"ANGEL IS NEXT" –
THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT SPEAKS
Chapter Nine from "9/11 Synthetic Terror:
Made in USA", Copyright 2005, 2006 by Webster Griffin Tarpley, published by Progressive Press.
From 10:00 a.m. to approximately 8:00 p.m. (on Sept. 11), US government
officials were not thinking that this was the work of Arab terrorists, but
rather that it was an expression of a military coup being carried out by
US-based extremists who were capable of provoking a nuclear war. – Réseau
Voltaire,
Sheikh: They [the Americans] were terrified thinking there was a coup. –
"Bin Laden" tape of December 2001 (Meyssan 2002 197)
The current tenant of the White House most probably was not familiar in
advance with a detailed outline of the 9/11 plot. He was assisted in not
knowing and not acting by his cognitive impairment, his contempt for detailed,
accurate information, and his habitual mental lethargy. Whether or not he
suspected that something was coming, whether or not he knew this or that
detail, are all matters to be determined with the help of open archives and
cross-examination of the subject. The guess here is that Bush knew far less
than many of his most severe critics might surmise. Bush's crime was not the
crime of knowing everything in advance; it was rather the crime of not knowing
what he should have known, and of then compounding that by capitulating, by
turning the
As I pointed out in my 1992 study of Bush 41, the typical model of a Bush
presidency is that of a weak and passive executive who comes into office with
few ideas beyond the basic desire to rule and to appoint rich cronies to key
posts, and who sits in the White House waiting for his networks to tell him
what it is he must do. These impulses, naturally, are mediated through the
handlers of the White House palace guard. But here lies the danger: when Bush
was running for office, it was widely conceded by his supporters that their
candidate was a moron, but a moron who would hire the best advisers available,
who would guide him through the crises of his presidency. In this sense, both
Bush presidencies were oligarchical presidencies, with the chief magistrate in
fact functioning as the front man for a committee.
The events of 9/11 showed the grave danger of such an oligarchical presidency:
what happened if the advisors turned out to be traitors, misfits, or absent, as
they did on 9/11: the presidency itself was paralyzed and incapable of acting,
as occurred during the dark eternity of horror the world experienced as Bush
busied himself with reading "My Pet Goat."
If the forces favorable to a policy of open-ended clash-of-civilizations
warfare had been in total control of the government, they might have been able
to orchestrate the outbreak of war directly, through an incident involving a
target country like
As part of his "endless summer" approach to the presidency which
had seen him on vacation for over 40% of his time in office up to 9/11, Bush
was spending the evening of September 10 at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort
on Longboat Key, a narrow coral island in the Gulf of Mexico, off Sarasota,
Florida. This resort, a favorite destination for plutocrats, was billed as
"
Bush awoke at
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
On the evening of September 10, Zainlabdeen Omer, a Sudanese national who
was a local resident, reported an assassination threat against Bush to the
Secret Service. Omer said an acquaintance named Ghandi had made violent threats
against Bush and was now in town, so Omer was worried about Bush's safety. The
next day, 9/11, the Secret Service searched a
It was at Longboat Key that Bush was the target of a possible assassination
attempt. As Bush was preparing for his morning run, a van carrying several
Middle Eastern men pulled up to the security post at the Colony's entrance. The
men claimed to be a television news crew with a scheduled poolside interview
with the president. They asked for a certain Secret Service agent by name. The
message was relayed to a Secret Service agent inside the resort, who hadn't
heard of the agent mentioned or of plans for an interview. He told the men to
contact the president's public relations office in
This technique may have been the same one used to eliminate General Ahmed
Shah Massoud two days earlier. Here a television camera crew composed of
suicide bombers had gained access to the legendary anti-Soviet fighter and
leader of the Afghan Northern
But there is a more cogent view: Massoud was a proud nationalist who would
not have taken orders from the CIA and UNOCAL, so it was urgent for the CIA to
eliminate him. In the latter case, Bush may have come close to joining Massoud
as the victim of the same rogue network of
Bush's publicity event at the
On the surface, Bush's security arrangements at the Colony appeared
elaborate. Surface-to-air missiles were placed on the roof of the resort
(Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
At about 8:50 AM (when reports of the first World Trade Center crash were
first broadcast), while standing on the Sarasota bay front waiting for the
presidential motorcade to pass by, a passerby observed two Middle Eastern men
in a dilapidated van "screaming out the windows 'Down with Bush' and
raising their fists in the air." The FBI supposedly questioned the source
of this report, but it is not clear if this was the same van that had appeared
at the Colony security checkpoint. (Longboat Observer,
When did Bush learn that American Flight 11 had hit the
Part of the answer to this may lie in Bush's mental inertia and weak hold on
external reality. But it may also be that Bush was being subjected to some form
of security stripping by the networks who were carrying out the 9/11 attacks.
It should be recalled that the assassination of President Kennedy in
An alert security detail would have taken Bush out of the Booker school at
the first news that American 11 had hit the
Months later, Bush offered his famous garbled and impossible account of how
he learned of the first plane impacting the WTC. On
Many commentators have noted that the only known film of American 11 hitting
the
The children were opening their books to read a story together when Bush's
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card entered the room and whispered to Bush:
"A second plane hit the second tower.
This was the defining moment of the Bush 43 presidency: the raging infantile
id paralyzed by fear and dread. And this was Bush's pattern: When an American
EP-3E spy plane had been forced down on the coast of China in the spring of
2001, "neither Bush nor Rice seemed anxious about the situation's
deteriorating into a hostage crisis….Bush went to bed around his usual time,
before midnight.…In the White House, it was mostly business as usual. Bush came
back from Camp David early on Sunday, not because of the crisis, but because
bad weather interfered with his outdoor recreation." (Newsweek
"MY PET GOAT"
Bush's defense, as summarized by the 9/11 commission was that "the
President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better
understand what was happening." (9/11 commission report 38) This is exactly
the ceremonial conception of the weak presidency, which sees the office as a
symbol and object of popular emotional cathexis or focus, rather than as a
policy-making post oriented toward action in the real world. It was left to the
foreign press to ask the obvious question: whatever Bush's animadversions might
have been, why was he not picked up and carried out? A Canadian reporter noted
that "for some reason, Secret Service agents (did) not bustle him
away." (Globe and Mail, September 12, 2001) There had in fact been one
attempt. A member of Bush's entourage, variously identified as a Secret Service
agent or as a Marine from the communications detail, had said, "We're out
of here. Can you get everyone ready?" (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, September
10, 2002) But nothing happened. What strange process was at work behind the
scenes to leave Bush as a sitting duck in a highly publicized location at a
time of gravest danger? Was security stripping going on in the background? This
lackadaisical response of Bush's Secret Service detail contrasts sharply with
the aggressive manhandling of Cheney, who was lifted up by main force and
carried toward the PEOC, the White House bunker, by Secret Service agents.
As for Bush, he was taking orders from his handlers, as usual. From the back
of the room, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer held up a sheet of paper with the
words "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET" written on it in big block letters.
(Washington Times, October 7, 2002) In the interval, Bush was listening to a
pupil read the celebrated story of "My Pet Goat," while the crisis
unfolded around him. This is the interval portrayed so graphically in Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 911; how long did Bush stay in the classroom after he was
told of the second attack. The Tampa Tribune thought he had remained there
"for eight or nine minutes" – until sometime between 9:13 and 9:16.
(Tampa Tribune, September 1, 2002) At a certain point a reporter asked Bush,
"Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of the plane crash in New York?
Is there anything..." Bush, obedient to the instructions of Ari Fleischer
to keep his mouth shut on this topic, responded, "I'll talk about it
later." But even now the president did not depart. He tarried to shake
hands with Ms. Daniels, the second grade teacher. It was evident that Bush felt
no urgency to take any action in particular. "He was taking his good old
time. ... Bush lingered until the press was gone." According to
This singularly lethargic conduct by Bush attracted criticism very early on.
9/11 widow and activist Kristen Breitweiser said on the Phil Donahue show:
"It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service
whisk [Bush] out of that school? ... (H)e is the commander-in-chief of the
United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after
the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25
minutes." (Donahue, August 13, 2002) This critique is all the more
justified because of the security warning of the previous night, and the
attempted assassination attempt earlier that same morning.
One way to account for Bush's behavior in the classroom that morning, and
perhaps the most likely one, is the notion that Bush simply froze in fear and
insecurity about what to do. "We've seen Bush's sense of omnipotence
threatened before – in the hours following the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon," wrote Dr. Frank. "All of us were
understandably frightened, but Bush's fear at first appeared paralytic: he
continued reading to the second grade class he was visiting for a full twenty
minutes after he was told that the first tower had been hit. Then he fled for an
entire day, serpentining across the country until the coast was clear and he
could finally make it back to Washington." (Frank 99)
The 9/11 commission accepted without criticism and even without comment
Bush's absurd decision to continue reading the story about the goat while the
country was under attack, along with his explanation that this was motivated in
his own mind by the desire to project an image of strength – an answer which
suggests that he was more concerned about maintaining appearances in his own
delusional world than he was about providing concrete measures of national
defense in this world.
Bush went to a private room in the school and conferred with his advisors.
Then, at 9:30, he read the following statement:
THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America.
I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks. Secretary
Rod Paige and the Lt. Governor will take the podium and discuss education. I do
want to thank the folks here at Booker Elementary School for their hospitality.
Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the
World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have
spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of
the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go
to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale
investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.
Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you would join me in
a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America.
Thank you very much.
END 9:31 A.M. EDT
The operative term here is "apparent terrorist attack." Later that
day Bush remarked, "The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But
make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test." As
Meyssan argues, the general tone of Bush's remarks, including especially the
term "test," might suggest a military conflict or internal
insurrection just as easily as terrorism. (Meyssan 2002 47)
Soon after this, Bush left the Booker School for the nearby Sarasota
Airport. But before he left, the Secret Service was to receive news of another
threat to Bush: As the local paper reported a few days later: "Sarasota
barely skirted its own disaster. As it turns out, terrorists targeted the
president and Air Force One on Tuesday, maybe even while they were on the
ground in Sarasota and certainly not long after. The Secret Service learned of
the threat just minutes after Bush left Booker Elementary." (Sarasota
Herald-Tribune, September 16, 2001)
Another account confirms that the Secret Service learned of a new threat to
Bush and Air Force One "just minutes after Bush left Booker
Elementary." Karl Rove, who was traveling with the president, commented:
"They also made it clear they wanted to get us up quickly, and they wanted
to get us to a high altitude, because there had been a specific threat made to
Air Force One.... A declaration that Air Force One was a target, and said in a
way that they called it credible." (New Yorker, October 1, 2001)
Air Force One took off from Sarasota between 9:55 and 9:57 AM, as many news
reports confirm. The takeoff was a hurried one, followed by a steep climb to
higher altitudes. Communications Director Dan Bartlett remembered, "It was
like a rocket. For a good ten minutes, the plane was going almost straight
up." (CBS, September 11, 2002) Air Force One began to roll down the Florida
runway just as WTC 2 was about to collapse. "As the President sat down in
his chair, [he] motioned to the chair across from his desk for me to sit
down," recalled Karl Rove. "Before we could, both of us, sit down and
put on our seat belts, they were rolling the plane. And they stood that 747 on
its tail and got it about 45,000 feet as quick as I think you can get a big
thing like that up in the air." (Bamford 2004 63)
However, despite the pattern of grave threat, Air Force One took off without
any military fighter protection. This was about one hour after the impact on
the South Tower. There was no lack of nearby air bases which should have been
on continuous alert: Homestead Air Station was 185 miles from Sarasota, and
Tyndall Air Station was 235 miles away. It should have been possible to
improvise a small fighter escort in that interval. This poses the question: was
fighter cover being denied to Bush by the rogue network, as part of the pattern
of security stripping? This question is made more urgent by the fact that,
according to most accounts, Air Force One did not get a fighter escort until
well over one hour after it had made its emergency takeoff.
"AIR FORCE ONE IS NEXT"
Once in the airplane, Bush was in continuous contact with Cheney and others.
Around this time, officials feared that as many as 11 airliners had been
hijacked. (CBS, September 11, 2001) Some reports place Bush out of the loop
because of communication difficulty, but "out of the loop" was his
father's line from Iran- Contra.
Shortly after takeoff, Cheney apparently informed Bush of "a credible
threat" to Air Force One. (AP, September 13, 2001) US Representative Adam
Putnam said he "had barely settled into his seat on Air Force One ... when
he got the news that terrorists apparently had set their sights on the
plane." (Orlando Sentinel, September 14, 2001) The Secret Service had
received an anonymous message saying: "Air Force One is next." The
caller spoke in the code words relating to Air Force One procedures. Colonel
Mark Tillman, who was piloting Air Force One, was informed of the threat, and
an armed guard was stationed at his cockpit door. The Associated Press reported
that the threat came "within the same hour" as the Pentagon crash
–before 10:00 AM, and approximately when the plane took off. (AP, September 13,
2001) The threat contained in this message, "Air Force One is next,"
would appear to have been distinct from the earlier warning that came upon
leaving Booker School, but this cannot be established with total certainty.
Bush wanted to go to Washington, but he was overruled by the White House
palace guard. Card told Bush, "We've got to let the dust settle before we
go back." (St. Petersburg Times, September 8, 2002) The plane apparently
stayed over Sarasota until it was decided where Bush should go. Accounts
conflict, but through about 10:35 AM (Washington Post, January 27, 2002), Air
Force One "appeared to be going nowhere. The journalists on board – all of
whom were barred from communicating with their offices – sensed that the plane
was flying in big, slow circles." (London Daily Telegraph, December 16,
2001) What was being discussed on the secure phone during this time? Was Cheney
communi- cating the demands of the coup faction to Bush? Was Cheney reporting
these demands, or was he joining in urging Bush to accept them? At various
points in the narrative, Cheney appears to be acting not just as relayer of
information, but as a spokesman for the secret government network which was in
action on 9/11. It is thus Cheney, far more than Bush, who must be considered a
prime suspect in any serious investigation of 9/11.
"ANGEL IS NEXT"
According to Bob Woodward's canonical mainstream account: "At about
10:30 AM Cheney reached Bush again on Air Force One, which was still on its way
toward Washington. The White House had received a threat saying, 'Angel is
next.' Since Angel was the codeword for Air Force One, it could mean that
terrorists had inside information." Allegedly because of this report,
Cheney argued that Bush should not return to Washington. "There's still a
threat," said Cheney. (Woodward 18) Within minutes, the plane changed
course and flew to Louisiana instead. (Washington Post, January 27, 2002) Was
this now a third threat, after the post-Booker threat and the "Air Force
One is next" threat? Did the terrorist controllers now add the code word
"Angel" to further document their insider status, and their possible
access to nuclear codes? Or are we dealing with two versions of the same
threat?
We will return to "Angel is next." This represents the single most
important clue as to the sponsorship of 9/11, since it was at this point that
the sponsors showed their hand. They were not located in a cave in Afghanistan,
but were rather a network located high within the US government and military It
was a moment of capital importance, the thread which, if properly pulled, will
unravel the entire fabric of 9/11 deceit.
Around 10:55 AM, there was yet another threat to Air Force One. The pilot,
Colonel Mark Tillman, said he was warned that a suspect airliner was
approaching from dead ahead. "Coming out of Sarasota there was one call
that said there was an airliner off our nose that they did not have contact
with," Tillman related. Tillman took evasive action, pulling his plane
even higher above normal traffic. (CBS, September 11, 2002) Reporters on board
noticed the increased elevation. (Dallas Morning News, August 28, 2002; Salon,
September 12, 2001) It has not been possible to establish exactly what the
basis of this threat report was. Was the rogue network blackmailing Bush? Was
this suspect airliner a military aircraft using participation in Vigilant
Guardian/Vigilant Warrior as a cover story for assisting the plot?
Air Force One had some protection against heat-seeking missiles in the form
of an infrared jammer code-named "Have Charcoal." There were also
other electronic anti-missile countermeasures. The plane is shielded against
the electro- magnetic pulse effect (EMP) which can be generated by nuclear
explosions, and which causes damage even at a considerable distance. (Bamford
2004 84)
At the time of this incident, it is apparent that Air Force One still had no
fighter escort. Why were the fighters being withheld, and by whom? It was later
reported that, in Cheney's 10:32 phone call, he told Bush that another 40 to 90
minutes would be required to get protective fighters up to escort Air Force
One. (Washington Post, 1/27/02) This would have left Bush without fighter cover
until noon. What was the tone of this remark by Cheney? Was it a threat? Was it
blackmail? Our only certainty is that at the time of the 10:55 AM evasive
action, there was still no fighter escort. By 1:30 there were reportedly six
fighters protecting Air Force One. (Sarasota Magazine, September 19, 2001)
According to another version, when the Air Force sent an AWACS early warning
radar aircraft plus two F-16s to escort Air Force One, the presidential party
treated them on a need-to-know basis. "We were not told where Air Force
One was going. We were just told to follow the President," said Major
General Larry Arnold of NORAD (Bamford 2004 87) Was the Bush party suspicious
of certain military elements?
BARKSDALE AND NIGHT WATCH
Aboard Air Force One on the way to Barksdale, passengers, including the
numerous press corps, were told to turn off their cell phones. The Secret
Service then came around and removed the batteries from each phone to prevent
the emission of any kind of signal that might reveal the plane's location.
These measures turned out to be of dubious value, since the Shreveport
television stations had placed at least one camera crew near the main runway.
"The strange part about it was, here we were turning off cell phones and
taking precautions, and we could see ourselves landing at Barksdale Air Force
Base in Louisiana on the TV," recalled Eric Draper, Bush's personal
photographer. (Bamford 2004 86)
Air Force One landed at Barksdale Air Force base near Shreveport, Louisiana
at about 11:45 a.m. (CBS, September 11, 2002; Daily Telegraph, December 16,
2001) "According to intelligence sources, a key reason for deciding to
land there was that Barksdale was home to the US Strategic [Air] Command's
alternate underground command post, a bunker from which Bush could run a war if
necessary. It was also a place where the President could rendezvous with 'Night
Watch,' the 'Doomsday Plane.' Once a specially outfitted Boeing 707 known as
the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, by 2001 it had become a heavily
modified military version of the Boeing 747-200, similar to Air Force One. Renamed
the National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), the aircraft was designed to be
used by the President to direct a war in case of nuclear attack. During the
Cold War, one of the four Night Watch aircraft was always in the air,
twenty-four hours a day. But in the 1990s, the decision was made to keep the
alert aircraft on the ground with the ability to take off on fifteen minutes'
notice." (Bamford 2004 84)
During the morning, Clarke had instituted Continuity of Government, the
measures prescribed for emergency rule in the face of a catastrophic emergency.
"Our coordinator for Continuity of Government (we will call him Fred here
to protect his identity at the request of the government) joined us. 'How do I
activate COG?' I asked him. In the exercises we had done, the person playing
the President had always given that order. 'You tell me to do it,' Fred
replied." After relaying messages to Bush and Cheney, Clarke added:
"'Tell them I am instituting COG.' I turned back to Fred: 'Go.'" (Clarke
8) Clarke, we see again, was running the country, while Bush zig-zagged.
It was at Barksdale that Bush made a second statement for television broad-
cast; it was taped and put on the air only after he had left the base. Bush
said:
Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom
will be defended. I want to assure the American people that the full resources
of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives
and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States
will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. I've been
in regular contact with the vice president, secretary of defense, the national
security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions
to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on
high-alert status and we have taken the necessary security precautions to
continue the functions of your government. We have been in touch with the
leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do
whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans. I ask the American
people to join me in saying thanks for all the folks who have been fighting
hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the
victims and their families. The resolve of our great nation is being tested.
But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test. God
bless."
The crucial point here is that all reference to terrorism or terrorists had disappeared.
Bush was now speaking under the impact of "Angel is next," which had
given him the idea that his adversaries were not what the term
"terrorists" would normally suggest.
While Bush was reading his 219-word statement, "'he looked nervous,'
said The New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr. The
Washington Post reporters Dan Balz and Bob Woodward agreed. 'When Bush finally
appeared on television from the base conference room,' they wrote, 'it was not
a reassuring picture. He spoke haltingly, mispronouncing several words as he
looked down at his notes." Judy Keen of USA Today noted that 'Bush looked
grim. His eyes were red-rimmed.' An administration official later admitted, 'It
was not our best moment.'" (Bamford 2004 87)
While at Barksdale, Bush "spent the next hour and a half talking on the
phone," still disputing with Cheney and others over where he should go
next. (Sarasota Magazine, November 2001) There was probably much more at issue
than Bush's itinerary. Were Bush and Cheney haggling about whether or how to
accept the rogue group's demands, such as the war of civilizations? When Bush
requested a return to Washington, Karl Rove answered: "Our people are
saying it's unstable still." (Associated Press, September 13, 2001) Bush
was told he should go to the US Strategic Command center in Offutt, Nebraska,
and he agreed to go.
While still at Barksdale, Bush received word of yet another threat. Just
after 1:00 PM, Bush reportedly "received an intelligence report from the
base commander that a high-speed object was headed for his ranch in Crawford,
Texas." It turned out to be a false alarm. (Sammon 117) By 12:16 PM, US
airspace was supposedly empty, since all flights were thought to have landed.
Was this another psychological warfare ploy by the rogue network in order to
keep Bush off balance? (USA Today, August 12, 2002) Air Force One left
Barksdale for Offutt Air Force Base around 1:30 PM. Perhaps better to mask the
nature of Bush's predicament, most of the White House press corps were
jettisoned at Barksdale. Bush's party was pared down to a few essential
staffers such as Ari Fleischer, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, and
Gordon
"By then [as Bush was leaving Barksdale] many in the press were
beginning to question why the President hadn't returned to Washington during
the grave crisis. The question was put to presidential counselor Karen Hughes,
then at FBI headquarters. 'Where's the President?' asked one reporter. 'Is he
coming back to DC? asked another. Instead of answering, she simply turned on
her heels and walked out of the room. NBC's Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press
and the Washington bureau chief, also remarked about the nation needing the
leadership of its president. Yet, rather than return to Washington, the
decision was made to keep moving as quickly as possible in the opposite
direction. It was a risky choice. 'If he stayed away,' reported London's Daily
Telegraph, 'he could be accused of cowardice.'" (Bamford 2004 87)
OFFUTT, NEBRASKA: STRATCOM
Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha Nebraska was the principal headquarters of
the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the successor organization to Curtis
LeMay's Strategic Air Command of Cold War vintage. This base possessed the main
military command bunker of the US for nuclear warfighting purposes. Bush
arrived here on Air Force One at 2:50 Eastern Daylight Time. He went at once to
the bunker, which was several stories underground, and protected by a series of
blast doors and the like. The conference room was ABC-proof, that is, secure
against atomic, biological and chemical weapons. As Bamford evokes the tableau:
It was like a scene from Dr. Strangelove, or Seven Days in May. Never before
had all the pieces been in place for the instant launch of World War III. The
military alert level was at its highest level in thirty years. The Vice
President was in the White House bunker, senior administration officials were
at Site R, congressional officials had been flown to Mount Weather, the
Secretary of Defense and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in
the Pentagon War Room, and the President of the United States was in the
nuclear command bunker at STRATCOM. (Bamford 2004 89)
Was all of this because of terrorism, or was there some more serious threat
of subversion to the state, perhaps complicated by the danger of a
thermonuclear exchange? All of this behavior suggests at the very least that
the White House thought that forces far more formidable than bin Laden and his
Afghan troglodytes were involved.
Both movies cited by Bamford involve military madmen attempting either to
precipitate general thermonuclear war, or else to stage a coup d'état in the
US. A Straussian might see a hidden message here. The US military posture was
now Defcon Delta, the highest state of alert short of all-out war. At Malmstrom
Air Force Base in Montana, there were 200 Minuteman III ICBM silos, each one
ready to launch three warheads. At other bases there were MX ICBM silos, and
here each missile carried even more warheads.
Bush convened the NSC as a teleconference call with Vice President Cheney,
National Security Advisor Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of
State
Omaha's resident plutocrat and world's richest man Warren Buffett was
scheduled to appear at Offutt that day, hosting an unpublicized charity benefit
inside the base at 8:00 AM. In attendance were business leaders and several
executives from the World Trade Center, including Anne Tatlock of Fiduciary
Trust Co. International, the source of this story, who likely would have died
had it not been for the fortuitous meeting. (San Francisco Business Times,
February 1, 2002)
Bamford notes that "…it was close to 4:30 on the East Coast, and except
for the brief, two-minute taped comments made at Barksdale, no one had seen or
heard from the President or even knew where he was. Republicans back in
Washington were becoming worried. 'I am stunned that he has not come home,'
said one Bush fundraiser. 'It looks like he is running. This looks bad.'
William J. Bennett, a former education secretary and a drug czar under former
President George Bush, said that it was important for Bush to return to the
White House as soon as possible. 'This is not 1812,' he said. 'It cannot look
as if the President has been run off, or it will look like we can't defend our
most important institutions." (Bamford 2004 91)
Air Force One left Offutt around 4:30 PM and landed at Andrews Air Force
Base at 6:34 PM, escorted by two F-15 fighters and one F-16. Bush then took the
Marine One helicopter to the White House, arriving shortly before 7:00 PM. Bush
gave a nationally televised speech at 8:30 PM, speaking for about five minutes.
This speech is too long to be included here, but it is readily available.
Indeed, the White House commemorative edition leaves out the earlier two
statements, and begins with this one. The change of tone is remarkable. Bush is
now possessed of a Manichean certainty about the events of the day. He is back
to the line that the perpetrators were terrorists. One important passage came
at the beginning, where Bush stated: "Today, our fellow citizens, our way
of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and
deadly terrorist acts….Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil,
despicable acts of terror." (Bush 1) Later in this statement, Bush
presented the kernel of what would later be termed the Bush doctrine, his
declaration of war on the world: "We will make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." (Bush 2)
What had changed for Bush during the course of the afternoon and early
evening? It may have been only at this moment that Bush began to recover from
the panic which had gripped him around 9 AM that morning. Clarke noted that
"unlike in his three television appearances that day, Bush was confident,
determined, forceful." (Clarke 23) As we will argue below, there is
persuasive evidence that he had decided to capitulate to the demands of the
sponsors of the terrorist attacks by launching the war of civilizations which
this network had demanded. This surrender, carried out sometime in the
afternoon or evening of September 11, constitutes Bush's great betrayal of the
Constitution and his great crime against humanity. Everything Bush has done
since, down to the very structure of his personality, has been determined by
the moment in which he declined to fight the rogue network, but rather
preferred to follow its orders, in violation of his oath of office. Never
before had the United States surrendered to an enemy in this way.
After his 8:30 PM television address, Bush met with key officials in the
Presidential Emergency Operations Center. According to Clarke, who was there,
this was "a place he had never seen." (Clarke 23) This 9:00 PM
meeting with Bush's full National Security Council was followed roughly half an
hour later by a meeting with a smaller group of advisors. Bush and his advisors
had already decided bin Laden was behind the attacks. CIA Director Tenet told
Bush that al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan were essentially one and the
same. When Bush insisted on sleeping in his own bed, he was warned that any
threat would require that he go to the bunker. "And sure enough,"
said Mr. Bush. "We are in bed at about 11:30, and I can hear a guy
breathing quite heavily. 'Mr. President, Mr. President! There's an unidentified
aircraft heading towards the White House!'" It turned out to be a false
alarm – or was it a good night kiss from the rogue network? (Daily Telegraph,
December 16, 2001) Before going to sleep, Bush wrote in his diary, "The
Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.... We think it's Osama bin
Laden." (Washington Post, January 27, 2002) There is no evidence that
Bush, the man who never reads, writes enough to keep a diary. This reference to
a diary would seem to be a vehicle to convey that depth of Bush's capitulation
to the rogue network behind 9/11, a kind of intimate confession that he truly
believed in the new party line he had embraced that afternoon or evening.
There was a brief phase of recrimination against Bush after 9/11, and it was
based largely on his evasive retreats to Barksdale and Offutt. Human Events,
the conservative magazine which had been favored by Reagan, noted that
"some in the media were caustic in their description of the flight."
The New York Times called it a "zigzag course." The New York Daily
News charged, "A shocked and shaken President Bush – who was hopscotched
around the country yesterday in an extraordinary effort to keep him
safe...." Journalists were whispering about the president's absence. And
even some friends are disturbed by the implications that the president or
Washington may not have been safe. One former official with the first Bush
administration said he was "deeply disappointed by his zigzagging across
the country." "We had control of the skies by 10 o'clock," the
source added. "I was hoping to see a Churchillian or Reaganesque sign of
defiance. Bush was poorly served by his staff." (Human Events Online,
9/17/01)
There are several additional significant incidents which must be taken into
account. These vanished early on from narratives of the event; they made the
defenders of the official version uncomfortable. The first of these was a fire
at the Old Executive Office Building or Eisenhower Building (OEOB), which is
where the offices of the National Security Council are located. This is an
integral part of the White House compound, and was the work place of such
figures as Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and others. The
ABC television network broadcast live pictures of a fire at the OEOB on 9/11 at
9:42 AM local time. (Meyssan 2002)
Another is the issue of a car bomb at the State Department: "Lisa
slipped a note in front of me: 'CNN says car bomb at the State Department. Fire
on the Mall near the Capitol." (Clarke 9) According to another account,
"at 10:20 a report came in that a huge car bomb had gone off outside the
State Department in Washington. It wasn't true, but it changed the picture once
more." (Daily Telegraph, December 16, 2001) The fire on the Mall near the
Capitol is yet another incident. Clarke also recounts receiving a report:
"There has been an explosion in the Pentagon parking lot, maybe a car
bomb." (Clarke 7)
If we put these events together with the possible early morning attempt to
assassinate George Bush, we see that the scope of the 9/11 plot was altogether
broader and more inclusive even than the acts of spectacular synthetic
terrorism which the world observed that day.
SAFIRE: INSIDE THE BUNKER
An initial exposition of Bush's claim to have acted under threats on 9/11
came in a September 13 New York Times column entitled "Inside the
Bunker" from William Safire, a hardened old neocon sinner from the Nixon
White House. According to Safire, "A threatening message received by the
Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that 'Air Force One
is next.' According to the high official, American code words were used showing
a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible."
Safire identified his source as Karl Rove, Bush's political Svengali.
According to Rove, when Bush stubbornly insisted that he was going back to
Washington, "the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained
language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures
and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided
to get airborne with a fighter escort." Another Safire source, who was
with Cheney in the White House bunker, related that it was Cheney who
"suggested Air Force One go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska,
headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, with a communications facility where
the president could convene the National Security Council."
Safire correctly pointed out that "The most worrisome aspect of these
revelations has to do with the credibility of the 'Air Force One is next'
message. It is described clearly as a threat, not a friendly warning – but if
so, why would the terrorists send the message? More to the point, how did they
get the code- word information and transponder know-how that established their
mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and
possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole
in the White House – that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA or
CIA. If so, the first thing our war on terror needs is an Angleton-type
counterspy." (New York Times, September 13, 2001) Of course, it may well
be that the dubious Angleton networks, given their penchant for fascism, are
themselves among the suspects. But that is another story.
The essential details given by Safire were confirmed by an AP wire that same
day, also inspired by the opportunistic Rove. Here Ron Fournier wrote:
Hopscotching across half the country while America was under attack,
President Bush vented his frustration with Secret Service officials who told
him of an anonymous call saying: "Air Force One is next." According
to a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, the caller
knew the agency's code words relating to Air Force One procedures and
whereabouts. (AP, September 13, 2001)
Foreign press organs, more critical than the controlled corporate media of
the US, reported this story straight. The London Financial Times wrote that
after Bush had taken off from Florida, "within an hour, an anonymous call
reached the Secret Service. Using code words known only to the agency's staff,
the caller issued a chilling warning: 'Air Force One is next.'" (Financial
Times, September 14, 2001)
The principal clue leading us to the existence of the rogue network behind
9/11 is the "Angel is next" threat. Since hasty attempts to deny that
this ever existed came soon after 9/11, we pause to document the evidence that
this call really did take place.
In an interview with Tony Snow on Fox News Sunday, National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice confirmed that the September 11 threat against President
Bush's life included a secret code name.
SNOW: Sept. 11 there was a report that there was a coded message that said,
"We're going to strike Air Force One" that was using specific coded
language and made the threat credible. Is that true?
RICE: That is true.
SNOW: So we have a mole somewhere?
RICE: It's not clear how this coded name was gotten. We're a very open
society and I don't think it's any surprise to anyone that leaks happen. So, I
don't know – it's possible the code name leaked a long time ago and was just
used.
SNOW: How on earth would that happen?
RICE: I don't know. I don't know. We're obviously looking very hard at the
situation. But I will tell you that it was plenty of evidence from our point of
view to have special measures taken at that moment to make sure the president
was safe.
This exchange was reported by Carl Limbacher of NewsMax.com, who added that
"US intelligence officials have not ruled out the possibility that a
government mole may have given terrorists the top secret code language they
used to deliver the threat 'Air Force One is next' as the World Trade Center
and Pentagon were under attack." (NewsMax.com, September 23, 2001) Of
course, the real imperative was to consider whether the rogue network behind
the attacks extended into the ranks of holders of top secret security
clearances.
The threat to Air Force One was repeated by others in the administration. In
the September 12 White House briefing, Ari Fleischer told reporters, "We
have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One
were also intended targets of these attacks." The next day Fleischer was
asked, "[It was] yesterday reported that some of the people in the
Pentagon were a little bit skeptical about your comments yesterday that the
White House and Air Force One were attacked – were targets of attack, given
that the plane had come from the south. What do you –" Fleischer:
"Who are these people?" Reporter: "Well, I don't know. They
weren't my sources, so…" Fleischer: "No. There's – I wouldn't have
said it if it wasn't true." Reporter: "Can you confirm the substance
of that threat that was telephoned in...that Air Force One is next and using
code words?" Fleischer: "Yes, I can. That's correct."(September
13)
On Meet the Press of September 16, Cheney began to back away from the story,
telling Russert: "The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat
to Air Force One – came through the Secret Service ..." Russert: "A
credible threat to Air Force One. You're convinced of that." Cheney:
"I'm convinced of that. Now, you know, it may have been phoned in by a
crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way to know that. I
think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to
me." (Meet the Press, September 16) Notice that the top-secret code words,
the really sensitive point, have now disappeared. Still, the Bushmen were
extremely sensitive to any impugning of their man's courage under fire. A
journalist who said Bush was "flying around the country like a scared
child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed after having a nightmare" and
another who said Bush "skedaddled" were fired. (Washington Post,
September 29, 2001)
In the short term, the Bushmen were eager to use the threat incidents to
defend their leader from the charge of cowardice, and also to provide a cover
for the reasons that had actually caused him to flee across the country.
However, the "Angel is next" story contained an explosive potential
for the longer term, since by pointing toward the existence of highly-placed
moles within the administra- tion who had access to top secret code words and
procedures, it threatened to explode the official myth of 9/11 which was then
taking shape.
As Bush gathered momentum with his "war on terrorism" and Afghan
invasion, the need to use the "Angel" story for political cover
diminished, and the need to protect the coherence of the official myth became
paramount. It was at this time that the threat story began to be denied, not by
officials speaking on the record, but by mysterious, anonymous leakers. One of these
leaks came two weeks after 9/11: "Finally, there is this postscript to the
puzzle of how someone presumed to be a terrorist was able to call in a threat
against Air Force One using a secret code name for the president's plane. Well,
as it turns out, that simply never happened. Sources say White House staffers
apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail." (Jim
Stewart, CBS Evening News, September 25, 2001) An AP wire of the same day, also
based on an anonymous leak, read: "[
After these leaks, Fleischer also dropped the story. On September 26, a
reporter asked about the September 11 warning. Fleischer replied: "I'm not
going to comment on any particular threats coming toward the White House. . .
it is not an uncommon occurrence for people to threaten the government of the
United States, regardless of whether it's President Bush or any of his
predecessors. And that's why there are security precautions taken at the White
House as a matter of routine." (Washington Post, September 27, 2001)
Latent hatred and resentment of Bush made it easy for reporters to
trivialize the threat story, and make it appear as a devious invention of the
loathsome Karl Rove. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, the
gossipy Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had "called around town, trying
to sell reporters the story – now widely discredited – that Mr. Bush didn't
immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed
for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air
Force One was in jeopardy, too." Rove was indeed a scoundrel, but there
was something much more important at stake.
Especially eager to dispense with the threat story and focus on the soap
opera of Bush the skedaddler were the leftists. To illustrate these, we take
the case of Joe Conason, who wrote indignantly that "The Bush
administration told an outrageous lie that the president was a target of
terrorists – and Americans deserve an explanation." Conason, already
inclining to defend the most reactionary lie of all, the official version, was
especially upset about the reference to "code-word confirmation" –
since this was the point that threatened the al Qaeda myth. Conason was even
more worried about the demand for an investigation to root out the mole network
inside the US government:
Only when those assertions were shot down by CBS News and the Associated
Press did the spinners back down, claiming that it had all been a
"misunderstanding" by staffers, with little elaboration. How serious?
In addition to undermining public confidence in the White House during a
national emergency, this spinning of the president's flight from Washington led
New York Times columnist William Safire, among others, to demand an internal
investigation that would determine whether an administration "mole"
had revealed top-secret information to America's enemies. That paranoid theme
was immediately picked up in the foreign media, no doubt worrying allies and
potential allies engaged in sensitive discussions with the United States.
(Slate, October 5, 2001)
Conason's reference to foreign paranoids may have been meant for the Réseau
Voltaire, which was already performing yeoman service in dismantling the
official version. In the 9/11 commission hearings, it was Ben-Veniste who took
care to assert that the story was spurious. As a leading public opponent of the
Bush dynasty since the time of Bush 41, I yield to nobody in my determin- ation
to put an end to the monstrous prominent role of this family in US public life.
However, to think that the moron Bush could have organized 9/11 is absurd. As
we have seen, part of the project was evidently to liquidate Bush and pass
power to Cheney, whose credentials as a possibly witting plotter are infinitely
stronger. By surviving the Colony interview hit, Bush lived to encounter 9/11
as a fait accompli, in which he was told at gunpoint to acquiesce, and he
promptly did so. To reduce everything to "Bush knew" is a good slogan
– far better than the official version – but it does not deal with the rogue
network which antedates 9/11, and which remains in place today, posing a
constant threat of new terrorist attacks, with or without Bush.
Paul Thompson, whose empirical work on the 9/11 timelines is a valuable
resource for all researchers, unfortunately buys into the denials of the threat
story. After marshalling the available evidence, Thompson, who prides himself
on his empirical precision, concludes: "Was there a mole in the White
House? No. It turned out the entire story was made up." (Citizine, May 9,
2003) But it is far too simple to let this entire complex of problems and the
vast issues it raises be swept under the rug by mere anonymous leaks, no matter
how many times they might have been repeated. At stake is the most important
clue in the entire 9/11 case. The regime is hiding something crucial here, and
they must not be allowed to abscond. "Had terrorists hacked their way into
sensitive White House computers?" Thompson asks. But the issue is much
larger. If the threat to Bush came encrusted with code words, this means that
the terror attacks were organ- ized by high-level moles inside the US
government – not that a hacker in an Afghan cave had cracked the Pentagon
mainframes.
BUSH AND PUTIN ON 9/11
The potential for a thermonuclear confrontation or even of an all-out
thermo- nuclear exchange growing out of 9/11 has generally been ignored by the
US controlled media, but such a potential was clearly present. It was
inherently present because of the tense relations among the US, Russia, and
China in the wake of the bombing of Serbia and the Kursk incident. It was made
explicit when a flying object, probably a cruise missile, hit the Pentagon. As
the 9/11 commission report notes, one fighter pilot who saw the damage to the
Pentagon immediately thought of Russia as the most likely adversary. This
innate mental reaction must have been repeated thousands of times in the minds
of non-witting military personnel on the day of 9/11. Clarke points out that
the US proclamation of Defcon Delta, the level of readiness just below actual
war, was inevitably immediately noticed by Russia, and came near causing
immediate counter-measures of readiness on the Russian side. This was the first
Defcon Delta since Henry Kissinger had ordered a world-wide alert to deter
possible Soviet intervention in the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East in
October 1973. Defcon Delta posed the danger of an escalation of mobilization
between the two leading nuclear powers:
Frank Miller reported that DOD had gone on a global alert, DEFCON 3:
"This hasn't happened since the '73 Arab-Israeli War."
"State, State, go." Armitage acknowledged the call. "Rich,
DOD has gone to DEFCON 3 and you know what that means." Armitage knew; he
had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration.
"It means I better go tell the Russkies before they shit a brick."
Armitage activated the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, down the hall from the
State Department Operations Center. The NRRC was connected directly to the
Russian Ministry of Defense just outside of the Kremlin. It was designed to
exchange information in crisis to prevent misunderstanding and miscalculation.
Armitage reappeared. "Damn good thing I did that. Guess who was about
to start an exercise of all their strategic nuclear forces?" He had
persuaded his Russian counterpart to defer the operation. (Clarke 15-16)
Most US 9/11 commentators have virtually nothing to say about Bush's famous
telephone conversation with Russian President Putin; Bamford, Thompson, and
others exhibit elaborate disinterest in this matter. And yet, this is another
one of the central moments of 9/11. In order to avoid a possible thermonuclear
exchange, Putin needed to be reassured that the US Defcon Delta was not a cover
for a thermonuclear sneak attack upon his country, something perfectly within
the realm of possibility from the Russian view. Putin also needed to be told
that thermonuclear launches from the US toward the Middle East or other areas
were the work of a rogue network, not of the constituted government. Putin, in
short, had to be asked for cooperation and restraint.
During the hours after the 9/11 attacks, Putin became the first world leader
to place a call to Bush. Officially, this was done so that Putin could offer
his condolences. But in the course of this conversation, Putin told Bush that
he had ordered a stand down of Russian strategic forces, meaning that the
maneuvers planned for the Arctic Region were cancelled. Putin also sent an
official telegram to Washington DC conveying "anger and indignation"
against the "series of barbaric terrorist acts directed against innocent
people." (See "On Russian President Vladimir Putin's Telegram of
Condolence to US President George Bush, 11 September 2001, Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs website, www.In.mid.ru) For Putin's statements related to 9/11,
see
Bush later noted his appreciation for Putin's gesture and for Putin's
strategic stand down of the Russian strategic rocket troops in deference to the
US Defcon Delta. "It was a moment where it clearly said to me that he
understands the Cold War is over." (Washington Post, October 4, 2004)
In a national television address later that day, Putin vehemently condemned
the 9/11 attacks as "an unprecedented act of aggression on the part of
international terrorism." These attacks, he claimed, were not a localized
American issue but an event that "goes beyond national borders."
Terrorism, Putin declared, is the "plague of the twenty-first
century" and "Russia knows first hand what terrorism is. So, we
understand as well as anyone the feelings of the American people." Putin
described 9/11 as "a brazen challenge to the whole of humanity, at least
to civilized humanity." Resonating with Bush, Putin set up his own
Manichean dichotomy between terrorist barbarism and 'civilized humanity.' Putin
assured Bush that "we entirely and fully share and experience your pain.
We support you." ("Statement by President Putin of Russia on the
Terrorist Acts in the US, Moscow, September 11, 2001," www.In.mid.ru)
Putin later declared a national minute of silence in commemoration of the
victims of the attacks.
Putin's actions on 9/11 can be seen as a successful attempt at war avoidance
in extremis. Putin, as a KGB veteran, would have had no doubt that the official
US version was hogwash, something a number of prominent Russian military
officers expressed in the wake of 9/11. Putin could also see that the rogue
network responsible for the bombing of Serbia and the sinking of the Kursk
momentarily had the upper hand, and with them negotiation would be fruitless.
Putin was determined not to play into the hands of the unhinged US rogue
network behind 9/11. At a deeper level, his policy was therefore one of
strategic deception or of maskirovka – to gain time in the wake of the
catastrophe.
Putin must have seen that secret-government madmen ferociously hostile to
Russia had now taken over the US regime to an unprecedented degree. He could
also see that the neocons, with their obsession with Israel's strategic
predicament, might well attack various countries in the Middle East before they
got around to attempting to deal with Russia. Such Middle East tar-baby
scenarios could only weaken, overextend, discredit, and isolate the United
States, thus offering Russia some advantage. Putin was also busily working on
the follow-on to the very formidable Topol missile, a weapons system that was
probably superior to anything in the US arsenal, which would very likely allow
Russia to defeat the US side's primitive off-the-shelf missile defense system.
All these considerations suggested that Putin should camouflage himself for the
time being as Bush's bosom buddy.
On September 24, 2001 Putin made a major television address, which grew out
of a weekend of strategizing with his top advisors and a forty-minute phone
call with President Bush. In this speech Putin accepted the establishment of US
bases in the former Soviet republics of central Asia, which the US wanted to
set up as staging areas for the imminent invasion of Afghanistan. On the
surface this was capitulation, but underneath was still strategic deception.
For a time, it appeared that a great US-Russian alliance was in the making, but
this was more appearance than substance. Bush joined with Putin at a school in
Crawford, Texas on November 15, 2001. The Bush-Putin honeymoon lasted into
2002. By the time Bush began seeking UN carte blanche for his war on Iraq,
Russia had been attracted into the French-German continental bloc.
The existence of Russian strategic maneuvers on 9/11 involving bombers had
been known to the Pentagon, since it was the explicit premise for the maneuver
Northern Vigilance. In this case, it would have been known to the plotters as
well. Therefore, the planners of 9/11 were well aware that their incendiary
actions would take place against a dangerous backdrop of simultaneous US and
Russian aircraft maneuvers.
BAMFORD: THE US INTELLIGENCE VERSION
Bamford compares Bush's actions on 9/11 with the behavior of President
Lyndon B.
"Instead, the decision was made to leave Vice President Cheney in the
White House while President Bush hopscotched around the country. Though reporters
were told of a supposed call to the White House threatening Air Force One – the
reason for the President's odyssey – later it was concluded that no such call
or threat ever took place. 'They've been unsuccessful in trying to track down
whether there was such a call,' one administration official told the Associated
Press. CBS News reported the call 'simply never happened,' and the Washington
Post headlined its article on the subject: 'White House Drops Claim of Threat
to Bush.' (Bamford 2004 70) Bamford thus avoids most of the really essential
questions about 9/11.
THE ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE VIEW
One of the most detailed accounts of the high-level state secrets possessed
by the 9/11 conspirators was provided by the Internet journal Debka, which
often reflects the views of the Israeli Mossad . This Israeli analysis stresses
the extent of the top-secret information controlled by the plotters, and the
extensive network that would be necessary to have gathered such information.
According to Debka, the message "Air Force One is next" was received
by the US Secret Service at 9 AM. For Debka, Cheney was hustled into the bunker
three minutes later. Debka suggests that the code name of Air Force One is
changed daily, and that "the terrorists' message threatening Air Force One
was transmitted in that day's top-secret White House code words." At the
heart of Debka's account is the estimate that
the terrorists had obtained the White House code and a whole set of
top-secret signals. This made it possible for a hostile force to pinpoint the
exact position of Air Force One, its destination and its classified procedures.
In fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane's
incoming and outgoing transmissions. The discovery shocked everyone in the president's
emergency operations center – Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Their first question was: How
did the terrorists access top-secret White House codes and procedures? Is there
a mole, or more than one enemy spy in the White House, the Secret Service, the
FBI, the CIA or the Federal Aviation
Nor was this all; the reach of the conspirators was even greater: "In
the week after the attacks in New York and Washington, more hair-raising facts
emerged. The terrorists had also obtained the code groups of the National
Security Agency and were able to penetrate the NSA's state-of-the-art
electronic surveillance systems. Indeed, they seemed to have at their disposal
an electronic capability that was more sophisticated than that of the
NSA."
According to Debka's information, the US intelligence community also
believed "that terrorists are in possession of all or part of the codes
used by the Drug Enforcement
According to Debka, the plotters had even mastered steganography, a
technology which "enables users to bypass electronic monitoring by hiding
messages randomly in seemingly innocent digital files, such as music files,
those of the popular online marketplace eBay, pornographic files or even e-mail
headers."
Here were the sure-fire premises for an incontrovertible argument that the
9/11 attacks were the work of a rogue network of dissident moles inside the US
government and military. But after having made precisely this case, Debka
attempted to lead its audience back to the myth of al Qaeda, this time
presented as possessing scientific and technological capabilities superior to
those of the US government! As one of the parties guilty of having given al
Qaeda the codes, Debka fingered World Space Communication, described as
"one of the known bin Laden assets" which the US counter-terrorism
agencies, including the NSA, had supposedly been tracking. Debka also alleged
that "Bin Laden also has the NSA beat on the employment front," since
the wily Saudi had supposedly hired "the best computer experts on the
market. One such is Nabil Khan Kani, a Syrian who lived in Barcelona with his
Spanish wife,
Through one salto mortale (fatal leap of logic) after another, Debka clawed
its way to the astounding conclusion that the only agency which could have
secured access to all those code words was – Iraq!! Debka wrote:
The nagging question of a mole in the highest reaches of the US government
and intelligence community – with direct or indirect links with bin Laden –
remains. Since no single individual has access to every top-level code at any
given time – a single mole would not answer the case; it would have to be a
large, widely spread number. US experts do not believe bin Laden was capable of
infiltrating double agents into the heart of the US administration on a large
scale. They are looking elsewhere, instead, at a country with a very well-oiled
intelligence apparatus– Iraq. (Debka, "Digital moles in White House?
Terrorists had top-secret presidential codes." WorldNetDaily.com,
September 22, 2001)
While this conclusion was absurd in the extreme, Debka had provided a
valuable estimate of how high up in the US command structure the rogue network
reached.
This is comparable to the "infiltration of police by the Red
Brigades" or the story that the "Saudi-financed" Ptech software
firm's penetration of FAA, NORAD and other sensitive databases was the key to
the wargames and the attacks of 9/11 – a sleeper story that has been dusted off
after the 2004 elections, perhaps signifying a new phase of blackmailing of the
Saudis in Bush's second term. An early seed was planted in the report,
"Bin Laden's Magic Carpet – Secret U.S. PROMIS Software" by Michael
Ruppert (FTW, Oct. 26, 2001): "Bin Laden's reported possession of Promis
may also explain the alleged threatening messages that were received by
President Bush while aboard Air Force One on September 11th... the likelihood
than [sic] bin Laden may have compromised the systems the U.S. government and
its allies use to track him is high." And Bin Laden supposedly obtained
the software not direct from his sponsors in the CIA, but from his
"Russian handlers" [sic] – perhaps during a lull in the Soviet-Afghan
war? Other commentators, less solicitous of the CIA or the bin Laden myth,
describe Promis as a trojan horse, spyware that reports back to its masters on
the recipients' doings – perhaps the perfect gift for a patsy like bin Laden.
As for Ptech, is it reasonable to imagine that the deep and long-entrenched US
resident rogue network needed an outsider like CIA cut-out and drug dealer
Yasin Kadi in order to surveille their own government? Or rather that the
Saudi-sheepdipped Ptech was created by these very networks as a false lead, as
part of the hoax? "Ptech" is the incompetence theory, which like
"LIHOP" we must reject as a subspecies of the official lie that tells
of autonomous terrorists capable of spectacular attacks, and thus worthy of a
war of vengeance.
A CRITICAL FRENCH ACCOUNT
During the weeks after 9/11, the Réseau Voltaire of Paris represented one of
the strongest voices calling the official version into question. Réseau
Voltaire's most prominent writer was Thierry Meyssan, the well-known civil
rights activist. His book on 9/11, L'effroyable imposture, was primarily a
demonstration that the official thesis of a large commercial airliner striking
the Pentagon was absurd and impossible. But Meyssan also focused on the central
political-institutional questions posed by 9/11, and especially the "Angel"
question. For Meyssan, the plotters' use of top-secret code words suggested
that they had access to other codes, including the US nuclear missile launch
codes.
At the heart of 9/11 was therefore a blackmail threat to the Bush regime
that, if he refused to launch the war of civilizations, the plotters were in a
position to do it on their own in a much more sweeping manner, by launching a
US nuclear strike against a series of Arab and Islamic capitals. Whatever the
Russian and Chinese attitude to such a launch might have been was not
specified. Meyssan's thesis was that "from 10:00 AM to approximately 8:00
PM [on Sept. 11], US government officials were not thinking that this was the
work of Arab terrorists, but rather that it was an expression of a military
coup being carried out by US- based extremists who were capable of provoking a
nuclear war." (www.reseauvoltaire.net, September 27, 2001)
On his website, and in his later books The Big Lie and Pentagate, Meyssan
offered a detailed analysis of the events of the day, with special stress on
the insurrectionary behavior of the US rogue network. He narrates that
About 10:05, the Secret Service, in charge of protecting top personalities,
reportedly received an encoded telephone call from the assailants. They thus
would have had at their disposal transmission and authentication codes for the
White House and Air Force One. In other words, the security of the top American
leaders is no longer guaranteed and the enemies of America are able to usurp
the identity of President Bush, including to order a nuclear launch. According
to Brian L. Stafford, director of the Secret Service, it is not a matter of the
United States' facing terrorist actions, but facing a situation of war. He
orders the implementation of the COG (Continuity of Government) plan. This
ultra-secret procedure is orchestrated by FEMA...which has already been
supervising the rescue operations and working in coordination with the FBI.
From this moment, FEMA steps ahead of the FBI and becomes the highest civilian
authority of the administration. This agency, which cultivates opacity, is
directed by Joe M. Allbaugh, a former campaign treasurer for the Bush family.
(www.reseauvoltaire.net)
The keystone of this aspect of Meyssan's analysis is the "Angel"
call:
According to sources close to George W. Bush, the Secret Service received
during the course of the morning a telephone call from the authors of the
attacks, probably to make demands. In order to accredit their call, the
assailants revealed presidential transmission and authentication codes. Only a
few trusted persons at the apex of the state apparatus could have access to
these codes. It therefore follows that at least one of the authors of the
September 11 attacks is one of the civilian or military leaders of the United
States of America. (www.reseauvoltaire.net)
For Meyssan, the "Angel" call definitely came from the
"sponsors of the terror attacks in New York and Washington." He
argues that "from 10 AM to 8 PM approximately, American officials did not think
that those strikes were the result of Middle Eastern terrorists, but that they
manifested an attempted military coup by American extremists capable of
provoking nuclear war." The content of the call had been not so much to
claim responsibility for the attacks, but to "pose an ultimatum, to force
the hand of the President of the United States."
The trump card of the plotters was their possible possession of nuclear
launch codes, and to counteract that, "during some 10 hours, President
Bush was forced to run away from Washington and to go personally to the US
Strategic Command (Offutt, Nebraska) both to take direct control of the armed
forces; and especially so that no one could usurp his identity and unleash
nuclear war." In Meyssan's view, in the wake of the "Angel"
call, "No member of the National Security Council thinks any longer about
terrorist attacks, all think about a military putsch which is ongoing. Calm
will only be restored at 8:30 PM." (Réseau Voltaire, Information Note
235-236, September 27, 2001)
The call was followed by the descent of Cheney and Rice into the White House
bunker. Meyssan sees the defense preparations around the White House as
directed against a possible attack by insurrectionary US troops:
Simultaneously, the Secret Service has the Presidential areas evacuated, and
deploys special agents and sharpshooters armed with machine guns and
rocket-launchers in the surrounding area. It prepares to repel a possible
assault by airborne troops. The Secret Service also informs President Bush of
the situation; he is on board Air Force One, en route to Washington.
Within this context, Meyssan sees the pattern of threats to Bush and to Air
Force One:
The US Strategic Air Command indicates to the President that it has detected
a signal, moving towards Air Force One. Considering the velocity, it is
probably a missile. To protect the President, the military demand that Air
Force One, despite its profile, continue its flight at tree-top level and
follow an evasive course, while the F-15 and F-16 join it and escort it. But
the military do not shut off its weather apparatus on board the Presidential
plane, such that it continues to emit a signal allowing the international
meteorological network to know its position continuously....Over a scrambled
phone line, Bush consults the Vice President. He decides to go to Offutt Air
Force Base (Nebraska), headquarters of the US Strategic Air Command. If his
identity can be usurped by the perpetrators, the only possibility to prevent them
from giving orders to the US Army in his place, is for him to be physically
where all the weapons of mass destruction are controlled, including nuclear
bombs. But Air Force One consumes too much fuel flying at low altitude, and its
refueling in flight is impossible for safety reasons. A stop is therefore
planned for the military base at Barksdale. (www.reseauvoltaire.net)
Meyssan reported that his research team attempted to determine what network
might have been behind the 9/11 attacks. His prime suspect was a group he
called the "special forces underground," a terrorist network
associated with US- controlled stay-behind networks of the Gladio type which in
his opinion main- tained close ties to bin Laden among others. (Réseau
Voltaire, Information Note 235-236, September 27, 2001)
Meyssan sums up the world-historical significance of 9/11 in these terms:
"The attacks were thus not ordered by a fanatic who believed he was
delivering divine punishment, but by a group present within the American state
apparatus, which succeeded in dictating policy to President Bush. Rather than a
coup d'état aimed at overthrowing existing institutions, might it not involve
instead the seizure of power by a particular group hidden within those
institutions?" (Meyssan 202 48) This means that the September criminals
are still at large, still in power, and capable of striking again.
THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE VIEW: NAMAKON
The Russian opposition weekly newspaper Zaftra, edited by the maverick
Russophile Aleksandr Prokhanov, published on July 16, 2002 excerpts from a
German-language EIR news agency report on the background of the attempted
internal US coup of 9/11. EIR's thesis was that "the New York and
Washington attacks could not have occurred without the witting complicity of
high-level rogue elements within the US military intelligence command
structures." Together with this material, Zaftra included some comments on
the 9/11 issue from "Namakon" – the pen-name used by a group of
top-level former Soviet intelligence officers. Namakon agreed that the events
of September 11 could not have occurred without high-level complicity by a
network or faction within the US military. Namakon also emphasized that the
decision by President Bush, urged on by Tony Blair and others, on the evening of
September 11 to endorse and embrace the bin Laden cover story "meant a de
facto capitulation of the US Presidency to the real organizers of the attack,
and the adoption of their policy of confrontation with the Islamic world,
according to Huntington's formula for a 'Clash of Civilizations.'"
Namakon also called attention to the much-neglected fact that the attempted
orchestration of an escalating nuclear alert between the US and Russia was a
crucial part of the 9/11 coup plot. Namakon explicitly linked this potential
for thermonuclear confrontation with the August 2000 sinking of the Russian
nuclear submarine Kursk, the full story of which has yet to be told. Namakon
wrote that this "hypothesis leads us to ask whether the Kursk catastrophe
might not also have been an included facet of the operations of the US putsch
group, since an attack of such dimensions would necessarily lead to a
large-scale reaction by the Russian military and population, creating an
atmosphere favorable to provoking nuclear escalation."
The escalation of the Kursk incident, which high-ranking Russian military
officials repeatedly blamed on the presence of NATO submarines near the site of
the sinking in the Barents Sea, came perilously close to succeeding. A serious
confrontation was avoided only by a direct hot line consultation between
Russian President Putin and then-US President Clinton. This telephone call was
followed within 48 hours by a highly unusual visit to Moscow by CIA Director
George Tenet. (Zaftra, July 16, 2002; EIR, July 22, 2004) In the case of 9/11,
the immediate parallel was the telephone conversation between Bush and Putin,
which, strangely enough, is never mentioned by an otherwise well-informed
author like Bamford.
Many features of the analysis developed here with the help of Israeli,
French, and Russian sources in particular have become current among
well-informed European circles. On August 23, 2002, at a moment when the neocon
drive for war with Iraq appeared stalled, an influential British political
figure made the following comments to the late investigative journalist Mark
Burdman of EIR:
I have been noticing, as you have, the growing opposition, in Britain, in
the United States, to this Iraq war. Last night, something occurred to me that
I think is very relevant. I think the crowd that wants this Iraq war may well
do something drastic in the coming days to regain the momentum. Some very big
terrorism, perhaps. It is all very well that there are these challenges to the
Iraq war. But we should not lose sight of the fact that there are powerful
people in Washington, who pulled off this September 11 last year. They have
their Plan A, which is now in trouble. But they also have their Plan B, Plan C,
Plan D. They may well have been thinking until very recently that their coup
that began on September 11 was going very well. But suddenly, they have to
re-think. And I think they are desperate, and capable of a lot. (EIR, August
23, 2002)
In other words, the rogue network was still in place, and it might resort to
a new round of terrorism.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – WHAT A REAL PRESIDENT WOULD HAVE
SAID
We now leave the terrain of what actually happened, and move to a
hypothetical sphere in which we can best try to shed further light on the
events of 9/11. At this point a detailed account and timelines of what really
happened behind the scenes on 9/11 cannot be attempted. However, we can
speculate as to what an honest and courageous president might have done. Such a
president might not have immediately understood the full scope of the 9/11
plot, but he would have insisted upon political accountability for appointed
officials and on an immediate and thorough investigation. Some guidance might
have come from an examination of the Ed Meese press conference of November 1986
which blew the lid off the Iran-Contra scandal, and which was accompanied by
the firing of Oliver North and
My fellow citizens:
Today our country and our political system have been targeted by
large-scale acts of terrorism. These are monstrous crimes against humanity, and
they will not go unpunished. We send our solidarity to the brave firemen,
policemen, military people, and office workers who have borne the brunt of this
assault. We promise an equitable and equal compensation for the human losses of
this day. Insistent and irresponsible voices have been raised in my own White
House and in the intelligence agencies, and have inspired media reports attributing
these attacks to Arab or Islamic terrorists of the al Qaeda Bin Laden
organization. But this is no time for snap decisions or a rush to judgment when
we are dealing with the present and future peace of the world. It is true that
we have bitter enemies around the world, but the capabilities displayed today
appear to go far beyond the technical and physical means available to al Qaeda.
We must also recall that, under the reckless and irresponsible policies of my
predecessors, the CIA had been one of the main sponsors of Bin Laden and al
Qaeda. If we think back to the attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City
in 1995, we remember that media voices attempted in the first hours to
attribute that tragedy to the Arab world. Although I am convinced that we still
do not know the full story of Oklahoma City, it is clear that the Arab world
was not involved.
There are too many unanswered questions at this point. How were the
terrorists who seem to have been involved allowed to enter the United States
and operate freely in this country? Why was there no air defense over a period
of one hour and fifteen minutes? I have ordered an immediate inquiry into this
question, and in the meantime I have accepted the resignations of Gen. Myers of
the Air Force, the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and of Gen.
Bernhard of NORAD, whose agency failed the people today. There is also evident
reason to believe that the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service have not performed satisfactorily, based on the
fragmentary accounts available so far. I have therefore accepted the
resignations of the leaders of those agencies, and of their principal deputies.
I have furthermore accepted the resignation of the Secretary of Defense and his
deputy, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Transportation, and of my
National Security Adviser, since it is evident to me that they could not
continue to serve the nation effectively because of the immense tragedy which
has occurred on their watch. We rightly demand accountability from teachers,
from railroad engineers, and from physicians. We therefore have all the more
reason to demand accountability and responsibility from those who have been
entrusted with the management of the executive departments, several of which
have not served us well today.
Another question involves the collapse of the World Trade Center towers
many minutes after they had been impacted by the airplanes. These events, as
you know, represent an absolute anomaly in the history of skyscrapers. In
particular, there is no explanation whatsoever for the collapse of building
seven at five o'clock in the afternoon. Accordingly, and consistent with our
urgent measures to save any victims remaining in the rubble, I am ordering the
Seventh Mountain Division of Fort Drum, New York, to seize control of the site
of the World Trade Center, cordoning it off as a crime scene and taking
immediate measures for preserving the evidence we must have to determine what
really happened. Not one scrap of metal will be removed before a full forensic
survey has been carried out. Contrary to media accounts, we have not been able
to identify the flying object which apparently hit the Pentagon, although it
seems likely that it was not a Boeing 757, and thus could hardly have been
United Flight 77. As for the tragedy over Shanksville, we are investigating
whether this aircraft was shot down by our own forces, and why. All crash sites
are being secured by military units, acting under my direct orders, whose
loyalty to the Constitution is beyond question.
The overriding question is whether the criminals who acted today enjoyed
support or collaboration from within our own country and even within our own
government. I have created a special unit of federal investigators which will
act under my direct orders and which will report to me and to me alone. The
first task of that unit will be to determine why there was no air defense, in
violation of the standard operating procedures of NORAD and the FAA. Another
task will be to examine the entire roster of FBI and CIA double agents
presently infiltrating terrorist groups and how they are managed, with a view
to identifying possible factors of collusion. Another task will be to determine
why our watch list procedures and other forms of vigilance were not effective
in screening the criminals out.
As far as the FBI is concerned, I urge the Congress to join me in
breaking up this tragically dysfunctional agency. After Ruby Ridge, Waco, the
FBI crime lab, Wen Ho Lee, the Atlanta Olympics and
In determining the full scope of what happened today, I need the help of
all our citizens. If you know something important about what happened today, I
want to hear it. Call the White House and talk with one of my staff, who are
mobilized to take your calls. If you see anyone, including especially federal
agents, attempting to tamper with evidence, or if a federal agent attempts to
intimidate you into saying you saw or heard something you did not see, I want
to know about that, too.
I am also determined to find out if foreign intelligence agencies or
foreign citizens were involved in today's events. I am appointing myself as
temporary Director of the CIA, and in that capacity I will undertake a
comprehensive review of foreign operations on American soil. No foreign agency
will be exempted, and I promise you a full initial progress report.
In addition to the immediate investigations I have mentioned so far, I am
also empanelling a board of inquiry to study today's events and offer a second
opinion on what may have gone wrong. I am asking Senator Byrd to be the
chairman of this body, and Lawrence Walsh, a Republican, the former Iran-
Contra prosecutor, to be the vice chairman. I have invited former Secretary of
the Treasury O'Neill, former President Carter, General Zinni, former Governor
Ryan of Illinois to serve. I am also actively soliciting participation by
outsiders and academics who have been critics of our government policies of
recent years. I am inviting
I recall the words of President Eisenhower in the wake of the Kennedy
assassination: the American people, he commented will not be stampeded. I ask
you to support your government and its constitutional institutions, and not to
give way to the voices of hatred, fear, aggression, and paranoia. I promise
that swift justice will be rendered for those who have struck us today, no
matter who they turn out to be.
These dastardly attacks will not force this great nation off course; they
will not force us to become something we are not. We will remain ourselves. We
will go forward in the great American tradition of the Monroe Doctrine, the
Good Neighbor Policy, the Bretton Woods system, the Marshall Plan, and the Four
Freedoms of the Atlantic Charter, starting with the freedom from fear.
Further attacks cannot be ruled out in the coming days and weeks. Because
of the office I hold, and because of the constitutional responsibilities I must
meet, I ask for your support – no matter what may happen during the coming days
and weeks.
Good night.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2001 – WHAT A REAL PRESIDENT WOULD HAVE
SAID
A real president would have glanced at Cicero's orations against Catiline in
the Roman Senate to stop the impending coup d'état of the bankrupt aristocrat
Lucius Sergius Catilina in 63 BC, who had planned to seize power through a
massacre of Roman political leaders. He would have been mindful of General de
Gaulle's 1962 speech in which he expressed his determination to defeat the coup
attempt of four fascist generals in Algiers.
My fellow citizens:
Tonight I would like to present, as promised, a progress report on the investigations
into the events of September 11, investigations which have been the main task
of your government over the past weeks. The tidings I bring you this evening
are very grave, and they are related to the tempestuous events of the last few
days which are known to you in whole or in part.
As many of you may know, during the morning of 9/11 the White House
received a telephone call saying, "Angel is next." "Angel"
was the top-secret code word designating my official aircraft, Air Force One,
so this was a threat to shoot down Air Force One. It was also something more:
as I realized immedi- ately, it was quite possible that this telephone call had
indeed come from the authors of the 9/11 terror attacks. If that was so, there
existed the definite possibility that this group, whoever they were, also had
access to other top-secret code words used by our government. This meant that
there was imminent danger that the terrorist group might possess the code words
and related signals that could be used to target thermonuclear ballistic
missiles on targets in foreign countries – or even here at home. A duplicate of
the briefcase known as "the football," which follows me everywhere,
might be in the hands of the plotters. I decided at once to proceed as quickly
as possible to the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska with a
small force of bodyguards for the purpose of countermanding, by the immediate
physical presence of the commander in chief, any and all illegal attack orders
that might be issued by the rogue terrorist network which had so plainly
declared war on our country. My intent was to assume direct personal control
over the nuclear deterrent forces of this country, wherever they might be
located.
During my flight to Nebraska, I received a phone call which presented
this threat in the most concrete form. The call came from a man who identified
himself as the spokesman for a secret organization of clandestine operatives
and special forces – clearly a subversive and insurrectionary group acting as a
tool for a coterie of very powerful, wealthy, and ruthless persons. This
spokesman told me that his organization had orchestrated the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon as a means of reversing the inexorable
decline of American power in the world – a process which I and my elected
predecessors had been wholly negligent in allowing, he asserted. He also
demanded that I immediately make a televised public statement identifying al
Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, and Iraq as those responsible for the
terror attacks, and announcing our government's plans to invade and occupy
these two countries. Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, he added, might have to
come later. If I failed to accept this ultimatum, the conspirators were
determined to use the nuclear launch code words in their possession to destroy
Cairo, Baghdad, Teheran, Rabat, Tunis, Karachi, Jakarta, Damascus, Pyongyang,
Riyadh, Havana, and possibly other cities. That would start 100 years of war of
civilizations, they told me, and once it had started, nothing could stop it. I
told this spokesman that he and his group, in addition to being guilty of high
treason, were courting suicide. The Russian Federation might interpret the
missile firings as the beginning of a US first strike against Russian targets,
and might respond by initiating procedures for launch under attack, in an
attempt to use their nuclear assets against us before they were destroyed on
the ground. The People's Republic of China might respond in the same way. These
countries might also conclude that our government had been taken over by
madmen, and that their only hope of safety might lie in the use of military
means against us. The spokesman for the group of plotters replied that those
dangers were real, but that it was up to me to avoid this danger by granting
the demands of the terrorist controllers, which came down to US attacks on
Afghanistan, and Iraq, with the overthrow of the government of Saudi Arabia
likely along the way. The terror group, he boasted, welcomed the bloody global
conflict that I seemed to fear, and even regarded the prospect of world war
engulfing this planet as preferable to the relative decline of the United
States for which he said I and those like me were responsible.
At this moment, our country faced the greatest danger in our entire
history. To accept the ultimatum of the plotters and to wage war against their
target list of Arab and Islamic states would have cast the United States adrift
on an ocean of blackmail, lies, and adventures. Blackmailers always escalate
their demands, and the addiction to terrorism of the victorious criminal
network might have poisoned our national life for decades, or even for
centuries. If I had capitulated, I would have been a puppet of the plotters for
as long as I remained in office, indeed for the rest of my life. On the other
side, the danger of world war was immediate. I decided that the only honorable
course coherent with my oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
was to defy the terrorists. At this point we had reached the SAC headquarters
in Nebraska. I terminated my conversation with the spokesman for the plotters.
At this point, I activated several units of the Secret Service and Army intelligence
under hand-picked officers whose constitutional loyalty I knew I could trust. I
briefed them on what I knew so far, and gave them the task of finding the rogue
terror network and rooting it out. These fine patriotic men and women went to
work at once, and within 72 hours the main outlines of the plot were evident.
Let me sum up what we have learned so far.
A group of al Qaeda operatives, manipulated by a cabal of rogue CIA case
officers, had chosen September 11 to hijack several aircraft, force them to
land, and use the passengers as hostages to extort the liberation of certain
prisoners being held in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Among these al Qaeda operatives
were several double agents, also under the control of rogue elements in our own
intelligence community. These were dissolute and evil persons, who had been
trained using the infrastructure left over from the Iran-Contra affair.
Air defense that day was completely absent, in part because of four air
exercises which were taking place at the same time in various parts of North
America. A number of officers in critical positions at NORAD, its regional
office in Rome, New York, and in the FAA appear to have been party to the plot.
By a kind of collective inertia, they ignored the well-known and long-established
standard operating procedures which govern the cooperation of FAA and NORAD,
and were able to misdirect our few remaining fighter interceptors, out over the
Atlantic Ocean in one case. More arrests are imminent as a result of ongoing
investigations in this area.
What the al Qaeda operatives apparently did not know was that the
aircraft they had chosen to hijack had been equipped with a new technology
making it possible to seize control of these aircraft and operate them by
remote control from a command center on the ground. It was this new technology,
and not the dubious skills of the hijackers, which allowed the planes to hit
their targets with such precision.
But even direct hits by the two planes could not have been enough to
bring down the towers. According to the information we have developed, the
collapse of World Trade Center buildings one, two, and seven was the direct
result of controlled demolition – the result of explosive charges which had
been placed in these buildings over the previous days and weeks by the terror
network, who infiltrated the buildings in the guise of cleaning and security
personnel. We have not yet been able to solve all the problems posed by the
collapse of the twin towers, since energy sources appear to have been at work
which go beyond the realm of today's conventional technology. I will have more
to report on this later. In the meantime, I regret to report that I have had to
order the arrest of the Mayor of New York, who repeatedly attempted to bring
about the destruction of evidence at the crime scene.
As for the Pentagon, it was struck by a US Air Force cruise missile fired
from an aircraft above West Virginia, and not by one of the hijacked airliners.
We have not yet been able to determine what happened to American Flight 77, and
we call on citizens to come to our aid in this matter. The launch of the cruise
missile was the work of an entire Air Force unit in Ohio, and these traitors
have all been taken into custody.
The airplane that crashed in Shanksville was cynically shot down through
the actions of a rebel mole placed in a highly sensitive position at NORAD.
This mole was aware that the passengers had retaken control of the aircraft
from the lightly armed hijackers, and realized that the interrogation of the hijackers
on board would have revealed critical dimensions of the real plot in which the
hijackers, although certainly acting with criminal intent, were ultimately mere
expendable pawns. The NORAD mole also feared that an examination of the
aircraft might reveal the presence of the remote control technology, which had
for some reason failed to function. Accordingly, the mole cynically directed
jet interceptors to destroy this airplane, even though it was far away from any
target of interest to the hijackers.
Several FBI officials and agents have been indicted for obstruction of
justice; they have been accused of destroying security camera tapes at the
Pentagon, and intimidating witnesses at the Pentagon and in Shanksville.
Members of the FBI crime lab and the NTSB team have been discovered attempting
to sabotage the cockpit voice recorders of the planes in question; the
recordings we have heard are consistent with the account of the 9/11 events I
have just described.
Sadly, I must address the three mysterious suicides from the highest
ranks of our own government which have caused so much speculation over the past
several days. The vice president was found dead in his bunker at Site R last
Thursday; the coroner has ruled this a suicide, and has established that the
cause of death was a potassium cyanide pill. The same finding has been
delivered in the case of the former deputy secretary of defense some hours
later on that same day. The death of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff by a gunshot wound to the head in the Pentagon at around that same time
has also been ruled a suicide. I can only confirm that arrest warrants for all
three had been issued by a federal grand jury empanelled to investigate the
tragic events of September 11.
The mutiny of the Delta Force battalion based near Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, has been quelled by loyal troops and planes. The appeal of the rebel
commander for a military rebellion against the legal government and for a
military coup has been ignored.
As you may also know, a top former anti-terror official and several other
high officials of the CIA and FBI have been missing for over two weeks, and are
presumed to have fled abroad. I can confirm that arrest warrants have been
issued for these persons. A number of journalists have also disappeared, and
this may also be related to the recent upheaval. I can assure you that our
constitutional procedures are just as vigorous as they have ever been, that
habeas corpus remains alive, well, and in full force. We have no secret prisons
and no secret prisoners, and I will tolerate none. Our open courts continue to
function, and they will continue to do so.
We have uncovered complicity between the rogue network in this country
and a number of foreign intelligence agencies. One of these is the British
MI-6. After the raid by Scotland Yard on the headquarters of MI-6 in Oxford
Circus, and after the resignation of Mr. Blair, I look forward to working with
the new Labour Party prime minister to eradicate any remaining insurrectionary
elements. We continue to observe the situation in several other countries we
believe may have been involved in the 9/11 plot. I regret that General Sharon
has refused to cooperate, and I invite the Congress to consider what response
may be required.
I would like to thank President Putin of the Russian Federation and the
leadership of the People's Republic of China for their wisdom and restraint,
especially during the morning of 9/11, when the rebel network engaged in
visible preparations for a nuclear launch. I am certain that the great powers,
having weathered this storm, will be able to return to the path of
confidence-building measures at our summit next week.
More details will be announced as soon as practicable. In conclusion, let
me say a few words about the state of the world.
I do not assert that terrorism is a spontaneous outgrowth of poverty and
misery. In fact, I assert the opposite: terrorism is usually organized by an
outside agency, often by a government or a network operating inside a
government. But it is certainly true that poverty and misery provide the
indispensable environment in which terrorist groups can recruit, or be created
by intelligence agencies. In today's world, there are about 2 billion people
who are attempting to get by on less than $1 per day. There are some 600
million homeless – that is equal to about the entire population of Europe.
About one and one half billion people do not have clean water to drink. With
about one billion people unemployed, the unemployment rate in our world is
about 33%, or about one third. When that happened in our own country during the
1930s, we called that a great depression, and we must therefore acknowledge the
existence of a world economic depression of unprecedented severity today.
Two thirds of the people in the world – 65% – have never made a phone
call. About 40% do not have access to electricity for household use; I would
call that a clear need for rural and urban electrification. Every day in this
world of ours, some 40,000 human beings perish from malnutrition and from
easily treated diseases like diarrhea. Another 40,000 lose their lives each
month as the result of warfare, all of which is absolutely futile and which has
often been cynically fomented by foreign economic interests; I am thinking here
of the crisis in Africa most specifically. In Africa, the standard of living of
the average family has declined by 20% over the last twenty years.
Eighty-nine countries are now worse off than they were at the beginning
of the 1990s. 175 million people leave their home countries every year in the
desperate search for jobs and food – about 3% of humanity. The price of a human
slave on the slave markets of southern Europe at this very moment is about
4,000 euros. In the midst of all this, the 258 richest persons in the world own
more in the way of assets and other property than the poorest three billion
persons. When 258 own more than half the human population of the world, I hope
you will agree with me that such a world cannot be stable. Yet, this is the
world that lies before us. I plan to use my powers as president to ameliorate
this situation with every means at my disposal, and I call upon the Congress
and upon all citizens to support these steps for a new world economic order
that will be more just, more equitable, more prosperous, and more dynamic.
We have now been tested in the crucible of a brutal crisis. From this
experience we must take renewed devotion to our best values. The decade of
globalization has been revealed as a colossal failure, for ourselves as well as
for others. We must find a better, more humane, more equitable way of
organizing the affairs of this planet. To do this, we must work closely with
almost 200 sovereign states, and work out the details with them, since every
country has an inherent right to economic development, science, technology, and
dignity. The old imperialism denied these, and the old imperialism is now on
the junk-heap of history. In the days to come, my two lodestars will be peace
and economic development, seen as the two sides of the same coin. Our world has
turned over several times in the past month, but I am more certain than ever
that I can count on the support of the American people in getting the world
back on the right track. I ask you once again to remember the victims of the
recent tragedy in your prayers. Good night.
CONCLUSIONS
So far we have come to the following conclusions:
1. The government's assertion that the so-called hijackers operated without
being detected by official surveillance is untenable, and evidence is strong
that the alleged hijackers acted in coordination with a faction within the
government itself. The hijackers were therefore in all probability expendable
double agents or, more bluntly, patsies.
2. The government's assertion that the four supposedly hijacked airliners
were taken over and piloted by the four accused hijackers identified by the FBI
is at or beyond the limits of physical and technical reality. The planes were
in all probability guided to their targets by some form of remote access or
remote control.
3. The government's assertion that the failures of air defense were caused
by the fog of war is lame and absurd. Air defense was in all probability
sabotaged by moles operating inside the government.
4. The government's assertion that a Boeing 757-200 hit the Pentagon is physically impossible. Some other type of