Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Psychologists Speak Out on Effect of Trauma on Challenging 9/11 Government Narrative
The following video presents a number of psychologists speaking about the psychological effects of witnessing the 9/11 tragedy, and how the effects of trauma intersect the problem of "hearing information that confronts our world-view." The cognitive dissonance (fear and anxiety) that confronts Americans as they consider the extent to which their government has lied to them on this very distressing topic has near paralyzed political discussion of what really happened on 9/11.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Radio Interview: “Iron Man” and the OBL Cover Up
I was pleased to spend an hour talking with James Corbett, as part of his radio show last night. Readers interested in the 9/11 cover-up story, especially as it relates to the suppression of knowledge about the work of military intelligence agencies, should click here to listen to the podcast.
From The Corbett Report website:
From The Corbett Report website:
In the run-up to 9/11, a little-known military intelligence unit was tracking the movements and actions of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. In late 2000, the military brass called off that work, and later the DoD lied to Congress about the unit and its work. Find out more about this underreported piece of the 9/11 cover up puzzle on tonight’s edition of the broadcast with our special guest Dr. Jeffrey Kaye.
Monday, December 19, 2011
James Corbett Reports: "35 Reasons to Question 9/11"
In a 9/11/2011 podcast, James Corbett linked together numerous documentary evidence presented over the years to show a consistent and continual obstruction into investigations over the origins and actions surrounding the 9/11/01 terrorist attack.
The evidence and its presentation is convincing and its cumulative effect overwhelming. (The work by Jason Leopold and myself on the "Iron Man"/JFIC aspect of the story is listed as number 9 of the 35 "reasons to question" the 9/11 story .) Listen to the broadcast, or click here to read. (I had earlier cross-posted this, but was not able to solve the formatting problems that left much of the text truncated. So you'll have to follow the links to get the full list and story.)
The evidence and its presentation is convincing and its cumulative effect overwhelming. (The work by Jason Leopold and myself on the "Iron Man"/JFIC aspect of the story is listed as number 9 of the 35 "reasons to question" the 9/11 story .) Listen to the broadcast, or click here to read. (I had earlier cross-posted this, but was not able to solve the formatting problems that left much of the text truncated. So you'll have to follow the links to get the full list and story.)
Sunday, December 11, 2011
"Ignorance is Strength" - New Short Video Summarizes 9/11 "Conspiracy Theory"
This new video uses sarcasm and irony to point out the absurdity of the mainstream government narrative on 9/11. Like the JFK assassination which most people believe -- Stephen King and Tom Hanks, notwithstanding -- was a high-level conspiracy that made Lee Harvey Oswald (as Oswald himself described it) a "patsy," the events surrounding 9/11 have already entered the folk history of America, the only place left where government crimes and the true purpose of U.S. foreign policy can be discussed, it seems.
The video comes complete with transcript over at The Corbett Report. One thing the video leaves out is the recent reportage on the suppression and cover-up of a military intelligence unit attached to Joint Forces Command in the months before 9/11. This unit, part of Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) had been tracking Bin Laden and others, and also providing intel on terrorist targets inside the U.S. Briefings on likely attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were given to top military leaders and intelligence officials at least six months or more before 9/11, as these recent reports document. Evidence of this was censored and kept from the eyes of Congressional investigators in 2002, and later from the 9/11 Commission itself.
H/T for this to Naomi Wolf's Facebook page.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
9/11 Documentary Delayed Due to CIA Threats
The following press statement was released today by the documentarians who have produced a film on former CIA Alec Station chief, Richard Blee. To see their full statement, click here.
AUSTIN, Texas (September 12, 2011) – On Thursday, the CIA threatened the journalists behind Who Is Rich Blee? with possible federal prosecution if their investigative podcast reveals the names of two CIA analysts at the center of a pattern of obstruction and mishandling of intelligence that many feel would have stopped the 9/11 attacks.
Like FBI agent Ali Soufan and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer before them, the podcast team, including John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, are being subjected to intimidation and censorship by government officials over blowing the whistle on the true story surrounding two alleged 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
The podcast originally scheduled for September 11th release presents a narrative of how three CIA analysts working under Richard Blee, the long unknown former head of CIA’s Bin Laden Station, deliberately misled their colleagues and withheld key intelligence from FBI and the White House regarding the presence of two known Al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S.
Four government investigations into CIA handling of pre-911 intelligence included personal details of the two CIA analysts and their actions. Nowosielski and Duffy deduced the identities of the two as yet unnamed CIA employees from internet research based on details provided from these and other open sources. When the producers used their full names in interviews, interviewees offered no correction. The CIA response provided the final confirmation.
In project updates at SecrecyKills.com the producers announced the delay of the podcast and posted background of a complicated case involving dozens of violations of protocol, intimidation, and incidents of obstruction by the CIA, with the two yet named CIA analysts at the center of many of them.
Author and expert on the subject, Kevin Fenton, documents 35 such incidents between January 2000 and September 11th in his book, Disconnecting the Dots.
Pulitzer-prize winner Lawrence Wright, interviewed for the podcast, told producers the actions of one of the unnamed CIA analysts still employed at CIA amounts to obstruction of justice in the FBI’s criminal investigation of the deaths of 19 seaman aboard the USS Cole.
The producers are not the first subject to government censorship over this case. Last month New York Times reported on CIA efforts to censor an autobiography by Ali Soufan, a front-line FBI counter-terrorism specialist. Prior to 9/11, Soufan was interested in Mihdhar and Hazmi because of links to the bombing of the USS Cole. The CIA redacted references to a passport photo of Mihdhar the CIA had withheld from Soufan, despite his repeated requests.
Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, interviewed for the podcast, was himself intimidated, demoted and smeared by the Pentagon after he came forward to the 9/11 Commission with details of how, on three occasions, unnamed DoD officials prevented his Able Danger operation from meeting with the FBI prior the attacks.
In 2000 the Able Danger program placed Mohammed Atta in a Brooklyn terrorist cell but had also placed Hazmi and Mihdhar in a San Diego cell, the epicenter of intrigue around Alec Station’s Rich Blee, Tom Wilshere and the two as yet unnamed subordinates who themselves repeatedly withheld intelligence from the FBI. Though Shaffer was interviewed by 9/11 Commission’s Director Philip Zelikow and staffer Dieter Snell, the Commission left any mention of Able Danger from its final report.
In the planned podcast, 9/11 Commission Chair Tom Kean is asked about a scant footnote to Chapter 6 of the 9/11 Report referring to an intelligence cable, seen by 50 at the CIA, but prevented from reaching the FBI. For Kean the incident was not a case of bungling or intel ‘stovepiping’: “Oh, it wasn’t careless oversight. It was purposeful. No question about that in mind. It was purposeful.”
Whereas Kean explains it as a penchant for secrecy, Richard Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Bush White House, goes farther suggesting malfeasance and the possibility of illegal CIA-led domestic spying activity. Comments by Clarke released in a video in August led to a formal statement from George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, and a response from the producers.
“This was perhaps the closest U.S. intelligence got to foiling the 9/11 plot,” explains Producer Ray Nowosielski, “but instead of stopping the attack, the CIA stopped intel on two high-value targets from getting to the right people, repeatedly. And still the CIA protects the individuals responsible by intimidating those who simply want to know the truth behind a shocking and possibly criminal pattern of obstruction.”
In an email Thursday the CIA warned Nowosielski he could be subject to prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a law intended to apply to government employees who violate their security clearance and never used to convict journalists.
The producer’s online response: “The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics states that ‘journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know’ and should ‘be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.’ The day that journalists’ exposés of wrongdoing within government agencies require the approval of those government agencies before release, that is the day that transparency and accountability are lost.”
John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, both graduates of Chicago’s Columbia College Film School, produced the critically acclaimed 2006 documentary 9/11: Press for Truth.
NYT: Soufan Book Adds to Charges CIA Kept 9/11 Terrorist Info from FBI
Ali Soufan's long-awaited new book, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, was released the other day, meriting a story on some of its more explosive material in an article by Scott Shane at the New York Times. According to Shane, "Mr. Soufan accuses C.I.A. officials of deliberately withholding crucial documents and photographs of Qaeda operatives from the F.B.I. before Sept. 11, 2001, despite three written requests, and then later lying about it to the 9/11 Commission."
The book made headlines last month when it was revealed the CIA had demanded "scores" of cuts to the book, for purposes of "national security."
According to Soufan, in a special introduction to the new book:
In at least one other case, crucial information was kept from Soufan and other investigators by CIA officials, information that would have helped break the Cole case, and, crucially, have led FBI investigators to identify Al Qaeda operatives who had entered the United States more than eighteen months before 9/11. These two operatives, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, died on the plane that rammed into the Pentagon.
The controversies surrounding the CIA's withholding of information about these two hijackers was told in Lawrence Wright's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and was further explored in Kevin Fenton's recent book, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen.
Here's how Shane described the moment when Soufan realized he'd been had. For some strange reason, the NYT refrains from actually giving al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi's names.
How Al Qaeda Terrorists Were Allowed to Enter the U.S.
What briefly reportedly occurred was this:
In January 2000, the CIA got information from the National Security Agency that al-Mihdhar and an associate were headed to a seeming summit of top terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to Fenton, "the CIA realized that the summit was so important that information about it was briefed to CIA and FBI leaders, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and other top officials at the start of 2000." The CIA discovered a visa for al-Mihdhar showing he was planning to come to the United States. Al-Mihdhar's father-in-law was the owner of a house in Yemen that NSA, CIA, and likely others were surveilling electronically -- the so-called Al Qaeda Yemen "hub."
In any case, according to Wright, the CIA already knew from Saudi intelligence that al-Mihdhar was Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the CIA had obtained al-Mihdhar's passport, along with the visa, photographed it and sent it on to the CIA's Bin Laden desk, known as "Alec Station." When an FBI agent assigned to Alec Station, Doug Miller saw the cable, he drafted a memo requesting permission to alert his FBI superiors of the terrorists' intentions to come to the U.S. But permission was denied. We know that this was upon the authority of Alec Station deputy chief Tom Wilshire.
Even worse, another CIA agent at Alec Station, informed others who inquired that the information was passed on to the FBI. Except it never was.
Obstructions Continue
In an article about these matters by Jason Leopold at Truthout, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick's new book, Triple Agent, about the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents at Khost, reports that the CIA Inspector General said "as many as sixty CIA employees" had seen "a series of cabled warnings in 2000 about" al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar "who later became part of the September 11 plot.... yet the two operatives' names were never passed along to the FBI, which might have assigned agents to track them down or shared with the State Department, which could have flagged their named on its watch list. In theory, the arrest of the either man could have led investigators to the other hijackers and the eventual unraveling of the 9/11 plot."
This was the beginning of numerous instances of lying and obstruction of an investigation by CIA, and on occasion, FBI officials, related to these two Al Qaeda personnel in particular. As you can see, far from the 9/11 terrorists begin "lucky," it appears there was a concerted effort to keep FBI criminal investigators from tracking key Al Qaeda operatives in the months, even weeks or days, leading up to 9/11. As Fenton points out, the latter possibly was achieved by detailing Wilshire, the agent who had blocked the first evidence of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi entering the U.S., to work with the FBI's counterterrorism unit in early 2001.
Soufan relates a much later instance of obstruction, this time only weeks before 9/11 itself. In late August, the FBI was finally figuring out what the CIA had known over a year before. When one reads this, one should remember that al-Mihdhar was certainly involved in the Cole terrorist plot, and both he and the very existence of the Malaysia Al Qaeda "summit" were kept from Soufan and his investigators for months, only finally told them when they had pretty much figured it out for themselves.
The following exchange took place in late August 2001, after FBI agent Dina Corsi had accidentally copied a criminal FBI investigator on an email about al-Mihdhar:
Last month, two investigators released a partial video interview of former counter-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke talking about the CIA and the withholding of information from the FBI and his office on movements of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi. (See video at end of story.) Clarke said George Tenet never told him about the two U.S.-bound terrorists. He also believed that Tenet, and Alec Station chief Rich Blee, "whose true identity was revealed for the first time two years ago, were responsible for the failure to capture al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi.
The investigators' documentary on all this, "Who is Rich Blee?", was supposed to be released yesterday. But at their website we see the following message, "On Thursday, the CIA threatened the journalists behind Who Is Rich Blee? with possible federal prosecution if the investigative podcast is released in its current form.
"We are delaying that release while we consult with others and weigh our options. A press statement with a more complete explanation will be made available at this site soon."
Silence and the Legacy of 9/11
I haven't yet finished Soufan's book, so this essay is by no means meant to be a review. In the past, I have been critical, for instance, of how Soufan has played around with what he felt were non-coercive interrogations, which I believe meant it was okay to use isolation, for instance. I will be very curious to read his narrative about the Al Qahtani and Zubaydah interrogations, for instance. But for the purposes of this article, I'm concentrating only on the obstruction of justice aspects of his charges.
Whether it was a deliberate attempt to let terrorists operate in this country (as Kevin Fenton maintains), or a terrible combination of over-caution, inertia, lack of imagination, bad judgement, institutional hubris, and bad luck, as others would suggest, remains to be seen. What is clear is that we need a new investigation of the activities of the intelligence groups and the military leading up to 9/11, the earlier investigations being hog-tied by lies, information coerced from tortured detainees, and repeated efforts (mostly successful) to hide or withhold crucial information from investigators.
Only our silence will guarantee that we will never know the truth. Given that 9/11 and the threat of terrorism is used to justify trillions spent on wars, a major crackdown on civil liberties, and the use of torture and other abuses upon detainees, I don't see silence as an option.
Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter
The book made headlines last month when it was revealed the CIA had demanded "scores" of cuts to the book, for purposes of "national security."
According to Soufan, in a special introduction to the new book:
"... the FBI informed me that the manuscript had been sent to the CIA for review. This was strange, as I have never reported to the CIA or had any contractual agreement with them. While I understood that the FBI might feel the need to consult with others in the intelligence community about certain material in the book, there was absolutely no reason to subject me to a second full-blown prepublication review."Soufan, a long-time special agent working with the FBI, worked on some of the more notorious terrorist cases post-9/11, including the interrogation of Mohamed Al-Qahtani and Abu Zubaydah. According to Soufan, he was pulled off these interrogations when the CIA or military officials wanted to use torture on the detainees. In these cases, and it turns out others, Soufan and his colleagues were pulled out of interrogations at the behest of the Bush administration or the CIA. Soufan was also the lead investigator on the bombing of the USS Cole.
In at least one other case, crucial information was kept from Soufan and other investigators by CIA officials, information that would have helped break the Cole case, and, crucially, have led FBI investigators to identify Al Qaeda operatives who had entered the United States more than eighteen months before 9/11. These two operatives, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, died on the plane that rammed into the Pentagon.
The controversies surrounding the CIA's withholding of information about these two hijackers was told in Lawrence Wright's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and was further explored in Kevin Fenton's recent book, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen.
Here's how Shane described the moment when Soufan realized he'd been had. For some strange reason, the NYT refrains from actually giving al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi's names.
[Soufan] recounts a scene at the American Embassy in Yemen, where, a few hours after the attacks on New York and Washington, a C.I.A. official finally turned over the material the bureau requested months earlier [from the CIA], including photographs of two of the hijackers.According to Shane's report, CIA spokesman Preston Golson called "baseless" the idea that the CIA “purposely refused to share critical lead information on the 9/11 plots."
“For about a minute I stared at the pictures and the report, not quite believing what I had in my hands,” Mr. Soufan writes. Then he ran to a bathroom and vomited. “My whole body was shaking,” he writes. He believed the material, documenting a Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, combined with information from the Cole investigation, might have helped unravel the airliner plot.
How Al Qaeda Terrorists Were Allowed to Enter the U.S.
What briefly reportedly occurred was this:
In January 2000, the CIA got information from the National Security Agency that al-Mihdhar and an associate were headed to a seeming summit of top terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to Fenton, "the CIA realized that the summit was so important that information about it was briefed to CIA and FBI leaders, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and other top officials at the start of 2000." The CIA discovered a visa for al-Mihdhar showing he was planning to come to the United States. Al-Mihdhar's father-in-law was the owner of a house in Yemen that NSA, CIA, and likely others were surveilling electronically -- the so-called Al Qaeda Yemen "hub."
In any case, according to Wright, the CIA already knew from Saudi intelligence that al-Mihdhar was Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the CIA had obtained al-Mihdhar's passport, along with the visa, photographed it and sent it on to the CIA's Bin Laden desk, known as "Alec Station." When an FBI agent assigned to Alec Station, Doug Miller saw the cable, he drafted a memo requesting permission to alert his FBI superiors of the terrorists' intentions to come to the U.S. But permission was denied. We know that this was upon the authority of Alec Station deputy chief Tom Wilshire.
Even worse, another CIA agent at Alec Station, informed others who inquired that the information was passed on to the FBI. Except it never was.
Obstructions Continue
In an article about these matters by Jason Leopold at Truthout, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick's new book, Triple Agent, about the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents at Khost, reports that the CIA Inspector General said "as many as sixty CIA employees" had seen "a series of cabled warnings in 2000 about" al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar "who later became part of the September 11 plot.... yet the two operatives' names were never passed along to the FBI, which might have assigned agents to track them down or shared with the State Department, which could have flagged their named on its watch list. In theory, the arrest of the either man could have led investigators to the other hijackers and the eventual unraveling of the 9/11 plot."
This was the beginning of numerous instances of lying and obstruction of an investigation by CIA, and on occasion, FBI officials, related to these two Al Qaeda personnel in particular. As you can see, far from the 9/11 terrorists begin "lucky," it appears there was a concerted effort to keep FBI criminal investigators from tracking key Al Qaeda operatives in the months, even weeks or days, leading up to 9/11. As Fenton points out, the latter possibly was achieved by detailing Wilshire, the agent who had blocked the first evidence of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi entering the U.S., to work with the FBI's counterterrorism unit in early 2001.
Soufan relates a much later instance of obstruction, this time only weeks before 9/11 itself. In late August, the FBI was finally figuring out what the CIA had known over a year before. When one reads this, one should remember that al-Mihdhar was certainly involved in the Cole terrorist plot, and both he and the very existence of the Malaysia Al Qaeda "summit" were kept from Soufan and his investigators for months, only finally told them when they had pretty much figured it out for themselves.
The following exchange took place in late August 2001, after FBI agent Dina Corsi had accidentally copied a criminal FBI investigator on an email about al-Mihdhar:
“Dina, you’ve got to be kidding me. Mihdhar is in the country?” [FBI agent Steve Bongardt] could hardly contain his anger....The "stand down" ordered by the CIA was not the first "stand down" surrounding intelligence agencies in the months before 9/11. As I wrote the other day, both here and, with Jason Leopold, at Truthout, according to the former Deputy Chief of a Pentagon intelligence unit, which was hunting Bin Laden, and concerned with the scenarios about when and how and where Al Qaeda would attack, his group was pulled off that work in early 2001. This story is in addition to the controversial news reports about the Army's Able Danger data mining operation, shut down after it had identified some of the Al Qaeda terrorists, and more than one case of FBI reports of possible terrorists training to be pilots that were ignored by higher-ups.
“Steve, you’ve got to delete that,” Dina replied nervously. “We’ll have a conference call about it tomorrow.”
Dina called the next day, with a senior CIA official also on the line. Steve was told by the senior official that he had to “stand down” regarding Mihdhar. He was furious to hear—again—that this was intelligence that couldn’t be shared with criminal agents.
“If this guy is in the country, it’s not because he’s going to fucking Disneyland,” Steve retorted.
“Stand down,” the senior official replied.
Last month, two investigators released a partial video interview of former counter-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke talking about the CIA and the withholding of information from the FBI and his office on movements of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi. (See video at end of story.) Clarke said George Tenet never told him about the two U.S.-bound terrorists. He also believed that Tenet, and Alec Station chief Rich Blee, "whose true identity was revealed for the first time two years ago, were responsible for the failure to capture al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi.
The investigators' documentary on all this, "Who is Rich Blee?", was supposed to be released yesterday. But at their website we see the following message, "On Thursday, the CIA threatened the journalists behind Who Is Rich Blee? with possible federal prosecution if the investigative podcast is released in its current form.
"We are delaying that release while we consult with others and weigh our options. A press statement with a more complete explanation will be made available at this site soon."
Silence and the Legacy of 9/11
I haven't yet finished Soufan's book, so this essay is by no means meant to be a review. In the past, I have been critical, for instance, of how Soufan has played around with what he felt were non-coercive interrogations, which I believe meant it was okay to use isolation, for instance. I will be very curious to read his narrative about the Al Qahtani and Zubaydah interrogations, for instance. But for the purposes of this article, I'm concentrating only on the obstruction of justice aspects of his charges.
Whether it was a deliberate attempt to let terrorists operate in this country (as Kevin Fenton maintains), or a terrible combination of over-caution, inertia, lack of imagination, bad judgement, institutional hubris, and bad luck, as others would suggest, remains to be seen. What is clear is that we need a new investigation of the activities of the intelligence groups and the military leading up to 9/11, the earlier investigations being hog-tied by lies, information coerced from tortured detainees, and repeated efforts (mostly successful) to hide or withhold crucial information from investigators.
Only our silence will guarantee that we will never know the truth. Given that 9/11 and the threat of terrorism is used to justify trillions spent on wars, a major crackdown on civil liberties, and the use of torture and other abuses upon detainees, I don't see silence as an option.
Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter
Sunday, September 11, 2011
IG Report Cover-up: Top Military Officials Hid Evidence of Pre-9/11 Al Qaeda Intelligence
Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter
Between the fight between differing camps of 9/11 Truthers, the incredulity, if not laziness, of many mainstream bloggers and the MSM press itself, and the apparent disinterest (if not collusion) of Congress, actual evidence of an important government cover-up must struggle to gain notice and credibility.
Such is the case with the story of how top military intelligence officials working at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) lied to Congressional investigators about the work of one of its top secret intelligence components, which included tracking of Osama bin Laden, and identification of the World Trade Center and Pentagon as top targets of Al Qaeda, including briefings to military and intelligence figures in summer 2002 that such attacks could come from hijacked civilian aircraft.
As reported in a new story at Truthout, by myself and Jason Leopold, these top military officials censored the answers Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) gave to a questionnaire from the 2002 Joint Intelligence Inquiry of the U.S. Congress, meant to investigate the details behind how the different intelligence agencies performed prior to 9/11, what they knew, what might have went wrong, and what really happened.
The falsification was meant in particular to hide the work of the 9-person unit within JFIC, known as the Asymmetrical Threats Division, or DO5 in military lingo. DO5 had analysts with expertise in all areas of intelligence, including signals intel, humint (human intelligence), and geospatial mapping. They received reports from NSA and CIA, and had access to NSA databases. According to "Iron Man," the government's own cover name for the former deputy chief of DO5, his unit had been hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from late 1999 until early 2001, until it was shut down by higher ups in the months leading up to 9/11. This aspect of the story was reported in earlier articles.
As covered in continuing coverage of the story, particularly at Truthout and at Firedoglake, the former Deputy Chief (and later Acting Chief) of DO5 protested the suppression of his organization's work, and tried to provide documentary evidence directly to the Defense Intelligence Agency Congressional Affairs Office. It's not known if it ever reached Congress.
In any case, neither the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 or the later official 9/11 Commission ever published a word about JFIC/DO5's work. In general, the entire story relating to military intelligence activities relating to Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, and tracking the 9/11 terrorists has totally been suppressed, with no other reporting on this... until Iron Man's protest to DoD's Inspector General (he also complained to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) when the IG started dragging their feet) produced an investigation, and then a report by the Inspector General of Intelligence at DoD, finished in 2008, but not made public until last year.
The news briefly caught the attention of Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News, and Electronic Frontier Foundation, who posted a FOIA-released copy of the DNI letter to DoD's Inspector General about Iron Man's complaint. EFF noted that "High-level Pentagon officials gave false information (PDF) to Congress about al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks."
Interestingly, the story also surfaced in a Charlie Savage, Scott Shane article in the New York Times in December 2009, commenting on the DNI letter released to EFF.
In the latest installment at Truthout of our investigation, Leopold and I released new documents that directly contradicted the assertions the Inspector General made about DO5's activities. For instance, the IG report claimed, "The JFIC did not have the mission to track Usama Bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets."
But a NCIS slide briefing in approximately 2000 stated, ""JFIC routinely supplements national agencies with original intelligence on UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] and Afghanistan." (Emphasis added.)
The Truthout story continues:
Doctoring Documents
This negligent, or deliberate, confusion continues in other important aspects, not least in the representation of the documents finally sent to Congress themselves. In the appendices of the report, two scanned copies of the answers from JFIC to Congress about its operations are reproduced. One is the original set of answers, one is the actual copy that was sent to Congress after "review" by the Director for Intelligence at JFCOM. While the IG report never notes there were any differences between the original and the "reviewed" answers, in fact, the "review" copy sent to Congress had 4 of its 13 items deleted, and many other items were cut dramatically.
As the Truthout report describes it:
It is in fact the confluence of four different agencies having higher ups obstruct their investigations, all in these crucial lead-up months to 9/11, and the cover-ups and lies pertaining to these matters, that marks this issue for further investigation.
And we need that investigation more than ever, as both 9/11 and the "war on terror" are prime propaganda points used to fuel one of the greatest attacks on civil liberties this country has ever seen, in addition to militarist and spy program activity that even the mainstream media has begun to realize is out of control.
So like it or not, the drone wars, the assassinations and black-site prisons, the torture and renditions are all the bastard children of 9/11. Yes, U.S. militarist policy and CIA perfidy was plenty evident before 9/11, but the escalation of U.S. activity in this area is now back to Vietnam-era levels, or even higher.
I don't know the "truth" about 9/11. But I know a lie when I see one. But unless the public speaks out -- and that includes the couple dozen political bloggers who see themselves as a counterweight to the Establishment's near-monopoly on "legitimate" political discourse -- then we will all have to live with the bogus narrative around 9/11, and the consequences of these lies. I'd think that the 3,000 or so who died that day deserved a better fate than that.
What follows is an interview I recently did with The Real News's Paul Jay on the Iron Man story:
Between the fight between differing camps of 9/11 Truthers, the incredulity, if not laziness, of many mainstream bloggers and the MSM press itself, and the apparent disinterest (if not collusion) of Congress, actual evidence of an important government cover-up must struggle to gain notice and credibility.
Such is the case with the story of how top military intelligence officials working at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) lied to Congressional investigators about the work of one of its top secret intelligence components, which included tracking of Osama bin Laden, and identification of the World Trade Center and Pentagon as top targets of Al Qaeda, including briefings to military and intelligence figures in summer 2002 that such attacks could come from hijacked civilian aircraft.
As reported in a new story at Truthout, by myself and Jason Leopold, these top military officials censored the answers Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) gave to a questionnaire from the 2002 Joint Intelligence Inquiry of the U.S. Congress, meant to investigate the details behind how the different intelligence agencies performed prior to 9/11, what they knew, what might have went wrong, and what really happened.
The falsification was meant in particular to hide the work of the 9-person unit within JFIC, known as the Asymmetrical Threats Division, or DO5 in military lingo. DO5 had analysts with expertise in all areas of intelligence, including signals intel, humint (human intelligence), and geospatial mapping. They received reports from NSA and CIA, and had access to NSA databases. According to "Iron Man," the government's own cover name for the former deputy chief of DO5, his unit had been hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from late 1999 until early 2001, until it was shut down by higher ups in the months leading up to 9/11. This aspect of the story was reported in earlier articles.
As covered in continuing coverage of the story, particularly at Truthout and at Firedoglake, the former Deputy Chief (and later Acting Chief) of DO5 protested the suppression of his organization's work, and tried to provide documentary evidence directly to the Defense Intelligence Agency Congressional Affairs Office. It's not known if it ever reached Congress.
In any case, neither the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 or the later official 9/11 Commission ever published a word about JFIC/DO5's work. In general, the entire story relating to military intelligence activities relating to Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, and tracking the 9/11 terrorists has totally been suppressed, with no other reporting on this... until Iron Man's protest to DoD's Inspector General (he also complained to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) when the IG started dragging their feet) produced an investigation, and then a report by the Inspector General of Intelligence at DoD, finished in 2008, but not made public until last year.
The news briefly caught the attention of Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News, and Electronic Frontier Foundation, who posted a FOIA-released copy of the DNI letter to DoD's Inspector General about Iron Man's complaint. EFF noted that "High-level Pentagon officials gave false information (PDF) to Congress about al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks."
Interestingly, the story also surfaced in a Charlie Savage, Scott Shane article in the New York Times in December 2009, commenting on the DNI letter released to EFF.
Another memorandum disclosed that a Defense Intelligence Agency employee said that in May 2002, in response to a Congressional inquiry, the Joint Forces Intelligence Command provided false information about its activities related to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks. The document offered few details.The NYT never mentioned the subject again.
In the latest installment at Truthout of our investigation, Leopold and I released new documents that directly contradicted the assertions the Inspector General made about DO5's activities. For instance, the IG report claimed, "The JFIC did not have the mission to track Usama Bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets."
But a NCIS slide briefing in approximately 2000 stated, ""JFIC routinely supplements national agencies with original intelligence on UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] and Afghanistan." (Emphasis added.)
The Truthout story continues:
The slide presentation further notes that the Asymmetrical Threats Division has "primary division focus" on both counterterrorism and military "force protection." Moreover, the briefing slides state that JFIC's "Primary CT/force protection concerns" as "UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] and associated terrorist groups," adding that its goal was to determine when Bin Laden and other terrorists would strike, "How they will strike" and "Where they will strike"....The Inspector General report is probably one of the most ridiculous government documents I've ever read. It's short, as if they didn't take the investigation seriously. For one thing, it totally misrepresents the point at issue, i.e., withholding of information from Congressional investigators, and keeps referring to the 9/11 Commission, which was not even an entity until about the time the Congressional inquiry was winding up (late 2002).
Another document Iron Man turned over to Truthout is a January 2001 confidential "Point Paper" that describes the Asymmetrical Threats Division as having "prepared numerous assessments of those cities most likely to be targeted by international and domestic terrorists," confirming Iron Man's claims that part of his unit's work did consist of producing intelligence on domestic targets by terrorists.
Doctoring Documents
This negligent, or deliberate, confusion continues in other important aspects, not least in the representation of the documents finally sent to Congress themselves. In the appendices of the report, two scanned copies of the answers from JFIC to Congress about its operations are reproduced. One is the original set of answers, one is the actual copy that was sent to Congress after "review" by the Director for Intelligence at JFCOM. While the IG report never notes there were any differences between the original and the "reviewed" answers, in fact, the "review" copy sent to Congress had 4 of its 13 items deleted, and many other items were cut dramatically.
As the Truthout report describes it:
The missing portions largely relate to aspects of JFIC's mission that had to do with the breadth and depth of its anti-terrorism work. For instance, in item one, JFCOM deleted the original JFIC reply that it conducted "in depth discussions about potential terrorist attacks since Dec. 00"....The information that yet another intelligence component was pulled off of the tracking of the 9/11 terrorists in the months leading up to 9/11 -- joining the controversies over the Army's Able Danger program, the refusal of the CIA to notify the FBI of two key terrorists entering the U.S. in early 2002, the failure of the FBI to respond to field office reports about possible hijackers and terrorist pilots -- makes it very unlikely that the drawdown of intelligence over Al Qaeda's activities in the U.S. just at the time 9/11 was being planned was a matter of "luck."
One of the missing items in the version of the JFIC answers sent to Congress concerned the names and positions of JFIC counterterror personnel. This was not redacted for classification purposes, as they appear in the IG report, Appendix B. Instead, back in 2002, the lack of any such names meant there was no one identifiable from JFIC to call as a witness.
At other points in the edited version of the JFIC responses, descriptions of the unit's analytic work, in particular aspects that seem pertinent to Asymmetrical Threats Division's work, are left out.
It is in fact the confluence of four different agencies having higher ups obstruct their investigations, all in these crucial lead-up months to 9/11, and the cover-ups and lies pertaining to these matters, that marks this issue for further investigation.
And we need that investigation more than ever, as both 9/11 and the "war on terror" are prime propaganda points used to fuel one of the greatest attacks on civil liberties this country has ever seen, in addition to militarist and spy program activity that even the mainstream media has begun to realize is out of control.
So like it or not, the drone wars, the assassinations and black-site prisons, the torture and renditions are all the bastard children of 9/11. Yes, U.S. militarist policy and CIA perfidy was plenty evident before 9/11, but the escalation of U.S. activity in this area is now back to Vietnam-era levels, or even higher.
I don't know the "truth" about 9/11. But I know a lie when I see one. But unless the public speaks out -- and that includes the couple dozen political bloggers who see themselves as a counterweight to the Establishment's near-monopoly on "legitimate" political discourse -- then we will all have to live with the bogus narrative around 9/11, and the consequences of these lies. I'd think that the 3,000 or so who died that day deserved a better fate than that.
What follows is an interview I recently did with The Real News's Paul Jay on the Iron Man story:
Monday, June 13, 2011
EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11 Probe
Reposted from Truthout
by: Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, just as he has done in years past, a top military intelligence analyst identified by the US government only as "Iron Man" will hunker down in front of his television and watch a particularly gruesome scene of the carnage left behind on that fateful day.
"Although I try to avoid it, I glimpse a film clip, a scene, of people throwing themselves from a burning tower, people who deserved better protection from their country, from me and the men I worked with, and I hear the sounds of the lobby in the [World Trade Center] on tape," said the man, whose alter ego chosen by the government appears to be paying homage to the Marvel Comics superhero [4]. "To me, the sights and sounds, the smoke of that day are not yet history. They are a knot, a silence, a facial tick, a missing friend in Iraq. They are not history yet."
For many Americans, the emotional reaction to President Barack Obama's announcement last month that a Navy Seal team had killed Osama bin Laden during a raid at his compound in Pakistan was celebratory. But for others, like the mysterious Iron Man, who has spent his career lurking in the shadows, the death of the late al-Qaeda leader is a painful reminder of what could have been avoided had the government heeded numerous early warnings of an impending attack against the very targets terrorists struck on 9/11.
The intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an issue the media - and lawmakers - put to bed years ago, despite the fact that new information continues to trickle out, undercutting the integrity of the official investigations into who knew what and when.
It was an exclusive story [5] Truthout published May 23 in the wake of Bin Laden's death, focusing on a little-known intelligence unit that was ordered to stop tracking his movements prior to 9/11, and led Iron Man to contact Truthout to share previously undisclosed documents he recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [6], which appear to cast further doubt on the official narrative and suggests high-level military and intelligence officials withheld key evidence from Congressional lawmakers probing the attacks.
The materials Iron Man provided to Truthout stand as the most revealing information to surface in years regarding Bin Laden and al-Qaeda's plans to attack the United States.
This is the first page of "Iron Man's" complaint to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General related to intelligence work he did on Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Formal Complaint
Five years ago, Iron Man, who requested Truthout conceal his true identity out of concern for his family's privacy, lodged a formal complaint with the Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General after he was accused of improperly handling classified material.
Iron Man filed a FOIA request in September 2006, seeking a declassified copy of the six-page complaint he filed with the inspector general's office. He finally received a copy on April 8, just a few weeks prior to the raid on Bin Laden's compound.
What he revealed in that letter, portions of which were redacted by the government because the information is classified, is the inner workings of an elite intelligence unit he headed at one point: the Asymmetric Threats Division, formed in 1999, and "charged with reporting on asymmetric threats, especially terrorism."
The unit worked with Joint Task Force-Civil Support (JTF-CS), also set up in 1999. According to the Defense Department (DoD), JTF-CS was charged with supporting "terrorist response operations in the continental US" and providing "military assistance to civil authorities."
The Asymmetric Threats Division is referred to as DO5, a branch of the Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), whose responsibilities included, among other things, vetting human intelligence sources on behalf of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). From 1998 to 2001, Iron Man was working as a counterterrorism/counterintelligence analyst for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), assigned to JFIC.
The JFIC is an elite intelligence unit that falls under the authority of the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and "had a direct and assigned purview on international terrorism against the US, to include the operations of al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attackers."
The JFIC was also responsible for monitoring Bin Laden and other suspected terrorists who resided in Afghanistan between 1998 and 2000 and was charged with constructing likely scenarios that could be carried out by terrorists and possible government responses.
Iron Man noted the "purpose of the letter" he wrote "is to formally complain" to the inspector general that "JFIC, when instructed in or before May 2002 to provide all original material it might have relevant to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks for a Congressional inquiry, intentionally misinformed the Department of Defense that it had no purview on such matters and no such material."
"JFIC's role" and the DoD's "role, in the pursuit of al-Qa'ida before 9/11 and timely analysis of the targets actually struck by the 9/11 attackers have remained unknown even to senior DoD officials," the letter says.
Moreover, there has never been a public accounting of the work conducted by DO5. But Iron Man's letter provides deep insight into the secret military intelligence group's highly classified activities.
Tracking Terrorists
DO5 was "a fore-runner of current all-source fusion centers," the letter Iron Man wrote says. Individuals assigned to the unit had "a wide mix of skills" in intelligence disciplines, including human and open-source intelligence, signals intelligence and imagery and signature intelligence.
DO5 drafted "numerous original reports ... identifying probable and possible movements and locations of Usama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar," including likely identification of the house where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly planned the 9/11 attacks.
From 1999 to 2001, the intelligence unit also "conducted imagery analysis of Jalalabad and Qandahar" and other parts of Afghanistan as they were "pulled into a community-wide initiative on al-Qa'ida."
The letter further states, "DO5 was able to 'scoop' [the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency]," an agency which played a crucial role in identifying the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden had been hiding.
According to US government officials, it was one of Bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom intelligence operatives identified about five years ago, that led the CIA to pinpoint Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.
But Iron Man's 2006 letter states that DO5 worked closely with DIA and was instrumental in identifying "a likely financial courier" for al-Qaeda, and one who may have led intelligence officials directly to Bin Laden well before 9/11.
Early Intelligence Pointed to the World Trade Center, Pentagon
In 2002, following his departure to DIA, Iron Man returned to JFIC to teach two classes on asymmetric warfare, and he kept "numerous" slides related to DO5's work on "pre-9/11 briefings."
As Iron Man explained in his letter of complaint to DoD's inspector general, "upon my arrival at DIA, I had these documents e-mailed from JFIC to my DIA account, so that I could use them as references for the asymmetric warfare course I was drafting for DIA, and as references for any future counter-terrorism work I might pursue at DIA."
It appears that the allegation Iron Man mishandled classified material stems from a decision he made to email the briefing slides to his DIA account. Iron Man declined to elaborate about the circumstances of the allegations leveled against him. Still, what he reveals in his carefully worded letter in response to those charges is explosive.
"I kept the original classifications on the slides, as historical documents, although the fact that al-Qa'ida was likely to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was clearly no longer classified." (Emphasis added.)
Iron Man further elaborated on this point by stating that high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets.
In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.
For example, Iron Man states in his letter that in the summer of 2000, DO5 briefed USJFCOM senior intelligence officials and staffers, including the deputy commander in chief, on the "WMD Threat to the U.S."
Iron Man describes a "sensitive," "oral briefing" that took place that summer "indicating that the World Trade Centers #1 and #2 were the most likely buildings to be attacked [by al-Qaeda], followed closely by the Pentagon. The briefer indicated that the worst case scenario would be one tower collapsed onto another."
Furthermore, as he states in his letter, Iron Man was certain that such a scenario was part of a "red cell analysis" discussion that took place prior to the intelligence briefing and included a finding that the buildings "could be struck by a jetliner." He wrote that there was a suggestion about alerting WTC security and engineering or architectural staff, "but the idea was not further explored because of a command climate discouraging contact with the civilian community."
One official who attended the DO5 briefing was Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander in chief (DCINC), USJFCOM (Iron Man's complaint does not identify Meyer by name, but notes the presence of the "DCINC" for USJFCOM). But despite the red flags raised during the briefing, Meyer [7] reportedly told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR), and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"
Mayer retired from the Navy in 2003 and was hired [8] by defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
Intelligence Withheld From Congress
Even worse, according to Iron Man's letter, the information DO5 had collected about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the lead up to 9/11 was withheld from Congress after the House and Senate Intelligence Committees launched an investigation into the attacks.
"When the Justice Department requested all documents relating to 9/11 from DoD in May 2002, I notified [redacted] in the DIA Congressional Affairs office that I retained these documents," Iron Man's letter states. "I spoke to [redacted] JFIC DI1 [an individual who works in the command administrative staff], who informed me that JFIC had already submitted a response without any documents. I was surprised and disappointed when my successor at DO5 [redacted] notified me of the full JFIC non-response. I notified [redacted] in the Congressional Affairs office, and was told to submit the documents as DIA documents, with an explanatory e-mail. I did so on 29 May 2002, presuming (probably correctly) that the documents might be overlooked, since they originated at JFIC. I forwarded copies to [redacted] (who was departing JFIC that week), (his subordinate), and [redacted] (who was also departing JFIC that week)."
A DoD spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees also did not respond to calls for comment.
After raising his concerns, Iron Man, who from late 2000 to June 2001 was acting head of DO5, was told by his former boss that JFIC's formal response to Congress' inquiries was that "al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks had been outside JFIC's purview and that JFIC consequently held no material on those issues," which was a lie.
Iron Man's boss said, "He insisted [to officials who responded to the Congressional inquiries] that such was not the case, but was told this was JFIC's response."
Iron Man wrote that "many people" working at government agencies were knowledgeable about JFIC's "role in preparing original analysis" on al-Qaeda, including officials at the CIA, NCIS, USJFCOM, DIA and NSA, whose names were redacted in the letter he sent to DoD's inspector general.
However, after conducting at least 300 interviews and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, the final report issued by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in December 2002, into "Intelligence Community Activities Before And After The Terrorist Attacks Of September 11, 2001" did not cite any of DO5's work on al-Qaeda or Bin Laden or the fact that the intelligence unit was able to identify the terrorist group's top two targets in the US. The later 2004 9/11 Commission Report did not mention DO5 or JFIC.
Flawed DoD Investigation
Although the inspector general acted on Iron Man's complaint and launched an investigation, the findings of the probe, outlined in a report [9], declassified last year, previously reported by Truthout, was highly flawed and failed to address Iron Man's charges that intelligence was withheld from Congress.
Indeed, it appears the author of the inspector general's report confused Congress' investigation into the 9/11 attacks with the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States [10], otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission, created in late 2002 by legislation passed by Congress. The inspector general's report insisted it did not find any "evidence that the Joint Forces Intelligence Command misled Congress by withholding operational information in response to the 9/11 Commission."
But Iron Man's complaint specifically addressed intelligence withheld from Congress' inquiries into the 9/11 attacks, not the independent panel's probe, thereby dismissing an allegation Iron Man had never made.
Iron Man told Truthout the inspector general's final report "was, shall we say, very incorrect, and intentionally did not address the full scope of the [his] complaint. "
The watchdog did not tackle another of Iron Man's explosive claims about DO5 briefings that centered on "numerous examples and suggestions of how [Osama bin Laden] was being hunted by JFIC and could be hunted by the [intelligence community]."
One such briefing held for a "DIA senior intelligence officer on counterterrorism" was entitled "The Search (for Osama bin Laden) - A [commander in chief] Level View," which included "a compendium of imagery of [a] suspected [Bin Laden] house dating from 23 August 1999 until 11 April 2000."
At the briefing, intelligence officials were informed that "eleven special reports" by DO5 had been disseminated in the "Daily Intelligence Summary on [Bin Laden], Taliban leadership, Afghan military movements, UN locations, and the economic status of Afghanistan."
Another briefing for the counterintelligence/counterterrorism chief at NCIS, and about 30 NCIS agents, "clearly stated the JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division monitored 'worldwide [counterterrorism/counterintelligence] traffic' and routinely prepared 'analytic reports' and 'supplements national agencies with original intelligence on [Bin Laden] and Afghanistan.'"
Congress was kept in the dark about those discussions and was not shown the documents distributed to intelligence officials at the briefings. The inspector general never bothered to find out why. Remarkably, the watchdog stated in its report, "JFIC did not have the mission to track Usama Bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets."
Iron Man told Truthout it was key intelligence withheld from Congress about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden's pre-9/11 activities that also played a part in his decision to file a complaint with the inspector general.
"My concern was not only that the 9/11 commission had not been informed, but the larger Congress, in its larger oversight responsibilities, had also not been informed," he said.
A Heavy Burden
What remains unclear is exactly what took place back in May 2006 that prompted Iron Man's complaint to the inspector general, given that the issues he had raised centered on events that unfolded four years earlier.
The answer to that question can be found in these passages of Iron Man's letter, particularly the last few sentences:
Because von Ackerman's name was classified in the complaint Iron Man filed with the inspector general, he could not confirm whether von Ackerman is the individual he was referring to.
Just three months after Iron Man filed his complaint with DoD's inspector general, in August 2006, the Army Criminal Investigative Service concluded that von Ackerman had been kidnapped and killed. His remains have never been found nor has anyone claimed responsibility for his death.
Von Ackerman's tragic story [11] has been previously reported by journalist-blogger Susie Dow on the web site e Pluribus Media, but has largely remained under the radar. In a May 6 article she published on her personal blog, Dow identified von Ackermann as a member of JFIC's Asymmetric Threats Division. Iron Man's complaint suggests he ultimately became deputy chief of DO5.
In October 2006, Dow wrote [12] that von Ackermann was "assigned to a counterterrorism team."
"You'll find no mention of either Kirk von Ackermann or his team in the 9-11 Commission report.... Well before 9-11, Kirk von Ackermann predicted aircraft could be hijacked and used as weapons against the United States. He also predicted potential targets."
Von Ackerman's wife, Megan von Ackerman, has maintained a blog called "Missing in Iraq [13]," dedicated to her missing husband. In March 2006, she wrote that her husband had planned for such a catastrophic event, but his warnings were ignored:
"[Redacted] and I discussed this issue the last time we spoke," Iron Man wrote in the final paragraph of his letter to the inspector general, likely referring to von Ackerman. "He remains the longest missing man in Iraq in this war, and I want, one day, to be able to explain to his children what their father foresaw."
"Although I try to avoid it, I glimpse a film clip, a scene, of people throwing themselves from a burning tower, people who deserved better protection from their country, from me and the men I worked with, and I hear the sounds of the lobby in the [World Trade Center] on tape," said the man, whose alter ego chosen by the government appears to be paying homage to the Marvel Comics superhero [4]. "To me, the sights and sounds, the smoke of that day are not yet history. They are a knot, a silence, a facial tick, a missing friend in Iraq. They are not history yet."
For many Americans, the emotional reaction to President Barack Obama's announcement last month that a Navy Seal team had killed Osama bin Laden during a raid at his compound in Pakistan was celebratory. But for others, like the mysterious Iron Man, who has spent his career lurking in the shadows, the death of the late al-Qaeda leader is a painful reminder of what could have been avoided had the government heeded numerous early warnings of an impending attack against the very targets terrorists struck on 9/11.
The intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an issue the media - and lawmakers - put to bed years ago, despite the fact that new information continues to trickle out, undercutting the integrity of the official investigations into who knew what and when.
It was an exclusive story [5] Truthout published May 23 in the wake of Bin Laden's death, focusing on a little-known intelligence unit that was ordered to stop tracking his movements prior to 9/11, and led Iron Man to contact Truthout to share previously undisclosed documents he recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [6], which appear to cast further doubt on the official narrative and suggests high-level military and intelligence officials withheld key evidence from Congressional lawmakers probing the attacks.
The materials Iron Man provided to Truthout stand as the most revealing information to surface in years regarding Bin Laden and al-Qaeda's plans to attack the United States.
This is the first page of "Iron Man's" complaint to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General related to intelligence work he did on Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Formal Complaint
Five years ago, Iron Man, who requested Truthout conceal his true identity out of concern for his family's privacy, lodged a formal complaint with the Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General after he was accused of improperly handling classified material.
Iron Man filed a FOIA request in September 2006, seeking a declassified copy of the six-page complaint he filed with the inspector general's office. He finally received a copy on April 8, just a few weeks prior to the raid on Bin Laden's compound.
What he revealed in that letter, portions of which were redacted by the government because the information is classified, is the inner workings of an elite intelligence unit he headed at one point: the Asymmetric Threats Division, formed in 1999, and "charged with reporting on asymmetric threats, especially terrorism."
The unit worked with Joint Task Force-Civil Support (JTF-CS), also set up in 1999. According to the Defense Department (DoD), JTF-CS was charged with supporting "terrorist response operations in the continental US" and providing "military assistance to civil authorities."
The Asymmetric Threats Division is referred to as DO5, a branch of the Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), whose responsibilities included, among other things, vetting human intelligence sources on behalf of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). From 1998 to 2001, Iron Man was working as a counterterrorism/counterintelligence analyst for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), assigned to JFIC.
The JFIC is an elite intelligence unit that falls under the authority of the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and "had a direct and assigned purview on international terrorism against the US, to include the operations of al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attackers."
The JFIC was also responsible for monitoring Bin Laden and other suspected terrorists who resided in Afghanistan between 1998 and 2000 and was charged with constructing likely scenarios that could be carried out by terrorists and possible government responses.
Iron Man noted the "purpose of the letter" he wrote "is to formally complain" to the inspector general that "JFIC, when instructed in or before May 2002 to provide all original material it might have relevant to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks for a Congressional inquiry, intentionally misinformed the Department of Defense that it had no purview on such matters and no such material."
"JFIC's role" and the DoD's "role, in the pursuit of al-Qa'ida before 9/11 and timely analysis of the targets actually struck by the 9/11 attackers have remained unknown even to senior DoD officials," the letter says.
Moreover, there has never been a public accounting of the work conducted by DO5. But Iron Man's letter provides deep insight into the secret military intelligence group's highly classified activities.
Tracking Terrorists
DO5 was "a fore-runner of current all-source fusion centers," the letter Iron Man wrote says. Individuals assigned to the unit had "a wide mix of skills" in intelligence disciplines, including human and open-source intelligence, signals intelligence and imagery and signature intelligence.
DO5 drafted "numerous original reports ... identifying probable and possible movements and locations of Usama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar," including likely identification of the house where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly planned the 9/11 attacks.
From 1999 to 2001, the intelligence unit also "conducted imagery analysis of Jalalabad and Qandahar" and other parts of Afghanistan as they were "pulled into a community-wide initiative on al-Qa'ida."
The letter further states, "DO5 was able to 'scoop' [the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency]," an agency which played a crucial role in identifying the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden had been hiding.
According to US government officials, it was one of Bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom intelligence operatives identified about five years ago, that led the CIA to pinpoint Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.
But Iron Man's 2006 letter states that DO5 worked closely with DIA and was instrumental in identifying "a likely financial courier" for al-Qaeda, and one who may have led intelligence officials directly to Bin Laden well before 9/11.
Early Intelligence Pointed to the World Trade Center, Pentagon
In 2002, following his departure to DIA, Iron Man returned to JFIC to teach two classes on asymmetric warfare, and he kept "numerous" slides related to DO5's work on "pre-9/11 briefings."
As Iron Man explained in his letter of complaint to DoD's inspector general, "upon my arrival at DIA, I had these documents e-mailed from JFIC to my DIA account, so that I could use them as references for the asymmetric warfare course I was drafting for DIA, and as references for any future counter-terrorism work I might pursue at DIA."
It appears that the allegation Iron Man mishandled classified material stems from a decision he made to email the briefing slides to his DIA account. Iron Man declined to elaborate about the circumstances of the allegations leveled against him. Still, what he reveals in his carefully worded letter in response to those charges is explosive.
"I kept the original classifications on the slides, as historical documents, although the fact that al-Qa'ida was likely to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was clearly no longer classified." (Emphasis added.)
Iron Man further elaborated on this point by stating that high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets.
In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.
For example, Iron Man states in his letter that in the summer of 2000, DO5 briefed USJFCOM senior intelligence officials and staffers, including the deputy commander in chief, on the "WMD Threat to the U.S."
Iron Man describes a "sensitive," "oral briefing" that took place that summer "indicating that the World Trade Centers #1 and #2 were the most likely buildings to be attacked [by al-Qaeda], followed closely by the Pentagon. The briefer indicated that the worst case scenario would be one tower collapsed onto another."
Furthermore, as he states in his letter, Iron Man was certain that such a scenario was part of a "red cell analysis" discussion that took place prior to the intelligence briefing and included a finding that the buildings "could be struck by a jetliner." He wrote that there was a suggestion about alerting WTC security and engineering or architectural staff, "but the idea was not further explored because of a command climate discouraging contact with the civilian community."
One official who attended the DO5 briefing was Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander in chief (DCINC), USJFCOM (Iron Man's complaint does not identify Meyer by name, but notes the presence of the "DCINC" for USJFCOM). But despite the red flags raised during the briefing, Meyer [7] reportedly told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR), and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"
Mayer retired from the Navy in 2003 and was hired [8] by defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
Intelligence Withheld From Congress
Even worse, according to Iron Man's letter, the information DO5 had collected about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the lead up to 9/11 was withheld from Congress after the House and Senate Intelligence Committees launched an investigation into the attacks.
"When the Justice Department requested all documents relating to 9/11 from DoD in May 2002, I notified [redacted] in the DIA Congressional Affairs office that I retained these documents," Iron Man's letter states. "I spoke to [redacted] JFIC DI1 [an individual who works in the command administrative staff], who informed me that JFIC had already submitted a response without any documents. I was surprised and disappointed when my successor at DO5 [redacted] notified me of the full JFIC non-response. I notified [redacted] in the Congressional Affairs office, and was told to submit the documents as DIA documents, with an explanatory e-mail. I did so on 29 May 2002, presuming (probably correctly) that the documents might be overlooked, since they originated at JFIC. I forwarded copies to [redacted] (who was departing JFIC that week), (his subordinate), and [redacted] (who was also departing JFIC that week)."
A DoD spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees also did not respond to calls for comment.
After raising his concerns, Iron Man, who from late 2000 to June 2001 was acting head of DO5, was told by his former boss that JFIC's formal response to Congress' inquiries was that "al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks had been outside JFIC's purview and that JFIC consequently held no material on those issues," which was a lie.
Iron Man's boss said, "He insisted [to officials who responded to the Congressional inquiries] that such was not the case, but was told this was JFIC's response."
Iron Man wrote that "many people" working at government agencies were knowledgeable about JFIC's "role in preparing original analysis" on al-Qaeda, including officials at the CIA, NCIS, USJFCOM, DIA and NSA, whose names were redacted in the letter he sent to DoD's inspector general.
However, after conducting at least 300 interviews and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, the final report issued by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in December 2002, into "Intelligence Community Activities Before And After The Terrorist Attacks Of September 11, 2001" did not cite any of DO5's work on al-Qaeda or Bin Laden or the fact that the intelligence unit was able to identify the terrorist group's top two targets in the US. The later 2004 9/11 Commission Report did not mention DO5 or JFIC.
Flawed DoD Investigation
Although the inspector general acted on Iron Man's complaint and launched an investigation, the findings of the probe, outlined in a report [9], declassified last year, previously reported by Truthout, was highly flawed and failed to address Iron Man's charges that intelligence was withheld from Congress.
Indeed, it appears the author of the inspector general's report confused Congress' investigation into the 9/11 attacks with the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States [10], otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission, created in late 2002 by legislation passed by Congress. The inspector general's report insisted it did not find any "evidence that the Joint Forces Intelligence Command misled Congress by withholding operational information in response to the 9/11 Commission."
But Iron Man's complaint specifically addressed intelligence withheld from Congress' inquiries into the 9/11 attacks, not the independent panel's probe, thereby dismissing an allegation Iron Man had never made.
Iron Man told Truthout the inspector general's final report "was, shall we say, very incorrect, and intentionally did not address the full scope of the [his] complaint. "
The watchdog did not tackle another of Iron Man's explosive claims about DO5 briefings that centered on "numerous examples and suggestions of how [Osama bin Laden] was being hunted by JFIC and could be hunted by the [intelligence community]."
One such briefing held for a "DIA senior intelligence officer on counterterrorism" was entitled "The Search (for Osama bin Laden) - A [commander in chief] Level View," which included "a compendium of imagery of [a] suspected [Bin Laden] house dating from 23 August 1999 until 11 April 2000."
At the briefing, intelligence officials were informed that "eleven special reports" by DO5 had been disseminated in the "Daily Intelligence Summary on [Bin Laden], Taliban leadership, Afghan military movements, UN locations, and the economic status of Afghanistan."
Another briefing for the counterintelligence/counterterrorism chief at NCIS, and about 30 NCIS agents, "clearly stated the JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division monitored 'worldwide [counterterrorism/counterintelligence] traffic' and routinely prepared 'analytic reports' and 'supplements national agencies with original intelligence on [Bin Laden] and Afghanistan.'"
Congress was kept in the dark about those discussions and was not shown the documents distributed to intelligence officials at the briefings. The inspector general never bothered to find out why. Remarkably, the watchdog stated in its report, "JFIC did not have the mission to track Usama Bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets."
Iron Man told Truthout it was key intelligence withheld from Congress about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden's pre-9/11 activities that also played a part in his decision to file a complaint with the inspector general.
"My concern was not only that the 9/11 commission had not been informed, but the larger Congress, in its larger oversight responsibilities, had also not been informed," he said.
A Heavy Burden
What remains unclear is exactly what took place back in May 2006 that prompted Iron Man's complaint to the inspector general, given that the issues he had raised centered on events that unfolded four years earlier.
The answer to that question can be found in these passages of Iron Man's letter, particularly the last few sentences:
"My motivation for this complaint is multi-faceted," Iron Man wrote. "I do believe that knowledge of the work done by DO5 would add to DoD's understanding of its role in the events leading up to 9/11, and how to avoid future attacks ... I have been falsely accused of revealing classified information on DO5's work, when I am certain that information is not and has not been classified since 9/11, and I do want to see myself cleared of that false accusation.The deputy whose name the government redacted from Iron Man's letter, is believed to be Kirk von Ackermann, a former Air Force captain and intelligence analyst, who was working for the US Army as a contractor in Iraq and disappeared in October 2003 while traveling between Tikrit and Kirkuk. A computer, a briefcase containing $40,000, and other materials were found in von Ackerman's vehicle after he went missing.
"In addition, I and the deputy of that team, [redacted], especially carried the burden of knowledge of how close DoD came to bin Ladin and perhaps being able to reduce the number of lives lost on 9/11 ..."
Because von Ackerman's name was classified in the complaint Iron Man filed with the inspector general, he could not confirm whether von Ackerman is the individual he was referring to.
Just three months after Iron Man filed his complaint with DoD's inspector general, in August 2006, the Army Criminal Investigative Service concluded that von Ackerman had been kidnapped and killed. His remains have never been found nor has anyone claimed responsibility for his death.
Von Ackerman's tragic story [11] has been previously reported by journalist-blogger Susie Dow on the web site e Pluribus Media, but has largely remained under the radar. In a May 6 article she published on her personal blog, Dow identified von Ackermann as a member of JFIC's Asymmetric Threats Division. Iron Man's complaint suggests he ultimately became deputy chief of DO5.
In October 2006, Dow wrote [12] that von Ackermann was "assigned to a counterterrorism team."
"You'll find no mention of either Kirk von Ackermann or his team in the 9-11 Commission report.... Well before 9-11, Kirk von Ackermann predicted aircraft could be hijacked and used as weapons against the United States. He also predicted potential targets."
Von Ackerman's wife, Megan von Ackerman, has maintained a blog called "Missing in Iraq [13]," dedicated to her missing husband. In March 2006, she wrote that her husband had planned for such a catastrophic event, but his warnings were ignored:
"... When 9/11 happened everyone around us reacted as normal, civilians would - shock, horror, fear ... but Kirk, isolated from the intelligence and military community of people who knew what he knew, felt what he felt, was essentially alone," Megan von Ackerman wrote. "For a year he had spent his days imagining just this sort of scenario. He had come up with countless plans, evaluated targets, totaled up casualties and estimated political value. He had thought like a terrorist so he could stop them. Now he had to watch it made horribly real - the nightmare he had worked so hard to avoid ... Kirk had tried to make the warning, he had worked endless hours to stop this very thing happening. He knew he had no guilt that he had been ignored. But he retained an enormous sense of responsibility - not only for what happened, but for dealing with the new world that 9/11 ushered in."Knowing exactly how close he, von Ackerman and DO5 came to capturing Bin Laden and possibly thwarting the attacks on 9/11 is a "burden" Iron Man said he "no longer wants to carry."
"[Redacted] and I discussed this issue the last time we spoke," Iron Man wrote in the final paragraph of his letter to the inspector general, likely referring to von Ackerman. "He remains the longest missing man in Iraq in this war, and I want, one day, to be able to explain to his children what their father foresaw."
[14] This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [14].
Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/3051
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/3051
[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/82947612@N00
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man
[5] http://www.truthout.org/report-intelligence-unit-told-911-stop-tracking-bin-laden/1306159803
[6] http://truth-out.org/files/inspector-general-complaint-911-iron-man.pdf
[7] http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=martin_mayer_1
[8] http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2003/LockheedMartinNamesMartinJMayerVice.html
[9] http://www.truth-out.org/report-intelligence-unit-told-911-stop-tracking-bin-laden/1306159803
[10] http://www.9-11commission.gov/
[11] http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2006/20060512_missingman_p1.html
[12] http://missingman.blogspot.com/2006/10/counter-terrorism-and-kirk-von.html
[13] http://missinginiraq.blogspot.com/2006/03/getting-to-iraq-part-three-911.html
[14] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[15] http://twitter.com/share
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/jeffrey-kaye-and-jason-leopold/1307986666
[17] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[18] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Most Unreported Story: FBI Involvement in 1993 WTC Bombing
The most under-reported story regarding terrorism in our time: an FBI informant on tape tells his FBI handler how he, as an informant buried inside Ramzi Yousef's terror cell on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- indeed, the informer/FBI asset, Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence agent, was bodyguard to the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman -- was involved in the building of the bomb, and is upset he was pulled out before he could make the bomb non-explosive, as part of a sting of the terrorists.
Then Judge Michael Mukasey (later GWB attorney general) tried to keep the tapes secret, but some were linked to the New York Times.
Too crazy to be believed? Then read these NY Times articles from 1993:
Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds (10/27/93)
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast (10/28/93)
Then Judge Michael Mukasey (later GWB attorney general) tried to keep the tapes secret, but some were linked to the New York Times.
Too crazy to be believed? Then read these NY Times articles from 1993:
Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds (10/27/93)
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast (10/28/93)
Monday, May 23, 2011
Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden
Cross-posted from Truthout
by Jeffrey Kaye
A great deal of controversy has arisen about what was known about the movements and location of Osama bin Laden in the wake of his killing by US Special Forces on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Questions about what intelligence agencies knew or didn't know about al-Qaeda activities go back some years, most prominently in the controversy over the existence of a joint US Special Forces Command and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) data mining effort known as "Able Danger."
What hasn't been discussed is a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. JFIC is tasked with an intelligence mission in support of United States Joint Force Command (USJFCOM).
The report, titled "Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11 Commission," was declassified last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists.
The whistleblower, who the IG report identified as a former JFIC employee represented only by his codename "IRON MAN," claimed in letters written to both the DoD inspector general in May 2006 and, lacking any apparent action by the IG, to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) in October 2007, that JFIC had withheld operational information about al-Qaeda when queried in March 2002 about its activities by the DIA and higher command officials on behalf of the 9/11 Commission. The ODNI passed the complaint back to the IG, who then opened an investigation under the auspices of the deputy inspector general for intelligence.
In a November 27, 2007, letter from Edward Maguire at the ODNI to Gen. Claude Kicklighter at the DoD's IG office, Maquire identifies the whistleblower as "a DIA employee in the Defense HUMINT Management Office, Policy and Plans Division," who was "personally involved in JFIC intelligence activities related to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks and had first hand knowledge of circumstances surrounding that alleged false reporting to the Secretary of Defense and Congress."
Maguire also offered to send classified material to the DoD IG that was in possession of the Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) inspector general. He also told Kicklighter that the DNI had not performed even a preliminary inquiry on the allegations.
The IG report, which does not explain the 18-month delay in opening an investigation, cleared JFIC of any wrongdoing and declared that the intelligence agency had "provided a timely and accurate reply in response to the 9/11 Commission." In evident response, IRON MAN indicated to the IG investigating staff that "he had never seen the 9/11 Commission questions or JFIC's response, but that Congress should have asked for files concerning the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin."
According to the IG report, the 9/11 Commission "had not requested the direct submission of any files or requested information regarding the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin." The report said the commission questions "were very specific," and asked what the JFIC knew about "imminent attack" or "hijackers involved" in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Tracking Bin Laden had been undertaken by a secret unit within the JFIC, the Asymmetric Threats Division, formed in 1999 "to take a non-traditional approach to analysis." Known by its DoD acronym, DO5, it was tasked with providing "current intelligence briefings and produced the Worldwide Terrorist Threat Summary in support of the USJFCOM Intelligence staff [J2]." Almost no public source material exists on DO5 activities, except what is in the IG report.
The IG report does not deny the tracking of Bin Laden, but notes that the JFIC was to provide general and direct intelligence support to USJFCOM and subordinate joint forces commands and that it did not have a mission to track Osama bin Laden or predict imminent targets of terrorism on US soil.
Nevertheless, DO5 was involved in intelligence concerns domestically. It provided assistance to the Joint Task Force - Civil Support (JTF-CS), which, like DO5, was formed in 1999 and based out of Fort Monroe, Virginia. The JTF-CS was tasked with assisting the DoD response to domestic terror incidents, including "managing the consequences of a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) situation." At one point, DO5 assisted the JTF-CS by "establishing fictional terrorist organizations that would mimic real world terrorist groups" that were utilized as part of JTF-CS "exercises."
The obscurity of DO5's mission was summed up by a former JFIC deputy director of intelligence, who told investigators that DO5 had "no theater specific mission." According to the answers the JFIC provided to the 9/11 Commission, the JFIC received over 2,200 messages daily "from other agencies, JFCOM components, or services." It did "not conduct any unilateral collection" of any intelligence domestically.
According to the narrative in the IG report, a previous JFIC deputy director of intelligence said that the JFIC commander, identified elsewhere in the report as Capt. Janice Dundas, US Navy, "directed him to stop tracking Usama Bin Ladin. The Commanding Officer stated that the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission." At the same time, JFIC analysis of purported Afghanistan "terrorist training camps" was also curtailed, with an explanation that such activities were outside the agency's Area of Operations and "that the issues where [sic] not in JFIC's swim lane."
According to the report, the Asymmetric Threats Division was "realigned" in summer 2001 under the "Intelligence Watch Center." The Intelligence Watch Center may be the Combined Intelligence Watch Center associated with NORAD, which is an "indications and warning center for worldwide threats from space, missile and strategic air activity, as well as geopolitical unrest that could affect North America and US forces/interests abroad." This would be consistent with the work DO5 did with the JTF-CS.
The order to stop tracking Bin Laden, therefore, came sometime between the origin of DO5 in 1999 and its realignment just prior to, or right after 9/11. In 2005, the JFIC itself was renamed the Joint Transformation Command-Intelligence, still subordinate to and serving USJFCOM.
Other Allegations
According to the IG report, IRON MAN claimed that the JFIC had "original material created by DO5 relevant to al-Qa'ida," and that the JFIC had constructed "numerous original reports." But the IG investigators found that interviews with other JFIC personnel and a review of historical DO5 briefings did not support these allegations. They claimed that DO5, which "recruited JFIC personnel from the command based upon their counterintelligence and counterterrorism expertise," merely "monitored and compiled intelligence reporting" from other agencies.
IRON MAN told IG investigators that he believed that his agency, JFIC, would deny the existence of the Asymmetric Threat Division and its analyses. But the IG report authors claimed, "JFIC correctly identified the DO5 in its response to question 8" from the 9/11 Commission and explained, in addition, that the JFIC noted that "D05's emphasis was on force protection for the USJFCOM components."
But in the reply to question 8 reproduced in the IG report, there is no mention of either DO5 or the Asymmetric Threat Division. The answer states, "JFIC's Counter-terrorism focus has changed over the years," and that from fall 1999 until September 11, 2001, the JFIC's counterterrorism focus switched to "Asymmetric Threats OCONUS [outside the continental US] to include terrorism and CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear] issues," with the aforementioned emphasis on USJFCOM force protection. Nowhere does it indicate the existence of DO5 and there is no reason to believe that 9/11 Commission members were ever aware of its existence. The JFIC was never mentioned in the subsequent 9/11 Commission report.
In addition, IRON MAN's allegations also included charges that the JFIC and specifically DO5, had developed information that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the most likely domestic targets of an al-Qaeda attack. The IG report disputes this and claims, with less than definitive assurance, "Evidence indicated that the JFIC did not have knowledge regarding imminent domestic targets prior to 9/11 or specific 9/11 hijacker operations."
The IG report indicated that IG investigators spoke with a number of key ranking JFIC personnel, as well as the previous USJFCOM director of intelligence, the JFIC Commanding Officer and personnel from the Asymmetric Threat Division.
Earlier this year, a blogger, Susie Dow, who has been following the story of Kirk von Ackermann , a US Army contractor in Iraq who disappeared on the road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in October 2003, asserted that von Ackermann had earlier belonged to JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division. Von Ackermann's vehicle was found by the side of the road with a computer and a briefcase containing $40,000 in cash. An Army Criminal Investigative Division investigation later concluded that he was the victim of a probable kidnapping, while rumors persisted that he was possibly going to blow the whistle on DoD corruption.
An associate of von Ackermann, Ryan Manelick, a former Air Force Intelligence officer, was shot and killed outside a US military base near Baghdad two months later. Manelick had earlier told various people that he was in fear for his life. Both von Ackermann and Manelick worked for the contractor Ultra Services, based in Turkey. No particular link between von Ackermann or Manelick and the IRON MAN allegations has ever been proposed.
Dow has written on the two contractors for the website e Pluribus Media. In a May 6 posting at her own web site, "The Missing Man," Dow noted the IG report's conclusion: "The analysis completed by the Joint Forces Intelligence Command, specifically the Asymmetric Threat Division, was not applicable to the questions asked by the 9/11 Commission."
"Which leads me to believe the 9/11 Commission did not ask the correct questions," Dow said.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
by Jeffrey Kaye
A great deal of controversy has arisen about what was known about the movements and location of Osama bin Laden in the wake of his killing by US Special Forces on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Questions about what intelligence agencies knew or didn't know about al-Qaeda activities go back some years, most prominently in the controversy over the existence of a joint US Special Forces Command and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) data mining effort known as "Able Danger."
What hasn't been discussed is a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. JFIC is tasked with an intelligence mission in support of United States Joint Force Command (USJFCOM).
The report, titled "Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11 Commission," was declassified last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists.
The whistleblower, who the IG report identified as a former JFIC employee represented only by his codename "IRON MAN," claimed in letters written to both the DoD inspector general in May 2006 and, lacking any apparent action by the IG, to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) in October 2007, that JFIC had withheld operational information about al-Qaeda when queried in March 2002 about its activities by the DIA and higher command officials on behalf of the 9/11 Commission. The ODNI passed the complaint back to the IG, who then opened an investigation under the auspices of the deputy inspector general for intelligence.
In a November 27, 2007, letter from Edward Maguire at the ODNI to Gen. Claude Kicklighter at the DoD's IG office, Maquire identifies the whistleblower as "a DIA employee in the Defense HUMINT Management Office, Policy and Plans Division," who was "personally involved in JFIC intelligence activities related to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks and had first hand knowledge of circumstances surrounding that alleged false reporting to the Secretary of Defense and Congress."
Maguire also offered to send classified material to the DoD IG that was in possession of the Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) inspector general. He also told Kicklighter that the DNI had not performed even a preliminary inquiry on the allegations.
The IG report, which does not explain the 18-month delay in opening an investigation, cleared JFIC of any wrongdoing and declared that the intelligence agency had "provided a timely and accurate reply in response to the 9/11 Commission." In evident response, IRON MAN indicated to the IG investigating staff that "he had never seen the 9/11 Commission questions or JFIC's response, but that Congress should have asked for files concerning the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin."
According to the IG report, the 9/11 Commission "had not requested the direct submission of any files or requested information regarding the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin." The report said the commission questions "were very specific," and asked what the JFIC knew about "imminent attack" or "hijackers involved" in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Tracking Bin Laden had been undertaken by a secret unit within the JFIC, the Asymmetric Threats Division, formed in 1999 "to take a non-traditional approach to analysis." Known by its DoD acronym, DO5, it was tasked with providing "current intelligence briefings and produced the Worldwide Terrorist Threat Summary in support of the USJFCOM Intelligence staff [J2]." Almost no public source material exists on DO5 activities, except what is in the IG report.
The IG report does not deny the tracking of Bin Laden, but notes that the JFIC was to provide general and direct intelligence support to USJFCOM and subordinate joint forces commands and that it did not have a mission to track Osama bin Laden or predict imminent targets of terrorism on US soil.
Nevertheless, DO5 was involved in intelligence concerns domestically. It provided assistance to the Joint Task Force - Civil Support (JTF-CS), which, like DO5, was formed in 1999 and based out of Fort Monroe, Virginia. The JTF-CS was tasked with assisting the DoD response to domestic terror incidents, including "managing the consequences of a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) situation." At one point, DO5 assisted the JTF-CS by "establishing fictional terrorist organizations that would mimic real world terrorist groups" that were utilized as part of JTF-CS "exercises."
The obscurity of DO5's mission was summed up by a former JFIC deputy director of intelligence, who told investigators that DO5 had "no theater specific mission." According to the answers the JFIC provided to the 9/11 Commission, the JFIC received over 2,200 messages daily "from other agencies, JFCOM components, or services." It did "not conduct any unilateral collection" of any intelligence domestically.
According to the narrative in the IG report, a previous JFIC deputy director of intelligence said that the JFIC commander, identified elsewhere in the report as Capt. Janice Dundas, US Navy, "directed him to stop tracking Usama Bin Ladin. The Commanding Officer stated that the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission." At the same time, JFIC analysis of purported Afghanistan "terrorist training camps" was also curtailed, with an explanation that such activities were outside the agency's Area of Operations and "that the issues where [sic] not in JFIC's swim lane."
According to the report, the Asymmetric Threats Division was "realigned" in summer 2001 under the "Intelligence Watch Center." The Intelligence Watch Center may be the Combined Intelligence Watch Center associated with NORAD, which is an "indications and warning center for worldwide threats from space, missile and strategic air activity, as well as geopolitical unrest that could affect North America and US forces/interests abroad." This would be consistent with the work DO5 did with the JTF-CS.
The order to stop tracking Bin Laden, therefore, came sometime between the origin of DO5 in 1999 and its realignment just prior to, or right after 9/11. In 2005, the JFIC itself was renamed the Joint Transformation Command-Intelligence, still subordinate to and serving USJFCOM.
Other Allegations
According to the IG report, IRON MAN claimed that the JFIC had "original material created by DO5 relevant to al-Qa'ida," and that the JFIC had constructed "numerous original reports." But the IG investigators found that interviews with other JFIC personnel and a review of historical DO5 briefings did not support these allegations. They claimed that DO5, which "recruited JFIC personnel from the command based upon their counterintelligence and counterterrorism expertise," merely "monitored and compiled intelligence reporting" from other agencies.
IRON MAN told IG investigators that he believed that his agency, JFIC, would deny the existence of the Asymmetric Threat Division and its analyses. But the IG report authors claimed, "JFIC correctly identified the DO5 in its response to question 8" from the 9/11 Commission and explained, in addition, that the JFIC noted that "D05's emphasis was on force protection for the USJFCOM components."
But in the reply to question 8 reproduced in the IG report, there is no mention of either DO5 or the Asymmetric Threat Division. The answer states, "JFIC's Counter-terrorism focus has changed over the years," and that from fall 1999 until September 11, 2001, the JFIC's counterterrorism focus switched to "Asymmetric Threats OCONUS [outside the continental US] to include terrorism and CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear] issues," with the aforementioned emphasis on USJFCOM force protection. Nowhere does it indicate the existence of DO5 and there is no reason to believe that 9/11 Commission members were ever aware of its existence. The JFIC was never mentioned in the subsequent 9/11 Commission report.
In addition, IRON MAN's allegations also included charges that the JFIC and specifically DO5, had developed information that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the most likely domestic targets of an al-Qaeda attack. The IG report disputes this and claims, with less than definitive assurance, "Evidence indicated that the JFIC did not have knowledge regarding imminent domestic targets prior to 9/11 or specific 9/11 hijacker operations."
The IG report indicated that IG investigators spoke with a number of key ranking JFIC personnel, as well as the previous USJFCOM director of intelligence, the JFIC Commanding Officer and personnel from the Asymmetric Threat Division.
Earlier this year, a blogger, Susie Dow, who has been following the story of Kirk von Ackermann , a US Army contractor in Iraq who disappeared on the road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in October 2003, asserted that von Ackermann had earlier belonged to JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division. Von Ackermann's vehicle was found by the side of the road with a computer and a briefcase containing $40,000 in cash. An Army Criminal Investigative Division investigation later concluded that he was the victim of a probable kidnapping, while rumors persisted that he was possibly going to blow the whistle on DoD corruption.
An associate of von Ackermann, Ryan Manelick, a former Air Force Intelligence officer, was shot and killed outside a US military base near Baghdad two months later. Manelick had earlier told various people that he was in fear for his life. Both von Ackermann and Manelick worked for the contractor Ultra Services, based in Turkey. No particular link between von Ackermann or Manelick and the IRON MAN allegations has ever been proposed.
Dow has written on the two contractors for the website e Pluribus Media. In a May 6 posting at her own web site, "The Missing Man," Dow noted the IG report's conclusion: "The analysis completed by the Joint Forces Intelligence Command, specifically the Asymmetric Threat Division, was not applicable to the questions asked by the 9/11 Commission."
"Which leads me to believe the 9/11 Commission did not ask the correct questions," Dow said.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Anti-Torture Psychologists Call for Major Overhaul of APA
The psychologists with Coalition for an Ethical Psychology have released a statement about the state of organized psychology nearly ten years after 9/11. They suggest that if after reading it you would like to support their call for change, go sign their petition at www.thepetitionsite.com/1/reclaiming-psychology/. You can also sign up for email updates at www.ethicalpsychology.org.
Reclaiming Our Profession: Psychology Ten Years After 9/11
Next September 11th will mark the end of a difficult and pivotal decade for American psychology. The path taken in the months ahead will help determine whether this period is remembered as the decade that forever tarnished the profession or, instead, as a watershed decade in which psychology firmly established its moral bearings.
Human rights advocates, and increasingly the general public, have come to view our profession as home to the architects, abettors, and practitioners of abusive interrogations -- even torture -- and other ethical violations as part of a national security apparatus run amok. And they are not wrong. Regrettably, such misconduct has often overshadowed the very many psychologists who have played valuable roles as dedicated helping professionals, researchers, and educators during this time.
But a profession's legitimacy and reputation are neither established nor maintained by a simple count of those who act decently and responsibly compared to those who do not. Psychology rises or falls depending upon whether principle and integrity are chosen over expediency and opportunism. Such choices are not made solely by individuals and then reflected in their personal actions. Of even more importance, these choices are made by organizational leaders representing the profession as a whole.
It is now well documented that the leadership of the American Psychological Association (APA) has comprehensively failed in this crucial stewardship role. As a result, the larger tragedy does not revolve around particular psychologists who took an abhorrent approach to interrogations, who compromised science for career opportunities, or who succumbed to situational pressures. Disappointingly, our core ethical imperatives in psychology, including bedrock tenets of "do no harm" and informed consent, were cast aside at the highest levels of the APA, in exchange for increased access, status, and funding.
Indeed, over the past several years the evidence of misconduct and questionable judgment within the APA -- primarily through associations with CIA and Department of Defense intelligence operations -- has steadily risen. Like expanding floodwaters, one new revelation has followed another. They now threaten to breach the makeshift dam built piecemeal from APA’s denial, stonewalling, intimidation, and double-talk. At risk are not only those who have acted irresponsibly. The casualties may well include many bystanders -- decent and dedicated APA members brought down by misplaced allegiance and trust in their organization’s leaders, and non-member psychologists whose practices and careers have been tainted as well.
The ongoing efforts of our fellow "dissident" psychologists to change APA policies have been invaluable. But as this tumultuous decade draws to a close, it is clear that a far broader grassroots movement is needed. APA members and non-member psychologists alike must come together in large and growing numbers and stand firm in their simple demand: "No More, This Must End."
The necessary changes are far-reaching. They will meet resistance at each step, but they are attainable. Otherwise our professional organizations likely will repeat the errors and failures of the last decade during future periods of crisis. New leadership for the psychology profession is crucial. At this point it remains an open question whether the APA is capable of reforming itself, including replacing compromised leadership, or whether new organizational forms will ultimately be needed. At a minimum, accountability for those responsible for wrongdoing is essential. If the APA is to survive as an ethical organization, a restructuring of its governance and bureaucracy is critical, so that processes at all levels become more transparent and power is no longer held in so few hands. A thorough reevaluation of priorities and relations, including links to the military-intelligence establishment, must be undertaken.
This is a tall order, but anything less is unacceptable. The approaching tenth anniversary of 9/11 must coincide with the rebirth of a principled American psychology, truly taking "do no harm" to heart. If not, it may represent a eulogy for our once proud profession. We owe it to those who have tragically suffered at psychology’s hands; we owe it to the next generation of psychologists; and we owe it to ourselves.
This statement is also available in PDF form at www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition--Reclaiming-Our-Profession.pdf
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Gladio: A Conspiracy So Large, It's Time You Learned About It
I am pleased to link here the 1992 three-part BBC documentary by Alan Francovich, Gladio. Utilizing interviews from the many European and American principals involved, the documentary relates the story of the biggest "conspiracy" of our time (are you listening, Cass Sunstein?) -- the existence of a covert terrorist network maintained throughout Europe by NATO, which utilized terrorism in an effort to discredit the political left.
These "stay-behind" networks originally were built up by recruiting fascists from the countries the U.S. and Britain occupied, meant to be a bulwark against a possible and feared Soviet invasion after World War II. When the invasion never occurred, the networks were not dismantled, but took on a different mission: to keep the left from gaining power in any of these states, from Sweden and Belgium to France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere.
The existence of secret "stay-behind" armies and groups, known today by the Italian name, Gladio, caused a sensation in the early 1990s, when they were revealed by then-Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Since then, Gladio-like operations, supposedly ran by the CIA and to some extent the British MI6, have been linked to a number of terrorist attacks, assassinations, and right-wing coups in Europe, e.g., the Bologna train station bombing in 1980, the 1967 generals coup in Greece, etc.
The sensationalistic charges have fed a number of conspiracy theories, particularly those around the existence of "false flag" government operations. Some have indicated they see the 9/11 attacks in this light, though I can't say I have the kind of evidence to make such an assertion. But one can understand how any individual might come to seriously mistrust the U.S. government after learning of the Gladio history, which is extensive and well-documented.
Among other canards the Gladio story can put to rest is the silly belief that no large scale conspiracies can exist, at least in a so-called open, democratic society such as ours. And yet, Gladio proves that is not true. In fact, since the revelations of the early 1990s, there has been practically no discussion of this crucial aspect of contemporary history by U.S. historians or policy makers. The existence of this huge conspiracy and intervention against sovereign European states is almost never even referred to by the vast majority of political commentators, left or right, in the United States. I don't see how anyone can intelligently discuss modern European politics without understanding the Gladio revelations and the fallout from them in the various European countries.
More Documentation on Gladio
The first academic examination of Gladio was published in 2005 by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser. Mr. Ganser is currently a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. His book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, is available at last at not too outrageous a price at Amazon, and likely other book outlets.
(Caveat emptor! The paperback version was said to be unavailable, leaving only the $190 hardback edition! However, there is a Kindle version available for under $40. And moreover, clicking on a link on the latter page brings me to another Amazon page that lists the paperback as available, with new and used copies from $41 on down.)
Another excellent book that delivers a good deal of research on Gladio comes from British journalist Philip Willan, who writes for the UK Guardian and other papers: Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy.
I can't say that I have mastered the above material. Nor am I sure how exactly this aspect of American and European history is being played out even now. I do know that it much too large a story, with way too many ramifications to be ignored. In fact, from a historian's standpoint, or that of any commentator on the events of the past fifty or sixty years, it appears that many of the assumptions about the world we live in are seriously called into question.
At the end of this posting are some links to other online sites of interest, as we begin to assimilate this gigantic story, one which until recently, has been kept from the American people -- outside of small websites, chat rooms, or in the comments of blog readers who get labeled as "conspiracy nuts." Some of the latter are intemperate and have not really examined the proof for many of their statements. But Gladio is not one of those instances. It is a true conspiracy, by men and women at the highest levels of our society. It was kept secret for decades. By indifference and neglect, it is kept out of public consciousness even now.
Part One - ="The Ringmasters"
Part Two - "The Puppeteers"
Part Three - "The Foot Soldiers"
The Wikipedia entry on Gladio. Not bad, with lots of links.
Selections from Ganser's book
An article on Gladio by Arthur Rowse, formerly at the Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report.
Dr. John Prados, Senior Fellow at The National Security Archive, and who wrote the forward for Ganser's book, discusses Gladio in his book on William Colby, which one can read in part at Google Books.
The ongoing ramifications of Gladio in Turkey, where the "stay-behinds" or embedded secret organization (take your pick) is called Ergenekon.
US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy'
Report claims Washington used a strategy of tension in the cold war to stabilise the centre-right
Philip Willan, UK Guardian, 24 June 2000, page 19
These "stay-behind" networks originally were built up by recruiting fascists from the countries the U.S. and Britain occupied, meant to be a bulwark against a possible and feared Soviet invasion after World War II. When the invasion never occurred, the networks were not dismantled, but took on a different mission: to keep the left from gaining power in any of these states, from Sweden and Belgium to France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere.
The existence of secret "stay-behind" armies and groups, known today by the Italian name, Gladio, caused a sensation in the early 1990s, when they were revealed by then-Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Since then, Gladio-like operations, supposedly ran by the CIA and to some extent the British MI6, have been linked to a number of terrorist attacks, assassinations, and right-wing coups in Europe, e.g., the Bologna train station bombing in 1980, the 1967 generals coup in Greece, etc.
The sensationalistic charges have fed a number of conspiracy theories, particularly those around the existence of "false flag" government operations. Some have indicated they see the 9/11 attacks in this light, though I can't say I have the kind of evidence to make such an assertion. But one can understand how any individual might come to seriously mistrust the U.S. government after learning of the Gladio history, which is extensive and well-documented.
Among other canards the Gladio story can put to rest is the silly belief that no large scale conspiracies can exist, at least in a so-called open, democratic society such as ours. And yet, Gladio proves that is not true. In fact, since the revelations of the early 1990s, there has been practically no discussion of this crucial aspect of contemporary history by U.S. historians or policy makers. The existence of this huge conspiracy and intervention against sovereign European states is almost never even referred to by the vast majority of political commentators, left or right, in the United States. I don't see how anyone can intelligently discuss modern European politics without understanding the Gladio revelations and the fallout from them in the various European countries.
More Documentation on Gladio
The first academic examination of Gladio was published in 2005 by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser. Mr. Ganser is currently a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. His book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, is available at last at not too outrageous a price at Amazon, and likely other book outlets.
(Caveat emptor! The paperback version was said to be unavailable, leaving only the $190 hardback edition! However, there is a Kindle version available for under $40. And moreover, clicking on a link on the latter page brings me to another Amazon page that lists the paperback as available, with new and used copies from $41 on down.)
Another excellent book that delivers a good deal of research on Gladio comes from British journalist Philip Willan, who writes for the UK Guardian and other papers: Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy.
I can't say that I have mastered the above material. Nor am I sure how exactly this aspect of American and European history is being played out even now. I do know that it much too large a story, with way too many ramifications to be ignored. In fact, from a historian's standpoint, or that of any commentator on the events of the past fifty or sixty years, it appears that many of the assumptions about the world we live in are seriously called into question.
At the end of this posting are some links to other online sites of interest, as we begin to assimilate this gigantic story, one which until recently, has been kept from the American people -- outside of small websites, chat rooms, or in the comments of blog readers who get labeled as "conspiracy nuts." Some of the latter are intemperate and have not really examined the proof for many of their statements. But Gladio is not one of those instances. It is a true conspiracy, by men and women at the highest levels of our society. It was kept secret for decades. By indifference and neglect, it is kept out of public consciousness even now.
Part One - ="The Ringmasters"
Part Two - "The Puppeteers"
Part Three - "The Foot Soldiers"
The Wikipedia entry on Gladio. Not bad, with lots of links.
Selections from Ganser's book
An article on Gladio by Arthur Rowse, formerly at the Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report.
Dr. John Prados, Senior Fellow at The National Security Archive, and who wrote the forward for Ganser's book, discusses Gladio in his book on William Colby, which one can read in part at Google Books.
The ongoing ramifications of Gladio in Turkey, where the "stay-behinds" or embedded secret organization (take your pick) is called Ergenekon.
US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy'
Report claims Washington used a strategy of tension in the cold war to stabilise the centre-right
Philip Willan, UK Guardian, 24 June 2000, page 19
Monday, March 16, 2009
9/11 Commission Relied on Tortured Confessions
Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, the moniker for one of Daily Kos's most intrepid diarists, has written an article covering the revelations in Newsweek that much of the information in the report of the 9/11 commission was gathered from prisoners who were tortured. NBC news reported:
As PDNC points out, Newsweek can't help put notice that the "troubling implications for the credibility of the commission’s final report". No kidding.
The very term, "9/11", can still rouse a great deal of emotion and fear. The idea that much of what we thought we knew about 9/11 is based on torture "evidence"/testimony is about as horrifying as anything I can think of.
Truly the use of torture has spread like a poison and infected everything this country does or claims to stand for. It has invaded the very notion of truth and sullied it beyond recognition.
Moreover, this kind of news will give new credence to those who have seen 9/11 as some kind of government conspiracy. While I am no such conspiracist on this issue, there are certainly strange doings around the 9/11 events.
One such unanswered aspect of the affair appeared in respected journalist James Bamford's recent book on the NSA post-9/11, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
In the first chapter of the book, Bamford reports how Tom Wilshire, a high-level CIA deputy chief at Counter-Terrorism Center, spiked a report on the travel of a known associate of a terror center in Yemen to New York City. From Bamford's book (pp. 19-21 -- emphases added):
Will someone please stop asking for torture information and goddamn ask Tom Wilshire what the hell he was doing suppressing the CIR on Mihdhar. Someone also might want to investigate the coincidental loss of the tail of the two suspected terrorists after they left Kuala Lumpur.
I'm sure this doesn't represent the sum total of unanswered questions about 9/11. The diarist's own article raises a new one: who ordered or approved the use of tortured information in the investigation? They should be headed to jail, and pronto.
Looked at from another angle, the news reported above could have concerned any damn government report. If a government uses tortured evidence for military and intelligence purposes, that's evil, and bad enough (and illegal, and should be prosecuted).
But when torture is used by civil commissions as a basis of investigation, then the entire nation has jumped the shark, and we are in waters so deadly and deep, I don't know how we all don't drown.
According to both current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials, the operatives cited by the Commission were subjected to the harshest of the CIA’s methods, the "enhanced interrogation techniques." The techniques included physical and mental abuse, exposure to extreme heat and cold, sleep deprivation and waterboarding.Even more startling, the 9/11 Commission's request for more information may have led to even more torture. Per PDNC's diary:
The 9/11 panel also did not publicly protest the interrogation methods even though there were public reports at the time that the prisoners were being tortured or subjected to "enhanced interrogation." Moreover, despite their suspicions and public news reports, the position of the commission staffers interviewed by NBC News was that interrogation techniques were "not in our mandate."What did the commission members make of all this at the time, these paragons of political virtue, who included Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton, Tim Roemer, Bob Kerrey and others, and as executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, an old colleague of Condoleezza Rice, and also an NSC member and director of the Aspen Strategy Group? According to the NBC "deep background" article:
Finally, the commission "demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions." Newsweek reports that it is a "distinct possibility" that prisoners were subjected to torture in order to answer the questions posed by the 9/11 Commission. Commission members wanted to have direct access to the prisoners to ask questions, but the Whitehouse refused, so questions were passed onto the CIA.
9/11 Commission staffers say they "guessed" but did not know for certain that harsh techniques had been used, and they were concerned that the techniques had affected the operatives’ credibility. At least four of the operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured."Major Questions on 9/11
As PDNC points out, Newsweek can't help put notice that the "troubling implications for the credibility of the commission’s final report". No kidding.
The very term, "9/11", can still rouse a great deal of emotion and fear. The idea that much of what we thought we knew about 9/11 is based on torture "evidence"/testimony is about as horrifying as anything I can think of.
Truly the use of torture has spread like a poison and infected everything this country does or claims to stand for. It has invaded the very notion of truth and sullied it beyond recognition.
Moreover, this kind of news will give new credence to those who have seen 9/11 as some kind of government conspiracy. While I am no such conspiracist on this issue, there are certainly strange doings around the 9/11 events.
One such unanswered aspect of the affair appeared in respected journalist James Bamford's recent book on the NSA post-9/11, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
In the first chapter of the book, Bamford reports how Tom Wilshire, a high-level CIA deputy chief at Counter-Terrorism Center, spiked a report on the travel of a known associate of a terror center in Yemen to New York City. From Bamford's book (pp. 19-21 -- emphases added):
Mihdhar and Hazmi died along with everybody else after they helped hijack American Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.Doug Miller, one of three FBI employees at Alec Station, took one look at the faxes and became instantly alarmed. A possible terrorist, whose travel was arranged by bin Laden's ops center, was on his way to a secret al-Qaeda meeting [in Kuala Lampur] and would soon be heading for America's largest city. At 9:20 a.m. [roughly Dec. 1999], started pecking out a message to alert his superiors at FBI headquarters, who could then put [Khalid al] Mihdhar on a watch list to bar him from entry.
But inexplicably, the message -- known as a Central Intelligence Report (CIR) -- was spiked by his CIA boss, Tom Wilshire, the deputy chief of Alec Station. At about 4:00 p.m., one of the CIA analysts assigned to the station, a twenty-nine year old woman, typed a note onto it: "pls hold off on CIR for now per Tom Wilshire." Without Wilshire's approval, Miller could not pass on the information, even verbally. He had done everything by the book....
Miller then told his FBI colleague Mark Rossini what happened. Rossini had spent many years working on terrorism cases in the bureau, from the first World Trade Center bombing to the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, and had been assigned to Alec Station for several years. he was both perplexed and outraged that the CIA would forbid the bureau's notification on a matter so important. "Doug came to me and said, 'What the fuck?'" said Rossini, who took the matter up with Wilshire's deputy.... "So the next day I went to her and said, 'What's with Doug's cable. You've got to tell the bureau about this.' She put her hand on her hip and said, 'Look, the next attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia -- it's not the FBI's jurisdiction. When we want the FBI to know about it, we'll let them know. But the next bin Laden attack's going to happen in Southeast Asia.'" It made no sense to Rossini. The potential terrorists were coming to the U.S. -- not to Southeast Asia. Neither Rossini nor Miller was questioned by the 9/11 Commission.
"They refused to tell us because they didn't want the FBI... muddying up their operation," said one of the FBI agents assigned to the station....
Having forbidden Miller and Rossini from notifying their headquarters about Mihdhar's planned travel to the U.S., the CIA then proceed to lose Mihdhar and Hamzmi when they took off for a brief visit to Bangkok, en route to the U.S....
On January 14, the chief of Alec Station told senior officals that the search for Khalid al-Mihdhar and the others was still going strong. In fact, it had been over for days. The next day, the FBI agent Doug Miller sent an e-mail to Tom Wilshire asking what happened to his CIR to FBI headquarters warning of Mihdhar's plans to travel to the U.S. "Is this a no-go or should I remake it in some way?" he asked. He never received a response.
At almost the same moment, Mihdhar and Hazmi's plane touched down at Los Angeles International Airport.
Will someone please stop asking for torture information and goddamn ask Tom Wilshire what the hell he was doing suppressing the CIR on Mihdhar. Someone also might want to investigate the coincidental loss of the tail of the two suspected terrorists after they left Kuala Lumpur.
I'm sure this doesn't represent the sum total of unanswered questions about 9/11. The diarist's own article raises a new one: who ordered or approved the use of tortured information in the investigation? They should be headed to jail, and pronto.
Looked at from another angle, the news reported above could have concerned any damn government report. If a government uses tortured evidence for military and intelligence purposes, that's evil, and bad enough (and illegal, and should be prosecuted).
But when torture is used by civil commissions as a basis of investigation, then the entire nation has jumped the shark, and we are in waters so deadly and deep, I don't know how we all don't drown.
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