Who had the most to gain?

paul108 · October 21, 2001

(unknown author)

All of us who has ever seen a rerun of Columbo, read an Agatha Christie novel, or seen any TV crime drama has heard that question when trying to figure out the most likely suspect of a murder.

Well it looks like five thousand people were just murdered. So ask the question. Well? For starters it's certainly not the hijackers. They lost their lives. What about the people that are supposedly behind them, like Osama bin Laden? It would seem not.

Some terrorist acts may give the perpetrator some street cred: blowing up a mid-air flight like the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland which was linked back to Libya, blowing a hole in the USS Cole, blowing up a couple of US embassies in some backwater country like Tanzania. You can make a name for yourself in your little region of the world and know that the US will definitely try to catch you, but it's only going to try so hard.

But anyone would have to realize that committing an act so horrifying in size and audacity is sure to commit the US to not rest until it has your head on a stick. It's like a gang member who will try to improve his gangsta rep by shooting a local cop, but knows better than to try to assassinate the president.

Decide for yourself what it means or doesn't mean but the ones who benefit the most from this incident are those in the Bush administration.

Fact: The economy was likely to enter recession. Rightly or wrongly the public tends to place blame for economic downturns on whichever president is in office at the time. Well now if the economy heads south, it's not their fault! It's this horrible tragedy of course that's shaken people's confidence!

Fact: The Bush administration had "nothing to do". No cause. The President was reading to school children when the planes hit. (He couldn't have been too busy with affairs of state). Bush himself has said that this has now become "the focus of (his) administration" They have found their issue, their cause to rally around, and their issue to campaign for reelection on in 3 years.

Fact: Declaring a "war on terrorism" is like declaring a war on vice. It is endless and can be used indefinitely as an excuse to push through whatever agendas they may have like the missile defense shield, increased defense spending, or whatever.

Fact: The label "terrorist" is a very easy one to apply. Especially so the label "harboring" a terrorist. And we now are finding out the "enemy is among us" (here in the US). This sounds an awful lot like the Red Scare of the 50's where the excuse of routing out the invisible communists was used to abuse people's civil rights and intimidate anyone and everyone opposed to the administration or US policy. Today we look back and condemn that as "McCarthyism" but are we so clear sighted about what's right in front of us now?

Fact: Congress just approved a FORTY BILLION "relief aid package" with little to no oversights on how Bush gets to spend it. That's Billion with a "B". And this is not just for disaster clean up and aid to the victims. It's also for the "ongoing" war Bush has told us to expect and "increasing our intelligence capability". Well what does that include exactly? Reading all emails? Eavesdropping on our phone calls? Who knows because they don't have to say. Congress has given the money in the heat of emotion with little or no conditions.

Fact: Congress will have to go along with just about anything the President's administration wants that can be tied in to this disaster. Any representative or senator that dissents will look "unpatriotic" if they say no. This is very dangerous. The founders created three branches of government so that no one branch would have too much power. One of those is the judicial branch and we saw what the Supreme Court did this most recent election. Many legal experts say it was unprecedented that they ruled to hand the election results to Bush rather than say they had no business deciding it and were unduly influenced by the fact that many of the justices were appointed by Bush Sr. So that's one branch that seems not to be performing its role of providing checks and balances. And now the other branch, Congress, is cow towed too.

Fact: This sudden disaster sure seems to have taken many people's attention off the fact that this President won the election under very fishy circumstances in Florida (where his brother is governor). Boy that sure is a big help.

Does this prospect seem horrendous? Too incredible to imagine? Well it's happened before. A great fire destroyed a huge part of Rome. The emperor Nero blamed it on the Christians and used it as an excuse to persecute them and this cause helped the unpopular emperor consolidate his political power and rally patriotic Rome around him. Historians generally feel that Nero himself probably had the fire set. In the 1930's the Reichstag (the German building where their representatives met...like our Capitol building) burned down. Hitler blamed it on the "communists among them" and used it to rally a patriotic Germany around him, consolidating his political power and to persecute his political enemies. People generally agree there is enough evidence to believe the Nazis themselves set fire to the building for just this purpose.

It's very likely the Roman citizens could never imagine their own Emperor setting fire to their own city, and the same with the Germans. And that is exactly why it worked.

After the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, people who suggested people in the government were behind it looked like conspiracy nuts. Even today there seems little motivation to that idea. Unless it was a test. A smaller scale test to see how the public would react. And to extrapolate how they might react to something much bigger in the future.

Back to the suspects: Shortly after the attacks a rental car was found in the parking lot of Boston's Logan airport. Inside was the Koran and an instructional video tape on how to fly airliners. Even some of the news anchors reporting this live seemed to say what an obvious plant this seemed like! It's just not plausible that the perpetrators would be watching a video the day before the attack. It seems they'd have learned how to fly the plane well before then. If they didn't have it down by the day before something's wrong.

And it also doesn't make sense to leave such obvious evidence behind. It might if the attackers/backers planned on taking credit for it. But they haven't. Just the opposite. Everyone is denying it. So if they didn't want to get blamed for it, wouldn't they be a little more careful about leaving behind such obvious evidence?

On Saturday, just days after the attack, they announced that in the rubble of the trade center they found one of the terrorist's passports. We all saw that fireball! The fire was so hot it turned the steel of the building into hot liquid molten metal. But his passport survived? And it was found even though they had only gone through 20,000 tons of debris out of a total of 1.4 million tons? In other words they only scratched the surface of the ruins and there it was? It's like reaching out and taking a pinch from the haystack and lo and behold! There's the needle!

Something about all of this just doesn't smell right. Does that seem unpatriotic? Un-American? Well this country has a long tradition of healthy Yankee skepticism and asking about what might really be going on, what we're not being told rather than falling lockstep behind whatever slogans and rhetoric government leaders are feeding the public like the masses do in totalitarian countries.

So now might be the time to use our heads and try to look beyond the superficial.

Real Americans are not afraid of debate, of different ideas, of free thought. So pass this email along and let people discuss it. If millions of people passed along the email hoax of that phony Nostradamus "prediction" then we owe it to ourselves to share with each other something that is actually relevant

darwin · October 21, 2001

Bin Laden was a part of the CIA. I think that elements of the CIA and others associated with the US government may be involved.

However, it is important to remember that even if it was only Bin Ladens group, Bin Ladens group may have planted false leads to frame the US government or Iraq.

Read this:

Friendly Fire

Book: U.S. Military

Drafted Plans to

Terrorize U.S. Cities to

Provoke War With

Cuba

By David Ruppe

N E W Y O R K, May 1

- In the early 1960s,

America's top military

leaders reportedly

drafted plans to kill

innocent people and

commit acts of terrorism

in U.S. cities to create

public support for a war

against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the

plans reportedly included the possible

assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking

boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas,

hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship,

and even orchestrating violent terrorism in

U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick

the American public and the international

community into supporting a war to oust

Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel

Castro.

America's top military brass even

contemplated causing U.S. military

casualties, writing: "We could blow up a

U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame

Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S.

newspapers would cause a helpful wave of

national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body

of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by

investigative reporter James Bamford about

the history of America's largest spy agency,

the National Security Agency. However, the

plans were not connected to the agency,

he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were

presented to President Kennedy's defense

secretary, Robert McNamara, in March

1962. But they apparently were rejected by

the civilian leadership and have gone

undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff

documents. The reason these were held

secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never

wanted to give these up because they were

so embarrassing," Bamford told

ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have

leaders responding to the public will, and

here this is the complete reverse, the

military trying to trick the American people

into a war that they want but that nobody

else wants."

Gunning for War

The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of

Staff drew up and approved plans for what

may be the most corrupt plan ever created

by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the

potential death of astronaut John Glenn

during the first attempt to put an American

into orbit as a false pretext for war with

Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn,

they wrote, "the objective is to provide

irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with

the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."

The plans were motivated by an intense

desire among senior military leaders to

depose Castro, who seized power in 1959

to become the first communist leader in the

Western Hemisphere - only 90 miles from

U.S. shores.

The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs

invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been

a disastrous failure, in which the military

was not allowed to provide firepower.The

military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," says

Bamford, noting public and international

support would be needed for an invasion,

but apparently neither the American public,

nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S.

troops deployed to drive out Castro.

Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for

establishing prolonged military - not

democratic - control over the island nation

after the invasion.

"That's what we're supposed to be freeing

them from," Bamford says. "The only way

we would have succeeded is by doing

exactly what the Russians were doing all

over the world, by imposing a government

by tyranny, basically what we were

accusing Castro himself of doing."

'Over the Edge'

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed

by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen.

Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed

plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara

on March 13, 1962, recommending

Operation Northwoods be run by the

military.

Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were

rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not

clear. But three days later, President

Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was

virtually no possibility of ever using overt

force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within

months, Lemnitzer would be denied

another term as chairman and transferred

to another job.

The secret plans came at a time when

there was distrust in the military leadership

about their civilian leadership, with leaders

in the Kennedy administration viewed as

too liberal, insufficiently experienced and

soft on communism. At the same time,

however, there real were concerns in

American society about their military

overstepping its bounds.

There were reports U.S. military leaders

had encouraged their subordinates to vote

conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were

published focusing on a right-wing military

leadership pushing the limits against

government policy of the day. The Senate

Foreign Relations Committee published its

own report on right-wing extremism in the

military, warning a "considerable danger" in

the "education and propaganda activities of

military personnel" had been uncovered.

The committee even called for an

examination of any ties between Lemnitzer

and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't

get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

"Although no one in Congress could have

known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer

and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped

over the edge."

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes,

the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext"

operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between

Cuba and another Latin American country

so that the United States could intervene.

Another was to pay someone in the Castro

government to attack U.S. forces at the

Guantanamo naval base - an act, which

Bamford notes, would have amounted to

treason. And another was to fly low level

U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of

having one shot down as a pretext for a

war.

"There really was a worry at the time about

the military going off crazy and they did,

but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for

lack of trying," he says.

After 40 Years

Ironically, the documents came to light,

says Bamford, in part because of the 1992

Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the

possibility of a conspiracy behind the

assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination

swelled after JFK's release, Congress

passed a law designed to increase the

public's access to government records

related to the assassination.

The author says a friend on the board

tipped him off to the documents.

Afraid of a congressional investigation,

Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs

documents related to the Bay of Pigs

destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow,

these remained.

"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes

out until 40 years after," says Bamford.

Tarun · October 21, 2001

"Bring 'Coke' from down South.

Bring 'Smack' from out East.

Anyone jeopardizing our 'Trade Secrets'.. we know what to do."

What? What's that? Who stood to gain most?

Hmm. Let me see dare...

paul108 · November 7, 2001

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html

US agents told: Back off bin Ladens

US special agents were told to back off the bin Laden family and the Saudi royals soon after George Bush became president, although that has all changed since September 11, it was reported today.

And the BBC2's Newsnight program also said the younger George Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, who took over as head of the family after his father Mohammed's death in a plane crash in 1968.

The program said it had secret documents from the FBI investigation into the terror attacks on New York and Washington which showed that despite the myth that Osama is the black sheep of the family, at least two other American-based members of it are suspected of links with a possible terrorist organisation.

The program said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of bin Laden family members living in the US after, and even before, September 11.

A document showed that special agents from the Washington field office were investigating Abdullah, a close relative of Osama, because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organisation, it said.

The program said it had found where he used to live with another close relative, Omar, also an FBI suspect, in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington. The house was conveniently close to WAMY, it said, and just a couple of blocks down the road was a place listed by four of the alleged hijackers as their address.

The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and insists it is a charity, the program said, yet Pakistan had expelled WAMY "operatives" and India claimed WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir.

The FBI did look into WAMY, but for some reason agents were pulled off the trail, it said.

The program has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis, it said.

The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, Michael Springman, told the program: "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

"People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained there. I complained here in Washington to Main State, to the inspector-general and to Diplomatic Security and I was ignored."

He added: "What I was doing was giving visas to terrorists - recruited by the CIA and Osama bin Laden to come back to the United States for training to be used in the war in Afghanistan against the then Soviets."

The US wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection - so long as America was safe, the program said.

The program said the younger George Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, who took over as head of the family after his father Mohammed's death in a plane crash in 1968.

Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little-known private company which in just a few years of its founding has become one of America's biggest defence contractors, and his father, Bush Senior, is also a paid adviser, the program said.

And it became embarrassing when it was revealed that the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11, it added.

The program said it had been told by a highly-placed source in a US intelligence agency that there had always been "constraints" on investigating Saudis, but under President Bush it had become much worse.

After the elections, the intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from investigating the bin Laden family and the Saudi royals, and that angered field agents, the program added.

The policy was reversed after September 11, it reported.

The program was told by FBI headquarters that it could not comment on its findings.

A spokesman reportedly said: "There are lots of things that only the intelligence community knows and that no one else ought to know."

gHari · November 8, 2001

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/

Tarun · November 11, 2001

Bin Laden is as guilty as Noriega.

Noriega knew/knows too much. Same with Bin Laden.

As Mahak would say: Bin Laden? Bin there, Dubya Dunnit done that.

Gas stations r a waste of land.

We have technology to run cars sans petroleum.

Why beat a dead horseless carriage?

The 2002 car models r such junk anyway.

No style, no performance, nothing.

It's a totally dead archaic industry.

That's why Oilmen r holding on for their dear life.

Dinosaurs amongst us.

They're so out of touch with geo-reality, a thousand degrees depressed below sub-pathetic.

Instead of changing their ways, they perform horrific ugra-karma for temporary public appeal.

How r our ratings?

So long we keep'em fooled we'll be okay.

Bushing can go play 'Big Giant' elsewhere. He can make believe he's Jimmy Dean in some remote Texas desert town "Far from the Maddening Crowd" he himself maddened.

Tarun · January 23, 2002

Petition to Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Please go to this link to sign petition:

www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html

Petition to Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

U.S. Senate

Petition to Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

We, the undersigned, do hereby petition the Senate of the United States of

America to thoroughly investigate events surrounding the acts of terrorism

that transpired in the United States on September 11, 2001. Such investigation would include research into the following peculiarities relating to terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11:

1.) Thousands of put stock options that were purchased on United and American

airlines immediately prior to 9/11/01

2.) Financial transactions totaling more than 100 million dollars that

electronically passed through World Trade Center immediately prior to its

destruction on 9/11

3.) Black-box recordings from four planes which crashed on 9/11

4.) Cell phone calls made by passengers on hijacked flights on 9/11 which never

emerged on their cell-phone bills

5.) Interviews of any air-traffic controllers on duty on 9/11

6.) Eyewitness accounts detailing Flight 93's explosion prior to its crashing

7.) Aircraft debris strewn approximately seven miles from crash site of Flight 93

8.) Unocal's role in its quest to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan,

plans implemented prior to 2001

9.) Carlyle Corporation's role in overseeing Unocal's quest to have oil pipeline built across Afghanistan, plans implemented prior to 2001

10.) Role of remote-control software technology implemented in 9/11 hijackings

and crashes

11.) George W. Bush's possible foreknowledge of terrorist attacks on 9/11

12.) Role of Northern Alliance in explosive growth of opium production in Afghanistan after U.S. military intervention

We respectfully petition the Senate to make public the results of this investigation.

Sincerely, The Undersigned

http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html

(I added this to my signature: In addition, questions should be raised about why this President has not included banks in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - banks with which he personally has done business - on his list of banks to have their assets frozen, and why two former members of Pakistan's ISI (their equivalent of CIA), who have been linked to transfer of $100,000 to M. Atta, lead highjacker in attack on New York City, have not been indicted or charged with any crime.)

http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html

Petition to Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11

Terrorist Attacks Petition to The U.S. Senate was created by Falloutshelternews

and written by Lori R. Price.

This petition is hosted here at

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