Ten things we learned in 2004 about 9/11

1. The World Trade Center Black Boxes were recovered, though officials perpetuate the lie that they weren't.

2. FEMA really did arrive early in New York City, for the "bioterror drill" Tripod II, and Rudi Giuliani's testimony to that effect before the 9/11 Commission is its only public testimony which remains officially untranscribed.

3. The Total Information Awareness program was ready to roll out before Sept 11, and John Poindexter's office was established in the Pentagon no later than Sept 12.

4. A recording of six air traffic controllers' same-day detailing of their communication with two hijacked planes on September 11 was purposefully destroyed by the FAA.

5. NORAD was conducting a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings on the morning of 9/11, which effectively hamstrung a fighter response already compromised by exercises which took the bulk of interceptors far from the eastern seaboard.

6. Dick Cheney was running a separate command and control communications system on 9/11, which whistleblower Indira Singh recognized as having "the exact same functionality I was looking to utilize [for] Ptech," the high tech terrorist and intelligence cut-out that "was set up in the basement of the FAA" for two years before the attacks. (Go to this page to download video testimony of Mike Ruppert and Indira Singh on this subject.)

7. George Bush was unwilling to reluctanctly meet members of his reluctantly struck 9/11 Commission unless Cheney accompanied him, both were unsworn, their words were unrecorded and untranscribed, the meeting was private and in the White House, and the members' notebooks were confiscated afterwards.

8. That John Ashcroft made the case for Sibel Edmonds' State Secret Privilege gag order by claiming that disclosure of her testimony would "cause serious damage to the national security interests of the United States" suggests he is at least an accessory after the fact (Daniel Ellsberg believes Ashcroft deserving of jail time for his role in obstructing justice), as Edmonds has been able to say that her testimony involves "specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales."

9. Donald Rumsfeld confirmed what we knew all along, that Flight 93 was shot down, and the corporate media flew into damage control for the Pentagon, saying the Secretary "misspoke" and "stoked conspiracy theories."

10. As Pakistan wound down the search for Osama bin Laden and "prohibited" American forces based in Afghanistan from making cross-border incursions into the Tribal Areas, Musharraf was rewarded with the approving words that his continuing rule remains an internal matter for Pakistanis. (Afghanistan was, arguably, more cooperative in their attempt to bring bin Laden to justice, and Iraq was not a rogue nuclear state.)

We're getting there. Of course, they are there already, and have been for years. But we're catching on.

The big picture remains grim, and getting grimmer, but small pictures can still be pleasant ones. I hope yours are in 2005.

"A government 'op' that went wrong"

There was a story a couple of days ago in The Salt Lake Tribune that deserves attention:

Lawyer claims FBI informer linked to McVeigh bombing

A Salt Lake City lawyer says an FBI informant who was an explosives expert might have trained accomplices of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh at a white supremacist compound.

Attorney Jesse Trentadue says two teletypes sent by the FBI's director show that an informer had infiltrated a paramilitary training compound in Oklahoma known as Elohim City and was there in April 1995 when one of the bombing suspects allegedly called looking for co-conspirators.

The name of the informant and caller are blacked out, but Trentadue suspects they are Andreas Strassmeir, a German national who he says was the weapons and explosives instructor at the compound, and McVeigh, who allegedly was trying to recruit accomplices two weeks before the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people. The attorney says he believes Strassmeir was working either for the FBI or for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group, which relayed the information to the agency.

If his suspicion about the informant's identity is correct, "then not only does it appear that FBI defendants knew about and fail[ed] to prevent the attack upon the Murrah Building, but FBI defendants may also have been responsible for training McVeigh and the others who planned and carried out the attack," Trentadue says in a document filed Monday at U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.

Strassmeir arrived in the US in the late 1980s, and claims he expected to work on special assignment for the operations section of the DEA. For "some reason," that didn't pan out, and he soon hooked up with militias and the Klan, becoming chief of security for the compound "Elohim City."

Like Mohammed Atta, "Andy the German" led something of a charmed existence in the US, though there were numerous reasons for his deportation. It was as though he had guardian angels watching over him. And it wasn't that he was under the radar of authorities. According to Ron Ostrow of The Los Angeles Times, while on a trip to Germany in 1993 Louis Freeh, then FBI chief, was warned by the BND that Strassmeir was engagaged in neo-Nazi activities in the US. Freeh said that the Agency was aware, was "monitoring" his activities, but that "because of our First Amendment, there isn't anything we can do."

As Stephen Jones details in Others Unknown, according to the files of Immigration and Naturalization Service Strassmeir, "who was technically an illegal alien for having overstayed the last of three visas issued to him by the State Department, had been, in the period before the bombing, the subject of a 'sensitive' investigation by ATF." But it was only nine months after the Oklahoma City bombing, after he had left the country, that the INS issued an alert on Strassmeir, noting he was wanted for questioning.

Jones continues:

Was Strassmeir an agent provocateur? If not, was he on the payroll of one or another federal agency? There were rumours galore, before and after the bombing, and he would certainly appear to have led a charmed and protected life, vis-a-vis American law enforcement. Strassmeir himself would deny vehemently that he'd been on anybody's payroll, at the same time making coy-sounding observations about how easy it was to "penetrate" the American right wing once you learned to speak the language.

Here's Strassmeir being coy, from an interview in 1996:

It's obvious that it was a government "op" that went wrong, isn't it? The ATF had something going with McVeigh. They were watching him, of course they were. What they should have done is make an arrest while the bomb was still being made instead of waiting till the last moment for a publicity stunt. They had everything they needed to make the bust, and they screwed it up.

Whoever thought this thing up is an idiot, in my opinion. I am told they thought it would be better to put a bigger bomb in there. The bigger the better. It would make them more guilty....McVeigh knew he was delivering a bomb, but he had no idea what was in that truck. He just wanted to shake things up a little; you know, make a gesture.

The bomb was never meant to explode. They were going to arrest McVeigh at the site with the bomb in hand, but he didn't come at the right time... Maybe he changed the time, you never know with people who are so unreliable. I have heard that the truck was expected in the middle of the night, between two and three in the morning. The truck had a transmitter, so they could track it with a radio receiving device. I don't know how they could have lost contact. I think there was misinformation that the operation had been canceled.

If it's not a government op going wrong, chances are it's a government op going right. How many significant "acts of terrorism" have been conducted without, at least, an informer on the inside?

The first bombing of the World Trade Center? Informer Emad Salem was in the inner circle of the bomb makers. He warned the FBI of the plot, and wanted to substitute harmless powder for the explosives, but was dissuaded by his agent. This was reported October 28, 1993 on the front page of The New York Times, which said the taped revelation "portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers."

The Madrid City bombing? Rafa Zouhier and Emilio Suárez Trashorras, the two who supplied the explosives, were police informers. What's more, Trashorras "was in possession of the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad," as reported in The Times of London. "The revelation has raised fresh concerns in Madrid about links between those held responsible for the March bombings, which killed 190 people, and Spain’s security services." Gee - who'da thunk?

The 1999 spree of apartment building bombings in Russia; the Mindanao bombing campaign - it just goes on and on. As much as Operation Northwoods serves as a lodestone for 9/11 researchers, we have much more than a rejected proposal of the Joint Chiefs to demonstrate the lengths to which one's government will go.

False flag terror, and "letting things happen on purpose," are virtually standard operating procedures.

Planet Colombia

Here's all you need to know to parse the story of Orejuela's extradition and trial: "Between 2000 and 2005, the United States will have spent nearly $4 billion, but Plan Colombia will end next year unless Congress approves additional funding."

Scott Hiasson writes in today's Miami Herald that cofounder of the Cali cartel Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, known as the "Chess Player," may be denied access to his own assets to pay for his defense unless his attorney can show them to be "untainted by cocaine."

Gilberto was extradited to Miami this month; his younger brother, also indicted in Miami, is in Colombia facing extradition. Prosecutors say the brothers blended their cocaine business with seemingly legitimate enterprises -- including pharmacies, construction companies, a soccer team and an airline -- in an effort to conceal drug profits. The U.S. government seeks to seize $2.1 billion from the cartel.

Ironic how seldom the reverse is asked about the "seemingly legitimate enterprises" of our globalized narco-economy. Could, say, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Halliburton distinguish their legitimate profits from those by the drug trade which they've laundered into their balance sheets?

Orejuela gets a namecheck in Michael Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon in the important chapter "Connecting Drugs and Oil," in context of a report by the Center for Public Integrity which established a direct link between the facilities of Halliburton subsidy Brown and Root and "every drug-producing region and every drug-consuming region in the world." Ruppert discusses a guaranteed loan, through CIA cut-out banks, to the Russian financial conglomerate Alfa Group, which included $292 to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field. An official report of the Russian FSB claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven, "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia into Europe."

Ruppert writes:

Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family, were the same executives who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result, Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil field's could continue - and expand.

The CPI story reports allegations that organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had stolen the oil field by fraud. It then uses official reports from the FSB, oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers, and press accounts to establish a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

...

The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela...to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore.... The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies. The former KG agent "reported that there was evidence regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering of Latin American drug cartels."

It would be difficult for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this, as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C Langdon Jr at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fundraiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."

The farce of Orejuela's persecution comes into focus in a November article of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. While federal officials tout him as their biggest trophy since Pablo Escobar's turkey shoot, "some experts say the extradition is more of a moral victory than a practical one. 'They don't get any bigger than this, but it is largely symbolic,' said Adam Isacson, director of programs for the Center for International Policy in Washington. 'Gilberto is no longer a player.'"

"It's hard to believe," said Tom Cash, who ran the DEA's Miami office during the cartel's heyday. "These people were the untouchables in Cali." Cash credited the cartel's long run to its low profile and business acumen. "It's one of those proof positives that these cocaine traffickers were far from cowboys, much more like Wall Street businessmen who used their stealth and their brains and were extremely successful for a very long time," he said.

Now the Cali cartel has been replaced by smaller, more dangerous "baby cartels." Experts estimate as many as 300 mini cartels operate in Colombia.

Between 2000 and 2005, the United States will have spent nearly $4 billion, but Plan Colombia will end next year unless Congress approves additional funding.

So there you have it - again. Though Orejuela's name is legend, he is "no longer a player," so can be served up to showcase the success of Plan Colombia. Which needs a shot in the arm, so to speak.

Orejuela is no dummy; he knows which players are playing him:

"Colombia needs economic assistance from the United States and the US government needs to showcase results in the fight against drug trafficking," he told Semana magazine. "My brother and I have a symbolic value in this context."

The boy who cried Wolfowitz

Some thoughts, now that Houston has not blown up, regarding German Guy.

There's an interesting analysis here which suggests the posts were a backdoor, public yet deniable warning from German intelligence to the Wolfowitz network to back off possible "al Qaeda" attacks in Europe, or factions within the BND and other European intel agencies were prepared to disclose what they know of the complicity of American elements in 9/11. In this understanding the Houston scenario was always unlikely, and the purpose of the posts was to blackmail "the far side of the CIA and Mossad" to leave Germany alone.

The poster makes a good case, and my thoughts had been running along similar lines. That is until I read the latest installment of "The Voice from the White House," and some bells began ringing too loudly for me to ignore any longer.

Ever heard the name Gregory Douglas? He's an author - counterfeiter, really - working on the margins of revisionist history. It doesn't appear his name is genuine, either.

To quote David Irving, Douglas "is the classic Muenchhausen Syndrome type, seeking to attract attention to himself - using names like 'Freiherr von Mollendorf,' and generally living the life of a suave spy, adventurer, and sophisticate."

Other pseudonyms cited by Iriving include "Samuel Prescott Bush," "Christopher Crowles," "Bob Sonderby," "Peter Stahl" and "A. Zackery Mehlis."

Irving continues:

He operates under many pseudonyms, but from a police file I saw some years back his real name seems to be Norwood Burch, born March 22, 1930. He reportedly acquired his alias through association with the former "B" movie director Roger Steele in Los Angeles in the 1970s. When he signed onto the Prodigy internet service in 1994 he certainly used a credit card owned by the name "Burch".

For our purposes, lets stick to "Gregory Douglas."

Douglas is the author of a three-volume set of the supposed post-war interrogations of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller who, according to official history, vanished without a trace after the fall of Berlin. The books are, it would appear, very good hoaxes. He has also written Regicide, which reproduces alleged documents pertaining to the assassination of John F Kennedy, including a "Summary of Conferences held March - November 1963" by senior military-intelligence conspirators. Regicide as well would appear to be a hoax. (Self disclosure: I paid retail for Regicide, so now it's personal.)

In an email to James Fetzer, Douglas describes how Regicide came about:

Before his death in October of 2000, Robert Crowley, once Deputy Director ofthe CIA's Clandestine Operations, sent me two boxes of documents he feltmight be of assistance to me in my ongoing writings. I had known Crowleysince 1993 and we were in daily contact. He was courteous enough to write aforward to one of my books on Heinrich Muller, once Chief of the GermanGestapo and later a CIA employee.

Crowley was a man who knew where all the bodies were buried and was a good friend of Jim Angleton, head of counter intelligence for the Company,and who removed Angleton's most sensitive files when Angleton was fired from the CIA for illegally reading the mail of U.S. citizens. Some, but certainly not all, of this material will be utilized as Crowley wished it to. The great bulk of his extensive files ended up in the hands of Washington author, Joe Trento who has just written a book on the CIA that contains more material based on the Crowley files.

The material on the Kennedy assassination was directly from the Crowley papers. He kept these devastating, and potentially very dangerous, papers for purposes of self-justification and insurance. Now, what was hidden in his Cathedral Ave. home for years is now in the process of being edited for future publication.

Fetzer writes:

My ambivalence about the book was also manifest by the revision of my review on Amazon.com. Although I initially assigned it a 5-star rating, now I changed that to 1-star. The revised review, which appears on Amazon.com with the date of 30 March 2002, bears the heading, "A fascinating work that appears to be a fraud". My doubts are rooted less in Douglas himself than in the authenticity of the documents upon which his work is based and his odd relationship with their source, Robert T. Crowley, former Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA. According to Douglas, he never actually met Crowley, which I personally find difficult to reconcile with the staggering importance of the information he allegedly entrusted to him. But that is Douglas' story.

The more important grounds for my skepticism include (1) the absence of the original KGB study in the Russian language; (2) the convergence of both the Soviet assessment and the DIA assessment on three-shot scenarios; (3) the very idea of keeping official records of government agencies in collusion on the assassination of a President of the United States; and (4) the very idea that JFK would distribute photographs as sexual momentos to his conquests. It appears to me extremely improbable, when the assassination involved at least 8, 9, or 10 shots fired from at least 6 locations, that neither the Soviets nor the DIA would pick up on numbers greater than 3. That a politician of the intelligence and sophistication of Jack Kennedy would disseminate photos of his liaisons I find extremely difficult--even truly impossible--to believe.

Now here's the first rub: Douglas's Gestapo Chief and Regicide ("a must addition to any conspiracy buff ’s library") are both available for purchase through TBRNews, which also hosts "The Voice from the White House."

The latest installment of the "Voice," dated Dec 27, includes this interesting nod to those who've followed the "German Guy" story:

We have a number of faked IPs that permit government stool pigeons to send out reams of pro-Bush and pro-government propaganda to sympathetic bloggers and right-wing websites. A false vox populi but sometimes effective. Also, the psychology boys are now busy inventing weird conspiracy theories to put out to the boobery to keep their minds off of the growing and deadly disasters now beginning to loom over the heads of the Administration such as the Iraq mess and the even more serious financial crisis about to ruin all of us. (Incidentally, I took all of our savings and put them equally into Canadian dollars and the euro. I am hedging my bets here.)

These bright boys, working with the Rove people, are starting stories about weather control, a new Ice Age, the spread of SARS, Mad Cow (but only in Canada as a way of punishing them for daring to harbor US deserters), weird plots to blow up US cities and so on.

These nut stories seem to have a life of their own on the net and are eagerly accepted while the real plottings can go on behind the scenes. There is no doubt that we are going to have a draft and after that, an invasion of Iran and Syria…if Bush , Rove and the neocons have their collective, evil, way.

I've bitten my tongue for a while now regarding my suspicion that the author of "The Voice from the White House" is actually the counterfeiter Gregory Douglas, because it was nothing but suspicion. (And "The Voice" tells a good story, so it's compelling to believe him a genuine insider, who confirms our worst fears. It has caused many to overlook the uncomfortable fact that TBRNews is a site which supports Holocaust denial.) But the allusion to the "German Guy" story suggests to me he's now tipped his hand.

The works of "Gregory Douglas" and "The Voice from the White House" are both promoted by TBRNews. "Gregory Douglas" and "German Guy" both demonstrate a proficiency in German. The works of all three contain genuine research and hard truths, which help sell the "too good to be true" confirmation of the suspicions of the readers, which appear to be well-crafted fabrications.

Just as Fetzer now calls Regicide "a fascinating work that appears to be a fraud," so I'm tempted to now call the posts of "German Guy." Even so, I believe they remain worthy of some attention, because at the very least they brought to the fore some overlooked concerns that could make fruitful study. (The murder of scientist John Mullen, for one instance.) And, at the very most, well - we still don't really know, do we?

So, should a "Finnish Fellow" or "Latvian Lad" appear, bearing a similarly compelling message, we'll need to pay attention then, too. Better to be wrong and played the fool, than correct but play it cool. Such are the times.

Tale of two earthquakes

Curious: yesterday's 9.2 earthquake and tsunami was also the first anniversary of the Iranian earthquake which claimed 31,000 lives.

Thousands Mourn One Year After Bam Earthquake

26/12/2004

Thousands of Iranians have gathered in the southeastern city of Bam to mark Sunday's one-year anniversary of the earthquake that claimed more than 31,000 lives and devastated the ancient city.

Relatives and friends of survivors have been making pilgrimages to Bam's cemetery to remember the dead with prayers, flowers and candles. Despite President Mohammed Khatami's pledge to rebuild, and help from the international community, much of Bam remains in ruins, and the slow pace of reconstruction has angered survivors. The powerful quake shook the city before dawn on December 26 last year, killing thousands as they slept.

An odd synchronicity, but likely just that. Though as I wrote in "The American Replacement of Natural Disaster," that which used to be expressly "Acts of God" are being folded into the mandate of the US military.

Still, what I find most interesting is not the convergence of dates, but the disparity of response.

I don't recall the same generalized empathy, or an effort to rush aid to Iran as there is now to the nations afflicted.

I don't mean to diminish the magnitude of yesterday's tragedy, but rather elevate the magnitude of Iran's tragedy a year ago yesterday.

I wonder: could some of the discrepancy be accounted by the fact that Western tourists were among the victims yesterday, and the tsunami hit beachfront properties where Westerners could imagine themselves vacationing?

The ancient city of Bam, and 31,000 Iranian lives, just didn't seem to resonate quite the same to our solipsistic culture, did it?

"This world is not this world"

Several months ago I thought it prudent to shift my copy of Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors from my shelf of Second World War history to that of America's National Security State, alongside titles like The Paperclip Conspiracy and American Swastika. These books are next to my desk; the World War Two material is clear across the room. And if I can help it, I don't like to get up.

A story this weekend in Cuba's Granma, based upon the claims of a lawyer for two former French detainees of Gitmo, suggests I was right to move it within arm's reach:

Prisoners were experimented on

AFTER Australian David Hicks’ horrific revelations concerning the torture he suffered in the Guantánamo concentration camp, including mysterious injections with substances of unknown origin, the lawyer for two of the French detainees: Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, released in July, recently announced in Paris that his clients suspect that they were also the victims of experiments in one of the most sinister interrogation centers at the US military base.

"The state organism is a whole with its own laws and rights, much like one self-contained human organism...which, in the interest of the welfare of the whole, also - as we doctors know - abandons and rejects parts or particles that have become worthless or dangerous."

In the latest edition of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, lawyer Jacques Debray reported that Sassi and Benchellali, who were also forced to take suspect medication, are now wondering if they were victims of experiments carried out by their torturers.

"The doctor...if not living in a moral situation, where limits are very clear...is very dangerous."

To date, his clients have only agreed to recount a few details of what happened to them in Guantánamo, says Debray; “the French Intelligence Agency DST has explained to them that that would be better while other French nationals are still detained there,” said the lawyer. “But they have described similar scenes to those in Abu Ghraib,” he affirmed, specifying that the two former detainees, arrested in Pakistan and in US custody after the invasion of Afghanistan, didn’t even know that there was a war in Iraq until after their release. “In Guantánamo, they were received by U.S. soldiers who urinated on them when they were taken off the plane. At no point did they know why they were there,” he related.

"This world is not this world."

“They were interrogated at least 100 times, and before their interrogations, they would be taken past certain rooms from where they could hear screams. Nizar also told me that they were chained up in a room equipped with one-way mirrors where it was extremely cold. They also recounted that there were chambers where they would have to listen to extremely violent music. The two former Guantánamo detainees also spoke of “strange” medications that they were forced to take. “Once, after having received one of those medications, Nizar fainted and thinks that he was drugged without his knowledge for one or two days. They also received injections. They do not know what medication they were given but the two affirmed that one of the other detainees was covered in a rash after having received these medications. They are wondering if they were experimented on, “ the Parisian lawyer affirmed.

"Dr Clauberg ordered me to lie down on the gynecological table and I was able to observe Sylvia Friedmann who was preparing an injection syringe with a long needle. Dr Clauberg used this needle to give me an injection in my womb. I had the feeling that my stomach would burst with the pain."

“The medication bottles bore numbers and a doctor visited them to ask them if the medicines had had any effect. Other than those questionings, they were unable to see a doctor, except on one or two occasions, because in Guantánamo, everything functioned on a reward system.... Nizar and Benchellali affirmed that there were an “impressive number of psychiatrists” in Guantánamo and units reserved “for those who went crazy.”

"The SS doctors did their work just as someone who goes to an office goes about his work. They were gentlemen who came and went, who supervised and were relaxed, sometimes smiling, sometimes joking, but never unhappy. They were witty if they felt like it. Personally I did not get the impression that they were much affected by what was going on - nor shocked. It went on for years. It was not just one day."

As far back as last August, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet disclosed that doctors and other health professionals were complicit actors in the torture that took place in Abu Ghraib as well as in Afghanistan and that they were collaborating on the design and practice of psychological and physically coercive interrogation.

"I have no words. I thought we were human beings. We were living creatures. How could they do things like that?"

In emails recently received by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the FBI has involuntarily confirmed the horror lurking behind the bars of the cells installed there by the administration at the illegal US military base in Guantánamo. “I have seen a detainee seated on the floor of an interrogation room, wrapped in an Israeli flag, with loud music and flashes from an stroboscope,” an agent told his superiors in a email dated last July 30. The FBI erased the names of its agents and the dates of the described incidents in the emails obtained by the ACLU. FBI agents have participated in 747 detainee interrogations in Guantánamo, according to its own reports.

"The fact is that if you do something that is totally unbelievable, and you are incapable of believing, you don't believe it."

And for what it's worth, there's this, from "German Guy," posted December 15:

Please also note: We have reason to believe that many "terrorist" prisoners in US custody are being subjected to long periods of intense sensory deprivation and methods by which they acquire a new controlled personality. We think they are being programmed for something.

Rumsfeld goes off message

From the CNN transcript of Donald Rumsfeld's Secret Santa visit to Iraq on Christmas Eve:

NGUYEN: We want to go back now to that video that we're just getting in from Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq, a surprise visit, he is at Camp Victory here in Baghdad in this video speaking to soldiers in the mess hall. Let's take a listen.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And to change that way of living, would strike at the very essence of our country. And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be. And that is exactly what we cannot allow to happen.

Whoa there, Mr Secretary. Surely you meant to say the people who "heroically wrestled control of the aircraft from the terrorists"? But no; in the context, that hardly makes even Rumsfeldian sense. Perhaps al Qaeda had a sleeper cell in an Amish community which took a lucky potshot at Flight 93? Or hey, maybe during the holiday season your conscience turns to Paul Wellstone, and you meant to say "Minnesota"?

Or it could have been an admission of what most of us have known since September 11: that Flight 93 was shot down by the US Air Force. There's no shame in that. It ought to have happened three other times that morning. But Flight 93's departure was delayed 40 minutes, which removed the successful completion of its mission from the window of plausible deniability. So it had to be taken out. And it had to be lied about, because - well, because that's what you do, isn't it? Lie to deflect attention from the inattention of the air force, and lie to fabricate the "let's roll!" heroism of Joe American to ramp up the populace to a war footing.

Just what were you saying, sir? Unfortunately, this is something you'll never be compelled to answer. Because even when the transcripts don't get scrubbed, even you get a pass. Even when you accidentally speak the truth, the media and public are conditioned to hear instead the comforting falsehood.

And this remark of yours, that the purpose of those who terrorize is to "alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."

Right again, Mr Secretary.

Blood, oil, and Gary Webb's death

Blood

The Mosul bombing likely has some Americans thinking, as they do only when the media reports a mass US casualty event, that Iraq could be Vietnam redux. I wish they'd stop that; this is no time for vainglorious optimism. Iraq is much worse.

It's not just about the clicking of the casualty counter, though it did take the better part of a decade for American casualties in Vietnam to reach the level of "sustainable losses" the US military is now taking in Iraq. Consider this: since just the November 2nd re-selection of George Bush, 200 American troops have been killed and 1,500 wounded. During the invasion's so-called period of "major combat," only 140 Americans lost their lives. (How many Iraqis? An uncounted and irrelevant multitude.) But the neocons want a Hard America; a warrior nation. Losing two or three or 19 recruits a day from the underclass means a bloody nose to them, and what's more, in some respect it's to be welcomed. Because a bully who has tasted his own blood can more easily be driven to ever greater acts of violence.

We need to remember that Vietnam was a "domino." It was a piece in a geopolitical game, and not a very important one at that. Vietnam lied on the fringe of America's sphere of interest. And still it took 58,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives before it was over. ("Let's call it a draw," I can imagine Henry Kissinger saying to Andrei Gromyko. "Good match. Play again?")

Iraq will never be over, because it's not a domino. Dominating the diminishing oil reserves of the Middle East is not a sideshow; it is the essence of US strategic interest. We're talking about the centerpiece of empire in the New American Century. So this war - and it will not be contained to Iraq - will not be over until the American Empire falls.

Iraq is not Vietnam, because the war won't end with a dash for the helicopter on the roof of the Baghdad embassy. It will end with a dash for Marine One on the grounds of the White House.

"Mount Weather, soldier, and step on it!"

Oil

The geopolitical game being played today could be described as the endgame of the Industrial Age, at least so far as petroleum and natural gas are concerned. And no one is playing it with as much cunning, and perhaps grace under pressure, as China. As Richard Heinberg reports in Powerdown, in 2003 China accounted for a third of the world's growth in oil demand, and by 2030 it is expected to have more cars than the US and importing just as much oil. Since China's largest oilfied by far only produces 50 million tons a year, and is declining, where is it all going to come from? Into whose energy needs will its imports cut?

Just look at the headlines from the past several days:

Dec 19: China Says Growth May Top 9% This Year
Chinese President Hu Jintao said Sunday economic growth could exceed nine percent this year and foreign direct investment could top $60 billion. ..."Foreign trade volume for this year is expected to top $1.1 trillion. FDI is expected to top $60 billion this year." China has set an 8 percent growth target for 2005 and aims to peg inflation at around 4 percent, illustrating its eagerness to steer the economy to a soft landing.

Dec 20: China's Thirst for Oil Undercuts U.S. Effort on Iran
U.S. efforts to rein in Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program through economic sanctions are being stymied by China's increasing reliance on the Islamic nation for oil. The U.S. has tried for more than a year to get the United Nations Security Council to impose restrictions that might deter Iran from building an atomic bomb; China, which holds one of five vetoes on the council, is threatening to block those attempts. At the same time, a decades-long U.S. economic embargo of Iran is being undermined by a growing China-Iran trade partnership, highlighted by a $70 billion deal in October for oil and gas.

Dec 20: Chavez Heads to China to Expand Venezuela Energy Ties
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will travel to China tomorrow in a bid to broaden energy ties with the world's fastest growing economy, Venezuela's foreign minister said. Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil supplier, is seeking to shift exports away from the U.S. and is in a position to supply growing demand from China, Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez said at a press conference in Caracas. Chavez, 50, will travel with Energy and Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez, a ministry spokesman said.

Dec 22: Putin hints at Yukos China link
China could play a part in developing the oil production assets of Russian firm Yukos, which were sold to a mystery bidder on Sunday. Speaking during a trip to Germany, President Putin suggested that China - a major buyer of Yukos oil - could play some rule in the unit's future under its new owner. According to the Financial Times, President Putin said that the Chinese firm had not taken part in the controversial auction but had recently signed a memorandum of co-operation with Gazprom regarding oil projects in Russia. Gazprom told the Financial Times: "There is a real energy boom in Asia and particularly in China. In developing Gazprom....the eastern direction has been identified as a priority."

Dec 23: China in Line as U.S. Rival for Canada Oil
China's thirst for oil has brought it to the doorstep of the United States. Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America. The deals may create unease for the first time since the 1970's in the traditionally smooth energy relationship between the United States and Canada.

And the US? "In effect," Heinberg writes, "China sells Americans cheap goods, then lends the money with which to buy them." And while Washington's emboldened and blinded idealogues wargame and construct a familiar flimsy case to justify aggression against Iran, China - and Russia, too - draw a line in the sand around Iran, and outflank the neocons on every front save for the military. And that gap can only close over the course of decades as the US bankrupts itself. Which puts the world in an extraordinarily precarious situation. But you already knew that.

For a metaphor, think of the solar life cycle.

If the United States is a main-sequence empire, then it has reached the red giant stage, having exhausted the resources of its youth and midlife. Its economy, its fiscal vitality, its moral capital are all spent. It is staking everything on the "full spectrum dominance" of its military, and it is burning that feverishly. Like a red giant, its imperial bloat is a sign of decay, not health. And its destiny is to fail. Collapse is inevitable. Possibly, given its size, into a black hole, which could suck the whole world in after it.

Even failing the worst case, this world is unsustainable, and should be unrecognizable in 50 years.

Final Thoughts on Gary Webb

I won't say "case closed," because that's positively Posnerian, but the best evidence now suggests that Gary Webb did indeed take his own life.

I believe a good working hypothesis for the Bush years is to assume that nothing is as it first appears. After all, nothing, neither substantial nor inconsequential, said by Bush or his thugs has been found true, and virtually every one of their official narratives is a tapestry of outrageous lies. I give no benefit of the doubt to this crowd. So when a terrorist attack serves the greater interests of the Grand Imperial Octopus, or potential threats to the cabal suffer accidental death or are said to have taken their own lives, my first assumption will continue to be, They Did It.

Naturally, with such a sweeping presumption, sometimes they won't have done it. Not in the actionable sense. And while it can be said the machinery of state and its MOCKINGBIRD media did kill Gary Webb, it does appear he did, indeed, pull the trigger of his own volition. (And yes, even twice: the first bullet missed his brain, and exited his jaw.)

Michael Ruppert has posted his thoughts on Webb's memorial service, and makes a vigorous case for the wounds having been self-inflicted. But it was Lisa Pease's heartfelt, well-told and sad account that settled the issue for me. (Pease makes a cameo in Dark Alliance by forwarding to Webb a 30-year old story that reveals his early critic, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, to have been a CIA asset.)

We don't want Gary Webb's death to have been a suicide. If he must be dead, then it's an odd comfort of sorts, conforming to our diminished expectations of justice, to imagine him a martyred hero. And though he's no less a hero, it doesn't seem that's the story Webb left us. So unless some evidence appears to overturn it, this is where my speculation regarding his death ends.

On the last page of Dark Alliance Webb wrote, "One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now."

The burden of bearing something like the truth while criminals in high places go unpunished is hard enough. Webb was punished for telling a truth that was never meant to be told. It crushed him, and it killed him. We can begin to honour his memory by recognizing the truth of his death, life and work, and passing it on. We dishonour his memory, and our own purpose, if we prefer to spin a speculative legend.

Davao City bomber Michael Meiring reported in Houston

Well now, this is fairly disturbing.

Do you know about Michael Meiring? I wrote about him in October here.

He's an American national, wanted in the Philippines for his part in bombing a hotel, who was possibly helping to wage a false-flag terror campaign to justify a US military presence in the country. He was spirited out of the country by the FBI shortly after wounding himself in a premature explosion.

The Philippine Star is reporting today that "the Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking the United States to locate its two nationals — Michael Meiring and his friend, Stephen Hughes — and conduct an investigation into their alleged participation in the bombing of a hotel in Davao City on May 16, 2002."

"Since both are US citizens and wanted by the Philippine authorities in connection with the bombing of the Evergreen Hotel in Davao City, which clearly appears to be an act of terrorism, I am certain the US government will not tolerate this terrorist act," Gonzalez said. The DOJ chief sought the support of the US, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, to track down Meiring and Hughes.

...

"If these persons were correctly suspected for acts of terrorism by Philippine authorities, they also pose threats to the United States government," Gonzalez said.


And look at this:

Gonzalez was furnished a copy of an investigation report on Meiring made by 11 News, a media organization in Texas, that said the suspected terrorist had been in Houston.

In its report, 11 News said Meiring was having his last name changed to Van de Meer for remarrying purposes last March. He made the application before the Harris County Family court in Houston. He listed a Houston address as residence where he lived with a woman for several months.

The 11 News said it was able to track down Meiring to a phone number with a California area code. He denied the charges, refused an on-camera interview and would not comment on record.

What to make of it? Maybe nothing, besides the familiar and unspoken story of the United States sheltering its own terrorists. But I know I'd be uncomfortable if Meiring were in my city. And seeing his name linked this week to Houston is doing nothing to raise my comfort level.

The annotated "German Guy"

A follow-up on the "German Guy" flap touched on in Saturday's post.

If this is a hoax, it is of a high order of sophistication.

"Why did Mr Wolfowitz pressure John Ashcroft to order an FBI closure of the investigation of the murder of nuclear physicist John Mullen, who, as we already know, had been briefed by a network contact man to provide an hypothetical schematic of a remote-controlled nuclear device to be detonated in an 'hypothetical' city 'the size of Houston'?"

Dec 14, 2004: Scientist's Death Blamed On Poisoning


Dr John Mullen

The death of a well known Chesterfield scientist has been ruled a murder.

In June, Dr. John Mullen complained that he didn't feel good. He was rushed to the hospital and within hours, the 67 year old was dead.

Dr. John Mullen was a nuclear physicist and a former McDonnell Douglas research scientist.

Toxicology reports are back and investigators have released the findings. They say high levels of arsenic were found in Mullen's system.


"Why did Mr Wolfowitz ask Avner Meir to provide Kamran Akhtar with video equipment and explicit instructions to film public buildings and vital civilian infrastructure in Houston, Atlanta and Dallas?"

Oct 8, 2004: Pakistani videotaper to plead guilty


Kamran Akhtar

Kamran Akhtar, detained in July after a police officer spotted him videotaping Charlotte's skyscrapers, has agreed to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors that could keep him behind bars for up to six months, his attorney said Thursday.

Other tapes in Akhtar's possession showed buildings in the downtown areas of Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas, authorities said.

The charges Akhtar faces carry maximum punishments of up to 33 years in prison. If federal authorities can link his activities to terrorism, the charges would be punishable by up to 55 years' imprisonment. But Akhtar has no criminal record, Miller said, and will likely only face a maximum of six months in prison.

Aug 12, 2004: Meet Kamran Akhtar
According to cops, Akhtar, who is a Pakistani citizen, was videotaping buildings in the downtown area of Charlotte, NC, which happens to be a major financial center of the U.S. (Who knew?) Akhtar allegedly also had videotape in his possession showing buildings in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and New Orleans that were apparently cased as well. Here's our question - if he's a tourist, why is he so interested in financial buildings? And if he's a terrorist, why is he so stupid?

"Mossad has committed a large number of crimes in Germany and we have been able to prove it. But our political masters always prevent us from finishing the job. You may have heard about Uwe Barschel who ran foul of Mossad? Murder made to look like suicide that was a classic Kidon killing. Or the Free Democrat leader Jürgen Möllemann who suffered an unfortunate accident when his parachute failed to open?"

1987: Uwe Barschel "suicide"


Uwe Barschel

CDU-politician, Uwe Barschel, was, according to ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, murdered in 1987 by a Mossad hit team in a Swiss Hotel. According to Ostrovsky, Barschel had to die because he disturbed Israeli arms trade with the Iranian regime and an Israeli training programmes for Iranian fighter pilots on the soil of "Schleswig-Hostein" (German state of which Uwe Barschel was Prime Minster, comparable with a US-governor). The murder of Uwe Barschel, despite Ostrovsky's revelations in his book "The Secret Mossad-File", is still today called "suicide".

June 5, 2003: German politician in death plunge


Jürgen Möllemann

One witness, who jumped from a plane at the same time as the politician, said all the group's parachutes had opened normally.

Mr Moellemann was "easily recognisable by the big letters JWM on his blue and yellow parachute," he said.

Then suddenly the chute broke free from Mr Moellemann's body, said the witness, himself an experienced skydiver.

"He must have detached it. At that stage in the descent that's all that could happen. There is no other possibility."

Mr Moellemann's spare chute then failed to open, and an automatic safety system, which would open it even if the parachutist had lost consciousness, did not activate it, the witness said.


"Why did Mr Wolfowitz order the assassination of an undercover CIA operative, Kamel Derwish, who had worked so faithfully for him by recruiting and importing Mossad-trained al-Qaeda agents under the codename 'Operation Haeremai'? Was it because Kamel Derwish was under investigation by dedicated FBI agents and thus exposed Wolfowitz to charges of treason and material conspiracy in planning acts of terrorism against the American people?"

Nov 13, 2002: In a show of superpower might, the CIA kills a Qaeda operative and his American ally in Yemen


Kamel Derwish

Had the United States taken out the terrorists with a well-aimed Hellfire missile? By Tuesday morning, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was not only confirming the story, he seemed to be boasting about it.

The story took a surprising twist when Yemeni officials told reporters that one of the men blown away by the Predator was a U.S. citizen. Kamel Derwish grew up in the grim industrial suburb of Lackawanna, N.Y., migrated with his family to Saudi Arabia, became swept up in radical Islam – and returned to upstate New York in the late 1990s.


"Why has Mr Wolfowitz provided Mossad super-spy Rafi Eytan with a free pass into the United States, despite a long-standing prohibition?"

Feb 14 2003: "Dirty" Rafi Eytan


Rafi Eytan

Rafi Eytan was once the controller of Jonathan Pollard, and there is a standing warrant for his arrest accordingly in the United States.

According to an Israeli source who has previously proven to be reliable, this Sharon henchman last week snuck into the United States under a phony Canadian passport and landed in Las Vegas, proceeding from that city to an unknown location in Ohio on Saturday.

His mission is suspected to be the setting up of a false-flag "Islamic" terrorist attack to drive the American populace over the edge with fear and so aid the "chickenhawk" faction in Washington and London to get their desperately desired Iraq war off the ground. Skeptics are asked to consider previous acts of betrayal by our alleged "allies" in the Mossad, who are responsible for the Lavon affair of the 1950s, and the above-mentioned Pollard affair.

Aug 17, 2003: Rafi Eitan Plotting New 9/11?
On July 30, United Press International intelligence correspondent Richard Sale reported that Rafi Eitan, the Israeli spymaster who recruited Jonathan Jay Pollard to spy against the United States, ``has reemerged on American soil and is being scrutinized by the FBI.'' Sale elaborated, ``According to federal law enforcement officials, Eitan has, for the last year or so, been traveling to the United States on an Israeli passport, but using an alias.

These sources told UPI that Eitan lands at Columbus, Ohio, and then moves about the Midwest, to cities such as Indianapolis. Eitan has been seen and photographed in the company of `known dealers who belong to a ring dealing in the drug ecstasy,' one federal law enforcement official said.''

In a followup UPI story on Aug. 7, Sale wrote, "U.S. officials said Eitan, at first described by former Israeli officials as being 'sidelined' and 'in mothballs' as far as Israel is concerned, has, in fact, been brought back into government life by Sharon who is employing him as a counter-terrorism adviser... 'We all thought he he
was in disgrace,' a federal law enforcement official said. 'We were wrong.''

Sale quoted from a June 1997 interview with Eitan by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in which the former chief of Mossad operations in Europe said, "I failed in the Pollard affair, just as I failed in other intelligence operations behind enemy lines. That is the lot of the intelligence officer who runs complex operations.'' Note Eitan's reference to the United States as "behind enemy lines.''


"Why did Mr Wolfowitz authorise a 120,000 dollar transfer to Frank Riley (also known as Terence Lawley) via the CIA-backed Mara Salvatruchas syndicate on April 14, 2004?"

Dec 14, 2004: Terror at the Border
Earlier this month, border patrol agents working near Brownsville arrested 14 people who entered the country illegally from Mexico. Why was this collar different from others? Among the group taken into custody was a man named Fakhrul Islam, who comes from the Muslim nation of Bangladesh.

Moreover, according to a report in the Brownsville Herald, federal court records indicate that a man arrested in the same group as Mr. Islam belongs to Mara Salvatruchas, a violent Salvadoran gang. U.S. law enforcement officials believe the gang is working with al-Qaeda to smuggle its operatives into the United States across the Mexican border.

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, a Democrat who represents the Corpus Christi and Brownsville areas, called the arrests alarming. Aside from serving as an entryway for terrorists, our porous border with Mexico could be a conduit for deadly materials. Time magazine has cited a report circulating among U.S. officials that quotes a top al-Qaeda prisoner as saying the terrorist group is trying to smuggle nuclear material across the U.S. border.

Sept 10, 2004: Can Terrorist Gang Members be Found in Mexican Prisons?
They are called the Mara Salvatruchas. A gang from El Salvador. Its' members are said to be dangerous and vicious. They, along with Honduran gangs are reportedly being trained by al Qaeda terrorists to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico.

But there is no doubt they are in the U.S. The tell tale signs can be see on walls in many U.S. cities. The gangs initials M.S. followed by the numbers 13, 14 and 18.

Despite the conflicting reports Mexican authorities here tell us they will keep the United States advised if they see anyone coming from central America who are members of a gang or any other suspicious characters.


"Houston has been primed for months via deliberate mismanagement, incompetence, corruption and embezzlement at its FEMA-independent Emergency Center. The police and fire services have been deliberately and systematically sabotaged and thrown into administrative chaos so as to ensure maximum fatalities in the aftermath of the detonation. However, the existence of the center will provide the Bush administration with a 'we did everything we could' excuse."

Dec 12, 2004: Mismanagement and system failures at the Houston Emergency Center are creating a crisis

After more than a year of operation, a project that was touted to become another of the our city's shining jewels has turned out to be just another hyped-up monument to mismanagement and malfeasance.

The Houston Emergency Center was conceived as a multimillion dollar, state-of the-art, high-tech, low-maintenance emergency communications center. But it has been a deep and bitter disappointment.

The promoted cost savings anticipated by consolidating all emergency dispatch functions under one roof are, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. The dispatch center, bought (or more accurately, leased) and paid for, remains, as one Houston City Council member described it, a work in progress.

Why is the problem-plagued dispatch center still a center of controversy? Why has the local affiliate of the largest police labor organization in the nation refused to lift last year's vote of no confidence? Why have veteran dispatchers, call takers and supervisors chosen to retire early or seek employment elsewhere in droves?


"No one was more devastated by the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon than my colleagues at the BND. Everything they had predicted transpired exactly as they thought it would. Please try to imagine that feeling as you watch those towers tumble and you see the men responsible for those horrific crimes winking mischieviously into a television camera, blaming a (CIA) contract man sitting in a dirt hole in Afghanistan. The only consolation for us was that the French too had some information that tallied with ours, and Chirac (privately) informed his deputies that he was not going to allow the Americans to hoodwink his executive."

Nov 1, 2001: CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July

Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.

Two stories and one nightmare

NBC has the first picture of Tariq Aziz in custody (or rather did; as I post, the story appears to have been removed), and crows, "Once Saddam's tireless defender, Aziz is now singing a very different tune, to please his new keeper." It will be amusing, in that now familiar bitter way, to observe how the "pundits," who once wouldn't have taken Aziz's word for anything, are suddenly happy to swallow every word as gospel. Particulary since, regarding the UN oil-for-food fraud investigation, "US officials say Aziz already has implicated the French."

Aziz is a survivor, and still adept at picking up a tune.

Associated Press is reporting that, according to a nationwide survey conducted by Cornell University, "nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans." To be precise, 44%.

Researchers found that Republicans, the "religious," and those who pay considerable attention to television news, were more likely to favour the curtailing of rights. More than a quarter of those surveyed "supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government." Such measures are about to be beta tested in Fallujah, where residents will be "photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards," which they are to wear "in plain sight at all times."

Remarking on the results of the survey, Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society, said "The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface." Interface? Bray is still speaking the language of the Clinton years. That velvet glove fell to the ground in the collapse of the towers. When the next synthetic terror attack rocks America and the addled populace become glued to Showdown: Iran, Bray will find his efforts to interface rebuffed like the President in Independence Day, when he asked the alien "What do you want us to do?"

More than two years ago, a Jewish friend said solemly he expected a new Holocaust, and that the Arab people would be the victims.

"Die," said the alien.

Finally, here's something I hestitate to post, but will, and will likely regret it. Because it's probably, hopefully, entirely bullshit.

Several days ago on the web board of Godlikeproductions, a new poster appeared calling himself "German Guy." (Here is the thread, but be warned: because he is unregistered anyone is able to post under the name, and he has attracted several obvious copycats and hoaxers. Also, the thread is now well over 1,000 posts long, most of them chaff and nonsense.) He said he was a recently retired agent of the BND, with sensitive information regarding an impending staged nuclear attack on American soil. Specifically, Houston, December 27, perpetrated by what he called the "Hidden Hand" faction of the CIA, Mossad and SAS.

I should note right now that at least two respondents on "German Guy"'s thread have already, and separately, taken this threat warning to the FBI.

The website went down Friday night, and at the time of this posting is not up again. It's likely something as innocuous as a problem with the server. However, as I was reading German Guy's posts, I entertained the possibility that he really was BND, and weighed the chances of the site remaining up in that event. So I archived the thread. [On edit, the site is up again.]

I know it may appear otherwise, but I don't mean to be unduly alarmist. The thing is, how do we know what's "unduly"? It's not like the sky isn't falling.

Even if not genuine, German Guy makes a fascinating read - doom porn, I guess that would make it - and he's clearly done his cloak and dagger homework.

Here are some excerpts:

To 9-11. I personally (and many within the German intelligence services) believe that 9-11 was an internal operation planned and executed by an extreme pro-Israel faction within the American government and intelligence services. The technicalities evident in both planning, timing and precision flying point to the use of technologies not available to so-called terrorist groups.

We believe that the relationship between the so-called al-Qaeda group (really the Muslim Brotherhood which is financed by the British) and the Israeli intelligence services is very complicated, but there is an alliance of convenience. We ran a personality profile on some of the alleged hijackers, analysed handwriting and applied linguistic methodologies, and thus believe that Atta was a Mossad asset.

There is also an enabling aspect on the part of the Pakistani intelligence services, which is a clone of the CIA. Yesterday Musharraf told your media that he had done everything possible to destroy the Taliban enclave in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a lie. Neither the Americans nor the Pakistanis have any intention of breaking the Afghan rebel forces, as they will need them to become more extreme and regain the coüntry at a future date.

I think it would be very interesting to see Osama bin Laden and Mr Wolfowitz in a room together privately, for I am sure they would kiss each other on the cheeks as brothers under the skin with roughly the same general project, though sharply divergent goals.

...

It seems that a grouping of international corporate entities and financial institutions have decided that America at this late stage is only good for projecting military force, and so it will use up American resources to advance its own agenda until there is not much left of American power and credibility.

...

Wolfowitz is also running a Mossad agent in the Houston area called Avner Meir, whose present status is unknown, but we believe he is currently holding a visitor´s visa. His job is to facilitate the smuggling of Muslims (any Muslims will do) across the Mexican border and provide them with accomodation and distress funds under the asuspices of a fake charitable organisation. We suspect that Meir, also a master forger, will provide the unwitting Muslims with forged US passports and driving licences, plenty of Muslim literature, commendations and enough money to be "seen and remembered".

This was the basis of my discussions with American diplomatic personnel in Frankfurt yesterday, both of whom have been locked in secret discussions with the German government over, among many other things, their application for political refugee status in the event of making this known to the media.

The far side of the CIA and Mossad have been ordered to drop any plans they may have had for bombing the financial district of Frankfurt, including the European Central Bank. The Wolfowitz Network has decided that the Houston detonation must take priority over everything else.

All of our intercepts, field information and disclosures from former (and not so former!) US diplomatic personnel, tell us that the American people are being set up for another, but even more devastating, 9-11 tragedy in which a tiny group of people will gain enormously at the expense of the rest of the world.

A poster "John Doe," claiming to have worked for Canadian intelligence and attached for a time to the BND, added this:

You can believe the "German Guy". I have another cloak-and-dagger pseudonymn to add the roster. John Doe. I operate under the auspices of CSIS. Bewteen 2000 and 2001, I was attached to the Organisierte Kriminalität under the BND. We were investigating Mossad ha-Mossad le-Modiin ule-Tafkidim Meyuhadim connections to Muslim-based terrorist cells in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. In September of 2001 just as we were closing in on a Mossad agent, the operation was shut down by order from Pullach. All agents were reassigned. I was sent back to Ottawa - and then later reassigned to Canadian Consulate in Bejing. But while attached to the BND, I did overhear some intel chatter regarding late December, 2004. Although only bits and pieces (sound byte here and there - which I´ve been formally trained to decipher when in a framed context), it appears to relate to a multi-intel-agency operation involving a number of Western governments, including the CIA which initiated the op. Target unknown. Weapon and delivery system unknown. However, the operation has been named as ´Feuerball´ by the BND. German for fireball. As my connections to the BND have been severed and I have no formal working relationship with CIA (only lower level FBI), there´s not much I can offer. Hopefully the German insider may pass along some more sound bytes as the time is nearing closer.

To which "German Guy" replied:

I retired shortly before the operation you mentioned. I take it you would have been part of a three-way operation since the local state Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Agency for the Protection of the Constitution) likes to stick its bureaucratic nose in wherever it can :-)

Yes, Sir, welcome to the world of politically compromised intelligence with first-class operatives let down by poor management structures. No small coincidence that Mossad was on the receiving end.

This was not the main reason I took early retirement (mainly my health) but it was a big consideration.

Mossad has committed a large number of crimes in Germany and we have been able to prove it. But our political masters always prevent us from finishing the job. You may have heard about Uwe Barschel who ran foul of Mossad? Murder made to look like suicide that was a classic Kidon killing. Or the Free Democrat leader Jürgen Möllemann who suffered an unfortunate accident when his parachute failed to open? (Strange that he had begun to develop an outspoken criticism of Israel´s West Bank policies!)

Now the Metsada in Israel are directing their Katsa operatives (or Sayan helpers) to stir up muslims in Germany, hoping to provoke tensions and ill feelings between the communities, which is a shame because we have very good mixed culture relations here.

You are probably correct in identifying the codename ´Feuerball´ or similar to the anticipated next wave of "terrorist" activity, although I cannot confirm that personally. There exists at present some rivalry between Pullach and the BND presence in Berlin (I was against the move to Berlin and was quite outspoken on that) and they even have rival codewords for the same projects.

I still keep in touch with some of my colleagues and we continue to swap notes (over a beer or several :-), and I still have good contacts to some Americans I used to work with. Furthermore I work as a hobbyist with an old partner who is a technical computer genius and we network with other retired or resigned BND service personnel.

Let me tell you what we fear most - and this comes out of our intercepts. We do not fear so-called Arab "terrorists". We fear Mossad and we fear some of the groups that work on the far side of the CIA.

Mr Rumsfeld once explained his "mad dog" theory of international posturing, saying that an unpredicatble America would be an America respected out of fear. Well he is wrong. Because after a while the unpredictability becomes eminently predictable and all vanishes into thin air.

And these are his final remarks before the site went down:

If I would be allowed to spend some time with members of your Congress, I would perhaps be inclined to ask those not compromised by the Wolfowitz network and the Israeli government a number of very important questions:

Why has the FBI failed to investigate the role played by Mr Wolfowitz in illegally helping Kamran Akhtar (a.k.a. Kamran Shaikh) with cover and technical support immediately after the CIA-backed Mara Salvatruchas had brought him safely across the Mexican border and shortly before the arrest of Akhtar by Charlotte City police on July 20?

Why did Mr Wolfowitz ask Avner Meir to provide Kamran Akhtar with video equipment and explicit instructions to film public buildings and vital civilian infrastructure in Houston, Atlanta and Dallas?

Why did Mr Wolfowitz order the assassination of an undercover CIA operative, Kamel Derwish, who had worked so faithfully for him by recruiting and importing Mossad-trained al-Qaeda agents under the codename "Operation Haeremai"? Was it because Kamel Derwish was under investigation by dedicated FBI agents and thus exposed Wolfowitz to charges of treason and material conspiracy in planning acts of terrorism against the American people?

Why has Mr Wolfowitz provided Mossad super-spy Rafi Eytan with a free pass into the United States, despite a long-standing prohibition?

Why does Rafi Eytan regularly send Mr Wolfowitz highly irreverent childlike poems written in the Hebrew language and interlaced with Kabbalistic references in alternating 3-7-3 and 12-4-12 sequences? Why does Rafi Eytan periodically phone Mr Wolfowitz at his private residence and speak to him in the voice of a little girl?

Why did Mr Wolfowitz authorise a 120,000 dollar transfer to Frank Riley (also known as Terence Lawley) via the CIA-backed Mara Salvatruchas syndicate on April 14, 2004?

Why did Mr Wolfowitz pressure John Ashcroft to order an FBI closure of the investigation of the murder of nuclear physicist John Mullen, who, as we already know, had been briefed by a network contact man to provide an hypothetical schematic of a remote-controlled nuclear device to be detonated in an "hypothetical" city "the size of Houston"?

Probably nothing but an artful and informed lie. But as Steve Earle sings in Conspiracy Theory, "once you've added every little lie together You finally find the truth was always waiting there."

And in the unlikely event it's more, then it's prudent to establish a record now.

"The Last North American Career Journalist"

Al Giordano of Narconews has posted a brilliant and absolutely heartbreaking tribute to his friend and fellow authentic journalist, Gary Webb, here.

One of the many goddamn shames about this tragedy is that Webb's death could come to overshadow his life and work. It's what happens with our slain heroes. The circumstances of their sudden passing - whether they be lonegunman'd, accident'd or suicide'd - often become our first thoughts about these figures whose lives meant a better world. And that's the legacy of those who took their lives, not the legacy for which they deserve to be best remembered. Death effaces life, mystery obfuscates truth, and the fuckers win again.

Giordano does not question the verdict of suicide. I'm unpersuaded. But while we need to seek the truth about his death - two shotgun blasts to the head? - what I admire about Giordano's piece is that the truth of Webb's life remains paramount.

An excerpt, but it deserves to be read as a whole:

Gary never wrote with mere ink or pixels. Gary opened up a vein every time he sat down to tell us a new truth and he signed his byline, always, in blood. If you think that his suicide did not send as powerful a message as the stories he investigated and penned in life, think again: Gary was The Last North American Career Journalist. He presided over a transitional era and his death marks the end of that era. Fellow and sister journalists: The canary has died in the coal mine. Run out of that mine now, and seek alternate routes to truth-telling. There is no longer room for us inside the corporate machine.

All over the world he is mourned today. The compañeros here in Chiapas came to me last night. “You knew him. He worked for you. Did he ever come here? Did he know about us?” As they peppered me with questions I retreated far into myself. Time and space stopped, as it has before in this deep green tropical jungle. I could see it – the bullet (two bullets say the coroner: Gary was nothing if not thorough and persistent; imagine for a moment what strength it took to get off the second round) off in the distance somewhere over California, those bullets, the first one fired by that traitor-to-journalism-and-truth Jerry Ceppos in San Jose, those bullets that came out the other side of Gary’s cranium in Sacramento last week and took a southern turn toward me. And when they are done with me they will come for you. I could see and hear them heading my way last night and so today I type these words in a hurry so as to shoot back before my brains, too, are splattered on the page of history.

To be an Authentic Journalist in 2004 is to be a soldier at war. When a hero dies in battle first we must drape the coffin, sound the slow, sad bugle song of Taps, and remember this great man who died fighting for all of us. Among the soldiers I have known in my foxhole, there were none finer, more effective in a firefight, than Gary. He was a god among insects, and a particularly important god among gods (shortly before his death, Gary told our colleague Bill Conroy that he had applied for a reporter’s job at the San Antonio Express-News and that the newspaper never even acknowledged his application: In the immortal words of Jonathan Swift, “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.”)

...

I ask the compañeros here in Chiapas – they loved Gary, too - what I should do now: What can be done? I can’t bring Gary back and neither can you. Not even the compañeros, with all the revolutionary magic and ancient knowledge they can muster, can bring back Gary Webb: although they could have, as they brought me back seven years ago, if only we and I had cared enough about Gary to drag him by the hand to them, to have been alert that when he lost his job he was at risk, to have paid enough attention to have seen him sinking toward the grave, to have supported anybody who still loved him intimately to be able to stick with him, to have raised him the money so that he would not have lost his sense of place.

The compañeros gave me the answer to my question. What to do about the early death of Gary Webb? Their answer was so simple, so clear, that I kick myself for not having realized it immediately.

The answer: “Do what he did. Do what Gary would have done today if he were still alive.”

Mike Ruppert writes that "I myself might have committed suicide in 1996 - broke, divorced and having given up all hope of making people listen - had it not been for Gary Webb." Wisely, he adds, "For some years now it has been the farthest thing from my mind." Perhaps it would be prudent for the few authentic journalists left standing in America to follow Ruppert's example, and go on record regarding their disinclination to taking their own lives.

Ruppert concludes:

I am going to the funeral and I will be asking questions in Sacramento. Given the disproportionate number of "suicides" of authors and journalists who have covered such stories, and the mainstream's horrendously dishonest coverage of such events, it is right to see if there are grounds to be cautiously suspicious of these accounts. But it is also right to avoid hysteria and unsupported conclusions until there are solid reasons to suspect foul play.

Gary would have wanted us all to do this by the numbers, patiently and thoroughly. That was his style. That was why he was so good.

When funeral arrangements are announced FTW will publish them and we encourage all of our subscribers to send flowers, write letters and show their thanks to this man who changed all of our lives forever.

It wouldn't hurt if you wanted to let the L.A. Times know what you think of their obituary.

Sleep well, Gary. Wherever men and women of honor gather together from now on, your name will be spoken with reverence, respect and gratitude.

Evidence mounts...

...that Gary Webb was murdered.

From Alex Jones:

Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday morning.

...

Ricky Ross, one of Gary Webb's primary sources had spoken to Gary in the days before his death. Gary told Ricky that he had seen men scaling down the pipes outside his home and that they were obviously not burglars but 'government people'. Gary also told Ricky that he had been receiving death threats and was being regularly followed. It was also mentioned that Gary was working on a new story concerning the CIA and drug trafficking.

Gary described the men around his home as 'professionals' who jumped from his balcony and ran away when Gary confronted them

...

Original Associated Press reports stated that Webb had died of gunshot wounds (plural) to the face. This was later changed to 'single gunshot wound' when people began to question how or why a man would shoot himself in the face twice. This represents a concentrated effort to cover up the nature of Webb's death. There have also been reports that the coroner on the scene had originally reported 'multiple gunshot wounds' but later changed his story.

...

Former DEA agent Cele Castillo concurs that Webb was murdered and that in such a "revenge hit" situation it was common in his experience that the murderers would have likely talked to Webb at length about how and why they were about to kill him.

This is the first I'd seen that Webb was working on a new CIA/drug story. But my gut goes with Castillo's take of a "revenge hit."

...that the Madrid bombing was an inside job.

From Reuters:

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero accused the former government of deceiving the public between the March 11 Madrid train bombings and March 14 elections and of erasing computer records concerning that period.

"It was all deceit. It was massive deceit," Zapatero told a parliamentary commission Monday. He said the former government deceived the public by blaming the train bombings, which killed 191 people, on Basque separatist guerrilla group ETA. Investigators later determined that Islamic militants were responsible for the attacks.

I can't think of a better time to remember this Times of London story from last Spring:

Bomb squad link in Spanish blasts

The man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid was in possession of the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad, it emerged yesterday.

Emilio Suárez Trashorras, who is alleged to have supplied 200kg of dynamite used in the bombs, had obtained the number of Juan Jesús Sánchez Manzano, the head of Tedax.

The revelation has raised fresh concerns in Madrid about links between those held responsible for the March bombings, which killed 190 people, and Spain’s security services, and shortcomings in the police investigation. Señor Suárez Trashorras and two other men implicated in the bombings have already been identified as police informers. Other members of the group had evaded police surveillance, despite concerns within the security services about their activities and evidence of their association with al-Qaeda.

The telephone number of Señor Sánchez Manzano was contained in a Civil Guard dossier handed to Juan del Olmo, the investigating judge, at the National Court in Madrid. The number was written on a piece of paper found in the possession of Carmen Toro, the wife of Señor Suárez Trashorras. Both are in custody accused of supplying dynamite used in the Madrid bombs.

...that the US and Pakistan are colluding to shelter Osama bin Laden.

From The Telegraph:

US is forced to abandon hunt for bin Laden

Three years after Osama bin Laden fled American bombs in his Tora Bora hideout, the search for the world's most wanted man has all but come to a halt because of Pakistan's refusal to permit cross-border raids from Afghanistan, according to CIA officials.

Washington has downgraded its efforts to catch the al-Qa'eda leader in Afghanistan, from where he supervised the September 11 attacks, because it has become convinced that he is hiding in Pakistan's virtually lawless Tribal Areas, which hug the 1,200-mile frontier.

Islamabad refuses to permit cross-border pursuits by US special forces based in Afghanistan's mountainous frontier regions, agency officials told the New York Times.

Please, someone, how absurd is this story?

Do you recall the post-9/11 chest thumping? Richard Armitage, it was said, had given Pakistan a you're-with-us-or-against-us ultimatum. To ISI chief and Mohammed Atta's bagman Mahmood Ahmed, no less. The outcome of this shadow play was that Pakistan had chosen "wisely," and was fully onside in the "War on Terror."

And now? Well, Pakistan won't let us in, so we have no choice but to give up the hunt for bin Laden.

Anyone else see a lot of winking going on here?

"Give me a good reason"

Here's a follow-up of this story regarding the recovery of at least three of the four black boxes of the World Trade Center attacks in the rubble of ground zero. In the telling of the official story, of course, the boxes were never found. (Are we supposed to believe they were vaporized or melted, even though they are located in the rear of the aircraft, and subjected to stress tests more severe than the forces they encountered on September 11? What an imagination.)

A 9-11 rescue worker recently came forward to say he was told by FBI agents to “keep my mouth shut” about one of the “black boxes” a fellow firefighter helped locate at ground zero, contradicting the official story that none of the flight and cockpit data recorders were ever recovered in the wreckage of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.

Honorary firefighter Mike Bellone claims he was approached by unknown bureau agents a short time after he and his partner, Nicholas DeMasi, a retired New York firefighter, found three of the four “black boxes” among the WTC rubble before January 2002.

...

“They confronted me and told me to not to say anything,” recalled Bellone, referring to one of three reddish-orange boxes with two white stripes he saw in the back of DeMasi’s ATV. “I said, ‘Give me a good reason.’ When they couldn’t, I told them I wouldn’t shut up about it.

“Why should I? I have nothing to hide and nothing to gain. It’s the truth, and Nick and I are sticking to our story as we always have.”

I like that attitude: "I said, 'Give me a good reason.'" The honest simplicity of it probably caught the agents off guard. They didn't have a cover story ready. Probably they themselves weren't aware why the discovery of the black boxes needed to be hidden. Need-to-know, and all that.

I think that's what we should be saying, just about all the time now: "Give me a good reason!" Because they haven't yet, about virtually anything. And we shouldn't shut up, either, when we don't get one.