Cover-up and propaganda: The 9/11 commission finishes its dirty
Mark Graffis
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/062904Chin/062
904chin.html
June 29, 2004-The 9/11 Independent Commission is an
orchestrated cover-up, controlled by the Bush White House and Bush Justice
Department, headed by Bush-appointed directors, and run by legendary
Washington fixers and veteran war criminals with direct ties to the most
likely 9/11 planners, operatives and beneficiaries.
This fact has been amplified, as the commission has begun to
wrap up its final report, burying the truth about 9/11, under new piles of
spin, distortion, theater, unsupported allegations, warmed-over Bush
administration lies, and lurid new fabrications.
The highlights from the most recent releases speak loudly of
the commission's political agenda: engineer a limited hangout that absolves
the Bush administration for 9/11, concealing key complicity evidence. At the
same time, the commissioners selectively criticize Bush for Iraq-related
policy, while laying political groundwork for an "improved" and more
aggressive "war on terrorism," and new US/UN operations in the oil-rich Middle
East.
As journalist Joyce Lynn succinctly points out in her expose
of the "9/11 Coverup Commission":
a.. The commission's report, due July 28, will render
rationales to expand the security state at home and abroad and promulgate huge
spending for the "war on terrorism."
b.. The commissioners have ties with the very parties they
are investigating, including the CIA, banking and financial interests, and
Bush administration officials.
c.. The commission's report will echo the "who would have
ever thought" and bungling federal intelligence agencies that independent
journalists and researchers dispelled long ago.
d.. The Bush administration has written the plot line and
these 10 "independent" commissioners are merely reading the script.
A Stage-Managed Damage Control Organ From Day One
Like the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, the
insulting charade conducted in 2002, the 9/11 Commission is not an
"investigatory" body, and never has been one. Indeed, the full name of the
group-the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon America-is a dead
giveaway. The phrase assumes that 9/11 was a "terrorist attack upon" the
United States, carried out by "al-Qaeda terrorists" originating outside of the
United States. In other words, case closed.
The commission was formed only after public pressure,
notably by outraged 9/11 victims' families, forced the White House to
undertake some measure of public damage control. Opportunistically, the Bush
White House dictated the conditions under which the commission would operate.
In addition to being granted numerous protections, Bush himself would appoint
the commission's director, as well as dictate and approve its mandate. Another
condition was that the commission had to be comprised of "prominent
citizens"-political elites and Washington insiders.
Ultimately, the mandate was limited strictly to "how to
prevent future breakdowns"-cementing into place the assumption of unintended
"breakdown." In other words, its strict mission was to echo and reinforce the
original White House lie that 9/11 was an act of "outside terrorists"
("al-Qaeda"), that the "failure to stop it" was the result of "intelligence
failures," "incompetence," "breakdowns," "lack of preparedness," "inexplicable
communications problems," and other excuses.
Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton proclaimed, "The focus of the
commission will be on the future. We're not interested in trying to assess
blame, we do not consider that part of the commission's responsibility."
Criminal responsibility and complicity were never part of the mandate-assuring
that no one would be brought to justice.
The commission went on to dutifully handicap itself further,
by agreeing to numerous conditions and "compromises" with the White House. Six
out of 10 of the commissioners had to agree on any request for a subpoena.
Requests for documents from the executive branch had to be channeled through
the Bush Justice Department. The White House requested, and received, the
right to review commission material so that it could assert executive
privilege. Kean cut a deal preventing Bush from testifying. He cut yet another
deal allowing the White House to edit intelligence briefs before the
commissioners could see them, while also limiting access to the pre-edited
briefs to a minority of commissioners. Senator Max Cleland, who resigned from
the commission over this issue, put it simply: "That decision compromised the
mission of the 9/11 Commission, period."
In its own Staff Statement No. 16, the commission concedes
that its own work has been slipshod, at best [my emphasis underlined-LC]:
"Much of the account reflects assertions reportedly made by
various 9/11 conspirators and captured Al-Qaeda members while under
interrogation. We have sought to corroborate this material as much as
possible. Some of this material has been inconsistent. We have had to make
judgment calls based on the weight and credibility of the evidence. Our
information on statements attributed to such individuals comes from written
reporting; we have had no direct access to any of them."
The commission's processes-corrupted as they clearly
are-have been largely insulated from public involvement and participation.
Outraged 9/11 victims' families and researchers have demanded greater access
and accountability, to no avail.
Wolves Guarding the Hen House
The entire commission is rife with conflicts of interest.
Bush originally appointed the malignant Henry Kissinger to head the
commission. After this crude ploy failed, Bush chose an equally unsavory, but
lesser-known fixer, Thomas Kean, to be its chairman. This was followed by the
appointment of long-time Bush administration national security insider (and
Condoleeza Rice colleague) Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive
director, upon the recommendation of legendary Republican fixer, Slade
Gorton.
Kissinger and Kean are directly connected to the current and
previous Bush-Reagan regimes. Both are directly connected to long-time
multinational oil interests in Central Asia that benefited from the bombing
and occupation of Afghanistan and the planned trans-Afghan oil pipeline-the
first objective of the 9/11 War.
Zelikow was a senior staffer on the National Security
Council under the first President Bush. He also worked for the Bush transition
team, and the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Bureau.
Other commissioners are also legendary political fixers, who
have been well-placed at all major US scandals in recent decades:
a.. Lee Hamilton featured prominently as an Iran-Contra
fixer. As House chairman of the committee investigating Iran-Contra, Hamilton
believed that it was "better to keep the public in the dark" than investigate
"another Watergate." He casually accepted the word of senior Reagan-Bush
officials, including George H.W. Bush himself, who claimed that they were "out
of the loop."
b.. According to Daniel Hopsicker, author of "Barry and
the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History," Commissioner Richard
Ben-Veniste "has made a career of defending political crooks, specializing in
cases that involve drugs and politics." Ben-Veniste was the attorney for CIA
narco-trafficker Barry Seal.
c.. Former Senator Slade Gorton served on the notorious
Senate Intelligence Committee for over a decade. Throughout his career, over
scores of "hearings," the hawkish Gorton consistently ran interference for
Iran-Contra-smeared Republicans, such as Robert Gates.
d.. Also on the commission is former Senator Bob Kerrey,
who has to this day refused to come clean on war crimes he committed during
his stint in the CIA's Phoenix Program.
Indeed, the 9/11 commissioners themselves deserve to
investigated and brought to justice.
In a case of bitter irony, the commission interviewed two of
its own members, Zelikow and Jamie Gorelick, in January 2004. Adding to the
irony, Zelikow and Gorelick are the "gatekeepers"-the only two members of the
commission with full access to classified White House documents.
Michael C. Ruppert noted another blatant example of
commission malfeasance in a December 2003 edition of From The Wilderness:
"Thomas Kean, the Republican chair of the so-called
independent commission investigating 9/11, chose on December 17th to advance a
modified limited hangout, saying that the attacks could have been prevented
had it not been for incompetence and intelligence failures on the part of
middle managers. The timing of that announcement, just four days after the
"capture" of Saddam Hussein, was a weak attempt to bury unresolved questions
about 9/11 in boosted Bush approval ratings.
"The fact that Kean decided to make his announcement after
having subpoenaed FAA records of Air Force and government actions on 9/11, but
before receiving them; and after agreeing to the tepid compromise of reviewing
partial extracts of George Bush's pre-9/11 intelligence briefs, but before
seeing them, is ample evidence of his political motive. Investigative bodies
rarely pass public judgment before reviewing the evidence."
On April 8, 2004, Condoleeza Rice perjured herself before
the commission, repeatedly insisting that the Bush administration had no
advanced intelligence about al-Qaeda, nor did it have specific warnings about
9/11. The commissioners simply nodded. As noted by Ruppert:
"A crime was revealed when Democratic commission member
Richard Ben Veniste said, 'We agree,' as Rice asserted that there were no
specific threats inside the United States before 9/11. The so-called
independent commission has no intention of fulfilling its mandate. Ben
Veniste's use of the word 'we' was the only time where any commissioner spoke
for the entire panel and Ben Veniste is neither the chair nor the vice chair
of the commission. What prompted him to speak for the entire panel? As FTW has
said from the commission's inception, everything that we have witnessed thus
far has been stage-managed drama intended to convince the American people that
substantive answers to 9-11 have been obtained as a result of a difficult
process.
"This is an insulting load of bull."
Given its makeup, it is no surprise that the commission has
systematically ignored, disregarded, and distorted the vast array of evidence
implicating Bush administration and other US officials, operatives and
elites-prior to, during, and following 9/11. Entire databases of "smoking gun"
evidence compiled at Center for Cooperative Research, Center for Research on
Globalisation/Global Outlook, From The Wilderness and other sources have been
willfully ignored. Damning evidence left untouched includes:
a.. 9/11 insider trading: Suppressed Details of Insider
Trading, Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness, October 9, 2001
b.. Profits From Death: Insider Trading and 9/11, Tom
Flocco/Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness, December 6, 2001
c.. Physical evidence regarding the collapse of the World
Trade Center WTC-7.Net and what really hit the Pentagon and other anomalies
d.. Whistleblower testimony regarding spiked
investigations (Wright, Rowley, Edmonds, etc.)
e.. Specific and detailed intelligence warnings
f.. All issues related to Peak Oil: The Background Is Oil,
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, From the Wilderness, Dec. 18, 2001.
Meanwhile, the false and perjurious assertions of high Bush
administration officials have been regurgitated. At the same time, the
commission has cherry-picked, distorted and spun material from the CIA, the
FBI, the NSA, the Department of Defense, NORAD and other agencies-and
scapegoated low-level agents and operatives.
9/11 Propaganda, Enhanced
In the words of Michel Chossudovsky, "America's leaders in
Washington and Wall Street firmly believe in the righteousness of war and
authoritarian forms of government as a means to 'safeguarding democratic
values.' 9/11 is the justification." The 9/11 Commission has gone to great
lengths to preserve this justification.
Its most recent "revelations" deepen the myths of
"terrorism" and "al-Qaeda." While offering no credible proof, the commission
has echoed Bush rhetoric-"the war on terrorism," "America under attack" by
"the Enemy" and "outside threats," etc.-that fully reinforces the original
9/11 pretext for "infinite" war, and all of its manifestations-from continued
imperial oil conquests, to the USA PATRIOT Act, torture and
preemptive/presumptive US terrorism.
It is no surprise that the report omits the fact that
al-Qaeda, and the Islamic terror network, is the
creation of the CIA, nourished and guided since the Carter
administration, and have been continuously utilized as US
military-intelligence assets ever since. These compartmentalized cells are
guided by the CIA, and its foreign fronts, such as Pakistan's ISI.
"Terrorists" are controlled and manipulated for real or propagandistic
purposes.
Osamagate, Michel Chossudovsky, Center For Research on
Globalisation, October 9, 2001
Who Is Osama Bin Laden?, Michel Chossudovsky, Center For
Research on Globalisation, October 9, 2001
Role Played by Pakistan's ISI in the Sept.11 attacks, Michel
Chossudovsky, Center For Research on Globalisation, November 2, 2001
Hanjour: An Unlikely Terrorist, Amy Goldstein, Lena Sun and
George Lardner, Washington Post/Cape Cod Times, October 21, 2001
Truth, Lies, and the Legend of 9/11, Chaim Kupferberg,
Center For Research on Globalisation, October 21, 2003
9/11 and the Smoking Gun That Turned on its Tracker, Chaim
Kupferberg, Center For Research on Globalisation, September 21, 2003
Who Is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi? , Michel Chossudovsky, Center
For Research on Globalisation, June 11, 2004
The commissioners have refused to address al-Qaeda's
connection to Pakistan's ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA, as well as the
operational role of the ISI behind the 9/11 attacks, and its direct ties to
Washington.
Analyzing the highlights of the most recent statements, the
commission preserves, and improves upon, the original Bush White House version
of 9/11, and its "war on terrorism" fabrication, absolving it of guilt for
9/11:
1. Al-Qaeda conspirators plotted and trained since 1999, and
planned much larger attacks using up to 26 hijackers. In addition to the
dubious sources (Bush administration statements, "classified information," and
third-hand accounts of CIA interrogations, etc.), these allegations are based
on material that the commission itself concedes is "inconsistent" and
"difficult to corroborate." None of it has been subjected to independent
examination, cross-examination, and other minimal standards that would hold up
in a legitimate court of law.
The most spectacular "revelations" in the report are among
the most questionable: testimony obtained from interrogations of alleged
al-Qaeda participants such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), whom the
commissioners consider the "mastermind" of the 9/11 plot.
The suspicious circumstances surrounding headline-grabbing
arrests of "mastermind" KSM, involving Pakistan?s ISI (the CIA?s Central Asian
"go-between") serve to refocus attention on the CIA, the ISI and the
relationship between the Bush administration and al-Qaeda.
According to some reports, Khalid Shiekh-Mohammed was killed
in 2002. Yet, the commission is publishing accounts of this man's
interrogation as fact.
The highly dubious arrests, raids conducted by post-9/11
intelligence agencies, including KSM's arrest, and more recent Nick Berg
murder reek of an elaborate US intelligence ploy. "Terrorists" created and
nurtured by the US, are set loose on behalf of Anglo-American policy, later to
be accused of "terrorism" and then arrested-creating the appearance of law
enforcement and "anti-terrorism." Even if suspects were, in fact, captured and
interrogated, how trustworthy are materials obtained from interrogations
involving techniques "not subject to US rules of due process," and carried out
in CIA facilities in places like Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib?
Commissioners allege that KSM's 9/11 plot was inspired by
Project Bojinka. However, the report says nothing about the fact that Bojinka
was foiled by Philippine authorities, immediately reported to US authorities
in 1995, and undoubtedly known by the CIA and Bush administration officials
(who continue to insist that they had no foreknowledge, and no idea that
airplanes could be used as weapons).
2. "Chaos," confusion, ineptitude, incompetence, and
rampant, inexplicable communications problems thwarted air defenses and
official response on 9/11. The emerging consensus: "the Bush administration
knew, but could not act." The commission absurdly paints Bush officials as
heroic and out-of-the-loop bunglers, guilty only of confusion, faulty cell
phones, etc. Again, this scenario is directly refuted by existing evidence,
including minute-by-minute timelines tracking various Bush officials on 9/11
(and here), and evidence showing deliberate and systematic contravention of
standard air defense procedures, ordered by the highest levels of the US
government, not "al-Qaeda":
Guilty for 9-11:Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers (Part One), Jared
Israel, The Emperor's New Clothes, November 12, 2001
Guilty for 9-11:Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers (Part Two)
Nothing Urgent, George Szamuely, New York Press, February
12, 2002
9/11 Stand Down, Mark Elsis, May 2003
TRIPOD II and FEMA: Lack of air response on 9/11 explained,
Michael C. Ruppert, From the Wilderness, June 5, 2004
3. The CIA, the FBI and other agencies were unprepared for a
terrorist attack on 9/11. These incompetence allegations, built upon the
repeated lies of high Bush officials, while implicating lower-level officials
and employees, and embarrassing law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As
discussed, these claims are directly contradicted by exhaustive evidence
(prior intelligence warnings, spiked FBI investigations, etc.)
4. Al-Qaeda conspirators began flight training for 9/11 in
1999. Nothing in the report addresses the multitude of anomalies,
inconsistencies and open questions about the veracity of the hijacker training
story, and the fact that the schools were US military and intelligence fronts
and training facilities. Nor does the commission explain how this relatively
meager training allowed the so-called hijackers to pull off the 9/11 flight
maneuvers in ways that even seasoned military pilots could not.
On four final points, the commission turns the proceedings
into a political "limited hangout," containing hints about the emerging
consensus on future US war policy. Having covered up the larger crimes, and
the Bush administration's guilt, the commissioners lay groundwork for coming
US operations-an enhanced and more "nuanced" "war on terrorism" conducted
under the auspices of "multilateral international consensus," perhaps led by
the neoliberal faction and its president-select John Forbes Kerry.
Kerry himself has boasted that as president, he would lead
"the most aggressive anti-terror war in history." His foreign policy advisor,
Rand Beers, was George W. Bush's chief counter-terrorism advisor. Kerry not
only fully supported all of Bush's war policies up through the invasion of
Iraq, but he has promised to do a slicker job. Kerry has also viciously
attacked skeptics of the White House version of 9/11 as "conspiracy
theorists," and continued to trumpet the need to "keep America safe" from
foreign terrorists.
As made clear in numerous policy statements and stump
speeches, the only difference between a Kerry "war on terror" and the Bush
version is in how it is sold to the American people and US allies; conducted
according to "international consensus" and a bigger role for NATO allies and
the UN.
The well-connected Kerry, whose own checkered career
includes membership in the infamous Skull & Bones Society, played a major role
in containing the investigations of Iran-Contra and CIA-Contra cocaine
scandals. He is no savior.
With this in mind, note how the commission pronounces the
following:
5. There is no credible evidence that Iraq cooperated with
al-Qaeda on the 9/11 operation, and that Osama bin Laden did not have a
collaborative relationship with Saddam Hussein. The emerging line from
Washington and Wall Street: criticize the scandalized Bush administration and
the neocons for "Iraq overreach," but leave the "war on terrorism"-9/11
pretext fully intact for the next administration.
6. There is no evidence that the senior official of the
Saudi Arabian government funded al-Qaeda. It appears to be a virtual certainty
that Saudi Arabia (and its 25 percent of known world oil reserves) will
ultimately be destabilized and occupied by the US. New purported al-Qaeda
terrorism, and a growing wave of "the Saudis did it" propaganda, suggests that
preparations are underway. The commission's nod to the Saudi Royal family and
Saudi compradors suggests that an outright Anglo-American invasion, in
retaliation for 9/11, is not yet politically, economically or militarily
feasible. An invasion will not occur until Iraq is pacified, and a variety of
other petro-economic issues are sorted out.
7. Al-Qaeda has been funded through other networks. A nod to
the USA PATRIOT Act: secret police operations against Islamic organizations
with alleged ties to "terrorists" (Muslim charities, for example) will
continue.
8. Al-Qaeda terrorists are harbored by Iran and Pakistan.
The commission simply echoes the consensus geostrategy. All nations along the
Eurasian subcontinent, the "Grand Chessboard," are potential targets for
future US invasion and destabilizations, given their reserves of oil and gas,
and critical geostrategic importance. Both Iran and Pakistan are being
simultaneously contained and provoked.
Other Commission Lies
Staff Statement No. 15 (titled in true neocon language:
"Portrait of The Enemy") contains blatant falsehoods including these :
"There is no convincing evidence that any government
financially supported al-Qaeda before 9/11."
"The United States has never been a primary source of
al-Qaeda funding, although some funds raised in the United States likely made
their way to al-Qaeda."
"No persuasive evidence exists that al-Qaeda relied on the
drug trade as an important source of revenue, or funded itself through
trafficking from an Afghan state engaged in civil wars."
Al-Qaeda was created by the CIA, funded by the United States
and its allies, and continuously utilized as a military-intelligence asset
since the Carter administration. This historical fact is exhaustively
documented, from the proud boasts of Zbigniew Brzezinski (father of the
Mujahadeen and a founding architect of the current war) to US Congressional
records (and here). Following the Cold War terror operations against Russia,
the United States and NATO recruited al-Qaeda in the 1990s to fight in Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Macedonia among the ranks of the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) and the National Liberation Army (NLA). Afghanistan's Taliban regime was
put into power with US support, and US/ISI-funded al-Qaeda fighters. The US
supported the Taliban through the summer of 2001.
It is also matter of record, confirmed by bodies such as the
CIA itself, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), United Nations Drug Control
Program (UNDCP), and scores of journalists and researchers, including Alfred
McCoy, Peter Dale Scott and others, that the Mujahadeen armed and equipped
with weapons financed by the Golden Crescent heroin trade. As CIA assets, the
Mujahadeen controlled the Central Asian heroin trade.
The laundering of narco-dollars routinely funds covert
operations and regional conflicts, as well as serving as an underpinning of
world financial system itself.
Finally, the commission attempts to sell this carefully
phrased whopper:
"No credible evidence exists that operatives received
substantial funding from any person in the United States."
Given the long, documented facts regarding al-Qaeda-its
creation by the CIA, its long use as a US/NATO military-intelligence asset,
the military training received by the alleged hijackers-it is absurd for the
commission to deny that al-Qaeda received funding from the US.
Note the phrase, "any person in the United States." This
does not include foreign assets and go-betweens. Alleged lead hijacker,
Mohammed Atta did receive funding from General Mahmoud Ahmad of Pakistan's ISI
(at least $100,000). Pakistan's ISI functions as a foreign branch of the CIA.
On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad met with various elites on Capitol Hill,
including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage, CIA Director George Tenet, Senator Bob Graham, Senator Joe Biden,
Senator Bob Kyl, and Rep. Porter Goss.
No one in Washington, including the 9/11 commissioners, has
explained this.
One for the Ages
The Bush administration is a criminal organization, run on
secrecy, protected from exposure by "colleagues," from the Supreme Court
(which installed Bush in 2000, and has now ruled that the Bush White House
does not have to reveal the specifics of its Energy Task Force) to the 9/11
commissioners. The 9/11 Commission is an atrocity, and just one more insult to
victims of 9/11, and all of post-9/11 humanity.
The commission's final report, due in late July 2004, will
no doubt be immediately, vigorously and thoroughly rebutted, and demolished,
point by point, by 9/11 researchers and watchdog organizations with command of
the real evidence. Authoritative sources, such as the many cited in this
piece, and upcoming books, such as Michael C. Ruppert's soon-to-be released
book, "Across the Rubicon: America's Descent into Fascism at the End of the
Age of Oil", will explode the 9/11 lie, and lay waste to the entire charade.
Like its ancestors-the Warren Commission, spiked inquiries
into the Kennedy and King assassinations, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Enron, and other
government crimes-the 9/11 Independent Commission has served its function:
deception.
Larry Chin is a freelance journalist and an Online Journal
Associate Editor.
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