|
May 21, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
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 March 15, 2002
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
|
May
21, 2002
Follow the Money
Bush, 9/11 and Deep Threat
by Fran Shor
"What
did the President know and when did he know it?"
This question, evocative of the Watergate investigation,
is now being posed by politicians and pundits seeking to determine
what information the Bush Administration had prior to the incidents
of September 11, 2001. No amount of denial and back-pedaling
by the Bush Administration can cover up the fact that Bush had
advance knowledge of possible terror attacks on US targets by
the followers of Osama bin Laden. While it's clear that Bush
was personally briefed on August 6, 2001 about the possibility
of those attacks, it remains unclear about the nature and extent
of precautions, if any, taken to prevent such attacks.
Nonetheless, there is a welter of material
that points to the Bush Administration's obstruction and neglect
of important leads to link bin Laden to operations in the United
States. Moreover, in the months and weeks leading up to 9/11
there were warnings and signs that some members of the Administration
and its national security apparatus were anticipating something
horrendous. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush Administration
mobilized the war machine and repressive legislation to promote
policies that secured its economic and ideological agenda. Thus,
a more intriguing and significant question is: in light of what
the Bush Administration gained from the fall-out of 9/11, how
was that gain embedded in the actions and inactions by the Bush
Administration prior to 9/11? To ask the question about the reaping
of political advantage from the tragedy of 9/11 need not assume
that there was a conspiracy by the Bush Administration; merely
that certain players acted out of their personal interests at
the expense of the safety and security of the nation.
To piece together the various activities
of these players in the Bush Administration one should recall
another key component of Watergate--the famous advice of "Deep
Throat," the Washington insider, to Bob Woodward, the investigative
reporter from the Washington Post. When Woodward was having trouble
connecting all the dots and players, "Deep Throat"
intimated: "Follow the money!" The money trail links
Bush's oil background, his family's connections to Saudi investments,
the politics of pipelines in Central Asia, and the military-industrial
complex. By detailing Bush's background and fast-forwarding to
the decisions of the Administration in its pursuit of war in
Afghanistan, a possible war in Iraq, and a permanent war agenda,
a money trail will unfold that will transform Deep Throat's admonition
into a Deep Threat alarm concerning the lives and liberties of
citizens of the United States and the world.
The Bushes,
bin Ladens, and Carlyle
The Bush family's involvement with oil
is not only deeply rooted in Texas oil wells, but also in the
Middle East. George W's first experience in business was in the
creation of the Arbusto Oil Company which eventually merged into
Harken Oil. In 1986 Bahrain came to the rescue of the failing
company by accepting a drilling contract with Harken even though
Harken had no real background with drilling. When George W. sold
his holdings in Harken for $848,000 in June of 1990, he cashed
in at a point right before the company took a nose-dive in the
aftermath of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August of
1990. Questions about whether George W. had been given a warning
by his father concerning what may have been the entrapment of
Saddam Hussein in Kuwait have never been fully settled.
On the other hand, conflicts of interest
were definitely developed in the 1990's by father and son through
their involvement with the Carlyle Group, an investment group
filled with Reagan-Bush cabinet members. In 1990 with former
Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci, as the CEO of Carlyle,
George W. was appointed to the board of a Carlyle investment,
Cateair. After his defeat in the 1992 Presidential election,
George H. W. and James Baker, became Carlyle advisors and investors.
Especially useful were the Bush and Baker connections to the
ruling elite of Saudi Arabia. Those connections helped to generate
large investments in Carlyle from the Saudi elite including the
bin Laden family, a family made wealthy by an extensive construction
business.
Although in the aftermath of 9/11 the
bin Laden 2 million dollar investment in Carlyle was withdrawn,
prior to that time George W's administration had put up road-blocks
to the investigation of the bin Laden family. The lead investigator
of Osama bin Laden's involvement in terror actions against the
US, from the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to the African
embassy bombings in 1998 to the assault on the U.S.S. Cole in
2000, was John O'Neill, a Deputy Director of the FBI. O'Neill
had repeatedly been denied access to questioning the bin Laden
family, including a January 2001 directive from the White House
to desist from investigating two of Osama's brothers who were
residing in Falls Church, Virginia at the time. In the face of
such continuing obstruction, O'Neill resigned in protest from
the FBI claiming that the "main obstacles to investigating
Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil interests and the role played
by Saudi Arabia in it." Ironically, O'Neill became the chief
security person at the World Trade Center shortly before 9/11
where he, along with between 2-3,000 others, perished in the
destruction of the WTC on that fateful and tragic day.
If 9/11 was a tragedy to thousands of
Americans and their families, Bush and his father's Carlyle cronies
hit the jackpot, especially with renewed contracts for Carlyle
defense investments. In particular, Carlyle had invested heavily
in United Defense, the primary manufacturer of the Crusader artillery
system. Although the Crusader faced a skeptical Congress before
9/11, Carlucci and his lobbyists certainly managed to line-up
his old college buddy, Donald Rumsfeld, behind promoting the
outmoded Crusader. When Carlyle went public with United Defense
stock offerings in the fall of 2001, Carlucci, Bush, Baker, and
other investors in Carlyle made out like bandits. However, when
a possible paper trail and conflict-of-interest against Rumsfeld
surfaced recently, he announced his opposition to Crusader. Of
course, millions had already been made and Rumsfeld had to cover
his own backside in light of the calls for the resignation of
the Secretary of the Army, a former Enron executive already awash
in dubious conflicts-of-interest.
The Taliban
and Pipeline Politics
However, if the Saudi and Carlyle connections
to father and son Bush don't raise alarms, then the whole history
of the Bush Administration's dealings with the Taliban should.
The primary focus of these dealings was the renewal of a planned
pipeline from the natural gas rich fields of Turkmenistan through
Afghanistan and Pakistan to other Asian markets. Behind this
whole operation was the Unocal company. Among the advisors to
Unocal was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American academic, who
in addition to being an advisor to Unocal in the 1990's was also
part of the foreign policy think-tanks that included Frank Carlucci.
Khalilzad joined the Taliban's lobbyist, Laila Helms (a relative
of former CIA director, Richard Helms) in direct talks between
representatives of the Taliban and the Bush Administration right
up through July of 2001.
When the Taliban broke off the talks,
refusing the pipeline offers, the Bush Administration made known
its efforts to strike back at the Taliban as early as August
of 2001. Ostensibly attacking the Taliban for its refusal to
hand over Osama bin Laden, the Bush Administration refused any
alternatives to the military option. During the whole military
operation, the Pentagon has tried to establish security points
that reflect the route of the proposed pipeline. Moreover, Harmid
Karzai, the hand-picked US leader of Afghanistan, was, at one
time, also a consultant for Unocal. Along with Khalilzad, who
now is the US representative to Afghanistan's interim government,
Karzai is effectuating plans for the pipeline.
The CIA and
Other Deep Pockets
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a
number of news stories appeared concerning investments in "put"
options in United and American Airlines. Put options are shares
that are bets on falling market prices for specific stocks. In
the week before September 11 put options in United and American
Airlines went through a furious and unprecedented spasm of investment.
In addition put options for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch,
two of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Center, also
saw abnormal activity. Most of the investments in these put options
originated in Germany through the Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank
had earlier acquired Banker's Trust, a investment banking firm
whose Vice Chairman in charge of "private client relations"
in the late 1990's was A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In March
of 2001, Krongard was appointed Executive Director of the CIA.
Certainly, the CIA has a history of laundering
money and dealings with shady investment characters. What becomes
particularly relevant in the lead-up to 9/11 is the August CIA
briefing of Bush concerning the potential threat of attacks by
bin Laden using hijacked planes on certain sites, such as the
Pentagon and World Trade Center, and the fact that the CIA had
bugging equipment on bin Laden messages and international banking
operations. Although no one has apparently claimed the money
from the put options, questions remain about Krongard and the
CIA's involvement.
Warning Signals
and Criminal Negligence
The CIA's briefing for Bush wasn't the
only warning coming from intelligence agencies about the possible
attack by hijacked planes on targets like the Pentagon and World
Trade Center. Both German and Russian intelligence agencies picked
up signals during the summer of 2001 about bin Laden plans. The
FBI in its investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's activities documented
his desire to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. When those
FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal
computer, the civil liberties-minded Attorney General, John Ashcroft,
turned them down. On the other hand, Ashcroft was worried enough
about the hijacking of commercial airplanes that starting on
July 26, 2001 he stopped flying on commercial aircraft. Of course,
neither Aschroft nor anyone else in the Bush Administration bothered
to warn airport authorities to be on heightened alert and to
tighten airport security in the face of such warning signals.
To suggest that the Bush Administration
arranged the 9/11 tragedy is to resort to wildly speculative
conspiracy theories. On the other hand, there is a substantive
and documented record of neglect and obstruction to warrant a
charge of criminal negligence by Bush and his national security
state apparatus. It may be that part of that apparatus, especially
elements within the FBI, are angered by how they and their reports
were cavalierly treated by the White House. They and other congressional
sources may be leaking the kind of information that was essential
in bringing down President Nixon. Instead of waiting, however,
for what appears as inevitable congressional investigations,
we should be doing everything in our power to raise questions
in public forums and the courts, if possible, about the criminal
negligence of the Bush Administration. Before another pretext
is created for another war for oil and the advancement of the
military-industrial complex, this Administration needs to be
confronted for the duplicitous and corrupt self-serving elite
they are.
Fran Shor
teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is an anti-war
activist and member of the Michigan Coalition on Human Rights.
He can be reached at: f.shor@wayne.edu
|