BBC: 'Bottom Line, 911 is an inside job'

Will the Government kill its own citizens? It always has done. More about that later. But first - a fresh look at what the BBC calls "America's biggest crime scene":

The Conspiracy Files investigates the growing number of conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

Incredibly some believe the American Government allowed or actively helped the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Those who question the official version believe the World Trade Center buildings were actually demolished by explosives; others ask why there was so little damage to the Pentagon's outer wall if a plane really had hit it.

- BBC

This documentary, as no American piece has dared, critically examines Bush's "official conspiracy theory" of the events of 911. It is a fact that the US air force was out to lunch, arriving at least 15 minutes late when the smoke had all but cleared. Why? The government has never explained that. Considering that 911 was never really investigated, the time to re-examine events is way overdue.

There are several glaring holes in Bush's official conspiracy theory. Some of them are enough singly to discredit the entire official theory. The missing wreckage in PA and at the Pentagon are good examples. No wreckage = no truth to the official terrorist conspiracy theory.

Another glaring red flag is the deliberate pulling of Building 7, ordered pulled by building owner Larry Silverstein. He is on record with the BBC, admitting that he, in fact, ordered Building 7 pulled:

The point must be made that it takes time to pull off a controlled demolition. Building 7 fell into its own "footprint" within an hour, perhaps 30 minutes, of Silverstein's order. That means the building had been prepared, in advance, for a controlled demolition. Someone knew of the "attacks" well in advance and prepared to take advantage.

The violent blasts and billowing dust clouds may look chaotic, but a building implosion is actually one of the most precisely planned, delicately balanced engineering feats you'll ever see.

...

Demolition blasters load explosives on several different levels of the building so that the building structure falls down on itself at multiple points. When everything is planned and executed correctly, the total damage of the explosives and falling building material is sufficient to collapse the structure entirely, so cleanup crews are left with only a pile of rubble.

In order to demolish a building safely, blasters must map out each element of the implosion ahead of time. The first step is to examine architectural blueprints of the building, if they can be located, to determine how the building is put together. Next, the blaster crew tours the building (several times), jotting down notes about the support structure on each floor. Once they have gathered all the raw data they need, the blasters hammer out a plan of attack. Drawing from past experiences with similar buildings, they decide what explosives to use, where to position them in the building and how to time their detonations. In some cases, the blasters may develop 3-D computer models of the structure so they can test out their plan ahead of time in a virtual world.

- How Stuff Works

It was most certainly Silverstein himself who made the decision . On another BBC video that I have not been able to acquire, Silverstein is seen giving the order to "pull".

To sum up this point: you can't just order a pretty, neat, perfectly controlled demolition and have it take place perfectly within thirty minutes to an hour. The most probable culprits are those who had been in charge of WTC security (GWB's brother, Marvin), the City of New York, the White House. They must think us stupid.

The burden of proof has always been with Bush and his evil minions. Bush would have it otherwise. I remain unconvinced that two airliners, however spectacular the crash, would have created - perfectly - the conditions required for such neat pancakes. Bushies have expected us to believe an outlandish tale though they have made no case.

Then there is Bush himself claiming absurdly to have seen the first airliner crash the first tower. That's impossible. There was no network news coverage simply because "no one" knew it was going to happen. Or did they? Did Bush know?

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

- Orange County Convention Center Orlando, Florida, President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting

Bush could only have seen the first crash had there been a closed circuit system set up in advance, perhaps installed by the CIA for the purpose of showing the attacks to Bush. The implications of such a system are staggering. Bush's comments - taken at face value - amount to evidence that such an installation had been prepared in anticipation of the attacks. If that should turn out to be true, it is evidence of Bush's criminal complicity in an act involving the mass murder of US citizens. Such an act is not only mass murder, it is high treason, a betrayal of a nation and its people. I cannot think of a more heinous crime short of Hitler's campaign of genocide against the Jews of Europe. Should that turn out to be the case, hanging is too kind; a firing squad too honorable.

Another troubling factor: the official conspiracy theorists have never produced a crashed airliner. Not a single scrap has ever been traced to any airliner, let alone Flights 77 or 93. I have often challenged: show me the wreckage.

As a journalist, I never covered a plane crash that did not leave lots of identifiable wreckage and bodies. The Pentagon site is something else. There is no wreckage that is identifiable as being from an airliner. The entry hole is much too small. There is a "a punch out" hole in one of the innner rings, but again, it is much, much too small to have been made by the fueselage. But it may be about the right size for a missle. That might account for Rumsfeld's slip when he referred to "...the missile that struck this buildling."

Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.

-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense,Public Affairs News Transcript

Would the US government kill its own citizens? Law abiding American citizens have been shot and killed for exercising the very first "freedom" guaranteed them by our founding fathers. That is, they were murdered for opposing what they believed to be wrong and daring to say so publicly.

It was called the Kent State massacre. Four died. Despite the fact that the National Guard must surely have been deliberately armed with live ammunition, no one, to this day , has been held to account for this crime against the people of the United States.

The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre, occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio. Guardsmen fired off 67 shots in 13 seconds. Four students were killed and nine others wounded.

The students were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on April 25, and announced in a television address five days later.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young: Ohio

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

If you are too young to have memories of that time, I must tell you that the President of the United States was Richard Nixon who would later resign his office in disgrace - not because he waged an illegal war, ordered "carpet bombing" or sanctioned the pernicious use of "agent orange" but because he would most surely have been impeached for having played a role in covering up the GOP break-in of Democratic headquarters. I have often wondered if that is the date on which the GOP ceased being a political party and became a criminal conspiracy, a crime syndicate.

It is equally interesting that in the three articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon, there is nary a word about his illegal orders to bomb and invade Cambodia, a neutral country. There is not one word about US support for a "string of faceless" generals in South Viet Nam, most of whom assumed power backed by the CIA. There is no justice if Slobadan Milosovic can be brought to trial in the International Court while American "presidents" routinely retire in peace, like Roman Emperors, to write their memoirs beyond the reach of international justice and international law.

That anyone could have supported the endless quagmire in Viet Nam, the bombing of neutral Cambodia, the seemingly endless series of atrocities and murders that can be charged to as many as four American presidents, is as unthinkable as is the recent GOP debate of Bush's US policy in Iraq. That anyone opposing this mindless stupidity would have been shot dead for opposing it is even more appalling and horrifying in retrospect.

Bush has since 911 impugned the patriotism of anyone daring to question his official conspiracy theories. Personally, I will tolerate any number of "theories" if they are not intended to deceive as the Bush theories most certainly are. But for the skeptical few who never trusted him, Bush seemed to have succeeded in fooling all of the people at least some of the time. Still - the case for the official conspiracy theory is Bush's to make and he hasn't made it. He's merely stonewalled every investigation and waged war on critics and dissent. It's time Bush be made to put up or shut up. He must step down or be impeached and removed from office. There is probable cause now that he be tried for treason for heinous crimes committed against the people of the United States themselves.

I will tolerate a theory - even official ones put forward in good faith. But no good citizen must be expected to tolerate deliberate, bald faced lies by its government. The Bush administration now lacks any credibility. Just as nothing said by Bush about anything has been true, most of what Bush has said about 911 can be proven false. The rest is either inconsistent, unverifiable or it is, prima facie, a deliberate lie.

Despite the Mugabe regime's perverse use of the law as an instrument of terror and tyranny, there is a recognized right of a people to resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression. International law, political morality and even Christian doctrine all recognize that the people have an inalienable right to resort to rebellion against tyranny in certain circumstances.

- Adv. Lucas Nkomo, The right to revolt against tyranny

The author of our Declaration of Indepedence may have foreseen this turn of events.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

And from Che Guevarra's Art of Guerilla Warfare

It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities. Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

- Che Guevarra, The Art of Guerilla Warfare

In other words, Bush's stolen elections do not in themselves justify the taking up of arms against the "government". But in the mass murder of citizens by the state itself may be found every justification for an armed rebellion against the tyranny.

As Jefferson put it, the people may "abolish" the government. As Che put it, "when the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken." The people of the United States are, therefore, already at war with a rogue and criminal "President" who launched a pre-emptive strike against them. Bush has waged and is waging war against the people of the United States.

A fugue-like counterpoint threads itself through our idealistic youth like Pachelbel's Canon in D. The Beat Goes On. Sadly, the lesson of history is no one ever learns the lessons of history. Georges Santayana may be over-quoted these days but it is not his fault that no one has said it better:

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.

- Georges Santayana, American Philosopher

An update:

Ex-CIA analyst: Forged 'yellowcake' memo 'leads right back to' Cheney

A former CIA analyst claims that falsified documents which were meant to show that Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime had been trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger can be traced back to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Appearing on MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Show, Ray McGovern who served in the CIA for twenty-seven years, said, "the [forged] memo leads right back to the doorstep of the Vice President of the United States."

According to McGovern, former CIA Director George Tenet told his "coterie of malleable managers" at the CIA to create a National Intelligence Estimate "to the terms of reference of Dick Cheney's speech of August 26, 2002, where Dick Cheney said for the first time Saddam Hussein could have a nuclear weapon in a year, he's got all kinds of chemical, he's got all kinds of biological weapons."

McGovern, who at one time chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief, also claimed to have evidence that the memo leads back to Cheney, but he would not say what it was, except that the names of the people involved were "in the public domain."

In an op-ed posted at Buzzflash, McGovern argues, "If any good can come out of the intelligence/policy debacle regarding Iraq, it would be the clear lesson that intelligence crafted to dovetail with the predilections of policymakers can bring disaster. The role that Tenet, McLaughlin, and their small coterie of malleable managers played as willing accomplices in the corruption of intelligence has made a mockery of the verse chiseled into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters: 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'"

McGovern also calls Tenet a "pathetic figure" who is trying to "justify himself for unjustifiable activity." Tenet, in his new book, claims that the Bush administration distorted his use of the term "slam dunk" in reference to intelligence that ultimately led to the Iraq war (RAW STORY's coverage is here).

And this just in:

Dick Cheney is the Vice President of Torture

The following is from Damien, a regular contributor to the comments section of this blog. Damien's post is precisely to the point and exceedingly well-researched. It deserves more space than is available in the comments section:

Larissa Alexandrovna has done detailed work on the Niger forgeries. The background is complex. Her conclusion regarding the Niger forgery itself: the focus on Michael Ledeen is misplaced. Look instead to Elliott Abrams, Harold Rhode (also 1 2 3) and Cheney's Office of Special Plans (OSP) for Iraq and the Rendon Group (also 1 2 3 4), a DOD propaganda contractor.

According to Larissa, the White House plans, from even before Bush came to office in 2000, included an attack upon Iran which, at least for now, has been derailed. In this capacity Michael Ledeen was brought in by Cheney - not because of his Iran expertise - but because of his contacts with people like Manucher Ghorbanifar (also here), an expatriate Iranian arms dealer previously banned by the CIA for providing false intelligence. Ledeen's efforts to generate 'marketable intelligence' in relation to Iran put him in contact with Italians, some of whom ended up in delivering the Niger forged document to the US. This has led many to believe - falsely, says Larissa - that Ledeen was involved in the Niger forgery.

She also mentions Lawrence Franklin, a US Air Force Reserve colonel who has pleaded guilty to passing information about US policy towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) while working for the DOD.

The problem with this popular account of Franklin's activities is as Juan Cole points out:

"Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?"

"And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war."

He makes a further telling point:

"The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the US State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed."

And Cole describes (also here) how in mid 2003 Franklin, Ledeen, Rhode and Ghorbanifar undermined an offer by Iran to turn over five al-Qaida operatives (including al-Zarqawi) in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen el Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq.

Larissa continues: "Franklin went to Rome to discuss Iran and his intelligence espionage was all about Iran as well. Ledeen, Ghorbanifar, and Franklin all focused on Iran and continued well after the 2003 start of the Iraq war. Rhode, on the other hand, knew Judith Miller and Chalabi quite well, with all three meeting in Iraq in April of 2003. Rhode was part of all of the Rome meetings and most of the Paris meetings. So why has no one ever focused on Harold Rhode? Because everyone has been too busy focusing on Ledeen and the Iran arm of the policy -- myself included, but for a different reason... In the end, it does not matter who actually sticker taped the forgeries together, rather, what is key is who ordered it and who paid for it and how it was then used. To me, that is the story."

The key personnel in regard to the Niger forgery itself according to Larissa, are: Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rhode, the DOD and the Rendon Group all acting through the OSP for Iraq.

The OSP for Iraq was a creation of Rumsfeld (and Cheney) in order to obtain doctored intelligence using the DOD that would support the case for attacking Iraq - 'intelligence' they knew they would not be forthcoming from regular intelligence channels such as the NSA and the CIA because they had no basis in fact.

The OSP:

"The Office of Special Plans, which existed from September, 2002, to June, 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Donald Rumsfeld and led by Douglas Feith, to supply senior Bush administration officials with raw intelligence (unvetted by intelligence analysts, see Stovepiping) pertaining to Iraq. An allegedly similar unit, called the Iranian Directorate, was created in 2006 to deal with intelligence on Iran."

"In February 2007, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a report that concluded that Feith's office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsisent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The report found that these actions were "inappropriate" though not "illegal." Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that:

"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq. The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war.""

(It's also worth mentioning here that Rice received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before Bush included the Niger reference in his SOTU address. Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call warning from Tenet. So both Hadley and Rice were prepared to mislead Congress over Iraq. It should be assumed that they would lie about 9/11 if they felt it were politically expedient to do so.)

All of the OSP guys found an ideological home at the American Enterprise Institute. More here:

According to insiders, Rhode worked with Feith to purge career Defense officials who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Wolfowitz and Feith wanted. Rhode appeared to be "pulling people out of nooks and crannies of the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places to replace us with," says a former analyst. "They wanted nothing to do with the professional staff. And they wanted us the fuck out of there."

The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode was the American Enterprise Institute...Headquartered at AEI is Richard Perle...chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. Rhode, along with Michael Rubin, a former AEI staffer who is also now at the Pentagon, was a ubiquitous presence at AEI conferences on Iraq over the past two years, and the two Pentagon officials seemed almost to be serving as stage managers for the AEI events, often sitting in the front row and speaking in stage whispers to panelists and AEI officials.

Just after September 11, 2001, Feith and Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Wurmser would be the founding participant of the unnamed, secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon, set up in Feith's office, which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign.

On September 4, 2004, the Washington Post reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators had questioned David Wurmser, along with Harold Rhode, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith about their involvement in passing classified information to Ahmad Chalabi and AIPAC. David Wurmser's wife, Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, co-authored for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 an Israeli policy document (A Clean Break) that called for the overthrow of Iraq and Iran in pusuit of Israeli security in the Middle East.

What we have is a cabal of right wingers establishing their own intelligence program through the Defence Department and bypassing the CIA and NSA. They have strong ties to AIPAC, support Israel's foreign policy goals (which involve the invasion of countries in the Middle East), possess an ideological home in the AEI, are financially tied to major defense industries. A number of them are former Iran Contra agents willing to lie to Congress. The have utilisied a private industry -the Rendon Group - with a track record of destabilising countries and controlling intelligence in support US foreign policy. And they have been prepared to forgoe pursuing al Qaeda if it conflicts with other foreign policy goals - such as conducting a war against Iran.

The arguments about possible (some say, likely) connections to the events of 9/11 deserve a separate discussion but there is evidence of awareness of the hijackers' activities by various foreign intelligence agencies (1 2 3 4 5 6). There is also evidence that Israeli intelligence was also aware of the activities of the hijackers prior to 9/11 (1 2). And it is not too far a stretch to conclude that it would not have been ideologically beyond the people discussed here to have participated in the events of 9/11.

- Damien

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