Re: 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism Made in USA, by Webster Tarpley
Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:46 am
PART 2 OF 3 (CH. 16 CONT'D.)
THE NEOCONS UNDER ATTACK
The neocons were deeply concerned about their own personal fate. During their ascent, this exceptionally ideological and close-knit faction had by its arrogance and incompetence made many enemies. During May, there were repeated editorial calls for the firing of not just Rumsfeld, but also of Wolfowitz and the other neocons who had made such a mess of the Pentagon. The demand to oust Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz was raised by the veteran Republican Senators who exercised great authority within that party. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak, in a Washington Post op-ed on the Chalabi scandal, commented: "Republican Senators, who do not yet want to be quoted by name, feel there must be some accountability for this massive blunder, as there must be for the prisoner abuse scandal. They want the President at least to consider" firing Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and perhaps others of the neo-con gang. The senior Republican Congressional leaders were backed in this, by high U.S. military brass. (Time, May 25, New York Times May 24, 2004) According to press accounts, Senators Warner and McCain led a group of about a dozen senior GOP leaders who called on Bush to demand the sacking of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as a matter of urgent political expediency. Bush reportedly sat stony-faced and said nothing.
The May 20 US military/mercenary raid against the Baghdad offices of Ahmed Chalabi pointed to a new and grave danger for many top Bush administration and neocon figures. Chalabi was of course the darling of the neocons, who had channeled upwards of $40 million in official US government funding to him. He was the source of fantastic reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and of the eagerness of the Iraqi masses to rise up in revolt against Saddam Hussein. It now turned out that Chalabi had betrayed a vital US state secret to his patrons in Iran by telling the Iranians that the US had broken the secret code used by Iranian diplomats and agents. This revelation alerted the Iranians to their vulnerability, and cut off a key means of US espionage against Iran and its partners. The question thus arose as to who in the US government could have given Chalabi such highly classified information, thus committing a very serious federal crime. Chalabi's closest contacts were known to have been Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and a few others. This issue became the subject of an FBI investigation of these and other top Bushmen. The information that Chalabi and his intelligence chief Aras Karim Habit were alleged to have passed to the government of Iran "was highly classified, and known only to a few in the U.S. government," wrote Time's Romesh Ratnesar. "The probe will examine whether U.S. officials illegally transmitted state secrets to the INC. The investigation could ultimately reach high-ranking civilian officials at the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency who had dealings with Chalabi and his organization." Ratnesar cited "a senior U.S. official" as his source. New York Times reporters David Johnston and Richard Oppel, Jr. also citing "government officials," called the information "so highly classified that federal investigators have intensified their inquiry to find out whether anyone in the American government gave the material to Mr. Chalabi." They also cited "intelligence officials" saying that the probe, by the FBI, centered on the handful of U.S. officials with regular contact with Chalabi in Washington, and an even smaller number who had access to the intelligence. "Most of them were at the Pentagon," they wrote; however, Chalabi himself, on "Meet the Press" on May 23, acknowledged three personal meetings with Vice President Cheney. Leading neocons not currently serving in government, such as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Kenneth Timmerman, and Laurie Mylroie, vociferously defended Chalabi. (Time, May 25, New York Times May 24, 2004)
There was also the special prosecutor investigating the leaking to Robert Novak of the fact that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson (who exposed the fraud of the Bush 2002 State of the Union charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake in Niger) was working for the CIA. Prime suspects were Bush's political strategist Karl Rove, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Revealing the identity of a CIA agent is a serious felony under federal law.
Allegedly in regard to the Valerie Plame leak investigation, Bush retained his own private attorney, Jim Sharp. Sharp had represented Gen. Richard Secord, yet another Iran-contra figure, who was accused of taking part in the illegal arms shipments of the mid-1980s. Cheney already had a private lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell of the Washington DC law firm Williams & Connelly. According to Capitol Hill Blue of June 3, sources familiar with the Federal investigation say that Bush knew about the Plame leak, and that he took no action to stop the release of Plame's name. This would make him accessory to a serious federal crime.
At the root of the Valerie Plame affair was the role of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. This fake story was buttressed by documents which turned out to be forged. Of interest in this regard was the neocon ideologue Ledeen, because the faked documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen possessed extensive contacts. A federal grand jury was formed to investigate this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush officials, was an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W. Bush-Poindexter- Abrams-Oliver North Iran- contra gun-running and drug-running scandal, and mobilized these networks as part of the post 9/11 assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian regime. After the conquest of Iraq, Rhode was sent to Baghdad as the contact point between the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi. Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22, 2003 interview with Newsweek's Mark Hosenball, reported that he maintained contact with Rhode and Franklin "five or six times a week" through June 2003, when he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. This back channel to the Iranians came under intense scrutiny.
Richard Perle was the target of a huge civil suit growing out of his alleged involvement in the fraudulent conveyances and embezzlement carried out by the neocon press baron and moneybags Lord Conrad Black, who may have taken money from Hollinger to help fund neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute. Perle had worked closely with the purloining Lord in recent years, and might also face criminal charges in this case. A report prepared for the Hollinger board by Richard C. Breeden, a former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, called on Perle to give back $5.4 million to Hollinger. (Washington Post, September 1, 2004)
Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern warned that the allegedly "credible intelligence" cited by Ashcroft in his warning that Al-Qaeda is preparing to "hit the United States" was most likely yet another fabrication. "'Intelligence is being conjured up once again to serve the political purposes of the Bush administration," McGovern wrote. According to McGovern, "the President, Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, et al. have a deeply personal incentive to make four more years for Bush a sure thing." McGovern noted that according to a memo issued by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales on January 25, administration officials might be prosecuted for "war crimes" because of the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan. Gonzales stressed that "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions are war crimes under U.S. law, and added: "It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges" based on the War Crimes Act passed by Congress in 1996. Gonzales urged Bush to declare that the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war does not apply to Taliban or Al-Qaeda detainees, and that such a determination "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." And all that, McGovern notes, was before the Abu Ghraib revelations. McGovern continued:
In an interview with Amy Goodman's Democracy Now radio program, McGovern commented on the significance of Bush's retaining an attorney. Among the things on Bush's mind, McGovern repeated, is that he might be facing a war crimes prosecution if voted out of office. Another issue for Bush, according to McGovern, is that "four more years becomes even more important to me and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld," because of the war crimes indictments hanging over their heads. McGovern: "I say this, because I am more frightened now than at any time over the last three and a half years, that this administration will resort to extra-legal methods, to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush." (Democracy Now, June 4, 2004)
On June 3, CIA Director George Tenet announced his resignation, and was quickly joined by the CIA Deputy Director of Operations, James L. Pavitt, the spymaster of clandestine services. Tenet was evidently forced out by Bush and Cheney, but was willing to portray his own dismissal as a resignation for family reasons, mainly his desire to spend more time with his adolescent son. Tenet, as a Clinton holdover, was not a doctrinaire Straussian or Skull & Bones member, and thus was not and could never be a member of the Bush/neocon core group. For many weeks, neocons like Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich and others had been attempting to scapegoat Tenet for the US disasters in Iraq and elsewhere. Tenet did of course preside over 9/11 and the Iraq invasion, which established a prima facie case of his incompetence (or complicity). His departure allowed Bush to claim that there was some accountability in the current administration. More germane to the issue of the coming terrorism, Tenet was so discredited as to have become a controversial symbol of the failure of the Bush administration to defend the US. In a speech the previous week, even Tenet's friend Al Gore had demanded his resignation. With Tenet still in office, a coming terror event might have given rise to a wave of accusation and resentment against a CIA Director who by that time would have failed in warding off not only 9/11, but also whatever the second wave had to offer.
In the immediate aftermath of the Tenet ouster, the neocon gang appeared to have gained a monetary respite. Douglas Jehl of The New York Times reported on June 5 that the simultaneous departure of Tenet and Pavitt has shifted the balance of power within the US intelligence community in favor of the Pentagon neocons. Jehl writes that "Without Mr. Tenet in place, the power balance in a rivalry between the CIA and the Defense Department may tilt more toward Stephen Cambone." Jehl attributed this view to "Congressional officials." (NYT, 5 June 2004)
In the wake of the Tenet resignation, indications began to surface that the mental disintegration of "dry drunk" Bush had gone farther than usually surmised. Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue wrote: "President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state ..." The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works. "Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'That's it, George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."' Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will." (Capitol Hill Blue, 4 June 2004) Perhaps the tenant of the White House needed to get his thyroid checked.
COUNTERVAILING TENDENCIES?
By summer 2004, the situation of the party of terrorism inside the United States was uncertain. The political leaders who would be the beneficiaries of new terror attacks were figures like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Ridge, and the neocon Gestapo (as Colin Powell calls it) in general. The main agencies for their dictatorship would be FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), Ridge's Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. The US military, especially the US Army, had become profoundly disillusioned with the Bush-Cheney preventive war policy. They also resented being scapegoated for the Abu Graib atrocities, which were ordered by CIA, DIA, and Cheney's mercenary contractors. Some generals realized that a successful terror coup, which would have had the result of cementing the current gang in power for the foreseeable future -- without benefit of checks and balances -- would guarantee that US forces would be fed into meatgrinders far worse than Iraq. In addition to Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, a post-coup US regime could not avoid collision with China and/or Russia. It remained to be seen whether this awareness would be enough to motivate the US military to do something to stop such a coup. Similar considerations apply to the State Department, which had virtually no place in the post- coup world eagerly planned by the neocons. Incredibly, the Congress was conniving in its own liquidation with a bill ordering instant elections to replace deceased Congressmen, which passed the House.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to the Clinton Administration working with Salon.com, wrote a piece in the Guardian on how the U.S. officer corps had turned against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The piece, was headlined "America's Military Coup." Retired General William Odom, who was the head of the National Security Agency, the main US electronic spying center, and who had moved to the Hudson Institute, was quoted saying: "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq. It is a diversion from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is phony; the US army is overstretched and being driven into the ground; and the prospect of building a democracy is zero. In Iraqi politics legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail -- that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision." Another military figure told Blumenthal that Rumsfeld was "detested" and that "if there's a sentiment in the army it is: support our troops, impeach Rumsfeld." Blumenthal then referenced an essay by Lt. Col. Charles Dunlap which had received a prize in 1992 from then General Colin Powell. The title of the piece was "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," which was a cautionary tale of how the U.S.. military launched a coup because of the failures of the civilian government. (Guardian, May 13, 2004) Former CENTCOM commanders Zinni and Hoar also published attacks on the Rumsfeld- olfowitz policies. One account suggested that, given the degree of military hatred against the administration, any other country would have already witnessed a military coup.
Ashcroft had claimed that just after the Madrid bombing, an Al-Qaeda spokesman had announced that "90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete." But Newsweek terrorism writers Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball pointed out that the only known basis for Ashcroft's claim was a note sent to a London Arabic newspaper immediately after the Madrid bombing, which said that a major attack against the United States was "90 percent ready." The authenticity of this report was questioned at the time by some U.S. officials. (Newsweek web exclusive, May 26, 2004
TERRORIZING THE CONGRESS
On June 9, the US Capitol, including Congress and the Supreme Court, was evacuated in panic because of a report that an airplane without a transponder was approaching Washington DC. The plane turned out to belong to the Governor Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, who was coming to attend the funeral of former President Reagan, but authorities appear to have used this incident to terrorize the Congress in an unprecedented manner. Photographers, Secret Service agents and members of a military choir were finishing preparations for the Rotunda ceremony when Capitol Police suddenly burst in, shouting: "Evacuate the building now! Now! Move! Move!" Congressmen, senators, and staff members ran like rabbits as police officers shouted "This is not a drill!" Some jettisoned briefcases and laptops, and women flung off high heels. Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, reported that police had told people to "run, get out of the Capitol," because of the "imminent" approach of an airplane. Nearby, on the Mall, U.S. Park Police and Capitol Police also ordered people to flee. "Do not stop," officers yelled. "Keep moving." "Ladies and gentlemen, let's move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!" a D.C. police officer shouted. F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters were sent to intercept the errant twin-engine turboprop plane. The plane's transponder, which signals its identifying information to ground controllers, was broken, Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the press later. (Washington Post, June 10, 2004)
The July 4 Independence Day holiday was marked by a pattern of hysterical terror propaganda in the US mass media. Part of this was the publicity campaign around the new book, Imperial Hubris, about to be published by Brassey's, which was attributed to Anonymous, a currently serving officer of the CIA whose real name was allegedly Michael Scheuer. Anonymous was said to have been the first leader of the CIA's Osama Bin Laden station during the mid-1990s, which did not inspire confidence. At the center of the hype over this book, pushed by CNN's David Ensor and others, was the assurance that an ABC terror attack on the US was imminent. The New York Times of June 23 quoted Anonymous as having "a pressing certainty that Al Qaeda will attack the continental United States again, that its next strike will be more damaging than that of 11 September 2001, and could include use of weapons of mass destruction." Anonymous openly lionized Bin Laden, saying that Bin Laden's vast accomplishments were due to the fact that he actually believed deeply in something. Anonymous, following the line of Richard Clarke, was highly critical of the Bush regime for having deviated from the true existential world struggle against al Qaeda: "There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion of Iraq," wrote Anonymous, who described Bush as al Qaeda's ideal American president. What emerged from the Clarke and Anonymous volumes taken together was a growing recognition in US ruling circles that the Iraq adventure had long since crossed the line into irrevocable disaster. Their concern was therefore to safeguard oligarchical rule post-Iraq. To obtain this, they were more than willing to jettison the pathetically incompetent Bush regime and its phalanx of discredited neocon ideologues. But Clarke and Anonymous were both the type of bureaucrat who could expect to enjoy vastly increased power under martial law. The Clarke-Anonymous attempt was therefore to preserve false-flag terrorism in the guise of al Qaeda as the indispensable means of social control for the indefinite future. In this regard they appeared more than willing to tolerate a new round of ABC/WMD terrorism to make sure that the terror card remained available, since they evidently could see no other way of maintaining the current system.
Even more explicit was the book Osama's Revenge, whose author, the "former FBI consultant" Paul L. Williams, was publicized by Fox News on June 28, 2004. According to Williams, Osama Bin Laden already had 20 Soviet-made suitcase bombs, and these weapons were already in the United States! Williams estimated al Qaeda's strength in this country at about 5,000 sleeper agents ready for action. He also cited a warning that New York City was a nuclear target which was allegedly given by Tenet to Bush in October 2001, but never communicated to Mayor Giuliani.
To organize the terror drumbeat more effectively, the Bush White House was known to fax inflammatory and apocalyptic talking points on terrorism to its phalanx of reactionary talk show hosts. On June 24 at 2:25 PM on Fox News, the "terrorist and security expert" Harvey Kushner opined that al Qaeda is certain to attack the United States during the summer. On June 30 at 4:55 PM, Col. Oliver North (sitting in for the vacationing neofascist syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh) announced that the lesson of Madrid was that there was sure to be a large-scale terror attack in the US before the November elections.
CALLING OFF THE ELECTIONS
At this time, the Bush regime also openly broached the question of calling off the November presidential election, something that had not been done in the midst of real shooting wars in 1864 and 1944. According to Newsweek, DeForest Soaries, the chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission, had asked Ridge to urge Congress to pass legislation giving the government power to cancel or reschedule a federal election. Soaries noted that New York City had suspended its primary elections on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, but the federal government did not possess that authority.
Ironically, the US Election Assistance Commission was a new agency which had been created in the wake of the 2000 election fiasco. Left liberals were disturbed; The Nation published a parody of a future Bush speech announcing there would be no vote.
This first wave of Bush-inspired election cancellation propaganda peaked in mid-July 2004. At this point neocon ideologue Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute proposed the creation of a kind of committee of public safety of top-level oligarchs who would have the function of calling off elections. According to Ornstein,
With all the arid banality of the true neocon, Ornstein did not face the fact that his new oligarchical commission would in effect have become the supreme governing authority of the United States, although he is probably aware of this. Ornstein's proposal amounted to subverting the constitution while granting dictatorial power to the discredited hacks who bore much of the responsibility for the country's predicament, be it through their sins of omission or of commission.
As the presidential campaign unfolded, the Bush campaign showed a cynical willingness to use terror threats and terror demagogy as a kind of political auxiliary to their efforts. During the days just after Kerry had announced his choice of Senator Edwards as his vice presidential candidate, the lugubrious and plodding Tom Ridge of the Department of Homeland Security called a press conference to announce that there was a new, but wholly undefined, threat on the horizon. Ridge had obviously taken over the ministry of fear portfolio from Ashcroft, who was too widely hated and too discredited to be effective. Ridge's remarks were clearly aimed at chopping off the Edwards bounce for the Democrats. Some Democrats grumbled.
The Democratic National Convention ended in Boston on Thursday, July 29. Here again, a modest five-point pop in the polls for Kerry was observable. But on the afternoon of Sunday, August 1, it was Ridge's turn once again, this time with a litany of threats against the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC, against Prudential in Newark, and against the New York Stock Exchange and Citibank in Manhattan. It was Howard Dean who spoke up with refreshing candor, pointing to the obvious political motivation and political timing of the new wave of Bush terror demagogy. Speaking on CNN Late Edition, Dean said that he was "concerned that every time that something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays his trump card, which is terrorism. His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me. "'
With that, Dean had confirmed his historical merit of being the only national politician willing to challenge the sanctimonious shibboleths of the new terror state. He was immediately taken to task by neocon Democrat Joe Lieberman, less a monotheist than a zealous adept of the cult of Deimos and Phobos, the gods of fear and terror. "That's outrageous," said Lieberman of the what was merely obvious. GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority whip and apostle of venal election practice also criticized Dean. "I think that's the most cynical view," whined McConnell. "The president, after all, is the president, even if he's running for re-election." Dean courageously rejected the idea that he, Dean, was responsible for politicizing the terror threat, pointing out that it was Bush who had done this. "When you're going to run on inspiring fear in the American people, that's politics," Dean countered. "The president himself made the choice to inject politics into the campaign on terrorism. That was his choice. He's now going to have to live with the consequences." CNN later conducted a poll among its viewers to see how many thought that the new terror alert was a political stunt.
It soon became known that the allegedly urgent information upon which this orange alert was based was about four years old, and had just turned up in a computer captured in Pakistan. One thinks of Tony Blair's use of old term papers, Readers Digest articles, and messages found in hollow trees for his various imaginative and opportunistic dossiers. A senior law enforcement official told a reporter: "There is nothing right now that is new. Why did we go to this level? ... I still don't know that." (Washington Post, August 3, 2004)
On August 12, Kerry ventured to attack Bush for having dawdled with the second graders at the Booker School, listening to "My Pet Goat" while hundreds of Americans died. Responding to Kerry's attacks a day or two later, Bush claimed that he had been collecting his thoughts while he remained with the children, and even suggested that what he did in the first minutes was not important. "What is relevant," according to Bush, "is whether or not I understand and understood then the stakes .... And I made a determination that we would do everything we could to bring those killers to justice and to protect the American people." Bush told Larry King of CNN that "it's easy to second- guess a moment," said Bush; the important thing was that he quickly "recognized we were at war" and mobilized the nation for his series of wars. (Washington Post, August 13, 2004) Bush clearly wasted more than 15 minutes after the North Tower impact, and wasted another 7 minutes after the South Tower impact. In that time, he should have been issuing crisp orders to mobilize air defenses, deploy combat air patrols, cut through layers of bureaucracy, and generally administer a bureaucratic blow-torch to a corrupt and somnolent bureaucracy that was honeycombed with subversive moles. But Bush, who had been on vacation for much of his time in office before September 11, did none of these things. Bush nevertheless made his own supposed prowess on 9/11 the theme of the Republican National Convention at the end of August and the beginning of September.
THE NEOCONS UNDER ATTACK
The neocons were deeply concerned about their own personal fate. During their ascent, this exceptionally ideological and close-knit faction had by its arrogance and incompetence made many enemies. During May, there were repeated editorial calls for the firing of not just Rumsfeld, but also of Wolfowitz and the other neocons who had made such a mess of the Pentagon. The demand to oust Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz was raised by the veteran Republican Senators who exercised great authority within that party. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak, in a Washington Post op-ed on the Chalabi scandal, commented: "Republican Senators, who do not yet want to be quoted by name, feel there must be some accountability for this massive blunder, as there must be for the prisoner abuse scandal. They want the President at least to consider" firing Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and perhaps others of the neo-con gang. The senior Republican Congressional leaders were backed in this, by high U.S. military brass. (Time, May 25, New York Times May 24, 2004) According to press accounts, Senators Warner and McCain led a group of about a dozen senior GOP leaders who called on Bush to demand the sacking of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as a matter of urgent political expediency. Bush reportedly sat stony-faced and said nothing.
The May 20 US military/mercenary raid against the Baghdad offices of Ahmed Chalabi pointed to a new and grave danger for many top Bush administration and neocon figures. Chalabi was of course the darling of the neocons, who had channeled upwards of $40 million in official US government funding to him. He was the source of fantastic reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and of the eagerness of the Iraqi masses to rise up in revolt against Saddam Hussein. It now turned out that Chalabi had betrayed a vital US state secret to his patrons in Iran by telling the Iranians that the US had broken the secret code used by Iranian diplomats and agents. This revelation alerted the Iranians to their vulnerability, and cut off a key means of US espionage against Iran and its partners. The question thus arose as to who in the US government could have given Chalabi such highly classified information, thus committing a very serious federal crime. Chalabi's closest contacts were known to have been Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and a few others. This issue became the subject of an FBI investigation of these and other top Bushmen. The information that Chalabi and his intelligence chief Aras Karim Habit were alleged to have passed to the government of Iran "was highly classified, and known only to a few in the U.S. government," wrote Time's Romesh Ratnesar. "The probe will examine whether U.S. officials illegally transmitted state secrets to the INC. The investigation could ultimately reach high-ranking civilian officials at the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency who had dealings with Chalabi and his organization." Ratnesar cited "a senior U.S. official" as his source. New York Times reporters David Johnston and Richard Oppel, Jr. also citing "government officials," called the information "so highly classified that federal investigators have intensified their inquiry to find out whether anyone in the American government gave the material to Mr. Chalabi." They also cited "intelligence officials" saying that the probe, by the FBI, centered on the handful of U.S. officials with regular contact with Chalabi in Washington, and an even smaller number who had access to the intelligence. "Most of them were at the Pentagon," they wrote; however, Chalabi himself, on "Meet the Press" on May 23, acknowledged three personal meetings with Vice President Cheney. Leading neocons not currently serving in government, such as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Kenneth Timmerman, and Laurie Mylroie, vociferously defended Chalabi. (Time, May 25, New York Times May 24, 2004)
There was also the special prosecutor investigating the leaking to Robert Novak of the fact that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson (who exposed the fraud of the Bush 2002 State of the Union charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake in Niger) was working for the CIA. Prime suspects were Bush's political strategist Karl Rove, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Revealing the identity of a CIA agent is a serious felony under federal law.
Allegedly in regard to the Valerie Plame leak investigation, Bush retained his own private attorney, Jim Sharp. Sharp had represented Gen. Richard Secord, yet another Iran-contra figure, who was accused of taking part in the illegal arms shipments of the mid-1980s. Cheney already had a private lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell of the Washington DC law firm Williams & Connelly. According to Capitol Hill Blue of June 3, sources familiar with the Federal investigation say that Bush knew about the Plame leak, and that he took no action to stop the release of Plame's name. This would make him accessory to a serious federal crime.
At the root of the Valerie Plame affair was the role of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. This fake story was buttressed by documents which turned out to be forged. Of interest in this regard was the neocon ideologue Ledeen, because the faked documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen possessed extensive contacts. A federal grand jury was formed to investigate this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush officials, was an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W. Bush-Poindexter- Abrams-Oliver North Iran- contra gun-running and drug-running scandal, and mobilized these networks as part of the post 9/11 assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian regime. After the conquest of Iraq, Rhode was sent to Baghdad as the contact point between the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi. Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22, 2003 interview with Newsweek's Mark Hosenball, reported that he maintained contact with Rhode and Franklin "five or six times a week" through June 2003, when he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. This back channel to the Iranians came under intense scrutiny.
Richard Perle was the target of a huge civil suit growing out of his alleged involvement in the fraudulent conveyances and embezzlement carried out by the neocon press baron and moneybags Lord Conrad Black, who may have taken money from Hollinger to help fund neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute. Perle had worked closely with the purloining Lord in recent years, and might also face criminal charges in this case. A report prepared for the Hollinger board by Richard C. Breeden, a former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, called on Perle to give back $5.4 million to Hollinger. (Washington Post, September 1, 2004)
Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern warned that the allegedly "credible intelligence" cited by Ashcroft in his warning that Al-Qaeda is preparing to "hit the United States" was most likely yet another fabrication. "'Intelligence is being conjured up once again to serve the political purposes of the Bush administration," McGovern wrote. According to McGovern, "the President, Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, et al. have a deeply personal incentive to make four more years for Bush a sure thing." McGovern noted that according to a memo issued by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales on January 25, administration officials might be prosecuted for "war crimes" because of the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan. Gonzales stressed that "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions are war crimes under U.S. law, and added: "It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges" based on the War Crimes Act passed by Congress in 1996. Gonzales urged Bush to declare that the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war does not apply to Taliban or Al-Qaeda detainees, and that such a determination "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." And all that, McGovern notes, was before the Abu Ghraib revelations. McGovern continued:
For the Bush administration, the nightmare is losing the November election -- a prospect believed to be unlikely until just recently. For many of us citizens, the nightmare is the President and his associates resorting to extra-legal measures to ensure that there is no regime change in Washington for four more years ... Yes, this could mean a constitutional crisis without parallel in the history of our country .... But was there not a good warm-up in the fall of 2002? Did we not then experience a constitutional crisis when Congress was duped into ceding to the President its constitutional power to declare war? And it was all accomplished by spreading the myth that Saddam Hussein was close to exploding a mushroom cloud over us -- a myth based on a known forgery alleging that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Africa. Could an elevated threat level be used as a means of justifying martial law and postponement of the election? No doubt such suggestions will seem too alarmist to those trusting that there is a moral line, somewhere, that the President and his senior advisers would not cross. I regret very much to say that their behavior over the past three years leaves me doubtful that there is such a line .... If my doubts are justified, the sooner we all come to grips with this parlous situation the better. (Ray McGovern syndicated column, June 1; Common Dreams, June 2, 2004)
In an interview with Amy Goodman's Democracy Now radio program, McGovern commented on the significance of Bush's retaining an attorney. Among the things on Bush's mind, McGovern repeated, is that he might be facing a war crimes prosecution if voted out of office. Another issue for Bush, according to McGovern, is that "four more years becomes even more important to me and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld," because of the war crimes indictments hanging over their heads. McGovern: "I say this, because I am more frightened now than at any time over the last three and a half years, that this administration will resort to extra-legal methods, to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush." (Democracy Now, June 4, 2004)
On June 3, CIA Director George Tenet announced his resignation, and was quickly joined by the CIA Deputy Director of Operations, James L. Pavitt, the spymaster of clandestine services. Tenet was evidently forced out by Bush and Cheney, but was willing to portray his own dismissal as a resignation for family reasons, mainly his desire to spend more time with his adolescent son. Tenet, as a Clinton holdover, was not a doctrinaire Straussian or Skull & Bones member, and thus was not and could never be a member of the Bush/neocon core group. For many weeks, neocons like Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich and others had been attempting to scapegoat Tenet for the US disasters in Iraq and elsewhere. Tenet did of course preside over 9/11 and the Iraq invasion, which established a prima facie case of his incompetence (or complicity). His departure allowed Bush to claim that there was some accountability in the current administration. More germane to the issue of the coming terrorism, Tenet was so discredited as to have become a controversial symbol of the failure of the Bush administration to defend the US. In a speech the previous week, even Tenet's friend Al Gore had demanded his resignation. With Tenet still in office, a coming terror event might have given rise to a wave of accusation and resentment against a CIA Director who by that time would have failed in warding off not only 9/11, but also whatever the second wave had to offer.
In the immediate aftermath of the Tenet ouster, the neocon gang appeared to have gained a monetary respite. Douglas Jehl of The New York Times reported on June 5 that the simultaneous departure of Tenet and Pavitt has shifted the balance of power within the US intelligence community in favor of the Pentagon neocons. Jehl writes that "Without Mr. Tenet in place, the power balance in a rivalry between the CIA and the Defense Department may tilt more toward Stephen Cambone." Jehl attributed this view to "Congressional officials." (NYT, 5 June 2004)
In the wake of the Tenet resignation, indications began to surface that the mental disintegration of "dry drunk" Bush had gone farther than usually surmised. Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue wrote: "President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state ..." The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works. "Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'That's it, George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."' Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will." (Capitol Hill Blue, 4 June 2004) Perhaps the tenant of the White House needed to get his thyroid checked.
COUNTERVAILING TENDENCIES?
By summer 2004, the situation of the party of terrorism inside the United States was uncertain. The political leaders who would be the beneficiaries of new terror attacks were figures like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Ridge, and the neocon Gestapo (as Colin Powell calls it) in general. The main agencies for their dictatorship would be FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), Ridge's Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. The US military, especially the US Army, had become profoundly disillusioned with the Bush-Cheney preventive war policy. They also resented being scapegoated for the Abu Graib atrocities, which were ordered by CIA, DIA, and Cheney's mercenary contractors. Some generals realized that a successful terror coup, which would have had the result of cementing the current gang in power for the foreseeable future -- without benefit of checks and balances -- would guarantee that US forces would be fed into meatgrinders far worse than Iraq. In addition to Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, a post-coup US regime could not avoid collision with China and/or Russia. It remained to be seen whether this awareness would be enough to motivate the US military to do something to stop such a coup. Similar considerations apply to the State Department, which had virtually no place in the post- coup world eagerly planned by the neocons. Incredibly, the Congress was conniving in its own liquidation with a bill ordering instant elections to replace deceased Congressmen, which passed the House.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to the Clinton Administration working with Salon.com, wrote a piece in the Guardian on how the U.S. officer corps had turned against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The piece, was headlined "America's Military Coup." Retired General William Odom, who was the head of the National Security Agency, the main US electronic spying center, and who had moved to the Hudson Institute, was quoted saying: "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq. It is a diversion from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is phony; the US army is overstretched and being driven into the ground; and the prospect of building a democracy is zero. In Iraqi politics legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail -- that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision." Another military figure told Blumenthal that Rumsfeld was "detested" and that "if there's a sentiment in the army it is: support our troops, impeach Rumsfeld." Blumenthal then referenced an essay by Lt. Col. Charles Dunlap which had received a prize in 1992 from then General Colin Powell. The title of the piece was "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," which was a cautionary tale of how the U.S.. military launched a coup because of the failures of the civilian government. (Guardian, May 13, 2004) Former CENTCOM commanders Zinni and Hoar also published attacks on the Rumsfeld- olfowitz policies. One account suggested that, given the degree of military hatred against the administration, any other country would have already witnessed a military coup.
Ashcroft had claimed that just after the Madrid bombing, an Al-Qaeda spokesman had announced that "90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete." But Newsweek terrorism writers Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball pointed out that the only known basis for Ashcroft's claim was a note sent to a London Arabic newspaper immediately after the Madrid bombing, which said that a major attack against the United States was "90 percent ready." The authenticity of this report was questioned at the time by some U.S. officials. (Newsweek web exclusive, May 26, 2004
TERRORIZING THE CONGRESS
On June 9, the US Capitol, including Congress and the Supreme Court, was evacuated in panic because of a report that an airplane without a transponder was approaching Washington DC. The plane turned out to belong to the Governor Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, who was coming to attend the funeral of former President Reagan, but authorities appear to have used this incident to terrorize the Congress in an unprecedented manner. Photographers, Secret Service agents and members of a military choir were finishing preparations for the Rotunda ceremony when Capitol Police suddenly burst in, shouting: "Evacuate the building now! Now! Move! Move!" Congressmen, senators, and staff members ran like rabbits as police officers shouted "This is not a drill!" Some jettisoned briefcases and laptops, and women flung off high heels. Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, reported that police had told people to "run, get out of the Capitol," because of the "imminent" approach of an airplane. Nearby, on the Mall, U.S. Park Police and Capitol Police also ordered people to flee. "Do not stop," officers yelled. "Keep moving." "Ladies and gentlemen, let's move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!" a D.C. police officer shouted. F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters were sent to intercept the errant twin-engine turboprop plane. The plane's transponder, which signals its identifying information to ground controllers, was broken, Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the press later. (Washington Post, June 10, 2004)
The July 4 Independence Day holiday was marked by a pattern of hysterical terror propaganda in the US mass media. Part of this was the publicity campaign around the new book, Imperial Hubris, about to be published by Brassey's, which was attributed to Anonymous, a currently serving officer of the CIA whose real name was allegedly Michael Scheuer. Anonymous was said to have been the first leader of the CIA's Osama Bin Laden station during the mid-1990s, which did not inspire confidence. At the center of the hype over this book, pushed by CNN's David Ensor and others, was the assurance that an ABC terror attack on the US was imminent. The New York Times of June 23 quoted Anonymous as having "a pressing certainty that Al Qaeda will attack the continental United States again, that its next strike will be more damaging than that of 11 September 2001, and could include use of weapons of mass destruction." Anonymous openly lionized Bin Laden, saying that Bin Laden's vast accomplishments were due to the fact that he actually believed deeply in something. Anonymous, following the line of Richard Clarke, was highly critical of the Bush regime for having deviated from the true existential world struggle against al Qaeda: "There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion of Iraq," wrote Anonymous, who described Bush as al Qaeda's ideal American president. What emerged from the Clarke and Anonymous volumes taken together was a growing recognition in US ruling circles that the Iraq adventure had long since crossed the line into irrevocable disaster. Their concern was therefore to safeguard oligarchical rule post-Iraq. To obtain this, they were more than willing to jettison the pathetically incompetent Bush regime and its phalanx of discredited neocon ideologues. But Clarke and Anonymous were both the type of bureaucrat who could expect to enjoy vastly increased power under martial law. The Clarke-Anonymous attempt was therefore to preserve false-flag terrorism in the guise of al Qaeda as the indispensable means of social control for the indefinite future. In this regard they appeared more than willing to tolerate a new round of ABC/WMD terrorism to make sure that the terror card remained available, since they evidently could see no other way of maintaining the current system.
Even more explicit was the book Osama's Revenge, whose author, the "former FBI consultant" Paul L. Williams, was publicized by Fox News on June 28, 2004. According to Williams, Osama Bin Laden already had 20 Soviet-made suitcase bombs, and these weapons were already in the United States! Williams estimated al Qaeda's strength in this country at about 5,000 sleeper agents ready for action. He also cited a warning that New York City was a nuclear target which was allegedly given by Tenet to Bush in October 2001, but never communicated to Mayor Giuliani.
To organize the terror drumbeat more effectively, the Bush White House was known to fax inflammatory and apocalyptic talking points on terrorism to its phalanx of reactionary talk show hosts. On June 24 at 2:25 PM on Fox News, the "terrorist and security expert" Harvey Kushner opined that al Qaeda is certain to attack the United States during the summer. On June 30 at 4:55 PM, Col. Oliver North (sitting in for the vacationing neofascist syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh) announced that the lesson of Madrid was that there was sure to be a large-scale terror attack in the US before the November elections.
CALLING OFF THE ELECTIONS
At this time, the Bush regime also openly broached the question of calling off the November presidential election, something that had not been done in the midst of real shooting wars in 1864 and 1944. According to Newsweek, DeForest Soaries, the chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission, had asked Ridge to urge Congress to pass legislation giving the government power to cancel or reschedule a federal election. Soaries noted that New York City had suspended its primary elections on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, but the federal government did not possess that authority.
Ironically, the US Election Assistance Commission was a new agency which had been created in the wake of the 2000 election fiasco. Left liberals were disturbed; The Nation published a parody of a future Bush speech announcing there would be no vote.
This first wave of Bush-inspired election cancellation propaganda peaked in mid-July 2004. At this point neocon ideologue Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute proposed the creation of a kind of committee of public safety of top-level oligarchs who would have the function of calling off elections. According to Ornstein,
Congress should pass a law creating a blue-ribbon commission to which it would delegate the authority to make decisions about postponement of presidential and congressional elections in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or major natural disaster. The commission should consist of people with high profiles and impeccable reputations for integrity, and include some people with experience in election administration. From the public sector, the kinds of people to consider would include former senators such as Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson; former representatives such as Tom Foley, Lee Hamilton, Bob Walker and John Brademas; former Cabinet members such as Lynn Martin and Donna Shalala; and leaders of business, labor and higher education who have comparable reputations and public profiles .... The commission would function only if a disaster triggered the need for a decision, and it would operate under a specific set of directives that would make a decision to postpone any election, in whole or in part, the last recourse. Such a decision should be made only through broad consensus, requiring a two-thirds vote by the commission. (Washington Post, July 16, 2004)
With all the arid banality of the true neocon, Ornstein did not face the fact that his new oligarchical commission would in effect have become the supreme governing authority of the United States, although he is probably aware of this. Ornstein's proposal amounted to subverting the constitution while granting dictatorial power to the discredited hacks who bore much of the responsibility for the country's predicament, be it through their sins of omission or of commission.
As the presidential campaign unfolded, the Bush campaign showed a cynical willingness to use terror threats and terror demagogy as a kind of political auxiliary to their efforts. During the days just after Kerry had announced his choice of Senator Edwards as his vice presidential candidate, the lugubrious and plodding Tom Ridge of the Department of Homeland Security called a press conference to announce that there was a new, but wholly undefined, threat on the horizon. Ridge had obviously taken over the ministry of fear portfolio from Ashcroft, who was too widely hated and too discredited to be effective. Ridge's remarks were clearly aimed at chopping off the Edwards bounce for the Democrats. Some Democrats grumbled.
The Democratic National Convention ended in Boston on Thursday, July 29. Here again, a modest five-point pop in the polls for Kerry was observable. But on the afternoon of Sunday, August 1, it was Ridge's turn once again, this time with a litany of threats against the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC, against Prudential in Newark, and against the New York Stock Exchange and Citibank in Manhattan. It was Howard Dean who spoke up with refreshing candor, pointing to the obvious political motivation and political timing of the new wave of Bush terror demagogy. Speaking on CNN Late Edition, Dean said that he was "concerned that every time that something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays his trump card, which is terrorism. His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me. "'
With that, Dean had confirmed his historical merit of being the only national politician willing to challenge the sanctimonious shibboleths of the new terror state. He was immediately taken to task by neocon Democrat Joe Lieberman, less a monotheist than a zealous adept of the cult of Deimos and Phobos, the gods of fear and terror. "That's outrageous," said Lieberman of the what was merely obvious. GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority whip and apostle of venal election practice also criticized Dean. "I think that's the most cynical view," whined McConnell. "The president, after all, is the president, even if he's running for re-election." Dean courageously rejected the idea that he, Dean, was responsible for politicizing the terror threat, pointing out that it was Bush who had done this. "When you're going to run on inspiring fear in the American people, that's politics," Dean countered. "The president himself made the choice to inject politics into the campaign on terrorism. That was his choice. He's now going to have to live with the consequences." CNN later conducted a poll among its viewers to see how many thought that the new terror alert was a political stunt.
It soon became known that the allegedly urgent information upon which this orange alert was based was about four years old, and had just turned up in a computer captured in Pakistan. One thinks of Tony Blair's use of old term papers, Readers Digest articles, and messages found in hollow trees for his various imaginative and opportunistic dossiers. A senior law enforcement official told a reporter: "There is nothing right now that is new. Why did we go to this level? ... I still don't know that." (Washington Post, August 3, 2004)
On August 12, Kerry ventured to attack Bush for having dawdled with the second graders at the Booker School, listening to "My Pet Goat" while hundreds of Americans died. Responding to Kerry's attacks a day or two later, Bush claimed that he had been collecting his thoughts while he remained with the children, and even suggested that what he did in the first minutes was not important. "What is relevant," according to Bush, "is whether or not I understand and understood then the stakes .... And I made a determination that we would do everything we could to bring those killers to justice and to protect the American people." Bush told Larry King of CNN that "it's easy to second- guess a moment," said Bush; the important thing was that he quickly "recognized we were at war" and mobilized the nation for his series of wars. (Washington Post, August 13, 2004) Bush clearly wasted more than 15 minutes after the North Tower impact, and wasted another 7 minutes after the South Tower impact. In that time, he should have been issuing crisp orders to mobilize air defenses, deploy combat air patrols, cut through layers of bureaucracy, and generally administer a bureaucratic blow-torch to a corrupt and somnolent bureaucracy that was honeycombed with subversive moles. But Bush, who had been on vacation for much of his time in office before September 11, did none of these things. Bush nevertheless made his own supposed prowess on 9/11 the theme of the Republican National Convention at the end of August and the beginning of September.