WhatDIDN'Treallyhappen.com

2004-01-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

The Myths Live On

It never ceases to amaze me how fables and outright lies can live on in public discourse, long after they have been thoroughly definitively debunked.

Today's fractured media environment, as "empowering" as it may be (let's be frank, shall we? Some people simply shouldn't be empowered), has taken the "Lexis Nexis effect" to absurd new heights. Call it cybercascading, or, as Lileks put it, "non-contiguous information streams." What ever you want to call it, it appears that there are still scores of people -- legitimate journalists among them -- who to this day Didn't Get That Memo.

Alan Cabal has written another one of those Unanswered (to the Satisfaction of the Most Paranoid Among Us) Questions essays, regurgitating nearly every internet canard that's been written about the September 11 attacks, and attempts to marry them to the legitimate pursuit of answers to the depths of our intelligence/national security failures, and how such attacks can be prevented in the future.

Cabal's screed is so jam-packed with lies, I hardly know where to begin. First, I should emphasize that, in his attempt to hitch his bullshit assertions to more warranted criticisms, Cabal does make some (well, maybe only one) valid points. Yes, Condoleeze Rice shouldn't have made that ridiculous assertion about not being able to "imagine" that such an attack could occur. But, as I've written before, a little perspective is in order while conducting any recounting of the missed warnings.

But Cabal's piece takes the missed warnings argument just a bit too far:

Breitweiser is resolute in her assertions. Airport security officials, she believes, could have done much more to prevent the hijackings. Beyond that, however, she wonders what September 11 would have been like had the government made the public aware of the threats. How many people, she asks, would have chosen to board planes that morning? And how many of those in World Trade Center 2 would have remained in their offices, watching the inferno of Tower 1, had they known of the possibility of an air attack?

Those warnings, as Cabal himself notes, were received in June and July. Hence, to suggest that making them public would have made a difference nearly three months after the fact is a bit ridiculous.

After this, Cabal just repeats the most idiotic arguments you may have already read, many of which have been debunked here, but all of which have been debunked somewhere ...

So many, many questions. Why did World Trade Center 7 collapse? No airplane hit that building, and before September 11, no steel skyscraper had ever collapsed because of a fire. Yet three fell–very neatly and virtually into their own footprints.

(Even if one allows the engineers their claims that WTC1 and WTC2 were designed to collapse in on themselves, what of the perfect collapse of WTC7?)

The firefighters who were in the two towers were not in the least concerned about a collapse, as demonstrated in the fire department’s transcript of their radio traffic. In fact, they stated that the fires were dying out and could be extinguished with just a couple of lines of hose. Jet fuel burns like kerosene or charcoal fluid–quickly and completely–yet Ground Zero burned for 100 days.

The idea of rigging the buildings for a controlled demolition was dismissed as unrealistic by even the most suspicious types. How to gain access? Well, President Bush’s other brother, Marvin, had a security company covering the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines.

Well, there you have it. Michael Meacher and Gore Vidal have nothing on this asshole, who is actually suggesting that the WTC towers were destroyed by a controlled demolition.

People have asked me why I've never addressed this particular conspiracy angle on my What DIDN't Really Happen page. Quite honestly, I thought they were too absurd even for my time. Think about this kind of scenario: the evil PNAC cabal wanted a war and needed a massive terrorist attack as a pretext. They think, we could fly some "hijacked" planes into the WTC towers. Just one problem with that idea -- burning jet fuel isn't sufficient to bring the towers down [No, I don't believe that nonsense. I'm humoring these morons, focusing on the scenario itself. -- Ed.] and the public might not support our Pertpetual War if the towers don't collapse. Oh yeah, and don't forget about WTC 7. The plan won't work unless we rig explosives to bring down that building, too. And don't worry about getting caught. It's easy to rig three office buildings in downtown Manhattan with enough explosives to bring them down without anyone noticing.

Now, a "controlled demolition" that succeeds where the 1993 WTC bombing failed should be sufficient, but for some reason, the neocon cabal thought it necessary to go through with the hijacked planes plot, even though they were deemed insufficient to do the job. And they managed to coordinate them in such a way so that they crashed into the buildings at the exact locations of the rigged explosives -- can't have anyone seeing explosions in another part of the buildings -- and manage to do that without setting off the explosives prematurely ...

What fucking planet are these people from?

Cabal continues:

Some doubt altogether that a plane hit the Pentagon. On Sept. 12, Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher made some revealing statements. When asked about aircraft wreckage, he responded that "there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation…but not large sections. In other words, there’s no fuselage sections and that sort of thing." When asked about jet fuel, he referred to a "puddle."

Look at pictures, however, and it’s hard to believe that a Boeing 757 flew into the Pentagon. The damage is not in proportion to the claim, especially when one considers that two Boeing 757s are said to have taken down three skyscrapers. The Pentagon was dented, the plane evaporated.

Good lord, are there still people who believe this garbage? Oh yeah, I forgot. Roughly 20 percent of the German public, and perhaps a similar number in France. But just in case you've spent the last two and a half years in either place -- or under the same rock Cabal just crawled out from under -- read this.

It get's worse:

"Mohammed Atta" appears to have been a stolen identity, as per the real Atta’s father and his passport, which went missing in 1999, and on Sept. 23, 2001, the BBC reported that at least four other of the 19 men identified as the hijackers were alive and well–and considerably unsettled.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

And, should you have any remaining doubts that Cabal's piece is nothing more than a rehash of stale crap he read on the internet, he repeats yet another ridiculous claim:

Condoleezza Rice’s preposterous May 16, 2002, statement that no one could have foreseen this scenario was particularly ironic given that Pacifica Radio identified her that day as the source of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s "airport security" call warning him not to fly on Black Tuesday.

This one has also been around a while, and has appeared on dozens of Web sites -- but none of them credible news sources. I'm not sure if it's even true that Pacifica Radio ever made such an allegation, as none of the Web sites that make the claim actually cite Pacifica directly -- they all lead eventually to a sidebar on this piece by notorious anti-Semite and holocaust denier David Irving.

Not that it matters too much whether Pacifica ever did "report" such a thing. It frankly doesn't even pass the smell test (none of the hijacked planes flew out of San Francisco, and, as Zach Cohen once asked, why would Rice give such a warning to Willie Brown, who wasn't in any danger, but not to administration official Ted Olson, whose wife died on Flight 77?

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to learn whether Cabal ever bothered to check the claim with Pacifica, or if he simply ran with what he read on Indymedia, Rense.com, or wherever he read it. I'm willing to bet on the latter.

Like any good conspiracy monger, Cabal tries to cloak his ridiculous claims by coyly claiming he's just asking questions, and searching for the truth. But whether his essay is an exercise in willful deception, or just plain sloppy reporting (I'm trying not to assume malice where there is room for ignorance, but he's not leaving me much room), it is clear that the truth is the last thing Cabal is seeking.

2003-09-22T10:28:00.000-04:00

9/11 Stock Options Update

The FBI has closed its investigation into the "put" options that sold UAL and AMR short just before the attacks, saying there is no evidence of foreknowledge in the trading:

On Sept. 10, 2001, put options on AMR were 17 times their average volume of 269 contracts. On Sept. 6, 2001, UAL put options were traded at more than four times their average volume of 711 contracts.

At the same time, some experts cautioned that because of the light volume in most option contracts, an increase can seem eye-popping.

London regulators thought they had something in the short-selling of big airline stocks before Sept. 11, but traced the activity to one of their small competitors.

Hmm. Finally, someone adds some context to the "17 times their average volume" claim. I doubt this will satisfy the moonbats, though.

2003-09-18T11:41:00.000-04:00

Der Spiegel on Conspiracy Theories

I finally got around to reading this piece, which was criticized for giving attention -- thus credence" to charlatans like Thierry Meyssan and Matthias Bruckers.

As I commented on this at Jarvis' blog, I think this criticism is unwarranted, by virtue of the fact that there was already an alarming level of "credence" in this delusional propaganda without Der Speigel's attempt to debunk them.

Conspiracy theorists have long offered the fact that they are largely ignored in mainstream media as further proof that they're on to something big. If the theories are so absurd, they argue, why don't they debunk them? What are they hiding from? This obviously puts reasonable people in a quandary. No one likes to give undue attention to this kind of nonsense, but what else are they supposed to do? Ignoring them obviously hasn't worked out for them, but when they attempt to unload on them, they're accused of giving them "credence." Last year's aborted attempt by NASA to publish a book debunking the moon landing conspiracy theories is instructive on this point.

Apart from the editorial judgement of running such a story at all, I also have to say that the Der Spiegel cover story is an excellent piece of journalism, not only because it slams a lot of the internet disinformation so definitively. It also offers a great deal of insight into how these ideas gain traction:

Charles Ward, a former assistant of the leading Kennedy murder conspiracy theorist, Jim Garrison, described the way this method works as follows: "Garrison drew a conclusion and then organized the facts. And when the facts didn't fit, he liked to say that they'd been changed by the CIA."

This method of finding conspiracies where there are none has also been helpful to the September 11th conspiracy theorists. Otherwise, one could simply include that the reason many a controversial report never resurfaced is that it was resolved, as the story of the "living assassins" demonstrates. It is no secret, but rather an important lesson about a highly competitive news market, one in which journalists copied from one another so as not to miss a single story, and were ultimately all wrong and had all dispensed with any principles.

At this point, the story only seems to live on where Br?ckers, Bülow and the like seem to prefer looking for their information: in the "global memory of the internet, which, in its archives, registers, collects and provides access to all these discarded crumbs" (Br?ckers/Hau?).

And it is only there, where the old and the new, the incorrect and the correct are placed on equivalent footing, that these kinds of reports still appear to possess the currentness from which these authors fashion their suspicions and accusations.

The authors explain in great detail the anatomy of one of the more popular internet memes associated with 9/11 -- that many of the hijackers are still alive:

Take the BBC, for example, which did in fact report, on September 23, 2001, that some of the alleged terrorists were alive and healthy and had protested their being named as assassins.

But there is one wrinkle. The BBC journalist responsible for the story only recalls this supposed sensation after having been told the date on which the story aired. "No, we did not have any videotape or photographs of the individuals in question at that time," he says, and tells us that the report was based on articles in Arab newspapers, such as the Arab News, an English-language Saudi newspaper.

The operator at the call center has the number for the Arab News on speed dial. We make a call to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A few seconds later, Managing Editor John Bradley is on the line. When we tell Bradley our story, he snorts and says: "That's ridiculous! People here stopped talking about that a long time ago."

Bradley tells us that at the time his reporters did not speak directly with the so-called "survivors," but instead combined reports from other Arab papers. These reports, says Bradley, appeared at a time when the only public information about the attackers was a list of names that had been published by the FBI on September 14th. The FBI did not release photographs until four days after the cited reports, on September 27th.

The photographs quickly resolved the nonsense about surviving terrorists. According to Bradley, "all of this is attributable to the chaos that prevailed during the first few days following the attack. What we're dealing with are coincidentally identical names." In Saudi Arabia, says Bradley, the names of two of the allegedly surviving attackers, Said al-Ghamdi and Walid al-Shari, are "as common as John Smith in the United States or Great Britain."

The final explanation is provided by the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, one of the sources of Arab News, which in turn serves as a source to the BBC. Mohammed Samman is the name of the reporter who interviewed a man named Said al-Ghamdi in Tunis, only to find that al-Ghamdi was quite horrified to discover his name on the FBI list of assassins.

Samman remembers his big story well. "That was a wonderful story," he says. And that's all it was. It had nothing to do with the version made up of Br?ckers' and Bülow's combined fantasies.

"The problem," says Samman, "was that after the first FBI list had been published, CNN released a photo of the pilot Said al-Ghamdi that had been obtained from the files of those Saudi pilots who had at some point received official flight training in the United States."

After Samman's story was reported by the news agencies, he was contacted by CNN. "I gave them Ghamdi's telephone number. The CNN people talked to the pilot and apologized profusely. The whole thing was quite obviously a mix-up. The Ghamdi family is one of the largest families in Saudi Arabia, and there are thousands of men named Said al-Ghamdi."

When we ask Samman to take another look at the FBI's list of photographs, he is more than happy to oblige, and tells us: "The Ghamdi on the photo is not the pilot with whom I spoke."

The investigative journalists should have been able to figure out just how obvious the solution to this puzzle was. They all write that a man named Abd al-Asis al-Umari had been named as a perpetrator by the FBI, and that there are apparently many individuals with this name. Br?ckers and Hau? even noticed that the FBI had initially released an incorrect first name to the press. All of this certainly suggests that there was a mix-up, but it's also something that the conspiracy theorists apparently did not consider plausible.

In the case of the supposedly surviving terrorist Walid al-Shari, the truth is even more obvious. At least Bülow had the opportunity to avoid making this mistake. In his book, he writes that the alleged assassin Shari "lives in Casablanca and works as a pilot, according to information provided by the airline Royal Air Maroc."

If Bülow had inquired with the airline, he would have discovered that the name of the pilot who lives in Casablanca is Walid al-Shri and not, like that of the assassin, Walid al-Shari. This minor detail makes a big difference, namely the difference between a dead terrorist and a living innocent man. But to conspiracy theorists, discovering the truth is like solving a crossword puzzle for children: What's a four-letter word for a domesticated animal? Hrse.

While doing research for my conspiracy page last year, I had e-mailed several different desks at the BBC to inform them that their story was being used all over the internet as grist for these conspiracy theories, and asked if they had ever followed up on their apparent bombshell story. How, I asked, could they just do one story on such an accusation, and never make an attempt at closure one way or the other.

I never got an answer. I'm afraid that's all too common in journalism today. Headlines like "Initial Reports Proven Untrue" just don't sell newspapers, and I guess there just isn't a commensurate sense of accountability among reporters and their editors to clear up speculative nonsense for which they were responsible in the first place.

Later, the Philly Daily News ran an "unanswered questions" piece that included the same "hijackers still living" canard. I e-mailed the columnist, Will Bunch, primarily to inform him that one of those still-living hijackers was recently featured on an al-qaeda recruiting video -- reading his will, no less. I also asked him why he didn't try to solve any of these mysteries himself, rather than whining, "So why did this story line vanish into thin air?" A rather odd question for a reporter to be asking his readers, I thought.

Bunch's response: "I'm a good reporter, but if I tried to solve all 20 questions myself I'd be 96 years old by the time I was done!" With this level of laziness among professional journalists, it's no wonder the conspiracy loons are able to point to so many "inconsistencies" and "unanswered questions."

2003-09-12T20:41:00.000-04:00

Is This Even Necessary?

Al-Jazeera has aired a recruiting video on which 9/11 hijacker Said al-Ghamdi reads his will.

This may be of interest to some of the loonier conspiracy theorists, who have been wailing that al-Ghamdi is still alive, as are six other of the hijackers.

2003-09-10T09:29:00.000-04:00

9/11 Conspiracy Theories and Anti-Semitism

The ADL has released an exhaustive report on the various Jews-Were-Behind-9/11 theories, tracking their origins and prevalence in both the Western "conspiracy theory industry" and mainstream Arab media.

2003-09-10T09:24:00.000-04:00

Another Salingeresque Meltdown

What causes mildly annoying "intellectuals" and statesmen to become barking moonbats, infatuated with the first jerk-off theory or meme they see on the internet? Is it simply a function their having run out of ideas? If that's the case, then I guess we should welcome ex-environment minister Michael Meacher's screed in the Guardian as a step toward catharsis.

Everyone and their dog have already given Meacher's grab bag of conspiracy theories the what-for, so my two cents might be overkill. In fact, I've already addressed just about every inane assertion the man makes, and some well over a year ago -- that by itself should give you some indication of just how intellectually lazy and unoriginal his arguments are.

Nonetheless, and because I think there's no such thing as overkill when dealing with this garbage, here's a brief recap of what I've written on the subject:

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC)."

"It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons 'that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.'"

"It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that 'al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.'"

"The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not?" [See also Bruce Rolston's post on who was in command of NORAD that day. Hint: it wasn't an American.]

"The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.' Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs' (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001)."

"To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas."

And here's a howler I hadn't addressed before ...

"The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002)."

... but will now. Here is a bit of context to GEN Myers' quote:

Hunt: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?

Myers: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.

Interesting, I just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in these organizations. You may have more effect by going after the middlemen, because they're harder to replace. I don't know if that's true, or not, and clearly we would like to eventually get bin Laden.

But I think the fact that we've been able to disrupt operations, get a lot of the people just under him and maybe just a little bit further down, has had some impact on their operations. We know have disrupted, you know, four, five, six, seven active operations that they had planned and probably more that we don't know about.

So we're going to keep the hunt on. Finding one person, as we've talked about before, is a very difficult prospect, but we will keep trying.

Fact checking is not that difficult. These twits should try it some time.

2003-07-27T21:51:00.000-04:00

**It Should Be Settled**

According to A. Jay Cristol, the Miami judge and Navy veteran whose FOIA lawsuit for USS Liberty documents finally forced the NSA to release its recordings of Israeli Air Force radio transmissions during the attack, the Liberty incident should now be settled "for all but that 2 percent of die-hard conspiracy theorists."

But despite the fact that the released recordings and transcripts affirm Cristol's conclusions about the attack, much of the reporting has portrayed it as a still-open case. Scott Shane's story in today's Baltimore Sun is typical in its generosity, providing an uncritical platform for the comm points peddled by James Bamford, spokesman for the 2 percent. I can understand the desire to write a "balanced" story, but that does not excuse the Sun (or CNN, or UPI) for publishing Bamford's statements, which could easily have been verified as dishonest.

It should be noted that Bamford was exposed and proven a liar long before the NSA released these SIGINT intercepts. He continued to repeat the claim that Marvin Nowicki, the only person with firsthand knowledge of the intercepts who had discussed them in any detail before they were released, believed that they "proved" the attack was deliberate, but quite the opposite is true. Bamford also claimed that the NSA leadership was "virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was deliberate" -- another bald-faced lie.

Despite his record (Scott Shane, for one, certainly knows of his dishonesty, as he had reported on it in the past), Bamford continues to get top billing in mainstream media reporting on the incident. In any event, Bamford now claims:

The Israeli ground controller who called the ship "Arab" and "Egyptian" may be just repeating a bogus cover story, Bamford says. At one point, he notes, the controller directs the helicopter crews to check whether the survivors speak Arabic or English.

"If they knew it was an Egyptian ship, why did they think the crew might speak English?" Bamford asks.

In addition, the recordings show that one of the helicopter pilots spotted an American flag and read the ship's identification number. If the helicopter pilot saw those identifiers, Bamford asks, why didn't the fighter pilots and torpedo boat crews?

I dunno, Jim. Think it might have something to do with hovering capabilities?

Actually, the torpedo boat crews were able to see Liberty's ensign, after they had already damaged the ship and broken off their attack. According to the Isrealis, the MTB crews caught their first glimpse of Liberty's limp ensign at around 1451L that day, roughly 30 minutes before the Super Frelon helicopter identified the ship as American (seeing only the red portion of the flag, the MTB's first reported that it was a Soviet ship, which scared the shit out of IDF headquarters). A few minutes later, they finally identified the ship as American and offered assistance (they were declined).

The MTB's were not able to identify the ship sooner because Liberty, having just been strafed by Israeli Mirage jets, fired on the MTB's first. Also, the Israeli boats approached Liberty from the Southeast -- moving into the sun, which would have made identifying the colors of a flag on the ship virtually impossible.

Also, Shane's story fails to mention that the flag Bamford refers to was actually the second flag flown by Liberty that day. The first one had been shot to ribbons by the Mirages, and the crew hoisted its holiday ensign -- a 7-by-13-foot flag, in place of its 5-by-8-foot standard.

Bamford, true to his M.O., takes specific passages of the transcripts out of context, then holds them up against the strawman he's constructed for the Israeli side. The Israelis have maintained that Liberty's flag was not visible before or during the attack. These transcripts support that contention. Bamford takes evidence that the Israelis saw the flag after the attack -- which is consistent with their version of events -- and offers it as proof that they lied.

Bamford points to evidence of the possible Israeli massacre of 800 Egyptian prisoners at the time and suggests that Israeli officers wanted to cover up the war crime.

What evidence? No one -- least of all Bamford -- has ever put forth any evidence to support this claim. But like all conspiracy theory motives, there doesn't need to be any evidence. All that is needed is the possibility that it could have happened. That the Sun would portray this as anything more than an unsupported allegation is shameful.

2003-05-16T22:00:00.000-04:00

This Bears Repeating

In the first part of my dissection of Mike Ruppert's 9/11 conspiracy timeline, I addressed a favorite argument among the conspiracy loons -- the allegation that the U.S. had planned to invade Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks, as evidenced by threats passed to the Taliban via a Pakistani intermediary in July 2001. David Corn also addresses this argument here. Because Michael Rivero was allowed to repeat the charge on C-SPAN yesterday, as evidence that Afghanistan was a "war of conquest" that had more to do with natural resources than terrorism, the issue deserves a recap.

The story of these "track two" back-channel diplomatic meetings was reported immediately after September 11, in a couple of reports in the British press. Rivero's site includes the BBC story as an article "from before 9/11," which of course is a lie. Former diplomats from the U.S., Russia, Iran, and Pakistan met in a Berlin hotel to discuss what to do with the Taliban regime. The Pakistani representative, former foreign minister Niaz Naik, alleges that the Americans relayed a threat of military action to him, to be passed along to the Afghan government (which Naik also claims was done). Rivero and Ruppert -- as well as French authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie -- offer this as proof that the war in Afghanistan was over a natural gas pipeline the U.S. government wanted built in Afghanistan. The problems with this theory are numerous.

First, it should be noted that contrary to Ruppert's claim that Naik's account was "confirmed" by the Guardian and BBC stories, they remain to this day nothing more than an allegation. The three American participants in the talks, former diplomats Karl Inderfurth, Tom Simon, and Lee Coldren, flatly deny that any such threat was made. The Russian participant Nikolai Kozyrev, does not remember hearing the threat, but does not discount the possibility that it was brought up in "discussions in the corridor" -- though Naik claim's that it was brought up in the full session of the meetings.

As much as the conspiracymongers may want to believe it, Naik's claim doesn't make much sense. We all remember the very public reaction of the Taliban after September 11 -- when it became evident that we were going to attack them, and would be coming in heavy this time. But we are to believe that a threat of military action was passed to the Taliban in July, and they never uttered a word of protest? No denunciations of American imperialism, or attempts to portray the conflict as a "war on Islam" -- in order to rally Muslim countries to the defense of Afghanistan and turn international public opinion against the U.S., which frankly would have been their only chance of survival (and without a September 11-type event, would probably have worked)? Right.

And even though the U.S. may have had an interest in passing such a threat to the Taliban, why would they give specific details as to how the attack would be launched -- such as where the attack would come from, and how many troops the Russians were ponying up for the effort -- to an unofficial representative of a government that had at the time supported the Taliban?

But even if we are to accept Naik's version of what was said in the July meetings, this in no way proves the "war for oil" theory. Naik makes it clear that the threats had nothing to do with any pipeline deal, and had the singular aim of getting the Taliban to stop providing safe haven for al-qaeda. Salon's Damien Cave asked Naik directly whether the pipeline was discussed at all in the July meetings. His response: "No, absolutely not."

There are also problems in the differing accounts about the nature of the military threat. The Guardian version suggests a surgical strike aimed at bin Laden -- on a larger scale than the 1998 strikes, but by no means in keeping with a "war of conquest":

In the break afterwards, Mr Naik told the Guardian yesterday, he asked Mr Simons why the attack should be more successful than Bill Clinton's missile strikes on Afghanistan in 1998, which caused 20 deaths but missed Bin Laden.

"He said this time they were very sure. They had all the intelligence and would not miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to Afghanistan. The Russians were listening to the conversation but not participating."

The BBC version does suggest that the "plan" called for "action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar." And this:

Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.

I certainly don't consider it out of the realm of the possible that the U.S. would pass such a threat in order to scare the bejeezus out of the Taliban, but if this level of detail -- even though many of the details turned out to be wrong in the actual military action we took -- doesn't add to the plausibility.

But in any event, this episode doesn't support the "wars of conquest" rantings of people like Rivero at all. If anything, it demonstrates further that the conspiracy theorists have serious problems with the truth.

2003-05-16T20:32:00.000-04:00

A Legend in His Own Mind

This has got to be one of the most egregious cases of delusions of grandeur -- to say nothing of complete ignorance of current events -- in the history of mankind: Mike Ruppert taking credit for the firing of Army Secretary Thomas White.

Of course, he's had such fits of imaginary relevance before, once claiming that his public confrontation with Director of Central Intelligence John Deutsch in 1996 cost him an appointment as Secretary of Defense -- seriously! Quite an ego for a guy who can't even get a manuscript past a publisher that specializes in porn and Satanism.

2003-05-14T22:22:00.000-04:00

Canada Behind 9/11 Conspiracy!!!

Bruce Rolston goes after the Michele Landsberg's defence of Zwicker, focusing on the NORAD/FAA "dog that didn't bark" allegation. His arguments for the most part mirror my own. But he includes this interesting tidbit:

It should be noted that a Canadian was in operational command of NORAD that day, so Landsberg is actually slandering a Canadian Forces member here.

Heh. I don't know how I missed that.

2003-05-13T21:33:00.000-04:00

Trouble In the Enchanted Kingdom

Mike Ruppert is shopping for a new publisher for his September 11 conspiracy book. He and the publishing firm Feral House -- whose alluring titles include Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin, The Imp #4, and The Satanic Witch (by church of Satan founder Anton Lavey -- have had a falling out, and Mikey needs is shopping for someone else to print his drivel.

Larry Flynt, call your office!

2003-05-13T20:20:00.000-04:00

**The Toronto Star Is a "mainstream publication?"**

The National Post thrashes this Michele Landsberg suck-up to Barry Zwicker:

What is unintentionally comical about Ms. Landsberg's piece is the way she presents herself and Mr. Zwicker as a pair of heroic free thinkers who "challenge conventional wisdom" and stand up to the "rank-smelling" censors and lackeys who guard the path to truth. The duo ask "embarrassingly uncool" questions, she says, which "99% of Canadian journalists have not dared or deigned to ask."

The truth, of course, is rather less dramatic. While 99 out of every 100 Canadian journalists do indeed find Ms. Landsberg's nonsense "embarrassing," it is not for any lack of courage. Rather, they recognize that Mr. Zwicker's "Big Lie" theory is an eccentric crock. The reason they haven't reported on it is because they're good reporters.

We will not try to argue down Ms. Landsberg: Clearly, her logic circuits have been blown by a blinding hatred of the United States. And just as it is impossible to prove to a true conspiracy theorist that the Holocaust happened or that the moon landing wasn't faked, no one will ever be able to definitively "prove" 9/11 to those who see the hand of the CIA behind every evil. But surely, Ms. Landsberg's editors at the Star were in a position to exercise better judgment. Poisonous delusions such as these do not belong in a mainstream newspaper.

Wow.

2003-04-13T19:52:00.000-04:00

The Saddam Statue Meme

Oxblog has done a thorough job debunking this nonsense, brought to you by the same folks who brought you Delmart Vreeland and the "CNN used ten-year-old footage of celebrating Palestinians to foment anti-Arab war fever" meme.

Their capacity for denying the reality that makes them irrelevant is truly remarkable.

2003-03-16T21:48:00.000-05:00

Shhh! Don't Tell Rall about This ...

Afghan pipeline, blah, blah, blah, secret meetings between US diplomats using the Pakistanis as intermediaries, blah, blah, blah. The Afghan war was planned back in 1997 ...

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH asked Donald Rumsfeld to come up with a plan to invade Afghanistan and kick al Qaeda out of its hiding places, Rumsfeld and General Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he'd have to wait a while. Though the CIA had been pursuing al Qaeda leads in the region for much of the 1990s and had contingency plans to topple their protectors, the Taliban, the Pentagon had no contingencies for the type of operation the president wanted.

Just more government disinformation. Move along.

2003-03-11T23:04:00.000-05:00

Bwaahaahaahaa!

This just in ...

BREAKING: PAYPAL CLOSES WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ACCOUNT!

Just received from PayPal...
As you know, the PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to close an account at any time for any reason. We write to inform you that, after a review of your site, and in accordance with the User Agreement, your account has been closed. Your funds will be held for 180 days from the date of the last transaction on the account. After 180 days have expired, we will refund your funds by mailing a check to the address linked to your account.

Sincerely,
Merchant Risk Department

Now, as an experiment, type the words "PayPal" and "Porno" into any search engine. I used Google and got a list of hundreds of pornography web sites that PayPal does not seem to have any qualms about doing business with!

And your point being?

2003-02-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

The Liberty Incident

A while back, I mentioned receiving an advance copy of A. Jay Cristol's book on the 1967 attack on the U.S. intelligence-gathering platform by Israeli forces. I also got the chance to hear Cristol speak at the Middle East Institute, and want to reiterate how impressed I was with his deference to the Liberty crew members who have argued that the attack was intentional, even while presenting a damning refutation of their specific claims (for example, James Ennes, the most vocal proponent of Liberty conspiracy theories, has made claims in his memoir that simply cannot be reconciled with his testimony to the Navy's Court of Inquiry on the incident).

I finally got around to reading the book a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to post some sort of review here. But the book is so rich in compelling evidence and reasoning (I was green with envy as I read it) that I can't think of a way to summarize it without transcribing the entire book here.

So, in the interest of conserving space (and fending off a possible lawsuit), I'll simply post the book's epilogue, written by Ernest Castle, who was the naval attache at the U.S. embassy in Israel at the time of the attack:

On June 8, 1992, a plane departed Sde Dov Airport just north of Tel Aviv, twenty-five years to the day, to the hour, almost to the minute of my take-off in the Super Frelon helicopter provided me by Israel in my capacity as naval attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. In 1967 my mission was to try to assist the USS Liberty.

The 1992 flight was in memory of the 1967 event. Airborne, Judge Jay Cristol, the author of this book, set a course to the point where the Super Frelon had overflown the Liberty on the late afternoon of that fate-blemished day. Also in the small aircraft was my wife, Dr. Jeanie Castle; Major Danny Grossman, an Israel Air Force flyer (and former U.S. Air Force flyer); and Groosman's young son, Akiva. Cristol flew the aircraft, with the aid of the global positioning system to the precise point where I had observed the Liberty twenty-five years before. As the plane circled the point, Judge Cristol dropped thirty-four pink carnations into the sea, one in the name of each American who lost his life. The aircraft's flight path and the laws of gravity caused the flowers to fall in an approximate circle around the ship's position twenty-five years earlier.

I askd a blessing upon the souls of the dead and their surviving loved ones. The U.S. Navy hymn was recited. Major Grossman intoned the Kaddish, the Jewish Prayer for the dead. The event was sufficiently moving to bring tears.

In silence the little plane broke away from the site and returned to Tel Aviv. It was a small tribute to the gallant sailors who had died in the tragedy -- tragedy for them, their loved ones, their country, and Israel. The sorrow-filed event is now over three decades behind us. I have waited all that time for the emergence of this book. It is, for the first time, the complete, accurate, and evenhanded report of the Liberty incident. It is now time to turn this final page and close the book.

My own view is shaded by my constant exposure to C-SPAN's Washington Journal, on which the incident is brought up by ~~hydrophibic anti-Semites~~ critics of Israel almost on a daily basis, and even when the topic du jour is Social Security reform. As Cristol noted in his talk at MEI, he doesn't expect to sway many of these people, and frankly, he doesn't care to.

But I, for one, greatly appreciate his contribution to the factual record, and highly recommend his book.

2003-01-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

This is Getting Out of Hand

There's a a new blog in town devoted to debunking the 9/11 mythmakers. This one's devoted primarily to Michael Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com. My favorite post so far:

Today, Michael Rivero posted a link to a report that Ariel Sharon had cancelled a trip to Florida two days before 9/11, implying that Ariel Sharon wanted to stay off the planes so he doesn't get hurt.

But Michael forgot something. He did cancel two days before 9/11, but not THE 9/11 (as in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon). His trip was cancelled in September of 2002, as the article clearly states.

It mentions that the trip was scheduled to boost Jeb Bush's votes in the mid-term polls, and if you might remember a few months ago when Ariel Sharon was supposed to come to Florida.

Rivero's stupidity seems to be surpassed only by his propensity to see a Jewish conspiracy behind everything.

2002-12-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

The Return of Barbara Honegger

Another flagrant lie about military preparedness to deal with "hijacked planes being flown into buildings" is making the rounds, this one by the former Reagan staffer who is no stranger to unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Honegger, whose book October Surprise borrowed liberally from LaRouche sources, argues at the Idiots' Investigation of 9/11 Web site that it was the U.S. government, not the hijackers, who "chose the date of 9-11."

On Sept. 11, 2001 they had a brand new counter-terror emergency response plan in place at the Pentagon for exactly that scenario, and had a counter-terror 'wargame' set to begin on exactly that scenario that very morning in the nation's capitol.

Honegger cites a single source to support this allegation -- a news story that so flagrantly contradicts her theory that one must conclude that she is either illiterate, a pathological liar, or both:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) - In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism ? it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.

The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved ? to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said.

The NRO exercise also did not involve any aircraft intercept procedures -- it was designed to ensure officials could respond after the crash, much like the mass casualty exercise cited by other conspiracy idiots.

2002-11-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

Correction

Yesterday, addressing the Global Howler's 9/11 conspiracy timeline, I incorrectly noted that Enron had pulled out of its liquid natural gas (LNG) venture in Qatar in 2001, not 1999. Bruce Rolston correctly points out that these were two different ventures. My mistake.

But my central point -- that Global Howler, among others, have falsely claimed that Enron's Dabhol electrical plant in India was "jeopardized" when the company "lost access" to Qatari LNG. First, I'm not sure you can say that Enron "lost" access -- they walked away from it because it wasn't profitable. And the Business World story Bruce cites for the impacts on Dabhol sounds remarkably upbeat.

Bruce also quotes this report:

The 1995 letter of intent was for the construction of an LNG plant in Qatar with an annual capacity of 5 mm tpy, supplying LNG to Dabhol, Israel and Jordan.
The project suffered its first set back when Israel in 1996 refused to purchase Qatari gas. Enron failed to find new clients for the spare capacity.
In December, Enron signed a sales and purchase agreement with Oman LNG for 1.6 mm tpy of LNG for the Dabhol plant. It said it would also sign a deal with Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefication for 500,000 tpy.

Essentially, Enron decided that it did not have enough demand for LNG to support an entirely new project, so it opted for "expanding existing facilities." This also belies Bruce's claim that the shutdown forced Enron to "look for alternate sources" to fuel the Dabhol project. They already had alternate sources, but that's a relatively minor point.

I suppose you could argue that technically one could be said to "lose" something when you decide it is no longer in your interest and walk away from it. And to be fair, Global Howler does not go as far as Mike Ruppert, who proclaimed that with the loss of "access" to Qatari LNG, Enron's "only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan."

So, I'm willing concede that Global Howler's argument -- and it is an argument, and not merely a "question," as the site's publisher has repeatedly claimed in his lame impersonation of Eric Idle in Flit's comments -- is flagrantly deceptive, while Ruppert's is just a lie.

And an outrageous one at that.

2002-11-22T00:56:00.000-05:00

Who Said Anything About Being Objective?

Bruce Rolston has replied to my earlier post on the conspiracy theory web site, Global Howler. Curiously, he uses the headline, "Who's Really Still Objective." I've certainly never claimed to be objective, and my criticisms of Global Howler and the rest of the collection of conspiracy nuts have had nothing to do with objectivity, either. It's about honesty.

More to the point, Bruce puts in a great deal of effort into trying to reconcile Global Howler's rhetoric with the truth, or at least, within the realm of "reasonable questions." His general argument is that Global Howler is one of his "level one" conspiracy sites, in that it merely raises unanswered questions, and doesn't try to "link stuff in improbable chains." He also uses the term "dispassionate" to describe their presentation of the facts, which is quite a howler in itself. I'm not sure how dispassionate it is to post a story about the 9/11 hijackers working out at various gyms "presumably, to get in shape for a hijacking," under the headline, "Preparing to Die."

Global Howler does far more than merely raise questions. Although they do not go as far as Mike Ruppert and whatreallyhappened.com (which are not, as he notes, one and the same), but they still present information in a highly distorted manner, which is clearly intended to lean the reader toward the same idiotic conclusions. And yes, Bruce, the also lie.

In many places in his post, Bruce selectively edits passages both from the global howler website and my e-mails, leaving out relevant information. First, he quotes me on Larry SIlverstein's attempt to double his insurance policy on the WTC towers by claiming the attacks were two separate events:

'The howlers suggest WTC owner Larry Silverstein may profit from the attacks... And take a gander at the first source cited for this item: the rabidly anti-Semitic aztlan.net..."

What global howler actually said:

"July 24, 2001: The US Government sells the World Trade Center to Manhattan real estate mogul Larry Silverstein. This is the only time the WTC has ever been sold. Silverstein is now pursuing a $7.1 billion insurance claim, after paying $3.2 billion for a 99 year lease on the doomed property."

This is, simply a fact. The source, anti-Semitic or not, does not matter if it's true.

And here is what I actually wrote in the e-mail he butchered:

The howlers suggest WTC owner Larry Silverstein may profit from the attacks ("For Sale: Large Insurance Claim"), for pursuing a $7.1 billion
insurance settlement for property he paid $3.2 billion for.

To the innumerate (or actuarially illiterate, to be more precise) the $7.1B payout looks like a sweet deal for property that only cost you $3.2B, but the estimated liability is around $40B. Most business papers have derided Silverstein as an idiot for grossly underinsuring the WTC, but these guys make him sound like a profiteer.

And take a gander at the first source cited for this item: the rabidly anti-Semitic aztlan.net (they even have a Spanish version of the Protocols on their site).

As you can see, I did not suggest that the information in that specific item was factually incorrect -- just incredibly misleading, and quite obviously intentionally so. But he completely evaded this point in his response. And I maintain that my criticism of their use of the aztlan hate site was valid. The "facts" as they cited them, were available in the respectable sources the quoted after aztlan.net, so why include it?

Then, Bruce claims that I unfairly accused global howler of lying when they wrote that an Enron electrical plant in India was "is jeopardized when the company loses access to fuel for the plant from the State of Qatar." He grants me my point that Enron had two other sources of LNG to power the plant, and that the real reason the plant failed was over disagreement over a fair fee to operate the plant. But he maintains that the blurb is still factually correct, because Enron did, in fact, lose access to those particular sources.

Even if I were to grant him this point, the post still goes far beyond his "level one"standard, and is highly deceptive. But as it happens, the item is not true, despite his protests:

The move by the Dabhol Power Company, 65 percent owned by Enron, starts the clock ticking on a six-month notice period before the contract is voided, during which negotiations to settle the dispute are expected. The $2.9 billion Dabhol project represents the largest single foreign investment in India. Separately, Enron said today that it was withdrawing from a pipeline project in Qatar, which would have supplied some gas to Dabhol. The company said that the two steps were unrelated.[LA Times, May 22, 2001]

Please note that the "event" in global howler's timeline is dated April 1999, and yet Enron pulled out (and not the other way around) of its deal with Qatar two years later. I suppose it's possible that Enron had both lost it's deal with Qatar and gained it back within that two-year period, and only the Albion Monitor caught this amazing story (there is no reference to it on Lexis-Nexis), but I think I'm going to have to call this a lie.

On another howler item, Bruce says:

And they rely too much on the UK Mirror's description of the October, 2000 emergency drills at the Pentagon, which dealt with a airliner crashing into the building, but not necessarily a hijacked airliner, as they claim. But all that just suggests to me that they haven't seen all the evidence Herbert and I have yet, not that they're building air castles out of nothing.

Excuse me? They added details that were not included in the story they quoted. It's not that they missed some important detail, which could be attributed to not having access to all the relevant information. They made it up. You can't chalk that up to ignorance. It's a flagrant lie.

Finally, Bruce says that I was wrong on global howler's item about bin Laden family members being flown out of the U.S. during the grounding of all other commercial flights.

"The young members of the bin Laden clan... left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks."

Again, that's exactly true. Herbert's the one with his facts wrong this time.

He is certainly right about the "out of the U.S." part, as I did, in fact, miss the fact that they accurately quoted the infamous NYT story, which has been distorted by many others. But the headline of that particular item says "Flying when no one else can" -- another example of that "dispassionate" portrayal of the facts, and, in this case, quite deceptive.

And yet again, Bruce selectively edits the relevant passage, this time from the global howler's post. The complete item reads, "The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks."

Notice the Times writes "driven or flown," suggesting quite clearly that they had no confirmation at all that the bin Ladens were able to "fly when no one else can," as their headline suggests. I suppose that you can argue that their post was technically not a lie, but again, it was clearly intended to deceive.

Bruce says he believes that global howler "to be using their website to search for truth in a state of imperfect knowledge, I hold out hopes that that dialogue might be possible, and profitable." As for me, I wasn't suggesting that global howler was as bad as the blatantly racist sites like Rivero's. But they actively engage in deceipt to arrive at conclusions that are idiotic. In addition to their timeline, the web site features a flash video with the concise title, "Bush Knew." Tell me again how they are just asking reasonable questions, and provide a "flatter, more dispassionate telling of the same facts" as the other bastions of hebephrenia?

If Bruce really thinkshas he can engage in a reasoned discussion with the howlers, I wish him the best of luck.

2002-11-20T23:50:00.000-05:00

A Lie Is a Lie

Bruce Rolston says that I shouldn't paint all conspiracy theory Web sites with such a broad brush, and takes issue with my letter to Toronto Star columnist Antonia Verbisias. He categorizes such Web sites into three different levels of looniness, and argues that one of the three sites Zerbisias shamelessly -- and uncritically -- plugged in her original column actually has some merit:

But for the moment I'd rate globalhowler.com, despite the silly name, as a Level 1 site. People should read it. There are a lot of questions it raises (such as the airline stock profiteering, or why John Ashcroft was warned to stop using commercial air) that, due to any official U.S. inquiry, have never been explained, at least to my satisfaction. It's certainly worth a look, and if Zerbisias had shown any ability to discriminate between the sane conspiracy theorists and the insane ones, I'd have a lot more respect for her.

As for Bill Herbert, I don't think he's read globalhowler.com. Because there are some questions there that I don't think he could "cut to pieces quite easily."

As it happens, I have read global howler, though I admit that I hadn't seen it until Zerbisias' column alerted me to it's existence. Its "9/11 timeline" is nearly identical to Mike Ruppert's own timeline, which of course is riddled with flagrant distortions and outright lies. Global Howler even cites Ruppert's idiotic Delmart Vreeland spy case. If Bruce had read my own five-part series on Ruppert's timeline -- and I don't think he has -- he would know that I have already cut the vast majority of the same arguments to pieces, quite easily.

I'll grant Bruce his contention that things such as the pre-9/11 put options have not been satisfactorily explained. But the suggestion that the CIA knew of the transactions beforehand -- and should have concluded that a series of coordinated hijackings to fly commercial airliners into the WTC and the pentagon was in the works -- is complete garbage. As for Ashcroft's flight plans, you don't even need Occam's razor to conclude that this was an example of the sense of entitlement political appointees often think they are entitled to. Remember John Sununu?

The main point of my letter to Zerbisias was that these kinds of questions are raised in the evil corporate-controlled media here in the states. And in a more responsible manner, I might add. The argument that reading outright lies on the internet, just to get at the nugget of truth that they sometimes surround, is nonsense.

So no, Bruce, people don't "need" to look at these conspiracy web sites -- any of them -- to maintain a healthy level of skepticism. There are plenty of respectable sources of news and opinion that are willing to take on sacred cows, and they do so without injecting silliness about Navy spies in Canadian jails, or urban legends about bin Laden relatives being flown out of the U.S. by the FBI while during a commercial flight grounding.

2002-11-14T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ruppert Issues Apology for Slanderous Accusation

If you check this post on the Mike Ruppert timeline, you will notice that item 51 -- which is now item 56 on his latest revision has been removed.

Ruppert had alleged that a "a colleague of Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi and a notorious inside trader on the financial markets" had liquidated his childrens' trust fund account on September 10, 2001. In addition to removing this item from his bogus timeline, Ruppert has apologized to the individual named, as he is neither an associate of Khashoggi nor has he ever been convicted of any crime, including insider trading.

Though charged with insider trading, the initial claims of foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks were immediately dropped. In fact, the individual "spent Sept. 11 tracking suspicious stock trades and passing the information on to the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which thanked him for his help."

Ruppert's claims of a connection to Adnan Khashoggi were not corroborated by any independent account of this story, and he has since yanked the blurb from his bullshit-riddled timeline and personally apologized to the individual. He also promised to publish "something" to set the record straight, but has not done so at the time of this publishing.

UPDATE: Ruppert has finally issued a public retraction. He has also withdrawn his $1,000 offer to anyone who can identify lies and distortions in his accusations. The man is completely bereft of shame.

Readers of this Web site, however, know the true story.

2002-11-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

Moonbat Conspiracy Theory of the Week Day Hour Minute

Just when you thought the LaRouche Left couldn't get any more freakish.

2002-11-09T20:03:00.000-05:00

Fisking Gore Vidal, the Extended Remix

To supplement Ron Rosenbaum's slamdunk on Vidal's tripe in the Observer, I offer a more extensive examination than my earlier post.

As Rosenbaum notes, ~~LaRouche~~Vidal moves quickly from "we still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday" to ...

Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren't we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI.

Vidal cites the joint Congressional intelligence panel's report from September of this year, which, as I wrote back then, uncovered far more warnings of terrorist attacks abroad -- and not involving hijacked airplanes -- than the 12 warnings, over a seven year period. That Vidal would cite a 1994 warning of a plot to hijack American Airliners and blow them up over the Pacific ocean as evidence of "unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001" is a strong indication that he has never read the report, prefering the brief synopses provided by various conspiracy theory Web sites.

Similarly, his incredibly deluded interpretation of Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard bears such strong resemblance to the "Afghan invasion blueprint" arguments, that it is doubtful he ever cracked open the book himself. Rather than quoting religiously from the book itself, he prefers the conclusions of others:

Ahmed sums up: 'Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign.'

As I've written earlier, there is no mention of military designs whatsoever in Brzezinski's book. He merely states the obvious: that we are the last remaining superpower, and Eurasia is the most strategically-vital area on the globe. His criticisms of the isolationist mentality that has historically prevented U.S. engagement in far away lands unless we are attacked first, is twisted by the likes of Mike Ruppert into a brazen call for such an attack.

What Brzezinski really calls for is "maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy" and "gradually yield to a greater emphasis on the emergence of increasingly important but strategically compatible parters who, prompted by American leadership, might help to shape a more cooperative trans-Eurasian security system." Real scary shit.

Then on to the tired war-for-oil theory:

Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta's installation of a Unocal employee (John J Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!

The fact that Unocal no longer has an interest in the pipeline project doesn't enter Vidal's ossified brain. Nor does he entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Unocal hired the likes of Maresca (who was, as Vidal doesn't bother to mention, a career diplomat before joining the oil firm) and Karzai because of their expertise and influence in both the region's political culture and international relations in general -- instead of the other way around.

On 21 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV: 'That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which ... are 12 miles from the White House ... Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were "stand down" orders.'?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were 'only four fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US'. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?

How about outright lie, from start to finish? In addition to restating the baseless nonsense that no fighters were sortied until after the pentagon was hit, Vidal suggests that somehow, the D.C Air National Guard -- the fucking D.C Air National Guard -- should have been able to respond earlier. Yes, you brainless twit, the fighters stationed at Andrews AFB are weekend warriors.

Vidal also quotes Stan Goff, a Marxist activist from Chapel Hill who served as an Army Ranger, in his tirade about "stand down orders." Though he touts himself as an expert in special operations, most of Goff's drivel has to do with NORAD procedures, and aviation, about which he is woefully ignorant.

Now the real kicker: a pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 knots.

I'm not sure how much "pinpoint accuracy is required to hit a 6.6 million square-foot building, and in any event, the plane actually skidded across the ground before slamming into the pentagon. Goff also wrote:

The so-called evidence is a farce. The US presented Tony Blair's puppet government with the evidence, and of the 70 so-called points of evidence, only nine even referred to the attacks on the World Trade Center, and those points were conjectural. This is a bullshit story from beginning to end. Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old with a liking for courtroom dramas could tear this story apart like a two-dollar shirt.

In his defense, Goff did not have access to what we now know of the attacks when he wrote this diatribe back in October of last year, but Vidal cannot claim that as an excuse.

Goff has a rich history of promoting conspiracy theories, writing once that:

Slobodan Milosevic is no war criminal. Nor was he a dictator. Until the US started a massive campaign of extortion, bribery and election-rigging in Serbia, he won his elections fair and square--unlike the current de facto President of the United States. Nor did Milsoevic ever lead the non-existent movement for Greater Serbia. Nor do Serbs collectively "share" any blame for whatever flavor-of-the-day atrocity is being invented by the IMF, the State Department, NATO Headquarters in Brussels, or that fake Tribunal.

Getting back to Vidal, he goes on to parrot one of Michael Moore's stale canards:

According to BBC TV's Newsnight (6 Nov 2001), '... just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is that the bin Ladens are above suspicion.'

Unbelievable. This guy really doesn't get out much anymore, does he?

2002-11-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

The Smoking Gun Video

Milosevic apologist and all-around lunatic Jared Israel has uncovered a video he says "proves" the September 11 attacks were no surprise to Bush. The video covers the president's entire trip to the Booker School in Florida, including the infamous whisper into his ear by WHCOS Andrew Card:

If his Chief of Staff tells the President the country is under attack, the President would discuss it. He would ask questions. Demand more information. Leave the room. Meet with advisers. Do *something*. But Bush just sat there.

The Chief of Staff is the President's *employee*. If he tells the President, "America is under attack" the President would *give him orders.* But Bush said nothing - not one word. And Andy Card didn't wait for instructions; he rushed away.

What does this mean?

It means Andy Card did not expect a response.

It means he cannot have been informing Bush that an *unexpected* national attack was underway.

It means he was giving Bush an update on the progress of a plan of which Bush was already aware, and he had to get back to work.

Yeah, Jared, we get it. Because the president didn't jump up immediately, shrieking "my God, where are my aircraft carriers? Launch all available fighter jets! shut down the borders and all commercial air traffic immediately!" in the presence of small children, he had to have been expecting the news.

*Dumbass.*

2002-11-01T16:46:00.000-05:00

Kim Jong-Il Pacifists

This is why the Tin Foil Hat wing of the Left view David Corn as a CIA plant. But considering the damage they've done to their own cause, he could reasonably make the same charge against them.
[Via Damian Penny]

2002-10-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

Bored, Bored, Bored ...

Googlism for you know who:

justin raimondo is an idiot
justin raimondo is editorial director of antiwar
justin raimondo is also the author of reclaiming the american right
justin raimondo is editorial director of anti
justin raimondo is still wrong
justin raimondo is a nut case who gets just enough of the truth to his story
justin raimondo is correct
justin raimondo is a prolific writer
justin raimondo is learning some of the ropes that "anti
justin raimondo is author of reclaiming the american right
justin raimondo is a senior fellow at the center for libertarian studies
justin raimondo is a critic of both interventionism
justin raimondo is a fellow of the center for libertarian studies in burlingame
justin raimondo is spot on
justin raimondo is a critic of both interventionism and the blog community
justin raimondo is a san francisco writer
justin raimondo is the author of an enemy of the state
justin raimondo is a columnist i had begun to enjoy reading
justin raimondo is formatted a little painfully
justin raimondo is formatted a little obnoxiously
justin raimondo is repugnant to me
justin raimondo is responding to
justin raimondo is a far right neonazi conspiracy nutcase
justin raimondo is the libertarian author of enemy of the state
justin raimondo is editorial director for antiwar
justin raimondo is an idiot i've questioned the prevailing blog wisdom about the israeli art
justin raimondo is making this feature too easy lately
justin raimondo is "antiwar" = distortion mania ruins jaw
justin raimondo is worth discussion
justin raimondo is to virginia postrel
justin raimondo is even creepier than he looks
justin raimondo is completely off
justin raimondo is the editorial director of antiwar
justin raimondo is a editorial director of antiwar
justin raimondo is the
justin raimondo is such a big fan of china
justin raimondo is jaundiced as ever as he deconstructs the bush speech
justin raimondo is my own personal javert
justin raimondo is a putrid twit

[inappropriate slurs removed]

2002-10-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Who Am I?

From Googlism:

bill herbert is a graduate of new mexico highlands university
bill herbert is to lead work at sedgefield community college and at
bill herbert is on our side too
bill herbert is on the case
bill herbert is her beau
bill herbert is probably one of the best dispellers of conspiracy theorist

[Via Meesh]

2002-10-16T00:13:00.000-04:00

Mike Ruppert: Your Ass Has Been 'Splained

And now, the 5th and final installment of Mike Ruppert's Bullshit-Riddled Timeline. Even as I post this, he has already added still more line items (so numbers will not correspond with his latest version). But I'm I'm ending the point-by-point refutation here, as Ruppert's additions grow more inane, silly, and contradictory with each revision.

But I will continue to respond to his more important arguments, as his bowels generate them. Feel free to forward any that you feel warrant a response ...

75. Feb 18, 2002 -- The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late Spring of 2002 will reach a world record 4500 metric tons.

Uh huh. Despite the well-documented efforts (included in the FT story he cites) of the U.S. to curb the opium growth ? and the fact that the U.S. just exacted a major political upheaval in the country -- Ruppert concludes without any evidence whatsoever that this has been intentional.

76. mid-April, 2002 - World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, at the opening of the World Bank's offices in Kabul, states he has held talks about financing the Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline. He confirms $100 million in new grants for the interim Afghani government. Wolfensohn also states that a number of companies have already expressed interest in the project. [Source: Alexander's Gas and oil Connections, citing an Agence France-Presse story]

Once again, economic development that is good for Afghans as well as greedy Westerners. In fact, the Pakistanis are driving these develpments more than the U.S.

77. May 13, 2002 -- The BBC reports that Afghanistan is about to close a deal for construction of the $2 billion gas pipeline to run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The story states, "work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck" at a summit scheduled for the end of the month. Unocal will build the pipeline. [Source: BBC, May 13, 2002]
78. May, 2002 - A number of sources report progress on both oil and gas pipelines. Regional sources state that Unocal will re-emerge as a pipeline contender after withdrawing from the CentGas pipeline project in 1998. Unocal denies plans to revive the gas pipeline but curiously neglects to mention whether or not it has any interest in the oil pipeline, which local sources say is moving ahead. [Source: The Dawn Group of Newspapers, May 7, May 17, May 22, 2002]

Both of these stories are nonsense. As David Corn reported, Unocal has stated unequivocally that it has no intention of participating in the pipeline venture. Could they be lying? Well, sure, if they have completely taken leave of their senses. To take part in such a large venture as building a pipeline traversing Afghanistan in complete secrecy would indeed be quite an engineering feat. And keeping their shareholders in the dark would, of course, be entrepreneurial suicide.

79. May 30, 2002 - Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf meet in Islamabad to sign a memorandum of understanding on the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project. The three leaders will meet for more talks on the project in October. The Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistani gas pipeline accord has been published and can be viewed at the following website: http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nts22622.htm. [Source: NewsBase, June 5, 2002]

As I said, "The Parties support the construction of a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline, viewing it as vital to the interests of the peoples of the countries of the region, and will coordinate the joint activities necessary for carrying out the supply, transportation and use of Turkmen natural gas."

80. May 16, 2001 -- Press Secretary Ari Fleischer states unequivocally that while President Bush had been warned of possible hijackings, "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." [Source: CBS News, May 15, 2002]

For a thorough analysis of the "dropped balls" prior to September 11, go here. And here.

81. May 19, 2002 - Former FBI Agent Tyrone Powers, now a professor at Anne Arundel Community College states on radio station KISS 98.7 that he has credible evidence suggesting that the Bush Administration did in fact allow the Sept. 11 attacks to further a hidden agenda. [Source: http://www.indymedia.org - May 20, 2002]

Uh, is there an argument in there anywhere? And as for citing Nazimedia as a source, do we really have to go there?

82. May 31, 2002 - FBI Agent Robert Wright delivers a tearful press conference at the National Press Club describing his lawsuit against the FBI for deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented the 9-11 attacks. He uses words like "prevented," "thwarted," "obstructed," "threatened," "intimidated," and "retaliation" to describe the actions of his superiors in blocking his attempts to shut off money flows to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. These are not words of negligence. They are words describing deliberate and malicious actions. [Source: C-SPAN website]

"Curtailing investigations that might have prevented the 9-11 attacks." Yet another lie. Wright has not even alleged that he had any involvement in or knowledge of, investigations into the September 11 hijackers or their financiers. His work centered on Hamas and Hizbollah, and was based in Chicago -- a city with no known connection to the plots.

Wright's accusation should be taken seriously as a critique of how seriously the FBI took the threat of terrorism by Muslim extremists in the U.S., even though they seem, at times, quite petty. He has charged, for example, that the Bureau would not provide him with decent computer equipment -- to which all of his fellow agents can relate, I'm sure. Wright's attempt to link his personal crusade with the failure to prevent the September 11 attacks is extremely melodramatic, in addition to being baseless.

83. June 4, 2002 - Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Butler, who had called President Bush a joke and accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen, is suspended from his post at the Defense Language School in Monterey, Calif. and could face a court martial. [Source: Associated Press, June 4, 2002]

84. June 17, 2002 - Reuters reports that Butler's case has been resolved without the necessity of a court martial. (I guess so. There's enough material here to prove him right. -- MCR) [Reuters, June 17, 2002]

Thankfully, Butler's military career is as good as over, even without a courts martial. That's good enough for me, as he is unfit to lead, but there?s no reason to make a 1st Amendment martyr of him.

Again, Ruppert displays his ignorance of military practices: even if Butler's allegations were "proven right," his actions were still a clear violation of Article 88 of the UCMJ.

85. July 2, 2002 - Motions from Zacarias Moussaoui are unsealed in federal court, indicating that Moussaoui wants to testify before both a grand jury and Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui claims to have information showing that the U.S. government wanted the attacks to happen. [Source: The Washington Post, July 3, 2002]

Uh huh.

86. July 3, 2002 - The first-ever shipment of Russian oil, 200,000 metric tons, arrives in Houston. [Source: The Moscow Times, July 6, 2002]

And?

87. July 6, 2002 - Afghan Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir is assassinated by Afghan warlords. The New York Times reports that Qadir may have been assassinated by opium warlords upset by Qadir's efforts to reduce the rampant opium farming and processing that has taken place since the U.S. occupation. Qadir had been overseeing a Western-backed eradication program, according to the Times. However, the opium warlords of the region are same ones sponsored, protected, and in some cases released from prison by the CIA and who have been protected by President Bush's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. It is reported that the raw opium is being refined near U.S. bases at Kandahar. [Sources: The New York Times, July 8, 2002; Far Eastern Economic Review, April 18, 2002]

As Bill Gertz's work, Breakdown notes, internal -- and unclassified -- CIA reports have long concluded that "all major political factions in Afghanistan are involved in the drug trade to some degree." [Appendix A, p.188]

While one can argue that this is no excuse for not exerting more pressure on those factions, Ruppert's suggestion that this somehow proves complicity in the drug trade is as baseless as any argument he has made.

And that's saying quite a bit.

2002-10-07T21:58:00.000-04:00

A World Class Thumbsucker

Stefan Sharkansky was kind enough to translate the entire Die Zeit story on pre-September 11 intelligence failures and the Israeli "Art Student" spy scandal.

I was going to write a lengthy critique of Die Zeit's reporting, but Bruce Rolston beat me to it, and did a much better job than I would have. So let me just add a few minor details.

The first part of the piece, which centers on the Malaysia meetings and the CIA's failure to warn State, FBI, etc. about al-Midhar and al-Hazmi is not news. In fact, I could find no new angle or significant details in their version of events.

Likewise, the second part, which centers on the alleged Mossad operation that trailed the hijackers, offers no new solid information. Sure, it's conclusions are wildly divergent from those who have obsessed about this case since last fall, but it relies heavily on the same old 61-page draft DEA report that everyone else who has reported on this used. But Die Zeit incorrectly refers to the document as a "final report," and draws conclusions which are in no way supported by it. In fact, apart from that document, the story is entirely unsourced.

But go read Rolston's takedown. He has uncovered some glaring errrors in fact, sources notwithstanding.

UPDATE: Stefan reports that someone using the handle "Citizen Able," who posted a comment in support of the circus freak himself, used an IP address registered to the "Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation." Makes a nice finishing touch to this nonsense, doesn't it?

2002-10-03T17:17:00.000-04:00

Israeli Art Student Conspiracy Theory -- With a Twist

Stefan Sharkansky has been generous enough to translate this Die Zeit story, as google will only do a half-assed job. What a mensch!

The gist of the piece, according to the BBC summary, is that the supposed art student spies were trailing the 9/11 hijackers, and actually tried to warn the CIA, who ignored them, as they had no details. I still think there's nothing to this, even though it would a) completely douse Justin Raimondo's obsessive ranting about the treachery of Israel, and b) in no way proves foreknowledge by our own government.

I am interested to see what Die Zeit has actually added to the story, which remains rooted in shaky French reporting and a draft memo by a disgruntled DEA agent. Stay tuned.

2002-10-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

Another Foreknowledge Myth Down In Flames

Snopes lays to rest the nonsense about FEMA being sent to NYC on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks:

Since 11 September 2001 was a Tuesday, if the Massachusetts task force had really arrived on a Monday night, as Mr. Kenney said, they would have been deployed in New York City the evening before the attacks, a rather curious coincidence seized upon by many conspiracy buffs as "proof" that the federal government had foreknowledge of the terrorists' plans.

The real explanation is, as usual, much simpler and more mundane:

* Tom Kenney simply mixed up his days of the week, saying "Monday" when he meant "Tuesday" and "Tuesday" when he meant "Wednesday." As someone who muddled through quite a few television interviews in the aftermath of September 11, I know how easy it is to become disoriented and confused during live interviews, attempting to hear questions coming to you through an earpiece and respond to the disembodied voice of an interviewer whom you can't see while bright lights are shined in your eyes. A person unused to the experience does well if he manages to get through a three-minute interview without making a whole host of mistakes. That someone who had been working around-the-clock in a crisis situation for two days straight might lose track of the day of the week is quite an understandable human error.

Moreover, a reporter from the Boston Herald tracked down Tom Kenney to verify that he was not in New York City on September 10 ...

A simple mix-up on the days of the week? Nah! It's got to be more convoluted than that!

2002-09-24T13:37:00.000-04:00

Well, La-Dee-Freakin'-Dah!

This is just priceless. Christ, Raimondo, have some effing dignity. You sound like Oral Roberts.

2002-09-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

Who Didn't See This Coming?

Conspiracy charlatan Mike Ruppert's White Knight has disappeared:

A man who says the American government knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks went AWOL yesterday before his scheduled extradition hearing, leaving his lawyer to wonder if U.S. authorities had silenced him.

A bench warrant for the arrest of accused fraud artist Delmart Edward Vreeland, 37, will be served today[Sept. 10] if he isn't in a Toronto court by 10 a.m.

Anticipating this, Ruppert had long ago alleged that a Barry Seal-type scenario was underfoot. And there are undoubtedly people out there dumb enough to believe it.

2002-09-12T10:44:00.000-04:00

Canada Beware

CKLN radio ran an interview with yours truly today, on Mike Ruppert's conspiracy theories.

The promo refers to me as "mild-mannered." That is a typo. It should read "Quiet. Too quiet."

2002-09-02T13:32:00.000-04:00

More Ruppert News

For those of you dissatisfied with the frequency of my own posts, Ron Anicich, the Canadian radio reporter who brought you the most comprehensive Delmart Vreeland Website ever, has his own blog. Unlike mine, it features firsthand reporting, such as this e-mail exchange with the bullshit king himself:

This response is on the record.

Yes, I sent Vreeland the below email when I sent the interview questions. Nowhere in it do I tell him what to say. I tell him the format of the interview and that doesn?t violate any journalistic standards. So what?

I do not remember sending him any emails about Weems? correspondence but I may have. So what?

You state that I have lied to you on a number of occasions. I am putting you on notice that you need to specify to me exactly what those occasions were and what I said that was untrue and then provide me an opportunity to respond.

If you do not my attorney will be in touch with you immediately for publishing a libelous story. I have duly noted your new threat in the files.

Mike Ruppert

So I wrote back:

Mr. Ruppert,

First of all; if you were any kind of journalist you would know that you did, in fact, violate journalistic standards. I would, and will, suggest you had a clear motive for this. You know that virtually every time Vreeland opens his mouth he exposes himself as a fraud! Not only that but after you had heard from one of Vreeland's victims you stated to us clearly in an interview that you were not aware of any of Vreeland's victims. That, Mr. Ruppert is called lying. I'm sure your lawyer can fill you in on any technicalities.

Secondly; Notice or not, I am not in any way obliged to inform you of your own actions. If you cant remember lying to us then you can just wait for us to finish our work.

Third; what threat are you talking about? If you are speaking about exposing you as a liar then I suggest you stop lying. I would also suggest that people have already published stories which exposed your previous dishonesty and misleading assertions. They continue to do this despite the fact that you are sueing them? Whatever! The internet is full of work that endeavours to correct your own. You will undoubtedly waste a ton of money defending your (lack of) honour against these many articles. I would suggest this money would be better spent on your rapidly approaching retirement.

I am putting YOU on notice. We will continue our research and continue to expose the lies you are telling. Like I said, if you don't like it then STOP LYING! Please send any further correspondance which contains empty legal threats to CKLN who will forward it to our lawyer, after they have a great laugh.

Providing you with an opportunity to respond is a courtesy, not an obligation. Considering your response to our many querries we have decided that we no longer wish to give you another chance to correct your many errors.

Thank you for your time.

Ron Anicich
CKLN Radio
Toronto, Canada

It gets better. Read the whole thing. He also links to this radio interview in which Ruppert gets ambushed by David Corn himself. Great radio, if you can suppress the incredibly annoying KPFK host.

2002-08-16T21:59:00.000-04:00

Mike Ruppert's Bullshit-riddled Timeline, Part IV

For those of you new to this series, you can read the first three parts here, here, and here. As promised, this installment addresses his most idiotic claims ...

56. September 11, 2001, For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred – an event that has never happened in history. [Sources: CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.]

To say call this passage a misrepresentation of the facts would be wholly inaccurate. It is, to put it simply, a naked lie from start to finish. It is truly one of the most infamous lies told about the terror attacks, outdone in its outrageousness only by the French no-plane-hit-the-Pentagon invention, and perhaps Ruppert’s "White Knight". It’s amazing to the point of being distressing that he and others have been able to repeat it so often without receiving the amount of ridicule as these other two examples have elicited, considering it is such an incredibly easy target for debunkers like me.

As I’ve pointed out before, the timeline for the FAA/NORAD response to the hijacking is dead wrong. As is the myth about Payne Stewart’s plane, which Ruppert was one of the first to promote. Ruppert and others have gone even further, creating yet another myth about "combat ready" fighter planes available at Andrews Air Force Base, which should have been able to intercept a hijacked plane entering DC airspace.

Ruppert and his comrades obviously do not know what "combat ready" (as in, deployable) means, or else they would not make such an idiotic statement. The truth is that prior to the 9/11 attacks, America’s air defense doctrine focused on the frontiers, ready to intercept incoming Bears, but quite naked within domestic airspace. In fact, the U.S. had only 14 fighters on armed alert within the continental U.S., stationed on just seven bases – and Andrews was not one of them.

57. Sept. 11-12, 2001 - Nearly a month before the first reported outbreak, White House officials start taking the powerful antibiotic Cipro to treat anthrax. By the end of the year it will be known that the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks against Sens. Leahy and Daschle was produced by CIA programs coordinated through Fort Detrick, the Batelle Memorial Institute and the Dugway Proving Ground. [Source: NBC; CNN; www.tetrahedron.org, www.judicialwatch.org]

Despite all the wacky sources Ruppert provides for this, the assertion is only backed up by one AP story, which was later pulled from the wires, and is not even available on Lexis-Nexis (of course, that’s all part of the conspiracy, just as the ground you walk on is part of the conspiracy). I’m sure Ruppert would tut-tut that the story was never denied by the White House, which should come as no surprise, considering that they would never confirm or deny whether their employees were taking the drug.

Even if we were to assume the story accurate, it still proves nothing. Cipro is not an effective preventative prophyllaxis (which is why they call it a "post exposure" measure), so if and when any White House staff took it would have been after they believed they had possibly already been exposed to anthrax. This contention also assumes that the anthrax attacks were committed by al-Qaeda, which is quite far from being an accepted fact.

58. September 13, 2001 – China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001.]

Now this is just delusional. Really, now.

59. September 14, 2001 – Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]

As anyone even remotely familiar with the Vreeland case knows, the "warning letter" does not "describe" anything resembling the 9/11 attacks. It lists many potential targets, including both the WTC and Pentagon, but says nothing of the time or methods of the attacks.

But Ruppert’s claim that the records confirm that Vreeland wrote the note in early August, and gave it to jail authorities, who kept it until after the attacks occurred, are also complete nonsense:

One of the most bizarre allegations is his unsupported assertion that he had foreknowledge of the events of September 11 and tried to warn the authorities who would not listen to him. He says he wrote his warning with a blue contraband pen on August 11 or 12 and sealed his warning in an envelope which was opened by a gaol Lieutenant on September 14. He says it can be proven by forensic chemical analysis that his scribbled note was written with a blue contraband pen that was confiscated from him on August 13. He offers no such proof.

60. September 15, 2001 – The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown unit of Deutschebank.

61. September 29, 2001 – The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.

Once again, this relies heavily on unsupported assumptions. That anyone associated with Deutschebank was involved in the alleged put option insider trading (which is itself unproven), much less one of its highest-ranking officials, defies logic. Surely, if these evil corporate executives were to try to pull this off, they wouldn’t have done it through their own bank.

62. October 10, 2001 – The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."

63. October 11, 2001 – The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2002.]

64. Mid October, 2001 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations.

Whatever you do, Ruppert, don’t quit your day job (or what passes for it). You’re not ready to be a market analyst just yet.

65. November 21, 2001 – The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country.

66. November 25, 2001 – The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible."

67. December 4, 2001 – Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the US government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA’s leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, 12/4/01].

68. December 25, 2001 – Newly appointed afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde.]

69. January 3, 2002 – President Bush appoints Zalamy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, 1/9/02]

70. January 4, 2002 – Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2002.

71. January 10, 2002 – In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon’s switchboard operator who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior Court.]

This makes perfect sense. A Naval Intelligence spy would certainly have a publicly-listed phone number, and would obviously use the same name he’s been using in "operations" in Canada for that listing. He would also want to leave a special note to the Pentagon operators, to ensure they do not refuse to give the listing out to people who call in on non-secure phone lines from outside the United States.

It is certainly conceivable that someone who has an extensive criminal history specializing in IDENTITY THEFT might be able to hoodwink the little old ladies who run the Pentagon’s telephone directory. Ruppert cites Toronto Superior Court records as evidence of this. Let’s see that they actually have to say …

I permitted the Respondents to file an affidavit which asserts belief in information received from named U.S. government sources that a person purporting to be Lieutenant D. Vreeland sent an e-mail to a telephone operator at the Pentagon several days before the Applicant gave the above evidence and telephonic demonstration. The e-mail stated that Lieutenant D. Vreeland temporarily would be occupying the Pentagon office in issue, which was assigned to someone else, and requested that this temporary change be included in the listing. The Applicant denied sending this e-mail and appeared to suggest that it was fabricated by U.S. government representatives.

Of course it was fabricated. Just like his Navy service record that says he was booted in 1986, and the court records and police reports from nearly half a dozen states chronicling his prolific criminal record. All forgeries! And he ought to know one when he sees one!

72. January 10, 2002 – Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting Federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco who have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan.10, 2002 – FTW original investigation, The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I, Apr 4, 2002.]

Oh boy, an FTW original investigation. Ruppert’s own reporting, of course, does not tell you that the investigation from which Ashcroft fails to recuse himself involve bribery of officials in Kazakhstan, and violations of the Iran trade embargo. That’s funny, wasn’t Iran one of the alternates to the Afghan pipeline, preferred by virtually every U.S. oil company (except Unocal) as the most viable route for Central Asian oil?

His characterization of those investigations as "against ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco" is also quite misleading. He takes issue with a New York Times report from December 17, 2000, which stated that investigators had concluded, after subpoenaing their records, that these two oil companies were not involved. Ruppert cites a Seymour Hersh report which claims the opposite, but fails to show why the U.S. Attorney General must recuse himself from a case based not on grand jury findings, but on Hersh’s reporting. And rightly or wrongly, the Justice Department cleared these firms of any wrongdoing on Bill Clinton and Janet Reno’s watch, well before Ashcroft took office.

73. January 23, 2002 – Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Pakistan. Pearl is reported dead on Feb. 21. Lead suspect Ahmad Umar Sheik, former colleague of Gen. Ahmad, arrested on Feb 12, is named as the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder. Legal sources close to the Pakistani government tell FTW that Pearl was investigating the ISI. [Source: CNN.com]

After Ruppert/FTW’s gross inaccuracies in the Vreeland story, I’m not ready to buy any of their original reporting.

74. February 9, 2002 – Pakistani leader General Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity" including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghani government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, 2/9/02]

I guess the only way to disprove Ruppert’s conspiracy theory is to force the Afghan’s to live in abject poverty forever, refusing to do anything that might uplift the country’s standard of living. The idea that prudent economic development that could prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist’s retreat must be proof that terrorism was never the real issue is not only idiotic, it’s obscene.

Thus far, we’ve excised roughly 85 percent of the intellectual tumor that is Mike Ruppert. We’ve already dealt with his most damning allegations, which were at the same time his most egregious lies. The next installment should be the last, and will probably seem anti-climactic after this one. But if you're yet to be convinced that Mike Ruppert is the most laughable fraud who ever walked the earth, you won't want to miss it.

2002-08-12T17:20:00.000-04:00

Yeah, We Should Have Been Able To Intercept Those Four Planes

2002-08-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO HAS A PROBLEM WITH THE MCKINNEY 9/11 CAMPAIGN DONATIONS SCANDAL
Mark my words: you will never encounter irony as rich as this. Responding to this weekend's Atlanta Journal-Constitution story on Cynthia McKinney's receipt of campaign donations from groups linked to terrorist organizations on the day of the attacks (and subsequent lies to explain the suspicious transactions), Mike Ruppert had this to say:

In what is has become a down-to-the-wire race to determine the fate of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, has resurrected innuendo-like charges implying that somehow McKinney is a supporter of terrorism. These implied connections are reminiscent of the vigorous effort by the FBI and ruling elites to portray Martin Luther King as a Communist protégé when, in fact, years later U.S. Congressional investigations disclosed that all of those supposed Communist connections had originated from within the FBI and had no basis in fact.

McKinney did receive campaign donations from people who have been connected to terrorist support groups. So have the Republicans in a much harder case. [See Guardian story below]. That is not the point. No politician has ever been asked, or expected to run a background check on every campaign donor. That’s nonsense. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has shown its stripes by glossing over the case of the Safa Trust, a significant donor to the Republican Party and supporter of the Bush Administration that was targeted earlier this year by the FBI and described as being a money laundering operation for terrorist groups that actually shared office space with Republican Party operatives.

Innuendo? Implied? You don't say! As for what they are "reminiscent" of, I can think of a much better analogy. Suddenly, Ruppert has discovered that there is such a thing as coincidence.

2002-08-02T22:24:00.000-04:00

Have You Ever Noticed ...

... that the same people who claim that the government let the 9/11 attacks happen also argue that every action taken against terrorists since 9/11 has been a gross miscarriage of justice?

Or is it just me?

2002-07-28T16:06:00.000-04:00

Mike Ruppert's Bullshit-riddled Conspiracy Timeline, Part III.
NOTE: Ruppert has added several entries to his timeline, so the numbering has shifted slightly. Most of his new entries are derived from the French book Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth, which he accepts, predictably, as gospel. For the best analysis of the book?s shoddy and flagrantly inaccurate reporting, see David Corn?s response to one of the books authors.

We now return to the timeline, more or less where we left off ?

[late entry in a 7/17 revision] 38. late-August 2001 - Prince Turki, the pro-U.S. head of Saudi intelligence (also known to be close to bin Laden), is replaced by his more neutral half-brother, Prince Nawwaf who is an ally of Crown Prince Abdullah. [Source: Saudi Arabian Information Resource, Aug. 31, 2001; http://www.saudinf.com/ - Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

Doesn?t surprise me, although I would be naturally suspicious that Turki was "pro-U.S." Few outside our own State Department would disagree that the Saudi?s have been less than forthright about how widespread al-Qaeda sentiments and organization exists in their country, and that we are deluded if we think that they are truly our allies.

Neither would very many people disagree that the U.S.-Saudi "friendship" is based almost entirely on the politics of oil. This would make our government guilty of shortsightedness, but in no way supports complicity or foreknowledge, either by our government or even the Saudis themselves.

42. Early September, 2001 - An FBI internal document, based upon field noted from Minnesota field agents disclose that the agents had been investigating and had questioned the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. The field notes speculate that Moussaoui, who had been taking flight lessons, might crash an airliner into the WTC. Interestingly, the field agents? requests to obtain a search warrant for his personal computer were denied. French intelligence confirms to the FBI that Moussaoui has ties to terrorist groups and may have traveled to Afghanistan. The agents also had no knowledge of the Phoenix memo (See Item#14). One news story states that agents were in "a frenzy," absolutely convinced that he was "going to do something with a plane." [Source NEWSWEEK, May 20, 2002 issue ? story by Michael Isikoff].

What Ruppert doesn?t tell you is that these agents, though admittedly very anxious, were only in the "brainstorming" stages of trying to figure out what Moussaoui was up to. Isikoff?s source further admits that "the agents were only ?speculating? about possible scenarios."

In his typical fashion, Ruppert prefers to quote from Isikoff?s initial, austere reporting on this matter. He could have quoted from Isikoff?s more comprehensive story from the following week, but then, he might have encountered information he didn?t really want to know ? or share with his readers, in any event.
Information such as:

There were, in fact, failures at every level that summer: from the shortcomings in the law-enforcement trenches--the FBI's poor record at domestic surveillance, the CIA's poor record at infiltrating Islamic groups and the lack of cooperation between the two agencies--to the fixed strategic mind-set of the Bush
administration. Between the claims by the FBI and CIA that they didn't get enough information and the White House's insistence that it didn't receive any reports--"He doesn't recall seeing anything," Rice said when asked if Bush had read the Phoenix memo--the buck seems to be stopping nowhere. "If I were an average citizen, I'd be pissed at the whole American government," says a senior official who has worked on counterterrorism.

The question is not so much what the president knew and when he knew it. The question is whether the administration was really paying much attention. Terrorism is by nature stealthy and hard to crack, even in the face of the most zealous efforts to thwart it. What Americans should be asking is why the Bush administration in its first eight months, like the Clinton administration for much of its eight years, did not demand the intelligence cooperation that was needed. At issue is not whom to blame for the past, but how to learn from it to safeguard our future.

Or this ?

NEWSWEEK has learned there was one other major complication as America headed into that threat-spiked summer. In Washington, Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the special federal court that reviews national-security wiretaps, erupted in anger when he found that an FBI official was misrepresenting petitions for taps on terror suspects. Lamberth prodded Ashcroft to launch an investigation, which reverberated throughout the bureau. From the summer of 2000 on into the following year, sources said, the FBI was forced to shut down wiretaps of Qaeda-related suspects connected to the 1998 African embassy bombing investigation. "It was a major problem," said one source familiar with the case, who estimated that 10 to 20 Qaeda wiretaps had to be shut down, as well as wiretaps into a separate New York investigation of Hamas. The effect was to stymie terror surveillance at exactly the moment it was needed most: requests from both Phoenix and Minneapolis for wiretaps were turned down.

Certainly, Ruppert would dismiss all this as disinformation, arrogating to himself the authority to judge which parts of Isikoff?s reporting can be trusted, and which cannot. Finally, in the interest of providing a less-misrepresentative timeline of the events leading up to 9/11, one should note that, also in "early September," the State Department?s counterterrorism branch received warnings of another terrorist threat: against U.S. installations in Japan and Korea.

43. September 1-10, 2001 ? In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23, 000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]

First, the statement that "two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf" in the first week of September is simply a lie, as anyone familiar with Navy deployments might suspect. The truth is that one carrier battle group had already been there for months, and the second (Carl Vinson) left Bremerton, Wash., July 23 and was on its way to relieve the first "on station." This has happened every six months for decades.

Likewise, the Bright Star exercise Ruppert mentions is training operation that has been conducted in the Middle East every two years since 1981.

The notion that either Bright Star or the British exercise Swift Sword should be construed as a rehearsal for Operation Enduring Freedom becomes even more idiotic when one considers that they both started roughly at the same time as the real deal. Bright Star began October 8 (!), and lasted until November. Similarly, Swift Sword lasted until the end of October [Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 29, 2001]. Moreover, Bright Star wsa primarily an amphibious operation exercise, which had nothing to do with the tactics employed against the landlocked Afghanistan.

44. September 7, 2001 ? Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida web site listing of Governor?s Executive Orders.]

Suspiciously, there are not similar developments in New York or Virginia, where the 9/11 targets were located, but only in a state regularly pummeled by hurricanes. I think this can safely be categorized as a coincidence.

45. September 6-7, 2001 ? 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]

46. September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT ? above]

47. September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."

48. September 6-10, 2001 ? Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV, No.7, October 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html.]

49. It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden?s possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October 26, 2001; FTW, Vol. IV, No.6, Sept. 18, 2001; FTW, Vol. 3, No 7, 9/30/00

I?ve grouped these items together, as they all say the same thing: the CIA had to have known about (if they were not involved in it themselves) the suspicious trading of "put options" of airline stocks prior to 9/11. Ruppert, apparently with a straight face, suggests CIA involvement based on the fact that the purchases were made through a firm once led by a senior CIA official, Buzzy Krongard. One would think that if the CIA were involved, they would have chosen a broker that couldn?t be linked to them.

Ruppert?s assertion that these trades had to have been monitored by the CIA relies on the assumption that they, regardless of the software they employ, have the manpower to oversee all stock trades in all markets, which is highly questionable. Ruppert has a habit of making the idiotic conclusion that the presence of technology that makes something possible means that it was certainly done.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the CIA did know about the put options a week before the 9/11 attacks. By what bizarre calculus should they have interpreted this as a sure sign that a hijacking plot was in the works? And on the following Tuesday morning?

This man needs serious help.

50. Sept. 9, 2001 - President George W. Bush is presented with detailed war plans to overthrow Al Qaeda, according to U.S. and foreign sources speaking to NBC News. [Source: MSNBC, May 16, 2002. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

Here is the MSNBC story referenced.

It?s a tad peculiar that Ruppert uses the phrase "overthrow Al Qaeda" to describe these plans, perhaps to give the impression that the plans alluded to a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan, which they clearly did not:

THE DOCUMENT, a formal National Security Presidential Directive,amounted to a "game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the Earth," one of the sources told NBC News? Jim Miklaszewski.

The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

In many respects, the directive, as described to NBC News, outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly to the attacks because it simply had to pull the plans "off the shelf," Miklaszewski said.

The United States first would have sought to persuade other countries to cooperate in the campaign by sharing intelligence and using their law enforcement agencies to round up al-Qaida suspects.

The plans also called for a freeze on al-Qaida financial accounts worldwide and a drive to disrupt the group?s money laundering. The document mapped out covert operations aimed at al-Qaida cells in about 60 counties.

In another striking parallel to the war plan adopted after Sept. 11, the security directive included efforts to persuade Afghanistan?s Taliban government to turn al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden over to the United States, with provisions to use military force if it refused.

Nowhere in this detailed plan is there any provision for overthrowing the Taliban. Nor are there any details that support the war-for-oil theory. If anything, it suggests that the Bush administration was getting serious about fighting terrorism before 9/11, but did not act quickly enough.

52. Sept. 10, 2001 - On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. [Source: Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2001 issue, story by Evan Thomas]

A little context ?

Twice a week, the "Threat Committee," a group of top intelligence officials and diplomats, meets in the White House complex to review dozens of terrorist threats at home and abroad. In late June the CIA warned of possible terrorist action against U.S. targets, including those in the United States, for the Fourth of July. Nothing happened, but then in July the agency again warned about possible attacks overseas. The threat seemed grave enough to force U.S. ships in Middle Eastern ports to head for sea. Three weeks ago there was another warning that a terrorist strike might be imminent. But there was no mention of where. On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.

Unfortunately, Thomas? story says nothing about the nature of the threat that supposedly cancelled these officials? trip, or even to where they were heading. Remember, the terrorist threats that had reached the highest levels that week were against U.S. installations overseas, so it seems far more likely that the travel cancellations were due to threats on the ground at the destination.

High level Pentagon officials generally do not fly commercial ? they fly out of military installations. So, it appears highly unlikely that the threat to which they were responding was domestic.
53. Sept. 11, 2001 - United Air Lines flight 23, scheduled to fly from New York City to Los Angeles was delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off immediately. This happened apparently after the first plane had hit the WTC. The passengers were thrown off the flight. [Source: The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2002]
What this is supposed to prove is anyone?s guess. There are no reports that the hijackers on any of the four 9/11 planes acted similarly, and such reactions to the "air rage" phenomenon were not at all uncommon, even before 9/11.

54. September 11, 2001 ? Gen Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Porter Goss (R), FL and Bob Graham (D), Fl [Sources: MS-NBC, Oct. 7, The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002.]

This assertion, propped up by baseless assumptions, was dealt with in great detail in WDRH?s post on Michel Chussodovsky, who made the same arguments. Notice how reports that Mahmoud approved a wire transfer of funds to Atta, via an intermediary, have now transformed Mahmoud and Atta into drinking buddies. There is no evidence, of course, that the two had ever even met.

The assertion that Mahmoud was here in the U.S. "on behalf of the Taliban," is equally baseless, as this report clearly shows, flagrant misrepresentations by Chossudovsky notwithstanding.

55. September 11, 2001 ? Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world?s largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source: CNN?s Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01; Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, 9/27/01; Ha?aretz, 9/26/01.].

The Odigo IM report has been a favorite of the "Mossad did it" brand of conspiracy theorists, but to offer it as proof of complicity/foreknowledge by our own government defies logic (not that the Israeli foreknowledge version is much better).

But then, one must understand that Ruppert had originally reported that the Odigo employees had "immediately" notified the authorities of the instant message, and later ran a correction, admitting that this was incorrect. But even in that correction, he asserted that "Press reports have not established whether the information was relayed in time to have changed U.S. response to the remaining three hijacked aircraft." This is just silly. The message contained no specific information on the imminent attacks, so it would have been of little value had it been passed to authorities when it was received, just two hours before the first plane hit. To suggest that it would have assisted authorities in anticipating the other three is patently absurd.

Trust me, there is a light at the end of this tunnel, although it's been moved back a couple of times. We're all most through this cavalcade of lies. And stay tuned, because the most comical entries are yet to come.

But for now, time to come up for air ...

2002-07-26T17:04:00.000-04:00

None dare call it Bigotry. As expected, the Circus Freak (thank you, Tim Blair), has posted yet another regurgitation of his tired, long-debunked Israeli 9/11 conspiracy theory. Surely, there has never been a more self-quoted editorialist in this country's history, as he dusts off the same old fuzzy evidence (and even fuzzier logic), never deigning to answer for the glaring errors pointed out by his critics.

His latest offers just a single piece new information, which he swears is his smoking gun that proves Israeli involvement in 9/11, and he means it this time! The damning piece of evidence is a report that Dominik Suter, the Israeli immigrant at the center of the Urban Moving Systems espionage ring (loosely associated with the larger Art student spy ring), had once shown up on an FBI terrorist watch list. Utterly shocking when one considers that Suder's employees were in FBI custody for months, and that he personally fled the U.S. days after his employees were arrested. In keeping with the Raimondo school of syllogism, this new revelation should not be construed as proof that the Feds, contrary to Raimondo's assertions of a cover-up and treason, actually looked into the matter seriously.

But none of this warrants a post on Raimondo, not even for a blog that is dedicated to such case studies in dementia. There's a much larger issue here ...

Raimondo swears he harbors no ill will toward Israeli Jews - it's just their government he's "begining to hate" (he was only mildly skeptical of them when he brazenly asserted that they sat back and laughed as 3,000 Americans were murdered in a plot they knew about all along). I've been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt on this, as I've never been the type to label those critical of Israel as anti-Semites (I, like many others, wasn't too fond of Israel myself, until around August of 2000).

But what we see with the Circus Freak is a pattern of argumentation that, while not anti-Semitic, employs the same kind of logic used by White Supremacists. You will note that he has consistently attributed the any and all questionable behavior by Israeli individuals to Israel itself. An example:

Probably not, but the unmistakable evidence of something rotten in the state of Israel grows, such as this sickening story in the Jerusalem Post about an IDF company commander and a soldier in the reserves who tortured and sexually abused a Palestinian youth.

Of course, there isn't a country on earth that does not have it's share of sick fucks, but Raimondo's suggestion is that this kind of thing is allowed - if not encouraged - by Sharon himself, despite the fact that operative verb in the story was that they were charged with those offenses. Likewise, the Israeli Art Students, Urban Movers, are all presumed to be acting at the behest of their government.

There are no Israeli individuals.

Could this be explained by simple, equal-opportunity fascist tendencies by Raimondo? Doubt it:

Some dipsh*t web editor [of a government-controlled news site] posts David Duke's rancid ravings on Arab News and Taranto is ready to smear whole populations as Nazis: not that he requires much in the way of evidence.

Amazing. So this is what hypocrisy looks like at absolute zero temperature, eh?

Does this make Raimondo an anti-Semite? I would still hesitate to make such a charge. I'm sure he has lots of Jewish friends, and he may be quite fond of the Naturei Karta crowd. But he has consistently attributed the faults of Israeli individuals as "unmistakable evidence of something rotten in the state of Israel." I don't know what you'd call that, besides bigotry. It may be anti-Israeli bigotry, instead of anti-Jewish bigotry. But it's still bigotry, and it's repugnant.

CORRECTION: I originally made the assumption, using Raimondo's column as a source, that Dominik Suter himself had been in FBI custody for months, along with his employees. This is not the case, as Suter himself fled the country after being questioned just once. His five employees were held in FBI custody for two and a half months.

2002-07-21T17:33:00.000-04:00

And to think, I was only joking. A few weeks ago I noted the similarities between arguments made by the Birkenstock Birch Society and Zacarias Moussaoui's own bizarre conspiracy theory, alleged that the feds placed a monitoring device in the form of a fan on his dashboard, which could prove his innocence. "Mike Ruppert would be proud," I said, sarcastically.

Here's a late entry into Ruppert's 9/11 Conspiracy timeline:

85. July 2, 2002 - Motions from Zacarias Moussaoui are unsealed in federal court, indicating that Moussaoui wants to testify before both a grand jury and Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui claims to have information showing that the U.S. government wanted the attacks to happen. [Source: The Washington Post, July 3, 2002]

This just isn't fair. The guy's making it fucking impossible to make fun of him.

2002-07-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

David Corn: pretty cool for a Leftist. Once again, Corn has diverted himself from his more serious endeavors to respond to the most ignorant jackasses in the Western Hemisphere.

He answers the mail from several irate critics - Mike Ruppert included - and also gives what appears to be the first serious analysis of Jean-Charles Brisard & Guillaume Dasquie's Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, which has not yet been published in English (but he got his hands on a manuscript since his magazine is going to be one of the publishers that will do the honors). Like Corn's past work on the subject, his response to Brisard is brilliant:

Their book is a crass exploitation of a tragic event. It violates the most modest of journalistic standards. The authors manipulate an awful event into a story to serve a political end--or, perhaps, only to make money for themselves. The book practically justifies the attacks. Which is foul. It says the September 11 assaults were prompted by these "secret negotiations," not bin Laden's jihad or the geopolitical conditions and conflicts that may have fed that jihad.

One thing about about Brisard & Dasquie's claims that has baffled me is this: if we had threatened the Taliban back in July of last year with "a carpet of bombs" if they refused to give us an oil pipeline (or hand over bin Laden, which is what the "secret negotions" were really about), how is it that Mullah Omar resisted the urge to issue heated denunciations of the infidel plot to commit genocide against the Umma, and to publicly warn that the U.S. would learn the same lesson the Sovies did - kinda like when we really did start bombing Afghanistan and scattering his forces to the wind - for two whole months?

And to this day, no figure from the Taliban regime itself had ever made the same ridiculous claim that these two charlatans have. Were they briefly stricken with a bad case of reticence?

Do read the entire Corn response. It's pretty well-done, considering it's written by " one of the establishment CIA/FBI operatives who has long been planted within so-called progressive circles."

2002-07-14T20:30:00.000-04:00

This takes the fucking cake! A conspiracy theory based on a prank by Howard Stern fans? Nah, that could never happen. Or could it?

Yes, it's true, just when I thought the Indymidiots couldn't possibly get any dumber, they pick up on the prank call ("initial report") on the LAX El Al killing spree by Hashem Mohamed Hedayat, nearly ten days after everyone else had already fallen for it, then realized their error. The Birkenstock Birch Society known as Indymedia has developed a conspiracy theory around the infamous "Artie took my job!" shooter:

The actual shooter and second gunman was a white, Caucasian, blonde hair, with a pony tail, clearly NOT an Egyptian. (That is assuming that the Egyptian was a gunman patsy as a diversion, rather than what seems to be, an unarmed patsy, shot dead like Lee Harvey Oswald.) According to witnesses, mentioned primarily in early reports but not repeated or in foreign press reports, the "pony tail" wore an El Al identification badge and was identified by among others, those working at the right nearby Mexicana Air Lines ticket counter. He took deliberate, not random, aim at Chandra Levy's close associate working at the ticket counter, Victoria Chen. His shots, however, missed Peres' grand-daughter right nearby.

The "pony tail" had five accomplices in the airport terminal who were apprehended by the secret political police, the FBI, and have fallen into the Bureau's cover-up black hole of history.

PURPOSES OF THE COVER-UP

===To conceal efforts by The Mossad that they gave accurate, prior warning data to the Bush White House of the events that became 9-11, Black Tuesday. And that the Bush White House, as supervised by Daddy Bush running the show, wanted the events to take place. Why? For many poorly-informed Americans, outraged at the violence on their homeland, willing now to scrap the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be replaced by promises of "Homeland Security", like the Nazi Gestapo and the Soviet K.G.B. Ordinary Americans, unfortunately, do not understand this horrible mindset of the aristocracy, that foments wars and benefits from great financial debacles, like the Great Depression.

Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling with the Mossad? Oh, that is rich!

Actually, the author of this delusional screed is a self-described "court reformer" named Sherman Skolnick, who has his own Web site espousing countless different conspiracy theories, all of which seem to involve the Mossad. I'm surprised I haven't seen his byline on Arab News yet.

2002-07-10T23:21:00.000-04:00

The OTHT dilemma. Sometime in the late 1980’s the Department of Defense was confronted with a problem with it’s rapidly improving weapons technologies. It seemed that the ranges of its newer missile systems had become so great that they exceeded the ranges of the radar and other sensors used by the platforms that launched them. This "Over the Horizon Targeting" dilemma is now being solved by different "network-centric warfare" systems that are rapidly bridging that gap.

But the OTHT dilemma now provides an excellent metaphor for the research tactics of a certain columnist. Justin Raimondo’s latest tries to piece together the Independence Day shooting spree at LAX with the Anthrax mystery. In both cases, he has been able to cull a wealth of reportage, displaying great investigative reach.

Being able to process that information, and understand it in its proper context, however, is another matter entirely.

He begins by grossly misstating the position of several critics of the FBI’s reluctance to call the LAX attempted massacre "terrorism," and suggests that this rush to judgement is driven by ideological blinders, and allegiance to ZOG:

Since it advances Israel's interests to maintain that Hadayet was part of a larger terrorist operation, a footsoldier in a worldwide Islamofascist network, then it must be true. Which is why Israeli government officials jumped the gun, as I pointed out in a July 4 piece, and characterized it as an act of organized terrorism before Hadayet had even been identified.

First of all, no one has alleged that Hadayet was an "agent of the International Islamofascist Conspiracy" – except a certain Arabic newspaper based in London, that is. Making the presumption that all Israeli individuals who do anything wrong within the U.S. must be agents of their government, now that's a conspiratorial argument. For the Warbloggers, the argument has been solely about motive and what should be considered terrorism (see the difference?). There is evidence that Hadayet harbored virulently anti-Jewish sentiments, which are corroborated by the ranting denial of his wife, ironically enough.

Secondly, if Hadayet was driven by a hatred of Jews to go gun down Jewish targets, it would seem an understatement to call it a mere "hate crime," when we use the T-word to describe threats made by an NBA star. Hadayet didn’t have to go to any meetings of the Wahabbist international to be considered a terrorist. All he needed was to share their views and motives.

Raimondo also points to apparent "wildly differing versions" of certain aspects of the case as proof that it is far too soon to judge things like motive. He counts one inaccurate report which stated that Hadayet had been on an FBI watch list as clouding the issue, when in fact this was merely bad reporting (it was the Sydney Morning Herald, for fuck’s sake), that was pointedly corrected on July 5 (not July 6, as he claims):

There have been some reports coming out in the media that supposedly this individual was on a list or a watch list. That is not true. He has not been on any FBI or any FAA watch list. And we did confirm that this morning to ensure that we could at least let you know that.

He then meanders into his Anthrax cover-up theories (has it been five days already?), scoffing at the recent conventional wisdom which suggests a self-professed Rhodesian double agent should be a suspect in the bioterror that immediately followed 9/11.:

Laura Rozen's piece nowhere contains a single iota of solid evidence: sure, Hatfill has the knowledge, but his motive is barely sketched out beyond some vague megalomania mixed with right-wing malevolence.

Let me get this straight – you were ready to hang 60 Israeli art students for espionage based on some distorted reports of odd public behavior and a motive that was a figment of your imagination, but you don’t think a guy bragging about being a double agent and having lost his security clearance due to a failed polygraph isn’t enough to go on?

Once again, Raimondo rehashes the tale of his own theory, on how an anti-Arab cabal at the Ft. Detrick lab harassed an Egyptian doctor, eventually trying to frame him for the attacks with an anonymous letter, which somehow proves that they were the guilty ones. It never occurred to him that these bigots – being bigots and all – may have truly believed that the Arab scientist was behind the attacks. But it should strike those familiar with Raimondo’s creative writing as odd that he would so confidently declare that the Egyptian, Dr. Ayaad Assad "was questioned and completely cleared."

Kind of like those art students, huh, Raimondo? Me, I don’t have a theory on the anthrax attacks, be it Hatfill, Zack, or al-qaeda. But it was certainly terrorism, and if the indications that Hadayat’s motive was to strike fear in the hearts of Jews and other "kaffir" elements, then so was his rampage. And right now, those indications seem infinitely more compliant with reality than Raimondo’s Zionist plots. And what was that about ideological blinders?

At this stage of the game, when what little is known is ambiguous or contradictory, for Israel's partisans to try to capitalize on the July 4 shootings as part of a vast conspiracy is not only absurd but unseemly.

G-d damn. I never realized irony could get so friggin’ palpable.

2002-07-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

Must ... fight ... urge to kill ... With an MLB work stoppage seeming so imminent, coupled with Bud Selig's shameful decision to call the All-Star game a friggin tie, we may soon need to designate a new National Pastime. I respectfully submit McKinney bashing. I'm speaking, of course, of the Georgian Congresswoman to whom this blog is an homage, and not the Canadian comedian of Kids in the Hall and SNL fame (please don't crush my head, Mark).

Jake Meister (if that is indeed his real name), sends this rallying cry in support of the deluded gentlelady, which puts Michael Jackson's hypocritical tantrum to shame:

She has come under attack by "Jewish" leaders who are not willing to be honest about the war, about their brothers the Palestineans about the treatment of Black folks. These are the same Jewish leaders that can ask
for money for a Holocaust, but can not support our need for money during a Hell of A Cost - Slavery. These are the same White Supremacist that refuse to allow a Black Woman the voice to speak out against wrongs, clear
and evident wrongs. These are the same White Supremacists that told Maxine Waters to be quiet when she broke the news that the CIA intentionally placed drugs in the community.

We ask all of you who support Cynthia McKinney to contact me personally so that we can rally support. They are stating to her that she has 202 more days until they get rid of her. They being the same Vigilantes that tried to scare us out of office during the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and now 2002 they are still making threats against those Black folks that speak up. They are still making threats against those Black folks that are not going to compromise their position. If you are not a certified Uncle Tom willing to do what they ask you to do even if it means compromising the truth, then they will do whatever they can to attack you.

But didn't the Romans do that to Jesus?
Didn't they tell Muhammad he was crazy?
Don't they (those that hide from the truth) try to label and stigmatize
you.

2002-07-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

Ruppert's Bullshit-riddled Timeline, Part II (items 18-37). Resumed right where we left off. Enjoy.

18. July, 2001 – FBI agents in Arizona write a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Arizona. The memorandum specifically mentions Osama bin Laden and warns of connections to terrorist activities. [Source: The New York Times, May 14, 2002]

Ruppert doesn’t even bother to make an argument for why this cannot be explained by bureaucratic morass and incompetence – he takes it for granted, and expects his readers to as well. It has been widely reported that the memo never went higher than mid-level managers, preventing the proper context that could have made it more useful, and Ruppert offers no reason to doubt these accounts. Here is the exact quote from the NYT story that Ruppert apparently cites:

The memorandum said terrorist groups like Mr. bin Laden's might be sending students to the schools as the first step in what could be a concerted effort to
place Islamic militants in the civil aviation industry around the world as pilots, security guards or aircraft-maintenance workers.

Not at all as specific as Ruppert makes it sound. And a week later, the same NYT authors wrote:

The Phoenix agent's memorandum was not based on intelligence but on concerns and recommendations based on "conjecture and assumptions," said a senior official who has read it.

"There appeared to be a lot of Middle Eastern guys taking flying lessons in the Phoenix area," the official said. "This was just a good investigator taking a look at something. It was pure hunch."

And while the Phoenix memo mentioned suspected al-qaeda operatives, none of the 9/11 hijackers had been identified by agent Ken Williams. Hence, nothing short of the comprehensive sweep of all Middle Eastern flight school students is likely to have turned up anything valuable. Given the FBI’s recent embarrassments stemming from botched investigations such as the Wen Ho Lee case, it is understandable that these mid-level bureaucrats would shy away from such broad racial profiling.

Even after 9/11, the "sweeping" detentions of Middle Eastern men that have led to objections and lawsuits by civil libertarians, actually accounted for just one-tenth of the total number of Middle Eastern men (58,000) here illegally. It is not likely that the public before 9/11 would have stood for the "harassment" of so many foreigners attending flight school, most of whom were here legally, based on what investigators have described as a a hunch – a very good hunch, but a hunch nonetheless.

19. Summer, 2001 – The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by The Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]

Curiously, Ruppert prefers to cite the Albion Monitor's secondhand reporting rather than the specific Washington Post or Daily News stories. I wonder why? Ruppert may not want you to read the actual stories they cited, but I do:

"Good news is that the veep mentioned Enron in his meeting with [Indian opposition leader] Sonia Gandhi yesterday," a National Security Council aide wrote in a June 28 E-mail.

Two other E-mails indicate preparations were made for President Bush to bring the subject up with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but the idea was scrapped before they met. The documents are the latest indication that there were contacts between the Bush administration and Enron on issues directly related to the company's business. The White House maintains Enron enjoyed no special favors from the White House or Cheney.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans have conceded they spoke with Enron chief Kenneth Lay last fall about the energy giant's impending failure, but they insist they refused to help.

The new documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, indicate Cheney took a key role in pushing the Maharashtra State Electricity Board to make good on the huge debt claimed by Enron for a gas project in Dabhol, India.[New York Daily News, Jan. 18, 2002]

Ruppert incorrectly alleges that the Dabhol plant "was floundering in red ink because Enron could not access inexpensive natural gas via a proposed trans-Afghani pipeline from Turkmenistan." Quite the opposite is true.

As I noted in Part 1 (addressing his No. 6), Enron had secured LNG supplies from Oman and Abu Dhabi, (20-year contracts, according to the July 27, 2001 edition of Financial Times). One might also recall Ruppert’s allegation that the Dabhol venture had lost access to Qatari sources in April 1999. Hmm. Then explain why the LA Times would report on May 22, 2001 that Enron had pulled out of its deal with Qatar (not the other way around)?

The Dabhol power plant has remained dormant since June 2001, after Enron ceased funding because the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) refused to pay what it viewed as astronomical fees to the Enron-controlled company. Albion’s assertions that this was all due to a failed trans-Afghan pipeline is completely baseless.

20. Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain’s The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."

"Unconfirmed reports," being the operative phrase, Leigh’s rather confused reporting in no way supports Ruppert’s thesis. His own conclusion is that "the hawks in Washington thought they were backing Bin Laden into a corner," leading him to strike pre-emptively. But within the story, Leigh admits that this conclusion is rather weak:

Some analysts say Bin Laden had evidently prepared his suicide pilots up to a year beforehand, thus making Washington's behaviour in July beside the point. Others ask why US threats of military strikes in July should be of any more concern to Bin Laden than previous episodes, such as Clinton's rocketing of his camps.

There is nothing suspicious about military emissaries trying to foster relationships with their counterpart in the friendly Tajik, Kyrghyz, and Uzbek governments. Only the truly deluded would see this as evidence of imminent military operations. The U.S. has such relationships with many foreign militaries, with whom we conduct routine training exercises, but have not engaged in any conquests.

Leigh’s assertion that our past efforts to rid the world of bin Laden, because they were not successful, actually led al-qaeda to more aggressively pursue terrorist operations is a fair one. 9/11 is an important lesson about Clinton’s "tit for tat" approach to dealing with bin Laden. But that in no way supports the allegation that the invasion was planned in advance. That is probably why the Guardian dropped the story after September.

21. Summer 2001 (est.) – Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad’s direction is Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, October 11, 2001.]

As I’ve said before, there is nothing untoward about U.S. intelligence officials meeting with their Pakistani counterparts, considering the multitude of different security issues in South Asia that we were wise to follow closely. Also, there is no indication that any U.S. officials knew of the transfer while Ahmed was here in the U.S. No one, outside of Ruppert’s fellow conspiracy clowns, has even made the allegation. Speaking of clowns, Ruppert’s colleague at the University of Ottawa did make this allegation, in much greater detail, and my refutation of his intellectually dishonest arguments are here.

22. Summer 2001 – The online newswire online.ie reports on Sept. 14, 2001 that an Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source: http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=1512332.]

This article does not specify which law enforcement agency the Iranian detainee called "several times," but it does say this:

The Hanover daily newspaper Neue Presse reported the 29-year-old was dismissed as mentally unstable when he gave the warning of a terrorist attack to occur this week.

Considering that there is no indication this individual has ever been charged by German officials for complicity in the 9/11 attacks, it is safe to assume that the Germans have stuck to that conclusion. Ruppert, of course, does not. As they say, great minds think alike.

23. Summer, 2001 - Jordanian intelligence (the GID) makes a communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah’s men relay it to Washington, probably through the CIA station in Amman. To make doubly sure the message got through it was passed through an Arab intermediary to a German intelligence agent. The message: A major attack was planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used. The code name of the operation was The Big Wedding." - "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush Administration officials and congressmen who ate first denied that there had been any such warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations." This case was authenticated by ABC reporter John K. Cooley. [The International Herald Tribune (IHT), May 21, 2002]

Here’s what else Cooley had to say about this:

The message showed clearly that a major attack was planned inside the continental US. It said aircraft would be used. But neither hijacking nor, apparently, precise timing nor targets were named. The code name of the operation was mentioned: in Arabic, Al Ourush al-Kabir, "The Big Wedding."

24. Summer, 2001 (est.) - The National Security Agency intercepts telephone conversations between bin Laden aide Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta and does not share the information with any other agencies. [Jonathan Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 6, 2002]

Summer 2001? Actually, these intercepts occurred on September 10, as would be evident to anyone who has anything more than Landay’s facile reporting on the subject. The NSA did not share the intercepts with other agencies because they had not even translated them until two days later, after the attacks occurred. Moreover, experts doubt the transmissions could have prevented the attacks even if they had been translated immediately.

25. June 26, 2001 – The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by US and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.]

Except for the part about Iran "facilitating" our invasion of Afghanistan, the part about the Russian troop involvement, and the stuff about "limited military action," this is an example of good journalism.

Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of "facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan.
[…]
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong military back up of the US and Russia. Vital Taliban installations and military assets will be targeted. India and Iran will provide logistic support. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already hinted of military action against the Taliban to CIS nation heads during a meeting in Moscow in early June.

Now that’s just silly. But even if there were any validity to this report, I don’t think pushing the Taliban back to its 1998 position would have been enough to get that pipeline!

26. May 31, 2002 – Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for missions. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer. See Izvestia story here.

Izvestia? Seriously? Here is another excerpt of that story, which bears little resemblance to reality:

A terrorist group which realized actions against the USA consisted of at least 25 people. All of them had a special training on the territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan including piloting of an aircraft.

Besides, Russian Intelligence Service warns White House that present terrorist attacks are only the beginning of the wide-scale action. Ben Laden has the plans to attack nuclear units on the territory of the USA. Among Islamic targets are space objects and large financial centers of the USA.[emphasis mine]

If Izvestia had waited a few days to print this bullshit, they could have gotten the part about the hijackers’ flight training right at least.

27. July 4-14, 2001 – Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source: Le Figaro, October 31st, 2001.]

See the opening of Part 1 for how weak this allegation is, and for how Ruppert has misrepresented the reporting on it. Pay the man his $1000, Mike.

28. July, 2001 - The G8 summit at Genoa, Italy is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns and local airspace is closed off after Italian and Egyptian officials (including President Hosni Mubarak) warn American intelligence that airliners stuffed with explosives might be used to attack President Bush. US officials state that the warnings were "unsubstantiated." (But I wonder if they would have taken away the anti-aircraft artillery?) [The LA Times,
Sept. 27, 2001].

Obviously, these warnings were unsubstantiated. But even if they had merited a response, the notion that the U.S. should have been wary of a similar terrorist attack inside the U.S. every day hence is ridiculous.

29. July 26, 2001 - CBS News reports that John Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial airlines due a threat assessment. Ashcroft told the press that he didn’t know anything about what had caused it.

Of course, the fact that there was any "threat assessment" proves that the FBI knew of the 9/11 plot all along. Is there any logic fallacy this jackass doesn’t use?

30. August 2001 – The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden’s network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, September 13.]

The origin of this report was a French radio station called Europe 1. Reuters reported French authorities "could not immediately confirm" the radio station’s report, and Reuters never followed up on the story. Moreover, there’s no indication that the individual – if he even exists – had ties to the real hijackers, or could have provided any information to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

31. August 11 or 12 – US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]

It should first be noted that after David Corn eviscerated the Vreeland story, Ruppert’s "strong response" to Corn only addressed the Vreeland issue by saying:

It’s OK that you misrepresent and state that I have hung the entirety of my credibility on the Delmart "Mike" Vreeland case. I have published 56 stories since 9/11/01 and only six of them have been about Mike Vreeland.

Looks like a white flag to me. But for those of you who still aren’t convinced, or are just starving for more Vreeland trivia, go here.

32. August, 2001 - As reported in the IHT both a French magazine (name not given) and a Moroccan newspaper simultaneously report that a Moroccan agent named Hassan Dabou had penetrated Al Q’aeda to the point of getting close to bin Laden who was "very disappointed" that the 1993 bombing had not toppled the WTC. Dabou was called to the US after reporting this which curtailed his ability to stay in touch with the organization and gather additional intelligence that might have prevented the attacks. Though not proved beyond a doubt these stories have been met with a wall of silence. [The IHT, May 21, 2002].

Just when I think he’s reached the bottom of the world journalism barrel, he comes up with a Moroccan newspaper and a French magazine that IHT won’t even mention by name. Unbelievable, especially the part about our fiendish plot to prevent Dabou from gathering further intelligence by expressing an interest in what he had to say. Now that’s crafty!

33. August 2001 – Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MS-NBC interview with Putin, September 15.]

Again, no specific information that could have prevented the attacks. I guess Ruppert thinks that providing all of these unconfirmed "warnings" – all of which were reported by dubious media outlets after the attacks – proves his case. Actually, this preponderance of vague information only proves the point of just how difficult it is to sift through all this bullshit to find actionable intelligence. I’m beginning to think that Ruppert himself is part of a psyops disinformation campaign to support the government’s "cover story."

34. August, 2001 – President Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, TX ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. [CBS News, CNN – May 15, 2001]

This "briefing," also termed an "analytic report that summed up bin Laden’s methods of opteration," once again provided no specific threat information. I suppose the whole purpose of Ruppert’s listing this kind of information in "timeline" format is to convince the reader that these separate individual warnings create a confluence the points directly to the 9/11 plot. They do no such thing, and no one described the "static" effect in intelligence analysis than Jim Pinkerton:

But the definitive work on 12/7 argues that, yes, indeed, some Americans knew that Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor. But we also "knew" that the Japanese were going to bomb the Panama Canal, the Philippines and other points around the Pacific. In "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision," Roberta Wohlstetter used the word "static" to describe the dull roar of complementary and contradictory information, such that nobody could reasonably have known what the Japanese had in mind.

Static. That's the word to bear in mind as the 9/11 investigations fly forth, on and off Capitol Hill. And the sound will grow louder in the multimedia mixer, as the farrago of facts and factoids echo from here to cyberspace eternity. In the din, it will be easy for conspiracists to connect data-dots to "prove" that Bush or the FBI or Karl Rove knew that 9/11 was coming. But the fair-minded will see that such retrospective blaming is easy. What's hard is prospective threat-assessing. And so, while it's likely that Bush will be tarnished by the investigating and scooping to come, it's hard to believe he'll be revealed as treacherous.[Newsday, May 17, 2002]

Ruppert’s various warnings, even if we are to accept his deceptive portrayals of them all, are exactly that: static. Put together, they do not make the picture any clearer. Rather, they make it cloudier, and give the sensible reader a greater appreciation for the difficulty of sifting through such vague, and even disparate, information.

35. August/September, 2001 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.

The decline started much earlier than the three-week period prior to 9/11. The second largest single-day decrease for the DJIA (617 points) occurred on April 14, 2000. This is second only to September 17, 2001 (684 points), the first day the markets opened after 9/11. Sane and intelligent people realize that this is due to many factors, not the least of which is the hangover from the technology stock bubble from the 90's.

36. August/September, 2001 - According to a detailed 13-page memo written by Minneapolis FBI legal officer SA Colleen Rowley FBI headquarters ignores urgent direct warnings from French intelligence services about pending attacks. In addition, a single Supervisory Special Agent in Washington expends extra effort to thwart the field office’s investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, in one case rewriting Rowley’s affidavit for a search warrant to search Moussaoui’s laptop. Rowley’s memo uses terms like "deliberately sabotage," "block," "integrity," "omitted," "downplayed," "glossed over," "mis-characterize," "improper political reasons, "deliberately thwarting," "deliberately further undercut," "suppressed," and "not completely honest." These are not terms describing negligent acts but rather, deliberate acts. FBI field agents desperately attempted to get action to no avail. One agent speculated that bin Laden might be planning to crash airliners into the World Trade Center while Rowley ironically noted that the SSA who had committed these deliberate actions had actually been promoted after September 11th. [The AP, May 21, 2002].

Of course there were "deliberate acts." That’s the whole point of the memo. But only the most flagrant misinterpretation would construe this to support complicity or foreknowledge of the attacks. Ruppert seems to have a knack for taking isolated words out of context. That’s why I took the liberty of placing his selected terms in their proper context, as a public service:

Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.) Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all "unnecessary" actions/decisions by FBIHQ managers (and maybe to some extent field managers as well) has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course.
[…]
Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis'[sic] prior suspicions about Moussaoui.
[…]
The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY and go to the heart of the FBI's law enforcement mission and mandate. Moreover, at this critical juncture in fashioning future policy to promote the most effective handling of ongoing and future threats to United States citizens' security, it is of absolute importance that an unbiased, completely accurate picture emerge of the FBI's current investigative and management strengths and failures.
[…]
By the way, just in the event you did not know, let me furnish you the Webster's definition of "careerism - - the policy or practice of advancing one's career often at the cost of one's integrity". Maybe that sums up the whole problem!
[…]
I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons:
[…]
Also intertwined with my reluctance in this case to accept the "20-20 hindsight" rationale is first-hand knowledge that I have of statements made on September 11th, after the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already occurred, made telephonically by the FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) who was the one most involved in the Moussaoui matter and who, up to that point, seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts (see number 5).[note the qualifier before "deliberately thwarting that Ruppert apparently missed]
[…]
You do have some good ideas for change in the FBI but I think you have also not been completely honest about some of the true reasons for the FBI's pre-September 11th failures. Until we come clean and deal with the root causes, the Department of Justice will continue to experience problems fighting terrorism and fighting crime in general.

Here are some other passages -- complete sentences, mind you – that are worth noting:

The term "cover up" would be too strong a characterization which is why I am attempting to carefully (and perhaps over laboriously) choose my words here.
[…]
In the Moussaoui case, it was the opposite -- the process allowed the Headquarters Supervisor to downplay the significance of the information thus far collected in order to get out of the work of having to see the FISA application through or possibly to avoid taking what he may have perceived as an unnecessary career risk.
[…]
It's true we all make mistakes and I'm not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes. I'm relatively certain that if it appeared that a lowly field office agent had committed such errors of judgment, the FBI's OPR would have been notified to investigate and the agent would have, at the least, been quickly reassigned.
[…]
Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all "unnecessary" actions/decisions by FBIHQ managers (and maybe to some extent field managers as well) has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course. Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions.
[…]
Another factor that cannot be underestimated as to the HQ Supervisor's apparent reluctance to do anything was/is the ever present risk of being "written up" for an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) "error." In the year(s) preceding the September 11th acts of terrorism, numerous alleged IOB violations on the part of FBI personnel had to be submitted to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) as well as the IOB. I believe the chilling effect upon all levels of FBI agents assigned to intelligence matters and their manager hampered us from aggressive investigation of terrorists.

And my personal favorite, "Mr. Director, I hope my observations can be taken in a constructive vein."

Since Ruppert seems to prefer isolated terms, I have another for you: the word "failure" (including its plural) appears in the memo 12 times. Not exactly a word you associate with the willful, treasonous behavior Ruppert alleges. Nice try.

37. Sept. 3-10, 2001 – MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.

Uh-huh. Someone who knew about the plot just happened to call a radio talk show in the Caymans. I can’t for the life of me understand why the FBI – nay, I say the CIA and NSA – wouldn’t immediately act upon these premonitions. There are hundreds of such cranks who pester all levels of law enforcement (as well as hapless talk radio hosts) on any given day. People like this lady, for example.

2002-07-08T23:58:00.000-04:00

Posterboy for Conspiracy freaks.

The latest from the Moussaoui defense:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. –– Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, claims the FBI planted a tracking device in an electric fan that mysteriously appeared on his car in Oklahoma four months before his arrest in Minnesota, according to court records unsealed Monday.

The motion, one of more than four dozen Moussaoui has filed since becoming his own lawyer last month, adds a new element to the 34-year-old French citizen's contention that U.S. authorities know he is innocent of the attacks on New York and Washington because they had him and the 19 hijackers under surveillance for months.

He knew the FBi had ~~the other 19 hijackers~~those other 19 Arabs with whom he had no connection, even though he wasn't really associated with them. He's also a film critic:

Moussaoui took a shot at President Bush in one motion, comparing him to the Roman emperor in the movie "Gladiator."

"The one who say that he was going to return honors to the office was definitely talking about Ceasar Type Honors like in Gladiator: Stabbing the enemy in the back before the fight. Not surprising for Daddy son. Leading (or I must say cheating) from the back," he wrote.

Mike Ruppert must be proud.

2002-07-07T01:19:00.000-04:00

Never listen to a man named Michel. Another common theme among the Nazimedia circus freaks is that the CIA maintained ties to Osama bin Laden and other jihadists through Pakistan’s Iinter-Service Intelligence (ISI) apparatus. A colleague of Ruppert, Michel Chossudovsky (a professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa), has tirelessly tried to convince the world of the notion that the 9/11 attacks were funded and orchestrated by ISI, and that the U.S. government had to have known about them.

Chossudovsky’s smoking gun (or "missing link," as he calls it, though his argument contains scores of them) is the fact that ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud was meeting with U.S. officials the week of the attacks:

Pakistan's chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad "was in the US when the attacks occurred." He arrived in the US on the 4th of September, a full week before the attacks. He had meetings at the State Department "after" the attacks on the WTC. But he also had "a regular visit of consultations" with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon during the week prior to September 11.

What was the nature of these routine "pre-September 11 consultations"? Were they in any way related to the subsequent "post-September 11 consultations" pertaining to Pakistan's decision to cooperate with Washington. Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?

What’s so suspicious about U.S intelligence officials meeting with their Pakistani counterparts? Well, it just so happens that Ahmad was, in addition to being sympathetic to the Taliban, an active promoter of jihadi terrorist activities, and had ties to the 9/11 hijackers themselves:

Although there is no official confirmation, in all likelihood General Mahmoud Ahmad met Dr. Rice during the course of his official visit. Moreover, she must have been fully aware of the $100,000 transfer to Mohammed Atta, which had been confirmed by the FBI.

Here, Chossudovsky cites an October 9, 2001 Times of India story (which was picked up by AFP) that established a clear link between Ahmad and the transfer of money to Atta.

Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahmud.

Neither the Times of India nor the AFP version of the story say exactly when the Indian intelligence reports were "confirmed by the FBI," so Chossudovsky takes it upon himself to determine, either out of dishonesty or sheer stupidity, to conclude that this confirmation took place before the ISI chief’s visit to the U.S. There is simply no basis for this inference at all.

Chossudovsky’s difficulty with timelines does not end there. Repeatedly referring to Mahmoud Ahmad as the 9/11 "money man," he makes another baseless assumption that the $100,000 transfer occurred during "Summer 2001." Reading a few lines further, we see an Indian journalist asking National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice at a May 16, 2002 press conference whether she was aware of a $100,000 transfer on September 10 (as a sidenote, Chossudovsky’s most bizarre allegation is that CNN and FDCH transcripts were intentionally altered to remove the words "ISI chief" from the exchange. Though this White House press office does have a history of removing embarrassing remarks from its briefing transcripts – and then reinstating those remarks after their removal proved even more embarrassing – it’s quite a stretch to argue that they did so here. The rest of the exchange remains in the transcript, including the damning reference to the $100,000 transfer). Chossudovsky also quotes this ABC News report that claims that some of this money was wired "in the days just beore the attack."

Bolstered by this sloppy and austere research, Chossudovsky goes on to state the mother of all nonsequiturs:

While General Ahmad was talking to U.S. officials at the CIA and the Pentagon, he had allegedly also been in contact (through a third party) with the September 11 terrorists. What this suggests is that key individuals within the U.S. military-intelligence establishment knew about these ISI contacts with the September 11 terrorist ‘ring leader', Mohammed Atta, and failed to act. But this conclusion is, in fact, an understatement. Everything indicates that CIA Director George Tenet and ISI Chief General Mahmoud Ahmad, had established a close working relationship.

He provides nothing to support either of these conclusions, but he does provide this handy chart, that spells it out for those of you who don’t need evidence:

Attempting to dig deeper into history, Chossudovsky alleges a consistent and seamless collaboration among the U.S., Pakistan’s ISI, the Taliban, and, by extension, al-Qaeda. "Amply documented," he notes, "the ISI owes its existence to the CIA." He fails to provide any of this "ample" documentation. This assertion is silly, when one considers that the ISI was founded in 1948, just a year after the CIA’s inception. The CIA did provide much in the way of training and, especially during the campaign against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, a great deal of funding. But the assertion that the ISI has ever been subservient to its American counterparts is without merit.

Chossudovsky’s unsupported assertions in regard to the CIA’s hold on the ISI don’t end there. Quoting himself, he says:

In assessing the alleged links between the terrorists and the ISI, it should be understood that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad as head of the ISI was a "US approved appointee".

Even within his own quoted essay, there is nothing to support this claim. In fact, Mahmoud Ahmad is not even mentioned in the piece. A more lucid discussion of the relationship between the CIA and ISI can be found here.

In perhaps his most deceitful quotation-splicing, Chossudovsky distorts this report by Amir Mateen of Pakistan’s The News, on the purpose of the ISI chief’s visit to Washington:

"ISI Chief Lt-Gen. Mahmoud's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Marc Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centred around Afghanistan . . . and Osama bin Laden. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmoud's predecessor, was here, during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days."

Compare this paragraph with this slightly less editied version of the same passage (with the bits Chossudovsky missed in bold):

ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, State Department sources say he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. US sources would not furnish any details beyond saying that the two discussed 'matters of mutual interests.'
What those matters could be is a matter of pure conjecture. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centred around Afghanistan, relations with India and China, disarmament of civilian outfits, country's nuclear and missiles programme and, of course, Osama Bin Laden. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmood's predecessor, was here during Nawaz Sharif's government the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days.

This passage alone distinctly spells out what kind of intellectual dishonesty we’re dealing with here. Shameless. Truly shameless.

But Mateen goes on to add a bit more "conjecture" to the purpose of Ahmad’s visit in the very next paragraph:

Mahmood's visit comes close to General Musharraf's scheduled meeting with Vajpayee in New York. It is not clear what role the US would play in bringing about any breakthrough. What does it expect from Pakistan to do in the countdown to the historic meeting? It is obvious that the US officials would like to discuss these issues with somebody they know is 'in the know' and being a trusted colleague of Musharraf, capable of 'delivering'. He is not like the foreign minister who did not know whether he was pleading the case of his president or chief executive.

Now for some context from U.S.-Pakistani relations that Chossudovsky completely ignores. The Ahmad visit to the U.S. occurred on the tail end of a three-year regime of economic sanctions against Pakistan.

Finally, Chossudovsky claims that his contention that "US support funneled through the ISI to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden has been a consistent policy of the US Administration since the end of the Cold War" is "corroborated" by the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee transcripts. Once again, actually reading the footnote tells you a decidedly different story. The "corroborating" quotation was actually the testimony of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who has never represented the "sense of the Congress" on any issue. Moreover, Rohrabacher’s allegations (and far from being "corroboration," that is exactly what they are) were vehemently denied by both Alan W. Eastham, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South Asian Affairs, and Michael Sheehan, Ambassador-at-large for Counterterrorism:

The idea that we support the Taliban I also reject, as well, completely. I have spent 18 months in this job leading the effort within the U.S. Government and around the world to bring pressure on the Taliban. After the bombing of the embassies in East Africa, when I got hired for this job, I have made it my sole effort, my primary effort in this job to bring pressure on that regime.

The U.S. Government leads that effort in providing pressure on that regime. My office leads that effort within the U.S. Government. We started with an executive order in August 1999 that brought sanctions to bear on the Taliban. We led the effort in the United Nations to bring international sanctions against them.

We are also leading the effort internationally right now to look at further measures against the Taliban. It is the U.S. Government that is leading that effort. We are ahead of everybody else to bring pressure on the Taliban, and the Taliban knows it. Those other member states within the United Nations and the other communities know our efforts to bring pressure to bear on that organization because of its support for terrorism.

UPDATE: For the administration's actual policy toward the Taliban regime at the time, one doesn't need to rely on Congressional testimony. President Clinton's Executive Order 13129 (July 7, 1999) is available here.

Getting back to U.S.-Pakistani relations, the record shows quite irrefutably that Pakistan has acted independently of its purported CIA "masters," even in the heyday of the CIA-ISI pipeline that supported the precursors to the Taliban.

Respected critics of the Reagan policy note that U.S. goals in the region were "myopic," and not extending beyond the application of pressure against the Soviets, to weaken their hand in the grand scheme.

Pakistan, under Muhammed Zia ul Haq, had much greater ambitions:

"You Americans wanted us to be a front-line state," Zia said. "By helping you we have earned the right to have a regime to our liking in Afghanistan. We took risks as a front line state and we won't permit it to be like it was before - with Indian and Soviet influence and claims on our territory. It will be a real Islamic state, a real Islamic confederation, part of a pan-Islamic revival that will one day win over the Muslims in the Soviet Union. We won't have passports between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Who knows, perhaps Tajikistan and Uzbekistan may join, maybe some day even Iran and Turkey."

As Ahmed Rashid notes, the CIA was relegated to the role of disbursing agent, while the ISI, with its greater expertise, made the decisions as to how the money was spent and which groups were funded. The divergent Pakistani motives won under this arrangement, as Yossef Bodansky illustrates in Bin Laden:

The United States was convinced that it was supporting a genuine national liberation struggle, albeit with a strong Islamic foundation, and Islamabad went to great lengths to ensure that the United States did not discover firsthand the kind of mujahideen the American taxpayers were sponsoring. Toward this end the CIA was isolated by theISI from the training infrastructure it financed.

"When the Soviet Union left the region in 1989, MSNBC reports, "the CIA pulled out, too. But the zealots remained, and Pakistan’s own intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence bureau or ISI, took over as their sponsors." Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan turned sour, primarily because of the behavior of the ISI. Chossudovsky’s beloved Times of India noted October 12 that it was "an open secret that many Pakistani operatives have long since turned against the agency that once mentored them."

Although the two agencies fell out in the early 1990s amid reports of financial skulduggery by the ISI and a spat over weapons inventory, especially missing Stinger missiles, Washington continued to engage important Pakistani spooks. It was mandatory for all new ISI chiefs to pay their respects in appearance at least - to Langley and Foggy Bottom, home of the CIA and the State Department respectively.

In Chossudovsky’s black-and-white world, bilateral relations between two countries’ intelligence agencies have only two positions: on and off. But in the real world, such agencies at the very least maintain contact even when relations are at their worst. This does not entail the sharing of closely held secrets, and only the most simplistic worldview would dictate that such contact only occurs among allies.

The ISI’s inability to control the inventory of stinger missiles provided by the U.S. angered the incoming Clinton administration, which in 1993, placed Pakistan on the watch list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it remained throughout the 1990’s. And in addition to imposing economic sanctions against Pakistan over three years ago, the U.S. also imposed sanctions against China last year – for selling missile components to Pakistan.

U.S. intelligence sources have long suspected that the ISI had notified bin Laden of the cruise missile attacks on his training camps in 1998. Even as the U.S. launched its October 7 operations to topple the Taliban, "renegade ISI operatives visited Kabul, say Pakistan intelligence sources, to help the Taliban prepare its defenses." As the Guardian reported, Musharraf’s decision to turn against the Taliban and support the U.S. war against terror was not met with the obedience Chossudovsky suggests:

This time the atmosphere was cold. Gen Musharraf laid out his proposal to support America in the imminent war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. There was, he told them, simply no other choice. Officially the public was told the officers supported Gen Musharraf unanimously. But now it has emerged that four of his most senior generals opposed him outright. The Guardian has learned that the four openly challenged the president's pro-US stance. In military terms it was a stunning display of disloyalty.

According to a source close to the military leadership the most angry among the four that night was Lieutenant General Mehmood Ahmed, the religious hardliner who headed the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) -responsible for internal security and covert operations - and was once Gen Musharraf's closest ally.

The story also asserts that even after Musharraf’s purges, "several hundred in the core of 2,500 ISI officers remain opposed to Gen Musharraf's alliance with America."

I suppose Chossudovsky would try to explain all this away as a decades-long cover, while the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI continued to work behind the scenes for the same nefarious ends. Even without this contradictory information, his assumptions are supported only by a thin tissue of distorted information.

2002-06-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

Oops. Slobodan Milosevic's personal spin machine has actually issued a retraction:

In my June 21 column, "Treason is the Reason," I wrote about Sibel Edmonds, a wiretap translator formerly employed by the FBI who has stepped forward with allegations about infiltration of the FBI by a mysterious "Middle Eastern country." Citing "a trusted source," I wrote:

"According to his Justice Department sources, the mysterious "Middle Eastern country" the [Washington] Post couldn't name for reasons of ‘national security’ is indeed Israel."

I am now informed – by this same source – that the country in question may not be Israel.

While the column is not completely invalidated by this backtracking on the part of my source, it is nevertheless important to make clear that there is no solid evidence that Israel is indeed the country referred to in the Washington Post piece. I regret the error, and apologize to my readers.

Cue derisive laughter.

I can think of other things that Raimondo could - and should - retract. Like this passage posted to the Warblogger Watch message board:

*I* am talking about the Israeli SPY story -- the one where literally
hundreds of Israeli "art students" converged on US government facilities. The one that almost got Carl Cameron fired from his job at Fox News. The one you bloggers don't even MENTION. The one that shows how our noble ally stood by and watched as 3,000 people went down in flames: of course, they COULD have alerted us. But they didn't, because they wanted us to SEE HOW IT FEELS to be a victim of Arab terrorism.

Or maybe this one:

What I wrote is that the Israelis almost certainly had foreknowledge of the 9/11 events, although to what extent is hard to gauge at this point. No, did they didn't "blow up the WTC," but they had some idea who was planning to do so -- and so they were complicit. To what extent, we don't know as yet. And why, I might ask, is this so hard to believe?

I mention these statement only because Raimondo had actually emailed me about a week ago, demanding that I retract something that I had written about him. What he objected to is the fact that I had mentioned him in same sentence as two other tinfoil pundits, Mike Ruppert and the soon-to-be (I hope) ex-Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney. I could have also mentioned Raimondo's colleage, Jared Israel, in that cabal.

Yes, it's true. Raimondo took the comparison as an insult. So much so that he sent me emailed me to complain (don't let the photo fool you, kids - behind that sneering, broke-ass Jimmy Dean exterior lies one of the most insecure human beings ever to roam the earth).

I can only wonder when I'll get similar emails from Ruppert and/or McKinney's office taking me to task for comparing those two to Raimondo.

But out of fairness, I will acknowledge that the comparison was not intended to suggest that Raimondo buys into the same idiotic theories that Ruppert and McKinney suggest. His is an entirely different flavor of dementia. But when it comes to his methods, there is simply no daylight between them.

Like Ruppert, Raimondo flagrantly distorts the public record to make his case, and has himself perfected the "selective vacuum-cleaner" approach to research that Normon Solomon used to describe Ruppert. Take his treatment of the 60-page draft DEA report on the so-called Israeli "art student" spies. As Bruce Ralston has shown, Raimondo's interpretation of the document literally parodies itself, attempting to create mass hysteria at the fact that a few of these students had lived mere blocks from "an address" of four of the 9/11 hijackers. A cursory reading of the document shows that this "address" was a Mailbox Rentals store, where perhaps hundreds of other suspicious characters may have "lived." Flit provides other examples of Raimondo's command of forensics.

Raimondo, of course, has failed to even prove that these kids were doing any sort of intelligence work (and as I have pointed out, it is not even probable, as their "surveillance" included scores of private residences and businesses within the same geographic areas as these government facilities - including the home of one professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who teaches law in Tennessee, not Kentucky).

And yet Raimondo would make the quantum leap to concluding that these early-20's spooks had succeeded where our own intelligence services failed, uncovering the 9/11 plot before it happened.

How is this any more rational than the bullshit purveyed by McKinney and Ruppert?

2002-06-24T21:27:00.000-04:00

A flimsy attempt at a snappy rejoinder. A nameless blogger (another one of those valiant dissidents who's afraid of the Treasury agents underneath his bed) has tried his hand at refuting my Ruppert timeline post below. He has his own conspiracy yarns, including a Vince Foster redux, exposing the Cliff Baxter "suicide sham."

In any event, his prodding of my timeline focuses on items 3 and 4, in which Ruppert first claims the Unocal pipeline deal failed because the Taliban's price was too high (in 1997), and that Unocal VP John Maresca testified a year later that the deal would not be feasible unless and until a stable Afghan regime was in place. Predictably, this mystery blogger does not see the incongruity here.

but presumably that doesn't necessarily follow. The 1997 negotiations could have failed over money, and the Unocal Vice President could also have testified before the House that the pipeline would not be built before there was a stable government in Afghanistan.

I suppose you could make this argument if Afghanistan had slid into chaos between 1997 and 1998, but the truth of the matter is that the Taliban continued to consolidate its rule after 1996, and the country was certainly more stable (inasmuch as a country living under the most brutal, Luddite tyranny the world has seen since the Khmer Rouge can be called stable) in 1998 than 1997, when Unocal was supposedly haggling over a price. Prudent entrepreneurs ensure the investment is a secure one before they negotiate a price, not after.

The argument then progresses to Unocal's recent press release stating that it no longer had any interest in building the pipeline, which we are to believe is "a case, I dare say, of protesting too much." Uh-huh. If Unocal had released it out of the blue, but what he doesn't tell you is that it was in response to a report that it was the "lead company" in the pipeline's construction. "Protesting too much" is something corporations sort of have to do from time to time, as they depend of what are called investors who give special slips of paper called money for their stock, based on the decisions the corporation makes.

Moron.

But here's the best part of the missive:

Ruppert's strength isn't in any particlar part of the timeline, but in the sheer quantity of suspicious details.

So you see, it doesn't matter if none of Ruppert's weak assumptions, distortions, logic fallacies, and outright factual errors, hold any water. The fact that he is able to come up with such a wealth of idiotic arguments proves him right!

It should also be noted that this despicable pig also notes (again, in what is apparently his own yarn) the fact that only one flag officer - Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude - died in the attack as proof that there was foreknowledge, snidely remarking, "I guess he didn't get the memo."

Thanks for reminding me why I devote so much time to humiliating you people, Mr. Xymphora. Fucktard.

2002-06-23T10:41:00.000-04:00

Mike Ruppert’s bullshit-riddled timeline (Part 1). NOTE: This is the first in what will be at least a 5-part series refuting Mike Ruppert’s conspiratorial "timeline" point by point. It may grow longer, as Ruppert continues to add more allegations, in lieu of actually providing evidence to support his older ones.

David Corn may not have the space to devote to Ruppert’s entire timeline – which contains most of his purported "evidence" of government foreknowledge of, and complicity in, the 9/11 attacks.

But I do. From the top…

FTW, November 2, 2001 – 1200 PST – On October 31, the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official - presumably the Chief of Station. The meeting, held in bin Laden’s private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and this year’s attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14th he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down.

Now, let’s go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro – the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June.

The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he’s a black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden’s room.

"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi
millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden’s departure for Quetta…

"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise
information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory."…

"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian
activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining
the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, "What do you fear in the coming days?’ the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence."…

"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it
would seem, consistent with ‘a certain American policy.’"

Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin Laden
had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1 contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On November 1, as reported by the Ananova press
agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.

Who do you believe?

First of all, Le Figaro never "confirmed" anything with Dubai hospital staff, and Ruppert knows this. Bill Weinberg, editor of World War 3 Report called Ruppert on this inaccuracy back in March. The original (French) version actually used the verb affirmer, which Ruppert incorrectly translated to mean "confirm."

Should’ve used Babel Fish, Mikey!

Hence, what Ruppert has here is a single unnamed hospital official to corroborate Le Figaro’s outlandish tale. How about those other "quotes from hospital staff?" According to Agence France Presse, the hospital’s CEO, Bernard Koval "categorically denied" the report. "’Osama bin Laden has never been here. He's never been a patient and he's never been treated here. We have no idea of his medical condition,’ he insisted. ‘This is too small a hospital for someone to be snuck through the backdoor.’" [Luke Phillips, AFP, 31 Oct. 2001]

I believe the CIA. And the officials of the American Hospital in Dubai, who are not affiliated with the U.S. government. That’s two independent sources – both of which were sourced, and used much stronger words than "allegedly" – Ruppert’s mistranslation notwithstanding -- in their version of events.

On with Ruppert’s "timeline," which I will take apart line by line…

1. 1991-1997 – Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP, Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. ["The Price of Oil," by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 – The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]

All of which proves absolutely nothing. Yes, the U.S. consumes a great deal of oil. And yes, Central Asia is a burgeoning source which could well supply us, and the rest of the world, for decades to come. But even if we were to accept Ruppert’s conclusions at face value, this in no way supports any logical nexus between our craving of petroleum and the decision to go to war. And it doesn’t even support, much less prove, Ruppert’s allegation that there was foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

And when we prod a little into the substance of this claim, we find it to be a gross oversimplification, treating the oil industry as a monolithic interest. The reality is that there has never been a consensus among oil companies on the best route for the Central Asian pipeline. Take this analysis from BBC:

On the contrary, very few western politicians or oil companies have taken Afghanistan seriously as a major export route - for the simple reason that few believe Afghanistan will ever achieve the stability needed to ensure a regular and uninterrupted flow of oil and gas.
…
The West, in contrast, and particularly the US, has put almost all its efforts into developing a major new route from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea.

This had the potential advantage (from a western point of view) of bypassing Russia and Iran, and breaking their monopoly of influence in the region - allowing the states of the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan and possibly Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) to develop a more balanced, independent foreign policy.

Other insight into the war-for-oil conspiracy theory can be found here and here, both good pieces from Spinsanity that obliterated the theory as put forth by Ted Rall – who does not, to my knowledge, believe that there was any government foreknowledge or complicity in 9/11.

2. January, 1995 – Philippine police investigating a possible attack on the Pope uncover plans for Operation Bojinka, connected to WTC bomber Ramsi Youssef. Parts of the plan call for crashing hijacked airliners into civilian targets. Details of the plan are disclosed in Youssef’s 1997 trial for the 1993 WTC bombing. [Source: AFP, December 7, 2001]

This information would not qualify as what has been termed "actionable intelligence." Unless Ruppert is suggesting that we should have shut down all commercial air traffic from 1997 until… well, until when exactly? This, like many of Ruppert’s other "smoking gun" offers no information about specific dates, or even the specific airports from where such attacks would be launched. Moreover, the revelations included such possible targets as the Eiffel Tower. The notion that we could have provided interminable air defenses for such a large range of targets is ridiculous.

3. December 4, 1997 – Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997]

Nothing more compelling here than his first item. Moreover, this bullet is contradicted by the next…

4. February 12, 1998 – Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca – later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan – testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.]

Which is it, Ruppert? Either Unocal backed out over too much money, or the lack of stability. Put together, these two items seem to confirm that Unocal’s desire for such a pipeline was tepid, at best.

5. 1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Q’aeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by Robert Baer (release date Feb. 2002)].

Once again, this does not qualify as actionable intelligence. There is no indication that this "warning" contained any information about the 9/11 plots, or that the leads would have lead to any of its participants – not that that would have mattered. Two years would have been plenty of time for al-Qaeda to retool its plans.

6. April, 1999 – Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002.]

Huh? Qatar and India are not adjacent countries. Oil shipments between the two would presumably have been made by sea, which would seem to open up a few more "remaining options." Options like, oh, I don’t know, Oman?

Oman LNG's third major long-term customer, Dabhol Power Co of India, expects to take delivery of its first cargo of Oman's LNG in October 2001. The Dabhol SPA calls for the supply of 1.6 millions tpa over a 20-year period.

The Oman LNG plant has a total capacity of some 6.6 million tpa of LNG. The sales contracts with Kogas, Osaka Gas and Dabhol mean the company has successfully sold the entire output of the plant on a long term basis.[" Business News: Oman joins world's gas exporters with plant inauguration," Gulf News, 15 Oct. 2000]

Not enough? Okay, how about some shipments from UAE?

Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company Ltd. (Adgas) is to start gas exports to India from the end of 2001 for a 20-year period, the company's general manager said in an interview released on Tuesday. "We shall start exporting LNG (liquefied natural gas to Dabhol Power Company of India at an annual contractual rate of 480,000 tonnes, for a 20-year period," Rashid Saif al-Jarwan told the company's in-house magazine.[" UAE to start LNG exports to India at end of 2001," Agence France Presse, 26 Dec. 2000]

Neither of these sources carry the esteem of an Albion Monitor, but they are the best I could do.

7. 1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family.[Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 – "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/carlyle.html.]

There’s been a lot of talk about the bin Laden family, prefaced on the assumption that the whole "estrangement" story of Usama is a complete lie. Of course, neither Ruppert, Michael Moore, or anyone else alleging the Bush-bin Laden family connection have ever put forth any evidence that UBL still has friendly relations with his pro-Western capitalist family members.

8. March, 2000 - An FBI agent, reportedly angry over a glitch in Carnivore that has somehow mixed innocent non-targeted emails with those belonging to Al Q’aeda, destroys all of the FBI’s Denver-based intercepts of bin Laden’s colleagues in a terrorist investigation. [The Washington Post, May 29, 2002].

It should be noted that these were suspects, not confirmed "bin Laden colleagues," and because of the legal implications of gathering so many private communications from innocent people on whom the FBI did not have warrants, this would have been an understandable reaction. But, as is rapidly becoming the pattern, this is not nearly the whole story…

Yesterday, a bureau official disputed the account in the memorandum. He said no information had been lost, because the e-mail had been recovered. The system gathered too much information, the official said, not because it was flawed or experimental, but because the Internet service provider gave agents outdated settings for the tapped computers.

"The technology assistance provided by the I.S.P. is vital to proper configuration," the official said.

As a cop, one would think Ruppert would see the value of protecting the legal integrity of an investigation. Then again, reports of his record with the LAPD are spotty at best. And once again, there is no indication at all that this SNAFU had even a tangential relationship to the 9/11 plotters, or that this information could have given any assistance at all in preventing the attacks.

9. 2000 (est.) - The FBI refuses to disclose the date of an internal memo stating that a middle eastern nation had been trying to purchase a flight simulator. [The L.A. Times, May 30, 2002].

But they did, according to the same report, turn the document over to Congressional investigators – not a wise move, if it’s as damning as Ruppert thinks it is.

10. August, 2000 - Suspected Al Q’aeda operatives wiretapped by Italian police made apparent references to plans for major attacks involving airports, airplanes and the United States according to transcripts obtained by the L.A. Times. The LA Times suggests that the information might not have been passed to U.S. authorities (hard to believe) but it did report that Italian authorities would not comment on the report. The Times also noted that "Italian and US anti-terrorism experts cooperate closely." [The Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2002].

The LAT story also says that the significance of these intercepts wasn’t even realized by Italian authorities until "sometime after Sept. 11."

So far, Ruppert’s conspiracy would require collusion among countless bureaucrats in just about every federal agency except the Tennessee Valley Authority. Now, he’s suggesting complicity by the Italian intelligence service? Ah, why the hell not! The more the merrier!

11. October 24-6, 2000 - Pentagon officials carry out a "detailed" emergency drill based upon the crashing of a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon. [The Mirror, May 24, 2002]

That Ruppert would try to construe this prudent disaster preparation exercise as evidence of foreknowledge of 9/11 would be funny if it weren’t so despicable. The report cited by the Mirror is here. As you can see, it contains no reference at all to hijacked planes, but that this was a generic mass casualty drill to ensure that the Pentagon’s emergency response personnel could coordinate properly with other agencies, such as the Arlington, Va. Fire Department.

Several other scenarios were also part of the exercise, and it may come as a surprise to Ruppert, but the military is known for its continual training exercises, and they do not necessarily suggest that the scenarios practiced are imminent.

12. January, 2001 – The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden’s relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA – right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast –Nov 7, 2001].

There’s just one thing missing from Palast’s report: whether these zealous agents who wanted to investigate the bin Laden family had absolutely anything in along the order of probable cause. In fact, there’s no substance to his report at all. In an incestuous lovefest, he quotes fellow conspiracy theorists, as if the fact that these idiots support each other proves a thing.

Other, more reputable accounts concerning the bin Laden family suggest that there has been no shortage of cooperation by the family in bringing Usama to justice. In addition to providing DNA samples to assist in identifying his corpse should he have been killed in the Afghanistan campaign, family members – including his own mother, who still spoke with Usama – have given the U.S. any assistance they could:

The foreign official said the telephone call did not come to light until after Sept. 11 and was uncovered only as investigators for a foreign intelligence agency searched for evidence relevant to the attacks. Details of the conversation were first reported by NBC News today.

Mr. Bin Laden's mother, a member of the Alawite sect in Syria, took the phone call from her son while she was vacationing in Damascus, the capital, where she has met with him in the past, the official said. After she returned home to Saudi Arabia on Sept. 12 and learned of the terrorist attacks in the United States, she and members of her traveling party were interrogated by the police.

"She is not a bad person," the official said, noting that Mr. bin Laden's extended family has been cooperative in the investigations into terrorist acts that he is said to have organized or inspired.

It’s quite probable that the feds have gotten a wealth of useful information from the bin Laden family (though they certainly wouldn’t divulge details, nor should they, for obvious reasons), and that the supervisors of Palast’s nameless agents waved them off to prevent them from upsetting a good relationship by harassing them.

13. Feb 13, 2001 – UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale – while covering a trial of bin Laden’s Al Q’aeda followers - reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden’s encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.

In his own refutation of Ruppert, David Corn argued that Ruppert completely misrepresented Sale’s account, and that the NSA had actually only manipulated some of its bank accounts and blocked certain communications, which would not require breaking their codes. Ruppert’s fervid (yet weak) response rather foolishly overplayed his hand, offering that al-Qaeda’s communications have been protected by "a full suite of tools," which deflates his claim that al-Qaeda communications were an open book to the NSA. Also from Sale’s story:

Coded letters, encryption of calls, verbal ciphers, messengers that elude technical collection, embedding messages in Internet porno films -- all are being used.

Since Bin Laden started to encrypt certain calls in 1995, why would they now be part of a court record? "Codes were broken," US officials said, and Venzke added that you don't use your highest level of secure communications all the time. It's too burdensome, and it exposes it to other types of exploitation."

During an insurgency in Cyprus in the 1950s, the British found the rebels were using female motorcycle riders to carry messages back and forth. Bin Laden is doing the same. But while messengers are fine, their use "is dependent very much on the speed you require," Venzke said: "Communication has to be safe, but it has to be efficient too."

Yet another example of Ruppert’s selective vacuum-cleaner approach" to research. His argument here presumes that 1)the NSA was able to break all al-Qaeda codes, within all its modes of communication, 2)that those modes of communication and encryption stayed the same throughout that that six-year period, and 3)that al-Qaeda never expected the most sophisticated electronic intelligence gathering agency the world has ever seen to ever break its codes, and thus never took any action to change or protect them. These assumptions are, of course, moronic.

14. May 2001 – Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001].

I’ll defer to David Corn on this one:

Purportedly? Was the administration paying off the Taliban for something else? That is what Ruppert is hinting. The newspaper, though, reported that all US funds "are channeled through the United Nations and international agencies," not handed to the Taliban. Unless Ruppert can show that was not the case, this dot has no particular significance.

One should also note the peculiarity of Ruppert alleging the administration’s schmoozing the Taliban as proof that we wanted to eradicate them all along. This generous donation, it should be noted, was given just two months before we were supposedly threatening the Taliban with military force (more on that later).

15. May, 2001 – Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001.]

"It would be reasonable to assume?" And suppose this meeting between the nefarious intelligence chiefs did take place? Could they possibly have discussed our concerns over nuclear proliferation in the region or Indo-Pakistani relations in general? How about Kashmir? No, it’s obvious to those who possess Ruppert’s special perspicacity that they could only have been discussing the fiendish plot to force al-Qaeda’s hand to commit a vicious atrocity that would give them the pretext to invade Afghanistan. If the rest of the world would just get with the program…

16. June 2001 – German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.]

Yet another conveniently timed warning. And the source certainly bears scrutiny. Ruppert makes much of the fact that the U.S. government has never denied Allgemeine Zeitung’s account assuming that such a groundbreaking revelation must be true even though no other German publication picked up the story.

It’s also very curious that German intelligence officials would have so much specific information to give the Americans and Israel, yet took no action itself against the al-Qaeda cell operating in Hamburg until after the attacks. If this warning was as specific as FAZ claims, German officials would be guilty of far more egregious negligence (or are they part of the ever-widening conspiracy?) than our own officials.

And again, unless the Germans had offered up the specific individuals from whom they got these warnings, what sort of action could the U.S. have taken? Close our air space to all commercial air traffic for an indeterminate amount of time?

17. July, 2001 – Three American officials: Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verite? Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings.
British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, September 22, 2001; the BBC, September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001]

There he goes with another glaring misuse of the word "confirm," and this time he cannot claim a language barrier as an excuse. A quick perusal of the Guardian story confirms that they confirmed no such thing – they merely echoed the original allegation by former (in fact, all of the participants of these "track two" meetings were former government officials) Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Naik.

According to the same story, Naik’s version of events are refuted not only by Simon, Coldren, and Inderfurth, but the Russian counterpart as well:

Nikolai Kozyrev, Moscow's former special envoy on Afghanistan and one of the Russians in Berlin, would not confirm the contents of the US conversations, but said: "Maybe they had some discussions in the corridor. I don't exclude such a possibility."

Mr Naik's recollection is that "we had the impression Russians were trying to tell the Americans that the threat of the use of force is sometimes more effective than force itself".

Naik’s allegation that the Russians were an active part in these discussions precludes the possibility that they were "discussions in the corridor" out of earshot of the Russians. And Kozyrev’s refusal to rule out the possibility of outside discussions would indicate that he is not trying to cover for the Americans’ version. But even Naik isn’t quite as confident about his own story as Ruppert is…

Asked whether he could be sure that the Americans were passing ideas from the Bush administration rather than their own views, Mr Naik said yesterday: "What the Americans indicated to us was perhaps based on official instructions. They were very senior people. Even in 'track two' people are very careful about what they say and don't say."

Perhaps? Perhaps?!? And speaking of being "very careful about what they say and don’t say," why would these U.S. emissaries divulge an imminent attack on Afghanistan, including specific details on how it was to be carried out, in the presence of Pakistanis, whose government was at the time being censured by the U.S. for its nuclear proliferation and still had friendly ties to the Taliban government?

But even if we were to accept Naik’s claims in the Daily Wanker story, this in no way supports the war-for–oil theory or the idea that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the9/11 attacks. While the Brisard and Dasquie account alleges the meetings were over "geostrategic oil interests," the Wanker’s version makes it quite clear that the threats of force purportedly passed to the Taliban were to convince them to hand over bin Laden.

Finally, as Corn notes, this allegation presumes that the 9/11 plots were hatched merely two months before they were carried out. So why does Ruppert’s timeline contain so many items that go as far back as 1998?

That’s all for now. I will further dissect Ruppert’s nonsense once my palette is cleared of the taste of bullshit.

2002-06-20T17:55:00.000-04:00

The myth of NORAD's non-response on 9/11. One of the prominent arguments made by Government Foreknowledge/Complicity theorists is that the standing FAA/NORAD procedures for intercepting wayward civilian aircraft were not followed, which means that our air defense system had to have been "stood down" - an act which would have required intervention from the highest levels.

Damian Penny addresses this assertion, also made by one of Canada's own media mental patients, Barry Zwicker, with today's report that this same system failed to intercept a Cessna that violated White House airspace late yesterday. He might also have mentioned the case of Charles Bishop whose own suicidal crash into a Tampa building fialed to elicit a military intercept until 45 minutes after he had taken off without authorization.

Zwicker cites an NBC report - aired just hours after the attacks occurred - which stated that no jets were sortied until after the attack on the Pentagon. This statement is directly contradicted by NORAD, whose website posted the timelines of their response to all four hijackings:

American Airlines Flight 11 ? Boston enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0840*
Fighter Scramble Order (Otis Air National Guard Base, Falmouth, Mass. Two F-15s) 0846**
Fighters Airborne 0852
Airline Impact Time (World Trade Center 1) 0846 (estimated)***
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location Aircraft not airborne/153 miles

United Airlines Flight 175 ? Boston enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0843
Fighter Scramble Order (Otis ANGB, Falmouth, Mass.
Same 2 F-15s as Flight 11) 0846
Fighters Airborne 0852
Airline Impact Time (World Trade Center 2) 0902 (estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 8 min****/71 miles

American Flight 77 ?Dulles enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0924
Fighter Scramble Order (Langley AFB, Hampton, Va.
2 F-16s) 0924
Fighters Airborne 0930
Airline Impact Time (Pentagon) 0937(estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 12 min/105 miles

United Flight 93 ? Newark to San Francisco
FAA Notification to NEADS N/A *****
Fighter Scramble Order (Langley F-16s already airborne for AA Flt 77)
Fighters Airborne (Langley F-16 CAP remains in place to protect DC)
Airline Impact Time (Pennsylvania) 1003 (estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 11 min/100 miles
(from DC F-16 CAP)

In response to this, the conspiracy wonks have done one of two things. Some contend that the delay in sortying fighter jets still proves their point, and cite the 1999 intercept of (and I'm being totally serious here) Payne Stewart's fateful flight as a precedent showing how the FAA/NORAD response is supposed to work. Zwicker claims that the "total elapsed time" was a mere 21 minues between the realization that Stewart's lear jet was flying blind after its cabin was depressurized and its crew incapacitated, to the time two F-16s launched from Tydall AFB in Florida intercepted the plane.

Zwicker doesn't cite any source for his timeline, and it is quite different from other reports.

Zwicker's timeline notes that air traffic controllers "called in the military" at 9:38 a.m. EST, which is correct. He further alleges that the two F-16's reached Stewart's plane at 9:54, but according to Larry Guest's April 6, 2000 report, those jets did not even sortie from Tyndall until 10:08 a.m. Zwicker may also be interested to learn that those F-16's later deferred to an Eglin AFB jet, which had already been aloft on a routine training mission. That plane took time for an airborne refueling, then sped north for another 50 minutes before reaching Stewart's plane! Guest sourced his story directly to the air traffic controllers who were handling Stewart's jet, Air Force officials, and Capt. Chris Hamilton, the pilot who intercepted the plane.

Nice try, Zwicker.

Other versions of this flavor of conspiracy theory reject the evidence that NORAD responded before the Pentagon was hit as a "cover story" which is contradicted by initial reports. Reasonable people understand that in a crisis, first reports are often wrong, but to these mental defectives, those initial reports are the Freudian slips that emanate the truth, and anything reported after reflection is part of a cover up.

But let's dissect their evidence anyway. This website (which also alleges that photos of Bosnian death camps were faked) allegesthat it is somehow inconceivable that Dan Rather could make a journalistic error by first reporting that jets were not launched until after the Pentagon was hit, and reporting otherwise two days later.

They also select a rather narrow portion of JCS Chairman Gen. Richard Myers' testimony before the SASC on September 13:

When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked.

Here is a longer excerpt of the same testimony:

LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.

LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft?

MYERS: Sir, we were . . .

LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.

MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.

LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?

MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.(Emphasis mine)

The very premise of this particular theory is that the FAA/NORAD procedures are established and would require intervention to keep the agencies from acting automatically. It is indeed the case that the military uses standard operating procedures to remove the possibility of judgement errors in these situtations, which is why officials far removed from the responding commands might not be familiar with all the details.

Case closed.

UPDATE: Jared Israel also posits the absurd argument that two squadrons based on Andrews Air Force Base -- and attached to the DC Air National Guard should have been scrambled to intercept Flight 77, being much closer to the Pentagon than the fighters that were launched from Langley.

The DC Air National Guard!!! As in, Reservist pilots with civilian day jobs who have to first be recalled to active duty before their "highest state of readiness" even becomes relevant. Jeez, don't they offer a remedial course in military operations for these enterprising conspiracy theorists?

2002-06-17T19:21:00.000-04:00

Way too much information on the internet about this guy.

An alert reader forwarded links to this Web site, as well as it's companion discussion forum devoted to exposing the crimes and lies of Delmart Vreeland, the small time (albeit quite prolific) con artist and identity thief who has been lauded as a "White Knight" by many in the LaRouche Left.

A lot of the debunking appears to have come from the guy's own half brother (damn!), and the site even links to this rendition of an old Village People standard interspersed with snippets from the air time devoted to his case.

This started out as a quaint little conspiracy theory about a guy with a handwritten note predicting the events of 9/11, but now it's just gotten silly!

2002-06-11T20:49:00.000-04:00

More TWA 800 stupidity. Denver talk radio gasbag Ken Hamblin offers "another look" at the possibility that the Right's favorite conspiracy theory may yet be true:

When I expressed my view that a shoulder-mounted missile may have been used to destroy TWA 800, the usual would-be ammunition experts telephoned my syndicated talk radio show to insist that no Stinger could have brought down Flight 800 because it couldn't have been effective above 10,000 feet. Radar revealed the aircraft was climbing through 13,000 when it exploded.

Today I know those so-called experts were wrong because, according to the report from President Bush's policymakers, the Russian-made "SA-7s have a range of over 3 miles and can strike an aircraft flying at 13,500 feet. And an American-made Stinger can take out an aircraft flying at 10,000 feet and 5 miles away."

Wow. How has the Jon-Benet Ramsey case gone unsolved for so long with such analytical prowess right under the Boulder DA's nose?

Okay, so we've ascertained that it would not have been impossible for a SAM to reach the airliner from the ground. This, of course, could have been easily verified long before Hamblin's new developments - back in, say, March 1999?

What does Hamblin offer, other than refuting the impossibility of a missile attack? Nothing! He merely rehashes the same old conspiracy drivel, which has been abandoned by all but the most deluded proponents. There has never been a shred of physical evidence offered to support the missile theory, but the loonies continue to harp on the "hundreds of eyewitneses" who claim to have seen a "flash of light" some distance from the plane, just before it exploded.

Those "hundreds" actually made up around a third of the 700 eyewitnesses who had a view of the mishap, and what they saw is not inconsistent with a fuel tank explosion. If you're looking for more than the facile, secondary research cited by these ignorant dullards, you may want to read Deadly Departure, by aviation correspondent Christine Negroni.

The book documents fuel system design flaws of Boeing jets, which were known about for decades, but never remedied. The TWA 800 mishap was, she notes, the 14th fuel tank explosion on an airliner in 35 years.

But despite all this, Hamblin feels that the mere possibility that TWA 800 was hit by a SAM warrants his regurgitation of this stale nonsense. His listeners, and readers, deserve much better.

2002-06-08T17:21:00.000-04:00

Whoah, dude, that's heavy!

They walk among us, folks. They walk among us.

2002-06-08T17:17:00.000-04:00

The rumble on the Left. The LaRouche Left are going after the non-conspiratorialists like a pack of jackals.

In addition to David Corn's heresy, ZNet's Michael Albert penned his own missive arguing that, yes, the Bush administration is evil, warmongering, and imperialist, but did not have foreknowledge or complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

This has inspired another public stoning by the Nazimedia loonies, in the form of this droning oratory by John McMurtry, philosopher and jurist for the Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal at the Alternative World Summit in Toronto in 1989.

2002-06-05T19:23:00.000-04:00

"Incubating Nonsense Through Silence," or "Why I Started a Second blog." I had often wrestled with the idea of taking on the various 9/11 conspiracy theories that have been circulated via the internet since the very day we were attacked. I've alway s taken seriously the axiom that "there is no such thing as bad publicity," and I still grit my teeth when I read something in the mainstream press that debunks a piece of the nonsense - no matter how exquisite and deserved the drubbing may be.

As a highly-trained media relations killer, I've been taught that generating still more coverage based on some dufus' sloppy reporting is never good, regardless - or perhaps because- of how egregiously inaccurate the original story was. So, I didn't really cheer at the public flogging given to Thierry Meyssan over his idiotic claims. Rather, I thought, why are we giving this asshole the satisfaction of taking him seriously? Worse yet, why devoted coverage too him at all?

But this indignation then gave way to a more rational res ponse. While you certainly don't want to give these stories legs that they wouldn't otherwise have, the record has to be set straight. Conspiracy-mongers like Justin Raimondo, Mike Ruppert, and the rest, interpret inattention as validation. Their stories are replete with references to obscure news stories "that have never been denied or refuted."

This is how the mainstream media contributes to the growth of these stories, from Raimondo's Israeli "art student" intell igence o peratives, or the oft-repeated lie that NORAD ordered it's air defense assets to "stand down" in response to the four hijacked planes. A single news item - often a poorly-covered one, is easily taken out of context - or becomes the context through which other events are inter preted. The stories circulate in the darker corners of the internet, and talk radio, but are not covered in major newspapers or television.

The result is similar to the "Lexis Nexis Effect," or even worse. The lies are indelibly imprinted on the net, and are repeated often enough to give the appearance of generally accepted facts. Even if there are a few stories dedicated to setting the record straight, their presence does not erase the false stories from anyone's memory, as the recent myth about Zacarias Moussaoui definitively illustrates.

What the casual reader of newspapers may not realize is that many of these internet rumors are investigated by legitimate news agencies, contrary to what courageous muckracking publications like Creative Loafing or High Times would have you believe. But when they discover that there's really nothing to the story, they generally do not run stories to affirm that original reporting was inaccurate. They simply drop it, and hope everyone forgets the erroneous story, especially when they were culpable in its dissemination at the outset.

"Oops," and "our bad" are n ot words you're likely to find in any headline. There's an excellent example of this phenomenon at Snopes, regarding another urban legend about Israeli operatives here in the U.S. The incident grew from this story from Knight-Ridder, about suspicious men with Israeli passports roaming around the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Welch, Minnesota.

As the nation again stands on high alert, the FBI is searching for six men stopped by police in the Midwest last weekend bu t released -- even though they possessed photographs and descriptions of a nuclear power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska pipeline, a senior law enforcement official said Tuesday . . .

The six men stopped by police were traveling in groups of three in two white sedans, said the senior law enforcement official, who requested anonymity. In addition to the photographs and other suspicious material, they carried "box cutters and other equipment," the official said. They appeared to be from the Middle East and held Israeli passports.

They were let go after the Immigration and Naturalization Service determined the passports were valid and that the men had entered the United States legally, the official said . . .

It could not be learned in what state the six men were stopped or how they aroused suspicion. It was not known if their true identities matched those on the passports, or why the FBI was not releasing their names or descriptions. Investigators think the men almost certainly have changed cars by now and have fled to Canada or elsewhere.

Raimondo, oblivious to what the term "journalism" means, wrote that several other news outlets had picked up the story. What he neglecte d to mention, however, is that they all cited the sae Knight Ridder report as their sole source (as Snopes notes, that single report was the entire basis for the story).

The story, of course, turned out to be complete nonsense, based on nothing more than an unconfirmed "lead." "It was one of the many that washed out into nothing," said Paul McCabe, spokesman for the FBI Minneapolis field office. Fancy that - a source who actually gives his name.

To the disservice of their readership, none of the major n ews organizations (Reuters, London Times, and Ha'aretz, for starters) ever followed up on their original reporting. No closure either confirming or denying the report they fed the ignorant masses - they just left it hanging out there. Without the dedication of Snopes, we might never have known whether there was anything to the story, and that is exactly how charlatans like Raimondo flourish.

There are countless others - stories of 9/11 hijackers having residential listings on military bases, and some eve n turning out to be still living, and so on. Easily explained as mistaken identity cases, yet the news organizations which filed the original reports never followed up. They just whistled through the graveyard, hoping their readers wouldn't remember what they reported the previous day.

There's even a petty criminal awaiting extradition in Canada, who has claimed to be a U.S. Navy intelligence officer with inside information on the 9/11 attacks -- and there are scores of Leftists who actually believe him (!), perhaps because there have been only a couple of stories attempting to debunk his claim.

So, this is why I've started this new page. I think it's important that con artists like Raimondo, Ruppert, and Rense do not get any more attention than they've already stolen from the serious discussions of the war on terrorism. But there have to be more public servants like the good folks at Snopes, and I'm going to do my part in setting the record straight.