The post 9/11 Not an “Intelligence Failure” appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

“In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail to CIA) did see travel information on individuals who later became hijackers but the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.”

Clark claims to have been very close to Tenet and to find this impossible to believe. Clarke maintains that the Director must have been informed and must have made the decision not to share the information with Clarke and others. Clarke speculates that the presence of these two al Qaeda members was kept secret because the CIA had tried to recruit, or “flip,” those al Qaeda members and failed. Yet he has no evidence of such attempts.

But why not report that you tried to recruit someone and failed? What is the reason not to report that?

It seems more likely to me that Clarke is going easy on Tenet. “The September 11th attacks could have been prevented” has an “Obama could have fought for progressive principles” ring to it; it builds in the assumption that those involved WANTED the attacks to be prevented. Whatever this other new report ends up meaning, the history of Able Danger, and of White House inaction, and of Clarke’s earlier revelations begins to suggest a pattern.

I hate to underestimate incompetence and petty infighting as explanations for things, but I also hate to accept as the only possible explanation Clarke’s theory — of which he himself does not seem at all convinced — as to why Tenet apparently withheld information. I asked FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds what she thought, and her reply suggested a level of contempt for both Clarke and Tenet: “I think sometimes it takes one evil fighting another evil to get to the truth. In this case, the clash of two guilty egos has helped unearth some truth on 9/11. Hope to have more clashes.”

I turned to Pentagon whistleblower Karen Kwiatkowski. She ought to have a sense of how accurate Clarke’s description is of standard practice versus inexplicable deviation from it. She seemed to think this new angle fit an existing pattern:

“[This] is just one more unanswered question regarding our own government’s involvement and possible complicity in the events. There are more gaping questions that lend credence to the theory that the U.S. government or parts of it were supportive and facilitated the 9/11 events (and the subsequent Amerithrax case). One, why was there no investigation of and no discussion of WTC 7 in the 9/11 commission report? And why has the case of the Israeli ‘art students’ (actually agents) who were tracking and had detailed operational intelligence on a significant number of the purported hijackers in this country in the months leading up to 9/11 never dealt with in a big way by any commission or any government agency? The after-the-fact lack of interest in these events kind of confirms the before-the-fact activities of those who were in a position to stop the attacks.”

Note that Karen does not here suggest, and neither do I have much use for theories to explain away what we know, theories that suggest there were no airplanes, no hijackers, etc., etc., some of which theories are extremely valuable but purely as entertainment. Rather, Karen is asking questions about things we don’t know, and things our government has gone to considerable lengths to avoid making known. When it comes to such matters, it’s hard to do better than turning to retired CIA officer Ray McGovern. I’ve just done so, and he hasn’t disappointed. Here’s a comment of McGovernian length and perception that he’s sent me:

“Withholding critical intelligence from the makers and implementers of security policy can be worse than lying. Of lying, we have plenty of evidence that former CIA director George Tenet is a serial offender — as is his long-time spokesman, Bill Harlow.

“But withholding intelligence on two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been unconscionable — the epitome of malfeasance, not just misfeasance. That’s why Richard Clarke’s conclusion that he should have received information from CIA about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, ‘unless somebody intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution’ is a most serious charge, given the role of the two in hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

“Tenet has denied that the information on the two hijackers was ‘intentionally withheld’ from Clarke, and has enlisted former CIA operatives Cofer Black (more recently a senior official of Blackwater) and Richard Blee (a more shadowy figure) to concur in saying, Not us; we didn’t withhold.

“Whom to believe? It is a no-brainer. One would have to have been born yesterday to regard the ‘George is right’ testimony from Black and Blee as collaborative.

“Tenet is the same fellow who provided the ‘slam dunk’ on the existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, as well as the ‘artist renderings’ of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the imposter code-named (appropriately) ‘Curveball.’ Tenet is the fellow who, under orders from Bush and Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq to deceive our elected representatives out of their Constitutional prerogative to authorize a war of aggression. Not small infractions.

“After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to ‘justify’ attacking Iraq as ‘uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent.’ Good enough to win Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though. It worked just fine for the purposes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, thank you very much.

“It is a matter of record that Tenet lies a lot — on occasion, demonstrating a sort of chutzpah on steroids. Recall, for example, Tenet telling Scott Pelley on ’60 Minutes,’ five times, in five consecutive sentences, ‘We do not torture people.’

“Tenet has lied about 9/11 too. The joint statement from Tenet, Black, and Blee, provided by Bill Harlow, concludes: ‘We testified under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we didn’t know. We stand by that testimony.’ Almost made me laugh….almost.

“In his sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet told the Commission under the prime-time klieg lights that he had not spoken to Bush — even on the telephone — during the entire month of August 2001.

“But Tenet did visit fly to see the President in Crawford — not once, but twice during August 2001, and briefed Bush again in Washington on the 31st. After the TV cameras at the 9/11 Commission hearing were shut off, Bill Harlow phoned the commission staff to say, Oops, sorry, Tenet misspoke. Even then, Harlow admitted to only Tenet’s August 17 visit to Crawford (and to the briefing on the 31st).

“How do we know Tenet was again in Crawford on August 24? From a White House press release quoting President George W. Bush to that effect — information somehow completely missed by our vigilant Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

“Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxes eloquent about the ‘president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna.’ But the visit was not limited to small talk.

“In his book Tenet writes: ‘A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events.’ The Aug. 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief contained the article ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.’ According to Ron Suskind’s ‘The One-Percent Doctrine’, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, ‘All right, you’ve covered your ass now.’

“If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24? I believe the answer can be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.

“Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing, focusing on Moussaoui, titled ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.’ Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.

“It is an open question — if a key one — whether Tenet told Bush about the two hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, while keeping that key information from the person who most needed it — White House counter-terrorist czar Richard Clarke. Clarke finds the only plausible explanation in his conclusion that Tenet was personally responsible. Clarke says:

“‘For me to this day, it is inexplicable, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn’t tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn’t tell me, that the other 48 people inside CIA that knew about it never mentioned it to me or anyone in my staff in a period of over 12 months.’

“But Tenet’s aide-de-camp Bill Harlow has branded Clarke’s statements ‘absurd and patently false.’ The statement Harlow shepherded for Tenet, Black, and Blee adds ‘reckless and profoundly wrong…baseless…belied by the record…unworthy of serious consideration.’

“And Harlow never lies. Right. I’m reminded of Harlow’s reaction to Newsweek’s publication on February 24, 2003 of the remarks of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs for almost a decade before he defected to Jordan in 1995. Kamel did provide some information on residual, closed-down sites relating to WMD, and that information proved correct.

“Kamel ALSO said that after the first Gulf War in 1991:

“‘I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.’

“This was not at all what Bush, Cheney, and — by extension — Tenet wanted Newsweek readers, or the rest of us, to learn just three weeks before the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq, ostensibly to find and destroy those threatening, non-existent weapons.

“So Bill Harlow rose to the occasion, telling the FCM that the Newsweek story was, ‘incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.’ And the FCM said, Gosh, thanks for telling us.

“By all indications, Harlow is still able to work his fraudulent magic on the FCM, which has virtually ignored this major story since it broke several days ago. If Harlow says it’s not true…and throws in still more pejorative adjectives to dismiss what Clarke says, it is surely Richard Clarke who is not telling the truth. No matter Clarke’s well deserved reputation for honesty and professionalism.

“And so it goes.”

Yes, it is as likely as that the sky is blue that Tenet knew and that Tenet is lying about what he knew. But I’m interested in why. Did he try to convert two members of al Qaeda to his team and fail, and then choose to keep quiet about it, despite his established habit of trying to “cover his ass”? Wouldn’t his ass have been better covered by sharing the information? And wouldn’t we all then be better off, in particular the million Iraqis and thousands of Americans and Afghans who’ve paid for this malfeasance with their lives?

But what if, just as Obama’s actions make sense when we stop fantasizing about him being a liberal, Tenet’s actions make sense when we stop assuming his top priority was protecting the people of this country?

UPDATE:

Comment from Coleen Rowley:

“Richard Clarke is among the few high level counter-terrorism officials in the lead-up to 9-11 with the experience, insights and credibility to know what he’s talking about and to make logical deductions from the known facts.  His comments pertain to the still murky area as the CIA has never allowed any of its personnel to be fully debriefed about what transpired in the aftermath of the Kuala Lumpur meeting nor about the two known Al Qaeda members on the CIA’s terrorist list and who the CIA learned had come into California.  No one seems to have been forthcoming about why that important information was not shared in a timely manner with the FBI.  So Clarke’s educated hypothesis makes sense from what’s known.  And certainly CIA officials like Tenet and Cofer Black had every incentive and predisposition to not come clean afterwards.  Their reluctance to admit this and other mistakes and failures, given the ever-pervasive secrecy, was probably also used as a point of leverage to get them to go along with Bush’s plan to launch war on Iraq even though they all knew Iraq was not connected to 9-11.”

The post Richard Clarke Is Being Too Nice to George Tenet appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

We have members of the popular media (mainstream and quasi alternatives alike) ever anxious to market and disseminate government conspiracy and propaganda. They, members of the popular media, have their own rolodex of ‘experts’ and analysts, some on their payroll, to help them propagate the delivery and execution of government-given propaganda-conspiracy. The same principle applies to ‘sources.’ The popular media relies on their government sources who act as middle-men-government messengers who’ve been given a government written and approved script to be delivered; almost always anonymously. Well, this is exactly what we have been getting from our media, around the clock, since the announcement of the Bin Laden Death Operation: ever-changing government scripts, delivered mainly by anonymous government sources to the US media, and further embellished and expanded upon by government-connected experts and analysts on the payroll.

On the other hand, there are many independent real experts whose analyses and views you won’t, or rarely, get to hear or read about; at least not in the mainstream media or at quasi-alternative sites. And there are current and former government sources not tasked with messenger duties; many of whom don’t see the ‘calculated’ necessity to remain ‘anonymous.’ I can assure you, you do not, and will not, read or hear these experts’ and sources’ statements, analyses or views when it comes to government-written stories and their media buddies.

Last weekend Boiling Frogs Post contacted several independent sources and experts, and asked them for their straight-forward take on the absurdity-filled and ever-changing Bin Laden Death story. I say independent, because they are. As you’ll see these veterans and sources come from all different walks of Intelligence-Law Enforcement-Military, and as far as political orientation goes, they fall into every single category-liberal, conservative, libertarian and none. I want to thank them all for honoring the request given to them on extremely short notice, and for being honest, direct, commonsensical, and in some cases realistically humorous. Here is what they had to say, and say it briefly per my request, starting with my favorite investigative reporter and bestselling author, whom I respect tremendously and consider ‘truly independent,’ James Bamford:

I don’t know what happened, but here’s what I suspect.  The White House press office was horrified.  The image of an unarmed Bin Laden killed in his PJs, and his unarmed wife shot as she was trying to protect him, was too bland for prime time TV.  So after consulting with the “perception managers” at The Rendon Group, they quickly called together a team of experts for a conference in the Roosevelt Room to come up with a better narrative.

Among those present was Nurse Nayirah, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., accompanied by several PR representatives from Hill & Knowlton.  It was her false claim that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leave them on the floor to die, a lie propagandized around the world by H&K, that helped push the U.S. into the first Gulf War.  Sitting next to her was Ahmed Chalabi, the man whose deceptions about Saddam and his WMD, heavily promoted by the New York Times, helped lead the country to war with Iraq.  Then there was Jim Wilkinson, the Bush master propagandist who needed to find a way to get the country behind the war.  He thus fed the story to the media of how Pvt. Jessica Lynch fearlessly mowed down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she ran out of ammo, whereupon she was shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped.  Unfortunately, through no fault of Lynch, it was later discovered to be totally made up. Finally, there was General Stanley McCrystal, largely responsible for promoting the fact that football star and Army private Pat Tillman was killed in a heroic battle in Afghanistan when in reality he was accidentally shot by his own men.  The false story was then ballyhooed by the press and used by the Army as a major recruiting tool for the Afghan War.

After a few hours going around the table for ideas, the White House press people finally had their story.  With one hand wrapped around his wife as a shield, Bin Laden used the other in a desperate effort to fight off capture by firing wildly at the commandos with an AK-47, but was finally taken down with a bullet right between his eyes. 

James Bamford– One of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues.

If you factor in growth in government and the actual costs of the military and intelligence effort that finally succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden after fifteen years of trying, the renowned terrorist becomes the $3 trillion dollar man.  Considering that he has not personally directed a successful terrorist operation since 9/11 that is quite impressive, somewhat like winning a lifetime achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony.  And even 9/11 is by no means a slam-dunk for Osama as the Justice Department never charged him with that particular crime because they knew they did not have enough evidence to convince a jury.  So his story ends, shot down in Pakistan while resisting or possibly surrendering, with his wife and son or alone, in a lavish mansion or a shack, as a result of a great spy operation or maybe not, and with the President of the United States personally directing the operation or possibly just sitting in for a photo op.  Requiescat in Pace Osama. 

Philip Giraldi- Former Counterterrorism Specialist & military Intelligence Officer  of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

The executive-ordered assassination of Osama bin Laden, in what is now described as a rubbish-strewn, dirt-infested and barely habitable compound, does free up a spot on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.   As a result of this grand and newsworthy success, after an interminable decade of really, really, really hard work, the flag-draped and platinum-plated military-industrial-intelligence complex is poised for even greater rewards, in both glory and gold.   Constitution-minded and economically strapped Americans, and those who oppose unnecessary undeclared wars of any kind, need to get back under the Bush-Obama bus, and quick.  Here’s why: President Obama will not remind Americans that bin Laden was never “wanted” by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks, and as such, bin Laden’s death is irrelevant to Washington’s long war in Afghanistan.  Likewise, former President Bush will not tell the country that the bin Laden connection to Saddam Hussein was manufactured in 2002 by neoconservatives bent on invasion, and as a result, bin Laden’s death has no bearing on Washington’s 9-year occupation and nation-building project in Iraq.    Come to think of it, not having Osama around anymore is stagnation we can believe in. 

Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski- Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a specialist on the Middle East 

Two UN guys are sitting in a bar in Kabul – and one turns to the other and says “Did you hear the one about the president, the terrorism advisor and the pope?” The second guy turns to the other and says “Well – no – I have not” – and the first guys says “Me neither  – but it cannot be any more funny than the way the White House has handled the narrative of the Bin Laden raid.”

Four days after the Bin Laden raid, and in the middle of what must have been the 10^th White House modification to the story, I was asked in an on-air interview “don’t you (in the Special Operations Community) have plans for dealing with the media?” – well yes, yes, we do…but this plan was not used due to the White House insinuation of their “academic smart guys and gals” – so the plan was not followed – because the raid became a White House center piece that was quickly (and badly) absorbed for purposes of supporting the President’s reelection.

National security – and what is best and necessary for the nation – should NOT be an issue that is used by either side for political gain…the harsh reality is that it often is.  As I have said many time: “I am not anti-war, I am anti-stupidity…” we have sycophants in the White House who will do or say anything to get the President re-elected and sacrifice the truth, and the nation’s best interests, in the process as they drive the clown car of freedom around the nation for a victory lap…

Lt Col Tony Shaffer- Intelligence Officer & recipient of the Bronze Star, with 25 years of field experience commanding and directing several key operational intelligence organizations
 

The “fog of war” excuse for the Obama Administration’s horrendous series of factual errors in reporting bin Laden’s killing was mostly due to rushing to make the U.S. press deadline and take credit before being upstaged by leaks from international press.  One small detail that reveals the over-arching importance placed on Obama’s need for a bold, decisive press image lies in his unqualified announcement about getting his man that was made even before the DNA testing was completed.  The White House later clarified that they were 90 to 95% certain it was bin Laden based on photo comparisons and later they upped that to 95% certainty but there’s nothing scientific about “facial analysis” photo comparisons.  Quite likely another reason the Administration doesn’t want the dead bin Laden photo out now is that it would invite scrutiny of the hasty announcement.  I think the series of errors was mostly based on the rush to frame this quickly for the press so Obama would appear bold and strong on terrorism and get what Charley Cook projected as a 13% “bounce” in the polls.

Coleen Rowley- Retired FBI Agent and Former Cchief Counsel of the FBI Minneapolis field office

So we come through the mountain passes that are being watched by tribal warlords who have our left over stinger missiles from the Soviet’s little adventure there, because if we fly too high the Pakistani defense radar network will pick us up.  We don’t know who is in this compound, so we shoot-to-kill every unarmed male resident on the spot, before we even know if Bin Laden is there.  And we insist Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service knew nothing of Bin Laden being in the middle of their retirement neighborhood for military generals and intelligence officials.  Oh, we wanted to do it one week earlier, but our government knew that on that day the Easter Bunny would be hiding multi colored eggs for all the little Pakistani children!

Russell D. Tice- Former Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency & National Security Agency

From my own 25-years experience on the inside much of it doing international covert operations, I’m pretty certain that the competing federal bureaucracies’ decades long, often bizarre war for headlines is at the root of this whole weird episode. Of course this is fueled by the ease with which mainstream media is manipulated into printing absolutely anything that comes from their “inside” usually “anonymous” sources.

With the Bin Laden hit, the media skirmish started with the scramble for “credit” by the public affairs offices of each of the parties involved a.  First the Pentagon (Defense Intelligence) and White House take the lead.  Then the CIA, the Criminal Inept Agency, sorely hurting from five decades of being total and abject losers and perpetually at war with DIA, grabs the whole ball and runs with it, like they invented it.   This pisses off the DIA and leaks and counter-leaks begin to spring in every direction from inside sources on both sides, sniping at each other’s “story.”

But you can’t count out the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, who has been totally and insultingly left out of the whole mix.  Rumor is they even had an FBI Files episode on “How the FBI killed Bin Laden, “ready to go into production, no matter how Bin Laden died.  All they needed was a body.  Leaving them totally out of the kill of the dude for whom they’ve spent half their PR budget hunting, is…well…insulting to say the least. And you do NOT want to piss off the FBI.  Remember Cointelpro?!

Finally. What really happened? My bet is that some Navy Seal captain in charge of the guys out there circling around Pakistan’s night skies in helicopters like sitting ducks waiting for the Washington suits to make up their minds, said, “Screw it!  I’ll take responsibility.  Let’s do it guys!”

Mike Levine- Retired supervisory agent, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); also served the U.S. Customs Service, IRS (Criminal Investigations Division) & the FBI/DEA Task Force

Obama’s Idea — Whatabad!

Killing Osama in Abbottabad

Serves only to get a whole lottabad

guys planning in sync

To pay back Murder, Inc.

From Kandahar to Jalalabad.

Ray McGovern- Retired CIA Analyst, former Army Intelligence Officer & Founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A part of me is going to miss Bin Laden, at least I understood him.  I certainly do not condone his methods or his twisted logic; but his actions were extremely predictable (I was one of the few people that actively tried to prevent 9-11). But I do not understand our own government.  First we attack a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, we lower our moral standing in the eyes of the world, we violate our Constitution, we turn our military into the Peace Corps resulting in thousands of our own military casualties and tens of thousands of innocent civilian casualties overseas, we treat our own citizens as guilty of something until proven otherwise at airports, the list is endless.  The final straw, however, is the PR campaign of the killing of BL.  If ever there was a “black operation” in the traditional use of the term, this was it.  Our government should have said nothing about this assassination.  Oh, word would have leaked out over time and years from now we could have our day in the sun, but this isn’t the time.  We celebrate this killing like it’s the winning touch-down at the Super Bowl.  All this dog and pony show is a rallying cry for the same fanatics that rioted and killed over cartoons.  How many more innocent lives will be lost just so our politicians can make a little splash in the news?

Bogdan Dzakovic- Special Agent, Team Leader of the Red Team (terrorist team) and Federal Air Marshals for the Federal Aviation Administration(FAA), and  Former Coast Guard Officer & Federal Criminal Investigator

The post Intel Experts on the Ever-Changing bin Laden Death Script appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Their stated purpose was to, “act as a hub between independent researchers and the government’s 9/11 Commission to finally address the “unanswered questions” from 9/11.”

As a group, they worked alongside the family members that were apart of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee. Early on, the 9/11 Commission was not putting people under oath. To remedy this, 9/11 CitizensWatch ran a campaign to shame the 9/11 Commission into doing so. They also called for the resignation of Philip Zelikow, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, alongside the family members.

Throughout the course of the 9/11 Commission, 9/11 CitizenWatch held three different press conferences that were shown on C-SPAN. Here are those press conferences:

Here is the report that was put together by 9/11 CitizensWatch and released on 9/11/2004 entitled, “A Citizens’ Critique: The 9/11 Commission Process.”

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Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, “So this is America?” Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.

Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech,” stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.

Mr. McGovern now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

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