Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
ONE SEARCH PAGE OF NEW GUN LAWS
Just looking to see what's what in the world following new executive orders related to gun bans and in first search page alone...i'm confussed! So, in Alaska a federal officer can be arrested for guns, in Oklahoma a judge put a stay on new law allowing guns, Texas will lock up feds for enforcing and New York, well don't get caught with empty clips! With all this chaos, I have to pose the question...it's been spun a thousand different ways over last couple yrs...are they trying to get a civil war going? Have we all gone mad? Or am I just concerned over latest propaganda? Now, its not only legal, but, "the right thing to do" per Obama to kill select Americans who are" terrorists" and according to the lame poll yahoo showed 60% plus Americans are ok with this? Perhaps, before we all shoot one another we should legalize pot so maybe we can all get along! Beats the alternatives!
Paul Craig Roberts: "Extermination of The Truth" - In America Law No Longer Exist
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“Extermination of The Truth”: In America Law No Longer Exists
Global Research, February 01, 2013Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/extermination-of-the-truth-in-america-law-no-longer-exists/5321365In the 21st century Americans have experienced an extraordinary collapse in the rule of law and in their constitutional protections. Today American citizens, once a free people protected by law, can be assassinated and detained in prison indefinitely without any evidence being presented to a court of their guilt, and they can be sentenced to prison on the basis of secret testimony by anonymous witnesses not subject to cross examination. The US “justice system” has been transformed by the Bush/Obama regime into the ”justice system” of Gestapo Germany and Stalinist Russia. There is no difference.In an article available here, Stephen Downs, formerly Chief Attorney with the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct and Kathy Manley, a criminal defense attorney and member of the New York Civil Liberties Union, report on how the US government destroyed a charity, the Holy Land Foundation, which provided money for feeding the poor and for building schools and hospitals in Palestine.The charity, aware of the perils of being based in the US and doing anything for Palestinians, relied on the US State Department and the US Department of Justice (sic)for guidance on where to send humanitarian aid. The charity sent its aid to the same aid committees in Palestine that the US Agency for International Development and the UN used to distribute aid to the Palestinians.In the first trial of the Holy Land Foundation, the US government admitted that none of the charity’s donations had gone to terrorist organizations, and the federal prosecutors failed to achieve a conviction. So the prosecutors tried the charity again.In the second trial, the judge permitted the prosecutors to call an “anonymous expert” to tell the jury that some of the committees used by USAID and the UN and approved by the US Department of State were controlled by Hamas, the elected government of Palestine that Israel requires the US government to brand as “terrorist.”As Downs and Manley point out, an “anonymous expert,” cannot “be challenged because he is unknown.” There cannot be a cross examination. The “expert” could be anyone–someone paid to lie to the jury, a Jew who believes all help to Palestinianscomprises “aid to terrorists,” or a member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service that has throughly infiltrated the US according to US intelligence experts.Injustices are everywhere, the authors admit, so why is this important to you? The answer is that the due process clause of the US Constitution requires that criminal laws give fair notice as to what conduct is prohibited. According to Downs and Manley, the Holy Land Foundation followed the US State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations and avoided all contact with organizations on the list, but were indicted and convicted regardless. This tells us that federal prosecutors are viciously corrupt and that jurors are so inept and propagandized that they are useless to defendants.The US Supreme Court refused to review this most blatant case of wrongful conviction. By so doing, the US Supreme Court established that the court, like the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, and the executive branch, is not only a servant of the police state but also a servant of Israel and supports the destruction of the Palestinians by designating aid to Palestine as an act of terrorism.What this means for you is that your involvement in legal transactions or associations can be declared ex post facto by secret witnesses to be criminal involvements. The criminality of your past behavior can now be established, according to Downs and Manley, by “anonymous experts,” mouthpieces for the government prosecutors who cannot “be confronted or cross-examined within the meaning of the 6th Amendment.”Downs and Manley write: “The implications are enormous. The government can now criminalize political, religious and social ideology and speech. Donating to peace groups, participating in protests, attending church, mosque or synagogue, entertaining friends, and posting material on the Internet, for example, could later be found to be illegal because of ‘associations,’ manufactured by anonymous experts, which in some way allegedly support designated terrorist organizations one has never heard of.”The authors could have added that if the government wants to get you, all it has to do isto declare that someone or some organization somewhere in your past was connected in a vague undefined way with terrorism. The government’s assertion suffices. No proof is needed. The brainwashed jury will not protect you.Be prepared in the next year or two for all criticism of “our freedom and democracy” government to be shut down. In Amerika, truth is about to be exterminated.Copyright © 2013 Global Research
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Monday, February 4, 2013
Ellen Brown: Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
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Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
By Ellen BrownGlobal Research, January 29, 2013Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/10489“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”
– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
The Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. The deal was particularly controversial because Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, sits on the board of the New York Fed and participated in the secret weekend negotiations.1 In September 2008, the Federal Reserve did something even more unprecedented, when it bought the world’s largest insurance company. The Fed announced on September 16 that it was giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG) for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. The Associated Press called it a “government takeover,” but this was no ordinary nationalization. Unlike the U.S. Treasury, which took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, the Fed is not a government-owned agency. Also unprecedented was the way the deal was funded. The Associated Press reported:
“The Treasury Department, for the first time in its history, said it would begin selling bonds for the Federal Reserve in an effort to help the central bank deal with its unprecedented borrowing needs.”2
This is extraordinary. Why is the Treasury issuing U.S. government bonds (or debt) to fund the Fed, which is itself supposedly “the lender of last resort” created to fund the banks and the federal government? Yahoo Finance reported on September 17:
“The Treasury is setting up a temporary financing program at the Fed’s request. The program will auction Treasury bills to raise cash for the Fed’s use. The initiative aims to help the Fed manage its balance sheet following its efforts to enhance its liquidity facilities over the previous few quarters.”
Normally, the Fed swaps green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes for pink pieces of paper called U.S. bonds (the federal government’s I.O.U.s), in order to provide Congress with the dollars it cannot raise through taxes. Now, it seems, the government is issuing bonds, not for its own use, but for the use of the Fed! Perhaps the plan is to swap them with the banks’ dodgy derivatives collateral directly, without actually putting them up for sale to outside buyers. According to Wikipedia (which translates Fedspeak into somewhat clearer terms than the Fed’s own website):
“The Term Securities Lending Facility is a 28-day facility that will offer Treasury general collateral to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s primary dealers in exchange for other program-eligible collateral. It is intended to promote liquidity in the financing markets for Treasury and other collateral and thus to foster the functioning of financial markets more generally. . . . The resource allows dealers to switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable.”
“To switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable” means that the government gets the banks’ toxic derivative debt, and the banks get the government’s triple-A securities. Unlike the risky derivative debt, federal securities are considered “risk-free” for purposes of determining capital requirements, allowing the banks to improve their capital position so they can make new loans. (See E. Brown, “Bailout Bedlam,” webofdebt.com/articles, October 2, 2008.)
In its latest power play, on October 3, 2008, the Fed acquired the ability to pay interest to its member banks on the reserves the banks maintain at the Fed. Reuters reported on October 3:
“The U.S. Federal Reserve gained a key tactical tool from the $700 billion financial rescue package signed into law on Friday that will help it channel funds into parched credit markets. Tucked into the 451-page bill is a provision that lets the Fed pay interest on the reserves banks are required to hold at the central bank.”3
If the Fed’s money comes ultimately from the taxpayers, that means we the taxpayers are paying interest to the banks on the banks’ own reserves – reserves maintained for their own private profit. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself. Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?
Not Private and Not for Profit?
The Fed’s website insists that it is not a private corporation, is not operated for profit, and is not funded by Congress. But is that true? The Federal Reserve was set up in 1913 as a “lender of last resort” to backstop bank runs, following a particularly bad bank panic in 1907. The Fed’s mandate was then and continues to be to keep the private banking system intact; and that means keeping intact the system’s most valuable asset, a monopoly on creating the national money supply. Except for coins, every dollar in circulation is now created privately as a debt to the Federal Reserve or the banking system it heads.4 The Fed’s website attempts to gloss over its role as chief defender and protector of this private banking club, but let’s take a closer look. The website states:
* “The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations – possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.”
* “[The Federal Reserve] is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.”
* “The Federal Reserve’s income is derived primarily from the interest on U.S. government securities that it has acquired through open market operations. . . . After paying its expenses, the Federal Reserve turns the rest of its earnings over to the U.S. Treasury.”5
So let’s review:
1. The Fed is privately owned.
Its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.
2. The fact that the Fed does not get “appropriations” from Congress basically means that it gets its money from Congress without congressional approval, by engaging in “open market operations.”
Here is how it works: When the government is short of funds, the Treasury issues bonds and delivers them to bond dealers, which auction them off. When the Fed wants to “expand the money supply” (create money), it steps in and buys bonds from these dealers with newly-issued dollars acquired by the Fed for the cost of writing them into an account on a computer screen. These maneuvers are called “open market operations” because the Fed buys the bonds on the “open market” from the bond dealers. The bonds then become the “reserves” that the banking establishment uses to back its loans. In another bit of sleight of hand known as “fractional reserve” lending, the same reserves are lent many times over, further expanding the money supply, generating interest for the banks with each loan. It was this money-creating process that prompted Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, to call the Federal Reserve “a total money-making machine.” He wrote:
“When the Federal Reserve writes a check for a government bond it does exactly what any bank does, it creates money, it created money purely and simply by writing a check.”
3. The Fed generates profits for its shareholders.
The interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed’s operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders. A mere 6% a year may not be considered a profit in the world of Wall Street high finance, but most businesses that manage to cover all their expenses and give their shareholders a guaranteed 6% return are considered “for profit” corporations.
In addition to this guaranteed 6%, the banks will now be getting interest from the taxpayers on their “reserves.” The basic reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve is 10%. The website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York explains that as money is redeposited and relent throughout the banking system, this 10% held in “reserve” can be fanned into ten times that sum in loans; that is, $10,000 in reserves becomes $100,000 in loans. Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.8 puts the total “loans and leases in bank credit” as of September 24, 2008 at $7,049 billion. Ten percent of that is $700 billion. That means we the taxpayers will be paying interest to the banks on at least $700 billion annually – this so that the banks can retain the reserves to accumulate interest on ten times that sum in loans.
The banks earn these returns from the taxpayers for the privilege of having the banks’ interests protected by an all-powerful independent private central bank, even when those interests may be opposed to the taxpayers’ — for example, when the banks use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that threaten to collapse the U.S. economy. Among other special benefits, banks and other financial institutions (but not other corporations) can borrow at the low Fed funds rate of about 2%. They can then turn around and put this money into 30-year Treasury bonds at 4.5%, earning an immediate 2.5% from the taxpayers, just by virtue of their position as favored banks. A long list of banks (but not other corporations) is also now protected from the short selling that can crash the price of other stocks.
Time to Change the Statute?
According to the Fed’s website, the control Congress has over the Federal Reserve is limited to this:
“[T]he Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute.”
As we know from watching the business news, “oversight” basically means that Congress gets to see the results when it’s over. The Fed periodically reports to Congress, but the Fed doesn’t ask; it tells. The only real leverage Congress has over the Fed is that it “can alter its responsibilities by statute.” It is time for Congress to exercise that leverage and make the Federal Reserve a truly federal agency, acting by and for the people through their elected representatives. If the Fed can demand AIG’s stock in return for an $85 billion loan to the mega-insurer, we can demand the Fed’s stock in return for the trillion-or-so dollars we’ll be advancing to bail out the private banking system from its follies.
If the Fed were actually a federal agency, the government could issue U.S. legal tender directly, avoiding an unnecessary interest-bearing debt to private middlemen who create the money out of thin air themselves. Among other benefits to the taxpayers. a truly “federal” Federal Reserve could lend the full faith and credit of the United States to state and local governments interest-free, cutting the cost of infrastructure in half, restoring the thriving local economies of earlier decades.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com .
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Abayomi Azikiwe: Malian War Spreading into Niger - French Military Moves Further Into Northern Region
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Malian War Spreading into Niger: French Military Moves Further Into Northern Region
Global Research, January 29, 2013Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/malian-war-spreading-into-niger-french-military-moves-further-into-northern-region/5320936Reports emanating from the West African state of Mali indicate that French grounds forces accompanied by the national army from the capital of Bamako–along with a small contingent of regional troops from Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Chad and Nigeria–are moving towards the northern historic city of Timbuktu. Although there has been a media blockade by the French and Malian governments about the impact of the war, details of the conditions taking place inside the country are emerging.
In the northern city of Gao, French and Malian forces claim that they have taken the airport and are moving to occupy the city. A military press release from Paris stated that they were fired on by “Al-Qaeda linked terrorist elements who were destroyed.” (Associated Press, January 28)
Nonetheless, the ministry of defense in France has attempted to sanitize the actual situation in the contested areas. One report asserted that no civilians have been killed in the imperialist military operations, although other news agencies have contradicted these statements.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a press release issued on January 22, stated that “As air bombing and fighting continue in Mali refugees are continuing to cross into neighboring countries. In Mauritania, 4,208 Malian refugees have arrived since January 11.” (UNHCR)
This same media advisory continues noting that “After being registered at the Fassala transit center, they are being transported further inland to the Mbera refugee camp which is already hosting 55,221 people from earlier displacements.” During the same time period 1,300 refugees have arrived in Niger and 1,829 entered Burkina Faso.
Malians arriving in these neighboring states say that they are fleeing air strikes being carried out by French fighter jets. They are complaining about shortages of food, fuel and water. Many new arrivals are traveling in vehicles, but others are on foot and donkeys.
The refugees are anticipating that other members of their families will be crossing the borders very soon. Since the escalation of fighting in the north of Mali in January 2012, which was largely the result of the U.S.-NATO war against Libya, some 147,000 refugees have fled the country.
Inside the country, the UNHCR reports that 229,000 people have been internally displaced mainly from the areas around Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao. The UN refugee agency is assisting by providing food, water and shelter for the internally displaced as well.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced recently that the international body would not directly participate or authorize the deployment of troops under its authority. Ki-moon cited the humanitarian work carried out by the UN agencies, saying that the organization’s direct involvement would jeopardize the safety and security of its personnel.
Meanwhile the United States military is providing C-17 air transport for the French troops and equipment entering Mali. The Obama administration has pledged its support to the invasion and occupation of Mali where the Pentagon has maintained close ties with the national army.
Other NATO states are also participating in the war including Britain, Canada, Denmark and Italy. The Italian government announced on January 28 that it could not continue its support for the French war in Mali without the support of the parliament.
War Spreading to Niger
France announced that it would also deploy Special Forces units to neighboring Niger to guard the Areva uranium mines. The mines provide up to 70 percent of the uranium utilized to power its nuclear power reactors in France.
The mines are located in the areas around the towns of Arlit and Imouraren. Areva maintains operations in Canada, Kazakhstan as well as Niger.
Areva is the second largest uranium mining producer in the world. The mines in Niger are critical to its operations globally.
Just last year in October, the Niger government complained to Areva about the slow pace of its operations aimed at uranium production at the Imouraren site. Several personnel working at the mines were kidnapped during 2010 creating a serious security problem for the firm.
Also there were labor disputes in early 2012 among the construction workers at the Imouraren mines. The delays strained relations with the Niger government which threatened to withdraw support if the firm could not meet its construction deadlines.
France, a former colonial power in Africa, still maintains troops in various states on the continent including Gabon, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Niger and others. The U.S., which is expanding its military presence in Africa with the deployment of an additional 3,500 troops to 35 states, is therefore a natural ally of France in the imperialist expansion in the region.
Africa is becoming even more important in the supply of strategic resources essential for the maintenance of the industrial status of the western states. Oil, natural gas, coltan, platinum and uranium exist in abundance throughout the continent.
In addition to these resources, new findings have taken place over the last year in regard to natural gas and oil in East Africa. Explorations are ongoing in Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia as well as offshore areas in the Indian Ocean.
New Attacks in Algeria
On January 27, there was an attack carried out at the Ain Chikh natural gas pipeline in the Djebahia region of northern Algeria, some 75 miles east of the capital of Algiers. Initial reports indicated that two security guards were killed and five others were wounded.
Algeria was the scene of the seizure of the In Amenas gas field by an Islamist armed group purportedly headed by Mohktar BelMohktar of the “Signatories of Blood.” Algerian military forces stormed the plant on two occasions releasing hundreds of workers but the seizure resulted in the deaths of at least 81 people.
The war initiated by France against Mali, purportedly designed to prevent “Islamist extremists” from taking control of the entire country, has worsened the security situation throughout the region. U.S. trained Malian military personnel staged a coup against the democratically elected government in Bamako on March 22, after the army failed to mount an effective counter-attack against the Tuareg fighters in the north.
Opposition Grows to the Imperialist War in West and North Africa
More organizations are coming out against the French bombing and occupation of Mali, the spreading of the war into neighboring states and the support being provided by various NATO states. Workers World issued an editorial in its January 31 issue calling for the withdrawal of imperialist forces from the country.
Also Fightback! News, the website of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), published a statement opposing the intervention. A demonstration was held on January 23 in Minneapolis involving peace activists organized by the Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) chanting “No U.S. Drones to Mali, No U.S. Intervention in Mali!”
The United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC), a broad-based coalition of various groups from around the U.S., had already issued a statement opposing intervention in Mali prior to the French bombing and ground invasion which began January 11. The organizations’ administrative committee and coordinating committee has held two national conference calls on the situation inside Mali and the region.
UNAC will be issuing another statement updating its position on the current crisis. Plans are also underway for a national tour featuring people from the U.S. and Pakistan who are opposing the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone program that is devastating countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Abayomi Azikiwe is Editor of the Pan-African News Wire
E MAIL: panafnewswire@gmail.com
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Felicity Arbuthnot: Illegal Invasions, "Rogue States", Forgotten Victims and a Shaming Plea
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Illegal Invasions, “Rogue States”, Forgotten Victims and a Shaming Plea
Global Research, January 31, 2013Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/illegal-invasions-rogue-states-forgotten-victims-and-a-shaming-plea/5321316The usual suspects have embarked on another mass butchery – sorry “training exercise” – in mega-resource-rich Mali, and are meddling, with lethality, in Algeria. The UK, ever keen to kill, has gone from the Prime Minister’s “no boots on the ground” assurances, to “Operation Creep” in barely over a week.
The US, says a spokesman, assesses that “intervention” may “last for years.” He was talking Mali. Think Africa.
The US plans a drone base on the Mali-Niger border, as John Glaser has written, one of: ‘
“a constellation of secret drone bases” in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, in Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Seychelles, and beyond -which bomb Yemen and Somalia and most likely perform surveillance missions in East Africa and the Persian Gulf.’ (i)
The disaster of a recent African foray, the ruins of Libya, lives lost ranging from 30,000 to 100,000, the horror of the plight of the country’s Leader, his children, grandchildren, the murder of the US Ambassador, torching of his Benghazi residence and deaths of three US government employees are seemingly forgotten. No “lessons learned.” The British Embassy in Tripoli has received “credible threats” with the Foreign Office advising against travel to the country, with Westerners facing a “high threat from terrorism.”
Yesterday’s gift of “democracy” to Afghanistan – where US soldiers are being killed with relentless regularity by their Afghan “colleagues” who, of course, they have “trained” – has brought poverty and desperation such that the BBC – usually loyal to a fault to any colonial invasion – is reporting that some families resort to selling one child, in order to gain enough money to feed the others.
In the horror of the country’s prisons, the UN reports this month that torture is on the rise, and as Iraq (ii) the unspeakable continues.
In Iraq, the occupation’s abuses continue to haunt the invaders and the Iraqis. Today the tireless Phil Shiner, of the UK’s Public Interest Lawyers, presents another case on behalf of one hundred and eighty Iraqis, in Britain’s High Court, alleging they were systematically abused and tortured by British troops using methods chillingly reminiscent of the Americans at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
The claim is of a “systematic” policy between 2003 and 2008 of lawless torture and killing.
Mr Shiner has said:
“We’ve got the training materials, we’ve got the policy documents. Violence was endemic to the (UK) State practices and part of the State practices”.
As the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion approaches it is surely time for the invading countries to attempt to amend for the enormity of the illegality of the invasion and for individual sufferings. Details of the alleged abuses by Britain’s “heroes” defy depravity, bestiality, sadism and sub-humanity’s worst.
Just a few of those who suffered have their days in Court. Others have made pleas that should also shame.
Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, incarcerated under sentence of death since 2003, whose audience with the Pope in 2003 was a plea to avert an attack on Iraq, which had suffered so grievously under the embargo, whose people had died in their hundreds of thousands of its effects, has again appealed to the Pope.
In 2003 he appealed for Iraqis to live, to the Pope at the Vatican and in other European capitols. Last week he appealed to Pope Benedict the sixth that he should be allowed to die. (iii)
His lawyer Badie Izzat has said his client is deeply depressed and is sending an appeal to the Pope to intervene for the end of his suffering.
“Aziz told me that the former spokesman of the government Ali al-Dabbagh visited him months ago, accompanied by two of the judges and promised to study his case, but he did not receive any response from him” Aziz stated: “I prefer to be executed than to remain in this situation.” Two other former government officials, Saadoun Shaker and Abed Hammoud are also facing this most shocking of barbaric “victors justice.”
Tariq Aziz now suffers a range of serious health problems and seemingly has finally given up, also calling on: “all international organizations to intervene to put an end to his current status”, states Izzat.
Last year Iraq’s American imposed “Prime Minister” pushed for the death sentence against Aziz to be speeded up, in spite of the fact that Iraqi law negated the death penalty on those over seventy. Tariq Aziz is seventy four. His family have urged human rights organizations and relevant bodies, politicians to release him due to his frail state and lack of medical care.
President Talabani said that he would never sign the order for Tariq Aziz’s execution, but he was rushed to Germany after a heart attack and an ominous silence as to his condition has followed.
Tariq Aziz could have fled Iraq ahead of the bombs and tanks, but was true to his words to me in an interview that: “ ... I will never give up on Iraq.” His health has failed him but whatever the complexities he did not give up on the country he served and loved.
It is impossible not to ponder whether the core of Western proclaimed values are not hypocritical cant. Those – and there are many of them, distinguished and compassionate, who have written to the Pope, to Archbishops, politicians, all who profess a faith, those who learned the Ten Commandments barely out of nursery school: “Thou shalt not kill”, those who recite the Lord’s prayer on Sundays, and at their festivals: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” What rubbish. They simply annihilate, or condone annihilating, those who pose no threat whatsoever.
They ignore over year after year, pleas for justice, pleas for human lives, please in line with their hollow, meaningless, hypocritical prayers.
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath: It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes”,wrote Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice. Another fantasy that children of the West are indoctrinated with. Values of total delusion.
Of the torture cases before the High Court commencing today, law Professor Andrew Williams of Warwick University says:
“This is our last chance to get to the truth of what happened.
“This is what we demand of others, but we do not demand it of ourselves. What kind of message does that give the world about who we are?”
Indeed. Our governments have become the regimes they warned us about. Ones that illegally invade, rape, torture, incarcerate without oversight or review, either without trial, or via a proxy kangaroo court.
Last September Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be brought to The International Criminal Court at The Hague on war crimes charges. They had, he said:
“fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies … They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”
In the interim, perhaps those two professed Christians could do something, well, Christian, and pressure Nuri al Maliki to release their fellow Christian Tariq Aziz, his colleagues and the mass of illegally held incarcerated Iraqis.
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Sunday, February 3, 2013
Paul Schreyer: The 9/11 Plan - Cheney, Rumsfeld and the "Continuity of Government"
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The 9/11 Plan: Cheney, Rumsfeld and the “Continuity of Government”
Global Research, January 28, 2013Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-911-plan-cheney-rumsfeld-and-the-continuity-of-government/5320879“If a mandarinate ruled America, the recruiting committee on September 11 would have had to find someone like Cheney.” Washington Post author Barton Gellman in his book “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency”
Terrorism. Emergency plans. Political careers. The history of 9/11 can be written from many angles.
But whatever point of view is chosen, Dick Cheney is a central figure. “Principle is okay up to a certain point”, he once said, “but principle doesn´t do any good if you lose the nomination”. He´s surely an elusive character. Not less than Donald Rumsfeld, his close companion. Both of their lifes are inseperably bound with a dark side of recent American history. The core of the following story was originally told by the authors James Mann and Peter Dale Scott whose thorough research is deeply appreciated. Yet a lot of background information was added. Thus a bigger picture slowly took shape, showing a plan and its actors ...
Cheney and Rumsfeld were an old team. Major parts of their careers they had spent together. Both had no privileged family background. Cheney´s father worked as an employee for the department of agriculture, Rumsfeld´s father had a job in a real estate company. The families´ living conditions were modest. Both sons could go to university only with the backing of scholarships.
Rumsfeld, born 1932, chose political science. He was a rather small and sturdy person, but with energetic charisma. While at university he engaged in sport and was known as a succesful ringer. Later Rumsfeld went to the Navy to become a pilot. The Navy hat paid a part of his scholarship. At the end of the 1950s he eventually started his career in politics as assistant of a congressman. Meanwhile father of a young family, and following a short intermezzo at an investment bank, Rumsfeld himself ran for Congress, at the age of 29 only.
Getting backing
The prospects in his Chicago home district were unfavorable. He was inexperienced and almost without any voter base, compared to the other candidates. But the dynamic and ambitious Rumsfeld impressed some of Chicago´s business leaders, such as the boss of pharma heavyweight Searle. They paid for his campaign. With this economic power in his back also one of Chicago´s newspapers supported him. Rumsfeld won the election in 1962 and went to Washington as a republican representative.
At the beginning of the 1960s he visited lectures at the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman was teaching, one of the most influential economists of his time. Friedman was one of the founding fathers of neoliberalism. He called for less influence of the state and praised the self regulation of the markets. In 1962 his bestseller Capitalism and Freedom was published. Rumsfeld was impressed by these thoughts. In a speech honoring Friedman 40 years later he remembered: “Government, he has told us, has three primary functions: It should provide for the military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. And it should protect citizens against crimes against themselves or their property.” (1) This self-imposed restriction of politics was also the core of Rumsfeld´s belief while he served in Congress in the 1960s.
An apprentice in politics
Cheney, 9 years younger than Rumsfeld, meanwhile studied political science as well. First at Yale, where he left soon because of poor grades, then at a less prestigious university in the Midwest. Contrary to the forceful Rumsfeld he appeared rather defensive, quiet and cautious. His imminent recruiting to the Vietnam war he avoided by getting deferred from military service because of his study at the university and the pregnancy of his wife, until he couldn´t be recruited because of his age in 1967.
At the age of 27 Cheney was looking for a job in Washington. He applied for an internship at Rumsfeld´s office. But Rumsfeld rejected him. The failed interview was embarrassing for Cheney who in later times liked to tell the story of this flop as an anecdote. But soon both men found together.
Under president Nixon, Rumsfeld had switched in 1969 from Congress to government. First he ran the Office of Economic Opportunity. There he administered federal social programs – not exactly one of his major concerns, but still one step forward in career. Rumsfeld was looking for new staffers to pass on work. By recommendation of a befriended representative he employed Cheney as his assistant. Cheney was a diligent worker and quickly made himself indispensable. Whoever wanted something from Rumsfeld, learned soon to try it via Cheney.
Rumsfeld´s career developed. People started becoming aware of him nationwide. He looked good, was energetic and had a catching smile. His intelligence was outstanding. But he also liked to exaggerate and escalate conflicts and often was unnecessarily blunt to others. Soon he became president Nixon´s advisor (who would praise him as a “ruthless little bastard”). Three years later he went to europe becoming NATO´s ambassador there – escaping from Washington shortly before the Watergate affair would kill the careers of many of Nixon´s advisors.
Tasting power
In the mid of the 1970s politics in America went through a time of upheaval. The economy was in crisis. With the lost war in Vietnam, nationwide student protests and Watergate the leadership of the superpower showed internal signs of decay, culminating in Nixon´s resignation in 1974. Successor Gerald Ford appointed Rumsfeld to become chief of staff with Cheney shadowing him closely as his deputy.
Now both men had arrived in the centre of power. The position of chief of staff was seen as highly influential in the White House. He was the closest advisor to the president, controlled his schedule and also decided who would meet him. After Nixon, Watergate and the extensively publicly discussed CIA scandals the new administration had to fight with a damaged reputation. This difficult situation, with a relatively weak president, increased the importance of the chief of staff.
Rumsfeld and Cheney were partners now and had great influence on president Ford. When he reshuffled his cabinet abruptly in 1975 in the so-called “Halloween massacre”, firing among others the CIA director and the secretary of defense, many suspected Rumsfeld being the wirepuller. Fact was at least that he and Cheney were profiteering.
Rumsfeld now took over the command at the Pentagon. There he started expensive and prolonged defense projects like the Abrams tank and the B-1 bomber, building economic impact for decades. At the same time the 34 years old Cheney moved up to become chief of staff in the White House. Now he was no longer only assistant but an authority with relevant beliefs. One of his rules went: “Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn´t do any good if you lose the nomination.” (2)
Revolving doors
However soon just that happened. After the defeat of the Republicans in 1976 both men dropped out of government. Together with their families they spent holidays with each other in the Caribbean. Rumsfeld remembers the relaxing break with pleasure: “We played Tennis, boated, and spent time in the sun talking about life. Cheney grilled steaks and made chili.” (3)
Back home Cheney started capitalizing his Washington insider knowledge by working for a consulting company, helping wealthy clients with their investment decisions. But soon he returned to politics. At the end of the 1970s he went as elected Congressman to the House of Representatives. Yet the stress and pressure had their effect on the cautious and restrained Cheney – at age 37 he suffered his first heart attack.
Rumsfeld on the other hand found his new place for a longer time in private business. Dan Searle, the Chicago pharma magnate who had financed his first election campaign 15 years before, now entrusted him his whole company, appointing him to Searle´s CEO. Financially Rumsfeld climbed to new heights with that job. As CEO he got 250.000 Dollars a year, about four times more than as secretary of defense. (4) And also in his new job he made no half measures. Within short time Rumsfeld fired more than half of the employees, generating a huge increase in corporate profit. The business newspapers praised him as an outstanding manager.
In the 1980s the Republicans came back to power with Ronald Reagan. The new president conjured up the threatening picture of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and increased military spending. The Cold War gained new momentum.
The Armageddon Plan
At this time the White House also developed a secret emergency plan, put in action however only at September 11th, 2001 for the first time. Initially it should guarantee that the government could continue its operations even after a Soviet nuclear strike. The plan was called COG (Continuity of Government) and called for a very special emergency measure: when disaster struck, three teams should be sent to different places in the country, replacing the government. Each team would have an own “president” as well as other people standing in for the different departments and government agencies. If one team would be killed, the next one could be activated. So the planners hoped to keep control over the military and the most important parts of the administration, after an atomic bomb or another disaster had wiped out the government in Washington. (5)
These worries about a possible “decapitation” of the national leadership were deemed very seriously because exactly this course of action was also part of the U.S. war strategy towards the Soviets. (6)
The COG plan existed not only on paper. It was exercised in reality regularly in the 1980s. Once a year the teams, each consisting of a “president”, a “chief of staff” and about 50 staffers, were secretly flown from Washington to a closed military base or a bunker somewhere in the United States. There they played the emergency scenario for several days. Not even their closest relatives knew about the location or purpose of the exercise. (7)
Richard Clarke, later anti-terror coordinator under the presidents Clinton and Bush junior, recalls one of the maneuvers at that time:
”I remember one occasion where we got the call. We had to go to Andrews Air Force Base and get on a plane and fly across the country. And then get off and run into a smaller plane. And that plane flew off into a desert location. And when the doors opened on the smaller plane, we were in the middle of a desert. Trucks eventually came and found us and drove us to a tent city. You know, this was in the early days of the program. A tent city in the middle of the desert — I had no idea where we were. I didn’t know what state we were in. We spent a week there in tents, pretending that the United States government had been blown up. And we were it. It’s as though you were living in a play. You play-act. Everyone there play-acts that it’s really happened. You can’t go outside because of the radioactivity. You can’t use the phones because they’re not connected to anything.” (8)
Part of every team was one authentic secretary, leading a government department also in real life. He had to play the president. Yet his real life portfolio didn´t matter – at one point even the secretary of agriculture played the president. In the end the secretary taking part in the exercise was usually just the one being dispensable. Apparently more important was the role of the chief of staff. This part was routinely played only by a person who had been White House chief of staff also in real life. (9)
Therefore Rumsfeld and Cheney were regular participants of the secret annual COG exercises. Other attendants described them as being involved in shaping the program. (10) So at a time when the two men had no position whatsoever in government (Rumsfeld, as mentioned, was boss of a pharma company, Cheney was congressman), both of them disapeared every year for a few days to practice the take-over of the government after a disaster.
Above the law
The plan was secret also because it bypassed the constitution. Since the presidential succession was already explicitly fixed by law: if the president died, the vice president took over, then followed by the speaker of the house, after him the longest serving senator, then the secretaries of state, treasury, defense and so forth. However the COG plan simply ignored this well balanced constitutional arrangement. In an emergency it called instead for a president who was not democratically legitimized at all.
The plan was authorized with a secret directive by president Reagan. According to his security adviser Robert McFarlane Reagan personally decided who would lead the individual teams. The COG liaison officer in charge inside the National Security Council was Oliver North, who later became known as the key person in the center of the Iran-Contra scandal. (11)
Only incidentally, in connection with that scandal, the first details of the secret plan came to light in 1987. Under president Reagan Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North had coordinated a series of steps building in effect a shadow government, Congress didn´t know about, let alone having approved it. The Miami Herald wrote about this in 1987: “Oliver North helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. (...) From 1982 to 1984, North assisted FEMA, the U.S. government’s chief national crisis-management unit, in revising contingency plans for dealing with nuclear war, insurrection or massive military mobilization.” (12)
That the COG plan, suspending the constitution, could indeed not only be activated in case of a nuclear war, was laid out in a further directive authorized by Reagan in the last days of his presidency in November 1988. According to this directive the plan should be executed in a “national security emergency”, defined rather vague as a “natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States”. (13) In effect this meant a massive undermining of democratic principles. The COG plan, executed unter the circumstances mentioned, could also be used as cover for a coup d’état.
Meanwhile Cheney and Rumsfeld went on secretly exercising the take-over of the government during their annually running maneuvers. Belonging to this inner circle of potential state leaders had to be an uplifting feeling for both men. In case of a huge disaster the fate of the nation would lie in their hands.
Reach for the presidency
At the end of the 1980s Cheney moreover had climbed to the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the elite network connecting business leaders and politicians, well known for its huge influence on American foreign policy. In the meantime Rumsfeld had become a multimillionaire through the sale of the pharma company he had led. He planned running for the presidency in 1988. But his campaign didn´t succeed. From the outset Reagan´s vice president Bush senior had been the republican frontrunner – and finally also won the election.
But now Cheney got his chance. He became secretary of defense in the new administration, the same position Rumsfeld had already held 12 years before. Cheney successfully managed the first Iraq war in 1991, which led – parallel to the decline of the Soviet Union – to a permanent deployment of U.S. troops in the oil-rich Saudi Arabia. The control over Iraq was now in reach.
After the defeat of the Republicans in 1992 Cheney also considered an own presidential campaign. Yet soon he had to realize that he lacked support. Instead he moved to the private sector, becoming CEO of Halliburton, one of the world´s biggest oil supply companies. As secretary of defense he already had build connections to the firm, leading later to multi-billion-dollar contracts with the Pentagon. The new job now also filled Cheney´s pockets, making him a multimillionaire as well.
Meanwhile Rumsfeld had established himself as a highly effective and ambitious business executive. In the 1990s he first led a telecommunications company, then a pharma corporation.
The COG plan still existed, however with other presumptions. After the fall of the Soviet Union it no longer focused on the Russian nuclear threat, but on terrorism. Though it was reported in the mid 1990s that president Clinton wanted the program to phase out, it later became clear that this announcement only applied to the portion of the plan relating to a nuclear attack. (14) Then anti-terror coordinator Richard Clarke later disclosed that he had updated the COG plan in 1998. (15) The corresponding presidential directive (PDD-67) was secret. Its precise content was never made public. (16)
Cold War reloaded
At the same time a circle of neoconservatives around Rumsfeld and Cheney prepared for return to power. At the end of the 1990s they founded an organisation called “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). Their self declared desire: “increase defense spending significantly” and “challenge regimes hostile to our interests”. (17)
In parallel Rumsfeld headed a congressional commission assessing the threat of foreign long range missiles. Already in the 1980s Ronald Reagan had started plans for a national missile defense, which burdened the national budget over the years with about 50 billion dollars. Yet in the 1990s even the own intelligence agencies saw no longer a real threat. Because who should fire missiles on Washington in the near future? Yeltsin´s Russia? Or China, that became economically more and more interdependent with the United States? However the so-called “Rumsfeld Commission” revised the assessment of the intelligence agencies. In its 1998 published report new possible aggressors were named: North Korea, Iran and Iraq. (18)
The same year Rumsfeld and his PNAC associates had already written an open letter to president Clinton, urging him to be tougher on Iraq. Saddam Hussein´s regime should be “removed”, the letter demanded. (19)
Finally, in September 2000, two month before the presidential election, PNAC published a lengthy strategy paper, giving policy guidance to the next administration. “Rebuilding America´s Defenses” was its programmatic title and it analysed principles and objections of a new defense policy.
Basically the paper called for a massive increase in defense spending and a transformation of the armed forces into a dominant but mobile, rapidly deployable power factor. The aim was enduring military supremacy, which according to PNAC would urgently require new weapons systems like the missile defense. Yet the paper made also clear that the process of implementing these demands would be a long one and provoke resistance, “absent” – quote – “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” (20)
A question of energy
After George W. Bush´s inauguration in January 2001 the members of this circle secured important posts in the new administration. Cheney turned into the leading figure. This had become apparent well before the election. As early as April 2000 Bush had asked him to handle the selection of his vice presidential running mate. In the end Cheney had all but proposed himself for the job. (21) Meanwhile the workaholic had survived three heart attacks. One of his first recommendations to Bush was the appointment of Rumsfeld, almost 70, as secretary of defense. Deputy of his old associate became Paul Wolfowitz, a hardliner who had already worked for Cheney as chief strategist in the Pentagon at the beginning of the 1990s. Compared to these men president Bush himself was a newcomer in Washington. Though he was blessed with political instinct and a very practical intuition, he could hardly hold a candle to these old hands intellectually.
One of the first steps of the new administration was the creation of a “National Energy Policy Development Group”. It was headed directly by Cheney. Its final report, issued in May 2001, described the situation quite openly:
“America in the year 2001 faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s. (...) A fundamental imbalance between supply and demand defines our nation´s energy crisis. (...) This imbalance, if allowed to continue, will inevitably undermine our economy, our standard of living, and our national security. (...) Estimates indicate that over the next 20 years, U.S. oil consumption will increase by 33 percent, natural gas consumption by well over 50 percent, and demand for electricity will rise by 45 percent. If America´s energy production grows at the same rate as it did in the 1990s we will face an ever-increasing gap. (...) By 2020, Gulf oil producers are projected to supply between 54 and 67 percent of the world´s oil. Thus, the global economy will almost certainly continue to depend on the supply of oil from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members, particularly in the Gulf. This region will remain vital to U.S. interests.” (22)
Later it was disclosed that Cheney´s energy task force had also secretly examined a map of the Iraqi oil fields, pipelines and refineries along with charts detailing foreign suitors for il-field contracts there. Again, the date was March 2001.
Anticipating the unthinkable
Concurrently to its effort in energy policy the new administration created an “Office of National Preparedness”. It was tasked with the development of plans responding to a possible terror attack and became assigned to the “Federal Emergency Management Agency” (FEMA). (23) FEMA was already responsible for the COG plan since the 1980s. To call it back to mind: “From 1982 to 1984, Oliver North assisted FEMA in revising contingency plans for dealing with nuclear war, insurrection or massive military mobilization.” (24)
Back then Cheney had played a role in shaping these plans. Now he could continue the work – because Bush appointed him to head the new program. (25) Director of FEMA on the other hand became Joe Allbaugh, who had little professional expertise, but could offer other qualities. Allbaugh was Bush´s campaign manager, a man for tough and rather rude matters and also one of the president´s closest confidants. Back in 1994 he had managed Bush´s campaign to become governor of Texas and at the end of 2000 he had helped stopping the recount of votes in Florida. (26) That an expert for political tricks was appointed to head FEMA indicates that the administration had political plans with the emergency management agency from the outset.
Till today it´s undisclosed how the COG plan was refined in detail under Cheney´s direction in 2001. However the following is apparent: in the months leading to 9/11 Cheney linked anti-terror and emergency management measures with national energy policy. Commissions working on both issues were handled by him simultaneously. This connection anticipated the policy after 9/11, which could be summarized as using a terror attack as rationale for extending the power of the executive and waging war to seize control of world regions important for energy supply.
The emergency plans Rumsfeld and Cheney were involved with since the 1980s culminated in autumn 2001. On the morning of September 11th the secret COG program was implemented for the first time. (27) Shortly before 10:00 a.m., after the impact of the third plane into the Pentagon, Cheney gave the order to execute it. (28)
The shadow government
Almost nothing is known about the content of the plan and the specific effects of its activation. The secrecy in this respect appears grotesque. Even the simple fact of the plan´s implementation on 9/11 was concealed for months. After sporadic hints in the press the Washington Post finally disclosed some details in March 2002. In an article titled “Shadow government is at work in secret” it reported that about 100 high-ranking officials of different departments were working outside Washington as part of the emergency plan since 9/11:
“Officials who are activated for what some of them call ‘bunker duty’ live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families. As it settles in for the long haul, the shadow government has sent home most of the first wave of deployed personnel, replacing them most commonly at 90-day intervals. (...) Known internally as the COG, for ‘continuity of government’, the administration-in-waiting is an unannounced complement to the acknowledged absence of Vice President Cheney from Washington for much of the past five months. Cheney’s survival ensures constitutional succession, one official said, but ‘he can´t run the country by himself.’ With a core group of federal managers alongside him, Cheney – or President Bush, if available – has the means to give effect to his orders.” (29)
But what orders gave Cheney to his strange “shadow government” while his stays at the bunker? And what justified extending this emergency measure for seemingly infinite time? For the White House clearly hadn´t been wiped out by bombs. The president lived and his administration was able to act. Who needed a permanent second secret government?
After the first disclosure of these facts in spring 2002 leading politicians of the legislative immediately started expressing their astonishment. Soon it became clear that neither Senate nor House of Representatives knew anything about the activation of COG and the work of the “shadow government” in secret. The parliament had simply been ignored. (30) Later the 9/11 Commission experienced similar executive secrecy. Though it mentioned in its final report the implementation of the plan on 9/11, it also admitted not having investigated the issue in depth. Instead the Commission had only been briefed “on the general nature” of the plan. (31)
Patriots under pressure
An immediate response to 9/11 was the Patriot Act, passed only one month later, and allowing a broad range of highly controversial measures, from domestic wiretapping to warrantless detention of foreign terror suspects. The latter legalized the forthcoming procedures at Guantánamo, leading to secret U.S. prisons all over the world.
Two influential opponents of these legal changes were Tom Daschle, Senate Majority Leader, and Patrick Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both received letters with spores of deadly anthrax. The source was never traced with certainty. After that Daschle and Leahy gave up their resistance against the new legislation and approved the Patriot Act. (32)
In their radical nature the hastily passed changes bore resemblance to decrees while a state of emergency. And indeed were they similarly already part of the COG plan in the 1980s. (33)
Government officials familiar with COG indicated after 9/11 that the plan could really have resulted in martial law – if additionally to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also large numbers of congressmen and executive branch leaders had been killed on that day. (34)
Is it in this context a coincidence only that the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11 was heading towards Washington to hit the Capitol or the White House? (35)
Killers from Sudan?
There is also circumstantial evidence for an assassination attempt on president Bush in Florida that morning. The Secret Service had received a related warning the night before at 4:08 a.m., according to a TV report by a local ABC affiliate. (36) A few hours later Secret Service agents searched an apartment in Sarasota and arrested four men from Sudan, apparently belonging to the south sudanese liberation army SPLA, a paramilitary force secretly supported by the United States. (37) Also AP reported these arrests mentioning that the suspects had been released soon again because they had “no connection” to 9/11. The whole issue just would have been a “coincidence”. (38)
President Bush spent the night before 9/11 at a resort on Longboat Key, an island right next to Sarasota where he planned to visit an elementary school on the next morning. Longboat Key Fire Marshall Carroll Mooneyhan was a further witness of the possible assassination attempt. He said that at about 6 a.m. on September 11th a van with self-proclaimed reporters of middle eastern descent had pulled up at Bush´s resort, stating they had a “poolside” interview with the president. The men asked for a special Secret Service agent by name but where turned away by the guards. (39)
Were these “reporters” identical with the Sudanese temporarily arrested by the Secret Service later that morning in Sarasota? The incident resembled at least the successful assassination of Taliban foe Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before on September 9th in Afghanistan. The suicide attackers there were also a fake TV team using a bomb hidden in a camera, as the New York Times reported on September 10th. (40)
Additionally three witnesses remembered seeing Mohammed Atta and a companion at Longboat Key´s Holiday Inn on September 7th, three days before Bush would spend the night on that same small island. (41) September 7th was also the day the White House first publicly announced Bush´s schedule to travel to Sarasota. (42) In this context it is surely worth to consider if Atta scouted out the place for an assassination plot.
Completing the plot
The question arises: Did a circle around Cheney, Rumsfeld and some associates use 9/11 for a disguised coup d’état, partly failed in its execution?
Regardless of the answer to that question – 9/11 in fact allowed the implementation of emergency measures, the weakening of the legislative, the start of several wars and a massive increase in defense spending. The amounts in question easily exceed the imagination of observers.
While in the second half of the 1990s the average national defense budget totaled about 270 billion dollars a year, that number nearly doubled in the decade after 9/11, when the average annual budget went up to over 500 billion. (43) For the Pentagon´s private contractors that meant a sales increase of inconceivable 2.300 billion dollars between 2001 and 2010.
A national economy under arms
If one looks at the development of defense spending in the United States since 1940, some far-reaching conclusions arise. (44) It seems as if the attack on Pearl Harbor and the following involvement in World War II led to a structural change of the American economy. The budgetary value of the military was never reduced to a “normal” level after that. On the contrary it increased decade by decade. Thus the whole economy got into a fatal dependency on the defense business.
This ongoing development came to a halt only with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ten years later then 9/11 became the catalyzing event to kick-start the military buildup again – with all its broad economic effects on the country.
Cheney and Rumsfeld don´t seem to be driving forces in this “game”, but merely two talented managers, risen to the top in the stream of events. Author James Mann, who had disclosed their involvement in the COG plan first in 2004, described their political role this way:
“Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States, inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting.” (45)
Notes
(1) US Department of Defense, 09.05.02, “Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld speaking at Tribute to Milton Friedman”
http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=216
(2) James Mann, “Rise of the Vulcans. The History of Bush ́s War Cabinet”, New York 2004, p. 73
(3) Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown. A Memoir”, New York 2011, p. 240
(4) Ibid., p. 245
(5) James Mann, “Rise of the Vulcans. The History of Bush ́s War Cabinet”, New York 2004, pp. 138-145
(6) Ibid., p. 139
(7) Ibid., p. 138
(8) ABC, 25.04.04, “Worst Case Scenario – Secret Plan to Control U.S. Government After an Attack Went Into Motion on 9/11″
http://web.archive.org/web/20040429063810/
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Nightline/Politics/armageddon_plan_040425.html
(9) James Mann, “Rise of the Vulcans. The History of Bush ́s War Cabinet”, New York 2004, p. 140
(10) Ibid., p. 138;
Washington Post, 07.04.04, “‘Armageddon’ Plan Was Put Into Action on 9/11, Clarke Says”, Howard Kurtz
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55877-2004Apr6
(11) James Mann, “Rise of the Vulcans. The History of Bush ́s War Cabinet”, New York 2004, p. 142
(12) Miami Herald, 05.07.87, “Reagan Aides and the ‚secret‘ Government”, Alfonso Chardy
http://theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/secret_white_house_plans.htm
(13) Peter Dale Scott, “The Road to 9/11. Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”, Berkeley 2007, p. 185;
Executive Order 12656 – “Assignment of emergency preparedness responsibilities”, 18.11.88
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12656.html
(14) Peter Dale Scott, “The Road to 9/11. Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”, Berkeley 2007, p. 186
(15) Richard Clarke, “Against All Enemies. Inside America ́s War on Terror”, New York 2004, p. 167
(16) PDD-NSC-67 – “Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations”, 21.10.98
www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/pdd-67.htm
(17) Project for the New American Century, 03.06.97, “Statement of Principles”
http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
(18) New York Times, 16.07.98, “Panel Says U.S. Faces Risk Of a Surprise Missile Attack”, Eric Schmitt
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/16/us/panel-says-us-faces-risk-of-a-surprise-missile-attack.html
(19) Project for the New American Century, 26.01.98, “Iraq Clinton Letter”
www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
(20) Project for the New American Century, September 2000, “Rebuilding America´s Defenses”, p. 51
(21) Barton Gellman, “Angler. The Cheney Vice Presidency”, New York 2008, Chapter 1
(22) “National Energy Policy – Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group”, 16.05.01
(23) White House press release, 08.05.01, “Cheney to Oversee Domestic Counterterrorism Efforts”
http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_05/alia/a1050801.htm
(24) Miami Herald, 05.07.87, “Reagan Aides and the ‚secret‘ Government”, Alfonso Chardy
http://theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/secret_white_house_plans.htm
(25) White House press release, 08.05.01, “Cheney to Oversee Domestic Counterterrorism Efforts”
http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_05/alia/a1050801.htm
(26) Peter Dale Scott, “The Road to 9/11. Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”, Berkeley 2007, p. 210
(27) 9/11 Commission Report, p. 38
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf
(28) “Brief Timeline of Day of 9/11 Events, drafted by White House”
www.scribd.com/doc/12992821/Brief-Timeline-of-Day-of-911-Events-drafted-by-Wh...
Washington Post, 27.01.02, “America’s Chaotic Road to War”, Dan Balz and Bob Woodward
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR20060718011...
(29) Washington Post, 01.03.02, “Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret”, Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR20060609008...
(30) Washington Post, 02.03.02, “Congress Not Advised Of Shadow Government”, Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26212-2002Mar1
(31) 9/11 Commission Report, p. 555
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf
(32) Salon, 21.11.01, “Why Daschle and Leahy?”, Anthony York
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