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March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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March
11, 2002
Footprints in the Dust
By John Chuckman
One of the most fascinating snippets on the latest
Nixon Watergate-era tape to be released to the public, the same
tape that contains an 18-minute erasure and anti-Semitic remarks,
was a brief, unexplained comment by Nixon on what a fraud the
Warren Commission had been.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but as
part of a lifelong interest in history, I've read most of the
worthwhile books analyzing Kennedy's assassination, and I am
left only with the certainty that we've never been told the
whole truth.
I've always believed it to be a ridiculous
idea that the CIA had a direct role in killing President Kennedy.
No more ridiculous, mind you, than the story that gets floated
every few years about Castro having been involved, a story that
has the distinct odor of disinformation, and where disinformation
exists, so do motives for generating it.
And of course, Bertrand Russell's famous
question has never been answered. It remains as a powerful indictment
of the secrecy that yet surrounds the case. Lord Russell asked,
"If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where
is the issue of national security?" In other words, on
the Warren Commission's own premise, the assassination reduces
to an ordinary murder, and the facts of a murder case are supposed
to be a matter of public record.
For those who bother plowing through
the literature, the conclusion that the CIA knows far more than
it ever has revealed is inescapable. There are too many suggestive
trails and tantalizing bits of evidence. Too many stories put
out. Too few questions answered. Too many important documents
missing.
One of the most potentially explosive
is the CIA's photograph of whoever it was that went to the Cuban
Embassy in Mexico City shortly before the assassination claiming
to be Oswald - of course, every person entering or leaving that
embassy was routinely photographed. The photograph the CIA
did submit was obviously incorrect since the person in it could
never be confused with Oswald by anyone. And then there are
the recordings of phone calls supposedly made by Oswald at that
time. Again, these phone calls, since they involved the Soviet
embassy, certainly would have been recorded, but the CIA claimed
the tapes had been destroyed.
I've always believed that some CIA operation,
likely involving one of the many unsavory groups it financed
in those days trying to topple Castro, went very sour right
under its nose. What other likely explanation is there for
claims of national security over the years? Had something like
this been revealed in the 1960s, the CIA might well have been
destroyed in the middle of the Cold War. It already had been
badly hurt owing to its gross negligence in the Bay of Pigs.
Here indeed was a reason important enough for some very important
people to lie.
Anyway, it is beginning to look like
events around September 11 may well offer this generation of
Americans a repeat performance. Recent discoveries concerning
those events bring that same sure but murky sense of the CIA's
presence leading up to the attack. Perhaps another operation
gone very sour.
First, there is the former American diplomat's
story about the issuing of visas almost without question to
many very questionable people.
Then, there is the strong suspicion that
the flight school in Florida where one of the terrorists, Mr.
Mohamed Atta, trained likely had connections to the CIA.
And then, there is the Saudi connection.
As is well known, the Saudis were important financial contributors
to Al Qaida. The use of a country like Saudi Arabia, that would
be credited by others as having its own motives for contributing,
represents the kind of arrangement the CIA likes to use in channeling
financial support abroad. And even were the CIA not involved
in this activity, it is almost impossible that it would have
been unaware of it.
As is also well known, the Saudis have
received almost no seriously hostile attention over this connection.
This at a time when the junior partners of Bush, Ashcroft, von
Rumsfeld & Co. stay up late into the night looking to prosecute
the most inconsequential people involved in sending any money
to the Middle East.
And, of course, many of the nineteen
who died in the attacks were from Saudi Arabia, including Mr.
Atta. There is even some indication that Mr. Atta may have been
related to the royal family.
We also have the recent arrest and expulsion,
although this is officially denied in Washington, of a large
Israeli spy ring, many of whose members worked out of Florida,
the same state as Mr. Atta's flight school.
Spy rings as large as this one simply
do not operate in a place like the United States without the
CIA being aware of them. Apparently, there is a serious question
whether Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, told the U.S.
what it knew before September 11. At any rate, we know the
aftermath of the attack certainly has tipped the balance to
favor Mr. Sharon's bloody-minded way of seeing the world.
All in all, there are some very suggestive
footprints in the settled dust of the World Trade Center, and
they tend to point towards Langely, Virginia. Americans, for
a second time, may have been the unintended victims of their
own agency's dirty work.
John Chuckman,
a columnist for YellowTimes,
lives in Ontario. He encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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