9/11: Unanswered Questions

By Liane Casten

One year after the terrorist attacks, a flood of questions about the intelligence failure, the petroleum connection, insider trading, and the government’s response remain unanswered. These questions mandate thorough investigation by Congress and the media.

It is almost unthinkable that the 9/11 tragedy could have been prevented, that the loss and ruin could have been averted, but the evidence is piling up: our government may have been not just passive but criminally obstructionist in failing to prevent what many apparently knew was going to take place.

Worse, ample evidence suggests that Congress will not independently investigate what has become a flood of questions surrounding this incredible set of attacks.
The attacks became the justification for George W. Bush, John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney to take control of our lives, our energy sources, our reading materials and our actions—insidiously curtailing civil liberties in a country that claims to be a paragon of democracy.

The truly startling thing is that the evidence seems to grow every time I read my emails or a left-of-center journal, or even read some isolated story in the New York Times or Los Angeles Times, or the BBC, or listen to the courageous Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) raise tough questions despite a powerful (and successful) bipartisan effort to unseat her.

There’s evidence that the government may have known about the impending attacks; that those who tried to speak were silenced and stopped from going further; that there was insider trading directly before the crash; and that our own CIA met with Bin Laden in Dubai in July 2001, only two months before 9/11 (reported by French paper Le Figaro) and at a time when he was “wanted” by the CIA. It all adds up to something quite ominous.

Warnings Ignored, Blocked

Were the corporate press to do its job, the Bush administration could plunge into a political crisis. According to journalist William Rivers Pitt (www.truthout.com): “As the Clinton administration departed the White House, several of its anti-terrorism experts repeatedly briefed Condo-leeza Rice and others within the incoming Bush cabal of the dangerous nature of the terrorism threat represented by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Further, the Bush people were handed an effective battle plan to address that threat. Nothing was done about it until the towers fell.”

Pitt explains, “That systematic collapse came as a result of many factors. The first, simply, was the reality of power-transition in America. New people come in after an election, others must be confirmed by Congress, and as one administration takes hold of the reins, it must encompass the realities known by the departing administration. This takes time.”

However, the transition is only a small part of the problem, says Pitt. Much of it is due to “the knee-jerk hatred within the denizens of the Bush administration of all things Clinton.”

Finally, the reason the Bush administration’s failure to take up the terrorism issue where Clinton had left off boils down to a difference in priorities. Says Pitt, “Bush’s national security team wanted to go full-bore after a national missile defense system. John Ashcroft wanted to fight the war on drugs, and wanted to pursue pornography. Everyone on the team had a different agenda, and little of it had to do with fighting terrorism.”

Concealing Intelligence Failure

For the past year, the administration has been actively concealing information about the circumstances leading up to the terrorist attacks, denying any foreknowledge of it. In the days after 9/11, administration officials repeatedly characterized the suicide hijackings as a sneak attack for which there had been no warning.

These statements are now exposed as lies—a fact that raises the question, “Why has the White House sought to conceal the warnings it received?” I may posit an answer—the Bush administration was floundering before the attacks; now it has galvanized public support for Bush’s “leadership” in an endless war.

The cover-up began to come apart with a CBS News report immediately after the terrorist attacks that Bush had received a CIA briefing on 8/6/01—five weeks before the destruction of the World Trade Center. It suggested that an airplane hijacking by terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden was an imminent possibility.

This report prompted an explosion of reporting and commentary in the media, and demands for a full-scale congressional inquiry from House and Senate Democratic leaders, as well as from segments of the Republican Party.

Congressional critics took particular note of the coincidence of the August 6 briefing and two FBI reports, one from the Phoenix office on July 10, the other from Minneapolis August 13—both reports focused on suspicions that Al Qaeda operatives were using US flight schools to gain expertise required to hijack commercial airplanes.

The July 10 memo urged a nationwide screening of flight schools and cited possible links to bin Laden. The Minneapolis FBI agents reported the detention of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the French-Moroccan immigrant who wanted to learn how to fly a Boeing 747 but not to take off or land it. One email from a Minneapolis FBI agent described Moussaoui as someone who might fly a jumbo jet into the World Trade Center. Both reports were ignored by FBI headquarters.

FBI Special Agent Robert Wright Jr., tried to warn his superiors three months before 9/11 that Americans were in serious danger of attacks at home. He predicted that many Americans would die. No one listened then.

Wright spoke out at a press conference in May 2002, accusing the FBI of intentionally thwarting investigations of known terrorists, declaring that corruption inside the bureau derailed the investigations. He charged the FBI “cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the US and its citizens at home and abroad.” He brought a lawsuit against the FBI, claiming they violated his First Amendment rights by prohibiting him from making his complaints public.

In addition to thwarting Wright’s attempts to break up terrorist organizations in the US, the FBI told him he cannot publish the book he has written about it, Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission—the manuscript’s working title. He is now demoted to “meaningless paper-pushing work” in a Chicago office. The FBI threatened his job if he went ahead and told his story.

There are many media reports where other FBI agents openly discuss their frustrations at not getting through to higher authorities. How does the FBI hope to explain this pattern of blocking investigations by their field agents?

Coleen Rowley, general counsel for the Minneapolis FBI office, made headlines when she testified before the Senate on June 6, 2002, about FBI problems with coordinating information.

After appearing in Senate hearings, several senators—both Republicans and Democrats—said the revelations about advance warnings raised the issue of whether the 9/11 attacks could have prevented.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said: “There were two separate FBI reports plus a CIA warning, none of which were coordinated. The question is, if all three had been connected, would that have led to more vigorous activity?”

Our spy agencies have been sorely ill-equipped for a long time. Back under Clinton’s leadership, FBI computer systems were a mess. They were not designed to handle even basic tasks such as emailing photos of potential suspects.

The Los Angeles Times reported (7/28/02), “The severity of the problem, and its threat to national security, have long been known to top FBI officials …years of warnings at the highest levels of the FBI have often gone unheeded and the bureau allegedly diverted tens of millions of dollars from computer upgrades to manpower needs it deemed more important. Former Attorney General Janet Reno became so frustrated with the FBI’s inertia that she wrote then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh…it was ‘imperative that the FBI immediately develop the capacity to search its files, analyze security threats and be able to share information with other intelligence agencies.’”

But it’s more than CIA/FBI bungling. When Minneapolis FBI agent Rowley’s testified in Congress about her frustrations, she became the heroine for the day. Unfortunately, what was never revealed is that her investigative efforts had been blocked by her superiors. Why, and on whose orders?

NSA Destroys Illegally Collected Data

Two people with close intelligence ties told the Boston Globe (10/27/01) that since 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA), acting on the advice of their lawyers, have been destroying data collected on American citizens and corporations, angering other intelligence agencies seeking leads in the anti-terrorist probe.

Since the Globe report, no other media outlet has examined the heated discussions between the CIA and intelligence committee staff members.

Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA Director of Counter-terrorism, told Scoop Media, “If American citizens are believed to be involved in some way in a foreign intelligence operation that could lead to terrorism against this country, I believe the NSA is required to save or maintain the information.”

In the case of 9/11, Cannistraro believes NSA should have saved the surveillance data.
NSA lawyers have turned down requests to preserve this intelligence because regulations prohibit data collecting data on Americans.

Congress has been tight-lipped, and government investigators are frustrated that many possible leads stemming from the 9/11 attack were and are not being followed because of the NSA position.

Calls for Investigation Unheeded

In May 2002, Rep. Cynthia McKinney announced, “I have called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush administration received before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I was derided by the White House right-wing talk radio and spokespersons for the military-industrial complex as a conspiracy theorist. Even my patriotism was questioned…Sen. Zell Miller (R-Ga.) went so far as to characterize my call for hearings as ‘dangerous, loony and irresponsible.’”

McKinney adds: “It now becomes clear why the administration has been vigorously opposing hearings…it has been engaged in a conspiracy of silence. I believe it would be dangerous, loony and irresponsible not to hold full congressional hearings on any warnings the Bush Administration had…I’ve been told to ‘sit down and shut up’ over and over. Well, I will not sit down and I won’t shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people.”

For her brash patriotism, McKinney was shown the door largely due to powerful right-wing money and influence.

Warnings from International Intelligence Sources

The information provided by European intelligence sources was so extensive, it is no longer possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence.
Pitt notes, “Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the months before 9/11 a blizzard of warnings were delivered to the Bush administration from all points on the compass. The German intelligence service, BND, warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets.”

Pitt adds, “By August 2001, Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered ‘in the strongest possible terms,’ specifically regarding threats to airports and government buildings.

“In that same month, the Israeli security agency Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and CIA that up to 200 bin Laden followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable targets.”

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak reported that his intelligence agents learned about a bin Laden plot against an American target, and informed US officials in spring 2001. Officials denied the Egyptian allegations but later disclosed that the CIA had learned about a 9/11 hijacker’s connections to Al Qaeda months before the attacks.

Senate Links to Terrorists

The Times of India (10/12/01) reported that Pakistani ISI Director-General Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after the US attacks because of evidence produced by India showing his links to Mohammed Atta, the terrorist hijacking leader. The Times said, “US authorities sought his [Ahmad’s] removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh on the instructions of ISI Lt. General Ahmad.”

Senior [US] government sources “have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief.”

The Times added that “while they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh’s mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.”

Serious questions remain, however.

On the morning of 9/11, Bob Graham and former CIA operative Porter Goss—co-chairmen of the Senate Joint-Intelligence Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks—met with Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad. What was the reason for the meeting? And why was the Pakistani ISI Chief having money wired into the US to support the leader of the terrorist hijackers while the attacks were in progress?

Insider Stock Trading

Unanswered questions about the manipulation of stocks before 9/11 also suggest insider traders’ foreknowledge of the potential attacks.

On May 22, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate were charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. Royer was also charged with extortion. They allegedly used the FBI’s Automated Case Support database to monitor the investigation, passing confidential information about the investigations of companies to participants in a stock manipulation scheme, according to the Washington Post (5/23/02).

A news release from US Attorney Alan Vinegard stated, “The allegations reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain.”

Assistant US Attorney Kenneth Breen said stock advisor Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, charged in the indictment, called his Salomon Smith Barney broker, trying to sell $300,000 in stock from his children’s trust funds on the afternoon of September 10. During the conversation, Elgindy “predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000,” according to the New York Times (5/25/02).

This case raises the question of whether Congress will publicly disclose other indications of intelligence complicity in prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle (10/19/01), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) privately asked North American securities firms to participate in an information-sharing system to trace “large numbers of trades in securities of companies affected by the attacks.”

Curiously, however, the SEC asked companies “to designate senior personnel who appreciate ‘the sensitive nature’ of the case, and can be relied upon to ‘exercise appropriate discretion.’”

On 10/2/01, Canadian securities officials confirmed that the SEC had asked firms to review records for 38 companies, suggesting that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the attacks.

However, Congress has refused to make public what the Chronicle reported was an SEC “control list” containing confidential information about transactions, individuals, relationships, and entities identified by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the probe.

Neither has the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee publicly referred to prior knowledge of the attacks as it relates to stock transaction profits.

The Wall Street Journal (10/2/02) reported that the Secret Service was also probing an unusually high volume of five-year US Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks. One purchase included a single $5 billion trade. The Journal called Treasury notes among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, with their value having risen substantially since 9/11.

The Associated Press reported that a German Central Bank study strongly pointed to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures.

Will Congress chalk it up to just a remarkable coincidence?

In an interview with Scoop Media, former D.C. US attorney Joseph de Genova took a hard line, saying, “If the Congress does not want to get answers to these critical questions regarding who profited [from prior knowledge of the attacks], then it needs to be litigated.”

While thousands of American families, victimized by terrorism, still remain numb with grief, information is being advanced daily regarding slipshod government response to fundamental national security and safety concerns.

Deutschebank and Mayer, Brown & Platt

The evidence linking Deutschebank to the terrorists and insider trading is quite extra-ordinary. According to www.copvcia.com:

• The lead hijacker pilot and two accomplices had bank accounts at its Hamburg branch.

• One of its unnamed private investors never claimed $2.5 million in United Airlines put option contract profits following the attacks.

• Its global “private banking” chief Mayo Shattuck III, resigned the day following the attacks in the middle of a three-year $40 million contract.

• The bank hired away SEC enforcement and investigation chief Richard Walker just 20 days after the attacks.

• Its senior investment banker Kevin Ingram pled guilty to money laundering involving Stinger missiles and multiple varieties of arms sales to Pakistani and Egyptian citizens two weeks before 9/11.

• Deutschebank seemed heavily involved in the 9/11 insider trading, but Congress has not questioned former Alex Brown division head A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard—appointed by George Bush as executive director (number three) of the CIA—about intelligence and “real-time” stock trade monitoring.

European reporters found most of the suspicious pre-attack trades passed through Deutschebank and especially through A.B. Krongard’s former Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions.

The Energy Connection

A confiscated Al Qaeda document reveals US energy companies were secretly in negotiation with the Taliban to build a pipeline. The document was obtained by the FBI but was not allowed to be shared with other agencies in order to protect Enron. Multiple sources confirm that American law enforcement agencies were deliberately kept in the dark and systematically prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 in order to aid Enron’s secret Taliban negotiations. An inadvertent result of the Taliban pipeline cover-up was that the Taliban’s friends in Al Qaeda were able to complete their last eight months of preparations for the 9/11 attacks while the Enron secrecy block was still in force.

John O’Neill, an FBI counter-terrorism chief, resigned from the FBI in disgust, saying that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi Al Qaeda connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. O’Neill originally discovered the Al Qaeda pipeline memo after the Embassy bombings in Africa. Tragically, he became chief of security at the World Trade Center just weeks before 9/11 and died rescuing people as the towers collapsed.

There were other secrecy blocks. In March 2002, a Saudi funding network that targeted the destruction of the State of Israel and the obstruction of the Palestinian peace process was exposed and shut down. John Loftus, an attorney, former federal prosecutor and author (The Secret War Against the Jews), filed a lawsuit against the organization based on information about a secrecy block concerning Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Because of this action, the government raided the Saudi Charities in Herndon, Virginia. Following the raid, Loftus received detailed documents and information about a third secrecy block concerning the Taliban. It reveals extensive knowledge of the supposedly secret pipeline negotiations and their potential economic worth to the Taliban, Pakistan and the US.

At this point Dick Cheney allegedly reinstated the secrecy block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections.

The Saudis were always receiving special attention, especially under Bush administration. J. Michael Springmann, former Visa Chief at the US Saudi Embassy, revealed that the State Department forced him to issue visas to known terrorists, and then shredded his “unsafe” list after he left.

What of the Bush family’s close ties to the bin Laden family through their shared business concerns in the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest US defense contractor?
A book published by two French journalists, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, entitled Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, alleges that the Bush administration put energy policy before national security concerns.

A floundering pipeline project aimed at exploiting natural gas reserves along the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan was revived by the Bush administration when it took over the White House in January 2001. The pipeline, which sought to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a warm water port, had been the dream of American petroleum giant Unocal for much of the 1990s.

After the destruction of two American embassies in Africa in 1998 by Osama bin Laden, the Clinton Administration forbade any American companies from doing business with the Taliban, which had been sheltering bin Laden in Afghanistan. Unocal’s pipeline project was frozen.

When the Bush administration came to power, Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was sent to Pakistan to discuss the pipeline with Taliban officials in August of 2001. In bargaining for the pipeline, the Bush administration demanded that the Taliban reinstate deposed King Mohammad Zahir Shah as ruler of Afghanistan, and hand over Osama bin Laden for arrest. In return, the Taliban would reap untold billions in profit from the pipeline.

According to Brisard and Dasquie, part of the Bush administration’s bargaining tactics involved threats of war if these conditions for the legitimization of Afghanistan were not met. On 9/18/01, BBC reported the existence of war plans on Bush’s desk aimed at Afghanistan. Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik stated that the war plans were slated for October 2001.

The French journalists argue that the Bush administration fundamentally misunderstood the Taliban regime—to bring back the King and hand bin Laden over to the West would have been tantamount to suicide for the Taliban. Instead of giving in to the strong-arm tactics of the Bush administration, the Taliban set Al Qaeda loose on America. They chose to strike first in the hope that all-out war would break out in Central Asia and rally other Muslim nations to their cause.

After the US and its allies brought the Taliban down, Hamid Karzai was elected President of Afghanistan. Soon he announced the impending construction of a pipeline that would exploit Turk-menistan’s natural gas reserves. He named Unocal as the lead company for the project. Coincidentally, Karzai was previously an advisor to Unocal.

War Plans Even Before 9/11

The most important of the revelations appears to be the report by NBC News that Bush had on his desk 9/9/01—two days before the attacks—a National Security Presidential Directive outlining in detail a worldwide campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization, including the delivery of an ultimatum to the Taliban regime, backed by the threat of war.

The draft order, according to NBC, “outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the 9/11 attacks.”
Before the terrorist hijackings, the Bush administration had been preparing to launch a military action that it later claimed was a response to the 9/11 atrocities. The administration was getting ready to launch a military attack against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime, an action certain to provoke retaliatory strikes. Yet nothing was done to beef up the security of American cities, civil aviation, public buildings, or obvious targets like the World Trade Center.

The extraordinary revelations about the FBI’s handling of the reports from Minnesota and Arizona show how the top level of the FBI vetoed appeals for action that even then would have seemed routine. More plausible than the strained attempts to explain this as a “failure to connect the dots” is the likelihood that a decision had been made at high levels to allow an Al Qaeda hijacking to take place, in order to justify unleashing the military onslaught internationally and a civil liberties crack down domestically that was already in advanced stages of planning.

A Spectre Lurks Over Civil Liberties

Brick by brick, we are watching the ominous Office of Homeland Security move forward in addition to the USA Patriot Act —voted for by nearly all members of Congress—which provides the legal basis for subverting long-held rights under the screen of national security.

The search for truth is being blocked at every front. Vice President Cheney personally asked Congressional leaders not to investigate 9/11. John Ashcroft suggested members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submit to polygraph exams to see who leaked important 9/11 information to the press—information which the nation could have used prior to the attacks. Thankfully, such a request was roundly rebuffed by no less than committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) who said, “Under the separation of powers, we cannot put up with this, especially from an agency we oversee.”

By mid-August of this year, talk show host Phil Donahue put several guests on the air who were ready to ask the tough questions in public. Four hundred families of the 9/11 victims are suing Bush and nine others for their complicity in the terrorist attacks. Polls are showing the majority of the American people do not believe the full truth has come out about 9/11. The struggle to bring this truth to the light of day is not just critical; it is absolutely mandatory if we are to save this trembling democracy.

For further information, go to the following websites:

• Global Research
• Questions
• www.copvcia.com
• Truthout
• Emperors Clothes.com
• Alternet.org
• Commondreams.org
• Tompaine.com
• The Nation
• In These Times
• Z Mag
• Indymedia
• Communitycurrency.org
• www.falloutshelternews.com
• www.flight93crash.com
• www.propagandamatrix.com/archiveprior_knowledge.html
• www.lebenaspekte.de
• www.democraticunderground.com
• www.buzzflash.com
• www.madcowprod.com