Room
for a View
9/11: Who Knew, Who Benefits?
By Josh Robinson
Edited and Researched by Lorna Tychostup and Todd Paul
Photo by Molly Rubin Speculation as to exactly what led to the near-simultaneous
suicide hijackings of four commercial airliners September 11 sprang
up seemingly before the first building came down.
As is usually the case, most of this speculation proved baseless. But
one theory, ridiculous at first glance, has refused to go away: That
at least some portion of the US government knew about the attacks ahead
of time and allowed them to take place.
Why would the government do this? To provide an infallible excuse to
launch a war advancing longstanding geopolitical and economic goals,
say proponents of this line of reasoning.
But before dismissing such a theory, one must consider history. There
is evidence that previous US administrations have gone so far as to
plan attacks on Americans in order to justify a long-desired war.
At least one such scenario was documented with the release of a March
13, 1962 Joint Chiefs of Staff memo, unearthed by the National Security
Information Archive at George Washington University. The memo detailed
plans to use clandestine action to anger the US public and create support
for an invasion of newly Communist Cuba. “US military intervention
will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place
the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances,”
the memo states. “World opinion, and the United Nations forum should
be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban
government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable
threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.”
The proposal, dubbed Operation Northwoods, included dozens of possible
scenarios that might justify a US attack. The most disturbing involved
sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees or a US ship, and blaming the attack
on Castro’s forces. In fact, the declassified document specifically
mentions the recreation of a “Remember the Maine” situation,
a reference to the slogan that heralded the US declaration of war on
Spain after the mysterious explosion that sank the USS Maine in Havana
February 15, 1898, killing 266 of the 350 men on board. It is now generally
believed that the explosion happened inside the ship and was accidental.
(For more information on this memo, see
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf.
)
Why Afghanistan?
There may seem little reason for the US to desire war in Afghanistan,
an impoverished, nearly destroyed country barely the size of Texas with
little in the way of natural resources. But American corporations with
close ties to both major political parties have had their eyes on Afghanistan
for years.
Possibly the largest untapped reserve of crude oil and natural gas on
Earth lies under and around the Caspian Sea. The majority of it lies
in territory controlled by the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan
and Kazakhstan. The only thing preventing the extraction of this oil
is the lack of a viable transportation option. The Caspian does not
connect to any other major body of water. This means that pipelines
must be built to connect the oil to the eventual consumer, or to a port
where it can be loaded onto tankers.
The current infrastructure in the region dates from Soviet times and
leads north into Russia. But Russia is an oil-exporting nation, and
isn’t likely to see an increase in domestic consumption in the
near future.
The region slated for the greatest growth in oil consumption in the
next few decades is East Asia. Feeding that consumption is of primary
interest to those who benefit from the current petroleum-centered economic
model. The pipeline required to transport oil to industrial centers
in China, and from there to ports where it could be sent on to other
regional consumers, would be over 5,000 km long—a very unattractive
option. A much shorter pipeline could be used to move the oil to the
Black Sea, from which it could be shipped through the straits of Bosporus
and into the Mediterranean Sea. Although convenient for Western European
and American markets, this would create a much longer shipping route
to China and other points in East Asia.
Two Black Sea pipelines are under consideration, but even if both of
these pipelines are completed, they will not have enough capacity to
carry the roughly 4.5 million barrels per day that oil company executives
hope will be produced in the region by 2010. In addition, these routes
will move the oil away from consumers in the Asia-Pacific region.
A much shorter route would have crude oil loaded onto tankers in the
Persian Gulf. The most likely route for a pipeline to the Persian Gulf
would cross Iran, precluding the involvement of any American companies
due to sanctions against the Islamist government in Tehran and that
regime’s opposition to US political and business interests in the
region.
Another option would be to build the pipeline across Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Unocal, one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas
exploration and production concerns, has been in negotiations over such
a project with various Afghan factions for years, according to February,
1998 testimony before the Asia-Pacific subcommittee of the House International
Relations Committee. The California-based company even went so far as
to invite senior Taliban officials to its headquarters for discussions.
By early 1998, a very specific plan had been approved by Unocal: A 1,040-mile-long
pipe 42 inches in diameter, transporting one million barrels every day.
Such a project would rival the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline in scope and carry
a $2.5 billion price tag. But the instability and lack of international
recognition of the Taliban regime presented insurmountable obstacles
to the project. As Unocal’s Vice President of International Relations,
John J. Maresca, explained to the House subcommittee, “From the
outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have
proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government
is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our
company.”
(This testimony is available at http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/ap2-2.htm.)
At the same meeting, Maresca discussed a second pipeline planned by
CentGas, the Central Asian Gas Pipeline Consortium, in which Unocal
holds an interest. “As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline,”
he said, “CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally
recognized Afghanistan Government is in place.” This separate 48-inch,
790-mile pipeline is slated to run through Afghanistan and Pakistan,
and possibly extend all the way to New Delhi.
With US policy meshing so closely with that of Unocal and other energy
companies, it came as no surprise when the subcommittee members’
only point of contention with Unocal revolved around the company’s
dealings with the Taliban in light of that organization’s notorious
human rights violations. The point was underscored on December 31, when
Bush appointed Afghan-born US citizen and former Unocal advisor Zalmay
Khalilzad as a special envoy to the barely week-old interim Afghan government
led by Hamid Kharzi. Khalilzad, who hails from Mazar-e-Sharif, had led
Unocal negotiations with the Taliban in 1997. He continued to publicly
support the Taliban until the 1998 US cruise missile attacks on alleged
Al Qaeda training camps in his native country.
It should have come as a surprise to no one that the Bush administration
would be extremely friendly to US oil interests. President George W.
Bush was CEO of a failed oil company and made nearly a million dollars
selling his shares before the company collapsed. Vice President Dick
Cheney served on the board of oil giant Halliburton immediately before
chairing the committee that picked himself as Bush’s running mate.
Two members of Enron’s board of directors, Robert Zoellick and
Lawrence Lindsay, joined Bush’s cabinet, while several members
of the elder Bush’s administration got jobs at the Houston-based
Energy company which went bankrupt in 2001. For the 1999-2000 election
cycle, the oil and gas industry gave almost $11.7 million of soft money
to the Republican Party, nearly $8 million more than the Democrats received
from them.
In any case, with the Taliban out of the way, Middle East pipeline dreams
seem about to come true. An article in the February 20 online edition
of the Irish Times reports, “The Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, and the Afghan interim leader, Mr. Hamid Karzai, agreed yesterday
that their two countries should develop ‘mutual brotherly relations’
and cooperate ‘in all spheres of activity’—including
a proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.”
Evidence Ignored
A closer investigation of the events leading up to and immediately following
September 11 provides circumstantial evidence that elements within the
US government may have had foreknowledge of the attacks.
The first hints came as long ago as 1995, when Filipino officials investigating
a fire in an apartment building found a veritable explosives plant being
operated by men of Middle Eastern descent with fake immigration documents.
One of the men turned out to be Ramzi Yousef, who had detonated a bomb
in the basement of the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and wounding
more than a thousand. Led by the blind cleric Sheik Abdul Rachman, Yousef
and his comrades had hoped the 1993 bomb would be powerful enough to
topple one tower into the other, destroying both and killing tens of
thousands of people.
Though Yousef escaped Filipino officials in 1995, police arrested his
partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, and uncovered documents indicating plans
to blow up as many as 12 commercial airliners en route to the United
States, potentially killing as many as 4,000 people.
Yousef had actually conducted a test run of this plan in 1994, planting
a bomb under a seat on a Philippine Air flight. It killed a Japanese
passenger when it detonated four hours after Yousef disembarked.
Yousef, Murad, and a third conspirator, Wali Khan Amin Shah, who funneled
money to the bombers from an account owned by a Syrian man who worked
for an organization run by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, later
received life sentences in federal prison for the airline plot, but
not before Murad revealed a plot with chilling similarities to the September
11 attacks to Filipino interrogators. Investigators noticed that he
had spent time in the US training as a pilot, and extracted from him
an admission that he planned to fly a private plane packed with explosives
into CIA headquarters. He also revealed other targets, including the
Pentagon and unnamed skyscrapers, and said the only thing preventing
the completion of the plot was the lack of trained pilots.
Investigators also learned that the terrorists considered the 1993 bombing
a failure and held the World Trade Center still to be a viable target.
And, while the Filipinos unearthed no specific plan to hijack commercial
planes and turn them into missiles, they did learn that the conspirators
planned to discontinue the use of explosives because of their instability
and ease of discovery.
In a Washington Post article published last month, one of the lead investigators
from the Philippines claims that both the FBI and the CIA had access
to the entirety of the evidence collected. Vincent Cannistraro, the
former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, was quoted as
saying, “There certainly were enough precursors that should have
led analysts to suspect that the US could come under domestic attack.
There’s no question about it. We knew about the pilots and suicide
plots.”
In June, 2001, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German
intelligence, the BND, warned the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern
terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use
as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.”
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, warned the CIA and FBI in August,
2001 about a major terrorist plot involving cells based in the United
States, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph of London. And
in August, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian intelligence
to warn the US government “in the strongest possible terms”
of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings according to
an MSNBC interview with Putin on September 15.
Then, on August 16, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested after instructors
at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota tipped
off the FBI that he wanted to learn to steer a Boeing 747 in the air,
but not how to take off or land the plane. They also reported that he
was belligerent, paid the $6,300 fee in cash, and seemed to lack skill
with small planes, despite his desire to operate a jumbo jet.
In light of this information, the warning from Mossad, and the information
from the Philippines in 1995, it seems, if only in hindsight, to have
been profoundly obvious what sort of plan was afoot. Despite this, according
to wire reports, Marilyn Ladner, the vice-president of the flight school,
told two Minnesota Congressmen in November that it took four to six
calls to the FBI, and a warning that a jumbo jet full of fuel could
be used as a bomb, to even convince them to assign an agent to the case.
But there was more. Before September 11, the FBI tied Moussaoui to the
Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. Murad, the man who first revealed
plots involving suicidal pilots more than five years earlier, had trained
at this school for his own thwarted mission. Other students at the school
included men who would take part in the eventual attacks.
By August 26, the day after the first of the hijackers’ one-way
tickets had been paid for in cash and over two weeks before the hijackings,
French intelligence informed the FBI about Moussaoui’s ties to
Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, the same group Yousef and Murad had
been tied to years before.
At around the same time, John O’Neil resigned his position as deputy
director of the FBI and head of its investigations into international
terrorism. He did so, according to the new book Hidden Truth by French
intelligence analysts Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, because
he believed that “the main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism
were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia
in it.”
O’Neil left the FBI to take over as head of security for the World
Trade Center. His first day of employment was September 10, 2001. The
FBI claims he called their headquarters from his 34th floor office shortly
before he perished when the tower collapsed.
There were other warnings as well. At the end of June, both Reuters
and United Press International carried wire reports that Bin Laden’s
group had plans in place to launch attacks against America. According
to the San Francisco Chronicle, Mayor Willie Brown received a warning
from his airport security staff that “Americans should be cautious
about their air travel,” eight hours before the first hijacking
took place. Israel-based employees of instant messaging firm Odigo also
received warnings on September 11, in the form of text messages on their
pagers, that a terrorist attack was imminent. According to www.newsbytes.com,
an online subsidiary of the Washington Post, they read the warnings
two hours before the first plane crashed.
So, by the time flames, screams, and smoke shattered that cool, clear
morning in New York, US agencies and others had ample warning of a massive
terrorist attack on American soil, the existence of previous plans to
use suicide pilots in such attacks, and the fact that at least one Middle
Eastern man inside the US had tried to learn how to steer a jumbo jet
without first getting it off the ground. This doesn’t mean the
government knew exactly when and where an attack might take place. But
it does suggest that US airbases should have been on alert for such
an attack, and raises questions about why the air force failed to respond
after the first tower was struck.
No Response
US warplanes stationed close to New York City might not have had time
to intercept the second plane to hit the World Trade Center. But two
squadrons of combat-ready jets stationed at Andrews Air Force Base,
just 10 miles from the Pentagon, could definitely have intercepted the
third plane.
An hour elapsed between the time the first World Trade Center tower
was struck, and the time the third plane hit the Pentagon. Officials
knew there had been more than two hijackings, and knew the plane that
eventually struck the Pentagon had radically deviated from its flight
plan. Yet, no air force planes were summoned to escort the hijacked
airliners, and none were scrambled for an intercept until after the
Pentagon was hit, nor was any attempt made to shoot the third plane
down. Why?
In the aftermath of the attacks, Vice President Cheney implied, in a
“Meet The Press” interview, that a presidential decision would
have been required to intercept a hijacked airliner. But this is not
true. The FAA, NORAD and the military have cooperative procedures by
which military aircraft routinely intercept commercial aircraft under
emergency conditions, without need of a presidential decision. These
procedures were not followed on September 11, although they have been
followed many times before and since.
According to a CBS News report, the FAA alerted US Air defense units
of possible hijackings at 8:38 am Instead of scrambling fighters from
nearby Andrews AFB, jets were scrambled from Langley AFB in Virginia,
which is 129 miles from the Pentagon. These jets were launched at 9:30
am, but didn’t reach the Pentagon until nearly 10 am. This means
they were traveling at 258 mph—one-fifth of their top speed, according
to an analysis by investigative reporter George Szamuely.
In addition, the president knew before arriving at the Booker School
that the World Trade Center had been attacked, according to evidence
presented by investigative reporter Jared Israel. Surely the president
could have interrupted a relatively unimportant elementary school visit
to respond to the greatest national emergency since the Cuban missile
crisis. Instead, he went ahead with his school visit, reading to the
children for half an hour a story about a goat.
Articles by Israel, Szamuely, and others—along with maps and timetables
of the events of 9/11—can be accessed online at
www.
emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm.
Additionally, there are unconfirmed reports from eyewitnesses that both
the World Trade Center and the White House (which was closely flown
over, apparently as an aborted target, by the plane that hit the Pentagon)
had been equipped with surface-to-air missile batteries. If they existed,
they obviously were not used.
Investigations Squelched
In the days following the attacks, President Bush promised the US would
unfailingly find and punish those behind the suicide terrorists. But
in fact, the Bush administration has hindered investigations of what
happened on September 11.
Administration efforts to squelch investigation by Congress into the
attacks began early this year. First, as reported by CNN, Vice President
Dick Cheney placed a phone call to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschele
(D-SD) asking that any such inquiry be limited to a single subcommittee
in the House and one in the Senate. When that effort failed, President
Bush called for a private meeting with congressional leaders during
which he personally made the same request to Daschele, and received
the same rebuff.
Even prior to September 11, when Osama bin Laden was wanted for embassy
bombings and other terrorist acts, investigations by US secret services
into the Bin Laden family had been squelched by US presidents. According
to a November, 2001 BBC report, the Bush administration ordered the
FBI and other intelligence agencies to “back off” investigations
of the Bin Laden family in January, 2001. This was only the latest in
a series of similar orders dating back to 1996.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of the circumstances surrounding the terrorist
attacks is President Bush’s behavior immediately afterwards. When
the first plane struck the World Trade Center, Bush was reading to schoolchildren
in a Florida elementary school. Even after being informed of the second
crash, Bush continued to read to the schoolchildren for half an hour
as if nothing had happened, before spending the rest of the day flying
from undisclosed location to undisclosed location.
Even stranger were Bush’s claims—once in Florida in December,
and once in California in early January—to have witnessed the first
crash on television before he began reading, at a time when no one without
prior knowledge of the attacks had any reason to be watching a video
feed from the top of the World Trade Center. No explanation for these
claims has been produced.
Invasion Plans
The US plan to overthrow the Taliban was presented to the American people
as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Nothing could
be farther from the truth. In fact, there is evidence that such a plan
existed, and had the support of US allies abroad, months prior to September
11.
By last June, readers of the online public affairs journal Indiareacts
knew about the imminent joint US-Russian invasion of Afghanistan in
support of the Northern Alliance. A special report on the issue began,
“India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans
for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban,” and
continued to list reasons for the international coalition’s existence.
The list included Caspian oil and the spread of international terrorism,
which was projected to possibly create a fundamentalist regime stretching
from Kandahar to Grozny and controlling access to the vast natural resources
of Central Asia.
Months before, in March 2001, respected military analysis clearinghouse
Jane’s Defense reported that India had joined the coalition against
the Taliban, and planned to supply “information and logistic support”
for the Northern Alliance. By mid-July, Pakistan had become privy to
a US plan to attack Afghanistan “before the first snows,”
no later than mid-October.
In an article published only one week after the destruction of the World
Trade Center, the BBC quoted former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz
Naik as saying that senior American officials informed him of the planned
invasion of Afghanistan two months before the attacks on the World Trade
Center. He was told that US military personnel had already been placed
in Tajikistan, 17,000 Russian troops had been placed on standby, and
Uzbekistan had decided to participate. He had also learned, two months
prior to September 11, that the goals of the mission would be to kill
or capture Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar as well as Bin Laden,
and hopefully to topple the Taliban and replace it with a pro-Western
transitional government.
Perhaps the Bush administration had planned to announce the upcoming
invasion of Afghanistan and rally public support, but abandoned this
plan once the events of September 11 made it unnecessary. Perhaps the
planned invasion even precipitated the terrorist attacks.
One thing seems certain: the toppling of the Taliban is not the righteous
response to 9/11 that the American people have been led to believe.
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