ground zero Wall St.		… When the WTC towers were built, there was extensive controversy over their safety in emergencies. The NYC Fire Dept protested, as did a host of other agencies & professional associations. The buildings were constructed in bulk & height far in excess of what municipal constuction & zoning codes allowed. However, the Port Authority, a quasi-governmental agency with exceptional powers inherited from the regime of Robt. Moses, was specifically exempt from compliance with municipal codes. Real estate, construction and finance industries were powerful supporters of the project. Aside, I add that in 30 some years of examining NY buildings, I have found none, zero, which are fully compliant with municipal building codes. It is a terrible, little reported scandal of the city in which it is considered to be bad business to fully comply with codes. … NYC has an entire industry, separate from design professionals, which negotiates compliance due to large costs involved and what are believed to be arcane, even corrupt provisions in regulations. … ¹     NYC architect John Young, Cryptome National Science Foundation funded 8 research projects to probe the WTC catastrophe. American Society of Civil Engineers is sponsoring several studies of the site. Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Structural Engineers established an investigative team to analyze the disaster 10.9.01   Steven Ashley Scientific American ¹ ² ³ Genelle Guzman dropped 13 stories as the building collapsed, but survived, one of only 2 civilians to be pulled alive from the rubble. After 27 hours trapped with her legs crushed and pinned under rubble, she was rescued when she heard a search party, calling "do you see the light?" 10.24.02   Wm Langewiesche American Ground Fed to provide funds to banks 9.11.01   AP "APO/Attacks-Fed" Wash.D.C.   The Federal Reserve, seeking to provide assurances that the nation's banking system will be protected following the terrorist attacks, said Tuesday it stood ready to provide additional money to banks if needed. "The Federal Reserve System is open … operating. The discount window is available to meet liquidity needs," the Fed said in a 2 sentence statement. The promise to supply additional money to the banking system was similar to a pledge that the Fed issued on the morning after the Oct. 1987 stock market crash, when the market plunged by more than 500 points in one day of trading. That statement in 1987 was given a large amount of credit for helping to restore calm to badly shaken financial markets. Before the statement was released, Fed officials said Greenspan was out of the country attending a banking conference in Switzerland but was being kept apprised of developments. Fed vice Chair Roger Ferguson, No.2 Fed official, was monitoring banking & financial market developments along with a team of top Fed officials. The 1987 crash occurred only 2 months after Greenspan was sworn in as Fed chair. He received a large amount of praise for his handling of that financial crisis. His quick response in letting banks know that they should keep lending despite the huge loses investors had suffered on Wall St was credited with helping spur a stock market rebound. While the Oct. 1929 stock market crash helped usher in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Greenspan's quick response in 1987 helped to stabilize the stock market and keep the country out of a recession. Fed spokesman Dave Skidmore said Greenspan was taking part in a regularly scheduled meeting of the Bank for Intl Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. The bank serves as a coordinating body for central banks around the world. Skidmore refused to discuss whether extra security measures were being deployed to protect Greenspan in light of the attacks or when he would return to Washington. "We don't discuss or provide details of his travel plans at any time for security reasons," said Skidmore. Greenspan travels with a security detail supplied by the Fed. As the Fed sought to reassure the country that the nation's banking system was safe, officials at the Securities & Exchange Commission issued a statement saying that they supported the decision by stock exchanges to halt trading Tuesday. SEC chair Harvey Pitt said his agency had been "in constant communications with each of our organized security markets & exchanges. As a safety precaution while the tragic events of today are sorted out, securities markets have decided not to open for trading today." Pitt said regulators strongly support this decision. "It is a responsible course of action in light of the current situation. We are continuing to monitor the situation, along with the securities markets, and investors should be assured that the disruption to normal trading patterns is a temporary phenomenon; trading will resume as soon as it is practicable to do so. We will keep the public advised," Pitt said.
new Carlyle Group the plan oil money martial law Homeland Sec.Dir T.Ridge Thos. Kean Richard Clarke brownwash parade forewarning Bernard Kerik simulation hawala banking Muslim alms Nauru Wahhabi anger of the damned Arabia Op.TIPS suspects Military Commissions Act coverage profiteers China Rep. C.McKinney references Op. Northwoods 1962 Osama binLaden FISA court Abdul Haq Genelle Guzman terrorists harbored by U.S. IWLU SaPPi NCPC DNI Afghanistan Pakistan Indonesia & SEAsia John O'Neill Sec.State Powell R.Armitage Syria T.McVeigh Aidid åum shinrikyo Castano Colombia Montesinos Christopher Boyce Rep. D.Rohrbacher R-CA budget 1.23.02 peace Cointelpro ephemera archive ryecatching   ª ² Nuoviso.com re 'noble' lies Paul Thompson UnansweredQuestions.org 911Skeptics Unite Popular Mechanics disinformers & DEW debunked Village Voice Loose Change Aftermath: unanswered questions Martial Law 9-11 Snowshoe Films Killtown Phil Jayhan Jimmy Walter Power Hour 911proof David Ray Griffin terrorize.dk Pentagon Strike 150 subpoenas media chorus Donna Marsh O'Connor My Pet Goat W.G. Tarpley re synthesis new Paki spooks pay 9.11.01 leader   with drug profits Peter Dale Scott Bob Graham Paki complicity Richard Clarke Orlando Bosch Al Martin Robert Baer contrary paradigm GWU NSA sourcebooks Smithsonian CCR David Leffler Afghan govt 'Study of Revenge' L.Mylroie
"There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing." ex•Sec.State Lawrence Eagleburger, CNN 9.11.01 est. 80% of U.S. mosques under control of Wahhabi imams Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, nee Lebanon now in U.S. 9.11.01   20K dead in 99 minutes est. Hunter S. Thompson 10:10 am   A portion of the Pentagon collapses.   per CNN 10:08 am   Secret Service agents armed with automatic rifles deployed into Lafayette Park across from White House. First year pilot on American Eagle, commuter arm of American Airlines, receives around $15K/yr in annual pay per Michael Moore Twin terror attacks stagger U.S. 9.11.01   MSN Money CNBC "Market Dispatches" …   Buildings shut down; Fed open The attacks that paralyzed NYC & DC also shut down buildings & offices across the nation. But the Federal Reserve stayed open. Across the country, skyscrapers like Chicago's Sears Trade tower were evacuated as a precaution. Buildings were also evacuated in London. Ford was closing & evacuating its Dearborn MI offices. Major league baseball also shut down for the day, canceling games across the country. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is not currently at the Fed's Washington building, the central bank said on Tuesday following attacks. "The chairman is not at the board," said Fed spokesman David Skidmore. "We do not discuss or provide details of his travel plans." CNBC reported Greenspan was safe and that he was still in Basel, Switzerland, where he had been attending a central bankers' meeting. U.S. Federal Reserve said it was open & operating and that its discount window will provide liquidity to financial markets as needed.   Bond market closes Stock trading never opened this morning, and U.S. Treasuries were frozen at higher levels this morning when the Bond Market Association recommended an immediate close. Prices had opened mixed with long-dated securities on the weaker side, but the disaster that subsequently engulfed downtown Manhattan inspired a flight to quality that pushed prices of U.S. govt debt higher. In Europe, shares in insurers plunged after the landmark attacks, a possible sign of what will happen when U.S. markets eventually reopen. Dow Jones European Stoxx insurance sector <.SXIP> fell 8.5%, while the Eurotop insurance index dived 9.64%. Insurance companies could face claims running into billions of dollars stemming from the incident. A U.S. insurance industry official told Reuters damage could cost insurers billions of dollars. U.S. airlines could face similar claims.   Dollar keeps sliding, gold and oil surge The dollar and some bonds continue to trade, because they are not bound to any particular exchange. By midday, the dollar lost about 1% against the euro, 1.5% against the Japanese yen and more than 2% versus the Swiss franc. Global investors clearly are parking their money in countries perceived as removed from today's attacks. Commodities prices have soared. Benchmark crude-oil futures surged about $1.85 to close at $29.30, lifted by knee-jerk fears of an oil shortage. And gold, traditionally viewed as the safest hedge against market adversity, soared some $17 an ounce in European trade. "There is panic buying of metals, gold & oil; it is complete pandemonium," said Standard Bank London metals analyst Robin Bhar. "Gold & oil have gone up and it is a drive toward safe haven territory."   European stock indexes slide Pan-European FTSE Eurotop 300 has lost 4.5&*#37, of its value, and indexes in major European capitals were lower. Some European markets closed temporarily, while others remained open.   Insurance burden will be huge Human & political damage of today's attack is impossible to calculate, but one corporate casualty is sure to be the insurance industry. Claims will easily reach into the billions of dollars, per industry experts quoted by news services. "It is safe to assume claims will be in the billions," Insurance Information Inst. chief economist Robert Hartwig told Reuters. He says losses from intentional attacks generally would be covered. Among the largest property/casualty insurers are AIG, Allianz & Allstate.

Money trail a long & winding road Tracing terrorists' funds hard; Economic weapons backfire. 9.21.01   Warren Vieth L.A.Times WASHINGTON … U.S. is dangling financial aid & trade concessions for nations that cooperate and economic sanctions & a new crackdown on terrorist fund-raising & money-laundering for those that don't. On Wednesday, the Treasury and Justice departments released a report on a revised national strategy for combating money-laundering, and efforts to stamp out schemes that finance terrorism. The Treasury Department is trying to understand, infiltrate and disrupt the multinational financial networks used by followers of Osama bin Laden and other known and suspected terrorists. … Treasury undersecretary Jimmy Gurule said. … to seal off Afghanistan's already shuttered economy are likely to increase suffering in one of the world's poorest nations, officials said. Past efforts to sever financial lifelines of terrorist organizations have proven generally ineffective because the money flows are difficult to detect. More than that, a successful crackdown requires the cooperation of govts that are not among America's staunchest supporters. … economic weapons fall into two broad categories: carrots & sticks directed at other govts, and search & destroy missions aimed at terrorists themselves. Perhaps no country has more to gain than Pakistan, … Pakistan's finance minister, Shaukat Aziz, has said he expects his country's participation to yield important economic benefits: expanded access to overseas markets, additional financial aid and help with restructuring its crushing foreign debt. In addition, the United States may be willing to ease trade restrictions imposed on Pakistan and India in an effort to deter the two countries from engaging in a nuclear arms race. & In Afghanistan, there's almost nothing left to cut off, & Commerce Sec. Don Evans in CNN interview. "If they don't want to cooperate and don't want to be on our side, there are things and measures that we can take, sanctions or other kind of barriers to our markets here." [ schoolyard racketeering ] … former senior State Dept official who requested anonymity. "It is far preferable to find common areas of cooperation & agreement." … other form of economic warfare is global sleuthing that administration's new terrorist tracking center is designed to conduct. Treasury undersecretary Gurule said the center had begun working up "financial profiles" of some of the suspects in last week's attacks to determine where their funding came from. One possibility, he said, is a direct link to ostensibly charitable foundations diverting receipts to terrorist groups. … testimony in the trial of a suspect linked to the 1998 bombings of 2 U.S. embassies in Africa, Bin Laden presides over a multinational business conglomerate as well as a global terrorist network. One witness said his holdings incl firms involved in construction, agriculture, import-export & currency exchange. Money generated by the businesses was deposited in banks in Sudan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and London, the witness said. Gurule said the Treasury & Justice Depts were working to draft legislation that would strengthen their ability to combat money-laundering, incl authorizing the IRS to open its files to counter-terrorism investigators. … unlikely to eradicate terrorism, experts said. The objective, they said, is containment. … goal: disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, dismember." EU steps up war on terror funding Banks will be asked to provide suspects' details 10.16.01   BBC The European Union has announced a major crackdown on money-laundering, as ministers meet to discuss anti- terrorism measures in the wake of 9.11.01. The new measures will mean that a whole range of professionals, incl accountants, estate agents and lawyers, will be required to report any "suspicious transactions" they come across. Even casino owners and traders in precious stones would have to be on alert. The plans to tighten the rules have been under discussion for more than 2 years, but have been given added urgency by the terrorist attacks. They will have to be ratified by ministers and the European parliament before taking effect in some 18 months. "We call on the rest of the world, incl offshore centres, to implement regulations requiring institutions to report suspicious assets," said Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer. "We should stand shoulder to shoulder to root out the financial lifeblood of terrorism." The move comes as European ministers of finance, home affairs and justice hold a series of meetings in Luxembourg to discuss how their efforts to combat terrorism are taking shape. As the war on terror finances is stepped up, ministers are also working on joint ways to: Share information on bank accounts believed to be held by criminals. Take punitive action against states which are not seen as adhering to international norms on combatting money-laundering, with the Philippines and the tiny Pacific island of Nauru at the top of the list. Follow up the inquiries into whether the 11 September terrorists also profited from their crimes by investing in key shares before the attacks, and selling them afterwards. The BBC's Patrick Bartlett in Luxembourg says there has been no conclusive proof that terrorists played the markets, despite strong rumours. "There is no clear pattern emerging," he said. "It is proving difficult to substantiate the claims." He says that the sanctions under discussion might include a ban on European banks opening branches in countries suspected of holding funds for terrorists' use. An EU official told the French news agency AFP that the 15 EU states had agreed to impose penalties on third countries considered "particularly unco-operative" in fighting money-laundering. A total of 19 countries have already been identified as "unco-operative", according to AFP. 13 countries seeking EU membership will also have to adhere to the money-laundering regulations, including Hungary, which is currently on the blacklist of suspect countries. Russia has also been named as problematic. At a separate meeting this evening, attended only by justice ministers and interior ministers, proposals for an EU-wide definition of terrorism and an EU-wide arrest warrant will be under discussion, but no decisions are expected, a commission spokesman said. FBI following S.D. hijackers' financial trail Evidence shows that terrorist cells are still in county 9.21.01   Kelly Thornton SD UT FBI agents continued yesterday to follow a money trail left by three San Diego-linked hijackers who may have received financial support from local residents. Agents examined records from bank accounts, credit and debit cards, and hotel and rental car receipts, finding evidence that terrorist cells almost certainly remain in San Diego County, the sources said. No arrests were made in San Diego County yesterday, but they are likely in coming weeks, the sources said. So far, one San Diego resident has been taken into custody in connection with the terrorists. "We believe they are still living and operating here," said a law enforcement source. … Details were unclear and the FBI declined to comment. Also yesterday, the FBI was looking into the discovery of a Middle Eastern passport, wallet, military and airport-related documents in a trash can at Second Avenue and Broadway, near the American Plaza trolley station and the Santa Fe train depot. Among the documents were flight school locations and phone numbers that had been torn out of the yellow pages, according to report by San Diego police officers, who turned the items over to the FBI. The items were found by a 45-year-old passer-by. … Reporting restrained coverage of horrific scenes 9.12.01   Howard Rosenberg L.A.Times Even as GWBush was initially kept from risky Washington, America's presidents of the airwaves were right where they were expected to be early Tuesday, addressing the nation in admirably measured tones about the epic television images of our time. "You are looking at live pictures of the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsing," said NBC's Katie Couric coolly as the 110 stories of steel, concrete and glass crumbled in an explosion of dust and debris that sent pedestrians running and blanketed lower Manhattan … newscast titles seemed to have the entire U.S. "under attack," … First the terror, then the talk. … Late in the afternoon, however, all news operations but the Fox News Channel picked up a live report with pictures from CNN's Nick Robertson in Kabul, Afghanistan, saying that explosions were occurring in that capital city. … Brokaw saying, "We're vulnerable because of the things that make us so great." NatSec invocation of need to know GWBush instructions [ transl. & abridged ] … Executive joint censorship of press: NSC Condoleezza Rice convened main press bosses to state their "responsibilities". Bush, calling upon motives for national security, gave instructions not to give Congress information indispensable to the exercise of their mandates. The White House, Washington 10.5.01 memorandum for The State Secretary The Secretary in the Treasury The Secretary in the Defence Attorney Général The Director of CIA The Director of FBI Subject: Disclosures to the Congress As we wage our campaign to respond to the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9.11.01, and to protect us from further acts of terrorism, I intend to continue to work closely with the Congress. Consistent with longstanding executive branch practice, this Administration will continue to work to inform the leadership of the Congress about the course of, and important developments in our critical military, intelligence, and law enforcement (MILE) operations. At the same time, we have an obligation to protect military operational security, intelligence sources and methods, and sensitive law enforcement investigations. Accordingly, your departments should adhere to the following procedures when providing briefings to the Congress relating to the information we have or the actions we plan to take: (i)   Only you or officers expressly designated by you may brief Members of Congress regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information; and (ii)   The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate of Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate This approach will best serve our shared goals of protecting American lives, maintaining the proper level of confidentiality for the success of our MILE operations, and keeping the leadership of the Congress appropriately informed about important developments. This morning, I informed the House & Senate leadership of this policy which shall remain in effect until you receive further notice from me. sig:   GW Bush

At the Treasury Dept, officials announced regular weekly auction of 4 week bills scheduled for Tuesday would be delayed until Wednesday. The Treasury Dept, next to the White House, was evacuated after report of a plane crashing into the Pentagon.   Options exchange joins trading probe Inquiry seeks evidence of manipulation by people with advance knowledge of attacks 9.19.01   M.Levin & H.Weinstein L.A.Times & Bloomberg News Chicago Board Options Exchange, world's biggest options market, joined a widening probe of whether terrorists profited from bearish trades in airline, insurance and brokerage stocks before the attacks on the World Trade Center & the Pentagon. Officials with the exchange said Tuesday that they are investigating an unusually high volume of sales of "put" options on stocks such as UAL Corp. & AMR Corp., parent companies of United Airlines & American Airlines, in the days before their jets were used to destroy the World Trade Center and severely damage the Pentagon. Buyers of put options are guaranteed the right to sell stocks at a targeted price, and they make a profit if the shares' value goes down. "CBOE is conducting an investigation of trading prior to the news event," said Lynne Howard-Reed, a spokeswoman for the exchange. She declined to give further details. The SEC & securities regulators in Europe & Japan also are looking into whether shares in particularly vulnerable industries could have been subject to a insider trading by people with advance knowledge of the attacks. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt said the agency's enforcement division "has been looking into a variety of market actions that could be linked to these terrible acts." In a letter Tuesday, NY Rep. John J. LaFalce, ranking Democrat on House Committee on Financial Services, urged Pitt to ask Congress "for any additional powers or resources you may require" to get to the bottom of the matter. … But some analysts said they have seen little evidence so far of market manipulation. Given the general weakness of the stock market, it is "not surprising to see that there were people buying puts, basically making bearish bets on these stocks," said Joseph Sunderman, manager of research at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati. Reports of suspicious trading activity began circulating over the weekend in Europe, involving 3 big reinsurance firms, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance and AXA. Reinsurers sell backup insurance to protect major insurers from big losses. In days leading up to Sept. 11 attacks, the companies' shares were hit hard by "short" selling … In a report Tuesday, Bloomberg News said 3 trading days before the attack, the volume of put option contracts sold for UAL was 285 times higher than average. According to Bloomberg, the day before the two American Airlines jets were hijacked & crashed, the number of option contracts for AMR was 60 times the daily average. Options volume for some brokerage & insurance firms was also high. Trading in put options for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of one of the trade center towers, was 25 times the usual volume, Bloomberg said. Some analysts said the market moves probably resulted from the economic slump and the fact that market weakness has been accelerating in Sept. The airline industry was already in the dumps, and brokerage stocks always fall when the market is down, they said. Others described the short selling of reinsurance stocks as more curious. "The insurance sector … was one of the brightest spots in a very difficult market," said Pete Gallo, NY bureau chief of HedgeWorld.com, which tracks hedge funds & other alternative investments. If, indeed, terrorist groups were involved in market manipulation, it would mean they are trying to finance a campaign of terror against Western capitalism "by using its very core institutions, the markets," said John C. Coffee, a Columbia University law professor. If terrorists were involved, "I can only speculate on how many entities there could be between the mastermind and the purchase," said James L. Sanders, former regional administrator of the SEC in L.A. Experts said it would be hard to permanently conceal the identities of those who took part in the trades. Said a market regulator who would not speak for attribution: "It's very hard to pull something like this off and not leave a paper trail someplace." They bet against America 9.19.01   John Balzar L.A.Times … Wall Street and its disciples: that grim gambler's den that rushed to bet against us. The profiteers failed the first test of patriotism in 2001. They short-sold their country. Cowards, they ran. … We needed to shake off our collective cynicism about ourselves. Many tried. Not the profiteers. A curse on their house. I'll be quick to acknowledge the mixed blessings of patriotism. It can run away with us and blind us to good judgment. … many of us on the sidelines asked for a little backbone among the investor clique. Congress rushed to signal that it would bail out the airlines. The Fed cut interest rates for the eighth time this year. Investors grabbed what they could from the moment and skittered off. They didn't think red, white and blue, only green. In a far-off bunker somewhere, Osama bin Laden had a second reason to rejoice. … If other Americans answered to market forces alone, TV networks would have showed ads for toilet paper last week instead of absorbing huge losses to carry the story uninterrupted. Newspapers would have shrunk instead of expanded. The "liberal media" sacrificed at the bottom line. Hustlers of the stock markets couldn't even hold fast. … Investors served up a record number of sell orders. … Some who stood firm were dragged down by the overpaid mutual fund managers who led the retreat, by the brokers who churned orders as they spread fear, by the hedge fund players who could see no further than the closing bell, by the individual investors who let themselves be stampeded. … Wall Street troops only yielded 7% of the value of this nation's publicly held industry on the first day they were summoned to battle. … This is blood money. …   Individual investors face difficult choice:   stay the course or run Selling into panic usually a bad move, but shareholders' mood already gloomy after 18 months of losses. 9.12.01   W.Hamilton, K.M. Kristof & J.Friedman LATimes … But some mutual funds & brokerage firms said that they received calls Tue. from worried investors seeking to sell shares. "The initial reaction by individual investors was they wanted to sell immediately," said Jon Brorson, Northern Funds money-management equities dir. in Chicago. … European & Latin America Equity markets dived Tue. as news of the attacks spread worldwide. But experts say history shows selling into a panic is usually a bad move. Though there are no direct historical parallels to the worst-ever terrorist assault on U.S. soil, experts note that stocks often have moved higher within weeks or months of calamities, even if prices fell initially. For example, Dow Jones industrial average was down 9.7% 3 months after 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, but it recouped virtually all of that drop within a year. The Dow was up 25% a year after tumbling nearly 3% the day President Kennedy was assassinated. "It has always, in retrospect, proven to be a foolish thing to sell in the aftermath of these [types of] events," argued Mark Keller, chairman of the investment strategy committee at brokerage A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. "My advice is to sit tight and not panic." … behind the high price-to-earnings valuations that investors afforded many U.S. stocks in recent years included that the world had changed, economic growth would continue without interruption and America's position in the world was unchallenged. … "The reason you head for the exits is you think there is something to be saved. You want to beat other people out the door," said A.C. Moore of money management firm Dunvegan Associates in Santa Barbara. "Here, [the event is] a done deal. There's likely not another shoe to drop." … initial reaction was move investments to safe havens. But by early afternoon, already reconsidered. … Mark Anker, a Los Angeles waiter, said he simply needed a little cash to get through the week. He said he anticipates that few people will be going out to eat this week, so he expects his business will come to a near-standstill. Panel backs House bill on monitoring of finances 10.12.01   Adam Clymer NYTimes Washington   House Financial Services Committee 62-to-1 vote overwhelmingly approved broad new legislation today to combat money laundering, including a provision to require financial institutions to identify large depositors. … The bill is quite similar to a Senate measure passed tonight. The legislation, which also would empower the Treasury Sec. to prohibit U.S. financial institutions from doing business with dubious foreign banks, could become law soon. The measure, which was proposed earlier but faced strong opposition from bankers, gained strong impetus from disclosures of how money reached terrorists involved in last month's suicide bombings at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. HFSC head Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-OH, said, "We are discovering how easily the terrorists used American dollars and the world-class services of the American financial system to underwrite their deadly operations. They used credit cards, automated teller machines, checking accounts, intl wire transfers and large amounts of cash to transact business, all without raising alarm in the financial community." … Rep. John J. LaFalce D-NY, senior Dem. sponsor of last year's version of this bill, said after passage that without it the country would be fighting "terrorism with one hand tied behind our back." … The major difference between the 2 bills is that the House measure seeks to thwart Internet gambling, which FBI officials told the committee had developed into a major route for money laundering. The bill prohibits gambling interests from accepting credit cards, electronic fund transfers and checks from American banks, which could be ordered to stop doing business with gambling companies. This section drew the only heated debate in today's session, with opponents like Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, saying it represented the "nanny state" trying to suppress gambling because it disapproved. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-MI, disagreed, saying "This is about targeting terrorism." The provision survived on a 37-to- 25 vote, but could face further opposition. Another major provision of the bill would toughen laws against smuggling currency out of the country and provide for forfeiture of smuggled cash in amounts of $10,000 or more. The major new responsibility imposed on U.S. banks, and U.S. branches of foreign banks, is higher "due diligence" standards to determine who controlled private banking accounts of $1 million for a foreign person. The same requirement would cover correspondent accounts from offshore or foreign banks from nations determined to pose high risks of money laundering. American banks would be flatly prohibited from doing business with "shell banks," institutions that have no physical presence in any country. The bill also gives the treasury secretary authority to establish regulations governing "concentration accounts" to make sure that they are not used to hide the identity of customers. The measure also makes it illegal to raise money for terrorist organizations. Like the Senate bill, the House one seeks supervision of the nearly paperless banks called hawalas that operate in the Middle East and Asia - and that send money back and forth to the U.S. The only committee member to vote against the bill was Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. The entire bill, Mr. Paul said, was "more a war on financial privacy than a war on terrorism." Somali company 'not terrorist' ¹ 11.8.01   Hassan Barise BBC   [ wartime suspension of habeus corpus:   conviction & sentencing by executive decision rather than public judicial hearing ] Mogadishu   Senior officials of a Somali company labelled as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. Wednesday have rejected the accusation. Bush administration listed 62 individuals & organizations, including al-Barakaat & Mr Kahiyeh, calling them "Specially Designated Global Terrorists".

Largest employer
Abdullahi Hussein Kahiyeh, general manager of the al-Barakaat group of companies, denied having any links with Osama Bin Laden or any terrorist network. The company which has 600 shareholders is the largest employer in Somalia as hundreds of thousands and probably millions of Somalis depend on it to transfer money throughout the world. Somalis living abroad use it to send money to their relatives back home as there are no other banking systems in Somalia since 1991 downfall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. Mr Kahiyeh said his company welcomes any investigative body whether local or international to look deep into their activities worldwide. "We would be very satisfied with the outcome of any such open & transparent investigation," said Mr Kahiyeh. "We have never done anything wrong against anyone, nor are we planning to do that."

Special committee
Mr Kahiyeh said he was shocked by the news released on Wednesday and was not initially sure whether to open on Thursday. Eventually, the doors were opened 2 hours later than normal. Somalia PM issued decree appointing a special committee to investigate al-Barakaat, as well as all other remittance companies. The govt has already appointed a committee to combat intl terrorism. Abbas Abdi Ali, general manager of the Barakaat Bank in Mogadishu, another in the list said: "America is wrong on our company and on myself."

Raided
Mr Abbas also spoke about how their office in Dubai was raided by UAE security officials. "They closed our office, took out our documents & computers," he said. "Because of this our bank operations will remain closed until Monday." Ordinary Somalis have likewise been shocked by the news. An old man at the gate of al-Barakaat said the American decision was an attack against the poor people of Somalia. "When America closes al-Barakaat, are they bringing us any other alternative?" he asked. "We still need money from our relatives abroad. America wants us to die just the same as they are killing those poor people in Afghanistan," said the old man.
Business world left reeling   Forecasters fear the shock could send teetering U.S. economy into recession & drag other countries down with it.
9.12.11   Peter G. Gosselin, L.A.Times

Wash D.C.   Beyond the awful carnage they wrought, Tuesday's terrorist attacks struck at the very heart of the American economy, threatening open, connected, computerized order that's widely credited with having delivered the longest prosperity in U.S. history. The most immediate economic problem was how to get huge communications, transportation & production systems brought to near halt by suicide crashes up & running again. The attacks and ensuing security alert shut virtually every U.S. airport, many ports & rail lines, and the nation's financial markets.

Concerned families and friends jammed the telephone network that serves the East Coast with close to half a billion calls, more than twice the usual volume, according to managers with AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications, the major carriers. …
"It's going to take a tremendous amount of skill to prevent an absolute panic and rout when trading resumes," said Gary C. Hufbauer, a veteran economist and senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.

Even if such immediate problems are solved, several respected forecasters said Tuesday that the attacks will drive an already stumbling U.S. economy into contraction, a move that could drag other economies down with it. "A full-blown, global recession is highly likely," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist with Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. "Who's going to feel like going out and buying a car now?" added David Levy of the Levy Economics Institute in Mount Kisco, N.Y. And beyond recession loomed the question of the economy's long-term prospects.

Corporations evacuated workers from skyscrapers across the country, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Transamerica Building in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the John Hancock Tower in Boston. Analysts' worries about getting the economy back up and running were somewhat similar to those that surrounded the Y2K computer glitch, which many feared would slow so many elements of the nation's and the world's economic dance that it would prove hard to get them quickly moving in sync again. "The whole planet is almost hard-wired so it's all affected," said Ian Mitroff, a USC analyst. "It's like the total work stoppage of a nation." The global stock tumble that followed Tuesday's attacks came atop a financial drubbing the night before and left some analysts fearful about a repeat of the kind of financial seize-ups that briefly afflicted the globe in 1998, in the wake of Russia's debt default. Economists … pointed to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War ¹, which pushed the economy into a nine- month contraction and the country into a weakened condition through the middle of the 1990s. "The productive capacity of the economy has not been damaged," said Wells Fargo's Sohn. "The primary concern is confidence. The economy has been on a high-wire act straddling between a recession and an anemic growth; the damage to confidence will push us into a recession," he predicted. But some analysts' concerns went well beyond the immediate ups and downs of growth and focused on whether the nation can sustain its recent productivity gains-- the improvement in how much workers can produce for each hour of work. "This is going to force people to add locks [to increase security] all over the economy and locks are a tremendous waste of money," said Robert E. Litan, an economist with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Right off the bat, it will add an hour to every flight in the U.S.," he predicted. … Hufbauer said. "This is going to trigger sweeping security increase, and by the time you finish there may not be much left of the open economy." Oil lobby, critics invoke national security 9.24.01   Danielle Knight Inter Press Service (IPS/IMS) Wash.D.C.   Oil industry & conservation advocates are using 9.11.01 to advance their opposing energy strategies as essential for national security. Rekindling debate over the direction of U.S. energy policy, Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) former sr vp Kenneth Dickerson says the attacks prove once more that domestic energy supplies need to be increased. Dickerson says U.S. dependence on imported oil "means that over 10,000 tankers enter U.S. ports each year, bringing foreign crude oil to U.S. refineries." Echoing Pres. GWBush's proposed energy strategy, Dickerson says more coal-fired power plants must be built and exploration for oil & gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will be key to meeting the nation's energy needs. "ANWR is the single best opportunity we have to increase domestic production," says Dickerson. Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers strongly oppose opening up the pristine refuge, a vast wilderness tucked along Alaska's shore near the U.S.-Canadian border north of the Arctic Circle. In early August, U.S. House of Representatives approved a broad energy bill that would allow some oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. The Senate has yet to vote on the measure. To pass, it must win approval from the Senate Environment Committee, headed by Jim Jeffords, a long-time supporter of environmental protection. Conservationists argue that in addition to possibly harming pristine ecosystems, Bush's energy plan, with its focus on more oil & gas production & distribution, would create more potential targets for terrorists. Washington-based environmental & energy research organisation American Hazard Control Group sr assoc. Peter Asmus says following 9.11.01, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power companies stepped up security measures. "One of the first public policy casualties in Washington, D.C. linked to the terrorist assault could be Bush's national energy strategy, and rightly so," says Asmus. He says Bush's energy strategy, which also touts the creation of more nuclear power plants, will create unnecessary security risks. Asmus acknowledges that a nuclear explosion would not occur if a commercial aeroplane crashed into one of the nation's 103 operating nuclear reactors. But he says huge deadly radioactive clouds could result from a direct hit to a power plant. On the other hand, he argues, renewable energy sources like wind & solar power are decentralised in nature and therefore add to the nation's energy supply without creating possible targets. "Distributed networks of clean micro-power systems offer national security benefits that the Bush administration should not only recognise but embrace as it ponders energy supply in the aftermath of America's darkest hour," he says. Other environmentalists say the recent attacks should prompt policy makers to focus on reducing the nation's increasing demand for energy by promoting conservation & efficiency. Ctr for Small Business & the Environment exec. dir. Byron Kennard says that after 9.11.01, an energy policy rooted in conservation, efficiency and renewable sources has become "absolutely imperative.The days of America's prodigious energy waste are over. Now we must conserve fuel for national security needs and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." Kennard says the key to saving energy lies in changing the wasteful behaviour of the 23 million small businesses in the U.S. Small firms account for more than half of all commercial energy use, he says, and "one half to one third of this energy is wasted." Businesses can make a big dent in energy demand, he adds, simply by improving lighting and installing better thermostats & insulation. Despite the significant role small firms play in energy consumption, Kennard says Bush's energy plan scarcely mentions creating incentives for small enterprises to invest in efficient technologies. Conservationists are optimistic that the Senate energy bill will favour efficiency & renewable energy to a greater extent than the House or administration plans. Energy & Natural Resources committee chair Sen. Jeff Bingaman has included 2 legislative proposals designed to encourage investments in new renewable energy resources. Both proposals "provide very significant opportunities for the nation to move toward a more sustainable & secure energy future fueled by abundant, domestic clean energy sources," according to the Washington- based Environmental & Energy Study Institute. The first policy proposal would require retail electric suppliers to obtain a minimum percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources. The percentage rate would vary from state to state. Currently, 14 states have enacted such standards, but each state's provisions vary widely in time frames & requirements. The second proposal would establish a fund, paid for by a small charge added to electric bills throughout the country, to help implement renewable energy & energy efficiency technologies. When the Senate will debate & vote will take place on these energy proposals remains uncertain, however, as lawmakers concentrate on the aftermath of the attacks. Sense & nonsense about Sept. 11 9.12.01   Alex Cockburn & Jeff St Clair CounterPunch … In 1965 CIA officer George Carver wrote an infamous article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Faceless Vietcong", which rationalized the US campaign of assassination & torture of civilians in South Vietnam that came to be known as the Phoenix Program. … September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq … & also the anniversary of the Camp David accords. … GWBush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds ¹ to give more money to the Defense Dept Who done it: "Muslim militants" or "our" govt?   Brief history of U.S. Govt directed & fomented terror cit. "Secret Societies & Psychological Warfare" 2001 ed. Michael A. Hoffman II Independent History & Research box 849, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816 … the FBI was fully aware ¹ of the 1993 bomb plot of the World Trade Center in New York before the attack took place. The Muslim group involved had been infiltrated by Emad Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence agent who was hired by the FBI and ultimately paid $1 million. The FBI even provided the Egyptian with a timer for the bomb. ² "FBI tipster said he built bomb" 12.15.93 Chicago Tribune "The Other Trial: As Sheik Omar case nears end, neither side looks like winner" 9.22.95 P.Waldman & F.A. McMorris WSJ U.S. equipped terror sponsors ¹ ² ³ ª º   Clinton exported NSA-ducking phone, high-tech encryption to Syria 9.12.01   Paul Sperry WorldNetDaily Wash.D.C.   … high degree of communications activity their mission required at each stage. … They also apparently studied passenger traffic patterns of airlines in order to pick flights with relatively few people aboard. … More key, the terrorists needed to select transcontinental flights with big fuel loads to turn the planes into giant petro-bombs. …   Synchronized terrorists … Peter M. Leitner, Defense Dept senior strategic trade adviser , who reviews commercial license applications for exports of some of the most sophisticated military-related technology, thinks he knows the answer. "The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily. Leitner says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security. … "We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said. … Asked Tuesday if he had any inkling of the plot, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dodged the question: "We don't discuss intelligence matters." Three weeks ago, some overseas papers quoted bin Laden saying that a major strike against the U.S. was coming soon. But there were no specifics. And bin Laden reportedly sent an e-mail to unknown govt sources three days ago warning holy hell would break out. But again, he didn't say how, when or where. … Leitner asserts … "Now we're going to have to knock out their [terrorist] camps, just like we had to bomb the Iraqi's several times now to try to take out the fiber-optics network that the Chinese are installing in Iraq's air-defense systems. Yet, it was the Clinton administration that gave the Chinese the technology to give to Iraq," he noted. The Bush administration apparently hasn't woken up, either.   Wake-up call In June, Leitner was asked by the Commerce Department to OK a new round of exports of dual-use telecom equipment to Syria. He denied the request, and was asked to reconsider. He denied it again, arguing in a letter to Karen Vogel, the Commerce export licensing officer who requested the approval, that: "Doing so vastly upgrades the C3 and C41 systems of the Syrian military and Intelligence Services. My concerns are also obviously compounded by the fact that Syria is one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism." … Vogel argued in an earlier letter that her request came on the heels of eight previous approvals of licenses for similar exports to Syria. Emergency Response in High Gear 9.11.01   Stratfor … Because the attacks occurred within U.S. borders, the FBI is primarily responsible for coordinating response teams. According to a Federal Emergency Management Agency press release, the FBI's Strategic Operation Information Center has been activated. Local emergency agencies are in charge of disaster assistance, such as emergency medical services. Sources in New York report that off-duty police have been called up and that 10,000 rescue personnel are deployed in lower Manhattan. For the first time in its history, the FAA has shut down the nation's air grid, … The U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico have been closed to ground & air traffic. The military is officially under direction of the FBI. … The National Security Council is the primary crisis team for the president. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's NSC adviser, has already convened the group. … Extra security was added at the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons & research complex in Oak Ridge, TN, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Security was also beefed up at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, home to the Army's main germ warfare defense laboratory.   Toward managing the next crisis Local consortium aids tech advances against terror, disasters 10.12.01   Jeff Ristine SD UT Next good idea for homeland defense emerge from a local laboratory or entrepreneur? Local public-private consortium hopes so, offering business support services & grants for potential technological advances in crisis & consequence management, a field that ranges from the threat of terrorism to natural disasters. Planning by the Commercialization of Advanced Technology consortium had been under way more than 2 years, … "Our objective is to take technologies that are out there in academia, small businesses (and) govt, and get them to the market where they're needed as fast as possible," said pgm dir. Barry Janov.… Partners SDSU Entrepreneurial Management Ctr; UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering and its support program for high-tech entrepreneurs, CONNECT; Space & Naval Warfare Systems Ctr SD, a Defense Dept lab; and Orincon Technologies housed at SDSU Foundation, the center has $5.8 million in funding from the Defense Dept for its first 2 years. The idea for the center came from Dan Alspach, founder & CEO of Orincon. "It's the first time… the federal govt has tried something quite like this," said Orincon pgm manager Tom Byrne. Terry Bibbens, who says his role as "catalyst" is to keep all the partners in the consortium working together, said that while there are "some wonderful technologies" being developed in crisis response, "it still takes a long, long time for an intriguing idea in the lab to get out to the field." To bridge that gap, the center will use campus resources to help develop business plans, perform market research, facilitate licensing agreements, find venture capital or take other essential steps to speed technology to the marketplace. Space & Naval Warfare Systems Ctr Brenda-Lee Karasik said that even when technology is developed in Defense Dept labs, "there has not been an extremely effective way to move those technologies into the commercial sector so that it would be available for (the department) to buy back and use in larger quantities." Financial amp; technology experts will decide which applicants will receive help based on commercial potential. The assistance is available only to San Diego-based organizations that submit an application by Oct. 31. There will be more solicitations later. Terror attacks not big depression screenings factor 10.12.01   SD UT Counselors at annual National Depression Screening Day's sites in SD Cty yesterday reported no increase in people seeking help because of 9.11.01 terrorist attacks. "People aren't mentioning much of an impact from last month's events, and we're not seeing more people than usual," said Don Berk of Sharp Behavioral Health. Some people who sought screenings had been depressed for a long time, but the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks brought back memories from when they lived in Vietnam or other war-torn nations, said Alex Tran of the Union of Pan Asian Communities Behavioral Health Ctr on 54th St. For some seniors with existing depression, the Sept. 11 events "moved them into the category of being clinically depressed," said Susan Lund of the Oceanside Senior Center. Symptoms of depression include insomnia, fatigue, sleeping too much, thoughts of death, lack of concentration, slowed thinking and weight gain for more than a month. Mental Health Assoc. SD branch 619.543.0412. forewarning   new Able Danger triage crackdown forecast John O'Neill Robt Wright Bernard Kerik posthumous visas Accenture first anniversary cyberattack Lone Gunmen Tora Bora Massoud OKC 11.4.03 M.Vreeland & R.Wright CIA collusion Dubai 7.4.01 Russ Kick Tim McNiven David Shippers Sooner Arabs ANSER Curt Weldon inflight calls   Barbara Olson ¹ ² ³   ~ Ted Olson   MD police had terrorist in custody Baltimore mayor: Freed because CIA didn't alert cops   12.12.01   AP Wash.DC   One of 19 suicide hijackers was stopped by Maryland state trooper before 9.11.01 but was released because the trooper had no way of knowing the man was on a CIA terrorist watch list, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley said Tue. O'Malley disclosed the incident in prepared testimony submitted Tue. to Senate Judiciary subcommittee. He did not identify the hijacker nor provide details why he was stopped, and he did not mention the incident when he testified before the committee. A spokesman for the mayor would not comment Tue. night either on the incident or why the mayor chose to disclose it only in his written testimony. The state police did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Officials have said 2 of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar & Nawaf Alhazmi, were on the CIA watch list prior to the attacks and were being sought by U.S. authorities who knew they had entered the country but couldn't locate them. Both were on American Airlines flight hijacked out of Washington Dulles Intl Airport and crashed into Pentagon. Employees at a suburban Maryland gymnasium have said that both Almihdhar & Alhazmi worked out at the facility in early Sept. O'Malley said the trooper would have known the man was wanted if he had had an outstanding speeding ticket or if his insurance had been expired. Because the CIA had not shared its terrorist list with local law enforcement authorities, however, the trooper had no way of knowing that the man was an international terrorist. Since the attacks, names of those on the FBI watch list have been added to the crime computer network available to local law enforcement. But O'Malley said it's crucial that pictures of such suspects also be made available to state and local police. In his public testimony, O'Malley praised AttyGen Ashcroft & FBI Dir. Robert Mueller for promoting better communication since the attacks. But O'Malley added: "On the ground it isn't happening." "We have a bad case of the slows," O'Malley told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on oversight. For example, he said, he has learned there are 12 students in Baltimore sought for questioning for visa violations, but he has been told city police can't talk to them yet because the Justice Dept first needs to set up a process for such interviews.   FBI didn't share anthrax tip NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said that when police began investigating an anthrax scare at NBC Studios, they learned the FBI had gotten a tip more than a week earlier about a suspicious letter there. The FBI never alerted NY authorities, he said. The letter turned out to be harmless, but Kerik said he was disappointed with the way the FBI handled the matter. "The bottom line is, if there was something there that could have been detrimental to the people of the city, then it could have been a major issue," Kerik said. Communication has improved since then, he said. Utah Chiefs of Police Assoc. president Jon Greiner is helping put together security for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He said it is not uncommon for him to learn about some security issues through the media. "We're getting information but not quickly enough," Greiner said. Kerik, O'Malley, Greiner and Fraternal Order of Police national vp Chuck Canterbury urged passage of legislation intended to remove legal barriers to cooperation between the FBI & local police. Current law restricts the FBI's ability to give local police information obtained through wiretaps and grand jury proceedings. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer D-NY & Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton D-NY would permit but not require information-sharing. It also encourages the FBI to cooperate fully with local law enforcement. The bill has support of Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy D-VT and its ranking GOP, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. Rep. Anthony Weiner D-NY sponsors House version. The bill is expected to be taken up early next year. FBI's Mueller already has said he will create a new position of asst dir. for law enforcement coordination to improve communication. FBI ignored French warning on extremist 9.13.01 04:48 ET   Reuters Paris   The FBI arrested an Islamic militant in Boston last month and received French intelligence reports linking him to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden but apparently did not act on them, a French radio station said on Thursday. Europe 1 radio reported that U.S. police arrested a man with dual French and Algerian nationality who had several passports, technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. The man had been taking flying lessons, it added. Asked for information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, French security services provided a dossier clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with bin Laden. "He has a pedigree as long as your arm, an investigator said," the radio reported. "He belongs to the Pakistani- Afghan network that trains Osama bin Laden's soldiers." … Two of the four commercial airliners hijacked in the suicide operation took off from Boston. Many Algerian militants fought against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and have since used their military background for guerrilla attacks in Algeria, France and other countries, intelligence sources say. French officials could not immediately confirm the Europe 1 report. It said the man, who is in jail but has refused to cooperate with investigators, was a "soldier without borders" who had made several trips to potential hotspots around the world in recent months. "He has the profile of someone who could prepare or lead terrorist operations," it said. "This information was transmitted by French security services to the FBI but apparently got lost in the enormous American police machinery," it added. "The inquiry that might have been able to avoid everything was not started. There was no special alert transmitted to airport authorities in the U.S.," it concluded. Officials told of 'major assault' plans ¹ 9.21.01   Richard A. Serrano (DC), John-Thor Dahlburg (FL), K.Ellingwood, R.L Jackson, M.Levin, J. Meyer, J.Pasternak S.Rotella, N. Yates L.A.Times Wash.D.C.   FBI & CIA officials were advised in Aug. as many as 200 terrorists were slipping into this country and planning "a major assault," a high-ranking law enforcement official said Wednesday. The advisory was passed on by the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. It cautioned that it had picked up indications of a "large-scale target" in the U.S. … Mindy Tucker, Justice Dept spokeswoman … Some participants help others slip unnoticed from city to city, and country to country, by providing them with fake or fraudulent passports, cash gained through bank and credit-card fraud, and havens in their homes or in apartments rented under aliases, the authorities said. Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, in Minnesota jail on INS violation morning World Trade Center destroyed. … French citizen, … made several trips to Afghanistan. … spent at least 3 years in Britain in late 1990s, according to French officials. He came to the French Embassy in London in September 2000 and had his French passport extended. At the time, he described himself as unemployed and said he had lived at several addresses in the suburbs of London. By this year, however, he was able to afford to travel to the U.S. and begin flying lessons. He was arrested Aug. 17 after the staff at a flight school grew concerned about his offer of thousands of dollars in cash for instruction in how to fly jumbo jets and his lack of interest in learning to take off or land jets. … 2 men removed from a train in Ft. Worth day of the attacks had … $20,000 in cash, box cutters similar to those allegedly used by the hijackers, … boarded Newark, NJ flight bound for San Antonio morning of attacks. Flight was diverted to St. Louis after the World Trade Center was hit, and the two men then took an Amtrak train to Texas.The train was stopped in Fort Worth on a routine check for drugs, … Wednesday, owners of fitness clubs in Florida & Maryland said several of the suspected hijackers had worked out in their gyms. "They may have been told to go get as strong as they could get in case of body conflict or a fight," said Jim Woolard, who owns eight World Gyms in Florida's Palm Beach and Broward counties. … U.S. authorities are looking into possible links between the hijackers & 3 Afghans arrested in the Cayman Islands. 2 weeks before the hijackings, an anonymous letter sent to a Cayman Islands radio station warned that the 3 might be involved with Bin Laden in preparing "a major terrorist act against the U.S. via an airline or airlines." The day after the attacks, U.S. officials arrived in the Caymans to pick up evidence gathered by Cayman and British investigators in their yearlong probe of the men. … They said they boarded a ship in Turkey bound for Canada and were put ashore in a small boat in the Caymans, believing they had arrived in Canada. But David Thursfield, Caymans police commissioner, said authorities are certain the men actually entered the Caymans from Cuba with Pakistani passports. … Instant messages to Israel warned of WTC attack 9.27.01 11:48am CST   Brian McWilliams Wash.Post NYC 11:48am CST   Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that 2 employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center 2 hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks. Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender. But Alex Diamandis, sales & marketing VP, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research & development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately 2 hours prior to the first attack. Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification. Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today. Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message. In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company. U.S. overlooked terrorism signs well before 9/11 ¹ House-Senate panel report says Al Qaeda was focusing on a domestic attack and the use of planes as weapons as far back as mid-'90s 9.19.02   Greg Miller L.A.Times Wash.D.C.   The nation's intelligence agencies failed to heed serious warnings dating back to the mid-1990s that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was increasingly focused on striking targets in the U.S. and using aircraft as weapons, according to a report issued by congressional investigators Wednesday. The document, represents the first comprehensive look at intelligence failures surrounding 9.11.01 and lists newly disclosed terrorist plots & other clues that did not point directly to last year's attacks, but suggest that U.S. spy agencies should have been looking for just such a plot. Among the revelations is an intelligence report of a 1998 plot in which Arab suspects possibly linked to Al Qaeda were to pilot an explosive-packed plane into the World Trade Center. That same year, intelligence officials learned that Al Qaeda was trying to establish an active cell in the U.S.. Just one month before the attacks on the trade center & the Pentagon, intelligence agencies obtained information suggesting Al Qaeda operatives were possibly plotting to crash an airplane into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. The disclosures were released as part of Congress' first public hearings on intelligence failures surrounding 9.11.01. The House & Senate Intelligence committees are expected to hold a series of public hearings over the next month before producing a final report early next year. Wednesday's document represents preliminary findings that seem to undercut administration officials' repeated assertions over the last year that the nature & magnitude of the attacks were all but inconceivable until they happened. The report raises serious questions about the extent to which U.S. spy agencies had mobilized to respond to the emerging Al Qaeda threat. As recently as 2000, the report says, the CIA's counterterrorism center had just 5 analysts focused full-time on Al Qaeda, and the FBI had just one. That was despite the fact that in 1998, CIA dir. Geo. J. Tenet had written a memo declaring "war" on Al Qaeda and saying, "I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the [intelligence] community." Though money & manpower aimed at terrorist targets grew subsequent to that memo, the report says "there was no massive shift in budget or reassignment of personnel to counter-terrorism until after 9.11.01." The report says, "relatively few of the FBI agents interviewed by [investigators] seem to have been aware of Tenet's declaration." Many lawmakers said the report points to systemic intelligence breakdowns. "We now know that our inability to detect & prevent 9.11.01 was an intelligence failure of unprecedented magnitude," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby AL, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Some people who couldn't seem to utter the words 'intelligence failure' are now convinced of it." Shelby appeared to be referring to Tenet, who in testimony before the committee earlier this year insisted 9.11.01 was not an intelligence failure. The report, the product of an ongoing investigation of the attacks by congressional intelligence committees, is likely to put new pressure on the White House to account for intelligence breakdowns and push for substantial reform. But there were new signs at Wednesday's hearing that lawmakers & the White House remain at odds over how much of what the investigation uncovers should be released to the public. Members complained Wednesday that they have been blocked by the White House from disclosing whether any intelligence warnings mentioned in the report were ever conveyed to Presidents Clinton or Bush. The White House has refused to allow such disclosures even in cases in which the underlying information has already been declassified or publicly reported, said Senate Intelligence Committee chair Bob Graham D-FL. As a result, the report contains repeated references to intelligence that was brought to the attention of "senior govt officials," without making clear who the officials were. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the administration's stance stems from its concern that "the president should be able to receive candid intelligence assessments and advice without congressional interference," and that exposing such communications "could have a chilling effect" on what intelligence officials share with the president. Congressional investigation staff dir, Eleanor Hill stressed during testimony Wednesday that the investigation has not uncovered a "smoking gun" indicating that any federal agency or official had information before 9.11.01, identifying when, where or how the attacks would be carried out. But the report, based on reviews of more than 400,000 documents & interviews with nearly 500 people, lists dozens of pieces of data that point to at least the possibility of an event like 9.11.01. Many of the findings are sketched out only in general terms because details remain classified. The report, for instance, doesn't spell out the exact nature of many of the warnings intelligence officials were said to have received, or whether they were pursued. Some of the joint committee's most significant findings have already been reported, incl the so-called Phoenix memo in which an Arizona FBI agent made a futile effort to urge bureau headquarters to investigate Arabs in flight schools; the failure to grasp the implications of the Aug. 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, now believed by authorities to have been the intended 20th hijacker; and the failure of the CIA to put two 9.11.01 hijackers on a terrorism watch list until they had already entered the U.S.. But the report also contained a number of provocative findings not previously disclosed. Many center on a series of warnings that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups might use airplanes as weapons. Jan. 1996, the report says, the intelligence community obtained information regarding a planned suicide attack by individuals associated with a "key Al Qaeda operative" to fly a plane from Afghanistan and attack the White House. The report also says the CIA had been aware of a key Al Qaeda figure involved in the 9.11.01 plot since 1995, "but did not recognize his growing importance" and paid scant attention to him. The figure is not identified in the report but is believed to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the plot. In 1998, intelligence officials obtained information that "a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive- laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center." Intelligence officials have since found possible links between that group & Al Qaeda. That same year, intelligence officials got another warning, this time indicating that "Osama bin Laden's next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it." 2 years later, in 2000, a would-be informant walked into the FBI's Newark, NJ office saying he had attended a training camp in Pakistan and that he was supposed to meet others in the U.S. to take part in a hijacking plot, the report says. He warned agents that "there would be pilots among the hijacking team." But although the informant passed an FBI polygraph test, the FBI "was never able to verify any aspect of his story," the report says. Despite these & other warnings, the report says, intelligence officials never seriously studied the possibility that airplanes could be used as weapons. Indeed, less than a year before the attacks, "the FBI & FAA had assessed the prospects of a terrorist incident targeting domestic civil aviation in the U.S. as relatively low." The report's findings challenge White House officials' repeated claims that they couldn't have foreseen the nature of the attacks. In May, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said at a White House news conference, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." The report indicates that intelligence & law enforcement agencies also underestimated the likelihood that Al Qaeda would launch an attack on U.S. soil. This was true even though intelligence showed Al Qaeda was seeking to establish a cell in the U.S. in 1998, and that by 2000 Bin Laden was considering targets including skyscrapers, ports, airports, nuclear plants and the Statue of Liberty. These warnings were followed by a spike in intelligence traffic in the summer of 2001 indicating an Al Qaeda attack of devastating proportions was imminent. Between May & July, the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on electronic signals around the globe, intercepted at least 33 communications indicating possible imminent attack. Reports indicated that Bin Laden followers were planning to enter the U.S. via Canada & other routes, and were plotting operations using high explosives. But instead of bracing for a domestic strike, Hill said, agencies were overwhelmingly focused on vulnerabilities overseas. One senior FBI official interviewed as part of the inquiry told investigators "he thought there was a high probability, 98%, that the attack would occur overseas."   [ Standard military blunder of myopia: fighting the last war, i.e. USS Cole, instead of the next one. ] Wednesday's hearing also included emotional testimony from spouses of 2 9.11.01 victims: Kristen Brietweiser, 31, whose husband worked in the World Trade Center; and Stephen Push, whose wife was a passenger on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Both called for an independent commission to conduct further investigations of the 9.11.01 intelligence failures. Legislation creating such a commission could be considered by the Senate as early as this week. NY announces plans for 9.11.01 anniversary 8.11.03   Reuters NYC   NY officials 8.11.03 revealed the city's official plans to mark the second anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks, unveiling events scaled back from last year and intended to convey a message of hope. Topping the agenda will be a reading of the names of the nearly 2,800 victims by 200 surviving children & family members at a ceremony at Ground Zero … , officials from City Hall and Gov. George Pataki's office announced. "This will be the second time that we as friends, as families, and as one community, will gather to remember a tragic day which has become synonymous with not only great sorrow and loss, but also courage & resilience," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. "Forever mindful of the grief still felt by the families, and our desire to honor the heroes of that day, we plan to mark this anniversary as a day of remembrance and pride, but equally as a day on which we turn toward the future," he said. The ceremony will be punctuated with 4 moments of silence, 2 to mark the times that a plane hit the towers and 2 to mark the times when each tower fell. Family members, as they did last year, can descend into the 6 story deep pit at Ground Zero to lay flowers & remembrances for their lost loved ones. At sunset, twin "Tribute of Light" beams, which were lit last year at the 6 month anniversary, will be turned on again for one night. The occasion features far less fanfare than last year, when firefighters & police led 5 predawn processions that began at the farthest reaches of the city's borders and converged at the World Trade Center site. Last year, 2801 victims' names were read aloud. The current number of victims stands at 2972, as various claims of fraud are investigated and the process of identification continues, according to the city Office of the Medical Examiner. Private prayer services, concerts, candlelight vigils and memorial services are expected throughout the day.

Global recession likely to develop, experts say ¹ Slowing trade, falloff in tourism and loss of confidence will hasten decline; defense spending increase. 9.12.01   James Flanigan L.A.Times A stark indicator … at the Ports of Los Angeles & Long Beach as ships were held outside the docking areas of the nation's largest port complex so vessels could be intensely inspected. … Govt spending on defense, budgeted at $301 billion for this year, will increase. Govt outlays will surge for many other purposes, as well, including rebuilding the devastated areas of New York and other crash sites. "Our whole concept of security will now change. This means a shift of resources to defense of the homeland," said Loren Thompson, managing director of the Lexington Institute, a defense policy firm in Arlington, Va. … The effect of insurance industry losses on the economy will be broad and long term. Insurance rates will rise for every business and risk. Insurance companies needing funds to honor claims will call upon the Federal Reserve to make sure funds are available. The Fed will keep interest rates down and money plentiful to prevent financial panic. Paradoxically, inflation may be a side effect of the coming recessionary period, as there will be a strain on supply lines for many goods and services. The easy flow of materials in the global economy has always depended on an atmosphere of peace and security, experts pointed out Tuesday. … Flows of capital, which have financed the growth of the global economy and been of special benefit to the U.S. economy, also will slow in the absence of trust and security. Prices of basic materials, particularly oil and gas, will rise for the immediate future, said Joseph Tovey, an investment banker in the energy industry. Tovey was on his way to a meeting Tuesday of the New York Society of Security Analysts at Tower 1 of the World Trade Center when the plane crashed into it. He phoned The Times from a pay phone on a Manhattan street. Attempts to increase production of natural gas and other energy resources in the U.S. will be reinforced, Tovey said. … Projects to liquefy natural gas in Indonesia, Algeria and other countries, which have been under consideration by companies and financial markets, look much less likely to be constructed, Tovey said. Expenditures are sure to rise for research & development of high-tech surveillance & intelligence systems, such as those produced by Northrop Grumman & TRW. Some experts theorized that centralized installations such as the Pentagon itself would be replaced over time by decentralized military planning & management facilities. "The Internet was developed to provide just such decentralized protection," Thompson noted. Yet, on Tue., Internet communication lines were not able to handle the flood of traffic. Several defense experts predicted President Bush would now encounter less opposition in Congress and from foreign govts, … all ideas for defense & security shields will get a receptive hearing. … Cries of 'war' stumble over the law 9.13.01   Jonathan Turley, law professor     Geo.Washington Univ. L.A.Times … Some commentators have insisted that precedent for declaring war on Bin Laden and his organization can be found in the war against the Barbary pirates in the early 1800s. The Barbary pirates, however, were the effective governing body of Tripoli, and it was the dey of Algiers who declared war on the U.S. The closest analogy would be to declare war on Afghanistan, which is the base of operations or host nation for Bin Laden. Of course, the framers were largely unfamiliar with the modern concept of terrorist. Threats on citizens by sub- state actors were largely committed by pirates. The Constitution specifically gave Congress the right to "define and punish" pirates without a declaration of war, … One complaint is that a law prohibits assassinations while a state of war allows for such personal retribution. In reality, neither federal law nor the Constitution prohibits the president from ordering the assassination of a foreign national who is a threat to the U.S.. It is not a law but an executive order that prohibits political assassinations. This order was signed in 1976 by President Gerald Ford after years of abuses by our intelligence agencies. … In the past, Ford's executive order encouraged the use of military strikes in thinly veiled efforts to kill terrorists. The result was unnecessary collateral damage to targets (including killing civilians such as Moammar Kadafi's 3-year-old adopted daughter in a 1986 bombing raid) and the escalation of a conflict with a military strike. Conversely, efforts to capture someone like Bin Laden for trial could place Americans or our foreign intelligence assets at risk. … While legal principles prefer due process, the law does not require a trial for foreign terrorists. … US martial law coming?   ¹ Def. Sec. Cohen predicts Army will patrol streets 10.27.98   staff/wire reports Army Times "Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection," says Def.Sec Wm S. Cohen The nation's defense chief told the Army Times he once considered the chilling specter of armored vehicles surrounding civilian hotels or govt buildings to block out terrorists as strictly an overseas phenomenon. But no longer. "It could happen here," Cohen said he concluded after 8 months of studying threats under the Pentagon microscope. Free-lance terrorists with access to deadly chemical and biological bombs are "going to change the way in which the American people view security in our own country," he predicted in a Sept 10 interview. Cohen is calling for the govt to step up its efforts to penetrate wildcard terrorist organizations. "It's going to require greater intelligence on our part, much greater emphasis on intelligence gathering capability, more human intelligence, and it's going to take more technical intelligence," he said. But using the U.S. military in a domestic law enforcement role would require revisions to laws in force for more than a century, cautions Shreveport attorney John Odom, Jr. "You can't do it from the Defense Department side unless Congress dramatically revises the Posse Comitatus laws." said Odom, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a reserve Judge Advocate. "The 1878 law specifically prohibits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by Congress or the Constitution and does not allow for military intervention through action by the Secretary of Defense of even an Executive Order from the President," Odom said. We're trained from the first day of Judge Advocate school to think of Posse Comitatus !!! said Odom. "If Secretary Cohen is suggesting that the Department of Defense be involved, it may be part of a legislative package, but it will not happen unilaterally without a lot of folks thinking long and hard about it." Cohen said terrorism would be a top priority in 5 new areas he plans to focus on now that he has wrapped up his first defense budget, the quadrennial review of the military and a new 4-year defense strategy. Other goals include modernizing the military, improving troops housing and other benefits, streamlining the defense bureaucracy and shaping new military relationships and contracts across the globe.   Giving Ridge authority to defend our homeland   10.12.01   Jos. Perkins SD UT ¹ ² ³ Tom Ridge … former PA governor, former congressman, former Marine has been tasked by the president … (as) director of newly created Office of Homeland Security (with) has less power than Rod Paige, Bush's secretary of education. Less authority than Labor Sec. Elaine Chao. Less clout than Vet Affairs Sec. Anthony Principi. Paige, Chao and Principi are full-fledged members of the president's Cabinet. They have their own headquarters buildings. They have budgets to work with. They have their own employees. By contrast, Ridge will run his shop out of a tiny office in the West Wing. While roughly 40 federal agencies & offices are involved in counterterrorism activities, spending roughly $10 billion a year to thwart terror attacks on the U.S., Ridge will have no direct control over those agencies and offices or their budgets. Instead, the homeland security director will simply "coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the U.S.," according to the presidential executive order creating Ridge's new position. Ridge will merely "review & provide advice to the heads of depts & agencies" involved in protecting the homeland from future attacks "in the development of the president's annual budget submission." If this sounds similar to the dubious authority vested in the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, that's because it is. Ridge, nation's new terrorism czar ¹, will have no more juice than the nation's drug czar (whose putative Cabinet rank position is so inconsequential, in the view of Congress, the White House nominee has not even been confirmed nine months into the Bush presidency). … This Homeland Security Dept, or whatever the White House and Congress might decide to call it, should be given a constitutional mandate "to ensure domestic tranquillity." That means securing the nation's borders and policing its ports and waterways. That also means protecting the nation's critical infrastructure, airports, railroads, nuclear facilities, power plants, public water systems and other potential terror targets. … at very least, … direct control over U.S. Border Patrol, Coast Guard and National Guard. Those 3, logically, play lead roles in defending the homeland. As it is now, Border Patrol falls under the Immigration & Naturalization Service, Coast Guard under Dept of Transportation, National Guard under the control of each state's governor during peacetime, but when called into federal service troops are under the command of the appropriate service secretary. INS commissioner James Ziglar has enough on his plate without trying to direct the Border Patrol's counterterrorism activities. Same with Norm Mineta and the Coast Guard. And the nation's governors are too busy running their states to figure out where best to deploy National Guard troops to deter terrorists. … Anything short of this and the Office of Homeland Security will amount to nothing more than a paper bureaucracy. And Good Man Ridge will be little more than a figurehead.   Deadly attacks may loosen CIA shackles ¹ ² ³ µ Curbs recruiting informants with 'dirty hands' could lift   9.12.01   Susan Sward, Bill Wallace SF Chronicle … Only one year ago, the congressionally mandated National Commission on Terrorism sharply criticized some rules barring U.S. agents from collecting information from unsavory sources. "Intelligence is our first line of defense because it is the way we find out what the bad guys are doing," said Michael Swetnam, president of the nonprofit Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, in Arlington, Va., who testified before the commission last year. He said concerns over human rights abuses prompted bans against "the Central Intelligence Agency recruiting informants who were known terrorists, human rights abusers or dictators when the whole business of spying at the CIA had been getting in bed with them so you know what they are doing." Swetman, who spent a quarter of a century in the CIA and naval intelligence, said many of the commission's recommendations have not been implemented fully, in part because of the cost. Now "the priority for implementing the report will be much greater because the U.S. is historically far more vigorous in reacting the day after, " he said. "People were leaning over backwards to avoid dealing with those who had committed crimes when those rules were adopted," said Fred Ikle, a former undersecretary of defense and director of the U.S. Disarmament Agency who served on the terrorism commission. "I think that is likely to be rectified now." The National Commission on Terrorism's June 2000 report and a similar report this year by the U.S. Commission on National Security (known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) both pointed to a widespread lack of coordination among the 45 agencies involved in U.S. intelligence work. … Bush order extends C.I.A. director's reach 8.27.04   Douglas Jehl NY Times Wash.D.C.   President Bush issued a new order on Friday enhancing the powers of the director of central intelligence, but the White House said that new legislation was still needed to establish the kind of strong national intelligence director recommended by the independent Sept. 11 commission. The move, along with a separate order to establish a new national counterterrorism center, was described by the White House as "a down payment'' toward the more extensive overhaul recommended by the commission, whose terms are now the subject of a debate on Capitol Hill. A sr White House official called the moves a strong signal that Mr. Bush wanted the existing head of the Central Intelligence Agency, as an interim measure, to take the lead in overseeing all of the country's 15 intelligence agencies, along the lines envisioned for a future national intelligence chief. The official said the order would give the existing intelligence chief limited new authorities in determining the budget of national-level intelligence programs. Congressional Democrats called on the White House to go further by endorsing a recommendation by the Sept. 11 commission that any new national intelligence director established by Congress be given hiring, firing and budgetary authority over all the intelligence agencies. "At the end of the day, Congress is going to have to enact comprehensive reform, and we need real leadership from the president to get it done,'' said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV D-WV, top minority seat on Senate Intelligence Committee. "Will the president rise to the challenge and override turf battles to support a national intelligence director with true budget authority over the entire intelligence community?'' Rockefeller asked in a statement. "That remains an open question." The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, would say only that Mr. Bush would work with Congress to make sure that the proposed national intelligence director had enough authority over spending and hiring & firing "so they can do the job and do it effectively.'' The moves were among 4 executive orders & 2 presidential directives issued by the White House on Friday to promote an intelligence overhaul, as Mr. Bush promised early this month in response to the recommendations issued by the Sept. 11 commission. Mr. McClellan said the moves would "improve our ability to find, track and stop terrorists.'' VP nominee Sen. John Edwards D-NC said the moves would "fall short" of what's needed to enact "meaningful intelligence reform." "The proposal announced today does not get the job done," Edwards said in a statement issued Friday. "Expanding the powers of the existing director of central intelligence is a far cry from creating a true national intelligence director with real control over personnel and budgets." In a conference call with reporters, a sr White House official described Mr. Bush as having "strained the limits of his executive authority'' in his effort to strengthen the powers of the current intelligence chief to the greatest extent possible under existing law. But when asked to point specifically to new authority granted to a director of central intelligence under the order, the White House official cited only a change that would allow the intelligence chief to "determine'' the intelligence budget, in addition to his old powers to "develop and present'' it to the president. Under the National Security Act of 1947, the director of central intelligence has always had the authority to coordinate activities of other intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office, even though they are part of the Pentagon. The order issued by Mr. Bush amends in part Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. A White House official made clear that one purpose of the orders was to reinforce powers that the intelligence chief has under law, but has not always exercised. "What it does is it states the president's clear intention that the D.C.I. execute his full authority,'' the official said. 2 other executive orders issued by Mr. Bush on Friday would establish a "President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties,'' to provide advice in an arena that has the potential to conflict with aggressive counterterrorism efforts, and would promote the sharing of information about terrorism among govt agencies. Logan's security chief an aviation field novice 9.18.01   Elizabeth Mehren L.A.Times BOSTON   Among the surprises to emerge from last week's terrorist attack is the fact that Logan International Airport's chief of security had no background in aviation before assuming his job. Former state trooper Joseph Lawless, 43, was then-Gov. William F. Weld's personal driver 8 years ago when Weld tapped him for the $125,000-a-year job. "On paper, you can laugh about [Lawless] being a driver, but he was a state police guy, and he had done investigative work. It wasn't a ridiculous idea on the face of it," said former Weld advisor Martin Linsky, now a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Govt. "But it is hard to defend in retrospect." Massachusetts Port Authority officials would not permit Lawless to be interviewed for this story. But with international attention focused on Boston's busy airport, Lawless suddenly became a media presence. … "Logan is as secure as any other airport in this country," he steadfastly maintained. Lawless did admit, however, that FAA guidelines allow 5% of employee identification badges to "go missing" at any time. About 12,000 Massport employees carry such badges at Logan. At least one real or fraudulent Logan identification badge was reported to have been found in a car the hijackers abandoned at the airport here. Lawless also sparked an embarrassing dispute by telling federal agents their help was not needed in putting in place new FAA security measures. Sidestepping Lawless, senior federal officials informed airport administrators that they intended to lend a hand. … Lawless' boss, Massport President and CEO Virginia Buckingham, also has no aviation experience. Buckingham is a former Weld press aide who in 1998 managed the successful gubernatorial campaign of Weld's Republican successor, Paul Cellucci. Her predecessor, former Republican congressman Peter I. Blute, a Weld appointee, also had no experience running an airport. … 'Watch list' didn't get to airline 9.21.01   D.Willman, A. C.Miller, P. McDonnel L.A.Times Wash.D.C.   Federal law enforcement authorities did not notify American Airlines that two men with links to terrorist Osama bin Laden were on a "watch list" before they helped hijack a flight from Dulles International Airport last week, according to individuals with direct knowledge of the matter. Even before they had reserved their tickets for the Los Angeles-bound flight that crashed into the Pentagon, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi were known to federal law enforcement authorities. … Generally, law enforcement officials regard the names on the watch lists as sensitive intelligence, though there have been exceptions allowing the information to reach airlines. When less significant crimes were suspected in recent years--including drug smuggling and theft-- federal authorities have often tipped the airlines or sought their cooperation. … American Airlines on numerous occasions to drug or theft suspects appearing on passenger lists, sources said. In at least a dozen instances, the airline has allowed the FBI to place agents within its work force to conduct undercover operations. Federal agencies this summer had evidence in hand that linked Al-Midhar and Alhamzi to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire suspected of financing terrorist assaults worldwide, incl 2.26.01Feb. 26, 1993, World Trade Center bombing … [ FBI did far more to bomb WTC than O.binLaden ] Former U.S. Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, one of six people chosen by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to develop recommendations to improve aviation security, said there have been ongoing problems with "coordination and communication among agencies." … According to govt documents obtained by The Times, Al-Midhar arrived 7.4.01 at New York's JFK Intl on Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 53, carrying a Saudi Arabian passport. He gave his intended address as a Marriott Hotel in New York. He was traveling on a business visa obtained at the consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. … Acting this summer on CIA information, the immigration service learned that Al-Midhar and Alhamzi were already in the U.S. By Aug. 23, the FBI set about trying to find both men. FBI Special Agent Jeff Thurman in San Diego, where the two men once lived, recounted the events. … Were Feds Warned Before OKC Bomb Built ? 2.6.97   Lou Kilzer & Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News The fuel dealer reported the purchasing attempt to the ATF, but the agency did not follow up. Destined to shadowbox with the Devil 9.18.01   Robert Scheer L.A.Times … terrorists have already won, immobilizing the world's greatest democracy and that much of what we are doing as a nation is simply stomping our feet in frustration. … deal rationally with the mayhem that much of the world has long endured, some of it even inflicted by us. … measures required to totally eliminate terrorism would turn the world into a police state. … Lawmaker is lightning rod in terrorism policy debate   Calif. congresswoman praised & condemned after voting to deny Bush broad authority to deal with crisis.     9.18.01   M. L.LaGanga, J.M.Glionna, D.Morain (Sacramento), M.Schultz (DC) L.A.Times OAKLAND   … Rep. Barbara Lee … received 20,000 e-mail missives in last 3 days; painclothes police officers guarded her Wash. DC office after casting the lone vote against giving President Bush broad authority to combat terrorism … "we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target." … California's 9th Congressional District, home to … Berkeley & Oakland … 420-1 vote against war powers … [Alameda constituent] Glenn Forster: 'There's a word for people like her: peacenik." Sandre R. Swanson, Lee's chief of staff in Oakland home office, … "This isn't a popularity contest vote." … Lee is not the first member of Congress to take a solo stand against going to war. Jeannette Rankin, Montana's lone representative at the time and the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, cast the only votes against WWI & WWII. Although a statue of Rankin stands in the Montana State Capitol, she paid the price for her convictions. She was defeated for reelection after each vote. … Stop open-ended permanent war on terrorism 4.18.02   Rep. Dennis Kucinich D-OH statement ranking Minority member, Govt Reform Subcomm. on National Security, Veterans' Affairs & Intl Relations A Louisiana congressman apologized yesterday after coming under fire from Arab-Americans for saying anyone with "a diaper on his head" should be stopped and questioned. Republican Rep. John Cooksey, who's planning to run for Senate next year, made the comment Monday in a radio interview broadcast statewide. "If I see someone come in and he's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over and checked," Cooksey said. Ziad Asali, president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called Cooksey's remark "very unfortunate." Yesterday, Cooksey stated, "The man I had on my mind was Osama bin Laden, and I never intended to disparage loyal Americans of Arab descent." 9.21.01   SD UT A chilling tale 10.12.01   Jonathan Alter Newsweek Online This week, I went to Brooklyn in search of an "urban myth" about the World Trade Center assault. … this story is no myth. Everyone has heard the stories, the "friend of a friend" who was stood up by her Afghan boyfriend, who then told her in an e-mail not to get on a commercial jet on 9.11.01. The next-door neighbors of Middle Eastern descent who threw a raucous party Sept. 10 then were nowhere to be found the next day. The story I was looking for had circulated less widely and in more general form. It recounted the story of a kid who bragged around school before the attacks that the WTC was going to be destroyed. On Oct. 11, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, an aggressive young reporter for The New York Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., published an article that tracked the story to New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. Shapiro identified a teacher who witnessed a freshman in her class saying the week prior to the WTC attacks: "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week." "This is the only case we know of where someone said the WTC was coming down prior to it happening," a police source told me. New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is a wonderful melting pot. On Thursday, when I visited, 2 girls, one Chinese, one Russian, sat poring over SAT prep material near polling booths set up for the New York City mayoral runoff. I heard at least 3 languages spoken I couldn't even begin to identify. With 116 students from Pakistan, the school offers courses in Urdu. Bensonhurst has changed immeasurably since the days of black versus white racial confrontation in the 1980s. Immigrants, many of whom speak little English, far outnumber native speakers on the streets. The restaurants & shops offer food from dozens of countries. Since 9.11.01, hundreds of calls have poured into the local police precinct, but real incidents have been few. Someone tried to throw a Molotov cocktail into a mosque, but it hit a canopy pole of the building instead and did little damage. Reports that Arab immigrants had been cheering at a local supermarket after the towers collapsed (a frequent rumor around the country) were investigated and turned out to be false. So were the dozens of rumors of Arabs mysteriously disappearing from their homes just before the attack. The police say they have been working closely with 2 of the 3 mosques in the area. One is run by an Irishman who converted to Islam and became an imam, the other by a baggage handler for American Airlines. This latter fact, not surprisingly, aroused a great interest at first. His friends in the community thought he might lose his job. But the imam is backed by the airline and remains close to the police in the area. "I feel sorry for the dark-skinned people in the neighborhood," says a police officer. "They've done nothing wrong, and most have been cooperative." It's that context that makes the story of the Pakistani freshman so strange. I can't tell you who filled in the details for me; the heat is on, and the FBI is particularly jumpy. Both teacher & student have, with the help of the school, successfully ducked all efforts to contact them. But here's what I've pieced together: On 9.6.01, 5 days before the attack, Antoinette DiLorenzo, who teaches English as a second language to a class of Pakistani immigrants, led a class discussion about world events. She asked a freshman (his name has been withheld): "What are you looking at?" The youth was peering out the third-floor window toward lower Manhattan. After he made the remark about the WTC not being there next week, the teacher didn't immediately think much of it, though it stuck in her mind. On 9.11.01, school was canceled after the attack and again the following day. On Thursday, 9.13.01, a clearly agitated DiLorenzo, saying she had been afraid to come forward, reported the incident to the principal's office. "It scared the hell out of everyone," according to a source at the school. The police & FBI were alerted and 12 NYPD officers entered the school and secured DiLorenzo's classroom for 3 hours, locking the doors with the students inside. While the students were brought lunch & a movie and told to be calm, the youth in question & his older brother, a sophomore, were taken to be interrogated by the FBI, stationed at the police precinct nearby. DiLorenzo, the key to the believability of this story, was also questioned. She was described by school officials as having a superb & unblemished record in the New York school system. A police source described her as "100% credible." Moreover, according to police, the youth confirmed having made the Sept. 6 statement about the towers. At the moment he did so, his older brother elbowed him, said he had been "kidding," and the youth in question agreed. The younger brother seemed upset and said he was "having a bad day." When asked why, he said that his father was supposed to come back from Pakistan that day. Further details of the interrogation are unclear, in part because the FBI is not discussing it. Because of the suspension of air travel, it took the father a few days to return. About a week after 9.11.01, the father visited the school and angrily asked why his sons had been interrogated by the authorities. He said that his family's constitutional rights had been violated. Having done nothing wrong beyond spreading a rumor that turned out to be true, the student was returned to his classroom. He remains in the school. The FBI placed the boy's family under surveillance but, according to sources, does not see a connection to the plot to blow up the towers. The case remains under investigation, but with thousands of leads, it doesn't appear to be going anywhere. So what to make of all of this? There is no doubt in my mind that the story is true. But what does it mean? There are only three possibilities. One, the youth was clairvoyant. Two, the youth, knowing about the 1993 bombing, was just venting anger in a particularly timely way. Three, word of the attack on the WTC was rumored in his neighborhood and he heard about it. Investigators don't know what to believe. "It's creepy," one told me before I got on the subway to go back to the office. "But what the hell are we going to do about it now?" U.S. harassment campaign may backfire   ¹ 7.29.99   Vernon Loeb Wash.Post "One should go to the refugee camps throughout Pakistan and find out how many boy children have been named Osama since last August (1998), that's scary," said former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the agency's covert campaign to arm the Afghan mujadeen fighting Soviet troops in the 1980's. Missiles (fired at Afghanistan & Sudan) inflicted little lasting damage but helped to make bin Laden "a revered figure" in the Islamic world a senior counterterrorism official said. "People feel they have no voice," said former American Amb. in Pakistan & former State Dept counterterrorism coordinator Robt B. Oakley. "They look at a people with great wealth while they live in deep poverty. They resent the personal corruption of the Saudis" and the power of the U.S. American counterterrorism officials ruefully agree that bin Laden's oratory also rings true in Saudi Arabia. "His attacks on the Saudi royal family's repression & corruption are factually similar to State Dept human rights reports and CIA economic analyses". But they differ sharply in blaming the U.S. for shoring up the House of Saud by stationing troops in the Arabian Peninsula. "And if we make it into a war, we lose,'' said former Amb. Oakley. ''We'll swell their numbers enormously.'' That further increases the political threat that bin Laden presents, American officials concede. US 'planned attack on Taleban' 9.18.01   George Arney BBC A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden & the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden & the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar. The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional govt of moderate Afghans in its place, possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place. He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest. He said that he was in no doubt that after the WTC bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within 2 or 3 weeks. And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban. Secret memo reveals US plan to overthrow Taliban 9.21.01   Guardian UK Ian Traynor Tajikistan & Gary Younge Wash.DC U.S. govt is pressing European allies to agree to a military campaign to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and replace it with an interim administration under UN auspices. Diplomatic cables from the Washington embassy of a key NATO ally, seen by the Guardian, report U.S. is keen to hear allied views on "post-Taliban Afghanistan after the liberation of the country". The embassy cable reveals U.S. administration is bent on force to evict the Taliban from power because it offered Osama bin Laden shelter, named by the White House as prime suspect. The Guardian also learned 2 large US Hercules transport aircraft landed in Tashkent, capital of former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, on Tuesday loaded with surveillance equipt to be installed along the northern Afghan border. The secret landing represented a radical departure since it appeared to herald deployment of U.S. fighter squadrons at Uzbekistan's sprawling Termez airfield directly on the border. Such build-up would incur Russian wrath which views central Asian republics as its backyard. The Pentagon yesterday continued movement to war footing, with orders for up to 130 heavy bombers, fighters, aerial refuelling planes & other combat aircraft to be deployed around the MidEast & Central Asia region. 2 B-52 bombers yesterday left Barksdale airbase in Louisiana, joining F-15E fighter-bombers, F-16 fighters, B-1 long range bombers & E-3 Awacs airborne command & control aircraft that left Wednesday. The navy also sent an additional aircraft carrier toward MidEast region, which, along with air deployment, could place up to 500 US warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf & Indian Ocean areas. Tony Blair, in Washington last night to meet GWBush, suggested military strikes inside Afghanistan, targeted on bin Laden's training camps, could come in a matter of days. "These people, if they could, would get access to chemical, biological & nuclear capability. We have no option but to act," he said. The US strategy to depose the Taliban regime is based on more than military thinking. A further plank appears to entail supporting the campaign of the exiled 86-year-old monarch of Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah, to return to power by encouraging the Northern Alliance guerrilla army opposition to fall in behind him. Diplomatic documents seen by the Guardian show Washington is funding & organising travel of several Northern Alliance figures to Rome to confer with the exiled monarch who is expected to call for revolution. "The king plans to call on all the Afghan tribes to rise up against the Taliban," the diplomatic cable reported yesterday, citing advice of the U.S. administration. US plans to overthrow the Taliban regime were revealed when a senior European politician in Washington this week was told by the U.S. administration that it wanted to hear his country's views on how Afghanistan should be run after the Taliban were defeated and that "closer consultations" were necessary. The Americans also spoke of a UN role in the new "interim administration" for Afghanistan and for the Organisation for Security & Cooperation in Europe in central Asia, without mentioning NATO. Washington is routinely sceptical of the UN & OSCE, but the key role was seen as an attempt to build as broad a coalition as possible behind the imminent campaign. Europeans, Russia, and even China might be swayed by the unusual U.S. inclusiveness, diplomats said. "It's a major change of U.S. policy," said one. The spying mission in Uzbekistan is also fraught with political risk. The 2 Hercules could not fly over Iran, but Turkmenistan, the third ex-Soviet state bordering Afghanistan granted permission. However, diplomats said the Turkmens were less keen to grant overflying rights to U.S. fighter aircraft heading for the Afghan border. Officials: Iraq could be pretense for U.S. terror attack ¹   2.5.03   Kelli Arena CNN Wash.D.C.   The threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil is at a higher level than in previous months because of the possibility of impending military action against Iraq, U.S. counterterrorism officials told CNN Wednesday. "The threat level is definitely up. Our guys have been told to act as if we have already bombed Iraq," one senior counterterrorism official told CNN. Govt officials said they are concerned that al Qaeda, Iraqi agents or individuals could launch an attack coinciding with a U.S. strike against Iraq. There has been debate about putting out an alert warning or actually raising the national threat level, but threat level will remain at yellow, or elevated, sources told CNN. Sources say the FBI is closely watching a "handful" of people believed to be Iraqi intelligence officers in U.S.. It is part of the bureau's effort to question many of the tens of thousands of Iraqis living in U.S. There is also surveillance of at least several hundred Iraqi nationals who are thought to be supporters of Saddam. Sources say that since 9.11.01, U.S. has received constant intelligence about another major al Qaeda assault. There is continuing fear of al Qaeda obtaining weapons of mass destruction, but officials said there is no proof the terrorist organization has such weapons yet. "If they get their hands on them, no doubt they will use them," a senior official told CNN. A senior counterterrorism official said he has remained concerned about a second terrorist attack since 9.11.01. "We're holding our breath" because of Iraq, the official said. Heightened concern prompted the FBI to instruct its agents to pack 3 days of clothes and personal items and a bag for at least a one-month deployment, sources said. The FBI will deliver a National Threat Assessment to Congress next week which will describe how al Qaeda continues to adapt and will say that a major concern is the threat of chemical & biological agents. Wary NYC beefs up security after alert hike 2.8.03   AP   ª NYC   Warning that terrorists may once again have New York in the crosshairs, Gov. George Pataki & Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced beefed-up security at bridges, tunnels and spots where crowds gather: airports, subways and certain public buildings. "Intelligence information and common sense suggest we need to increase our security measures," said Bloomberg, adding that 9.11.01 indicated the city was a top target for "those who want to destroy our way of life." But he and Pataki also urged New Yorkers to carry on with business as usual. The governor & mayor spoke Friday after Bush admin raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange. AttyGen Ashcroft cited an "increased likelihood" that al Qaeda terror network would attack Americans, either at home or abroad. A high-ranking law enforcement source told AP Friday that the measures came in response to intercepted communications between suspected terrorists, some as late as Thursday night. The suspects used language that suggested NYC is a possible target, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The communications raised specific concerns about hotels & subways in the city & the East Coast, the source added. The mayor said there was no information a threat had been made against any specific "installation or building or group." Specialized units of the state police & National Guard were activated, the governor said. Some would focus on biological or chemical threats, he added. In addition, Pataki said the statewide level of alert was bumped up to orange, second-highest level in the color-coded system. NYC has remained at an orange level since 9.11.01.

hypochondria prophylaxsis ¹ Warnings trigger a run on disaster supplies 2.12.03   Gary Strauss USA Today Monday's recommendation by Homeland Security Dept to stockpile a 3 day supply of food, water & medicine and to have duct tape & plastic sheeting to seal windows & doors appeared to be taking hold around the country. Buying seemed more intense in NYC & Wash.D.C., widely considered the most likely targets for terrorists. The purchases came amid stepped-up security around the country since Friday, when the terror threat level was raised from yellow to orange, indicating a "high" risk of attack. airports   Random car searches continued at most airports. At least 3 airports declined to conduct the random checks: Minneapolis-St. Paul MN, Seattle & Spokane, WA. "We want to balance the traveling public's need for security with an individual's civil rights," said Minneapolis-St. Paul Intl Airport deputy exec. dir. operations Tim Anderson. In Washington state, airport officials said they were heeding tight restrictions on random searches spelled out by the state constitution. But officials will still stop suspicious cars, they said. Transportation Security Administration spokesman Robert Johnson said that airports can modify their security plans, but that random car searches are legal. "We believe we are on firm constitutional ground, given the threat that exists," he said. Some airports, incl Hartsfield Atlanta Intl Airport, are abandoning random searches because of possible congestion, he said. bridges   The Coast Guard scrambled to search the waters near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge before dawn Tuesday after a tugboat operator reported that a man wearing a wetsuit was buzzing around in an inflatable boat without lights. After an intense search, no one was found. Meanwhile, anxious customers piled into hardware stores around the nation's capital. In Reston, VA. shoppers argued over emergency supplies. "Does anyone know what else I need?" investment banker Michael Hawkins asked. "Bottled water, a battery-operated radio and masks," a shopper responded. Another steered Hawkins away from a nearby supermarket that had sold out of bottled water. In NY, stores saw a similar pickup. "We've been having a steady stream of customers buying dropcloths & duct tape," said Jonathan Jeffries at Vercesi Hardware. "Most are coming because they saw it on the news … (and are) just trying to be prepared. But New Yorkers are always trying to be prepared." Jon Terzis purchased a $595 "domestic preparedness kit" at Quark Intl Limited. The kit contains a gas mask, alarm, latex gloves, a flashlight, a multipurpose emergency tool and a chemical protection suit. "Look, I don't know if any of this stuff is going to protect you, but there is a certain peace of mind," Terzis said. "For this amount of money, to be caught without it sounds silly. That's a night on the town for most New Yorkers."

Consumer fears and purchases varied by region. At Central Ace Hardware in Miami Beach, long a prime source for hurricane supplies, calls came early. "A guy wanted a dozen rolls of duct tape," manager Jack Terplicki said. "He wanted to make sure he was prepared for the security alert and was afraid it would sell out. Normally, in hurricane season, all you need is one roll for the house. People are real scared."
In Fremont, NE Deb Gaudio was buying water, canned food and a radio. "We tend to buy in bulk anyway. And so what we did was purchase an extra quantity of things that we would use either way." In the San Francisco area, "people have emergency supply kits because we have unreliable power and we live in earthquake country," said Henry Nesmith, owner of Los Altos Hardware in Silicon Valley.

Internet sales also have gone up. Long Life Food Depot, based in Richmond IN said sales of military-style MREs (meals ready to eat), were up 100% since the threat level was raised. Popular orders: cases containing 240 meals ($1,080) and 72-hour emergency kits ($112) for 4 people.

[ mass media preparatory ] 1AEB79 "Pilot" Lone Gunmen ¹ 3.4.01   caricature tv series   Fox Network cf. Episode summary   ¶8 & 9 … Byers goes back to his father's home and finds Bert there. Bert slaps him and says he should not have gotten involved. The 12D plan is for a small group of govt operatives to crash a jetliner into New York City in order to keep tensions high and increase arms sales. Bert is doing what he can and thinks he knows which flight they have targeted. Back at the Gunmen's office, Frohike is working on anagrams when Byers returns. Helms is also there, and Byers tells him he has talked with his father. It was the plan of the govt to flush Bert out of hiding using John. Ray hurries off to find Bert. After he leaves, Bert comes to the door of the Gunmen's office. The two Byers head for the airport to try to find the explosives in the aircraft. Both board the plane, but cannot find explosives, using hydrocarbon "sniffer" devices. They realize that the airplane will be remote controlled, just like Bert's car was. Talking by phone to the Gunmen's office, Byers asks Langly and Frohike to hack into the aircraft controls. They do and discover that the plane is programmed to crash into the World Trade Center. Bert enters the cockpit and tries to warn the aircrew, but they don't believe him. Making a lunge, he deactivates the autopilot and the crew realizes that they are not in control. They have 22 minutes before they hit the building. Langly can't break the encryption on the aircraft control system; his computer doesn't have the processing power and the computer keeps freezing. Frohike slips next door to the firing range and finds Yves there. He needs the Octium but she is not impressed by the need to save people's lives. Frohike points out that her name is an anagram for "Lee Harvey Oswald" and says he knows who she is. She uses the Octium in her laptop to somehow assist Langly break the encryption and give the pilots control of the aircraft again. The plane barely misses the skyscraper. … [ ed. This was the initial aka "pilot" episode scenario, comedic depreciation of state terror against its own population, desensitizing viewers' affront at traitorous profiteering of shadow govt. The series ran 13 episodes in 3 months of much promoted prime time. AºA 9.11 came with the start of the next new tv season. ]

Fake terror road to dictatorship Free Republic Ceyhan exCIA dir. declares WWIV Aldo Moro 17x truth suppression USAID terror lessons Le Figaro ownership cf final ¶ war farce J.Pilger 11.4.01 "Plotters" New Republic 7.6.92 C.A. Valentine 3.10.02 "Hunt the Boeing" Asile C.A. Valentine 10.01 C.A. Valentine 10.06.01 Wm S. Burroughs re methodology pacifist anarchy re state terror Wag the Dog 9.11.01 synthesis American Hero, auth. Larry Beinhart Ready.gov … Once lost, the Romans & Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people. Remember that when Crassus tells you Sparticus approaches, when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear, when the Reichstagg burns down. "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels…" Henry IV 4:4, counsel to his son   Shakespeare references Megiddo Deacon Alexander WYE per EIR Terrorist Watch CIA collusion Peter Dale Scott villain invention counterpoint LaRouche empathy's odds Brasscheck CFR vers. CRS / GWU HSW WebArchive Karl Loren Human Underground Cephas Ministry MTV BBC Village Voice WI 2600 lgf TWA 800 eyewitness alliance ad oil   oil record high Cheney's treason petro presidency John Loftus Thomas Kean Enron regional pipeline Pipelineistan Ian Bremner (CFR) spring 1998 war farce J.Pilger 11.4.01 WSWS 10.27.01 J. Flanders re Michael Klare, et al Unocal VP John J. Maresca Guardian UK 3.5.01

[ ed.   For any number of reasons, 9.11.01 was fortuitous to short term policy of the Bush family & the economic interests they represent officially & privately. It occluded a soured economy after a decade of surplus which was on verge of much greater and more rapidly worsening, scheduled presentation of evidence to grand jury for indictment of Fed. Reserve chairman's participation with global banking firms in gold price fixing, whipsawing energy markets from a multinational utility corporation's death throes, severe perception management aka "image & opinion" failures during normally honeymoon period of tacitly unchallenged good standing, not least from theft of U.S. electoral college decision. Other consequences favorable to the oligarchs facilitated by allegiance in time of disaster include Congressional authorization of presidential fast track trade authority, approval of China's WTO membership, and all manner of martial law initiatives via customarily unconscienceable expansion of executive order & privilege. Nonetheless, if U.S. National Security agents & forces directly colluded in planning & causing 9.11.01 beyond mere spin control after the fact, so drastic an instigatory provocation presupposes clear coordination with commensurately strategic goals. Contended motives such as Caspian oil fields' hegemony are long range hence strategic, but have no time sensitive aspect necessitating drastic measure beyond customary State & Commerce Dept machinations.

One long planned, synchronous event was the Euro's actual circulation on 1.01.02.   With European solidarity assured by sympathy in response to yet another demonstration of might by New Rome's army in the planet's most remote quarter against rogue puppets, Novus Ordo Seclorum proves fiat enforceable. ]

Spies 'R' Us ¹ ² ³ ª º
Russia hosts 39 nations' espionage chiefs' gathering
3.27.02   Toby Westerman WorldnetDaily

While Patrushev called for "unification" of spy agencies, and Putin urges "close coordination" of intelligence agencies around the world, Russia has recently been caught attempting to spy on some of its partners. According to various press reports, British counterintelligence has recently apprehended an employee of one of Britain's largest defense contractors for allegedly stealing confidential material and sending it to Moscow. 45 year-old BAE Systems worker Iam Parr, civil & military electronic equipt supplier, was charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act. BAE Systems produces a variety of sensitive technologies, incl radar used in terrain-navigation systems for jet fighters, night-bombing equipment, night-vision field equipment, and helmet-mounted combat electronic devices.

Moscow is also currently charged with espionage in Japan. Russian trade representative recently charged with attempting to obtain U.S. military secrets from a former Japanese air force officer according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Russian embassy in Tokyo responded angrily to the charges and issued an implied threat to the Japanese govt regarding the long-anticipated treaty formally regularizing Japanese/Russian relations. Allegations of espionage were "inspired by those forces that are not interested in concluding a peace treaty between the 2 countries [Japan & Russia]," the Russian embassy thundered, declaring that those forces "still live in the epoch of the Cold War ..." Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
… counterintelligence expert Robert Hanssen, who later pled guilty to two decades of spying - first for the Soviet Union and then for the Russian Federation. …

Carlyle Group        
Crusader telcom intl forecast re corporate welfare Frank Carlucci USIS Riverstone Holdings re Cheney Thomas Kean David Kelly rip 7.17.03 wrecking vistas Touch America AZ refinery corp. cannibalism Putin at Kennebunkport Iron Triangle Reality.com MLPs dynastic fraticide redux Le Figaro ownership Relizon Bush knew: bin Mahfouz Dan Briody telcom ties Dutch intro video

Bush-bin Laden money connection per BushNews

"If the U.S. boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's alleged terrorist activities, his family may be the unexpected beneficiary of that, media reports said. "Among its far-flung business interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian clan, which says it is estranged from Laden, is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence & aerospace companies," Wall St Journal said in an investigative dispatch.

It said "through this investment and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family has become acquainted with some of the biggest names in the Republican Party." "In recent years, former president George H W Bush, ex-secretary of state James Baker & ex-secretary of defence Frank Carlucci have made the pilgrimage to the bin Laden family's headquarters in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). "Ex-president Bush makes speeches on behalf of Carlyle Group and is senior adviser to its Asian Partners Fund, while Baker is its senior counsellor and Carlucci is the group's chairman," the journal said." 9.28.01   Hindustani Times ••   Part Two : Inside The Carlyle Group With former US Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci as its chairman, it's no surprise that The Carlyle Group is drawn to defense. Defense & aerospace firms such as United Defense Industries make up a significant share of the world's largest private equity firm's portfolio. Also represented are information technology (Federal Data), health care, real estate, & bottling companies.   [ shades of Ted Shackley's Saigon Pepsi plant ] Since Carlucci joined in 1989, a host of staffers from the Reagan & first Bush administrations have stinted at the company, incl ex-Sec.State James Baker and ex-budget chief Richard Darman. Former Pres. Bush and former UK PM John Major have also made appearances. Hoovers Online … Traveling with the fanfare of dignitaries, Mr. Bush & Mr. Baker [use] their extensive govt contacts to further their business interests as representatives of the Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private equity firm based in Washington that has parlayed a roster of former top-level govt officials, largely from the Bush & Reagan administrations, into a moneymaking machine. In a new spin on Washington's revolving door between business and govt, where lobbying by former officials is restricted but soliciting investments is not, Carlyle has upped the ante and taken the practice global. Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker were accompanied on their trips by former UK PM John Major, another of Carlyle's political stars. With door-openers of this caliber, along with shrewd investment skills, Carlyle has gone from an unknown in the world of private equity to one of its biggest players. Private equity, which involves buying up companies in private deals and reselling them, is a high-end business open only to the very rich. Over the last decade, the Carlyle empire has grown to span 3 continents and include investments in most corners of the world. It owns so many companies that it is now in effect one of the nation's biggest defense contractors and a force in global telecommunications. Its blue-chip investors include major banks & insurance companies, billion-dollar pension funds and wealthy investors from Abu Dhabi to Singapore. In getting business for Carlyle, Mr. Bush has been impressive. His meeting with the crown prince was followed by a yacht cruise & private dinners with Saudi businessmen. Bush led Carlyle's successful entry into S.Korea, fastest-growing economy in Asia. After his meetings with the prime minister and other govt & business leaders, Carlyle won a tough competition for control of KorAm, one of Korea's few healthy banks. The steady flow of politicians to lucrative private-sector jobs based on their govt contacts is a familiar Washington tale. But in this case, it is being played out for more dollars, on a global stage, and in the world of private finance, where the minimal govt rules prohibiting lobbying by former officials for a given period are not a factor. These rules say nothing about potential conflicts when former govt officials use their connections & insights for financial gain, and they may attract more notice now that GWBush is president. Many of those involved with Carlyle, which invests largely in companies that do business with the govt or are affected by govt regulations, have ties to the Oval Office. For instance, Frank C. Carlucci, a Reagan secretary of defense who as much as anyone is responsible for Carlyle's success, said he met in February with his old college classmate Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a defense secretary under former President Bush, to talk about military matters at a time when Carlyle has several billion-dollar defense projects under consideration.... "Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit public interest group based in Washington. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the govt, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that and, to me, that's a jaw-dropper." It is difficult to determine exactly how much money the senior Mr. Bush & Mr. Baker have made. Mr. Baker is a Carlyle partner, and Mr. Bush has the title senior adviser to its Asian activities. With a current market value of about $3.5 billion on Carlyle's equity and with the firm owned by 18 partners and one outside investor, Mr. Baker's Carlyle stake would be worth about $180 million if each partner held an equal stake. It is not known whether he has more or less than the other partners. Unlike Mr. Baker, Mr. Bush has no ownership stake in Carlyle; he is an adviser and an investor and is compensated by obtaining stakes in Carlyle investments. Carlyle executives cited, for example, Bush's being allowed to put money he earns giving speeches for Carlyle into its investment funds. Bush generally receives $80,000 to $100,000 for a speech. He sits on no corporate boards other than Carlyle's. Carlyle also gave the Bush family a hand in 1990 by putting George W. Bush, who was then struggling to find a career, on the board of a Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair, an airline-catering company.... With $12 billion from investors, Carlyle claims to be the nation's largest private equity fund and makes money by investing in undervalued companies and reselling at a profit.... The California state pension fund invested $305 million with Carlyle, and the Texas teachers pension fund, whose board was appointed when GWBush was governor, gave Carlyle $100 million to invest in November. Carlyle also works as a financial adviser to the Saudi govt....Carlyle has done well for its investors, returning an average of 34% a year over the last decade, in line with other private equity funds. It has done this by buying what it knows best, companies that are regulated by the govt. Nearly two-thirds of its investments are in defense & telecommunications companies, which are affected by shifts in govt spending & policy. ...Carlyle has become the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, owning companies that make tanks, aircraft wings and a broad array of other military equipt. It also owns health care companies, real estate, Internet companies, a bottling company and even Le Figaro, the French newspaper.... And its access extends well beyond American shores. In Europe, Carlyle has assembled an advisory board that besides Mr. Major includes Karl Otto Pöhl, former president of German's Bundesbank, and the past or present chairmen of B.M.W., Hoffman-LaRoche, Nestlé, LVMH-Moët Hennessy, Louis Vuitton and Aerospatiale, the French Airbus partner. Carlyle's Asia advisory board, which helps raise money and finds and reviews deals, includes former President Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines, the former prime minister of Thailand and the executive director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The former South Korean prime minister Park Tae Joon was also an adviser to Carlyle.... In an office adorned with photographs of Carlucci & the politically mighty, he sits beneath an Oval Office picture of himself & Mr. Reagan, Carlucci makes it clear that his extensive govt & global ties are as fresh as ever. "I know Rumsfeld extremely well," Carlucci said in an interview. "We've been close friends throughout the years. We were college classmates." …   3.5.01   NYTimes •••   Ex-Prez Bush's financial ties with defense contractors leads to call for resignation Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes govt corruption and abuse, reacted with disbelief to The Wall Street Journal report of yesterday that Geo. H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice. (Other top Republicans are also associated with Carlyle Group, such as former Sec.State Jas. A. Baker.) Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been "disowned" by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in the senior Bush's firm. Other reports have questioned, though, whether members of his Saudi family have truly cut off Osama bin Laden. Indeed, the Journal also reported yesterday that the FBI has subpoenaed the bin Laden family business's bank records. Judicial Watch earlier this year had strongly criticized President Bush's father's association with the Carlyle Group, pointing out in a March 5 statement that it was a "conflict of interest (which) could cause problems for America's foreign policy in MidEast & Asia." Judicial Watch called for the senior Bush to resign from the firm then. "This conflict of interest has now turned into a scandal. The idea of the President's father, an ex-president himself, doing business with a company under investigation by the FBI in the Sept. 11 terror attacks is horrible. President Bush should not ask, but demand, that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group," stated Judicial Watch chairman & general counsel Larry Klayman. …   9.28.01   Judicial Watch   detached exegesis [ ed.   AOA (Attack on America) is 2% of the planet's population that own 98% of the tangible wealth faking havoc to deflect attention from their responsibility for their backstroke of "dump" after a decade of artificial escalation of value or "pump". Deployment of missiles & men is merely clearing shelves of obsolete inventory, not fundamental Spartan cultural values. The West birthed & nurtured Islamic hegemony of the MidEast for the sake of leverage, but the region's masses embraced it above citizenship and fanned the flames of cleric's ignition. They have no one but themselves to blame for being trapped in the consequences of deeming war holy beyond even the U.S. National Security demon obsession. Crusade is no more valid for Allah than Jehovah, least of all in the name of Jas. Jesus Angleton. Islam fancies itself sanctified in repudiating the perversity bred by hyper-consumer cultural values, utterly failing to recognize those values as symptomatic of class manipulation & dominion rather than an inherent attribute of culture or nation. ] Prince buys Citigroup, AOL, Priceline   3.11.02   Reuters Dubai   Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed has bought more than $1 billion worth of shares in Citigroup, AOL Time Warner and Priceline.com over the past 6 months, his co. said on Monday. Cross hairs   perpetrators, profiteers & pork ¹ 5.13.02   Mark Mazzetti U.S. News&World Rpt Def.Sec Rumsfeld pledged to kill unnecessary Cold War-era weapons and spend money on new technology. His first target: Army's Crusader howitzer, $11 billion, 42-ton tracked gun originally developed to fight the Soviet Union. But the Army wants to save the program. Since the Crusader would be built & tested in Oklahoma, powerful GOP lawmakers Rep. J. C. Watts & Sen. James Inhofe will fight on Capitol Hill. Former defense sec. & Carlyle Group president Frank Carlucci, whose subsidiary United Defense Industries is building the gun, can also be expected to lobby to keep Crusader off the chopping block. A war in the planning for 4 years How stupid do they think we are? 11.9.01   M.Ruppert FTW re The Grand Chessboard (Harper Collins 10.98)   auth. Zbigniew Brzezinski   "American primacy & its geostrategic imperatives" ¹   … beginning of final conflict before total world domination by U.S. leads to the dissolution of all national govts. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member & former Carter NatSec Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (1988 co-chairman Bush NatSec Advisory Task Force), will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation & war) of their power. Brzezinski offers the alternative of a world in chaos unless U.S. controls the planet by whatever means … open world dictatorship within next 5 years. … 3 grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40) "In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last." (p.209) "Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211) Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, PhD     auth. self-publ. 1989 The Most Important Secrets in the World (German)   former German defense ministry official   advisor to former NATO Secretary Gen. Manfred Werner. 1983 Newsweek op-eds that Brzezinski & CFR effort to impose global dictatorship "was a criminal society. What we need is education for politicians, training that instills in them a higher sense of ethics than service to money. … They are not fighting against terrorists. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don't know how to respond. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next 5 years. There may not be another chance." If U.S. wants to do something about radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The "rogue states", Iraq, Libya, etc., are less important in Islam radicalisation than S.Arabia, single most important cause & supporter of Islam (Wahhabi) radicalisation, ideologisation, and general fanaticisation. UCSD poli.sci prof. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr auth. authoritative volume on Islamic extremism in Pakistan … NATO … to thrust further along 40th parallel from Balkans through S.Asian Republics of former Soviet Union. U.S. military has already taken control of a base in Uzbekistan. … pattern of activity designed to simultaneously consolidate control over MidEast & S. Asian oil, and contain & colonize former Soviet Union, … Afghanistan is necessary for 2 things: base of operations to begin process of destabilizing, breaking off, and establishing control over S.Asian Republics, … and constructing pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market. BBC was recently told by Pakistani Foreign Sec. Niaz Naik that senior American officials were warning them as early as mid-July that military action for mid-Oct. was being planned for Afghanistan. In 1996, Dept of Energy was issuing reports on desirability of pipeline through Afghanistan; in 1998, Unocal testified before House Subcommittee on Asia & the Pacific that this pipeline was crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to Indian Ocean. … The so-called evidence is a farce. The U.S. presented Tony Blair's puppet govt with the evidence, and of the 70 so-called points of evidence, only 9 even referred to the attacks on the World Trade Ctr, and those points were conjectural, … a bullshit story from beginning to end. … sophisticated & costly enterprise that would have left what we call a huge "signature". … hard to effectively conceal. … long-term scenario within which to establish fascist control measures at home & abroad as a citadel for the ruling class … based on the end of oil. … domestic repression has already begun, officially & unofficially. … FBI has defined terrorist groups not by whether any given group ever acted as terrorists, but by their beliefs. Some socialists & anti-globalization groups have already been identified by name as terrorist groups, even though there is not a single shred of evidence they ever participated in any criminal activity. … the Smith Act that was finally declared unconstitutional, but only after a lot of people served long jail time for the crime of thinking. … Worldwide resistance to neoliberal agenda … (of) debt-leverage imperialism. While debt & threat of sanctions used to coerce nations in periphery, final guarantor of compliance remains military action. … The empire is beginning to unravel. We can hardly justify intervention in these places by saying they are not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute domination of their societies by transnational corporations. That exposes the agenda. So we simply claim they are supporting terrorism. Concept of war touted here is a violation of principles of war on several counts, and will inevitably lead to military catastrophes, … Worst of all, we'll be destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear power in active conflict with its neighbor, and … provoking Russia, another nuclear power. … "state of emergency" mentality is already being used to quiet public discourses of anti-racism, feminism, environmentalism, … Rosa Luxemburg … "We are not faced with a choice between socialism & capitalism, but socialism or barbarism".   per Stan Goff   [ contemporary realpolitik ] the "fourth global war"   "it's all about Saudi Arabia' 10.5.04   America's Secret War   "Inside the hidden worldwide struggle between U.S. & its enemies" Geo. Friedman   author, Stratfor Forecasting founder & chair Ghost Wars "Secret history of CIA, Afghanistan & bin Laden, from Soviet invasion to 9.11.01" 2.23.04   Steve Coll Charlie Wilson's War "How the wildest man in Congress and a rogue CIA agent changed the history of our times" 4.03   Geo. Crile Blackwater "rise of world's most powerful mercenary army" 2.15.07   Jeremy Scahill   #133; In Friedman's opinion, the only response for a nation who has received a surprise attack is to quickly go on the offensive. Political considerations are, at that time, more important than military ones and more modest goals are to be eschewed in favor of more robust ones even if less than ideal conditions are present for this action. This view resulted in the attack on Afghanistan that caught Al Qaeda and the Taliban by surprise since they didn't think we could respond quickly with more than limited air attacks. This show of force was also necessary to gain the allegiance or at least the attention of the various Afghan warlords whom we had largely abandoned after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and who had now made accommodation with or had direct ties to the Taliban. Although the Afghan campaign worked well and has resulted in the installation of Hamid Karzai as Afghan president, now a US ally rather than Pakistani surrogate, it has not been so great a defeat for Al Qaeda that they lost standing or credibility in the Islamic world. To do this, and to further erase our image of weakness, we needed a greater show of force and determination. This had to be the invasion of Iraq. The need for invasion was not unrelated to nuclear proliferation. We were worried about the control of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program as well as those in Iran and Iraq. While the State Dept favored supporting centralized state control in Pakistan and Iran, they were opposed by the Defense Dept which said that nuclear weapons or facilities in control of govts in whom we had no confidence was an intolerable situation. Defense said that 9/11 had created a situation where compromise was unacceptable and a military response was necessary. State was focused on the limits of our capability, Defense was focused on the threat, Defense won. Friedman says our putative allies were torn. They understood that the US had to wage war on Al Qaeda and they were willing to help us track down Al Qaeda operatives. They were not willing, however, to help us invade Iraq and thereby (at least in their minds) shift the global balance of power. They opposed the Iraq invasion for the same reason we wanted it: it would make the US the preeminent power in the Middle East. That, combined with our control of the seas, would give us a global empire that was not in the interests of the so-called `Great Powers'. These nations feared that with Saudi Arabia and Iran surrounded, America would have more influence on oil production denying Russia the oil pricing advantage she currently enjoyed. France pursued an essentially anti-American foreign policy since WWII seeing America as a threat to her national interests and her attempts to dominate Europe through her collaboration with a psychologically subordinate and submissive Germany. Friedman says that France thought 2003 was the perfect time to create a unified European foreign policy under guidance from Paris and Berlin with the help of Moscow. What they underestimated was the historical collective memory of Eastern Europe who remembered past treatment by Moscow, Paris, and Berlin and welcomed Rumsfeld's categorization of `New Europe'. The result was an increased influence in Europe for the US and embarrassment for France that some may call a victory for the Bush Administration. Friedman's bookend scorecard of gains & failures regards the lack of understanding of how completely Iran had built political and administrative control in the Shiite community and through the efforts of Ahmed Chalibi as major failures, as well as the underestimation of the depth and quality of planning in Saddam's guerrilla war. On the success side, he says there has been no `toppling of regimes', no rising of the `Arab street', and virtually all Islamic regimes have increased their support for anti-Al Qaeda activity and are using their own intelligence services to achieve US anti-terrorist goals. The war has also succeeded in the Machiavellian objective of making the US hated and feared in the Arab world instead of hated and held in contempt, which Friedman calls a positive. In summation he says that the American people understand and can endure war, it is the American elite that project their own timidity and self-doubts onto the national character. He says that this is indeed a war, and probably a war `to the finish'.   … factions recruited disaffected, newly trained, mujahedin empowered by their successful pursuit of the anti-Soviet Afghan war to create the anti-western Al Qaeda organization. Al Qaeda is a working intelligence organization that pursues the goals of toppling the current Islamic regimes that they see as illegitimate, creating an uprising in the Moslem world and reestablishing the Caliphate. Friedman says that in spite of the errors we have made in the war, Al Qaeda has still failed to meet any of these objectives. According to Friedman, Clinton foreign policy was about doing good things to help deserving people, rather than about pursuing America's national interests. As the worlds only superpower, war was now optional, to be pursued or declined at our option, since no enemy had the power, it was assumed, to force us into war. The attack on 9/11 showed otherwise. Earlier attacks; in 1993 on the World Trade Center, and on the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in Yemen were mostly declined by Clinton; the audience for the attacks was not the US, but the Moslem world. By failing to respond the US showed weakness and impotence while highlighting Al Qaeda's effectiveness. These attacks vanquished the hopelessness and powerless feeling in the `Arab street' and helped to create the current resurgence of aggressive militant Islam. Friedman compares this war to WWII. Although the traditional idea of war with a competing nation-state is diluted by the non-local or pan-Islamic nature of the Al Qaeda Islamo-fascism, it is still a war. [ False.   "Islamo-fascist attacks" are funded by, hence fundamentally consist of, dynastically directed intelligence agencies of status quo regimes underwriting militarily armed bandit gangs to preserve munitions profiteering derived from both "sides" played against a defrauded & tax looted middle of nominally democratic global citizenry. That is not international war; it is global hegemony of class conflict via victorious deceit of false flag populism. ] Current conflict has many similarities to the ideological wars of national liberation against Marxism-Leninism, but the historical comparison and precedents in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 are, to him, obvious. Legalistic interpretation that war is simply crime, and the perpetrators of war, criminals is, to Friedman at least with historical perspective, nonsense. [ Or at least bad for business in the admission, since GF's clients are all intel agencies and procurement profiteers engaged in record breaking organized crimes incl. genocide. ] He posits that this view would have led FDR on December 7, 1941, to declare that we would hunt down the Japanese pilots who participated in the attack and subject them to judicial proceedings to determine their proportionate guilt and subsequent punishment. This is, he maintains, absurd. It was, however, the position supported by the Clinton administration in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the current view of Harold Koh, dean of the Yale Law School among others. This view helped to justify the separation between the US Justice Dept and the US intelligence gathering organizations In the US, the FBI is a police organization entrusted with the prosecution of crime. Intelligence organizations are involved in the collection of information in anticipation of and to prevent future action. According to Friedman, these functions are not compatible and many of our intelligence failures are the result of this misalignment of resources. [ Not least because those "resources", i.e. tax revenues, would be spent on attorneys prosecuting and defending intel agencies' international racketeering instead of being remanded to GF for further studies re achievement of dynastic agendas with sufficient subterfuge as to escape attribution & indictment.] Iran: U.S., Britain, Pakistan linked to militants Reprisals vowed for bombing that killed Revolutionary Guard commanders 10.19.09   AP Tehran   Iran vowed retaliation Monday after accusing Pakistan, the U.S. and Britain of aiding Sunni militants who stunned the Islamic regime with a suicide bombing that killed top Revolutionary Guard commanders and dozens of others. A commentary by the official news agency called on Iranian security forces "to seriously deal with Pakistan once and for all." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Pakistani counterpart that his nation must hunt down suspected members of Jundallah, or Soldiers of God. "The presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan is not justifiable and the Pakistani govt needs to help arrest and punish the criminals as soon as possible," state TV quoted Ahmadinejad as telling President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday. Iran made no specific threats against the U.S. or Britain, but the accusations came as talks began in Vienna over Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. is part of those talks, which observers said made little headway Monday beyond spelling out each side's position. Iran has often claimed that Western powers use groups such as Jundallah to try to destabilize the country. But the direct finger-pointing at Pakistan and the warnings of a stepped-up offensive present a different and risky scenario for Iran's leaders. Sunday's attack occurred in a region that is home to several minority Sunni tribes in rugged southeastern Iran. It is one of the country's most restive areas. Until now, authorities have avoided widespread security offensives that could draw in outside extremists such as al-Qaida. Sharper tensions with Pakistan could severely hurt Iran's efforts to battle drug trafficking and jeopardize important trade deals at a time when Tehran could face more sanctions over its nuclear program. In May, the two countries signed a landmark pact for a natural gas pipeline into Pakistan. Pakistan's president quickly condemned the attack that killed at least 42 people including 5 senior Revolutionary Guard officers, in a district near Iran's border with Pakistan. The dry canyons and hills are crisscrossed by smuggling routes and home to Sunni Muslim ethnic groups known as Baluchi. Jundallah gained notice more than 5 years ago with sporadic attacks and kidnappings, claiming the minority Sunni tribes in southeastern Iran suffer at the hands of Iran's Shiite leadership. Its leader Abdulmalik Rigi has been quoted as saying the group does not seek to break from Iran but that violence is necessary to draw attention to discrimination. Most experts estimate Jundallah has no more than 1,000 main fighters from Baluchi clans, whose territory extends into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran has claimed the group has ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, but most analysts say no evidence has been produced. Jundallah has targeted the powerful Revolutionary Guard before, including a Feb. 2007 car bombing that killed 11 members. The group also claimed responsibility for a May suicide bomb that killed 25 worshippers in a Shiite mosque. Sunday's blast was the most deadly. Reports said a suicide bomber ambushed a high-level delegation of Guard commanders arriving for talks on promoting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation with tribal leaders in Pishin near the Pakstani border. Revolutionary Guard chief Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari vowed to deliver a "crushing" response and said an Iranian delegation would travel to Pakistan soon to present evidence of links to its agents. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement on his official Web site vowing to punish those behind the attack. Several analysts who have studied Jundallah say the group likely receives inspiration and material support from Baluchi nationalists in Pakistan, but no direct backing from militant factions. "Evidence shows that U.S., British and Pakistani intelligence supported the group," state TV quoted Jafari as saying. U.S. State Dept and Britain's Foreign Office strongly rejected claims of any involvement. Zardari called the incident "gruesome and barbaric" and pledged full Pakistani support to fight the militants, according to a statement from his office. Peiman Forouzesh, an Iranian lawmaker representing the region where the attack took place, called on the Guard to carry out military operations inside the Pakistani soil against Jundallah. A statement in the name of Jundallah said the attack was carried out in "retaliation for the Iranian regime's crimes against the unarmed people of Baluchistan." The victims of the attack included the deputy commander of the Guard's ground forces, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as a chief provincial Guard commander, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The others killed were Guard members or tribal leaders.

Connections and then some   David Rubenstein has made millions pairing the powerful with the rich 3.16.03   Greg Schneider Wash.Post pg F1 David M. Rubenstein is exasperated, and he blurts something that a quick look around the room proves is outrageous: "We're not," he nearly shouts, "that well connected!" Behind him is a picture of Rubenstein on a plane with then-Gov. George W. Bush. Across the room, a photo of Rubenstein with the president's father and mother. Next to that, Rubenstein and Mikhail Gorbachev. Elsewhere: Rubenstein and Jimmy Carter. On a bookshelf: Rubenstein and the pope. This is not some honor wall in Rubenstein's office on Pennsylvania Ave, this is his wood-paneled den at home in Bethesda. The snapshots are nearly hidden among books and trinkets and family photos, decorating restraint of the truly, deeply connected. Rubenstein, after all, is co-founder of Carlyle Group, investment house famous as one of most well-connected companies anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British PM John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor, former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is senior adviser; the list goes on. Those associations brought Carlyle enormous success. Founded in 1987 with $5 million, Washington based merchant bank. controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the largest private equity manager in the world. It buys & sells whole companies the way some firms trade shares of stock. But the connections also have cost Carlyle, in ways that are hard to measure. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the business world, omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media outlets from the Village Voice to BusinessWeek have depicted Carlyle as manipulating levers of govt from shadowy back rooms. "The Iron Triangle," book about the co. due out next month, promises to take readers into "a world that few of us can even imagine, full of clandestine meetings [and] quid pro quo deals." Last year, then-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney D-GA even suggested that Carlyle's & Bush's MidEast ties made them somehow complicitous in 9.11.01 terror attacks. While her comments were widely dismissed as irresponsible, the publicity highlighted Carlyle's increasingly notorious reputation. Internet sites with headlines such as "The Axis of Corporate Evil" purport to link Carlyle to everything from Enron to al Qaeda. "We've actually replaced the Trilateral Commission" as the darling of conspiracy theorists, says Rubenstein, who, truth be told, happens to be a Trilateral Commission member. It didn't help that, as the World Trade Center burned 9.11.01, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. Even if you believe the conspiracy theories that Carlyle luminaries are pulling strings on the company's behalf, there is evidence they haven't been very good at it lately. The current Bush administration has sloughed off advice from Baker calling for restraint in MidEast, where Carlyle has investors, and from former president Bush on the need for calm on the Korean peninsula, where Carlyle owns banks. DefSec Rumsfeld even canceled the $11 billion Crusader howitzer program, a crucial contract for the Carlyle-owned United Defense company. [ Canard. Crusader pgm canceled AFTER United Defense IPO bolstered by premature news Crusader cancellation to be reconsidered, customary pump for dump. ] Rubenstein resents the suggestion that Carlyle's bigwigs shape public policy for private gain; it's what made him erupt in an interview about his lack of connections. "Do you really think the current U.S. president would ruin his reputation and potentially hurt the U.S. because of his father's business interests? It's ludicrous," he says. "Do you really think because your father's making speeches in Saudi Arabia you're going to tilt U.S. policy one way or the other? It's ridiculous, it's absurd."   [ classic Watergate style non-denial denial ] Still, he knows why people believe that about Carlyle. He even takes the blame for it. "I probably failed in conveying the idea that we're not using this company in an inappropriate way," he says. Now, bit by bit, Rubenstein wants to change that image. A year ago he hired his first public relations specialist. Then, in Nov. 2002, he replaced former defense scretary Frank Carlucci as Carlyle's chairman with a different type of heavyweight: former IBM chair Louis V. Gerstner Jr. It is Carlyle's first marquee hire from the world of business instead of govt. It's only a step, and Carlyle has a long way to go to overcome its shadowy reputation. But Rubenstein has experience with transformation. His own career took a curious twist, as Rubenstein transformed himself from a young Carter White House policy wonk into a tycoon whose family safaris with Barbara Bush. "His ideology was compatible with mine, dedicated to human rights, civil rights, environmental quality, better education," Carter says in an interview. "I have been truly amazed by what David has done since the White House years." Carlyle, in its early days, was a far humbler creature than it is now. In fact, the company's first successful venture sounds like something from a spam e-mail. Rubenstein had discovered a legal loophole allowing Native Americans in Alaska to sell their tax losses, and he did a brief, brisk business connecting Eskimos with corporations in search of a write-off. Congress quickly closed the loophole, and Carlyle moved on in search of companies to buy. It made an abortive stab at the Chi-Chi's restaurant chain, and bought the Caterair Intl airline food service, putting George W. Bush on the board, but later selling it at a huge loss. The whole venture was something of a midlife crisis for Rubenstein, who had read somewhere that people rarely start businesses after they are in their late thirties. He had been treading water in a Wash.D.C. law office, and through old friend Ed Mathias, then of Legg Mason, hooked up with a few other men of similar age looking to get into something new. What they started was a private equity firm, aimed at using money from rich people or institutions to buy companies, run them for a while and sell them, hopefully at a profit. Carlyle was named for the swanky-sounding New York hotel, but that city's elite derided the little co. for being based in a financial backwater like Washington. Rubenstein craved legitimacy, so he paid attention when a former law partner passed on the tip that a big name in govt, Carlucci, was about to leave office and was looking for opportunities. Rubenstein resolved to hire him. "He was a person of some prominence. We were a 10-person firm, we thought hiring a person who was better known than we were might help us get our calls returned more. It was nothing more nefarious than that, or more intelligent than that," Rubenstein says. It worked. Carlucci is one of the world's great networkers. He got insight into business deals all over the country by serving on a long list of corporate boards.   [ A felony designated as "insider trading" ] With his Pentagon background, he pushed Carlyle to buy defense contractors at a time when such companies were out of favor with investors. When the defense industry later consolidated, Carlyle minted money by selling its pieces to the dominant new corporations. Carlucci became chair, and Rubenstein realized he had hit on a winning formula: If you put powerful people next to rich people, some of the power rubs off on the rich guys and some of the money rubs off on the powerful guys. Rubenstein began hiring other statesmen like a football owner stocking his team with stars, and the co. steered its investments into govt regulated industries. He got former secretary of state Baker in a twofer with former White House budget dir. Darman. Former FCC chairman William Kennard signed on to oversee telecommunications & media investing. Former SEC chairman Levitt is helping Carlyle find companies to buy and advising on corporate ethics. Baker helped land Bush, whose primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that attract wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially revered, such as Asia. After Bush speaks, Rubenstein & others close in to get the wowed attendees to entrust them with their riches. The co. has rewarded its faithful with a 36% average annual rate of return. It has done so through deals such as its $165 million purchase of Magnavox Electronic Systems in 1993, which it sold 2 years later for $370 million. Or its 1997 purchase of United Defense for $180 million. 4 years later, just before Rumsfeld canceled its Crusader howitzer program, Carlyle took United Defense public and sold about half the stock for $588 million. Such deals are the province of co-founders Daniel D'Anielo, who runs daily operations, and William Conway, who oversees investments. Rubenstein is the people person. He travels 300 days a year recruiting investors, visiting employees, scouting for opportunities. He is a Jew who sips tea in Arabian palaces, the son of a Baltimore postal worker who buys pinstripe suits, all alike, in London.   [ ed. Surnames indicating mob as COO, Zionist as CEO, and Wall St nee Plymouth Rock as CFO ] His role would suggest someone with a Chamber of Commerce smile, a 2 handed handshake. Rubenstein is not that guy. "I'm a pretty serious person," he says, cataloguing the sins he avoids: "I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't play golf." At 53, he manages to look boyish even though his hair has gone white. His eyebrows are still dark, à la Steve Martin, and his mannerisms, the palms-up shrug, the fast blinking when he makes a point, evoke a less-hyper Woody Allen. One of the most complicated things about Rubenstein is his sense of humor, which is pervasive but so bone-dry & understated that it's almost sneaky. When he greets someone for the first time with the stony-faced line "You were promised lunch, but the truth is, we don't actually have any lunch," the effect is off-putting and then amusing, a kind of barbed-wire charm. Rubenstein also is relentlessly self-deprecating. Being a reporter must be a fascinating job, he'll say, "with the exception of this interview." President Bush would no doubt love to have his advice, he deadpans, "so he could get inflation to 18%" the way Carter did with Rubenstein's help. He speed-reads 10 newspapers a day and 6 books a week. Among the clutter on his coffee table one Saturday afternoon: Gulf Business magazine, the book "What Went Wrong: Western Impact & Middle Eastern Response" by Bernard Lewis and "The Lexus & the Olive Tree" by NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman. Despite his drive to stay informed, Rubenstein also nurses an image as someone apart from the modes of the day. He hasn't seen a movie "in a dozen years." He carries a cell phone for emergencies, but doesn't know its number. He gets some 200 e-mails daily and responds to them all, though he writes the responses on a legal pad and has an assistant type them into the computer.   [ Hand written memos is Howard Hughes technique to control govt access to internal documents. ] Rubenstein's only real indulgence is gossip, which he uses both to reward and to milk his global network of big names. Otherwise, the man has no diversions. Work is his hobby. "If I were forced to relax in conventional ways I'm convinced I'd have a heart attack," he says. "I came from a very modest background, worked very hard and now I've achieved something, not a Nobel Peace Prize, not Bill Gates, but something." An only child, Rubenstein was raised in a working-class Jewish neighborhood in the Pikesville section of Baltimore. "It was a rigidly segregated place by religion," he says. But everything changed for him when he went to Baltimore's enormous City College public high school. There Rubenstein became friends with a charismatic football star named Kurt Schmoke, who one day would become the first elected black mayor of Baltimore. The two were members of the Lancers, a club for boys founded and still operated by retired Baltimore judge Robert I.H. Hammerman. "I didn't think David was a leader in the sense of Kurt being a leader, in the sense of being president of a class or president of a school," says Hammerman, who recalls urging the teenage Rubenstein to believe in himself. "I didn't think David at that time had that in him because he was too shy and too unsure of himself. … He did not have much self-confidence then, [though] he might feel he always bristled with confidence, because he certainly bristles with it now." Rubenstein went on to Duke University and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago Law School. After a couple of years working at NYC law firm, Rubenstein signed on as legal counsel to the presidential campaign of Birch Bayh. When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, Rubenstein won a job crafting domestic policy with campaign adviser Stuart Eizenstat. The two formed a close working relationship, and after the election Rubenstein found himself as the president's deputy domestic policy adviser at the age of only 27. Intoxicated by the job, Rubenstein made himself indispensable through sheer labor. "He devoted probably more hours to his work in the White House than anyone on my staff, so far as I ever knew," Carter says. "He was a reticent person as far as putting himself forward. He was very modest, and never claimed credit for successes when they did materialize. … And he never betrayed me." Newsweek magazine profiled Rubenstein in 1978 as the prototypical hyper-committed young policy wonk, eating dinner from a vending machine, all but sleeping in his office. As the last one out of the West Wing most nights, Rubenstein would put his & Eizenstat's memos at the top of the pile in the president's private study, ensuring Carter always knew their positions. A jealous staffer with the Office of Management & Budget eventually got a Secret Service agent to sniff out his technique and put that agency's memo on top, Rubenstein says. He likes to add that he didn't speak to that staffer for months, but later married her. Alice Rogoff Rubenstein went on to become asst to Donald Graham, then publisher of Washington Post, and she later spent 8 years as U.S. News & World Report CFO. Rubenstein also recruited his old friend Schmoke to the White House staff. "All the legends about him and how hard he worked are absolutely correct," Schmoke says. "He was somebody that I never heard anybody say anything critical or a bad word about. He was always somebody concerned about community. . . . He was very much interested in public policy concerns, and broad societal issues." Then, to Rubenstein's surprise, Carter failed to win a second term. Lawyers who had once dangled job offers now didn't return Rubenstein's calls. He eventually hired on at the firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge, but found that he didn't really enjoy the work. Eizenstat, who remains a close friend, didn't worry about Rubenstein, because he figured he would follow a path similar to his own, practice law, write papers for think tanks, step in and out of Democratic administrations. But Walter Mondale's big loss in 1984 soured Rubenstein on politics. As he entered his late thirties, he was restless for something to focus all that intense drive upon. Something that might carry a significant paycheck. So he took the leap and formed Carlyle. Not long after the firm started up, Rubenstein met Judge Hammerman for lunch at Duke Zeibert's. "I just want you to know," he said to his old mentor, "I'm not selling out." Rubenstein got his payday, and then some. He has lost track of his net worth, he says, because Carlyle's structure gives him an interest in each of the firm's 250-plus investments, and those values fluctuate. But it's safe to say he has many millions. The Rubensteins remodeled their Georgian-style home in Bethesda, assessed last year at $1.7 million, then bought the place next door and renovated it as a guesthouse. They built a 10,000-square-foot chalet in Beaver Creek CO and a compound that sleeps 30 on Nantucket. For all that, Rubenstein spends most of his time on airplanes or in hotels. He likes to point out that he neither skis nor sails, and visits those getaway homes maybe one week apiece each year. "I'm kind of fascinated with his acquisition of houses," says Arthur Levitt, the former SEC chairman. "I'm not convinced that he likes any of these houses a great deal. … He talks about them, but I certainly don't have the feeling that he has any commitment to them whatsoever." Despite his riches, Rubenstein has hung on to the persona of the earnest staffer laboring to make the marquee names look good. He hates the spotlight so much, associates say, he'll rearrange place cards at dinner to get himself off the head table. But what he's really doing is putting big potential investors next to the guest of honor, softening them up. One thing that has changed about Rubenstein is his politics. He hasn't let go of his roots; wife Alice Rogoff Rubenstein is on the board of the Carter Center, and the Carters were overnight guests at the Rubensteins' Nantucket home this summer. But George & Barbara Bush are more common houseguests. Rubenstein's wife & 3 children went along on a safari with Mrs. Bush, and the Rubensteins were among a select group invited to the former first lady's 75th-birthday party. "Spending time with them has affected my political views," Rubenstein says. Rather than Democrat or Republican, he now sees himself as a capital-C Capitalist. And he says he wants to position his co. the same way. Rubenstein has refused to let Carlyle form its own political action committee, and he has all but stopped making political donations. Since 1999 Rubenstein has contributed a total of about $2,500 to political campaigns, all GOP, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Others associated with Carlyle have given far more. From 1999 to 2000, people affiliated with the firm gave nearly $224,000 to Democratic candidates & groups and nearly $248,000 to Republicans, according to the center's numbers. Carlucci & co-founder William Conway are the company's most generous givers. Numbers were way down in the post-presidential 2000 to 2001 cycle: $27,350 to Democrats and $81,285 to Republicans. Rubenstein says he voted for the current president but did not raise money for him, and that he has visited this Bush White House only once, when a friend was involved in staging a Kennedy Center event. Critics argue that the Carlyle magic can't be gauged by such traditional standards. "My concern is the influence that Carlyle has that is not accountable or monitored," says Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity watchdog group. "This is a company that doesn't register for the most part in terms of its activities in Washington. It clearly has enormous influence, I mean astonishing influence." Even Rubenstein, for all his protests that Carlyle doesn't consciously lobby the govt, concedes that "maybe you get this influence by people thinking you have it." How do you measure the impact, Lewis asks, when co. top exec Carlucci chats at a cocktail party with Donald Rumsfeld about their wrestling days at Princeton? Or when its top adviser is not only a former president but once changed the diapers of the current president? It's not just in Washington that such questions arise. Last year when the British govt decided to privatize its secret technology lab by selling a stake to Carlyle, commentators and even some of the lab's employees expressed outrage about the company's ties to former British PM Major and to U.S. power brokers. Also last year, Carlyle made the seemingly innocuous purchase of a Hong Kong co. that is the world's biggest manufacturer of artificial Christmas trees. Shareholders in the Chinese co. who opposed the sale pointed out that one of its top executives kept a picture of Major in his office, implying that once again Carlyle's connections had given it an unfair advantage. One Carlyle insider, while vigorously defending co. ethics, concedes that there is often an unsaid component to overseas dealings in which "certain types of investors" will assume Carlyle's big names mean big influence. "No matter how much you try to tell them, they think it's like their system," the source says. That's also why the Internet hosts a robust strain of Carlyle-bashing. A British musical act calling itself the Carlyle Group has posted songs online with titles like "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" & "Blinded by the Right." One Web site offers a "Carlyle Casino" slot machine that uses pictures of Bush, Baker and Carlucci in place of cherries, bells and bars. Pull the handle, line up the photos and find out "Who's making billions from the War on Terror?" The characterization infuriates some of Carlyle's biggest names. "I say that's bull[expletive], and you can print it!" snaps Baker. "Somebody would say, well, you had one of the bin Laden brothers as an investor. Well, that's exactly right," he says, adding that the bin Ladens are one of the wealthiest families in the Middle East and have disowned Osama. Still, to deflect criticism, Rubenstein returned the bin Ladens' $2 million investment, and said that while Carlyle still has other MidEast investors, it no longer owns any companies there. But even people who aren't looking for sinister conspiracies have questioned Rubenstein's approach with Carlyle. Rep. Marcy Kaptur D-OH was once a junior member of Carter's domestic policy staff and is amazed by her former colleague's career. "I sort of saw David as the ultimate public servant. He was so selfless. He gave all that effort over all that period of time," she says. But now he has become something else: "I want to use a complimentary word here, I don't want to say a shadowy figure," Kaptur says. "Kind of a translucent figure." Using former statesmen such as Bush & Baker to pursue private gain just seems inherently wrong, she says. "I think that using your public-sector contacts to aggrandize yourself when you leave … creates a view that the public sector is for sale." Rubenstein understands the negative way some people view what he's done. Democrats, especially, "often consider the making of money in this kind of private-equity business as not as socially significant as working in a foundation or in govt," he says. But he argues that Carlyle has contributed to the social good: it has created jobs and generated wealth for investors that include the California Public Employees Retirement System and other major pension funds. Former president Carter says he finds no fault in Carlyle's stable of statesmen. "I think each public official, once leaving office, is as completely free as all other U.S. citizens to shape their own careers, within the bounds of ethical proprieties," he says. But he is quick to add that Carlyle is something "in which, by the way, I have never been involved at all. I have never been in the commercial life at all." He did make one speech at a Carlyle conference, he says, but only to promote the Carter Center. Times are changing, though. It's no longer valid to assume that Carlyle's golden roll of all-stars automatically opens doors in certain parts of the world, says Youssef M. Ibrahim of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "George Bush Jr is kind of screwing his father up, slowly but surely, in terms of securing relationships in the region," Ibrahim says of the Mideast. The current administration's support for Israel, its hostility toward Iraq and its rocky dealings with the Saudi royal family have soured business & political relationships alike, he says. In that light, it was especially good timing last year when Levitt introduced Rubenstein to Gerstner. The legendary IBM executive was planning to retire, and Rubenstein, much as he did 15 years before with Carlucci, resolved to hire him. It was past time for Carlyle to work on its image, Rubenstein decided. Frustrated by the conspiracy theories, burned by 9.11.01 bin Laden situation, Rubenstein viewed hiring Gerstner as the beginning of the next stage for his co. "Maybe you would say it's an evolution," he says. Political connections got them started, but now Rubenstein would like Carlyle to take the next step, becoming part of the bedrock of American finance, an institution that outlives its founders, the "Goldman Sachs of private equity." As for his own future, Rubenstein has been thinking about someday getting his hand back into an administration. Not as a staffer or appointee, that would be too restrictive, he says. No, Rubenstein now understands that if you want to do something to affect public policy, being the rich buddy of a sitting president would be the way to do it. "I'm not as convinced as I once was when my hair was dark and I was 27 that all public-policy achievements are accomplished within govt," he says. "I can have influence, if I want to, on the outside." 'Ex-presidents club' gets fat on conflict   High-flying venture capital firm Carlyle Group cashes in when the tanks roll   3.23.03   The Observer For 15 years one of America's most powerful venture capital groups has tried to play down suggestions that its multi-billion dollar funds get fat on the back of global conflict. But now, with the invasion of Iraq under way, a new book chronicling the relatively short history of the Carlyle Group threatens to draw attention to the company's close links with the Pentagon. Dan Briody, author of the Iron Triangle, Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, alleges the company's executives were so worried about his book they told staff not to talk to him. The Carlyle Group rejects this and argues the book is little more than a cuttings job based around some of the more crazy conspiracy theories found on the internet. It also points out that only around 7% of its funds are invested in defence companies, far less than several other venture capital groups. 'Peel away the layers of factual errors and self-righteousness and all you're left with is baseless innuendo. This book should be exposed for what it is: a compilation of recycled conspiracy theories masquerading as investigative journalism,' said Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman But Briody's account of how an upstart venture capital firm went from nothing to managing funds of nearly $14 billion in just 15 years, earning investors returns of around 36%, is likely to reinforce the controversial image of the Carlyle Group and raise concerns about its influence in Washington and beyond. Sometimes called the Ex-Presidents Club, Carlyle has a glittering array of ex-politicians and big league bankers on its board. Former secretary of state James Baker is managing director while ex-secretary of defence Frank Carlucci is chairman. George Bush senior is an adviser. John Major heads up its European operations. To give the conspiracy theorists plenty of ammunition, US newspapers have also highlighted the fact that current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a wrestling partner of Carlucci's at Princeton and the two have remained close friends ever since. Interestingly though, Briody's book chronicles how Carlyle was founded by two relative unknowns, Stephen Norris, a former executive with the Marriott hotels group, and David Rubenstein, a Washington lawyer and former policy assistant to Jimmy Carter. The two men saved Marriott millions by spotting a tax loophole that the company exploited to great effect. Buoyed by their success, Norris and Ruben stein struck out on their own and recruited two other co-founders, Marriott executive Dan D'Aniello and corporate financier William Conway. Initially the group, named after New York's Carlyle hotel, shied away from the defence sector and its early investment record was spectacularly unsuccessful. It backed a management-led buyout of Caterair and appointed George W Bush to the board. The company bombed and was quickly branded Crater Air by Wall Street. Norris, who presided over the deal, jumped ship, followed by Bush Jr shortly before the company's woes became public in 1994. Appointment of Carlucci to the company board marked a new phase in Carlyle's history. It was Carlucci who spearheaded the $130 million acquisition of BDM Consulting in 1990. The company was a specialist in the defence contracting business and had a formidable network of contacts thanks to its CEO, Earle Williams, a close friend of Carlucci. It was a good time for the Carlyle Group. Defence contracts were being slashed as the Cold War ended and cheap buyout opportunities were everywhere. Carlyle identified a key target: Vinnell. Few people have heard of Vinnell. It started life building airstrips, but by the 1970s was training Saudi troops to protect oil fields. Unlike other US firms it stayed in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War and by the time Carlyle snapped the firm up in 1992 it had built up the country's national guard from 26,000 to 70,000 troops. Carlyle sold its interest in Vinnell in 1997. But perhaps Carlyle's most famous acquisition was United Defense in 1997. The company had developed a huge 40 ton howitzer, the Crusader, which, despite widespread opposition from the army, was commissioned by the Pentagon. The $665m contract was signed just 2 weeks after 9.11.01 attacks; less than a month later Carlyle decided to take the company public in a move that was to earn the group nearly $240m. Months later the Crusader program was scrapped while United Defense was handed a new contract to build a lighter gun. At the same time it emerged that the bin Laden family, estranged from their terrorist son, was an investor in the Carlyle fund that owned United Defense. The backlash was ferocious. Carlyle hired a PR firm but the group was under siege. In an astonishing move Democrat Representative Cynthia McKinney cited the Carlyle Group as an example of an organisation 'close to this administration poised to make huge profits off America's new war'. The bin Laden family sold their stakes in the fund. A spokesman said their investment was valued at 'only' around $2m, although Briody quotes insiders who say the family's investment had been significantly greater in the past. In the wake of 9.11.01 came a fear of anthrax attack. One company that benefited was Pittsburgh- based IT Group, which won a number of contracts to clean up anthrax-infected buildings, including the Hart Senate Office Building. Carlyle owned 25% of the firm, which it subsequently sold on. Likewise its investment in US Investigation Services, a company that specialises in checking the background of employees, saw business improve dramatically. 'I do not exaggerate when I say that Carlyle is taking over the world in govt contract work, particularly defence work,' one employee told Briody. Other Carlyle companies also benefited, including EC&G which makes X-ray scanners, Composite Structures, a maker of metal-bond structures in fighter jets and missiles, and Lier Siegler Services Inc, a major military contractor, providing logistics support. Carlyle, whose high-profile investors include George Soros and Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, refutes suggestions it profits from war. Co-founder William Conway even went on record saying 'no one wants to be a beneficiary of 11 September.' This may be true, but unfortunately for the Carlyle Group its investments are beneficiaries of this new era of multilateral conflict. Indeed, a case can be made that even those companies Carlyle wouldn't class as defence investments, and which aren't examined by Briody, have benefited. Last month it bought CSX Lines, an ocean carrier firm that specialises in shipping heavy equipt. One of its biggest customers is the US military. Late last year it bought Firth Rixson, a specialist engineering firm that makes aerospace parts. It also has a 33% stake in Qinetiq, the government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. Pakistan Cover-up or complicity of Bush administration? ¹ Role of Pakistan's military intel agency ISI in 9.11.01 11.2.01   Michel Chossudovsky prof. Economics, Univ. of Ottawa Ctr Research on Globalisation CRG, Montréal 2 days after 9.11.01, a delegation led by Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI head Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, was in Washington for high level talks at the State Dept. ¹ He "was in the US when the attacks occurred." ²". Per NY Times, "he happened to be here on a regular visit of consultations." ³ According to Newsweek, he was "on a visit to Washington at the time of the attack, and, like most other visitors, is still stuck there," unable to return home because of the freeze on intl airline travel 4 Gen. Ahmad had in fact arrived in the US 9.4.01, a full week before the attacks. 5 … Press reports confirm that Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad had 2 meetings with Dep. Sec.State Armitage, 9.12-13.01. 6 After 9.11.01, he also met Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chair Sen. Joseph Biden. Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had "a regular visit of consultations" with US officials during the week prior to 9.11.01, meetings with CIA & the Pentagon. 7 ISI-Osama-Taliban axis 9.9.01 Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated. The Northern Alliance had informed the Bush Administration that the ISI was allegedly implicated in the assassination: The Northern Alliance had confirmed in an official statement "a 'Pakistani ISI-Osama-Taliban axis' [was responsible] of plotting the assassination by 2 Arab suicide bombers. … 'We believe that this is a triangle between Osama bin Laden, ISI, which is the intelligence section of the Pakistani army, and the Taliban,' 8 More generally, ISI complicity in ISI-Osama-Taliban axis was public record, confirmed by congressional transcripts & intelligence reports. 9 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" referred by journalist is a publication of the US State Dept which confirms that the govt of President Pervez Musharraf has links to intl terrorism: "The U.S. remains concerned about reports of continued Pakistani support for the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan. Credible reporting indicates that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance, and military advisers. Pakistan has not prevented large numbers of Pakistani nationals from moving into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. Islamabad also failed to take effective steps to curb the activities of certain madrassas, or religious schools, that serve as recruiting grounds for terrorism." 12

Behind closed doors at the State Dept
… "Dep. Sec.State Armitage handed over [to ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take". ¹³ "After a telephone conversation between Sec.State Powell & Pakistani Pres.Musharraf, State Dept spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate." ¹⁴ … 9.13.01 Pakistan Pres. Musharraf confirmed he would send chief spy Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad to meet the Taliban and negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden. … Mahmoud's meetings on 2 separate missions with the Taliban were reported as a "failure." On Sunday prior to 10.7.01 USAF bombing of major cities in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad was sacked from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as a routine "reshuffling."

… Times of India report revealed links between Pakistan's Chief spy Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad and the presumed "ring leader" of the WTC attacks Mohamed Atta. "While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmoud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on 10.8.01, … top sources confirmed here 10.9.01 that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen. Mahmoud. Senior govt sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing & establishing the link." … Times of India article was based on an official intelligence report of the Delhi govt that had been transmitted through official channels to Washington.

… Without US support channeled through the Pakistani ISI, the Taliban would not have been able to form a govt in 1996. Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of Taliban manpower & equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI," which in turn was supported by the US. ²³ … Corroborated by the House Intl Relations Committee, US support funneled through the ISI to the Taliban & Osama bin Laden has been a consistent policy of the US Administration since the end of the Cold War:

1. The Guardian 9.15.01
2. Reuters 9.13.01
3. NYTimes 9.13.01
4. Newsweek 9.14.01
5. Daily Telegraph. London 9.14.01
6. NYTimes 9.13.01 confirms the meeting 9.13.01
7. NYTimes, 9.13.01
8. Northern Alliance's statement released on 9.14.01, quoted Reuters 9.15.01
9. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate", Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), at globalresearch.ca, Oct. 2001.
10. Reuters 9.13.01
11. Journalist's question to Secretary of State Colin Powell, State Dept Briefing 9.13.01
12. US State Dept, "Patterns of Global Terrorism" Washington 2000. 
13. Reuters, 9.13.01
14. Ibid.
15. Presidential Papers, Remarks in a Telephone Conversation With New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani & New York Governor George Pataki and an Exchange With Reporters 9.13.01
16. The Guardian 9.15.01
17. United Press Intl, Face-off: Bush's foreign policy warriors,by Peter Roff & James Chapin, UPI 7.18.01
18. Wash.Post 9.23.01
19. Times of India, Delhi, 10.9.01
20. The Weekly Standard, Vol. 7, No 7, Oct. 2001.
21. AFP 10.10.01
22. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 9.12.01
23. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 9.3.98
24. US House of Representatives: Statement by Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, Hearing of The House Intl Relations Committee on "Global Terrorism & South Asia", Washington 7.12.00

The intelligence service reports its sources have no doubt that the Chinese combatants fought in a Taliban unit and were not part of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida or its associated Egyptian Jihad forces in Afghanistan. Neither organization admits non-Arab adherents, certainly not as guards for its senior officers. The Chinese-bin Laden relationship goes back some years. The British daily, Guardian, carried a report Saturday by John Hooper in Milan, claiming that three years ago, China paid bin Laden several million dollars for unexploded American cruise missiles left over from the U.S. attack on his bases. Hooper quotes an alleged senior al-Qaida agent in Europe, whose account is contained in the transcript of a secretly taped conversation between two bin Laden adherents. The Americans fired 75 missiles in the raid on bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan, carried out 8.20.98, in reprisal for the terrorist strikes against U.S. embassies in East Africa. Forty were found unexploded. The conversation taped took place in Milan between a Libyan called Ben Heni, who was arrested in Munich last week and accused by the Italian prosecution of being the liaison officer between two al-Qaida cells in Frankfurt & Milan, and a leader of the Italian cells, Sami Ben Khemmais Essid. The Italian police had bugged the flat.

According to the Guardian report, the two men confirmed bin Laden's close ties with China and described how the huge sums the Chinese paid for the unexploded U.S. missiles helped him finance his next three years of al-Qaida operations. In addition, the Wash.Post reported 9.13.01 that Beijing signed a memorandum of understanding with the Taliban for greater economic & technical cooperation, the last of a series of Chinese agreements with Afghanistan in the last two years. The Post characterized China's relationship with the Taliban as the closest of any non-Muslim country. The memorandum of understanding was, ironically, signed 9.11.01.

Afghan minister backs Chinese claims of militants' links to bin Laden
1.23.02   John Leicester AP

While Washington has rebuffed a connection, China has tried to portray opponents of Chinese rule in Xinjiang as part of the global terror threat being fought by the U.S.-led coalition. China has blamed the separatists for occasional bombings and attacks in Xinjiang. This week, China claimed that some separatists were armed, equipped and funded by bin Laden and Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers. China's official Xinhua News Agency said Karzai told Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji in their meeting Wednesday that his govt "completely understands China's concern, and will no longer tolerate the existence of any terrorist force in Afghanistan." Karzai's visit to China, which shares a small mountainous border with Afghanistan, followed a 2 day conference in Tokyo where donor nations promised $4.5 billion in aid for war-shattered Afghanistan. Abdullah said his govt would create a body, "which will be sort of independent" and staffed by Afghans, to account for promised aid and to prevent any corruption. He gave no details, but said: "We should do everything in our hands to make it as clear, as transparent and accountable as possible."

While China was not among Afghanistan's most generous donors at Tokyo, pledging just $1 million, Zhu told Karzai that "China is ready to provide assistance to the best of our ability to your effort of reconstruction." Abdullah said he was optimistic that Chinese President Jiang Zemin would offer more pledges of aid when he meets Karzai on Thursday. Abdullah mentioned roads, bridges, communications and medical equipment as areas where China could help. Chinese leaders endorsed the U.S.-led war against the Taliban, despite their uneasiness about the presence of American troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere in central Asia. Beijing acted with unusual swiftness to re-establish a presence in the Afghan capital after the Taliban collapsed, sending diplomats to Kabul to contact Afghan officials and inspect the site of China's embassy that it closed amid factional fighting in 1993. Afghan officials said China plans to send a vice foreign minister to Kabul to formally reopen the embassy on Feb. 6.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-GA	Saudi letter cluster bomb & food pack air drops Carlyle Group re corporate welfare various additional
Speaker pro tempore, under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Georgia is recognized for 5 minutes. 3.5.02   Congressional Record	Richard Clarke   [ Per usual, a vanguard speaking truth to power & the people, in this case 2 years before the top level whistleblower verified everything she said, the Congresswoman, as ever with pioneers of resistance to tyranny, received naught but opprobrium's arrows in the back for doing the right thing. ]

Mr. Speaker, I am worried about what is happening to our great country today. I fear that many of us cannot see what is happening here. Maybe we are too close. Maybe there are even people who do not want us to see; but our friends & allies in Europe and elsewhere are reporting that they are seeing disturbing developments in our country, like the fading of our fundamental constitutional rights, the creation of a war machine that threatens world peace, the spending of a generation of Americans on this war on terrorism, and even an attack on truth in govt by forming the Office of Strategic Influence to lie to us and to the rest of the world. The President even asked Hollywood to make these developments palatable to the American people. ¹

With this as a backdrop, I would just like to ask that Members close their eyes and imagine being drawn deeper & deeper into black space. If Members keep their eyes closed and if they close them good & tight, they will be able to imagine themselves going faster & faster and deeper ^amp; deeper into a black unknown. All of a sudden we see a bright light at a distance far away, but faster & faster and closer & closer it becomes brighter & brighter; and in one instant, with one grand motion, we can cross from the darkness into the light. But just before we make the crossing, a huge booming voice coming from nowhere, and at the same time coming from everywhere, booms all around us: You unlock this door with the key of understanding.

Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of hearing that which is not spoken, a dimension of seeing that which is invisible, a dimension of reading that which is not written. We are moving into a land of both shadow & substance, of things & ideas. Welcome. We just crossed over into the Twilight Zone, otherwise known as George Bush's America. For it is here and only here that the White House could receive warning after warning of massive attacks that were going to take place on American soil, the attack happens, and both the President & the Vice President, in separate phone calls to Tom Daschle, ask that Congress not investigate what happened & why.

That could only happen in the Twilight Zone. Or that an administration battling worldwide perception, as well as a domestic one having come to power in circumstances like Zambia's or Kenya's, could form a shadow govt inside the selected govt, with no one in the real govt knowing about the shadow govt except the shadow leaders in it. That could only happen in the Twilight Zone. Or that this President could propose the biggest hike in defense spending, where his dad stands to make a mint, as long as increased spending does not get lost wherever the $2.3 trillion is that the Pentagon has already lost, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, says we can afford it. That could only happen in the Twilight Zone. Or that Arthur Andersen, who kept Enron's books, could still have contracts to keep the books over at FBI, DOJ, and the Pentagon. That could only happen in the Twilight Zone.
Wake up, America. We are not only in the Twilight Zone, we have crossed the threshold into George Bush's America."

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