Announcement

**chequita guevara** · September 16, 2002, 12:48

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

40. August 2001 - President Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. [CBS News; CNN, May 15, 2002]

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

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

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

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

45. early-September 2001 - An FBI internal document, based upon field notes from Minnesota field agents discloses that the agents had been investigating and had questioned the "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui. The field notes speculate that Moussaoui, who had been taking flight lessons, might crash an airliner into the WTC. Interestingly, the field agents' requests to obtain a search warrant for his personal computer were denied. French intelligence confirms to the FBI that Moussaoui has ties to terrorist groups and may have traveled to Afghanistan. The agents also had no knowledge of the Phoenix memo (See Item #18). One news story states that agents were in "a frenzy," absolutely convinced that he was "going to do something with a plane." [Source: Newsweek, May 20, 2002 issue, story by Michael Isikoff].

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

47. Sept. 4-5, 2001 - A freshman at Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School who had recently emigrated from Pakistan reportedly predicts the destruction of the World Trade Center a week prior to the 9-11 attacks, according to the JournalNews newspaper in White Plains, N.Y. Citing "three police sources and a city official familiar with the investigation" as well as confirmation from the FBI that the bureau had received this information, the paper reported that in the midst of a heated class discussion the student pointed to the World Trade Center from a third story window and said, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week." New York City Board of Education spokeswoman Catie Marshall confirmed for the JournalNews "that school officials reported the matter to police within minutes of the Sept. 11 attack" and students told the paper that "FBI agents and NYPD detectives descended on the school on Sept. 13 to interrogate the student [who made the prediction] and others in his class," which was "an English class for Arab-American students." [Source: The JournalNews, Oct. 11, 2001, http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsro...1warumors.html]

48. Sept. 5, 2001 - "Five hundred websites -- many of them with an Arab or Muslim connection -- crash when an anti-terrorism taskforce raids InfoCom Corp. in Texas," reported Britain's the Guardian on Sept. 10, 2001. A taskforce of approximately 80 federal agents and officials from the FBI, Secret Service, INS, Customs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, IRS, and Commerce Department occupied InfoCom's office building in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas for four days, "copying every hard disc they could find." InfoCom hosts many websites for Middle Eastern clients and is located across the street from the Holy Land Foundation, a charitable organization which has been alleged to have connections with terrorist groups. InfoCom's vice president of marketing, Ghassan Elashi, is also the chairman of the Holy Land Foundation. [Source: The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/...549590,00.html]

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

50. Sept. 6-7, 2001 - Put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) totaling 4,744 are purchased on United Air Lines stock, as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the United puts are purchased through Deutschebank/A.B. Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), http://www.ict.org.il/, Sept. 21, 2001 (Note:The ICT article on possible terrorist insider trading appeared eight days *after* the 9/11 attacks.); The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 29, 2001]

51. Sept. 10, 2001 - Put options totaling 4,516 are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: Herzliyya Institute - above]

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

53. Sept. 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25 percent of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the Sept. 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above;
FTW, Oct. 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fre...oct152001.html]

54. 2001-2002 - It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported as recently as June 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by Fox, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least summer 2002. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; Fox, Oct. 16, 2001;
FTW, Oct. 26, 2001, - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fre...ic_carpet.html
FTW, Vol. IV, No. 6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/sept1801.html;
FTW, Vol. III, No. 7, Sept. 30, 2000 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fre...01_promis.html]

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

56. Sept. 10, 2001 - Amr Elgindy, a colleague of Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi and a notorious inside trader on the financial markets, orders his broker to liquidate his children's $300,000 trust account, fearing a sudden crash in the market. Elgindy is arrested in San Diego in May 2002, along with FBI agents Jeffrey Royer and Lynn Wingate who allegedly have been using their FBI positions to feed him inside information on various corporations. Elgindy is currently being held without bail. [Source: The Globe and Mail, May 25, 2002]

57. Sept. 10, 2001 - According to Newsweek, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. [Source: Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2001]

58. Sept. 10, 2001 - The Houston Chronicle reports the FBI was notified of a fifth grader from a Dallas suburb who told his teacher, "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." The Chronicle was unclear on specifically when Garland, Texas school district officials told the FBI about the incident, but it was some time between Sept. 13, 2001 and the story's publication date of Sept. 19, 2001. [Source: Houston Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2001 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.ht...olitan/1055222]

59. Sept. 10, 2001 - San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown receives a call from what he described as "his security people at the airport" eight hours before the terrorist attacks "advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel," as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Brown was scheduled to fly to New York from San Francisco International Airport. He told the Chronicle the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make any alarming statement." [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2001, http://www.sfgate.com/today/0912_chron_mnreport.shtml]

**chequita guevara** · September 16, 2002, 12:49

60. Sept. 11, 2001 - The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the federal agency that runs many of the nation's spy satellites, schedules an exercise involving a plane crashing into one of the agency's buildings. "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001," according to a website advertising a homeland security conference in Chicago run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, CIA official John Fulton and his team "were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way." Fulton is the head of the NRO's strategic gaming division. [Source: National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, http://www.nlsi.net, http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ane_exercise_1]

61. Sept. 11, 2001 - After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon occur, National Public Radio's congressional correspondent David Welna reports, "I spoke with congressman Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee, who said that just recently the director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack -- an imminent attack - on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected." [Source: http://www.thememoryhole.org/updates.htm]

62. Sept. 11, 2001 - United Air Lines flight 23, scheduled to fly from New York City to Los Angeles was delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off immediately. This happened apparently after the first plane had hit the WTC. The passengers were thrown off the flight. [Source: The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2002]

63. Sept. 11, 2001 - Gen. Mahmud of the ISI (see #16), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]

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

65. Sept. 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred. [Source: CNN; ABC; MSNBC; Los Angeles Times; The New York Times; www.tenc.net]

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

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

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

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

70. Sept. 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American and United airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the attacks, which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.

71. Oct. 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to Pakistan is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."

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

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

74. Oct. 29, 2001 - The Bush Administration drafts "an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public," wrote the Washington Post. The order also required members of the public to prove "at least a Ôdemonstrated, specific need'" for a president's papers to be released. Critics contend this would overturn the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which releases documents after 12 years. The White House maintained that a Supreme Court decision in 1977 allows presidents various privileges for their records. [Source: Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001, http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn...nguage=printer]

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

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

77. Dec. 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the U.S. government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, Dec. 4, 2001]

78. Dec. 25, 2001 - Newly appointed Afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde]

79. Jan. 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalmy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, Jan. 9, 2002]

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

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

82. Jan. 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP Amoco, which have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002; FTW, "The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I," April 4, 2002,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fre..._elephant.html]

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

84. Feb. 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader Gen. Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity," including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghan government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, Feb. 9, 2002]

85. Feb. 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late-spring 2002 will reach a world record 4,500 metric tons.

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

87. May 13, 2002 - The BBC reports that Afghanistan is about to close a deal for construction of the $2 billion gas pipeline to run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The story states, "work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck" at a summit scheduled for the end of the month. Unocal will build the pipeline. [Source: BBC, May 13, 2002]

88. May 2002 - A number of sources report progress on both oil and gas pipelines. Regional sources state that Unocal will re-emerge as a pipeline contender after withdrawing from the CentGas pipeline project in 1998. Unocal denies plans to revive the gas pipeline but curiously neglects to mention whether or not it has any interest in the oil pipeline, which local sources say is moving ahead. [Source: The Dawn Group of Newspapers, May 7, May 17, May 22, 2002]

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

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

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

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

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

94. June 14, 2002 - Common Dreams website publishes an account from a former member of the 1/118th Infantry Battalion of the South Carolina National Guard: "My unit reported for drill in July 2001 and we were suddenly and unexpectedly informed that all activities planned for the next two months would be suspended in order to prepare for a mobilization exercise to be held on Sept. 14, 2001. We worked diligently for two weekends and even came in on an unscheduled day in August to prepare for the exercise. By the end of August all we needed was a phone call, which we were to expect, and we could hop into a fully prepared convoy with our bags and equipment packed." [Source: Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0614-02.htm]

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

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

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

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

99. July 26, 2002 - White House security prevented the legal watch-group Judicial Watch from serving Vice President Cheney with a lawsuit filed on behalf of Halliburton shareholders. Before becoming vice president Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, which has filed for bankruptcy. [Source: Cybercast News Service, cnsnews.com]

100. Aug. 2, 2002 - The FBI asked members of the House and Senate intelligence committees to take lie-detector tests as investigators try to determine who leaked information to CNN about communications in Arabic that made vague references to an impending attack on the United States. The communications were intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10 but weren't translated until Sept. 12. [Source: Associated Press story published in the Boston Globe, Aug. 2, 2002, http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.0....lie.det.p.htm]

101. Aug. 5, 2002 - The Associated Press reported Russia's major role over the last five years in the trafficking of Afghan heroin into Europe. [Source: Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 5, 2002, www.sfnewmexican.com]

102. Aug. 16, 2002 - A Knight Ridder story discloses that members of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's staff have created a special planning unit for an invasion of Iraq. The unit is composed primarily of civilians and was spearheaded by conservative members of Rumsfeld's staff, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The story was headlined, "White House Methodically Preparing for Iraq Campaign." [Source: Knight Ridder Newspapers, www.truthout.org/docs 02/08.17B.wh.prep.irq.p.htm]

103. Aug. 28, 2002 - The Globe and Mail of Canada reports Afghanistan will become the world's top producer of opium this year, surpassing Southeast Asia. [Source: the Globe and Mail, Aug. 28, 2002]

Now, let's go back to the Oct. 31 story by Le Figaro -- the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai in July 2001.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who do you believe?

**Velociryx** · September 16, 2002, 12:55

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....I am the great and powerful Oz!

I agree.

There are a great many questions about our current course of action that have been raised. A great many perfectly reasonable, valid questions.

The response?

Squash any and all investigations into such matters. Big Brother, or in this case, Uncle Dubya, knows what's in all our best interests, and for reasons of "national security" we are to simply comply. To be herded. To be spoon-fed "proper and acceptable" official versions of the stories.

But those nagging questions remain, and questions are funny things. The more denial that's heaped on, and the more fervently questions and investigations are stalled or stopped cold, the more questions are raised.

If there's nothing at all to hide, then why not allow investigations to proceed?

Thus, there is only one logical conclusion to be reached.

-=Vel=-

**chequita guevara** · September 16, 2002, 13:00

Originally posted by Velociryx
If there's nothing at all to hide, then why not allow investigations to proceed?

Thus, there is only one logical conclusion to be reached.

-=Vel=-

My theory is to hide their complete and utter incompetence.

**Kyle** · September 16, 2002, 13:04

I don't subscribe to the idea that the CIA or Israel was behind the attacks, but it seems clear that lost of people knew something big was in the works, and had repetaedly warned the US government.

I think at this time, few people debate this. This wasn't an intellegence failure of the kind from India's '98 nuclear tests. I've been seeing it looked at as a failure to take the information they had and connecting the dots in time.

**Velociryx** · September 16, 2002, 13:05

I tend to be more generalized....I have not drawn any specific conclusions, but one thing is painfully clear, and you hit the nail on the head with your previous post:

....to hide....

The inescapable conclusion is that they ("they" in this case being members of the NSA and/or of Bush's team of handlers who are responsible for doling out the official story to the masses), are, in fact, worried about something. So worried, in fact, that they feel the need to hide it from sight, and further, to prevent any investigation into anything connected with it.

As to the specifics....I don't know, and don't care to speculate, but that there is some skullduggery going on here seems obvious enough to me, and some of the things outlined in your first post point to what they may well be.

-=Vel=-

**chequita guevara** · September 16, 2002, 13:09

Originally posted by Kyle
I've been seeing it looked at as a failure to take the information they had and connecting the dots in time.

A lot of the information points to others having already connected the dots for them. Germany, Jordan, and Russia all appear to have warned the US that there was a major terrorist attack in the works that involved using planes against buildings.

This wasn't just a problem in the mid levels of failing to put together the dots that their subordinaes were giving them, this now appears to be a failure at the highest levels of government.

**SlowwHand** · September 16, 2002, 13:14

"A lot of the information points to others having already connected the dots for them. Germany, Jordan, and Russia all appear to have warned the US that there was a major terrorist attack in the works that involved using planes against buildings."

You realize how ambiguous even having that knowledge is, don't you?

**chequita guevara** · September 16, 2002, 13:25

Reword your question.

**SlowwHand** · September 16, 2002, 13:30

That is not really that much useful information.
Building and planes, that's all.
I can see the outcry at the time, had there been money spent to patrol the sky like cop cars patrol streets, and even then there's plenty of crime to go around.

**DinoDoc** · September 16, 2002, 13:31

I'm not reading that. It's WAY too long and the fact that it mentions oil just makes it boring.

Could someone please point out the paragraph(s) that state that Germany, Jordan, and Russia warned the US that there was a major terrorist attack in the works that involved using planes against buildings?

**SlowwHand** · September 16, 2002, 13:36

And point out how having the knowledge would have made one iota of difference ?
I guess the "but my personal liberties" outcry could have been whined a little sooner, that's about all.

**Boris Godunov** · September 16, 2002, 13:41

19. June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 2001; See
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fr...tung_story.html]

**SlowwHand** · September 16, 2002, 13:44

Thanks, Boris. That's definitive.

Announcement

Troublesome "facts?"

Troublesome "facts?"

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment