THE CASE FOR FBI HEADQUARTERS COMPLICITY IN 9/11

By Garland FavoritoDecember 5, 2004NewsWithViews.com
After three years, multiple Congressional investigations and the recent 9/11 Commission Report produced by an “independent” panel of Democrats and Republicans, no accountability has ever been assigned to any government agency and the basic question still remains: “How could the federal government of the most powerful country on earth have allowed such a horrendous terrorist act to occur”? Several isolated incidents of astounding incompetence or worse have been identified at different agencies. For example:
The CIA knew that alleged hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, attended a Malaysia terrorist meeting in Kuala Lumpur during January 2000 but did not inform the FBI or the State Department so that the suspected terrorists could be placed on a State Department watch list;
The FAA Indianapolis Control Center lost track of flight 77 which eventually allowed it to fly off course for 52 minutes (8:46am – 9:38am) before crashing into the Pentagon without standard military intercept and escort procedures ever being implemented;
But the most severe question of government accountability must reside with the U.S. Justice Department and specifically its Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. FBI headquarters has an incredible documented trail of actions in both assisting the 9/11 terrorists and promoting agents who appear to have assisted them. Here are a dozen examples: Marion “Spike” Bowman, FBI’s National Security Law Unit deputy general counsel who was implicated by Democrat and Republican Senators for refusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in the Zacarias Moussaoui investigation, received a Presidential Rank Award and a 20%+ pay increase;
Michael Maltbie, FBI supervisory special agent who was implicated in removing FISA application information that may have helped obtain the warrant against Moussaoui, was promoted to field supervisor in Cleveland;
Maltbie’s boss, David Frasca, the FBI's Radical Fundamentalists unit chief, was implicated by FBI field offices in thwarting the Moussaoui investigation and ignoring the memo from Ken Williams in Phoenix about flight training for Hani Hanjour and other potential hijackers;FBI agent, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz who refused to secretly record another suspected Arab terrorist, was promoted to an anti-terrorism investigation post at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia;
A still to be identified representative from FBI headquarters refused to allow special agent Robert Wright and John Vincent to investigate Saudi money laundering from Chicago to Saudi Arabian businessman, Yassin al-Kadi. Wright was specifically told: 'I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,'
The U.S. Justice Department shut down the Chicago money laundering investigation down despite supportive efforts from local federal prosecutor, Mark Flessner;
FBI counter intelligence informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, hosted, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid AlMihdhar, two of the alleged hijackers in San Diego during October 2000 to December 2000 and provided enough information for San Diego field agents to request an investigation of them;
FBI headquarters refused the plea from a San Diego FBI agent to investigate the two alleged San Diego hijackers;
Thomas Frields, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism at the FBI Washington Field Office, took no action after his employees filed FBI 302 forms to document information received about the pending 9/11 attacks from an intelligence officer in Iran;
An FBI intelligence analyst assigned to the Cole investigation cited a National Security Law Unit opinion in her refusal to provide information to a Cole case agent who wanted to open an investigation on alleged hijacker Khalid Al Mihdhar in August of 2001;
Immediately after 9/11 while the FBI searched for lead and suspects, Mike Feghali, told Sibel Edmonds and other FBI translators to slow down or even stop translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of an "extensive backlog of untranslated documents" and justify its request for budget and staff increases;
Immediately after 9/11 the FBI hired Melek Can Dickerson, a Turkish translator, who was given a top-secret clearance although she worked for organizations that were FBI targets of investigation and had ongoing relationships with two individuals who were FBI targets of investigation. Dickerson used her translator position to block investigations into those organizations until she left hastily in 2002 and to take top secret documents out of the FBI with the assistance of her supervisor, Mike Feghali, who was subsequently promoted to supervisor of the Arabic languages unit;
While any one or two of these 9/11 incidents could be an honest mistake or oversight by sincere hard working individuals, the unbelievable combination of a dozen different instances, all directly involving the headquarters of the FBI raises the serious question as to whether or not the FBI was complicit in the 9/11 attacks during the period of July to September 2001.
So who was the FBI director during this horrible period in its history? No, it was not Robert Mueller, the Bush administration appointee who took office in September just after 9/11. And no, it was not Louis Freeh, the Clinton administration appointee who resigned in June 2001 after presiding over a period of unprecedented FBI corruption. It was Thomas Pickard, the former acting FBI director from June 2001 to September 2001 and past recipient of another Presidential Rank Award.
So why would Pickard allow his agency to be run in such a horrible manner during this key time frame? In his April 13, 2004 testimony, he told the commission that after the second briefing about the heightened terrorist threat during the summer of 2001, his boss, Attorney General, John Ashcroft, told him that” he did not want to hear about these threats anymore”.
If all of this surprises you consider the role of the FBI in other terrorists acts against the United States:
In the 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI actually had an Egyptian informant, Emad Salem, helping to make the bomb. Audio transcripts show that he was furious with the FBI N.Y. Field office director, William Garvin, for not stopping the plot and FBI Agents John Anticev and Nancy Floyd agreed with him;
In the 1995 OKC bombing, the FBI refused to investigate Hussain Al Hussaini, despite the fact that witnesses in the remarkable KFOR-TV investigative series identified him as being with Timothy McVeigh before the bombing, at the scene of the crime when the bombing occurred and driving a getaway vehicle that matched the description broadcasted over police radio. Hussaini later became a baggage handler at Boston’s Logan International Airport where two of the hijacked 9/11 flights originated;
In the 1993 Branch Davidian massacre near Waco, the FBI intentionally attacked and killed over 80 men, women and children who had never committed any crime;
In the 1992 Ruby Ridge Idaho murders, an FBI sniper shot and killed Vicky Weaver while she was standing on her porch holding her baby in her arms;
In the 1996 TWA 800 plane crash, the FBI attempted to prosecute James Sanders when he provided evidence of rocket fuel from the cover of a seat near where a missile entered the plane;
In the 2001 Anthrax case, the FBI never made an arrest even though the evidence immediately limited the suspects to a few dozen military scientists who formerly worked for the CIA.
The evidence seems clear that the FBI may have done more damage to America than good. This goes to show that the founding fathers were right all along when they explicitly excluded any mention of federal law enforcement in the Constitution. It simply becomes too evil, too corrupted and too unaccountable.

You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is
In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the deadNaomi Klein Saturday

December 4, 2004
The GuardianDavid T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London
Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".
The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.
In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital". 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.
US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.
Eliminating doctorsThe first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.
But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja general hospital "had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical centre" before it was hit.
Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single surgeon in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi hospital.
Eliminating journalistsThe images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.
It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.
On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.
Eliminating clericsJust as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of the clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in Falluja. On November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated Press, "Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch a civil disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the attack on Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces stormed a prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing three people and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that "US troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The report described the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out against the Falluja attack".
"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.
Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.
· Additional research by Aaron Maté
www.nologo.org

Sunday Herald - 05 December 2004
US admits the war for ‘hearts and minds’ in Iraq is now lost
Pentagon report reveals catalogue of failureBy Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor

THE Pentagon has admitted that the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda, made ordinary Muslims hate the US and caused a global backlash against America because of the “self-serving hypocrisy” of George W Bush’s administration over the Middle East.
The mea culpa is contained in a shockingly frank “strategic communications” report, written this autumn by the Defence Science Board for Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld.
On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.
“American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies.”
Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedoms”, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing support, for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.
“Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypo crisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronising … in the eyes of Muslims, the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. US actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.”
The way America has handled itself since September 11 has played straight into the hands of al-Qaeda, the report adds. “American actions have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.” The result is that al-Qaeda has gone from being a marginal movement to having support across the entire Muslim world.
“Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic,” the report goes on, adding that to the Arab world the war is “no more than an extension of American domestic politics”. The US has zero credibility among Muslims which means that “whatever Americans do and say only serves … the enemy”.
The report says that the US is now engaged in a “global and generational struggle of ideas” which it is rapidly losing. In order to reverse the trend, the US must make “strategic communication” – which includes the dissemination of propaganda and the running of military psychological operations – an integral part of national security. The document says that “Presidential leadership” is needed in this “ideas war” and warns against “arrogance, opportunism and double standards”.
“We face a war on terrorism,” the report says, “intensified conflict with Islam, and insurgency in Iraq. Worldwide anger and discontent are directed at America’s tarnished credibility and ways the US pursues its goals. There is a consensus that America’s power to persuade is in a state of crisis.” More than 90% of the populations of some Muslims countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are opposed to US policies.
“The war has increased mistrust of America in Europe,” the report adds, “weakened support for the war on terrorism and undermined US credibility worldwide.” This, in turn, poses an increased threat to US national security.
America’s “image problem”, the report authors suggest, is “linked to perceptions of the US as arrogant, hypocritical and self-indulgent”. The White House “has paid little attention” to the problems.
The report calls for a huge boost in spending on propaganda efforts as war policies “will not succeed unless they are communicated to global domestic audiences in ways that are credible”.
American rhetoric which equates the war on terror as a cold-war-style battle against “totalitarian evil” is also slapped down by the report. Muslims see what is happening as a “history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration … a renewal of the Muslim world …(which) has taken form through many variant movements, both moderate and militant, with many millions of adherents – of which radical fighters are only a small part”.
Rather than supporting tyranny, most Muslim want to overthrow tyrannical regimes like Saudi Arabia. “The US finds itself in the strategically awkward – and potentially dangerous – situation of being the long-standing prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the US, these regimes could not survive,” the report says.
“Thus the US has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle … US policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself … Americans have inserted themselves into this intra-Islamic struggle in ways that have made us an enemy to most Muslims.
“There is no yearning-to- be-liberated-by-the-US groundswell among Muslim societies … The perception of intimate US support of tyr-annies in the Muslim world is perhaps the critical vulnerability in American strategy. It strongly undercuts our message, while strongly promoting that of the enemy.”
The report says that, in terms of the “information war”, “at this moment it is the enemy that has the advantage”. The US propaganda drive has to focus on “separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical- militant Islamist-Jihadist”.
According to the report, “the official take on the target audience [the Muslim world] has been gloriously simple” and divided the Middle East into “good” and “bad Muslims”.
“Americans are convinced that the US is a benevolent ‘superpower’ that elevates values emphasising freedom … deep down we assume that everyone should naturally support our policies. Yet the world of Islam – by overwhelming majorities at this time – sees things differently. Muslims see American policies as inimical to their values, American rhetoric about freedom and democracy as hypocritical and American actions as deeply threatening.
“In two years the jihadi message – that strongly attacks American values – is being accepted by more moderate and non-violent Muslims. This in turn implies that negative opinion of the US has not yet bottomed out
Equally important, the report says, is “to renew European attitudes towards America” which have also been severely damaged since September 11, 2001. As “al-Qaeda constantly outflanks the US in the war of information”, American has to adopt more sophisticated propaganda techniques, such as targeting secularists in the Muslim world – including writers, artists and singers – and getting US private sector media and marketing professionals involved in disseminating messages to Muslims with a pro-US “brand”.
The Pentagon report also calls for the establishment of a national security adviser for strategic communications, and a massive boost in funding for the “information war” to boost US government TV and radio stations broadcasting in the Middle East.
The importance of the need to quickly establish a propaganda advantage is underscored by a document attached to the Pentagon report from Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, dated May.
It says: “Our military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to be the last such excursion in the global war on terrorism.”