|
June 1, 2002
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
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
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
|
June 1, 2002
The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
by Bernard Weiner
Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when
pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to
that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.
Q. I've heard all these reports about the government
knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were
going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush
Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything
wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies
"not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI
culture" that failed. Can you explain?
A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system"
spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation.
Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had
no idea as to the specifics -- they may not have known the exact
details of the attacks -- but it is more and more apparent that
they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including
the possible targets.
Q. You're not just going leave that hanging out
there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up?
A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more
than enough documentation to establish that the Bush Administration
was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda,
by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and
that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According
to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for
Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced ten
weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.)
Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least
an, attack was coming, why did the Bush Administration do nothing
to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists
out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status
or even in the air as deterents, get word out to the border police
to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air
missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc.?
A. The explanation preferred by the government
is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence,
up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise!, prefer
to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy).
But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a
moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind
the Bush Administration, get their political/business agenda
through, have a reason to move unliterally around the globe,
and defang the Democrats and other critics at home -- what better
way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader
after a diabolic "sneak attack"?
Q. You're suggesting the ultimate cynical strategem,
purely for political ends. I can't believe that Bush and his
cronies are that venal. Isn't it possible that the whole intelligence
apparatus just blew it?
A. Possible, but not bloody likely. There certainly
is enough blame to spread around, but the evidence indicates
that Bush and his closest aides knew that bin Laden was planning
a direct attack on the U.S. mainland -- using airplanes headed
for those icon targets -- and, in order to get the country to
move in the direction he wanted, he kept silent.
Q. But if that's true, what you've described is
utterly indefensible, putting policy ahead of American citizens'
lives.
A. Now are you beginning to understand why Bush&Co.
are fighting so tenaciously against a blue-ribbon commission
of inquiry, and why Bush and Cheney went to Congressional leaders
and asked them not to investigate the pre-9/11 period? Now do
you understand why they are trying so desperately to keep everything
secret, tightly locked up in the White House, only letting drips
and drabs get out when there is no other way to avoid Congressional
subpoenas or court-ordered disclosures? They know that if one
thread of the coverup unravels, more of their darkest secrets
will follow.
Q. You're sounding like a conspiracy nut.
A. For years, we've avoided thinking in those terms,
because so many so-called "conspiracies" exist only
in someone's fevered imagination. Plus, to think along these
lines in this case is depressing, suggesting that American democracy
can be so easily manipulated and distorted by a cabal of the
greedy and power-hungry. But I'm afraid that's where the evidence
leads.
Q. You mean there's proof of Bush complicity in
9/11 locked up in the White House?
A. We wouldn't use the term complicity. So far
as we now know, Bush did not order or otherwise arrange for Al-Qaeda's
attacks on September 11. But once the attacks happened, the plans
Bush&Co. already had drawn up for taking advantage of the
tragedy were implemented. A frightened, terrorist-obsessed nation
did not realize they'd been the object of another assault, this
time by those occupying the White House.
Q. This is startling, and revolting. But I refuse
to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon until I see some proof. Bush
says he first heard about a "lone" pre-9/11 warning
on August 6, and that it was vague and dealt with possible attacks
outside the U.S. Why can't we believe him? After all, the FBI
and CIA are notorious for their incompetence and bungling. You
got a better version that makes sense, I'd love to hear it.
A. Bush and his spinners want us to concentrate
on who knew what detail when; it's the old magician's trick of
getting you to look elsewhere while he's doing his prestidigitation.
We're not talking about a little clue here and another little
clue there, or an FBI memo that wasn't shared. We're talking
about long-range planning and analysis of what strategic-intelligence
agencies and high-level commissions and geopolitical thinkers
around the globe -- including those inside the U.S. -- saw for
years before 9/11 as likely scenarios in an age of terrorist
attacks.
The conclusion about Al-Qaeda, stated
again and again for years by government analysts, was basically:
"They're coming, by air. Get prepared. They're well-organized,
determined, and technically adept. And they want to hit big targets,
well-known symbols of America." (There was a 1999 U.S. government
study, for example, that pointed out that Al-Qaeda suicide-bombers
wanted to crash aircraft into a number of significant Washington
targets; during the 199 5 trial of Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind
of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he revealed plans to
divebomb a plane into CIA headquarters, and earlier he had told
FBI agents that the list was expanded to include the Pentagon
and other D.C. targets.)
Elements in the FBI, all over the country,
who suspected what was coming, were clamoring, begging, for more
agents to be used for counter-terrorism investigations, but were
turned down by Attorney General Ashcroft; Ashcroft also gave
counter-terrorism short shrift in his budget plans, not even
placing anti-terrorism on his priority list; John O'Neill, the
FBI's NYC anti-terrorism director, resigned, asserting that his
attempts at full-scale investigating were being thwarted by higher-ups;
someone in the FBI, perhaps on orders of someone higher-up, made
sure that the local FBI investigation in Minneapolis of Zacaria
Moussauoi was compromised. All this while Ashcroft was shredding
the Constitution in his martial law-like desire to amass information,
and continues even now to further expand his police-state powers.
(Note: An FBI agent has filed official
complaints over the bureau's interfering with anti-terrorism
investigations; his lawyers include David Schippers, who worked
for the GOP side in the Clinton impeachment effort; Schippers
says the agent knew in May 2001 that "an attack on lower
Manhattan was imminent." A former FBI official said: "I
don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming...Within
24 hours [of the attack], the Bureau had about 20 people identified,
and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information
was available in the files and someone was sitting on it.")
One can accept the usual incompetency
in intelligence collection and analysis from, say, an anti-terrorist
desk officer at the FBI, but not from the highest levels of national
defense and intelligence in and around the President, where his
spokesman, in a bald-faced lie, told the world that the 9/11
attacks came with "no warning." More recently, National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in a quavering voice, tried
to characterize the many warnings as mere "chatter,"
and concerned attacks "outside the U.S." But the many
warning-reports focused on terrorist attacks both inside and
outside the United States; the August 6th briefing dealt with
planned attacks IN the United States.
Not only were there clear warnings from
allies abroad, but the U.S., through its ECHELON and other electronic-intercept
programs, may well have broken bin Laden's encryption code; for
example, the U.S. knew that he told his mother on September 9:
"In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not
going to hear from me for a while".
And, the word of an impending attack
was getting out: put options (hedges that a stock's price is
going to fall) in enormous quantities were being bought on United
Airlines and American Airlines stock, the two carriers of the
hijackers, as early as September 7; San Francisco Mayor Willie
Brown was warned by "an airport security man" on September
10 to rethink his flight to New York for the next day; Newsweek
reported that on September 10, "a group of top Pentagon
officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning,
apparently because of security concerns"; many members of
a Bronx mosque were also warned to stay out of lower Manhattan
on September 11, etc. etc.
Q. You're giving me intriguing bits and pieces.
Can't you tie it all together and make it make sense?
A. OK, you asked for it, so we're going to provide
you with a kind of shorthand scenario of what may well have gone
down, a kind of narrative that attempts to tie a lot of disparate-seeming
events together. There is voluminous, multi-sourced evidence
that establishes this scenario. It's scary, so prepare yourself.
We believe that the HardRight began serious
planning for a 2000 electoral victory -- and then implementation
of a HardRight agenda, and the destruction of a liberal opposition
-- a year or two after Clinton's 1996 victory. (The impeachment
of Clinton was a key ingredient to sully Democrat opposition.)
The GOP HardRight leaders decided early to select George W. Bush,
a none-too-bright and easily malleable young man with the right
name and pedigree. They ran into a speed-bump when John McCain
began to take off in the public imagination, and so with dirty
tricks they wrecked his campaign in the South and elsewhere,
and continued on their merry course.
For a while, they fully expected an easy
victory over dull Al Gore, tainted goods for a lot of conservative
Republicans and others because of his association with Clinton,
but, given the obvious limitations of their candidate, they weren't
going to take a lot of chances. In Florida, for example, where
it looked as if the race might be tight, they early on arranged
things -- through Bush's governor-brother Jeb, and the Bush campaign's
Katherine Harriss, Florida's Secretary of State -- so that George
W. couldn't lose. An example: removing tens of thousands of eligible
African-American voters from the rolls.
As it turned out, Gore won the popular
vote by more than a half-million votes nationwide, and, we now
know, would have won Florida's popular vote had all the ballots
been counted, but the U.S. Supreme Court HardRight majority,
despite its longtime support for states' rights, in a bit of
ethical contortionism did a philosophical reverse in midair and
ordered the Florida vote-counting to stop and declared Bush the
winner, installing a President rather than letting the people
decide for themselves.
Q. That's ancient history. I'm interested in 9/11,
not tearing at an old scab.
A. OK. We're merely trying to indicate that the
HardRight's campaign to take power was not an overnight, post-9/11
whim but worked out long in advance. After so many near-chances
to take total control, they would do anything to guarantee a
presidential victory this time around -- which would give them
full control over the reins of power: Legislature (where HardRightists
dominated the House and Senate), the Courts (where the HardRight
dominated the U.S. Supreme Court and many appelate courts), and
the Executive branch, not to mention the HardRight media control
they exerted in so many areas.
They had followed the news, they knew
that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network was engaged in a maniacal
jihad against America, and was quite capable -- as they had demonstrated
on many occasions, from Saudia Arabia to East Africa to the first
attempt on the World Trade Center -- of carrying out their threats.
They also knew, from innumerable intelligence reports from telecommunications
intercepts, and from various commissions, CIA and foreign agents
that Al-Qaeda liked to blow up symbolic icon structures of countries
targeted, and that Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, had an affinity
for trying to use airplanes as psychologic or actual weapons.
(The French had foiled one such attack in 1994, where a hijacked
commercial airliner would be flown into the Eiffel Tower.)
By early 2001 and into the Summer, warnings
were pouring in to U.S. intelligence and military agencies from
Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, and other Middle East
and South Asian intelligence sources, along with Russia and Britain
and the Phillipines, saying that a major attack on the U.S. mainland
was in the works, involving the use of airplanes as weapons of
mass destruction.
Indeed, in June and July of 2001, the
alerts started to be explicit that air attacks were about to
go down in the U.S.; even local FBI offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis
began passing warnings up the line about Middle Eastern men acting
suspiciously at flight schools. In July, Ashcroft stopped flying
on commercial airliners and traveled only by private plane, and
Bush, after but a few months in office, announced he was going
to ground, spending the month of August on his ranch in Crawford,
Texas. Cheney disappeared from view, and our guess is that he
was coordinating the overall, post-attack strategy.
Under this scenario, in mid-Summer 2001,
Bush&Co. decided this was it. Bin Laden unknowingly was going
to deliver them the gift of terrorism, and they were going to
run with it as far and as fast and as hard as they could. The
various post-attack scenarios had been worked out, the so-called
USA Patriot Act -- which contained various police-state eviscerations
of the Constitution -- was polished and prepared for a rush-job
(with no hearings) through a post-attack Congress, the war plans
against the Taliban in Afghanistan were readied and rolled out,
the air-base countries around Afghanistan were brought onboard,
and so on. All during the Summer of 2001.
Q. I don't understand how war against Afghanistan
could have been anticipated so early.
A. Follow the money. Various oil/gas/energy companies
had wanted a Central Asian pipeline to run through Afghanistan
(costing much less to build, but also so it wouldn't have to
go through Russia or Iran); that project was put on hold during
the chaos in Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over and
brought stability to that country, the U.S. began negotiating
with the Taliban about the pipeline deal. Even after sending
them, via the United Nations, $43million dollars for "poppy-seed
eradication," and inviting them to talks in Texas, the Taliban
began to balk. At a later meeting, the U.S. negotiator threatened
them with an attack unless they handed over bin Laden and reportedly
told them, in reference to the pipeline, that they could accept
"a carpet of gold" or be buried in "a carpet of
bombs." (The later U.S. government spin was that the bin
Laden issue and the pipeline issues were separate, and that the
U.S. threats didn't mix the two and there were misunderstandings
of what was said.) Shortly thereafter, bin Laden, hiding out
in Afghanistan, initiated the September 11th attacks, and the
U.S. bombing of that country began. Oh, by the way, in case you
haven't noticed, under the new <U.S.-friendly> government
in Kabul, the pipeline project is back on track. Oh, by the way,
the pipeline will terminate reasonably close to the power plant
in India built by Enron that has been lying dormant for years,
waiting for cheap energy supplies.
Q. You're saying that U.S. war and foreign policy
have been dictated by greed?
A. Among other pleasant motivations, such as hunger
for domination and control, domestically and around the globe
-- which always ties in with greed. That's why Bush&Co. play
such political and military hardball. That's why the arrogant,
take-no-prisoners, in-your-face attitude, to bully and frighten
potential opponents into silence and acquiescence, even questioning
their patriotism if they demur or raise embarrassing issues.
Q. But this is a democracy, people are still speaking
their minds, right?
A. Certainly, there are areas of America's democratic
republic that have not yet been shut down. But where there should
be a vibrant opposition party, raising all sorts of questions
about Bush Administration policy and plans, America receives
mostly silence and timidity. However, as more and more of the
ugly truth begins to emerge -- and Enron, Anthrax, and pre-9/11
knowledge are just the tips of the iceberg -- the Democrats (and
moderate Republicans) are beginning to feel a bit more emboldened.
But just a bit, preferring to run for cover whenever Bush&Co.
accuse them of being unpatriotic when they raise pointed questions.
Q. You're so critical and negative about the Bush
Administration. Can't you say anything good about what they're
doing?
A. Yes. They have moved terrorism -- the new face
of warfare in our time -- front and center into the world's consciousness,
and have mobilized a global coalition against it. They may be
making mistakes, which could lead to horrifying consequences,
or acting at times out of impure motives, but at least the issue
is out there and being debated and acted upon.
Now, having said that, we must point
out that the institutions in this country -- the Constitution,
the courts, the legislative bodies, civil liberties, the Bill
of Rights, the press, etc. -- are in as much danger as they've
ever been in. And the U.S.'s bullying attitude abroad may well
lead to disastrous consequences for America down the line.
Q. So, what's to be done?
A. The most important thing at the moment -- even,
or especially when, the inevitable next terrorist attack occurs
-- is to break the illusion of Bush&Co. invulnerability.
The best way to do that, aside from ratcheting up the Enron and
Anthrax and 9/11 investigations (and it may turn out that those
scandals are deeply intertwined), is to defeat GOP candidates
in the upcoming November elections. If the Democrats hang on
to the Senate and can take over the House, the dream of unchallengable
HardRight power will be broken. Bush&Co. will become even
more desperate, overt, nasty, and in their arrogance and bullying
ways, will make more mistakes and alienate more citizens. The
edifice will begin to crumble even more; there will be more and
deeper Congressional and media investigations; resignations and/or
impeachments (of both Bush & Cheney, and Ashcroft) may well
follow.
Q. You're asking me to support ALL Democrats, even
though in a particular race a moderate GOP conservative would
be better?
A. Yes. In some cases, you may have to hold your
nose and send money to, canvass for, and vote for a Democrat;
we can get rid of the bad ones later. The objective right now
-- for the future of the Constitution, and for the lives of our
soldiers in uniform and civilians around the globe -- has to
be to break the momentum of the HardRight by taking the House
and keeping the Senate from returning to GOP control. Doing so
would be even more important than what happened when that courageous
senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, appalled by the HardRight
nastiness and greed-agenda of the Bush folks, resigned from the
GOP and turned the Senate agenda over to the Democrats.
Q. And you think if the GOP gets its nose bloodied
in the November election, that will convince Bush to resign or
lead to his impeachment? I don't get that.
A. Churchill once told the Brits during World War
II that "this is not the beginning of the end, but it is
the beginning of the beginning of the end." There is a lot
of hard work and organizing and educating to be done, but the
recent exposure of Bush coverup-lies about pre-9/11 knowledge
is "the beginning of the beginning of the end." With
a GOP defeat in November, Democrats will be emboldened to speak
up more, investigate deeper, and those inquiries will unlock
even more awful secrets of this greed-and-powerhungry administration.
And that will be the beginning of the end -- and the beginning
of the beginning of a new era of more humane values for America
and the rest of the world.
Bernard Weiner,
Ph.D., has taught American government & international relations
at Western Washington University and San Diego State University;
he was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years..
|