in conspiracy theory, since it’s the only theory that offers consistent, coherent answers to our growing secret government and its terror policies. (Capt. Eric H. May, “Peter de Fazio and the Portland Nuke,” Price of Liberty, 31 July 2007, downloaded from https://www.thepriceofliberty.org/may.htm, 31 July 2007.)
THE BOOZ ALLEN NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE: “AL QAEDA” THREAT TO USA LOOMS
This pitiful NIE ranks with the lying NIEs issued before the attack on Iraq in 2003 as a tissue of lies and prevarications. The main thesis is that al Qaeda branches around the world are striving to infiltrate more operatives into the US for terror attacks on the US “homeland:” “Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” opines the declassified summary of the underlying secret screed. “As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.” (cnn.com, July 17) The new faked NIE has been produced under the supervision of Admiral Michael McConnell, the current US intelligence czar, whose credentials include ten years at Booz Allen Hamilton, the premier private military firm. Some analysts have asked what was going on at Booz Allen on September 11, 2001, and in the days leading up to that event, and what McConnell personally might have been working on. Back on January 7, 2007, Raw Story had portrayed the newly-nominated McConnell as a Cheney asset, and quoted CIA old boy Vince Cannistraro calling the McConnell nomination “a disaster.” In the same article, CIA vet Larry Johnson predicted that McConnell, a weak manager, would cave in to Bush-Cheney on key issues. The fabrications of the new NIE have been assisted by Cheney’s office, by convicted Iran-contra felon Elliot Abrams (now a dominant personality inside the Bush White House), by Abrams’ military aide Gen. Kevin Bergner, and by other neocon assets.
Intelligence community veteran Philip Giraldi of the CIA has dismissed the new NIE with its talk of “high impact plots” against the US as “a tour de force of misinformation disguised as fact.” Giraldi also noted: “It is possibly no coincidence that there has been a significant increase in the anti-Iran rhetoric emanating from both the Bush administration and Congress over the past few weeks, mostly seeking to establish a casus belli by contending that Iran is masterminding lethal attacks against US troops in Iran and NATO forces in Afghanistan.” (antiwar.com, July 17) (Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
WARNINGS: RON PAUL, PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, CINDY SHEEHAN, PAT BUCHANAN
Among other authoritative voices across the political spectrum warning of an imminent Bush-Cheney attack on Iran:
Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul commented to Alex Jones: “I think we’re in great danger of it. We’re in danger in many ways, the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that’s in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment which endangers our troops and our national defense.”
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under the Reagan Administration, wrote in his latest column: “Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran. Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of ‘executive orders’ that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, ‘terrorist’ events in the near future.” (Paul Craig Roberts, “Impeach Now or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy,” Counterpunch, July 16, 2007)
In a July 19 interview with Thomm Hartmann of Air America, Roberts cited Bush’s July 17 executive order, which allows the US regime to seize the property of anyone found to be interfering with the reconstruction of Iraq. This radio warning was reported by the RIA-Novosti news agency of Moscow in numerous languages. The Moscow summary, dated July 20, begins: “A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship, and launch a war with Iran within a year.”
Pat Buchanan is convinced that the danger of a new war provocation by Bush-Cheney will come in August, when the Democratic Congress will conveniently be out of Washington and on vacation. Buchanan asks important questions:
Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess? One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.
Has Bush secretly authorized covert attacks inside Iran? Are U.S. and Israeli agents in Kurdistan behind the attacks across the border to provoke Iran? On July 11, Iranian troops clashed with Kurd rebels inside Iran, and the Iranians fired artillery back into Iraq.
Is this yet another abdication by Congress of its moral and constitutional duty to decide when and whether America goes to war?
Why is Congress going on vacation? Why are a Democratic-controlled House and Senate not asking these questions in public hearings? Why is Congress letting Bush and Vice President Cheney decide whether we launch a third war in the Middle East? Or is Congress in on it?” (“Tonkin Gulf II and the Guns of August?,” World Net Daily, July 17, 2007)
Based on the John Olver remarks, the Democrats are in on it. As for Buchanan, he should say these things on MSNBC.
Also warning of new war provocations was Cindy Sheehan, who was traveling towards Washington DC to declare her challenge to failed House Speaker Pelosi. She commented that there was a “distinct possibility” that America will be hit with another staged terror attack that will allow Bush to enact the martial law provisions he recently imposed by executive order. These measures allow Bush to declare a domestic state of emergency in response to virtually any minor incident anywhere in the world. (Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, July 12, 2007, “Sheehan: Distinct Chance Of Staged Attack, Martial Law; Peace Mom warns of false flag terror as she prepares to take on sell-out Pelosi.”) (Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver. Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here.
According to reports in the British press, the Cheney war party has gained the upper hand in the secret councils of the Bush White House, pushing aside the purported hesitations of Miss Rice, Secretary Gates, and the NATO allies to chart a direct course towards war with Iran:
‘The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.” . . . at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week. . . .”Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.’ (“Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran; Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out; President ‘not prepared to leave conflict unresolved’,” Guardian, July 16, 2007.)
Deluded supporters of the Democratic Party may soon have to throw away their pathetic countdown clocks, those self-consoling little devices that remind them of how much time remains until noon on January 20, 2009, the moment when it is thought that Bush will finally leave office. These countdown clocks make no provision for the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a new super 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction in the US, to be used as the pretext for a nuclear attack on Iran and for martial law at home. Those who think the Republicans cannot hold the White House in 2008 have forgotten that neocons always prefer a coup d’etat to an election. As Cheney told Bob Schieffer of CBS’s Face the Nation on April 15, 2007: ‘The greatest threat now is “a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities.”’
Pelosi and Reid need to toss out their fatuous countdown clocks, and get out their impeachment stopwatches — fast.
Chertoff’s gut feeling for terrorism
Integral to the Cheney strategy has always been to orchestrate a climate of public terror. As Cheney told WLS in Chicago on Friday April 13: “It’s important that people remember 9/11.”
Nine-eleven remains the basis of every one of Cheney’s intrigues. One of Cheney’s terror facilitators in this sense is Michael Chertoff, the cadaverous secretary of Homeland Security. Although an experienced bureaucrat, Chertoff is now contemplating his navel as he searches for new ways to intimidate the American people, who have essentially no natural enemies at all, into the hallucination that they face an acute existential threat of being wiped out from one moment to the next. Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune — once the voice of isolationism — that the US faces an increased danger of attack in the summer of 2007. This wild fabrication, not based on any specific information of any kind that he could cite, Chertoff called his “gut feeling . . . the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer.” “I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk,” said Chertoff. “Summertime seems to be appealing to them. . . . We worry that they are rebuilding their activities.”
The desperate demagogues of the Republican Party are facing a hecatomb at the polls in November 2008. Their idea seems to be that of the fascist Prime Minister Aznar of Spain in March 2004: if you are sure to lose an election, stage a terror attack, declare martial law, and perpetuate your power that way. Aznar was stopped by a general strike of about one third of the entire Spanish people. If all else fails, would Americans be capable of a mass strike against war and dictatorship? We may soon find out.
Chertoff’s troubled gut has already given rise to a White House interagency group of top intelligence and law enforcement functionaries that meets every Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. Will this committee run the coup? Reports followed of dozens of FBI agents fanning out to pursue a “worry list” of some 700 alleged leads, including 100 in the New York area. Some of these derived from the recent British terror stunts in London and Glasgow used by MI-5 and MI-6 to smooth the transition from the Tony Blair quasi-police state to the Gordon Brown version of the same thing.
MI-5 and MI-6 displayed the same mixture of comic ineptitude and phlegmatic homicide which was their hallmark during the long years when London was the prey of bombs by the “Irish Republican Army,” now revealed to have been top-heavy with government intelligence agents who called the shots. The Glasgow airport event consisted of a burning car crashed into a building, the films of which were shown all afternoon the by the US cable news networks. One was tempted to propose a caption: “Only one burning car — a good day on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.” Yet for one burning car, the world was supposed to stop. These British events had been preceded by several weeks of hysteria about allegedly looming terror attacks against US installations in the Rhein-Main area of Germany, featuring the Wiesbaden spa, all based on CIA claims made to the government in Berlin and relentlessly trumpeted through the controlled media.
A new 9/11 the key to bolstering Western resolve
Chertoff’s rationale was illuminated by an interview with Lt. Colonel Doug Delaney, the chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a NATO intelligence center. Delaney was addressing the problems raised by the rising Canadian losses in Afghanistan, but he provided a valuable window into the minds of military planners when he observed, in the words of the interviewer: “It may well be that the key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago, he says. If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this [Canadian meddling in Afghanistan] is necessary.” In other words, it may be time for a new false flag synthetic terror operation to gin up hysteria in North America to permit the present bankrupt elites to retain power and further grind down any spirit of popular resistance to such irrational rule. Chertoff’s fear-mongering was backed up by ousted Republican senator and notorious scoundrel Rick Santorum, who told a radio interviewer that “between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public is going to have a very different view of this war.” Chertoff’s reckless and inflammatory ventriloquism was the harbinger of the new US National Intelligence Estimate issued on July 17. …
US situation tragic
These points bring into sharp relief the dire predicament of our tragically drifting country in the summer of 2007, a summer which Cheney’s backers and controllers are determined to transform into the Summer of Fear. Skeptics may object that they have heard all this before — in the spring and the autumn of 2004, in the late summer of 2005, and in March-April of 2007 — and that so far the general war with Iran had not occurred. This is true, but it is no argument against the urgency of the warnings that the present writer and others have issued from time to time over the last three years. It only shows that the world has been lurching and careening along the edge of a much wider war in the Middle East since about May of 2004 at the latest. For much of this time we have lived in the shadow of the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a nuclear attack on Iran in the wake of a new super 9/11 terrorist provocation (coming from the bowels of the US intelligence community) — as revealed by Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative in August of 2005. Each time some combination of internal US institutional resistance and inertia, objections by NATO allies, and foreign threats or pressure have somehow avoided the worst. So far we have muddled through. But Cheney’s backers and controllers — the ones designated as the Cheneyacs in this analysis — have unfailingly pulled themselves together after each rebuff, and have marshaled their forces for a new drive over the brink of the abyss.
As long as Bush and Cheney are in power, as long as the 9/11 rogue networks in the US intelligence community continue their work unpurged and undisturbed, we will face one war emergency after another, until the likely moment when humanity’s luck runs out. Under any political system committed to its own survival, each of the Cheneyac war drives over the past three years should have led to the impeachment, removal from office, and indictment of the dour and snarling old reprobate himself, and a general mop-up of his followers. It is the fact that the corrupt and cowardly parliamentary cretins of the Democratic Party have failed to impeach and oust Bush-Cheney over the last six months since they took power, which represents the most immediate cause of the fix we are now in. Congressman Kucinich has introduced the needed articles against Cheney, but the Pelosi-Reid opportunists have been hostile to this needed measure. It is time for honest activists to join with the Philadelphia Platform to get on with the business at hand before martial law is imposed by these neocon fascist madmen, since by then it may be too late. (Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
BRZEZINSKI: “A TERRORIST ACT IN THE US BLAMED ON IRAN”
The Democratic Party Congressional leadership has known all about Cheney’s plans for six months or more, as can be shown from the public record. On February 1, 2007, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of ongoing machinations designed to procure war with Iran and beyond: “A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’ US action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”
Over the past half year, events have followed Brzezinski’s scenario closely. Blaming Iran for the missed benchmarks in Iraq is now the daily stock in trade of the Bush administration and the US Central Command, who whine continuously about Iranian interference in Iraq. There have been several military provocations in Iraq which the US has tried to pin on Iran, most notably March 23, 2007 incident involving 15 British Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel who were taken into custody by the Iranians. This incident was a part of Cheney’s winter-spring war drive, which peaked with two US B-1 bombers deliberately violating Iranian airspace over the city of Abadan in oil-rich Khuzestan province on March 31. This crisis was defused by a mobilization of persons of good will around the world, with Russian President Putin and the RIA-Novosti news agency playing a critical role. In particular, a pointed March 28 warning from Putin to Bush about attacking Iran created enough uncertainty in Washington about how Moscow might respond to nuclear aggression against Iran so that cooler heads than Cheney’s prevailed. (Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
FIGHT BACK WITH THE PHILADELPHIA PLATFORM
That leaves us with Brzezinski’s third scenario point: a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran. What Brzezinski is talking about here is high treason, insurrection , genocide, high crimes against humanity under US law and the Nuremberg Code. Why has he not been called upon to tell all he knows about this sinister plot, so obviously operating through the Cheney-Addington office, and through Eliot Abrams at the White House? Because the Democrats who heard that warning – Senators Biden, Dodd, and Obama on the committee, plus Hillary Clinton – have done nothing to raise a hue and cry, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, demand documents, or begin impeachment hearings against those involved. The Democratic Party must therefore be seen as fully complicit under the Nuremberg Code in any future crimes by Cheney regarding a wider war in the Middle East. The Democratic Party has failed, and the viable peace movement must now organize independently on a multi-issue basis including 9/11 truth, as called for in the July 4, 2007 Philadelphia Platform, which can be seen at www.actindependent.org. (Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from https://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007.)
Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Orderwhich allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.
He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts — a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War — by quoting the “strong words” which open Roberts’ latest column:“Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”
“I don’t actually think they’re very strong,” said Roberts of his words. “I get a lot of flak that they’re understated and the situation is worse than I say. … When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] … there’s no check to it. It doesn’t have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. … The American people don’t really understand the danger that they face.”
Roberts said that because of Bush’s unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election.”
However, Roberts emphasized, “the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling.” Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. “Something’s in the works,” he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.
“The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists … are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events,” Roberts continued. “Chertoff has predicted them. … The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. … You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda’s not going to do it, it’s going to be orchestrated. … The Republicans are praying for another 9/11.”
Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn’t about to happen. “If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it,” Roberts replied. However, he added, “I don’t think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective,” pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.
“Americans think their danger is terrorists,” said Roberts. “They don’t understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. … The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren’t able to perceive that.”
Roberts pointed out that it’s old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. “It’s so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power,” he said. “There’s no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. … Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. … A person like that would do anything.”
Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, “the only constraints on what’s going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it.” (Muriel Kane, “The Raw Story Covers Roberts’ Appearance on the Hartmann Show,” 19 July 2007, https://www.9/11blogger.com/node/10095, downloaded 27 July 2007.)
<“Operation Noble Resolve”: Response Triggered by Bomb or Hurricane
Noble Resolve is a U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) experimentation campaign plan to enhance homeland defense and improve military support to civil authorities in advance of and following natural and man-made disasters.
The Noble Resolve campaign will:
• Develop solutions for U.S. agencies and organizations by providing the means to deter, prevent, and defeat threats and aggression aimed at the U.S., its territories, and interests.
• Develop solutions to provide improved defense support to civil authorities.
• Build upon global partnerships.
The Army and USJFCOM determined the need for homeland defense experimentation during their Unified Quest 2006 wargame. USJFCOM explored the Department of Homeland Security’ s scenario for an unaccounted for, “loose,” ten kiloton nuclear weapon. (“Noble Resolve,” United States Joint Forces Command, downloaded from https://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/nobleresolve.html, 7 August 2007.)
(SUFFOLK, Va. – May 31, 2007) — The initial experiment of U.S. Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Noble Resolvecampaign designed to look at ways of enhancing homeland defense and support in the event of a natural or man-made disaster proved to yield promising results. …
Participants teamed up throughout the experiment to use a number of modeling and simulation (M&S) tools to get a read on what would happen in two scenarios.
The first involved a hurricane, similar to Hurricane Katrina, coming from western Africa hitting the Hampton Roads. The second dealt with a terrorist attack coming from a ship that sailed from the western African region. …
Ozolek gave praise to the commonwealth saying they’ve agreed to help out even more.
“What we actually learned working with Virginia is they’ve graciously agreed to work with us as we work with Oregon in August for Noble Resolve 07-2,” he said.
Kersh said the overall lessons learned from Noble Resolve 07-1 will be brought to Noble Resolve 07-2. That experiment will consist of two more scenarios, the first involving an earthquake to the Portland area and the second dealing with a series of vignettes dealing with the Global War on Terror.
By the time the Noble Resolve 07 campaign comes to a close in August, USJFCOM and NORTHCOM will have partnered with the U.S. Transportation Command, and other federal agencies such as the Dept. of Homeland Security, the FBI and Customs and Border Protection.
It also will have teamed with individual states such as the commonwealth of Virginia and state of Oregon, as well as multinational participants to include Canada, Germany, Singapore, Finland and Sweden, amongst others. (“Noble Resolve 07-1 yields new opportunities for experimentation,”United States Joint Forces Command, downloaded from https://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2007/pa053107.html, 7 August 2007.)
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Oden, the military lead for Noble Resolve’s initial experiment which will last through the end of the week … said the next phase in August will focus on a threat in the Pacific theater. Those involved will include the state of Oregon, the city of Portland, the Oregon National Guard, as well as Joint Task Force Homeland Defense, located in Hawaii. (“Noble Resolve 07 Kicks Off,” United States Joint Forces Command, downloaded from https://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2007/pa042307.html, 7 August 2007.)
<
Later this year, many members of the team will work with city officials in Portland, Ore., and the Oregon National Guard in an exercise designed to prevent, prepare for and respond to large-scale terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction. …
Also last week, Vice President Dick Cheney said the threat of nuclear terrorism is very real.
“The fact is that the threat to the United States now of a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities is the greatest threat we face,” he said. “It’s a very real threat. It’s something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day.” (“American Hiroshima: Big nuke terror drill on tap in U.S. today. Operation ‘Noble Resolve’ tests response to simulated detonation in Virginia harbor,” WorldNetDaily, 23 April 2007, downloaded from https://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55327, 7 August 2007.)
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the 9/11 commission have all concluded a nuclear terrorist attack is not only the nation’s No. 1 nightmare but also something of an inevitability at some time in the future. (“American Hiroshima: Nuclear terror: How likely is it? 50% chance of detonation
within 10 years, says expert,” WorldNetDaily, 20 April 2007, downloaded from https://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55292, 7 August 2007.)
WASHINGTON – With the nation facing an increased threat from nuclear terrorism, at least one community is rebuilding a public fallout shelter program like those abandoned in the 1970s when Americans began believing surviving a nuclear event was not possible or not worthwhile.
In Alabama, the Huntsville-Madison County Emergency Management Agency, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, local schools and hospitals and businesses, has identified facilities suitable for public shelters against nuclear and radiological attacks for nearly half of the area’s 300,000 people. …
[Kirk Paradise, plans coordinator for the Huntsville/Madison County Emergency Management Agency] and his boss, John Russell, offered a presentation to other emergency planners at a nuclear event symposium in Richmond, Va., last month.
“What happens if Osama bin Laden fulfills his promised American Hiroshima?” they asked in their power-point program. …
“This is not re-fighting the Cold War, but adapting to the threat of global terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to nations who will use them if they get them,” said Paradise. …
“If a nuclear weapon is detonated by terrorists, fallout shelters and the ability to use them will be the difference as to whether we are just victims or survivors, ready to rebuild our society,” said Paradise. (Joseph Farah, “Nuclear War-Fear: City prepares for nuke terror. Local officials restore long-abandoned fallout shelters, train for WMD emergency, WorldNetDaily, 13 April 2007, downloaded from https://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55106, 7 August 2007.)
Sears Tower? Larry Silverstein is its New Owner
I want to play a clip. [Charlie Sheen] mentioned this clip from America Rebuilds, a 2002 PBS documentary and it is narrated by Kevin Spacey. And here is Larry Silverstein, the owner who took out $7 billion worth of insurance on the two towers. And he’s also now bought the Sears Tower and taken out a bunch of insurance. And Governor Patawki just called him the lowest of the low in the newspaper because he’s holding out for a billion more now. Interesting fellow. He’s made out quite well. (Alex Jones interviewing Charlie Sheen at https://prisonplanet.tv/audio/200306sheen.htm, downloaded 29 July 2007.)
Two investors who are part of Larry Silverstein’s group that owns the World Trade Center lease are among the buyers of the Sears Tower, which MetLife Inc. agreed to sell Thursday for more than $800 million, according to people familiar with the situation.
Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre, New York investors who are among Mr. Silverstein’s backers in the Trade Center, are part of a group that agreed to buy the Chicago landmark, these people said. Another New York investor, Jeffrey Feil, was also a participant in the Sears Tower deal, the people said. Names of the other investors couldn’t be learned.
MetLife announced the agreement Thursday, but declined to disclose the buyer or the terms, citing a confidentiality agreement. While the insurance company, based in New York, had previously announced its intention to sell the tower, the speed of the deal and the relatively high price caught the real-estate industry off-guard.
MetLife said it would realize an after-tax gain of $90 million on the deal.
Messrs. Goldman and Carye couldn’t be reached. Attempts to reach Mr. Feil were unsuccessful. The names of the three investors were reported Thursday on the Slatin Report, a Web newsletter.
Mr. Goldman led a group including Mr. Cayre that put up most of the $125 million of the equity that Mr. Silverstein, a New York developer, used to buy the 99-year office lease on the Trade Center office portion from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The deal, valued at $3.2 billion, including the Trade Center’s retail mall, closed in July 2001, weeks before the September terror attacks that destroyed the complex.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Port Authority in December had quietly agreed to return all of the $125 million in equity that Mr. Silverstein and his low-profile group originally invested to buy the leases. The full details of that transaction haven’t been released to the public. But the deal effectively eliminated the Silverstein group’s capital risk in the project, while allowing the group to retain control of 10 million square feet of office space. The Port Authority has rejected a Wall Street Journal request to review the transaction, citing Mr. Silverstein’s ongoing lawsuit against his insurers, led by Swiss Reinsurance Co., over how many claims may be collected as a result of the attacks. (Dean Starkman, “MetLife will Sell Sears Tower,” Wall Street Journal, 12 March 2004.)
Oregonians called Peter DeFazio’s office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.
On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.
“I just can’t believe they’re going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack,” DeFazio says.
Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn’t know who did it or why.
“We’re talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America,” DeFazio says. “I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee.”
Bush administration spokesman Trey Bohn declined to say why DeFazio was denied access: “We do not comment through the press on the process that this access entails. It is important to keep in mind that much of the information related to the continuity of government is highly sensitive.”
Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he “cannot think of one good reason” to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.
“I find it inexplicable and probably reflective of the usual, knee-jerk overextension of executive power that we see from this White House,” Ornstein said.
This is the first time DeFazio has been denied access to documents. DeFazio has asked Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., to help him access the documents.
“Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right,” DeFazio said. (“Congressman on Homeland Security Committee denied access to documents: Maybe conspiracy,” 20 July 2007, downloaded from https://www.9/11blogger.com/node/10099, 29 July 2007.)
A spate of new reports of al Qaida resurgence appears to be laying the foundation for a fake attack on the US to bolster support for the “war on terror” and Bush’s sagging political fortunes. This conforms to a confidential memo circulated among senior Republican leaders that a new attack would be good for the GOP. Not even Michael Chertoff seems to be investigating what sources know that could help to prevent a real attack.
Madison, WI (PRWEB) July 19, 2007 — A new report summarizes evidence suggesting that intelligence agencies in collaboration with their media assets are in the process of preparing the American people for a new 9/11-style attack. James Fetzer, the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, has been taken aback. “This summary from MUJCA-NET forces us to confront the awful prospect that the forces that brought us a fake attack on 9/11 are about to reprise their performance,” he stated. “My fear is this will be done on a scale of magnitude greater, involving 30,000 or even 300,000 deaths.”
“This is not the first time that the political benefits of another terrorist attack have been discussed,” Fetzer observed. “Last November, Capitol Hill Blue reported that a confidential memo was circulating among senior Republican leaders suggesting “that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and ‘restore his image as a leader of the American people’,” as Doug Thompson explained on November 12, 2006. “The signs suggest that the time is right.”
The summary, authored by Kevin Barrett, founder of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth whose web site is mujca.com, includes a half-dozen examples of the use of the media to promote such a possibility, where the motivation for faking such an attack revolves around generating support for the “war on terror” and for the political fortunes of George Bush. “The illustrations he offers are stunning, when you pause to consider them,” Fetzer said, “including a half-dozen from political and intelligence sources.”
First, on June 3, 2007, Dennis Milligan, Chair of the Arkansas Republican Party, said, “I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [9/11” to make the American people appreciate President Bush and thereby benefit the GOP. https://rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=6331
Second, on July 7, 2007, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum asserted that a series of “unfortunate events” (meaning terrorist attacks) will occur within the next year and radically alter American citizens’ view of the war. https://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/070707changeview.htm
Third, on July 8, 2007, Lt.. Col. Doug Delaney, Chair of the War Studies Program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, suggested the West needs more terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 and 7/7 to save a failing foreign policy. https://www.thestar.com/News/article/233617
Fourth, on July 10, 2007, ABC News with Charlie Gibson reported that senior US intelligence officials insist that an “al-Qaida” terror cell is either already here or on the way, admitting the data is vague and non-specific. https://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/al-qaeda-cell-i.html
Fifth, on July 10, 2007, an anonymous U.S. intelligence analyst told the AP that “al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” according to two AP reporters. https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_terror_threat
Sixth, on July 10, 2007, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made a major effort to convey to the public he has a “gut feeling” that a new 9/11 is on the way, a report that even drew the attention of The New York Times (“Chertoff Warns of Higher Risk Of Terrorism,” July 11, 2007, page A16).
“What we have here is a kind of saturation campaign of disseminating the same or similar information through multiple sources in order to ‘soften the target’ for the main event, which in this case comes from the Director of Homeland Secutiry,” Fetzer observed. “This is a widespread technique of disinformation that insures most of those in the target population will hear the story and will hear it from more than one source, which is reinforcing. The whole ‘terrorism’ scenario is so amorphous that any act taken by anyone can be alleged to be the work of ‘terrorists,’ which is perfect for our agents. In this case, however, they overplayed their hand and made it too obvious.”
Indeed, on July 13, 2007, another alarming report appeared as an ABC News Exclusive, “Terror Commander: New Attack Will Dwarf Failed Bomb Plot”, https://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/terror-commande.html“This sequence appears to have been skillfully timed to create the impression that Michael Chertoff knew what he was talking about when he announced that he had a ‘gut feeling’ that we are going to have a hot summer. But the only summer attacks they can cite are 7/7 and the liquid-explosive plot, where the first occurred on the same route and at the same time as a ‘terrorist drill’ and the second was clearly a farce that represented no threat to anyone at all.”
“What is most troubling is that no one in a position of authority is trying to get to the bottom of this. If GOP leaders like Dennis Milligan and former Senator Rick Santorum possess information that could protect the American people from another terrorist attack, the CIA should interrogate them using the techniques our Vice President has approved,” Fetzer observed. “Let’s water-board them and subject them to sexual humiliation. After all, that’s what we are doing to prevent attacks abroad. Why aren’t they being used here? Chertoff appears to be making no effort to get to the bottom of this. Bush can’t claim to be ‘the security president’ if he won’t keep us secure.”
Fetzer is not alone in suspecting that Americans are being set up for another terrorist attack. On 10 July 2007, Paul Joseph Watson wrote, in response to the report from Lt. Col. Doug Delaney (that the West needs more terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11), “By this logic, if terrorist attacks only boost the geopolitical agents of Western governments, then how is it in their interest to prevent them, and of what benefit are they to the actual terrorists — unless the terrorists occupy positions of power?” More attacks work to their advantage. https://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/100707moreterror.htm
“The problem we confront is that this administration is corrupt to the core and has no regard for the well-being of ordinary citizens. We already know that 9/11 was ‘an inside job,’ as anyone visiting our site, 911scholars.org, can readily determine for themselves. The American government has been using acts of violence to instill fear into the American people, which is the classic definition of ‘terrorism,'” Fetzer said. “Which means the American government has been practicing terrorism on the American people. And, regrettably, from the look of things, matters are only going to get worse.” (“GOP Welcomes New 9/11: Reports Lay Groundwork for Attack, Scholars Say,” PR-GB.com, 3 August 2007, downloaded from https://pr-gb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5697&Itemid=9, 7 August 2007.)
Over the last two weeks the Bush administration has orchestrated yet another campaign to sow fear and anxiety among the American people with unsubstantiated claims that signs are mounting of a looming Al Qaeda terrorist attack.
Not a day goes by without suggestions by Bush or top Homeland Security officials that an attack perhaps on the scale of 9/11, or worse, is being prepared. As always, the mass media dutifully report such claims as authoritative, without questioning the lack of evidence beyond the bald assertions of intelligence and other government officials.
The deliberate cultivation of a climate of fear is a basic modus operandi of the Bush White House. Can it be an accident that Bush is once again resorting to scare tactics at a time when his poll numbers are dropping to record lows, popular opposition to the war in Iraq is rising, and the administration is openly declaring that its war policy will not be bound by elections or debates in Congress? The sudden reemergence of Al Qaeda as a supposed threat to the safety and security of every American coincides with a political counteroffensive in which critics of Bush’s military escalation are branded as either dupes or aiders and abettors of the terrorists.
The terror scare serves three basic political functions: to divert public attention from the disaster in Iraq and the social crisis within the US, to justify a foreign policy based on militarism and war, and to provide a pretext for police state measures at home.
What has happened over the last two weeks?
* On July 10, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff gave an interview to the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune in which he said the US was facing a heightened threat of attacks this summer. He gave no evidence of such a serious risk, other than saying he had a “gut feeling” an attack was being prepared. Why America’s top anti-terrorist official—who has at his disposal vast resources, including information gathered by US spy agencies around the world—would have to rely on a his gut, rather than concrete evidence, Chertoff did not say.
* On July 17, the Bush administration released an unclassified summary of its National Intelligence Estimate, which claimed the US was facing a “heightened threat environment” for terrorist attacks because Al Qaeda had found a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas, from where it could plot such attacks. The Bush administration immediately seized upon the report, ominously entitled “The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland,” as a pretext for possible military intervention in Pakistan and a justification for his war policy in Iraq as well as further domestic surveillance measures at home.
* On July 24, Bush gave a near-hysterical speech at a South Carolina air force base, where he insisted that the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq would result in terrorist attacks on the US. He repeated the absurd claim that US troops in Iraq were “fighting bin Laden’s Al Qaeda” and said that following the advice of those advocating a draw-down of US troops in Iraq would be “disastrous for America.”
The same day, Air Force General Victor Renuart, who heads the US Northern Command, established by the Bush administration to oversee military operations within the US, told the Associated Press that the American military needs to triple its domestic military forces to counter the growing threat from Al Qaeda, which, he claimed, was actively preparing another terrorist attack in the US. “I believe there are cells in the United States, or at least people who aspire to create cells in the United States,” Renuart said.
He called the National Intelligence Estimate a “summary of drumbeats, and the drumbeats are getting more prevalent out there. You cannot afford to ignore that.” Asked if he was concerned about an attack in the US this summer, he replied, “I have to be concerned that it could happen any day.”
Over the past few days, television news broadcasts have prominently featured a recent alert issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), warning federal air marshals and other law enforcement agencies to look out for terrorists practicing to carry explosive components onto aircraft. The July 20 warning was based on the seizure of “curious” items found in the luggage of a handful of passengers over the last year, including “wires, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,” such as blocks of cheese. Security officers were instructed to keep any eye out for “ordinary items that look like improvised explosive device components,” because they might be used to test airport security.
The agency admitted, however, that none of the passengers with any of these items were found to have any connections to criminal or terrorist organizations. TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe subsequently downplayed the story, saying Tuesday, “There is no credible, specific threat here. Don’t panic. We do these things all the time.”
Her remarks follow a well-established pattern. The government issues dire warnings which are given sensationalist coverage by the media. In most cases, there follow acknowledgments that the government has no concrete evidence of a specific terrorist plot. Why, then, the gratuitous alarms? The media never bothers to ask a government official to explain.
This has been the stock-in-trade of the Bush administration since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—an event which itself has never been seriously investigated and for which no accounting has been given of supposed intelligence lapses that point to the possible complicity of the government itself.
At numerous points in Bush’s tenure, terror warnings have been issued in the midst of damaging revelations and political events that shook the administration. For example, two days after the May 18, 2002 revelation that Bush had received a presidential briefing five weeks before 9/11, warning of a terrorist attack within the US, FBI director Robert Mueller announced more attacks were “inevitable.” The next day, officials declared that US railroads and key New York City monuments were threatened.
In the days following Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 2003 speech at the UN, where he claimed the US had incontrovertible evidence that Iraq had WMDs, and mass international anti-war demonstrations on February 15, a US official warned of potential bio-terror attacks and advised Americans to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect themselves.
Similar unsubstantiated warnings followed the Abu Ghraib revelations of US torture of Iraqi detainees, the revelation of CIA doubts about false pre-war claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion that the attacks were preventable, and news that Karl Rove might be indicted in the CIA leak case.
The Bush administration has set out to make fear and anxiety over terrorism the center of public life. It hopes to appeal to the confusion of more backward sections of the population in order to bludgeon popular opposition to its agenda of militarism and political repression at home.
In so doing, Bush has enjoyed the support of the Democratic Party, which, far from exposing this cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion, has fully embraced the so-called “war on terror.” The Democrats have frequently attacked Bush for not going far enough in “securing the homeland.”
There is no doubt that the brutal neo-colonialist foreign policy of the US government has placed the American people in danger of another terrorist attack. However, the greatest threat to the democratic rights and safety of the American people, and the people of the world, comes not from Islamic extremists in the Middle East, but from US imperialism and the warmongers in Washington. (Jerry White, “The motives behind the Bush administration’s latest terror scare,” Global Research, 30 July 2007.)