Were 9/11 terrorists running drugs for the CIA? [Archive]

Bman

04-08-2005, 02:28 PM

I believe there is some very good journalism on this subject being done by Daniel Hopsicker at www.madcowprod.com

http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6022004.html

“Top Ten Things You Never Knew About Mohamed Atta.”

From “Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9/11 Cover-up in Florida.”

from page 1

NUMBER 10: Intimidated Witness #1: Atta's American girlfriend.

Mohamed Atta had an American girlfriend with whom he lived for two months in Venice, FL., a lingerie model named Amanda Keller. You haven’t heard her story because she was intimidated into silence by the FBI.

In the aftermath of the attack she spoke only a dozen words to the press: “I can't really discuss anything. I'm afraid I'll get in trouble."

NUMBER 9: Mohamed Atta, Beastie Boys fan.

Atta often listened to them non-stop.

“One time I got mad cause he broke one of my knick-knacks, so I snapped his CD’s in half,” said Amanda Keller, his erstwhile American girlfriend. “I broke all of his CD’s, cause they drove me crazy, he played the ‘Beastie Boys’ nonstop."

In the aftermath of the argument, Atta told her why he was such a big fan. “He told me about this girl he’d dated in France, that had his son,” said Keller. “He didn’t tell anyone else about that, for some reason he felt he could spill his guts to me. His son was like nine, he said. He said his son was the reason he liked the Beastie Boys so much, cause they were his son’s favorite band.”

NUMBER 8. Mohamed Atta, Islamic Party Animal

"Atta and his crew were always flush with lots and lots of money," said Stephanie Frederickson, a 50-year old housewife and foster mother who with her husband lived right next door to Atta’s apartment. “Those guys were all really party animals."

During their brief time together, Amanda and Atta went out almost every night, she said, and were part of a social scene at clubs like Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota. “When we went out we would meet pilots from Africa, Germany, and there were always lots of Arabs.”

In fact, Atta was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore enough expensive gold jewelry that a waitress in Venice thought he might be in the Mob.

NUMBER 7. Mohamed Atta liked pork chops.

“Islamic fundamentalist” Mohamed Atta loved pork chops, according to former girlfriend Amanda Keller. In fact, she said this was 'fanatical Islamo-fascist' Atta's one endearing trait.

Devout Muslims don’t eat pork, do they?

NUMBER 6. Mohamed Atta didn’t come to the U.S. to learn to fly.

Atta was already a licensed pilot when he arrived in the US., with pilot’s licenses from half a dozen countries, and while at Huffman Aviation was not treated like a 'newbie' pilot, but accorded the privileges of a flight instructor.

And instead of attending just one flight school, Huffman Aviation, as the FBI states, his path took him through at least three Florida flight programs, not including his visit to a flight school in Oklahoma and a stint at the first flight school he attended in the U.S., whose name, oddly enough, remains unknown.

If Atta's real reason for being in Florida wasn’t to go to flight school... “why then was he here?”

That facts this basic remain unknown illustrates the extent of the official blackout on information about 9/11.

NUMBER 5. Mohamed Atta's email list included people working for U.S. Defense contractors.

One, for instance, worked for Canadian firm Virtual Prototypes, which helped develop the avionics for F-15, F-22 and B-2.. Mohamed Atta’s kept an email list, showing him to have been in contact with employee's of US Defense contractors.

Atta’s emails are reprinted in "Welcome to Terrorland's 40-page Appendix, filled with never before seen photos and documents about the terrorist conspiracy.

NUMBER 4. Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer’s School at Maxwell Air force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Witnesses there recall him having been introduced around at an officers' club party. Mohamed Atta and at least five other of the nineteen terrorists participated in military training at secure military facilities in the United States. A 'Mohamed Atta' attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Others of the terrorists studied in exchange programs at US Defense installations like the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA.

NUMBER 3. Mohamed Atta got dumped by his American girlfriend.

“The day I stopped liking him,” Keller says today, “was when I saw him for the first time out at the pool. He was wearing a lime-green Speedo. He had a flanky ass.”

He had also embarrassed her in a night club, which turned out to be the beginning of the end. “We were at Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota near the quay,” Amanda stated. “Angelina, Olivia, Timothy, Juergen, Sabrina, Mohamed, Wolfgang…they were all there.”

“And Mohamed, like a dumbass was standing on top of a speaker dancing. The man could not dance to save his life, he was real stiff, just kind of shaking, doing the ‘Roxbury head bob’ thing. He just embarrassed me instantly when we got there, and I just pretended I didn’t know him.”

NUMBER 2. Mohamed Atta was in Venice, Florida at least three times during the last six weeks of his life.

The FBI is covering this fact up, perhaps because it will lead to questions about the identities of those who Atta had gone to the retirement community on Florida’s Gulf Coast to meet, which included “Magic Dutch Boy” Rudi Dekkers.

And, the NUMBER 1 Thing You Never Knew About Mohamed Atta:

1. Mohamed Atta was a psychopath.

“He told me he’d get even with me,” Amanda Keller said, after she threw him out of the apartment they shared. “He said, ‘You will be sorry for this.’”

He revenged himself by disemboweling her pet cat and and dismembering its half-dozen baby kittens, then strewing the pieces around her apartment to be discovered when she returned home from work after a long night at the “lingerie model” escort service in Sarasota she worked for to the apartment that was now hers alone.

Amanda kept a pet dog, and several cats as well, one of whom had just had a litter, she informed us haltingly. There were six adorable kittens. But when she flicked on the lights in her apartment, she didn’t hear any noises coming from them, and she couldn’t see any of the kittens...

Voice cracking with horror, she told us what she saw when she turned on the light: pieces of dead kittens—kitten parts—strewn all over the living room. “She(the mother cat) had had a litter of six. Only one survived…The mother was gutted on my kitchen table. And there were little baby cat parts all over the place.”

“The only ones to survive were my little dog that hid under the couch, and my Siamese who sat on top of the fridge behind the cookie jar. My friend Page came in with me, and helped me pick up little kitten parts that were all over the apartment.”

Chopping up kittens across from the Venice Airport

In an apartment directly across the street from the Venice Airport, the American girl who had just spurned Atta was on her hands and knees picking up kitten parts. Amanda Keller moved out of the apartment that same day, and never returned.

Numerous descriptions of Atta have painted him as menacing, dark, glaring, sometimes just wooden. We even heard speculation, from people who had been in his presence in Venice, that they suspected he might have been brainwashed.

But after listening to Amanda Keller’s story, which we will see fully corroborated by credible witnesses, we can answer one of the open questions about the 9/11 attack: Why was Mohamed Atta chosen to commit one of history’s most unspeakable crimes?

Because he could. He was capable of it. Not just capable... he was perfect for the job. He does not deserve the ‘heroic suicide’ mantle placed on his shoulders by aggrieved Arab radicals. Any self-respecting Islamic fundamentalist should be ashamed that he sprang from their number. Atta wasn’t a hero. He belonged in a psych-ward.

Mohamed Atta was a psychopath. A Kitten Killer. We’re in Jeffrey Dahmer territory here.

Spectre

04-08-2005, 03:11 PM

Great start to the thread B, and that article is just chilling.

Another couple of mysteries that this theory would satisfy is how the hijackers LEGALLY entered the country so easily even though their names were supposedly on terror lists. Also, it would make sense as to why these shady Arab characters would not attract attention at US flight schools and furthermore, why when it was noticed it was immediately quashed. Also, it would suggest why bin Laden and co have never been found and why the Afghanistan campaign as a whole has been so hushed up. OBL would never be allowed to see the light of day so Saddam provided a perfect "new face of terrorism" for us to be excited about capturing while forgetting all about the actual perpetrators of the crime.

Bman

04-08-2005, 03:13 PM

Becky

04-08-2005, 09:27 PM

Very interesting indeed, though for some reason, I'm not too shocked about some of it. Though the part about the kittens is something that would traumatize me.

Atlas

04-08-2005, 09:45 PM

WTF. Are you under the influence of the drugs you think the "men in black" are bringing in?

Bman

04-08-2005, 09:57 PM

WTF. Are you under the influence of the drugs you think the "men in black" are bringing in?

what makes you say that?

If you read my first post, I said that this is a THEORY.. not a proven fact.

Alot of things dont add up , however, about the official version of events

Bman

Atlas

04-08-2005, 10:18 PM

The muslims I have known who visit or temporarily live in the US (Dar al Harb, or the world of evil) feel it's like vacation. Normal rules don't apply. They may take a non muslim wife , use alcohol, watch porno lie cheat or steal, "haram" or prohibited under Islam

When they get back home( Dar al Islam or the World of Peace) they go back to good conduct.

It's like shore leave from heaven.

The theory is lame. The CIA doesnt run dope. The govt isn't out to get you. More than likely they don't know or care that you exist, nor care what things you espouse or eschew.

Get over yourselves, my friends. We all have the strongest roles already.

Citizen.

get out and vote and kwitcher bitchin

Bman

04-08-2005, 11:28 PM

Sardonic

04-11-2005, 04:32 PM

what makes you say that?

If you read my first post, I said that this is a THEORY.. not a proven fact.

Alot of things dont add up , however, about the official version of events

Bman

Exactaly what I'm saying, Bman. I gave up on the "Bush planned 9/11 thing" a long time ago, but there's still a lot of stuff that does not add up to me about that day.

I obviously don't even know half of the truth.

That much, I know.

Bman

04-11-2005, 11:00 PM

In 1996, an investigative reporter by the name of Gary Webb for the San Jose Mercury news ran some damning articles alleging that the CIA was involved in running crack in Los Angeles in the 1980s to fund the Contra Rebels in Central America.. .I'll post two of Mr. Webb's articles in this thread..

Mr. Webb then went on to write a book called "DARK ALLIANCE: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion " which you can still buy at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1888363681/qid=1113274312/sr=12-1/102-4758789-1976169?v=glance&s=books

Tragically (and some have said, quite suspiciously), In December of last year (2004) Mr. Webb is reported to have taken his own life by shooting himself in the head... TWICE!

Copyright 2004 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
Sacramento Bee

December 15, 2004, Wednesday METRO FINAL EDITION

Reporter's suicide confirmed by coroner A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement.

Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer

Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head.

"The cause of death was determined to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head," the coroner's statement said.

"Information and evidence gathered at the scene of death, including a handwritten note indicating an intention on the part of the decedent to take his own life, resulted in 'suicide' as the determined manner of death.

"The investigation is continuing and will take an estimated additional six to eight weeks to complete."

The statement was issued because of the number of calls that had flooded the Coroner's Office since The Bee reported Sunday that Webb's death was caused by more than one wound.

Webb, a former San Jose Mercury News reporter, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning.

Webb, who most recently had been writing for the Sacramento News & Review, is survived by his ex-wife and three children.

Such a case normally would have sparked little notice. But Webb gained notoriety in the 1990s after writing a series of stories for the Mercury News linking the CIA to Nicaraguan Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government and to drug sales of crack cocaine flooding South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s.

His newspaper and others later questioned the conclusions in Webb's reporting, and he left the San Jose newspaper in 1997 after being moved to a suburban bureau.

But Webb's allegations spawned a following, including conspiracy theorists who have worked the Internet feverishly for days with notions that because Webb died from two gunshots he was killed by government agents or the Contras in retribution for the stories written nearly a decade ago.

Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted such theories Tuesday, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper.

"The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," Bell said.

She said that before he died Webb wrote and mailed notes to family members and placed his baby shoes in his mother's shed.

Webb had paid for his own cremation earlier in the year and had named Bell months ago as the beneficiary of his bank account, she said. He had sold his house last week, because he could no longer afford the mortgage, and was upset that his motorcycle had been stolen last week.

He had apparently laid out his driver's license before taking his father's .38-caliber pistol, which he kept in his nightstand, to shoot himself.

Coroner Robert Lyons said his office had been swamped with calls. "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots," he said, "but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility."

Services for Webb are pending.

Bman

04-11-2005, 11:03 PM

Copyright 1996 The Denver Post

The Denver Post

September 13, 1996 Friday 2D EDITION

SPECIAL REPORT CIA linked to Bay Area cocaine ring

By Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury-News

For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the CIA, an investigation by the San Jose Mercury News has found.

This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the crack capital of the world.

The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America - and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S.-backed army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting "gangstas" of Compton and south-central Los Angeles.

The army's financiers - who met with CIA agents both before and during the time they were selling the drugs in L.A. - delivered cut-rate cocaine to the gangs through a young south-central L.A. crack dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross.

Unaware of his suppliers' military and political connections, "Freeway Rick" - a dope dealer of mythic proportions in the L.A. drug world - turned the cocaine powder into crack and wholesaled it to gangs across the country.

The cash Ross paid for the cocaine, court records show, was then used to buy weapons and equipment for a guerrilla army named the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic Force) or FDN, the largest of several anti-communist groups commonly called the contras.

While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, black America is still dealing with its poisonous side effects. Urban neighborhoods are grappling with legions of homeless crack addicts.

Thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine - a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army brought it into south-central L.A. in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices.

And the L.A. gangs, which used their enormous cocaine profits to arm themselves and spread crack across the country, are still thriving, turning entire blocks of major cities into occasional war zones.

"There is a saying that the ends justify the means," former FDN leader and drug dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes testified during a recent cocaine trafficking trial in San Diego. "And that's what Mr. Bermudez (the CIA agent who commanded the FDN) told us in Honduras, OK? So we started raising money for the contra revolution."

Recently declassified reports, federal court testimony, undercover tapes, court records here and abroad, and hundreds of hours of interviews over the past 12 months leave no doubt that Blandon was no ordinary drug dealer.

Shortly before Blandon - who had been the drug ring's Southern California distributor - took the stand in San Diego as a witness for the U.S. Department of Justice, federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into his ties to the CIA.

Blandon, one of the FDN's founders in California, "will admit that he was a large-scale dealer in cocaine, and there is no additional benefit to any defendant to inquire as to the Central Intelligence Agency," Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale argued in his motion shortly before Ross' trial on cocaine trafficking charges in March.

The most Blandon would say in court about who called the shots when he sold cocaine for the FDN was that "we received orders from the - from other people."

The 5,000-man FDN, records show, was created in mid-1981 when the CIA combined several existing groups of anti-communist exiles into a unified force it hoped would topple the new socialist government of Nicaragua.

From 1982 to 1988, the FDN - run by both American and Nicaraguan CIA agents - waged a losing war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the Cuban-supported socialists who'd overthrown U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

Blandon, who began working for the FDN's drug operation in late 1981, testified that the drug ring sold almost a ton of cocaine in the United States that year - $ 54 million worth at prevailing wholesale prices.

It was not clear how much of the money found its way back to the CIA's army, but Blandon testified that "whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was going for the contra revolution."

At the time of that testimony, Blandon was a full-time informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a job the U.S. Department of Justice got him after releasing him from prison in 1994.

Though Blandon admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $ 166,000 since, court records show.

"He has been extraordinarily helpful," federal prosecutor O'Neale told Blandon's judge in a plea for the trafficker's release in 1994. Though O'Neale once described Blandon to a grand jury as "the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States," the prosecutor would not discuss him.

Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine operation, Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero, has never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even though the federal government has been aware of his cocaine dealings since at least 1974, records show.

Meneses - who ran the drug ring from his homes in the Bay Area - is listed in the DEA's computers as a major international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 separate federal investigations.

Yet he and his cocaine-dealing relatives lived quite openly in the Bay Area for years, buying homes in Pacifica and Burlingame, along with bars, restaurants, car lots and factories in San Francisco, Hayward and Oakland.

"I even drove my own cars, reg-istered in my name," Meneses said during a recent interview in Nicaragua.

Meneses' organization was "the target of unsuccessful investigative attempts for many years," prosecutor O'Neale acknowledged in a 1994 affidavit. But records and interviews revealed that a number of those probes were stymied not by the elusive Meneses but by agencies of the U.S. government.

Agents from four organizations - the DEA, U.S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement - have complained that investigations were hampered by the CIA or unnamed "national security" interests.

One 1988 investigation by a U.S. Senate subcommittee ran into a wall of official secrecy at the Justice Department.

In that case, congressional records show, Senate investigators were trying to determine why the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, had given $ 36,000 back to a Nicaraguan cocaine dealer arrested by the FBI.

The money was returned, court records show, after two contra leaders sent letters to the court swearing that the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy weapons for guerrillas. Russoniello said it was cheaper to give the money back than to disprove that claim.

"The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to people, records - finding anything out about it," recalled Jack Blum, former chief counsel to the Senate subcommittee that investigated allegations of contra cocaine trafficking.

It wasn't until 1989, a few months after the contra-Sandinista war ended and five years after Meneses moved to a ranch in Costa Rica, that the U.S. government took action against him - sort of.

Federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged Meneses with conspiracy to distribute one kilo of cocaine in 1984, a year in which he was working publicly with the FDN.

Meneses' work was so public, in fact, that he posed for a picture in June 1984 in a kitchen of a San Francisco home with the FDN's political boss, Adolfo Calero, a longtime CIA operative who became the public face of the Contras in the United States.

According to the indictment, Meneses was in the midst of his alleged cocaine conspiracy at the time the picture was taken.

The indictment was quickly locked away in the vaults of the San Francisco federal courthouse, where it remains today - inexplicably secret for more than seven years. Meneses was never arrested.

Reporters found a copy of the secret indictment in Nicaragua, along with a federal arrest warrant issued Feb. 8, 1989. Records show the no-bail warrant was never entered into the national law enforcement database called NCIC, which police use to track down fugitives. The former federal prosecutor who indicted him, Eric Swenson, declined to be interviewed.

After Nicaraguan police arrested Meneses on cocaine charges in Managua in 1991, the judge expressed astonishment that the infamous smuggler went unmolested by American drug agents during his years in the United States.

"How do you explain the fact that Norwin Meneses, implicated since 1974 in the trafficking of drugs has not been detained in the United States, a country in which he has lived, entered and departed many times since 1974?" Judge Martha Quezada asked during a pretrial hearing.

His seeming invulnerability amazed American authorities as well.

A Customs agent who investigated Meneses in 1980 before transferring elsewhere said he was reassigned to San Francisco seven years later "and I was sitting in some meetings and here's Meneses' name again. And I can remember thinking, 'Holy cow, is this guy still around?"'

Blandon led an equally charmed life. For at least five years he brokered massive amounts of cocaine to the black gangs of Los Angeles without being arrested. But his luck changed overnight.

On Oct. 27, 1986, agents from the FBI, the IRS, local police and the Los Angeles County sheriff fanned out across Southern California and raided more than a dozen locations connected to Blandon's cocaine operation. Blandon and his wife, along with numerous Nicaraguan associates, were arrested on drug and weapons charges.

The search warrant affidavit reveals that local drug agents knew plenty about Blandon's involvement with cocaine and the CIA's army nearly 10 years ago.

"Danilo Blandon is in charge of a sophisticated cocaine smuggling and distribution organization operating in Southern California," L.A. County sheriff's Sgt. Tom Gordon said in the 1986 affidavit.

"The monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported to Florida and laundered through Orlando Murillo, who is a high-ranking officer of a chain of banks in Florida named Government Securities Corp. From this bank the monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua."

Corporate records show that Murillo - a Nicaraguan banker and relative of Blandon's wife - was a vice-president of Government Securities Corp. in Coral Gables, a large brokerage firm that collapsed in 1987 amid allegations of fraud. Murillo did not respond to an interview request.

Despite their intimate knowledge of Blandon's operations, the police raids were a spectacular failure. Every location had been cleaned of anything remotely incriminating. No one was ever prosecuted.

Ron Spear, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, said Blandon somehow knew that he was under police surveillance. Others thought so, too.

"The cops always believed that investigation had been compromised by the CIA," said Los Angeles federal public defender Barbara O'Connor.

O'Connor knew of the raids because she later defended the raids' leader, Sgt. Gordon, against federal charges of police corruption. Gordon, convicted of tax evasion, declined to be interviewed.

FBI records show that soon after the raids, Blandon's defense attorney, Bradley Brunon, called the sheriff's department to suggest that his client's troubles stemmed from a most unlikely source: a recent congressional vote authorizing $ 100 million in military aid to the CIA's contra army.

According to a December 1986 FBI Teletype, Brunon told the officers that the "CIA winked at this sort of thing. (Brunon) indicated that now that U.S. Congress had voted funds for the Nicaraguan contra movement, U.S. government now appears to be turning against organizations like this."

That FBI report, part of the files of former Iran-contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, was made public only last year, when it was released by the National Archives at the San Jose Mercury News' request.

Blandon has also implied that his cocaine sales were, for a time, CIA-approved. He told a San Francisco federal grand jury in 1994 that once the FDN began receiving American taxpayer dollars, the CIA no longer needed his kind of help.

"When Mr. Reagan get in the power, we start receiving a lot of money," Blandon testified. "And the people that was in charge, it was the CIA, so they didn't want to raise any (drug) money because they have, they had the money that they wanted."

"From the government?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall.

"Yes, for the contra revolution," Blandon said. "So we started - you know, the ambitious person - we started doing business by ourselves."

None of the government agencies known to have been involved with Meneses and Blandon over the years would provide the Mercury News with any information about them.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed with the CIA was denied on national security grounds. FOIA requests filed with the DEA were denied on privacy grounds. Requests filed months ago with the FBI, the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have produced nothing so far.

None of the DEA officials known to have worked with the two men would talk to a reporter. Questions submitted to the DEA's public affairs office in Washington were never answered, despite repeated requests.

Blandon's lawyer, Brunon, said in an interview that his client never told him directly that he was selling cocaine for the CIA, but the prominent Los Angeles defense attorney drew his own conclusions from the "atmosphere of CIA and clandestine activities" that surrounded Blandon and his Nicaraguan friends.

"Was he involved with the CIA? Probably. Was he involved with drugs? Most definitely," Brunon said. "Were those two things involved with each other? They've never said that, obviously. They've never admitted that. But I don't know where these guys get these big aircraft."

Bman

04-11-2005, 11:05 PM

Copyright 1996 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

October 4, 1996, Friday, SOONER EDITION

GARY WEBB AND PAMELA KRAMER, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

LOS ANGELES

During the early 1980s, federal and local narcotics agents knew that a massive drug ring operated by Nicaraguan Contra rebels was selling large amounts of cocaine ''mainly to blacks living in the South Central Los Angeles area,'' according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by the Mercury News.

The Oct. 23, 1986, affidavit identifies former Nicaraguan government official Danilo Blandon as ''the highest-ranking member of this organization'' and describes a sprawling drug operation involving more than 100 Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers.

The affidavit of Thomas Gordon, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's narcotics detective, is the first independent corroboration that the Contra army - the Nicaraguan Democratic Force - was dealing ''crack'' cocaine to gangs in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods. Known by its Spanish initials, the FDN was an anti-communist commando group formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s.

Gordon's sworn statement says that both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI had informants inside the Blandon drug ring for several years before sheriff's deputies raided it Oct. 27, 1986. Gordon's affidavit is based on police interviews with those informants and one of the DEA agents who was investigating Blandon.

Twice during the past year, Ron Spear, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman, told the Mercury News that his department had no records of the 1986 raids and specifically denied having a copy of Gordon's search-warrant affidavit - even after two pages of it surfaced during the March 1996 cocaine trafficking trial of legendary Los Angeles crack dealer ''Freeway'' Rick Ross.

The Mercury News obtained the entire search warrant affidavit this week.

Wednesday, Sheriff Sherman Block's office did not respond to written questions about the raid, the warrant, records of what was found and what happened to those records and evidence.

A recent Mercury News series revealed how Blandon's operation, which sold thousands of pounds of cocaine to black Los Angeles drug dealers such as Ross, created the first mass market for crack in America during the early 1980s and helped fuel a crack explosion that is still reverberating through black communities.

Several investigations into U.S. government knowledge of, and possible involvement with, the Nicaraguan drug ring are under way. Both the CIA and the Justice Department have denied government involvement.

But according to a legal motion filed in a 1990 case involving a deputy who helped execute the search warrants, one of the suspects involved in the raid identified himself as a CIA agent and asked police to call CIA headquarters in Virginia to confirm his identity.

The motion, filed by Los Angeles defense attorney Harland W. Braun on behalf of Deputy Daniel Garner, said the narcotics detectives allowed the man to make the call but then carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S. government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering efforts on behalf of the Contras.

The motion said CIA agents appeared at the sheriff's department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence room. But Braun said detectives secretly copied 10 pages before the documents were spirited away.

Braun attempted to introduce them in the 1990 criminal trial to force the federal government to back off the case. Braun was hit with a gag order, the documents were put under seal and Garner was convicted of corruption charges.

Internal sheriff's department records of the raid ''mysteriously disappeared'' around the same time the seized files were taken, Braun's motion said. That claim was buttressed in an interview this week by an officer involved in the raid, and earlier by an attorney for one of the defendants.

The officer, who would not allow himself to be identified, said the alleged CIA agent was Ronald J. Lister, a former Laguna Beach police detective who worked with Blandon in the drug ring.

The 1986 search-warrant affidavit identifies Lister's home in Laguna Beach as one of the places searched. It says Lister was involved in transporting drug money to Miami and was Blandon's partner in a security company.

The company, according to a former employee, was doing work at a Salvadoran military air base in the early 1980s. Lister pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking in 1991.

A 1986 FBI report obtained from the National Archives last year said Lister claimed his security business was ''CIA approved.''

Since at least 1983, Gordon's affidavit said, both Blandon and Lister were under DEA investigation. Other court records say Blandon turned up in DEA investigative files as early as 1981. Blandon now works for the DEA as an undercover informant.

At Ross' trial in March, Blandon - the Nicaraguan government's director of wholesale markets under the U.S.-supported dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza testified that he was one of the founders of the Los Angeles branch of the FDN, and that he sold cocaine to raise funds for that army.

Detective Gordon's 1986 search-warrant affidavit, which was approved by Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Glenette Blackwell, mirrors much of Blandon's sworn testimony in March.

''Informant 2 stated to your affiant that Blandon is a 'Contra' sympathizer and a founder of the . . . (FDN), an organization that assists the Contra movement with arms and money,'' Gordon's affidavit states. ''The money and arms generated by the organization come through sales of cocaine. Informant 2 provided some 100 names of persons involved with the distribution of cocaine. All of these persons are either Nicaraguan and/or sympathizers to the Contra movement.''

The affidavit names Lister; Blandon's father, Julio; his wife, Chepita; banker Orlando Murillo; and another man as ''being directly involved with cocaine distribution.''

The affidavit also said Blandon was delivering ''up to 20 kilos a week'' to a Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Ivan Arguellas ''who in turn sells mainly to blacks living in the South Central Los Angeles area.'' It said Blandon ''uses a beer bar at Central Avenue and Adams Street in Los Angeles to distribute as much as 10 kilos of cocaine per week.''

Arguellas was described as being ''confined to a wheelchair as the result of being shot (in) a drug-related incident.''

During an interview with the Mercury News last year, former Los Angeles crack king Ross said one of his first cocaine sources was ''a guy named Ivan, who was in a wheelchair.''

Gordon, like six of the seven other narcotics detectives who staged the Blandon raids, was later indicted on federal corruption charges in the early 1990s. After two trials, including one in which he defended himself, Gordon was convicted of one count of tax evasion. He could not be reached for comment.

DC Penguin

04-11-2005, 11:12 PM

I've been talking with another poster and we've come up with a THEORY (ie, its not PROVEN, nor do we say that it is), that perhaps the 9/11 terrorists were running drugs for the CIA but, unbenounced to the CIA, they were also double agents working for Bin Laden..

That would explain alot of things... First of all, while testimony regarding the hijackers conduct prior to 9/11 is sparse, the stories that do come out suggest these guys were ANYTHING but pious muslims... These guys were party animals..

There are plenty of accounts of how the White House stopped certain lines of investigation of money laundering, etc, prior to 9/11... Indeed, the Presiden't Uncle, Jonathan Bush, is a senior executive at Riggs Bank, which is known to operate front accounts for CIA "off the book" operations. Riggs also was recently called (by a US Federal Judge), a "henchman of dictators and their corrupt regimes".. That's because they were laundering money for Argentinian dictator Pinochet, for God knows what reason.. Riggs is also being sued by the families of 9/11 families for funnelling money to terrorists...

If this is indeed the case, it would also explain Pakistani involvement with the hijackers and why the US has been loath to investigate Pakistan's role in the fiasco.. If anything, Pakistan appears to have been paid "hush money" in the form of forgiven loans and F-16s....

The theory is complex and it will take alot of posts to put the pieces together but I wanted to lay it out there..

Bman

I look forward to your summary. I'm curious to see what you assemble.

Bman

04-11-2005, 11:18 PM

I look forward to your summary. I'm curious to see what you assemble.

It'll be a work in progress over time.. I'll try to keep focus, but I feel like we need to first establish a pattern of stories that show the CIA has indeed worked with drug runners to fund "off the book" operations...

I think we then need to make the case that the Pakistani ISI was doing the same thing.. We need to make a link between the Pakistani ISI and 9/11 (that's the easy part)...Then ask some questions that haven't been answered....

All and all I think its a viable theory that the hijackers were double agents who were in the US under some sort of "protection".... Our theory is that they then turned on the US government and carried out the attacks... In the aftermath, the government has been hindered in revealing to the public what happened because they don't want to reveal the drug running game, etc...

Given Bush's father's intimate connection with the CIA and the strong allegations that the CIA was engaged in this sort of thing under Reagan/Bush... the theory is easy to make

Bman

Bman

04-12-2005, 01:24 AM

From Judicial Watch:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/newsletter/2002/0702j.shtml

FBI Agent:

Bureau Blocked Terrorism Investigation - Sues FBI for Blocking His Attempt to Tell the Public the Truth

Prior to September 11, JW client and Chicago FBI Special Agent Robert Wright tried to launch a criminal investigation of terrorist financial networks in the United States. His supervisors blocked his efforts, refusing to allow him to pursue his investigations. Now, they¹re trying to block him from telling the truth about their mistake.

During the 1990s, Agent Wright discovered that non-profit groups in the U.S. tied to Hamas and other militant Islamic networks "were being used to recruit, organize, train and support terrorist operatives and to plan and carry out terrorist attacks." Agent Wright brought this information to his superiors and requested permission to pursue a criminal investigation. It was denied.

According to the complaint filed by JW, "FBI management intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed Agent Wright¹s attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation that would identify terrorists, their sources and methods of funding before they attacked additional U.S. interests, killing more U.S. citizens."

If those investigations were allowed to continue, it is possible they could have disrupted the operations of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaidaterror network by choking off funds. Agent Wright was pulled off the Hamas investigation in 1999.

Agent Wright strongly believes the American people deserve to know the truth about the FBI’s failures and as was reported in the New York Times, he has produced a manuscript intended for publication. According to FBI rules, Agent Wright cannot do so without written permission from FBI officials. A recent letter from John E. Collingwood of the bureau¹s Office of Public and Congressional Affairs prohibited Mr. Wright from going public with his story.

Judicial Watch has initiated a lawsuit on Agent Wright’s behalf, accusing the FBI of violating his First Amendment rights.

"Clearly the FBI wants to keep Agent Wright quiet because they have something to hide," said JW Chairman Larry Klayman. "They botched efforts to investigate terrorism in the U.S., and Agent Wright knows it. They know it. Now it’s time the American people know it."

Judicial Watch¹s lawsuit comes on the heels of multiple news reports highlighting FBI missteps prior to September 11. For example, a report from the FBI’s Phoenix field office suggested that U.S. aviation schools were being infiltrated by Middle Eastern men seeking flight training, and mentioned Osama bin Laden by name.

According to the New York Times, FBI Director Mueller "has acknowledged that the bureau gave the memo too little attention."

And then there’s the story of Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui aroused suspicion when he sought flight training last summer, asking instructors to teach him how to steer, but not take off or land, an aircraft. Moussaoui was ultimately detained on immigration charges. When an FBI agent in Minnesota discovered he had terrorist connections, the agent speculated to the FBI that Moussaoui "could fly something into the World Trade Center." The agent then put in a request with the FBI and DOJ to search Moussaoui¹s computer a request that was denied.

After September 11, Moussaoui’s computer was searched. Investigators found information on airliners, crop dusters and wind patterns.

Bman

04-12-2005, 11:32 AM

This paper is from January 8, 2001... It is from a paper written by the South Asia Analysis Group (www.saag.org), and it is about Pakistan's Intelligence service, the ISI.

It was written PRIOR to the World Trade Center Attacks.

Excerpted from

http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper287.html

The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA. A number of officers from the ISI's Covert Action Division received training in the US and many covert action experts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers. Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.

The encouragement of opium cultivation and heroin production and smuggling was also an offshoot of this co-operation. The CIA, through the ISI, promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts. Once the Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988, these heroin smugglers started smuggling the drugs to the West, with the complicity of the ISI. The heroin dollars have largely contributed to preventing the Pakistani economy from collapsing and enabling the ISI to divert the jehadi hordes from Afghanistan to J & K after 1989 and keeping them well motivated and well-equipped.

Even before India's Pokhran I nuclear test of 1974, the ISI had set up a division for the clandestine procurement of military nuclear technology from abroad and, subsequently, for the clandestine purchase and shipment of missiles and missile technology from China and North Korea. This division, which was funded partly by donations from Saudi Arabia and Libya, partly by concealed allocations in Pakistan's State budget and partly by heroin dollars, was instrumental in helping Pakistan achieve a military nuclear and delivery capability despite its lack of adequate human resources with the required expertise.

Thus, the ISI, which was originally started as essentially an agency for the collection of external intelligence, has developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procurement of denied technologies as well.

DC Penguin

04-12-2005, 05:33 PM

Mind if I ask your current theory? I'm curious how you're integrating all this.

Bman

04-12-2005, 10:17 PM

Mind if I ask your current theory? I'm curious how you're integrating all this.

Penquin, I got your message.. I'll send you a reply later

So far, and I can only speak for myself, this is where I'm at:

It seems to me that there are two likely scenario that are "best fit" to the information that I have, which admittedly, is very limited.. I rely on reports that I can access on the internet.. with no first hand information...

On the one hand it seems that there was not only a negligent "neglect" on the part of the FBI and CIA prior to the 9/11 attack, but also an INTENTIONAL pattern of stonewalling investigations of terrorist threats... these seem to indicate intervention at high levels of the government. The big question is "WHY"??

One could surmise that perhaps the neocons, through their contacts with the Pakistani ISI (Dick Armitage was extremely close to the Paki Intelligence services) may have known that SOMETHING was about to happen. Its reasonable to conclude that there were people in the Paki ISI that knew a terrorist attack on the US was in the works... There were some very CURIOUS high level meetings between the head of Paki Intelligence and George Tenet, Porter Goss, and (allegedly, though its not proven) Condi Rice in the weeks and DAYS prior to 9/11.. IN fact, as 9/11 was actually happening, General Ahmed (the head of Paki ISI) was meeting with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, who are were key intelligence chairmen in the Congress.

Now what is extremely troubling is that General Ahmed was forced to RESIGN his position with the Paki ISI about a month after 9/11, after INDIAN INTELLIGENCE apparently provided the Americans with PROOF that General Ahmed was linked to Mohammad Atta... SPECIFICALLY, he ordered a man named Omar Sheik to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta just before the attacks (a month or two before, I think).. (Sheik was later convicted of playing a hand in the murder of Daniel Pearle... The US has never asked to put him on trial and to my knowledge he's still in Pakistan... though I'm not sure what his legal status is.. I'll look into it).

One theory might be that the neocons knew Osama was going to attack the US, but they didn't know exactly when or how. IN fact, I don't even think Osama himself knew when it would be.. exactly... One could surmise that the neocons were willing to let something shocking happen, to justify their military intervention in the Middle East.. (One could surmise that this is why they were in close consultation with Ahmed prior to 9/11... because he would have had an ear to alot of what was going on... but they (the neos) might not have realized that Ahmed himself was as close to Al Qaeda as we know now.) We know they were already planning the mid east military campaign prior to 9/11.. There are PNAC documents that specifically say that the wars they were planning would be difficult to launch , unless there were a "Pearl Harbor" type event... I believe one document even says something like, "such as a plane flying into a building"...

One could theorize that what happened at the WTC was way beyond anyone's expectations. however..... Indeed Osama himself seemed to be surprised (pleasantly) that the towers actually CAME down

Its difficult to believe this theory, simpy because it requires one to accept that people in the government were so evil as to allow (and indeed, hope for) a terrorist attack in order to coerce the public into accepting a war.

A second theory (WHICH IS THE ONE WE STARTED TO EXPLORE HERE), is that the CIA was working with Pakistani ISI to support drug activities for the purpose of securing money to fund some other (unknown to me) black operations. What I'm hoping I have shown here is that this sort of thing has happened in the past and may be something that is ROUTINE. Is it not possible that Atta and his men were drug runners that were engaged in this EXACT activity?? Could it be, however, that they PULLED ONE OVER on the CIA.. that with the help of General Ahmed (who was providing key information.. or disinformation... to US intelligence folks) they actually allied themselves with Al Qaeda to pull off the trade center attacks. The US authorities might have known about Atta, etc.. but perhaps they simply thought that they he was running heroin (with the help of the CIA to keep him out of trouble)... as perhaps they had been doing for some time... But somewhere along the line, Atta and his gang "found Allah" and started working for Bin Laden.. and planning an attack... They knew they had "free reign" in the US because they had cover..

This second theory isn't as "sinister" as the first one because it implies that the neocons didn't KNOW there was going to be an attack, but rather... they were duped by Paki ISI and Al Qaeda.. so that the very men they (the CIA)were protecting.. men they thought were working covertly for the CIA, were actually plotting the 9/11 attacks.

Both of these theories would explain alot of things.. I don't have all the answers.. but it seems to me that either of these theories is at this point viable..

What I've posted in this thread so far is information that Atta was living a lifestyle that doesn't fit with the profile of "pious muslim on a suicide mission for Allah"... that George HW Bush inexplicably pardoned a Pakistani heroin dealer in the latter days of his presidency.. that a reporter who wrote a book about the CIA and the drug trade killed himself recently.. BY SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE HEAD TWICE... That FBI agents are saying they were stonewalled at every turn prior to 9/11 when they started to get close to Atta and his ring...

In future posts I'll talk about how George Bush's uncle (HW's brother) was (and is) a senior executive at a bank that has been tied to laundering money for terrorists, operating sham CIA front accounts and recently was called by a Federal Judge, "a henchman for dictators and their brutal regimes"... The families of victims of 9/11 SUED that bank, along with the Saudi Royals who were accused of using the bank to funnel money to terrorist... In that lawsuit, JAMES BAKER.. George HW Bush's Secretary of STate and close ally of the Bush family, PERSONALLY REPRESENTED THE SAUDIs as their defense lawyer...

Doesn't all of this start to stink??? Am I a nutcase?? Tell me if I am.. I need to hear it.

Bman

DC Penguin

04-12-2005, 10:26 PM

Penquin, I got your message.. I'll send you a reply later

So far, and I can only speak for myself, this is where I'm at:

It seems to me that there are two likely scenario that are "best fit" to the information that I have, which admittedly, is very limited.. I rely on reports that I can access on the internet.. with no first hand information...

On the one hand it seems that there was not only a negligent "neglect" on the part of the FBI and CIA prior to the 9/11 attack, but also an INTENTIONAL pattern of stonewalling investigations of terrorist threats... these seem to indicate intervention at high levels of the government. The big question is "WHY"??

One could surmise that perhaps the neocons, through their contacts with the Pakistani ISI (Dick Armitage was extremely close to the Paki Intelligence services) may have known that some was about to happen. Its reasonable to conclude that there were people in the Paki ISI that knew a terrorist attack on the US was in the works... There were some very CURIOUS high level meetings between the head of Paki Intelligence and George Tenet, Porter Goss, and (allegedly, though its not proven) Condi Rice in the weeks and DAYS prior to 9/11.. IN fact, as 9/11 was actually happening, General Ahmed (the head of Paki ISI) was meeting with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, who are were key intelligence chairmen in the Congress.

Now what is extremely troubling is that General Ahmed was forced to RESIGN his position with the Paki ISI about a month after 9/11, after INDIAN INTELLIGENCE apparently provided the Americans with PROOF that General Ahmed was linked to Mohammad Atta... SPECIFICALLY, he ordered a man named Omar Sheik to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta just before the attacks (a month or two, I think).. (Sheik was later convicted of playing a hand in the murder of Daniel Pearle... The US has never asked to put him on trial and to my knowledge he's still in Pakistan... though I'm not sure what his legal status is.. I'll look into it).

One theory might be that the neocons knew Osama was going to attack the US, but they didn't know exactly when or how. IN fact, I don't even think Osama himself knew when it would be.. exactly... One could surmise that the neocons were willing to let something shocking happen, to justify their military intervention in the Middle East.. (One could surmise that this is why there were in close consultation with Ahmed prior to 9/11... because he would have had an ear to alot of what was going on... but they (the neos) might not have realized that Ahmed himself was as close to Al Qaeda as we know now.) We know they were already planning it prior to 9/11.. There are PNAC documents that specifically say that the wars they were planning would be difficult to launch , unless there were a "Pearl Harbor" type event... I believe one document even says something like, "such as a plane flying into a building"...

One could theorize that what happened at the WTC was way beyond anyone's expectations.. Indeed Osama himself seemed to be surprised (pleasantly) that the towers actually CAME down

Its difficult to believe this theory, simpy because it requires one to accept that people in the government were so evil as to allow (and indeed, hope for) a terrorist attack in order to coerce the public into accepting a war.

A second theory (WHICH IS THE ONE WE STARTED TO EXPLORE HERE), is that the CIA was working with Pakistani ISI to support drug activities for the purpose of securing money to fund some other (unknown to me) black operations. What I'm hoping I have shown here is that this sort of thing has happened in the past and may be something that is ROUTINE. Is it not possible that Atta and his men were drug runners that were engaged in this EXACT activity?? Could it be, however, that they PULLED ONE OVER on the US CIA.. that with the help of General Ahmed (who was providing key information.. or disinformation... to US intelligence folks) they actually allied themselves with Al Qaeda to pull off the trade center attacks. The US authorities might have known about Atta, etc.. but perhaps they simply thought that they were running heroin... as perhaps they had been doing for some time... But somewhere along the line, Atta and his gang "found Atta" and started working for Bin Laden.. and planning an attack... They knew they had "free reign" in the US because they had cover..

This second theory isn't as "sinister" as the first one because it implies that the neocons didn't KNOW there was going to be an attack, but rather... they were duped by Paki ISI and Al Qaeda.. so that the very men they were protecting.. men they thought were working covertly for the CIA, were actually plotting the 9/11 attacks.

Both of these theories would explain alot of things.. I don't have all the answers.. but it seems to me that either of these theories is at this point viable..

What I've posted in this thread so far is information that Atta was living a lifestyle that doesn't fit with the profile of "pious muslim on a suicide mission for Allah"... that George HW Bush inexplicably pardoned a Pakistani heroin dealer in the latter days of his presidency.. that a reporter who wrote a book about the CIA and the drug trade killed himself recently.. BY SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE HEAD TWICE... That FBI agents are saying they were stonewalled at every turn prior to 9/11 when they started to get close to Atta and his ring...

In future posts I'll talk about how George Bush's uncle was (and is) a senior executive at a bank that has been tied to laundering money for terrorists, operating sham CIA front accounts and recently was called by a Federal Judge, "a henchman for dictators and their brutal regimes"... The victims of families of 9/11 SUED that bank, along with the Saudi Royals who were accused of using the bank to funnel money to terrorist... In that lawsuit, JAMES BAKER.. George HW Bush's Secretary of STate and close ally of the Bush family, PERSONALLY REPRESENTED THE SAUDIs as their defense lawyer...

Doesn't all of this start to stink??? Am I a nutcase?? Tell me if I am.. I need to hear it.

Bman

Bman, I find your theory interesting, but I think you should drop the neocon term because it's been so overused that it's not clear what level of participation you're implying.

I believe you know that there was another airline plot that was attempted and thwarted prior to 9/11. I'm curious why you think that one was unsuccessful if you believe the government wanted such an attack.

If an event needed to be staged, then why involve aircraft at all? The PA flight was delayed from departure, clueing in the passengers that something was amiss, and the result was a failed mission for the hijackers. The Pentagon flight overflew the building, doubled back and dropped about 1,000 feet to hit it. If the WTC were not intended to collapse, then why not hit a corner or an upper floor? Most of all, why not just do a bombing rather than multiple hijackings?

I'm not going to ridicule you at any point. You're working a theory but you are still grasping at some straws, and you're making some very elaborate assumptions about the "unknown unknowns." You may want to think if there are any scenarios that would have been correct to conceal information or block speach. It is possible that some, if not all, of the unknowns were done for security reasons.

This is a deep quagmire you're entering, and I thank you for sharing. It's fascinating to watch the thought process.

Atlas

04-12-2005, 10:43 PM

The secret solution for your problem is available at this link:

http://tinctoris.com/images/01_04/tinfoil-jeffrey.jpg

Bman

04-12-2005, 11:33 PM

Bman, I find your theory interesting, but I think you should drop the neocon term because it's been so overused that it's not clear what level of participation you're implying.

I believe you know that there was another airline plot that was attempted and thwarted prior to 9/11. I'm curious why you think that one was unsuccessful if you believe the government wanted such an attack.

If an event needed to be staged, then why involve aircraft at all? The PA flight was delayed from departure, clueing in the passengers that something was amiss, and the result was a failed mission for the hijackers. The Pentagon flight overflew the building, doubled back and dropped about 1,000 feet to hit it. If the WTC were not intended to collapse, then why not hit a corner or an upper floor? Most of all, why not just do a bombing rather than multiple hijackings?

I'm not going to ridicule you at any point. You're working a theory but you are still grasping at some straws, and you're making some very elaborate assumptions about the "unknown unknowns." You may want to think if there are any scenarios that would have been correct to conceal information or block speach. It is possible that some, if not all, of the unknowns were done for security reasons.

This is a deep quagmire you're entering, and I thank you for sharing. It's fascinating to watch the thought process.

So what about the drug theory then? That removes the "they knew about it" factor...

Bman

Bman

04-12-2005, 11:34 PM

I believe you know that there was another airline plot that was attempted and thwarted prior to 9/11. I'm curious why you think that one was unsuccessful if you believe the government wanted such an attack.

.

What was the timing on this one, date wise?? Approximately when was this?? Before or after Bush took over?

Bman

Atlas

04-12-2005, 11:39 PM

What was the timing on this one, date wise?? Approximately when was this?? Before or after Bush took over?

Bman

I believe you refer to the phillipine airlines one, approx 1988

DC Penguin

04-12-2005, 11:55 PM

What was the timing on this one, date wise?? Approximately when was this?? Before or after Bush took over?

Bman

I believe it was before. There was an attempt to bring overseas flights down . . . I think five of them . . . that was stopped. However, I also believe it was during the period that 9/11 was being plotted (Moussaui stated that the plans began in 1996 for 9/11/01).

Bman

04-13-2005, 12:56 AM

I believe it was before. There was an attempt to bring overseas flights down . . . I think five of them . . . that was stopped. However, I also believe it was during the period that 9/11 was being plotted (Moussaui stated that the plans began in 1996 for 9/11/01).

Ok.. well that would offer a reasonable explanation as to why that attempt failed and the second attempt was "allowed to happen", if one wants to continue that theory..There was a change in those in charge.

IF there was a conspiracy to "allow an event" to happen, you have to remember that it wouldnt' involve the ENTIRE CIA and FBI, but rather the upper leadership.. .YOu'd still have grunts on the hunt.. There are numerous examples of mid to lower level analysts and agents who have gone on the record as saying they were specifically BLOCKED from pursuing leads that might have thwarted Atta and his group prior to 9/11.. I posted one such account from the Judicial Watch website earlier in this thread..

Of course even if there WAS a conspiracy to "allow an event", that doesn't mean it would actually happen.. Hijacking four planes simultaneously, then flying them all into their intended targets would be EXTREMELY difficult to pull off, regardless of who was behind it. Any number of things could go wrong, for example:

1. Flights could be delayed from taking off on time due to uncontrollable circumstances.
2. If there were big lag times between the planes hitting their intended targets, it could result in a passenger rebellion or the military shooting down a plane.
3. Hijackers could be thwarted by airport security.
4. Hijacker pilots, having no experience at actually flying jumbo jets, could miss their targets or crash the plane unintentionally.

It appears that some of these things did happen on 9/11.. The fact that they happened IN NO WAY would rule out the theory that the government allowed it to happen (and I'm not even making that claim at this point.. just thinking it through).. Just because the CIA (for example) may have turned a blind eye to the plot does NOT MEAN that Atta and his gang would necessarily be able to pull it off.

You said, "well why not just set off a bomb".. I think you misunderstood the THEORY that I was offering regarding the government "allowing it to happen".. Theory is that they knew AN ATTACK of some sort was going to happen, because Pakistan's ISI had gotten wind that something was being planned.. Indeed there is PLENTY OF EVIDENCE that other intelligence agencies had also gotten wind of it and warned the US ahead of time... That's not to say that the SPECIFICS of the attack were know, or even what kind of attack it would be. I already posted that I remember Osama Bin Laden saying (on that tape that was "found" in an abandoned house in Afghanistan) that he didn't know the details of when it would happen and that Allah had "blessed them" FAR BEYOND their expectations when the towers came down...

So , I don't think anyone is making the claim that the US governmet PLANNED THE ATTACK.. but rather they got wind that SOMETHING (undefined) was up and turned a blind eye to it.

In addition, you have the matter of the Pakistani General Ahmed, who was holding intense consultations with US Intelligence folks prior to 9/11... REMEMBER.. he PERSONALLY was linked to the attacks.. Its possible that he was feeding the US false information as well, regarding what the actual attack would be.

I get the feeling from your posts that you're simply laughing this entire exercise off, but I don't see where EITHER of the theories I have presented runs into any trouble.. at least SO FAR..

and I'll tell you what.. these theories are a HELL OF A LOT MORE believeable than the "official story" of unbelieveable screw ups, coincidences and outright negligence on the part of the government.. In addition, has there EVER BEEN ANY US GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE AT ANY LEVEL that has been given EVEN A MILD REPRIMAND (let alone their walking papers) for screwing up in any way at all, prior to 9/11.. If there have been any, I'm not aware of it..

so if we believe the "official" story, the FBI agents were blocked by people making "honest mistakes"... The military was in no position to respond to a rogue airliner, even OVER AN HOUR after the first tower was hit.. No one realized that the Pakistani ISI head (who played a role in the attacks!!!) had access to the highest levels of US intelligence just prior to 9/11... George W. Bush's own uncle was a senior executive at a bank that was implicated in the laundering of money to terrorists.. a bank with intimate ties to the CIA, yet no one could figure out what was going on... YET, at the end of the day.. no one was reprimanded for not doing their job...

My theories may sound incredible to you.. but the paragraph that I just wrote is far more incredible to me, than any of the two theories I have suggested in this thread.

Bman

04-13-2005, 01:11 AM

Bin Laden HIMSELF appears to have been "out of the loop" on much of the details of the attacks... Apparently, many of the hijackers didn't even know what was going to happen ( I believe it was reported that only 6 of the 19 seem to have known it was a suicide mission).... so its reasonable to assume that while General Ahmed knew something was going to happen, he didn't know the details of it either..

But for some reason, Ahmed was sending money to Mohammad Atta..

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/12/20/attack/main322092.shtml

Bin Laden Names Hijackers On Tape

Dec. 20, 2001

Bin Laden appeared calm and at times amused as he talked about the attacks on the hour-long tape dated Nov. 9 that the Bush administration said was found in Afghanistan.

(CBS) Osama bin Laden names some of the Sept. 11 hijackers and commends them to Allah, according to a more thorough translation by one of the experts hired by the government to review a videotape of the suspected terrorist.

A more leisurely review of the tape released by the government last week came up with "a whole bunch of names," translator George Michael said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. He would identify only three: Nawaq Alhamzi, Salem Alhamzi and Wail Alshehri.

Alshehri was on American Airlines flight 11, one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York; Alhamzi and Alhamzi were on American Airlines flight 77, which hit the Pentagon.

"You'll have to talk to the Pentagon about the rest," Michael said.

Michael, one of two translators hired by the government, says he handed the more detailed transcript to the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said Thursday night that she was unaware of a new translation, but added it was not surprising to find more information with a more in-depth study of the conversation, considering the poor quality of the sound on the tape.

White House officials did not immediately comment on the reports.

Despite an exhaustive search by U.S. and allied troops, bin Laden remains at large.

The latest intelligence reports indicate close associates of bin Laden believe he is still alive and on the move somewhere in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pentagon released the first transcript last week, offering a chilling glimpse of terrorist planning as bin Laden told his aides and clerics that the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations.

Bin Lden appeared calm and at times amused as he talked about the attacks on the hour-long tape dated Nov. 9 that the Bush administration said was found in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's voice was difficult to hear on the videotape, and government-hired translators at several points wrote "inaudible" when they didn't agree on an interpretation or when they couldn't make out the words.

The first government translation disclosed that bin Laden mentioned Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the terrorists.

In another videotape, Osama bin Laden declares "the battle has been moved inside America, and we shall continue until we win this battle, or die in the cause and meet our maker," according to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The International Herald Tribune reports this came during an "interview" in October with the al-Jazeera Gulf television network, but never aired because bin Laden ignores the reporter's questions and instead dictates both the questions and answers.

It was recorded earlier than the "home movie" the Bush administration has, probably October 20, and reportedly circulated among members of the al-Qaida.

According to Blair, bin Laden also says "the bad terror is what America and Israel are practicing against our people, and what we are practicing is the good terror that will stop them doing what they are doing."

"Not everybody knew (...inaudible...). Mohammad (Atta) from the Egyptian family (meaning the al-Qaida Egyptian group), was in charge of the group," bin Laden said on the tape, according to the government.

In the more thorough version, Michael said, bin Laden names several other hijackers and says: "may God accept their action," according to the English translation. Bin Laden used "Allah," the Arabic word for God.

References bin Laden made in the original transcription of the tape released last week already tied him to the attacks but naming and blessing several hijackers suggests an intimacy that would reinforce U.S. claims of his deep involvement in the planning.

The names only emerged now, Michael said, because the first translation was rushed in 12 hours, in a room in the Pentagon. It took four days to complete the fuller transcript in the comfort of his own office, Michael said.

"We did the first translation under a tight time frame," he said.

Michael, who is originally Lebanes, translated the tape with Kassem Wahba, an Egyptian. Both men had difficulties with the Saudi dialect bin Laden and his guest use in the tape, Michael said.

Attempts to reach Wahba were unsuccessful.

Some passages remain a mystery, Michael said: Bin Laden's Saudi guest names the person who smuggled him from Saudi Arabia into Afghanistan.

Michael and Wahba were unable to make out the name, and Michael said that if anyone was able to identify the name, it would be a Saudi.

Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi who listened to the tape, told the AP that the visitor attaches the words "jalad alhayaa" — a name for the Saudi religious police — to the smuggler's name.

Al-Ahmed, who directs a Washington think-tank, said the government has asked him for his own completed translation. Any connection between bin Laden and a Saudi official would probably embarrass the Saudi government.

In the first, rushed translation the Pentagon published last week, bin Laden tells his guest that 15 of the hijackers knew they were on a "martyrdom operation," but only learned of the details shortly before boarding their planes. Bin Laden also said the casualties were greater than his original estimates.

The guests discussing the Sept. 11 attacks with bin Laden have been variously identified as Sheik Ali bin Said al-Ghandi, a Saudi Arabian Islamic cleric known for anti-Western views and Khaled al-Harbi, a legless Saudi veteran of battles in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

Bman

04-13-2005, 01:32 AM

10 MORE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT MOHAMMAD ATTA

http://www.madcowprod.com/102204issue.htm

Atta was a wealthy, chain smoking, drug dealing psychopath who dressed like a mobster. And that's not even the good stuff.

Oct. 22, 2004--Venice,FL
by Grant Noah

1) Stains no detergent can touch

The Sunday Times (UK) February 3, 2002:

Atta and al-Shehhi were now paying $ 840 a month for an apartment in a condominium in Coral Springs. Al-Shehhi spent his days washing piles of laundry for the gang in the development's washing machines. Atta was often in the parking lot, chain smoking.

http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2002/sundaytimes020302.html

2) "'Running into buildings' for $1000 please Alex."

Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) October 27, 2001:

Wynn Errico, owner of Wynn Motor Co. in North Lauderdale, said three FBI agents came to his dealership several days after Sept. 11 to question him. Errico said Atta drove into his used car lot around 2 p.m. on the Friday before the attacks, saying he wanted to sell the Grand Am because he did not need it anymore. Three men in a white minivan accompanied him and waited for about 45 minutes while Errico and Atta went back and forth about a price, Errico said. He said Atta rejected his offer of $800 cash.

"He said, 'I'd rather run it into a building than sell it for $800,'" Errico said.

3) "You think I'm funny? You think I'm funny?"

The News-Press (Fort Myers, FL) September 13, 2001:

Flight instructor Bob Gaff, 50, didn't teach the terrorism suspects but recalled seeing them around. "You see how we're all dressed?" asked Gaff, who was clad in a T-shirt and jeans. "This one guy used to show up in leather shoes, shined shoes, dress slacks, silk shirts, all the time."

4) "We know some 'people.' So what?"

Chicago Tribune September 11, 2004:

In what appears to be a more noteworthy act of generosity to someone he barely knew, in 1995 Atta lent a Turkish baker, Muharrem Acar, some $25,000 to help Acar open a bakery. Acar told the BKA[German Intelligence] that Atta didn't even ask for a promissory note when he made the loan. “I don't know why El-Amir had so much money,” he said. “I did not want to know either…”

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/9639881.htm

5)"Petty drug crimes? Define 'petty.'"

New York Newsday January 24, 2002:

Mohamed Atta and two associates tried to get jobs with Lufthansa Airlines… on Feb. 15, 2001, according to "Netzwerke des Terrors (Networks of Terror)," a book published last month by Juergen Roth, one of Germany's top investigative reporters… Atta did not know that Lufthansa's personnel division had access to law enforcement files that indicated he had once been under investigation for petty drug crimes and falsifying phone cards while a student at the Technical University at Hamburg-Harburg in 1995, the book reports, citing federal law enforcement sources. Atta didn't get the job.

NY Newsday

Mail on Sunday (UK) September 23, 2001:

The FBI is attempting to unravel the minds of the terrorists. One of the key witnesses they will be using is a British woman who learned to fly alongside Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi at Huffman Aviation International Flight School in Venice, Florida. Anne Greaves, 56, an osteopath and former nurse… "I was told that Atta was a Prince from an Arab royal family and al-Shehhi was his bodyguard...I didn't think terrorist, I thought they were perhaps learning to fly to run drugs... There were so many tell-tale signs…"...

"These guys were different," said a top FBI man on the Florida section of the manhunt. "They lived the good life... then blew it up in our face."

Mail on Sunday

The Daily Telegraph (London) September 25, 2001:

"There was no pleasure, no enthusiasm. I thought there was an ulterior motive, maybe drug smuggling, although I never even considered terrorism." [said] Mrs Greaves, 56, a retired nurse from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, is helping the FBI to put together a psychological profile of the attackers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/25/nfly25.xml

The Guardian (London) July 5, 2002:

Ann Greaves… watched the TV pictures of the smoking building and said to her husband: "My God, I hope this has nothing to do with those two Arabs at Huffman Aviation!" A feisty grandmother, Greaves had just fulfilled a lifelong ambition by learning to fly at the training school in Florida... As she spoke, a second plane smashed into the south tower… Greaves had been suspicious of Atta and his friend from the moment she met them… "I couldn't help but be suspicious as to why he was there," says Greaves... She decided at the time that Atta was probably a drug runner. Her suspicions were not shared by the male staff at Huffman. "We had no obligations to do a background check on them," says Rudi Dekkers, the Dutch owner of the flying school... but did not question further.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,749722,00.html

Birmingham Post (UK), September 25, 2001:

Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi… strange behaviour aroused Mrs Greaves' suspicions, and she thought they may have been involved in drug smuggling. .. Mrs Greaves said the men seemed to enjoy preferential treatment at the flying school... 'There always seemed to be a problem. They would often overrun their lessons, and never offer any explanations or apologise. 'I was really a little bit jealous in that they were always given preference. 'I was told by my instructor that he, Atta, was an Arab prince and his companion was his bodyguard... Instead Mrs Greaves had deep suspicions about the pair. 'There was something wrong about them and I didn't think their motives were honest…

Birmingham Post

The Guardian (London), July 22, 2004:

Sibel Edmonds… has been quoted as saying: "My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included (terrorist) money laundering, detailed and date-specific information... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country (the US)... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up".

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0722-07.htm

Village Voice, June 1, 2004:

Sibel Edmonds… said, however, that "there are a lot of activities in the U.S. A lot of money... and these activities involve money laundering, drugs, a support network for terrorism... people in high places... [people] in the political arena."

http://www.911truth.org/readingroom/whole_document.php?article_id=116

7) Coming Outta Atta's Family Closet

Orlando Sentinel September 23, 2001:

Mohamed Atta, 33, the suspected ringleader and a pilot in the first suicide attack on the World Trade Center, may have had relatives or associates living in Central and South Florida for years. Among the possible relatives sought by federal investigators is Majed Atta, a former Winter Garden and Miami-area grocer who abruptly left the Orlando area last month and whose whereabouts are unknown. Local law-enforcement authorities are also still on the lookout for Mohamed Atta's car, a red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix two-door coupe reportedly spotted in downtown Orlando on Sept. 15. The Florida tag number is D79DDV…

Federal agents are investigating the possibility that suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta also had family ties in Central Florida. A South Florida federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Broward County court officials seeking records involving several people named Atta. They include Majed Atta, the former Winter Garden grocer.

Until the middle of this year, Majed Atta ran the Rainbow Grocery on Plant Street in Winter Garden. On Aug. 1, he and his family packed their belongings into a U-Haul and left their rental home near Lake Apopka. Majed Atta's former landlady said they moved just one week after Atta said he planned to buy the home from her and open a new grocery store in the Orlando area.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/620561/posts

Majed & Mahmoud Atta lived and worked just 2 miles down the road from Khalil bin Laden in Winter Garden, FL. Khalil’s home address in Winter Garden can be found on the FBI’s 9/11 suspect list under the name Geny Castanheira from Brazil (17920 W. Colonial Dr.). Khalil happens to be the Saudi ambassador to Brazil... and a known terrorist.

Associated Press June 11, 2004:

[A] seizure of $27,000 by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department during a traffic stop [occurred] in March [2004]… The vehicle was occupied by Palestinian immigrants Atiya Saleh and Shareef Quattom and Jordanian immigrant Majed Atta, all of New Orleans, who claimed the money originated from a business transaction… Lincoln County Sheriff Wiley Calcote questioned that account. "The only document they had was that they had sold one store and were buying another store, but there was nothing tying the money to that transaction, and they gave conflicting information about the amount and origin of the money," Calcote said.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/8900481.htm

Times-Picayune June 02, 2004

They were held for seven hours during which they were subjected to a strip search, drug-sniffing dogs and interrogation by local and federal officials... Capt. Dustin Bairfield, the deputy in charge of the investigation, said... even if the feds pass on the case, he said, local officials still might convene a grand jury and seek a state indictment for money laundering... Atta, who is now selling groceries on Congress Street in New Orleans... moved to the United States at 16 and attended college in Hattiesburg. His fond memories of the years he spent in Mississippi brought him back to the state in 2001, when he and his family decided to leave Florida, their home for 10 years... His last name -- which is the same as that of alleged terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta -- attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation... since they both had ties to Orlando… Atta is a U.S. citizen.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1086159411327130.xml

Times-Picayune June 4, 2004 Friday

Sheriff’s officials are skeptical and say they want to make sure the three New Orleans men weren’t on a money-laundering trip that took them through Mississippi…

Times-Picayune

8) Casablanca 9.11

9/11 Commission Report Notes:

Atta's cell phone was used on January 2 [2001] to call the Moroccan embassy in Washington, D.C…

9/11 Report Notes

This may not come as a surprise to our regular readers, as we recently published a story with the headline ‘Terror Suspect Tied to Moroccan Military Attaché’. However, the connections of the Moroccan embassy in Washington D.C. to the 9/11 plot run deep. The above information buried in the notes of the 9/11 Commission’s report confirms that fact. At least the Commission did not succeed in its goal of a complete 'whitewash', though nothing more is mentioned regarding Atta's contacts with the Moroccan embassy.

For those who did not catch the story (or click on the link and read the first few paragraphs) here is the basics. It starts in tiny Punta Gorda, Florida, a town literally founded by the CIA. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch put it, "Founded in 1958 by two former CIA colleagues, publicly held Punta Gorda had been one of Florida's largest landholders".

Palm Beach Post, September 24, 2001:

The FBI , Professional Aviation Flight Training University in Punta Gorda, after tipsters said they saw Atta there late last year or early this year.

Palm Beach Post

The Hamouda family owns Professional Aviation and several other facilities at the Charlotte County Airport near Punta Gorda. Though the Hamouda’s connection to 9/11 does not end there:

The Hamouda’s also housed Mohammed Arara, who is listed on multiple FBI 9/11 Suspect Lists. One of the more detailed FBI lists contains a handful of addresses for Arara, three of which are owned by the Hamoudas (This ‘unique’ family plays a leading role in ‘Welcome to Terrorland’).

Additionally, Arara is an FAA-certified commercial pilot. This could explain why the FBI's addresses for Arara border upon airports in Punta Gorda, Sarasota and Lake Worth, FL. While in the U.S., Atta only trained at four airports: in Venice, and of course, Punta Gorda, Sarasota and Lake Worth. And when Atta lived in Coral Springs, FL, Arara was using a mailing address only 2000 feet away from Atta's apartment.

So then, who is Mohammed Arara? This 9/11 suspect is also a relative and business partner of the Military Attaché for the Moroccan Embassy in D.C., Colonel Ahmed Arara.

Perhaps this is why Atta would be calling the Moroccan Embassy in Washington... perhaps. And perhaps connections with wanted 9/11 terrorists has something to do with this federal court case involving the ever-present Hamoudas and John Ashcroft:

US District Court (Fort Myers)

Hamouda, et al v. Ashcroft, et al -- FILING DATE: 4/18/2003; DOCKET CASE NUMBER: 2:03cv179

PLAINTIFF: Hamouda, Sonia; Hamouda, Louis; Hamouda, Gilles; Hamouda, Fabrice; Hamouda, Danielle

DEFENDANT: INS; Department of Homeland Security; Ashcroft, John, Attorney General of the United States, et al.

Case Type: Writ of Mandamus (To compel an official to do something within their power; used when no other specific remedy exists for Plaintiff)

9) Camp 'Cruisin' for a Bruising'

The New Yorker September 16, 2002:

On August 20th [1998], President Clinton ordered an attack on bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan… American warships in the region fired seventy-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan … the attack failed to hit its main targets - bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the other Al Qaeda leaders… The strike also missed Mohamed Atta, the alleged leader of the September 11th attacks, who was reportedly training in one of the camps.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020916fa_fact2i

10) 'Our Man Atta'

The Observer (UK) September 30, 2001:

Atta was not unknown to the authorities. Indeed he was under surveillance between January and May last year after he was reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and for biological warfare… The disclosure that Atta was being trailed by police long before 11 September raises the question why the attacks could not have been prevented with the men’s' arrest.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,560733,00.html

The Financial Times November 23 2001:

Mohammed Atta, one of the alleged ringleaders of the September 11 terrorist assaults, had been monitored by the Egyptian secret service before the attacks took place, according to a German investigative television report aired on Friday… The evidence, presented on the highly regarded ARD public television channel, reinforces concerns that the international intelligence community may have known more about Atta before September 11 than was previously thought, but had failed to act… The FBI is also believed to have monitored Atta for several months in 2000, when he was frequently in Frankfurt and had allegedly bought large quantities of chemicals, possibly to make explosives… The Atta family in Cairo had been monitored on several occasions over an unspecified period, the programme said.

Financial Times Internet Archive

Dallas Star-Telegram, June 7, 2002:

A secretive U.S. eavesdropping agency monitored telephone conversations before Sept. 11 between the suspected commander of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and the alleged chief hijacker... U.S. officials said... the conversations between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta were intercepted by the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency that monitors and decodes foreign communications... The House and Senate intelligence committee... investigators are aware of the intercepts of the conversations between Mohammed and Atta...

The official said... NSA analysts apparently did not recognize the significance of what they had.

Dallas Star-Telegram

Miami Herald, June 6,2002:

Another intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was "simply not true" that the NSA monitored the conversations and failed to share the information with other intelligence agencies [meaning they shared the info]... NSA analysts apparently did not recognize the significance of what they had...

The senior intelligence official said that when the NSA monitored their conversations, Mohammed was overseas and Atta was in the United States. [KS] Mohammed was... indicted on charges of being involved in a failed 1995 plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners flying over the Pacific Ocean on a single day... U.S. officials have concluded that Mohammed had overall command of the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks... U.S. investigators believe Mohammed might have met several times in Germany in 1999 with Atta or members of Atta's al-Qaida cell.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/3416632.htm

Sunday Herald November 2, 2003:

A French intelligence agency noted “according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and suspected terror cells lived in… Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity to the Israeli spy cells”. The report contended that Mossad agents were spying on Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi, two of leaders of the 9/11 hijack teams. Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would never know the truth, saying: “If we found evidence of unauthorised intelligence operations that would be classified material.”

http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707

BBC October 2, 2002:

German newspaper Die Zeit… uncovered details of a major Israeli spy ring involving some a 120 agents for the intelligence service Mossad operating across America and some masquerading as arts students. The ring was reportedly hard on the heels of at least four members of the hijack gang, including its leader Mohammed Atta. But the Israeli agents were detected by their American counterparts and thrown out of the country, it says. Just a month before the deadly attacks, the paper said, Mossad handed over to the Americans a detailed report naming several suspects they believe were preparing an attack on the United States.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2294487.stm

DC Penguin

04-13-2005, 02:14 AM

My theories may sound incredible to you.. but the paragraph that I just wrote is far more incredible to me, than any of the two theories I have suggested in this thread.

To be honest, you are digging up the facts that you have available, assembling them pretty well, and coming up with good reasons for your arguments. I'm impressed with your analytical approach.

I'm not trying to ridicule you or call your points incredible, but I am trying to get you to open your mind a bit further in your speculation. You have decided that something was an intentional conspiracy, and that is the foundation of your speculation. I'd ask that you also consider the possibility that there was NOT such a conspiracy, and that good reasons existed for what transpired. Put that bias into your head and see where it takes you. You'll come up with a different set of plausible theories.

I'm just asking you to consider all the angles. I'm not debating you.

Bman

04-13-2005, 08:54 AM

To be honest, you are digging up the facts that you have available, assembling them pretty well, and coming up with good reasons for your arguments. I'm impressed with your analytical approach.

I'm not trying to ridicule you or call your points incredible, but I am trying to get you to open your mind a bit further in your speculation. You have decided that something was an intentional conspiracy, and that is the foundation of your speculation. I'd ask that you also consider the possibility that there was NOT such a conspiracy, and that good reasons existed for what transpired. Put that bias into your head and see where it takes you. You'll come up with a different set of plausible theories.

I'm just asking you to consider all the angles. I'm not debating you.

well, I'll try doing what you suggested, but its difficult to think of "good reasons" why FBI agents were thwarted in their pre-9/11 investigations of funding of terrorists... Investigations that likely would have lead them to Mohammad Atta..

Its difficult to come up with "good reasons", why Pakistan's General Ahmad was linked DIRECTLY to the funding of Atta, yet he's never been extradited to the US for trial.. In fact, that information was COMPLETELY IGNORED by the 9/11 Commission.. While its difficult to come up with GOOD REASONS, its VERY EASY TO COME UP WITH "NOT SO GOOD" reasons..

Bob Graham and Porter Goss.. who HEADED UP THE 9/11 Commission, WERE MEETING WITH THIS SAME GENERAL AHMAD on September 11, 2001... as the planes smashed into the towers..

Did they forget to include that information in the 911 report, or did they INTENTIONALLY leave it out...I'll let you decide

Bman

Bman

04-13-2005, 10:43 AM

author Dennis Hopsicker, whose investigation into Atta's life in Florida prior to 9/11 resulted in the book, "WELCOME TO TERRORLAND" made some revealing statements in an interview

excerpt from

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0405/S00110.htm

In his December 29, 2003 interview on PowerHour, Hopsicker is quite explicit: “I discovered that we were dealing with flight school owners who are CIA assets. … Mohamed Atta was in this country as a result of a program being run through the Central Intelligence Agency.” He is so confident of his evidence that he wants his day in court. “Sue me,” Hopsicker said on radio, “if this is incorrect information.” On the same broadcast, the journalist told listeners what he thought were the broad strategic considerations: “Somebody in the U.S. government was trading with Osama bin Laden and the deal, almost, very likely, was oil and heroin for guns and training. Either the CIA was secretly trading with Osama bin Laden or people who were able to manipulate the CIA were trading with Osama bin Laden. And his people, the representatives of his drug-trafficking Islamic organization, turned around and double-crossed us.”

Hopsicker doesn’t speculate much about this double cross possibility in his book, although he does go into Atta’s early work for a US government program in Hamburg. On a trip back to Egypt during this period, Atta made unconvincing indications that he had gone through an Islamic conversion. Hopsicker’s unnamed source places Atta at Maxwell Air Force Base’s International Officer’s Training School, and the author covers the significant leaks made by individuals in the military regarding these connections. The Air Force’s partial denial that covered all of the purported hijackers explicitly did not rule out Atta’s attendance at Maxwell. If, after so much effort went into training the hijackers, the CIA or DIA or the Secret Team as Fletcher Prouty identifies it, was double crossed, then this is the main point – once again the people who are so intent on spying, for example, intent on having assets as pilots on Arabic airlines, do more harm than good.

Spectre

04-13-2005, 11:06 AM

Damn B, I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to pay attention to this thread. You've been doing a fantastic job with it though man. Pretty compelling stuff. I really wish there was some investigative group out there that would take up the cause and search for answers to some of these questions.

Bman

04-13-2005, 12:16 PM

DC Penguin

04-13-2005, 12:59 PM

well, I'll try doing what you suggested, but its difficult to think of "good reasons" why FBI agents were thwarted in their pre-9/11 investigations of funding of terrorists... Investigations that likely would have lead them to Mohammad Atta..

Its difficult to come up with "good reasons", why Pakistan's General Ahmad was linked DIRECTLY to the funding of Atta, yet he's never been extradited to the US for trial.. In fact, that information was COMPLETELY IGNORED by the 9/11 Commission.. While its difficult to come up with GOOD REASONS, its VERY EASY TO COME UP WITH "NOT SO GOOD" reasons..

Bob Graham and Porter Goss.. who HEADED UP THE 9/11 Commission, WERE MEETING WITH THIS SAME GENERAL AHMAD on September 11, 2001... as the planes smashed into the towers..

Did they forget to include that information in the 911 report, or did they INTENTIONALLY leave it out...I'll let you decide

Bman

I say this with respect, and not to criticize, but you are able to understand some possible reasons. Give it some thought. Your reply above is somewhat defensive and certainly biased. Don't lose sight of the big picture . . . there are other possibilities outside the worst possible.

You asked me to critique your findings and analysis. I'm just pointing out that you're on one path of many possible, and you may be losing sight of some of the possibilities as a result. I remain impressed with your analysis and thought processes.

Spectre

04-13-2005, 02:21 PM

I say this with respect, and not to criticize, but you are able to understand some possible reasons. Give it some thought. Your reply above is somewhat defensive and certainly biased. Don't lose sight of the big picture . . . there are other possibilities outside the worst possible.

You asked me to critique your findings and analysis. I'm just pointing out that you're on one path of many possible, and you may be losing sight of some of the possibilities as a result. I remain impressed with your analysis and thought processes.

The problem is, somebody has to ask the worst possible questions. Shit, nobody is asking ANY questions. If Bman is wrong, then well whoop-de-doo, he'll be proven wrong and he and I will both sleep better at night. If we're not...well you get the idea. It's quite easy to hope for the best. Anyone can do that.

Sardonic

04-15-2005, 06:04 PM

DC Penguin

04-15-2005, 10:20 PM

The problem is, somebody has to ask the worst possible questions. Shit, nobody is asking ANY questions. If Bman is wrong, then well whoop-de-doo, he'll be proven wrong and he and I will both sleep better at night. If we're not...well you get the idea. It's quite easy to hope for the best. Anyone can do that.

I wouldn't have it any other way. He should ask questions. I'm just making sure he keeps his mind open to all the issues. He and I have discussed some of this, and he understands the point. I'm hoping he comes out with a good theory.

Bman

04-16-2005, 09:07 PM

We'll know that you were right when you turn up dead one morning.

Sorry if that sounds sardonic, but we'll avenge you. Don't worry.

Kinda like a martyr. We'll capitalize off your death to tear the federal government down, but then decend into anarchy when we can't agree on the color of the new and improved W-4 forms.

Let me tell you something.. FOR THE RECORD , if I ever show up TWO gunshot wounds to the head, like the journalist mentioned in this thread, I'm TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW.. FOR THE RECORD , IT WAS NOT suicide... Write that down

BTW, I find the idea that someone could shoot himself in the head twice with a .32 or .38 (can't remember which it was) pretty difficult to believe.. yet, that is the official cause of death for the journalist who wrote the articles linking the CIA to the drug trade (see article earlier in this thread)...

Man, that seems like a tough way to go.

Bman

Bman

04-20-2005, 12:09 AM

an excellent video presentation on the role of the Pakistani ISI (and CIA perhaps) in 9/11

This is MUST see, but it takes about 30 mins or so

http://www.911busters.com/video/IQ1_16_PAUL_THOMPSON_PAKISTAN_26.48_.html

Bman

04-25-2005, 01:02 PM

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks it was reported on numerous occassions that 3 of the hijackers had graduated from the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio.

After Sept. 19th, 2001.. I never saw these reports again in the mainstream media... nor were they ever officially refuted (that I know of)

First, from the Washington Post, Sept 16, 2001:

As the investigation gathered strength yesterday, unusual leads began to surface, among them the possibility that some of the hijackers may have received training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida or other U.S. military facilities.

Two of 19 suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals listed in public records as using the same address inside the base.

In addition, a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, while men with the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.

"Some of the FBI suspects had names similar to those used by foreign alumni of U.S. military courses," the Air Force acknowledged in a statement. "However, discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people."

From the San Antonio Express News

Sept. 16, 2001

There are other possible connections to San Antonio.

The names of two of the suspected hijackers - Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi - show up on local records with San Antonio addresses.

No one answered at Saeed Alghamdi's home on the Southwest Side, but one neighbor said he thought he had seen Alghamdi and his family Friday.

Pentagon sources have confirmed a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland AFB in San Antonio.

A woman at Ahmed Alghamdi's home on the North Side said her husband had not lived in the United States "for a long time."

The two names also appear on a list at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola, Fla.

Two men with the same names as two other suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell AFB, Ala., and the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, respectively, according to the Washington Post.

The name Mohamed Atta also appears on a check of San Antonio records, showing someone with that name living at base housing at Lackland AFB.

Reports that some of the hijackers may have learned to fly commercial jets in the United States prompted Hameed Afzal, who operates a flight school at San Antonio International Airport, to call the FBI and turn over his flight school records to the agency.

Afzal said late Friday that a couple of names he saw on a published list of suspects were familiar to him, but stressed that he didn't know for sure that any of the kamikaze pilots had been trained at his small school.

"I won't know until I see their photographs," Afzal said.

Afzal, a Pakistani native who immigrated to the United States in 1980, and his wife, Alyce, own Alpha Tango Flying Service.

The couple said their school has trained scores of foreign nationals to fly private and commercial aircraft in the past 20 years.

Bman

05-11-2005, 09:01 AM

Good commentary in The Guardian

The war on paperclips

I worry that I'm turning into a conspiracy theorist

AL Kennedy
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

OK, I'm paranoid and depressed. My new government of troglodytes, murderers and spivs barely elongates the customary scream I give upon waking. What troubles me more is our rulers' inevitable recommencement of the war on terror bollocks.

To begin at what we're told is the beginning, we have 9/11 - the one in the US, not the earlier one in Chile when covert US government intervention killed thousands of innocents and handed the country to a commerce-friendly, torture-loving, far-right junta. Now if 9/11/2001 is so important, why is it so hard to find out what happened?

The FBI, as we know, blocked all manner of investigations into the plot in the run up to its execution, whether these involved highly specific warnings from its own agents or from government sources in Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, the Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco and Russia.

Meanwhile, I worry why the nearest military aircraft weren't scrambled to intercept any of the hijacked flights when this is standard procedure and why, when more distant jets were finally aloft, they flew at less than half speed, thus failing to prevent the impacts at the twin towers and then, it would seem, managing to shoot down Flight 93 when its passengers may already have overcome its hijackers.

It would, of course, be easier to know what happened to Flight 93 if there weren't - according to educated estimates - three minutes of the cockpit recording missing. It would, equally, be handy to have access to the black boxes from the other crashes. Firefighters at Ground Zero have repeatedly stated that three of the four possible black boxes there were found and taken away by government agents.

And these worries are maybe less important than the ones about clear links between the Pakistani ISI, the CIA and the men named as the 9/11 hijackers. Or the mysterious inability of anyone to capture Osama bin Laden, who fled from Tora Bora, possibly being evacuated by helicopter, and then escaped to Pakistan unhindered.

So while Chinese paperclips are now made out of vital 9/11 evidence and almost every implicated party goes free, we and our controlling US interests continue fearlessly to terrorise countries unconnected with the attacks, to place permanent military bases near oil reserves and pipeline routes, to harass and murder Muslims anywhere we can, and to foment terrorist resistance at every opportunity. The UK unmasks non-existent ricin plots and threatens us with ID cards, but we can't supply our troops in Iraq with working radios or a legal causus belli.

But you'd never want to think that on 9/11/2001 covert US government intervention killed thousands of innocents and handed the country, if not the world, to a commerce-friendly, torture-loving, far-right junta. That would make you a paranoid, depressed conspiracy theorist. And, take it from me, that just wouldn't be comfortable.

comment@guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1480940,00.html

stewey

05-11-2005, 03:55 PM

I doubt it, unless the CIA did it without the terrorists knowing it.

As someone before me said, look at all possible explanations... It usually is the most plausable.

Dora

05-11-2005, 05:18 PM

"THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!"

I'm sorry - but really, bman. :D

Bman

05-11-2005, 09:12 PM

"THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!"

I'm sorry - but really, bman. :D

what? why is that so implausible??

Bman

Bman

05-11-2005, 10:20 PM

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24502

Friday, September 14, 2001

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAY OF INFAMY 2001

Pistol-shooting parties
at terrorist safe-house
Neighbors of alleged hijackers suspected drug-dealing, called police; Iranian homeowner's ex-wife from Canada

----------------------------------------------------------------------

By Paul Sperry

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

VIENNA, Va. -- Residents of Orrin Street in this leafy Washington suburb have hung American flags from their porches and even lined their lawns with little flags in honor of the thousands of Americans killed Tuesday by Islamic terrorists. Little did they know that one of their neighbors may have been one of the killers.

Federal authorities suspect Waleed M. Alshehri was one of the kamikaze pilots who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which ripped into the north tower of the World Trade Center like a guided missile.

Authorities say Alshehri, 25, may have lived for a time, possibly as recently as 14 months ago, in Vienna, at 502 Orrin St., as well as in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, authorities say. Another suspected hijacker, Ahmed Alghamdi – who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the other flight out of Boston that was the second to hit the World Trade Center – lived at the same Vienna address, according to the FBI.

Neighbors on the otherwise quiet street told WorldNetDaily that the five-or-six bedroom rental house where Alshehri – a Saudi citizen and son of a wealthy diplomat – stayed had numerous tenants, who parked their luxury cars on the street and often had loud parties, upsetting neighbors.

During one party several years ago, a woman ran outside the house and shot a pistol into the air several times, recalls a next-door neighbor.

"A woman came out shooting a gun after getting in a spat with someone," said Mary Ann Neupert, who has lived at 500 Orrin St. for 37 years. "She was shooting in the air."

Neupert, 77, and her husband, Stanley E. Neupert, 79, say two FBI agents, a man and a woman, interviewed them yesterday about activities at the house, which property-tax records show is owned by Hamid Keshavarznia, an Iranian native and U.S. citizen who lives in Reston, Va. His ex-wife is from Canada, WorldNetDaily has learned.

His brother, Saeed Keshavarznia, is currently living at the Vienna house, WorldNetDaily also has found. He's listed as a co-owner.

"We thought it was a drug house," said another neighbor, who wished to have her name withheld. "All the cars parked on the street were new BMWs, new Mercedes. People were always walking around out front with cellphones."

She said as many as eight people, mostly "Arab-looking" men, lived in the house at one time. And so many cars were parked out front on the street that neighbors complained to the local police. She says that she noticed most of the cars had out-of-state tags.

"The gentleman who owns the place rents out rooms quite often," said Capt. John Cheyne of the Vienna Police Department. "We did have parking complaints, noise complaints, stuff along those lines."

"Over the years, there have been questions about how many people the owner actually has living there, but those are zoning issues, not police issues," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily. "And that's what has led to the complaints about the cars."

Fed up with the parking problem, and suspicious of activities at the house, the neighbor across the street at 503 Orrin St., John E. Albritton, called federal authorities, according to his wife. She says they observed a van parked outside the home at all hours of the day and night. A Middle-Eastern man appeared to be monitoring a scanner or radio inside the van, she says.

Another neighbor says residents have called the FBI within the last two years to complain about the house.

"The inside is real chopped up," she said, explaining that the relatively small, old house has far more bedrooms than it was designed to have.

Indeed, real estate listings obtained by WorldNetDaily through the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems database show that the house, which was built in 1956 as a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom rambler, now has five bedrooms and four bathrooms -- as well as two kitchens.

"Those bedrooms are cubicles," said a local realtor.

Neupert said the owners were in the process of adding yet another room off the living room of the house "about five or six months ago."

"This area is supposed to be single-family houses," his wife said. "In other words, the house shouldn't have been divided up like that."

She says she found it somewhat suspicious that tenants seldom entered the house through the front door, but "went from the street straight to the gate and entered the house from the backyard."

Her husband notes that, a few years ago, the owners or the tenants erected a satellite dish on the roof.

Federal authorities suspect that the home may have been used as a safe-house for terrorists.

Vienna does not have a big Arab population and, as far as local authorities know, has not been a haven for terrorist cells, Cheyne said.

Fairfax County tax records show that Habid Keshavarznia bought the Vienna house with France C.A. Carriere and Saeed Keshavarznia in 1993. Though appraised at $196,705, comparable homes in the neighborhood have recently sold for as much as $265,000.

Interestingly, there is no rental listing for the home, meaning the owners were able to rent it to apparently scores of tenants on their own, either by advertising or by word of mouth.

According to the realty listings database, Habid Keshavarznia put the home on the market on July 22, 1996. The listing expired Jan. 19, 1997.

He listed it for sale again on May 3, 1998, for $209,000.

The listing agent remarked: "TENANTS RARELY HOME."

In July 1998, Keshavarznia listed the home with a different broker. He asked $220,000, before reducing the price to $209,900. He withdrew the listing on Oct. 14, 1998.

A realtor's lockbox sits on the railing leading up to the side door of the house.

The garage of the rather rundown home, which is not cordoned off with police tape, houses two cars shrouded with protective covering. A third car beside the garage also is covered.

Near the garage stands a wooden crate and rubber trash can brimming with auto parts, including manifolds and whole engines blocks. A tire rests on the chain-link fence.

Vienna is also where former FBI agent and convicted Moscow spy Robert Hanssen called home. And a former National Security Council adviser to President Clinton, who breached security by loading Top Secret data from a White House "SCIF" computer to her unsecured computer, also lives in Vienna.

Bman

05-11-2005, 10:25 PM

now.. in light of that last article I just posted, read this

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/foxnews060602.html

Fox Special Report With Brit Hume (18:00)

by Brit Hume, Carl Cameron, Jim Angle, Brian Wilson, and Molly Henneberg
Fox News

June 6, 2002

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BRIT HUME, HOST: Welcome to Washington. I'm Brit Hume.

Hearings continued on Capitol Hill today about who knew what and when about the September 11th attacks, but in the meantime more reports are surfacing about missed leads by the CIA in the days leading up to 9/11, including clues on two of the hijackers. Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More than a year before the attacks, the CIA was tipped off about this house in Vienna, Virginia. A neighbor reported suspicious Middle Eastern men coming and going 24 hours a day. Two days after the actual attack, it was learned that hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi and Waleed Alshehri, who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, had lived there.

That's when Diane Albritton first went public with the fact that she had alerted the CIA months earlier about the house and its occupants.

DIANE ALBRITTON, NEIGHBOR: Just by my observations, I knew it was a rental house and people would come and go, but this was kind of beyond that. People would come at night, rental cars from out of state, constant turnover.

CAMERON: The house where the two hijackers lived is just three blocks from a CIA facility and just a few miles from the nation's capital. But Albritton said her call got little response.

ALBRITTON: I had seen what I thought was enough that maybe somebody else would be interested. Not. I did not have enough information to entice anybody to come forward.

CAMERON: For the CIA, it may be yet another example of information that critics say could have made a difference had it been handled differently. Standard procedures require CIA to notify FBI of such domestic information. But after several hours of checking, FBI officials told Fox News that they had not been able to find any record that CIA had shared information about it.

stewey

05-12-2005, 05:37 PM

If the feds had done something about the "Middle Eastern men acting suspicious" the ACLU and others would have shit themselves.

Bman

05-12-2005, 10:44 PM

If the feds had done something about the "Middle Eastern men acting suspicious" the ACLU and others would have shit themselves.

Yeah.. so what?

You seem to think that FEAR of the ACLU is an excuse for the government to shirk its duties

I don't get you guys sometimes

These guys were protected... its not because the CIA feared the ACLU.. .LOL... get real

Bman

stewey

05-13-2005, 03:40 PM

Yeah.. so what?

You seem to think that FEAR of the ACLU is an excuse for the government to shirk its duties

I don't get you guys sometimes

These guys were protected... its not because the CIA feared the ACLU.. .LOL... get real

Bman

Well, before 9/11, there was no "reason" to suspect middle eastern men, for most people. I agree the CIA could have (and now should have done something), but imagine if it turned out they had been innocent people. The backlash would've been phenominal. It is the same reason people complain about the Guantanamo Bay situation. The people there are the same that hide in ambulances and shoot US soliders from the back of them, but yet people feel they should be given the same rights as Geneva Convention.

The three greatest arguments against 9/11 conspiracies is:

1. Al Queda admitted to it.
2. Khalid Shekih Muhammed admitted to it before his capture in an Al Jazeera interview. Ramzi Yousef also was known to have plans to take down the WTC.
3. DNA found of plane passengers

So unless you are arguing the CIA and Al Queda are one in the same (which I highly doubt, considering the "al queda in iraq" situation and other evidence that suggests otherwise), I don't see merit to your claims. I mean good luck convincing people to kill themselves willingly to further your CIA cause.

Bman

05-15-2005, 10:46 AM

Well, before 9/11, there was no "reason" to suspect middle eastern men, for most people. I agree the CIA could have (and now should have done something), but imagine if it turned out they had been innocent people. The backlash would've been phenominal. It is the same reason people complain about the Guantanamo Bay situation. The people there are the same that hide in ambulances and shoot US soliders from the back of them, but yet people feel they should be given the same rights as Geneva Convention.

The three greatest arguments against 9/11 conspiracies is:

1. Al Queda admitted to it.
2. Khalid Shekih Muhammed admitted to it before his capture in an Al Jazeera interview. Ramzi Yousef also was known to have plans to take down the WTC.
3. DNA found of plane passengers

So unless you are arguing the CIA and Al Queda are one in the same (which I highly doubt, considering the "al queda in iraq" situation and other evidence that suggests otherwise), I don't see merit to your claims. I mean good luck convincing people to kill themselves willingly to further your CIA cause.

I'm not making the claim that Al Qaeda didn't committ the acts.... Here's a repost from earlier in the thread

----------- REPOST ---------------------------

seems to me that there are two likely scenario that are "best fit" to the information that I have, which admittedly, is very limited.. I rely on reports that I can access on the internet.. with no first hand information...

On the one hand it seems that there was not only a negligent "neglect" on the part of the FBI and CIA prior to the 9/11 attack, but also an INTENTIONAL pattern of stonewalling investigations of terrorist threats... these seem to indicate intervention at high levels of the government. The big question is "WHY"??

One could surmise that perhaps the neocons, through their contacts with the Pakistani ISI (Dick Armitage was extremely close to the Paki Intelligence services) may have known that some was about to happen. Its reasonable to conclude that there were people in the Paki ISI that knew a terrorist attack on the US was in the works... There were some very CURIOUS high level meetings between the head of Paki Intelligence and George Tenet, Porter Goss, and (allegedly, though its not proven) Condi Rice in the weeks and DAYS prior to 9/11.. IN fact, as 9/11 was actually happening, General Ahmed (the head of Paki ISI) was meeting with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, who are were key intelligence chairmen in the Congress.

Now what is extremely troubling is that General Ahmed was forced to RESIGN his position with the Paki ISI about a month after 9/11, after INDIAN INTELLIGENCE apparently provided the Americans with PROOF that General Ahmed was linked to Mohammad Atta... SPECIFICALLY, he ordered a man named Omar Sheik to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta just before the attacks (a month or two, I think).. (Sheik was later convicted of playing a hand in the murder of Daniel Pearle... The US has never asked to put him on trial and to my knowledge he's still in Pakistan... though I'm not sure what his legal status is.. I'll look into it).

One theory might be that the neocons knew Osama was going to attack the US, but they didn't know exactly when or how. IN fact, I don't even think Osama himself knew when it would be.. exactly... One could surmise that the neocons were willing to let something shocking happen, to justify their military intervention in the Middle East.. (One could surmise that this is why there were in close consultation with Ahmed prior to 9/11... because he would have had an ear to alot of what was going on... but they (the neos) might not have realized that Ahmed himself was as close to Al Qaeda as we know now.) We know they were already planning it prior to 9/11.. There are PNAC documents that specifically say that the wars they were planning would be difficult to launch , unless there were a "Pearl Harbor" type event... I believe one document even says something like, "such as a plane flying into a building"...

One could theorize that what happened at the WTC was way beyond anyone's expectations.. Indeed Osama himself seemed to be surprised (pleasantly) that the towers actually CAME down

Its difficult to believe this theory, simpy because it requires one to accept that people in the government were so evil as to allow (and indeed, hope for) a terrorist attack in order to coerce the public into accepting a war.

A second theory (WHICH IS THE ONE WE STARTED TO EXPLORE HERE), is that the CIA was working with Pakistani ISI to support drug activities for the purpose of securing money to fund some other (unknown to me) black operations. What I'm hoping I have shown here is that this sort of thing has happened in the past and may be something that is ROUTINE. Is it not possible that Atta and his men were drug runners that were engaged in this EXACT activity?? Could it be, however, that they PULLED ONE OVER on the US CIA.. that with the help of General Ahmed (who was providing key information.. or disinformation... to US intelligence folks) they actually allied themselves with Al Qaeda to pull off the trade center attacks. The US authorities might have known about Atta, etc.. but perhaps they simply thought that they were running heroin... as perhaps they had been doing for some time... But somewhere along the line, Atta and his gang "found Atta" and started working for Bin Laden.. and planning an attack... They knew they had "free reign" in the US because they had cover..

This second theory isn't as "sinister" as the first one because it implies that the neocons didn't KNOW there was going to be an attack, but rather... they were duped by Paki ISI and Al Qaeda.. so that the very men they were protecting.. men they thought were working covertly for the CIA, were actually plotting the 9/11 attacks.

Both of these theories would explain alot of things.. I don't have all the answers.. but it seems to me that either of these theories is at this point viable..

What I've posted in this thread so far is information that Atta was living a lifestyle that doesn't fit with the profile of "pious muslim on a suicide mission for Allah"... that George HW Bush inexplicably pardoned a Pakistani heroin dealer in the latter days of his presidency.. that a reporter who wrote a book about the CIA and the drug trade killed himself recently.. BY SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE HEAD TWICE... That FBI agents are saying they were stonewalled at every turn prior to 9/11 when they started to get close to Atta and his ring...

In future posts I'll talk about how George Bush's uncle was (and is) a senior executive at a bank that has been tied to laundering money for terrorists, operating sham CIA front accounts and recently was called by a Federal Judge, "a henchman for dictators and their brutal regimes"... The victims of families of 9/11 SUED that bank, along with the Saudi Royals who were accused of using the bank to funnel money to terrorist... In that lawsuit, JAMES BAKER.. George HW Bush's Secretary of STate and close ally of the Bush family, PERSONALLY REPRESENTED THE SAUDIs as their defense lawyer...

Doesn't all of this start to stink??? Am I a nutcase?? Tell me if I am.. I need to hear it.

Atlas

05-15-2005, 11:27 AM

This is tripe and sullies the honor of the many brave men and women in the CIA who toil everyday keeping us safe from threats we may not even ever hear of, and are unable to respond to slander like this because of public disclosure proscriptions.

Really, put your tin foil beanie back on and fine something new to obsess about

:add27:

Brianna

05-16-2005, 02:14 PM

And, the NUMBER 1 Thing You Never Knew About Mohamed Atta:

1. Mohamed Atta was a psychopath.

“He told me he’d get even with me,” Amanda Keller said, after she threw him out of the apartment they shared. “He said, ‘You will be sorry for this.’”

He revenged himself by disemboweling her pet cat and and dismembering its half-dozen baby kittens, then strewing the pieces around her apartment to be discovered when she returned home from work after a long night at the “lingerie model” escort service in Sarasota she worked for to the apartment that was now hers alone.

Amanda kept a pet dog, and several cats as well, one of whom had just had a litter, she informed us haltingly. There were six adorable kittens. But when she flicked on the lights in her apartment, she didn’t hear any noises coming from them, and she couldn’t see any of the kittens...

Voice cracking with horror, she told us what she saw when she turned on the light: pieces of dead kittens—kitten parts—strewn all over the living room. “She(the mother cat) had had a litter of six. Only one survived…The mother was gutted on my kitchen table. And there were little baby cat parts all over the place.”

“The only ones to survive were my little dog that hid under the couch, and my Siamese who sat on top of the fridge behind the cookie jar. My friend Page came in with me, and helped me pick up little kitten parts that were all over the apartment.”

Chopping up kittens across from the Venice Airport

In an apartment directly across the street from the Venice Airport, the American girl who had just spurned Atta was on her hands and knees picking up kitten parts. Amanda Keller moved out of the apartment that same day, and never returned.

Numerous descriptions of Atta have painted him as menacing, dark, glaring, sometimes just wooden. We even heard speculation, from people who had been in his presence in Venice, that they suspected he might have been brainwashed.

But after listening to Amanda Keller’s story, which we will see fully corroborated by credible witnesses, we can answer one of the open questions about the 9/11 attack: Why was Mohamed Atta chosen to commit one of history’s most unspeakable crimes?

Because he could. He was capable of it. Not just capable... he was perfect for the job. He does not deserve the ‘heroic suicide’ mantle placed on his shoulders by aggrieved Arab radicals. Any self-respecting Islamic fundamentalist should be ashamed that he sprang from their number. Atta wasn’t a hero. He belonged in a psych-ward.

Mohamed Atta was a psychopath. A Kitten Killer. We’re in Jeffrey Dahmer territory here.

The image of the kittens is disturbing. I wish I hadn't read that... Anyone know what happened to Amanda Keller? She seems to have disappeared.

Bman

05-16-2005, 04:22 PM

The image of the kittens is disturbing. I wish I hadn't read that... Anyone know what happened to Amanda Keller? She seems to have disappeared.

From www.madcowprod.com

A total blackout on information
With reporters literally camped at her doorstep, Keller told us she had been so intimidated into silence by the FBI that she spoke barely a dozen words. “The newspaper quote you read was accurate,” she said. “‘I can’t really say anything. I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble.’"

“A N.Y. Times reporter named Chris—young, tall, kind of heavy, dark hair and a dark goatee—came to my house,” she explained. “And he was mad because I wouldn’t talk to him. This dude would NOT leave me alone. I stood outside arguing with him forever, and he was trying to trip me up and get me to say something.”

"And so I called the FBI agent that had been calling me—right while this reporter guy was standing there—and told him this reporter won’t leave me alone. The agent said let me talk to him, so I handed him the phone. And I don’t know what was said, but after that he left me alone.”

Why had she remained silent? "Because of the intimidation by the FBI,” she replied. “They told me not to talk to anybody, to keep my mouth shut."

"Peeling hundreds from his fanny pack"

The FBI didn’t confine their menacing visits just to people who had lived with the terrorist ringleader. Some got in trouble just for having lived next-door, like Stephanie Frederickson, a pleasant 50-year old housewife who made the grave mistake of living in an apartment beside the apartment that Mohamed Atta moved into with Amanda Keller.
“At first, right after the attack, they (the FBI) told me I must have been mistaken in my identification," Frederickson stated. “Then they would insinuate that I was lying. Finally they stopped trying to get me to change my story. After that they just stopped by once a week to make sure I hadn’t been talking to anyone.

Frederickson shrugged. "Who was I going to tell? Everybody around here already knew.”

The Sandpiper Apartments manager, Charlie Grapentine, is a grizzled Korean vet in his early 60’s. The FBI did not welcome his recollections any more warmly than they had those of Stephanie Frederickson.

"Atta always carried a fanny pack around his waist,” Grapentine told us. "I remember Amanda once telling him that she needed some new clothes, and he reached in and peeled off a few hundreds from a thick roll of cash he had stuffed inside the fanny pack.”

THIS IS NOT A FLIGHT
SCHOOL OWNER

But, we all have careers to think about...

Grapentine turns grim on the subject of the FBI's treatment. "They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut," stated the ex-marine through clenched teeth. “Nobody likes to hear that: that they didn't see something they know they saw.”

Keller, Frederickson, and Grapentine, are just three examples of the apparently officially-sanctioned silencing of eyewitnesses in Florida to the terrorist's activities.

They are by no means alone in having felt official pressure to keep silent.

Longboat Key fire captain Carroll Mooneyhan was waiting in the lobby of the hotel President Bush was staying at the night before the attack, for Bush to come out for his morning run when he saw something he shouldn’t have. Something pretty big, actually…

After talking with local reporters he clammed up. When we finally reached him by phone, Mooneyhan, who witnessed the launch of an attempt to assassinate the President, told us: “I was visited by the CIA and the Secret Service after 9/11. I have a career to think about. I have to be careful what I say.”

And that was the last we heard from him.

A lesson for our times

You can count the number of investigative journalists who have followed the trail of the 9/11 terrorist conspiracy during their time in the U.S. on one hand and pick your nose at the same time.

Its time for a change.

http://www.madcowprod.com/index44bb.html

Bman

06-03-2005, 01:26 PM

This actually confirms much of what is written about in Hopsicker's book, Welcome to Terrorland

CIA's planes operate through shell companies: Report

Indo-Asian News Service

New York, May 31, 2005

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) owns 26 planes that it operates through many shell companies to carry out several of its operations, The New York Times reported.

From transporting suspected members of the Al-Qaeda from one country to another to dropping CIA operatives in different territories, these planes are used for many purposes to which the US government cannot officially lend its name.

The paper said it carried out an analysis of thousands of flight records, aircraft registrations and corporate documents, as well as interviews with former CIA officers and pilots, which showed the agency owns at least 26 planes, 10 of them purchased since 2001.

The Times report identified one of the shell companies, fronting for the CIA, as Aero Contractors Ltd, whose planes often take off from Johnston County Airport Smithfield, North Carolina.

"Nothing about the sleepy southern setting hints of foreign intrigue. Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul," the paper said.

The report said Aero Contractors' planes dropped CIA paramilitary officers into Afghanistan in 2001; carried an American team to Karachi, Pakistan, right after the US consulate there was bombed in 2002; and flew from Libya to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the day before an American-held prisoner said he was questioned by Libyan intelligence agents last year.

"While posing as a private charter outfit - 'aircraft rental with pilot' is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the CIA's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary CIA officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees," it said.

"The civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome. They sometimes allow the agency to circumvent reporting requirements most countries impose on flights operated by other governments. But the cover can fail, as when two Austrian fighter jets were scrambled on January 21, 2003, to intercept a CIA Hercules transport plane, equipped with military communications, on its way from Germany to Azerbaijan," the paper said.

"Some of the CIA planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. The resulting controversy has breached the secrecy of the agency's flights in the last two years, as plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements," it said.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/onlineCDA/PFVersion.jsp?article=http://10.81.141.122/news/181_1382898,00050001.htm

Bman

06-10-2005, 08:39 AM

Well, well , well... What do we have here???

The CIA SPECIFICALLY blocked information about two of the 9/11 hijackers from reaching the FBI...

Wonder why???

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times

June 10, 2005 Friday

Memo on 9/11 Plotters Blocked;
New disclosures show that CIA information in 2000 about two Al Qaeda operatives in San Diego was squelched before reaching the FBI.

Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON

A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged Thursday, when the Justice Department disclosed that about 20 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a CIA official had blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI that two known Al Qaeda operatives had entered the country.

The two men were among the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

If the FBI had received the official communique from the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit when it was ready for transmittal in January 2000, its agents likely could have tracked down the men, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with a newly declassified report of the Justice Department's inspector general.

Officials involved in the case of alleged would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had attempted to block release of the report, asserting that it would compromise the outcome of his case. But Inspector General Glenn A. Fine went to court and won release of the report after deleting the section on Moussaoui.

The report does not draw major new conclusions or disclose significant new episodes about the months and years leading up to Sept. 11. Rather, it fills in blanks and provides new details about previously known matters -- notably the failure to learn sooner about Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, the so-called San Diego hijackers.

An 18-month delay in the CIA's handing over of information about the two hijackers to the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies had been well-publicized. But the report's conclusion that an agent had written a memo specifically designed for transmittal to the FBI to alert the bureau to the men's presence -- and that a supervisor deliberately had prevented it from being sent -- is new.

The reason the CIA official, identified by the fictitious name "John," put a hold on the communique remains a mystery, the report said. It said the officials involved didn't recall the incident. Even when the author of the memo followed up a week later with an e-mail asking if it had been sent to the FBI, nothing was done.

The memo was written by an FBI agent on assignment to the CIA's special Bin Laden unit. According to the report, rather than send his memo directly to the FBI, he sent it to the deputy chief of the CIA unit because only supervisors were authorized to send such memos to the FBI.

Fine's report contains extensive new detail about that incident, as well as several already reported missed opportunities by the FBI to track down the two men.

The report stops short of concluding that any of the failures was responsible for allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to move forward. But it is sharply critical of the FBI and CIA, laying out in 371 pages a series of systemic and individual failures by the FBI in particular -- both internally and when dealing with other U.S. and foreign government agencies.

The report was compiled after Congress and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III asked the inspector general to evaluate how the FBI had handled intelligence before the Sept. 11 attacks. More extensive inquiries were done by a joint House-Senate committee and by the federal 9/11 commission, which reached similar broad conclusions.

The report disclosed Thursday is an abbreviated version of a top-secret report submitted in July to the FBI, CIA, Congress and the commission that investigated Sept. 11.

In an interview Thursday, Fine said it would be "too speculative" to conclude that the attacks could have been prevented had it not been for the failures outlined in his report, which was based on interviews with dozens of FBI and CIA officials and a review of thousands of top-secret internal documents.

"But there were very significant failures, both systemic and individual, and we lay out the details behind them," Fine said.

His report made 16 recommendations to improve the FBI, including better training and management of intelligence analysts, integrating FBI lawyers into counterterrorism investigations, and creating clear procedures on how to document intelligence information received in informal briefings with other agencies.

In a statement, the FBI said it generally agreed with the inspector general's findings and was already carrying out most of them.

"We enhanced our cadre of intelligence analysts with hundreds of new hires, new training and a clear career path," the FBI statement said. "We changed the criteria by which special agents, field offices and investigative programs are evaluated to emphasize intelligence-related functions."

The report identifies five junctures, from March 2000 to August 2001, when there were opportunities for the FBI to learn about Almihdhar and Alhazmi and their presence in the U.S. Each episode has been previously reported, but not in such great detail.

The report documents day-to-day contacts among FBI, CIA and other officials -- identifying them with names such as "John," "Mary" and "Rob" and, in many cases, assessing their performance. It quotes extensively from e-mails they sent and handwritten notes they kept of meetings.

Typical was the mild criticism of an FBI employee, "Lynn," for failing to respond to an e-mail from colleague "Jane" about the now-famous Phoenix memo. That memo by an agent in the Phoenix bureau urged the FBI to investigate the enrollment of Middle Eastern men in aviation schools, but it was never acted upon.

"A response from Lynn may have prompted Jane to take some other step.... Instead ... the [memo] languished," the report said.

One of the well-known missed opportunities was the fact that Almihdhar and Alhazmi had rented a room in the Lemon Grove home of a well-established local FBI informant. In a footnote, the report discloses that the informant was paid $100,000 in 2003 for his work over the years. However, he never told his FBI handler important details about Almihdhar and Alhazmi, and said afterward that he had known nothing about their terrorist connections or plans.

The report does not name the informant, but he has been identified elsewhere as Abdussattar Shaikh.

The report's findings come as the FBI faces continued criticism of its intelligence-gathering efforts, with some lawmakers and others calling for those functions to be taken over by another agency or by the new national intelligence director.

CIA officials had little comment, noting that the focus of the report was on the FBI's performance before Sept. 11. Fine also noted that his scope did not include evaluating the CIA's handling of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence.

Then-CIA Director George J. Tenet has vigorously disputed some of the criticisms of his agency, but Thursday attributed the CIA's failure to turn over information about Alhazmi and Almihdhar to his agents' being overwhelmed, exhausted and understaffed.

Days after a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia in January 2000, the CIA's Bin Laden specialists drafted a flurry of memos about the two men, their suspected terrorist connections and Almihdhar's possible ties to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Some of the memos were based in part on intelligence provided by the National Security Agency. The CIA was also in possession of a photocopy of Almihdhar's Saudi passport and valid multi-entry visa to the U.S.

Several cables from the CIA's Bin Laden desk disseminated the information to agency officials around the world -- including to one of the unit's special agents detailed to the FBI's Washington field office, according to Fine's report.

That employee, "Dwight," began drafting a memo addressed to the FBI's Bin Laden unit chief at bureau headquarters and to its New York field office. The memo contained virtually all of the details known to the agency, including Almihdhar's passport and visa information, which listed his intention to stay in New York.

But at 4 p.m. that day, another CIA Bin Laden desk officer, "Michelle," added a note to the memo: "pls hold off on [memo] for now per [the CIA deputy chief of Bin Laden unit]."

Eight days later, in mid-January, "Dwight" sent an e-mail to "John," asking why it hadn't been sent: "Is this a no go, or should I remake it in some way."

The CIA was unable to locate a response to the e-mail. Fine's report concludes that the CIA didn't turn over documentation of the electronic memo until Fine's investigators came across a reference and specifically asked for it in February 2004. That came so late in the investigation that it delayed release of the report and caused many more CIA and FBI officials to be interviewed, the report says.

Ultimately, Fine's investigators gave up trying to find an explanation.

Records show that the CIA didn't forward the information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi to domestic law enforcement officials until late August 2001, when it asked that the men be put on watch lists.

Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report from Orange County.

Bman

06-16-2005, 10:53 AM

Just throwing this in here for some historical perspective on the CIA and its drug connections

The Washington Post

June 16, 2005 Thursday

John K. Vance;
Uncovered LSD Project at CIA

Joe Holley, Washington Post Staff Writer

John K. Vance, 89, a member of the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general's staff in the early 1960s who discovered that the agency was running a research project that included administering LSD and other drugs to unwitting human subjects, died May 27 of respiratory arrest.

He died at the Wilson Health Care Center of Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg.

Code-named MKULTRA (and pronounced m-k-ultra), the project Mr. Vance uncovered was the brainchild of CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was intrigued by reports of mind-control techniques allegedly conducted by Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents on U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean War. The CIA wanted to use similar techniques on its own POWs and perhaps use LSD or other mind-bending substances on foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro a few years after the project got underway in 1953.

Heading MKULTRA was a CIA chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. In congressional testimony, Gottlieb, who died in 1999, acknowledged that the agency had administered LSD to as many as 40 unwitting subjects, including prison inmates and patrons of brothels set up and run by the agency. At least one participant died when he jumped out of a 10th-floor window in a hotel; others claimed to have suffered serious psychological damage.

Mr. Vance learned about MKULTRA in the spring of 1963 during a wide-ranging inspector general survey of the agency's technical services division. The inspector general's report said: "The concepts involved in manipulating human behavior are found by many people both within and outside the agency to be distasteful and unethical."

As a result of Mr. Vance's discovery and the inspector general's report, the CIA halted the testing and began scaling back the project. It was terminated in the late 1960s.

MKULTRA came to public light in 1977 as a result of hearings conducted by a Senate committee on intelligence chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho). Mr. Vance gave several long phone interviews to committee staff members but never had to testify.

Mr. Vance was born in Seward, Neb., and graduated magna cum laude from Doane College in Crete, Neb., in 1936. He received a master's degree in economics from Columbia University in 1937 and a bachelor's degree in library science from Columbia in 1939.

He began working on his doctorate at Harvard University during World War II but soon was serving in the Army. He was sent to language school to learn German and worked as a military interpreter at the postwar Nuremberg trials. In Nuremberg, he met people in the intelligence world.

His CIA career began in 1947. He was on the inspector's general's staff from 1960 to 1963, and then became the director of central reference until his retirement in 1971.

A member of the Maryland Ornithological Society and the Maryland Nature Conservancy, Mr. Vance helped in bird banding and also enjoyed gardening, biking, tennis and travel. He was a member of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda.

Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Elizabeth E. Vance of Gaithersburg; three daughters, Sally Roman of Kensington, Julia Stewart of Columbus, Ohio, and Margie Kay of Timonium, Md.; eight grandchildren; and five great-grandsons.

Bman

06-21-2005, 09:33 AM

So.. lets see.. one week before you fly yourself into the World Trade Center... you decide to GAMBLE???

BTW, doesn't Allah frown on gambling???

Copyright 2001 Times Publishing Company
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

September 27, 2001, Thursday, 0 South Pinellas Edition

Hijackers linked to local cruise

Times staff and wire reports

TREASURE ISLAND

Employees on a SunCruz gambling ship that sails from John's Pass think some of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were gambling on the ship the week before the attacks.

The FBI is investigating. SunCruz Casinos has turned over security videotapes and documents to FBI investigators.

Two or three men linked to the hijackings may have been customers on the SunCruz ship that is based at John's Pass, said Michael Hlavsa, chairman of the gambling cruise company.

The FBI has not confirmed the men's identities, and the cruise line is declining to identify the men being investigated. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Hlavsa said that in the days after the attack, cruise employees said they recognized some of the hijacking suspects as former customers.

One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise is the same as one of the suspected terrorists' names, Hlavsa said. A cash advance was taken out on that passenger's credit card, he said.

"They acted just like normal guests of ours and they were courteous," he said. "There were no issues."

The ship's extensive security systems, which are in place to protect its gaming operations and customers, may help the FBI confirm the men's identifies, Hlavsa said.

The cruise line also is giving the FBI a videotape from a Port Canaveral ship of a former customer that a casino manager thinks resembles one of the terrorists.

- Times staff writer Mike Brassfield contributed to this report and information from the Associated Press was used.

morpheus

06-21-2005, 01:13 PM

So.. lets see.. one week before you fly yourself into the World Trade Center... you decide to GAMBLE???

BTW, doesn't Allah frown on gambling???

I dont have a link, but I read somewhere (probably here) that during an operation, Allah allows such transgressions in an effort for the operative to fit in thereby making it easier to avoid suspicion and detection.

Dora

06-21-2005, 01:21 PM

I dont have a link, but I read somewhere (probably here) that during an operation, Allah allows such transgressions in an effort for the operative to fit in thereby making it easier to avoid suspicion and detection.
Didn't He also excuse the highjackers hanging out in bars & picking up women the weeks before 9/11 for that same reason?

DC Penguin

06-21-2005, 01:51 PM

There was a program on Roswell recently that decided to test memory. The Roswell incident didn't become a big scandal until years after the actual event.

A memory specialist (psychologist) set up a bunch of hikers to go on a nature trail with helmet cameras. The cameras documented what they actually saw. Along the trail, they placed some odd metal wreckage and a single armed guard in uniform who would simply walk around the metal wreckage, and not pay the hikers any mind.

One month later, they brought the hikers in for an interview. Most of them recalled seeing two guards who actually spoke to them and pointed their guns at the hikers.

The point was that memory will change over time. I find it interesting how, as time passes, more people saw the hijackers doing more things, and using similar names, than knew such immediately after 9/11. May be worth the pause to think about why

Bman

06-21-2005, 02:30 PM

Bman

06-21-2005, 02:31 PM

Hlavsa said that in the days after the attack, cruise employees said they recognized some of the hijacking suspects as former customers.
One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise is the same as one of the suspected terrorists' names, Hlavsa said. A cash advance was taken out on that passenger's credit card, he said.

"They acted just like normal guests of ours and they were courteous," he said. "There were no issues."

DC Penguin

06-21-2005, 02:40 PM

and yet, that sort of testimony is enough to convict a man of a crime, in a court of law.. especially when backed up by written documents, as it was in this case.. where the name of at least one hijacker appeared on the passenger log of the casino cruise ship

Bman

I'm well aware. Scary, isn't it? You might also read studies on lineups. They say the witness is convinced one is the right one and chooses the one closest to what they recall. Overall, highly unreliable.

Bman

06-21-2005, 02:41 PM

and the BEST part of the SunCruz gambling boat story???

Guess who OWNED the boat????

Jack Abramoff.. the corrupt lobbyist at the center of the Tom Delay ethics accusations... LOL.. you remember Abramoff.. the guy who was taking money from Indians to represent their casino interests, while at the same time taking money for the Christian Coalition, to work AGAINST gambling interests.. hahahhaha

So there it is.. Just 6 days from Sept. 11, 2001... The terrorists are hanging out, gambling off the coast of Florida.. on Jack Abramoff's boat... Beautiful, ain't it?

______________________________________________

Copyright 2000 Times Publishing Company
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

September 28, 2000, Thursday, 0 South Pinellas Edition

New owners board SunCruz

STEVE HUETTEL

A group of gambling and entertainment executives promise to try to steer clear of the trouble that the previous owner had with state regulators.

New owners are at the helm of SunCruz Casinos, whose gambling ships churned up controversy from Crystal River to Key Largo as the company grew into Florida's largest day-cruise operator.

A group of gambling and entertainment executives bought the Dania Beach company Tuesday from founder Gus Boulis for an undisclosed price.

The company will continue operating 11 casino boats in nine Florida locations - including Clearwater, Port Richey, Inglis and Treasure Island - and one in South Carolina, said Adam Kidan, who leads the new ownership group.

Kidan said he'll try to steer SunCruz clear of run-ins with state agencies and communities where the ships dock.

Under Boulis, a hard-charging businessman who founded the Miami Subs fast-food chain, SunCruz has been sued by Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the city of Hollywood, Fla.

"We will reach out to reasonable people," said Kidan, 36, who founded a bedding-by-phone business called Dial-A-Mattress in Washington. "If we're doing something wrong I want to change it."

Among SunCruz's troubles:

+The DEP sued to shut down its gambling boats in Pasco County last year, charging that propellers from the vessels dredge the Pithlachascotee River as they head out to sea. The boats now stay in the gulf, and passengers are shuttled out in smaller vessels, Kidan said.

+DEP officials arrested a ship captain after the company ignored orders to stop sailing out of Crystal River in 1998 because the vessel was muddying the river.

+Citrus County officials balked last year when a SunCruz vessel operating from Inglis failed to document it was disposing of sewage and wastewater in a storage tank on land, not dumping the waste at sea.

+And the city of Hollywood is suing to close down the SunCruz operation there. Residents near the boat dock complained their neighborhood is overrun by illegal parking, traffic and noisy drunks when the vessel returns from gambling trips.

"It's good news he (Boulis) is going," said Butterworth, who opposes the casino boat industry and fought unsuccessfully to ban it from the state. "He cut every corner, violated every environmental rule."

Boulis sold the company largely because of all the conflicts, Kidan said. "It's not fun being the target of lawsuits," he said. "It takes an emotional toll, a financial toll."

Kidan, who will be the company's chairman and chief executive, touted the new management's business expertise and experience in government. He is an owner and general counsel to the St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino. Vice chairman Jack Abramoff is a government affairs counselor for a Washington law firm, and spent more than a decade producing feature films. SunCruz president Ben Waldman served in the Reagan administration, including as associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.

The company, which employs 1,200, plans to double in size, upgrade ships and expand in Florida as well as enter new markets, Kidan said.

DC Penguin

06-21-2005, 02:43 PM

You've got me convinced that something isn't right. I'm anxious to read your final conclusions.

Bman

06-21-2005, 02:46 PM

I'm well aware. Scary, isn't it? You might also read studies on lineups. They say the witness is convinced one is the right one and chooses the one closest to what they recall. Overall, highly unreliable.

I know what you're saying... I agree 100%

Eyewitness testimony is terrible... I agree believe that 100%

mackinnon

06-27-2005, 10:30 AM

A book I read a while ago with interesting parallels:

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/title.cfm?ISBN=0007104820&Author=0015995

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,722131,00.html

If a British intelligence agency can, at best, allow a known assasination plot against Queen Victoria to continue, or, at worst, actually co-ordinate it for their own ends, then the same could have happened with 9/11.

All it takes is a double agent ot two.

Atta need never have known he was being helped by guys from "the other team."

Given that George & Tony, on both sides of the pond, are pushing ID cards, "anti - terrorism bills", not to mention two wars in the bag under the guise of "War on Terror", it really has turned out well for them.

Funny, in all the years that the British mainland was being bombed by the IRA, I can never recall such an obsession with "terror."

Do I think George knew about any such plot? Probably not.

Do I think Tony knew about any such plot? Probably not.

I suspect their strings are being pulled by other forces, who they are I just don't know.

EDIT: Having read my post again, I realise that it might sound like I am implying that the British had something to do with it. I didn't mean this.
It IS only a theory, but US intelligence alone or a collaboration with other countries' intelligence, to enable 9/11, isn't as implausible as most people think.

rectar

06-27-2005, 11:40 AM

Might As Well Be....Looks like a turf war ensuing in afghanistan between CIA and KGB lol.....

Afghanistan exiles the Russia accusation in terrorists training to her .
http://www.aljazeera.net/mritems/images/2005/6/24/1_547494_1_34.jpgAfghanistan emphasized that work for the terrorism ( the French) for the confrontation in a seriousness.
The Afghani government exiled the Russia accusation to her shelter " terrorists receive training in attacks on territory for rising in Russian territory ..

And Afghani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that these accusations are untrue be poor and to which an index " because Afghanistan works for the terrorism for the confrontation in a seriousness "..

And emphasized that Afghanistan herself the victim and on the campaign head against him , this campaign abode neighbors cause to the imitation in her in that in a pursuance..

And in reply to the Afghani negation comes statements Butin (fladeemeer) criticized Afghanistan demarche in terrorism controlling international and narcotic durg smuggling according to expression in her for the Russian president " extremely weak "..

Butin had expressed of worry for an training camps activity persistence which named in Afghanistan in the terrorists..

And conveyed foreign minister Russian will foam (lafrouf) in previous timed conducting in Russian territory terrorist operations in a purpose in elements sheltering of Taliban movement for Afghanistan two E laden the bloody event responsibility in. Ouzbekistan ..

And despite a transit three years interference in Afghanistan which a regime performed the Taliban to a drop American military and a foreign force existence in the the United States command orthodox 20 one thousand soldiers are elements,. The movement continue attacks launching on purposes American and Afghani this performed the year since a beginning to a more death from 600 persons..

The source.:our agencies abroad

Bman

07-29-2005, 12:19 PM

If a British intelligence agency can, at best, allow a known assasination plot against Queen Victoria to continue, or, at worst, actually co-ordinate it for their own ends, then the same could have happened with 9/11.

All it takes is a double agent ot two.

Atta need never have known he was being helped by guys from "the other team."

Given that George & Tony, on both sides of the pond, are pushing ID cards, "anti - terrorism bills", not to mention two wars in the bag under the guise of "War on Terror", it really has turned out well for them.

Funny, in all the years that the British mainland was being bombed by the IRA, I can never recall such an obsession with "terror."

My how a few weeks change things

rectar

07-29-2005, 08:09 PM

Depends on who the covert terrorists are lol....

New 'Great Game' defies U.S. interests in C.Asia

uploaded 27 Jul 2005

By Shamil Baigin

TASHKENT (Reuters) - The United States has won assurances it can keep its base in Kyrgyzstan, but it may face new challenges as play resumes in the centuries-old "Great Game" for influence in strategic Central Asia.

In 2001, Washington won an earlier round when it secured tacit consent of former colonial ruler Russia and stationed troops in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan -- once Moscow's imperial backyard -- to back its military operations in Afghanistan.

But Moscow is back in the game, now exploiting suspicion among the region's veteran leaders that Washington -- associated with a series of "velvet revolutions" in ex-Soviet countries -- may be out to unseat them too. "There is a lot of suspicion about U.S. long-term intentions," said a senior U.S. diplomat. This diplomat added it was tied to the mistaken belief Washington was trying to stir up new revolutions in Central Asia.

At stake for Washington is influence in a region that is a narcotics crossroads, a vital launching pad for the U.S. campaign to round up the remnants of the Taliban, and home to some of the world's largest oil finds in the last few decades.

Displaying a new coolness to Washington, four of five of Central Asia's ex-Soviet states issued a declaration in the Kazakh capital Astana earlier this month asking when the United States would withdraw its troops. Visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday Kyrgyzstan had agreed to let U.S. troops stay. But the invitation was not open-ended while a second base in neighboring Uzbekistan remains in doubt.

VELVET REVOLUTIONS

In the past 20 months, popular revolutions triggered by disputed elections have unseated long-serving leaders in ex-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

In March, Kyrgyz veteran leader Askar Akayev fled to Russia amid violent protests sparked by flawed parliamentary elections.

These "people's revolutions" have unnerved Moscow struggling to keep control over its former colonies and sent jitters through Central Asia's authoritarian rulers who brook no dissent.

Washington denies any role in instigating these revolutions. But it has not hidden its satisfaction -- or its enthusiasm -- for more of the same.

"Many countries think the Americans do not increase stability when they come to a region but increase instability," Andranik Migranian, professor at the Moscow State International Affairs Institute, told Radio Rossiya.

"It's not at Moscow or Beijing's initiative that they are ... countering the United States. They are doing it on their own initiative," he said.

NEW "GREAT GAME?"

Washington's tug-of-war with Moscow for control over Central Asia brings back historic memories of the 19th century "Great Game" rivalry between the Russian and British empires. Beijing seems to be ready now to join the game, too.

Uzbekistan, under fire from the West and human rights bodies for indiscriminate use of force by troops who reportedly killed some 500 civilians in an uprising in the city of Andizhan, is now being embraced by Russia and China.

Following Washington's demands to hold an independent inquiry into the May bloodshed, Uzbekistan reminded the United States that its stay at its air base was only temporary.

But Uzbek President Islam Karimov's flirtation with Moscow and Beijing may turn out to be a short one. And the autocratic ruler may well weather Western criticism and mend its close ties with Washington soon, diplomats say.

"We see a new 'Great Game' unfolding after Astana," said a Western diplomat working in Tashkent. "Obviously, the Uzbek leadership feels offended by Western criticism over Andizhan."

"But should Karimov openly call America an enemy, his regime won't last for long. The issue of possible economic sanctions against Karimov is on everybody's lips now, and the Americans are clearly in possession of all this leverage."

Kazakhstan, the region's most economically advanced state, signed the Astana declaration. But it seems pragmatically to prefer seeing large Western investments rather than hear calls for U.S. base withdrawals from its neighbors.

U.S. interests in Kazakhstan include stakes held by ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in consortia developing onshore and offshore oil riches. (Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Moscow, Raushan Nurshayeva is Astana and Dmitry Solovyov in Almaty)

Source: Reuters

Bman

08-04-2005, 01:28 PM

Banshee,

I don't agree with you.. but that's ok.. we can agree to disagree

Now, back to the thread.. I'll post things as I come across them, etc... it may not all add up or flow in any order.. but eventually I think we can get the material down in the thread and sort through it...

I came across this INTERESTING article tonight in my research.. .Check this out... Notice the date.. .the "George Bush" in the article is Bush I, who was director of the CIA before he became President.
Copyright 1993 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle

March 28, 1993, Sunday, 4 STAR Edition

SECTION: A; Pg. 20

Freeing of drug smuggler baffles legal authorities

BY: JOHN MONK, GARY L. WRIGHT; Knight-Ridder Tribune News

WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON -- For years, George Bush called drugs ""the
gravest threat facing our nation. ''

But on Jan. 18, two days before leaving office, President
Bush quietly freed a Pakistani drug smuggler from a North Carolina
federal prison.

Why? That remains a puzzle, a behind-the-scenes tale of
lawyers and politicians, of possible international intrigue against
the backdrop of the global narcotics trade.

In his four years in office, Bush freed only two other men
from the 80,000-inmate federal prison system. Neither was a drug
trafficker.

""It's most unusual,'' said Ken Andresen of Charlotte, N.C.,
who as assistant U.S. attorney prosecuted Adam. ""There must have
been some diplomatic aspect. I can't see President Bush making a
cavalier move on the brink of leaving office in this fashion after
what he's said about the war on drugs. ''

Aslam Adam, 32, had served eight years of a 55-year sentence.

He would have been eligible for parole in two years.

Once Bush let Adam go, authorities sped him onto a plane to
Pakistan -- where Adam had wanted to go since his arrest in 1985.

Why did Bush show mercy to a heroin smuggler? No one will say.

Certainly not Adam, who lives with his mother in Karachi in a
large, servant-staffed house.

Recently, when a Charlotte Observer correspondent showed up
at Adam's house, he would not come to the door.

Experts in Pakistani affairs and drug policy are mystified as
to why Bush freed Adam.

The Charlotte prosecutor and the judge who sentenced Adam say
they didn't want him freed.

Bush won't talk. A Bush spokesman said the Justice
Department, which recommended freeing Adam, should explain. Justice
insisted any explanation should come from Bush.

Some experts speculated that Bush's move may be tied into the
CIA. For years, the CIA had a major presence in Pakistan, as the
United States supplied guns to rebels in Afghanistan and funneled
billions of dollars to Pakistan.

But U.S.-Pakistani relations have soured. For three years,
the United States has frozen all aid to Pakistan, because the Asian
nation is believed to have nuclear weapons.

Pakistani officials say they are puzzled by Bush's act.

Syeda Hussain, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States,
said she tried unsuccessfully to get Bush to help Pakistan with
many issues, including border disputes and limiting Pakistani
textile imports.

""I wish I had been as effective with President Bush as Mr.
Adam,'' Hussain said.

Adam's case began routinely.

On April 30, 1985, U.S. Customs officials checking mail at
JFK International Airport in New York found heroin in a package
addressed to a Charlotte post office box.

Customs sent the package on. Officials staked out the box.

On May 7, 1985, Adam retrieved the package. He had been in
the United States less than a month, ostensibly to visit a sister.

A few days after arriving, he rented the box.

At his trial, Adam, then 24 and with no known criminal
record, said he wanted the box to receive jewelry catalogues.

The judge was one of the nation's toughest: Robert Potter,
nicknamed ""Maximum Bob. ''

On Aug.12, 1985, Potter gave Adam 55 years for importing
heroin and related charges.

In the next few years, Adam tried three different legal
avenues to overturn his sentence. All failed.

Adam's family and friends were also conducting a campaign.

Fatima Adam begged Potter to let her son return to Pakistan:
""Please consider the needs of an old woman, and the foolishness of
a young man. ''

Potter was unmoved.

He wrote Fatima Adam, refusing to intervene, saying her son
must pay for his crimes.

A family friend, Shirley Riddle of Charlotte, tried to help.

In early 1988, Riddle wrote Gov. Jim Martin, asking him to
look into the case. Martin forwarded the letter to Sen. Jesse
Helms, R-N.C. Helms wrote prison officials.

On Feb. 22, 1988, K.M. Hawk -- warden at the federal prison
in Butner, N.C. -- wrote Helms saying Adam couldn't be transferred
to Pakistan.

Hawk told Helms that Riddle's request to send Adam to
Pakistan to serve out his sentence wouldn't work because the United
States has no treaty with Pakistan for transferring offenders.

Riddle didn't give up. On Aug. 1, 1988, she wrote Potter,
saying Helms suggested she contact him. She said that Adam had been
set up and refused to cooperate with authorities because his
parents' lives had been threatened.

She also said Adam's father owned the largest flour mill in
Pakistan and his brother owned a car showroom.

""Aslam P. Adam is to inherit the family business,'' Riddle
wrote. ""He had no reason to risk losing this position to import
drugs. ''

In the late 1980s, Adam's mother came to this country to try
to free her son.

Fatima Adam met with David Stephenson, the pardon attorney of
the U.S. Justice Department. He offered little hope.

Stephenson, now retired, believed Adam's pleas for clemency
had some merit but didn't pursue the case after the prosecutor and
judge objected to releasing Adam early.

Stephenson also said, ""It's not good to be recommending
clemency in cases of drug offenses. ''

Current Justice Department pardon attorney Margaret Love
won't talk about the case.

""Since the 1930s, the reasons for clemency grants have not
been made public,'' Love said Friday.

One law enforcement source said Adam may be being used, or be
a pawn, in a covert operation of the U.S.government.

""It may be that the Drug Enforcement Administration or the
CIA wanted something from Pakistan -- and what they wanted will
never see the light of day,'' the source said.

The DEA said that it had objected to Adam's release but would
not show The Observer its objection.

Potter also said he had no idea why Bush set Adam free: ""I
didn't know anything about it until I saw it in the paper. ''

Adam's former lawyer, Keith Stroud of Charlotte, also was
surprised. ""I'd like to say I was influential in getting something
done,'' Stroud said. ""But I can't take any credit. ''

Said Ashcraft, the U.S.attorney: ""I don't know why the
president commuted this man's sentence. Only the president and his
close advisers would know that. ''

Fatima Adam would say only that her son is innocent. She
added, ""God bless Bush. ''

People are STARTING to connect the dots.....

This guy finally realizes that Al Qaeda is behind a big junk of the world's heroin trade.

HOLY SHIT DUDE! WOW.. who would have thunk it?? (well, of course readers of this thread already knew that)...

Just WAIT until this guy adds in the THIRD player, to complete the picture.. .THE CIA

Eventually, it'll all come out.. mark my words

Narco-terror link a truly terrifying prospect

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

By MIKE KELLY

WASHINGTON

So you thought the recent subway bombings by terrorists in London were bad? Try this: A network of Islamic jihadists, financed by drug kingpins.

Al-Qaida and heroin - a perfect nightmare together.

That was just one of the worrisome scenarios presented Tuesday to former representatives of Tom Kean's 9/11 commission.

The bipartisan commission, now reconstituted as the non-profit 9/11 Public Discourse Project, is staging a series of seminars to assess America's anti-terror efforts. The series will conclude next month with a report card on how well the federal government has followed the commission's recommendations. Expect many low grades.

The commission has already found glaring holes in America's safety net, from a lingering lack of cooperation between the FBI and CIA to Congress's refusal to allocate homeland security funds to cities most at risk. Tuesday's seminar focused on an especially worrisome topic: foreign policy.

To many security experts, foreign policy is like an eccentric uncle no one really likes to deal with. Yes, most security officials acknowledge that America's foreign policy needs retooling to cope with growing terrorist networks. But how? And how much?

In a way, the answers to many domestic problems in the war on terror, while definitely thorny, are far more tangible than solving problems overseas. It's one thing, for example, to debate the constitutional propriety of searching of backpacks and packages on New Jersey commuter trains and New York City subways. It's something else to debate how to wipe out thousands of acres of lucrative heroin poppies in the hills and meadows of Afghanistan - and then persuade farmers to plant wheat, which earns a far lower profit.

When you consider the implications of an alliance of drug lords, Osama bin Laden operatives and Afghan poppy farmers, the war on terror takes on a far more terrifying look. With their coffers overflowing with drug money from Afghan heroin, future terrorists would have far more access to nuclear weapons, sophisticated technology and even their own airplanes and ships.
Think of Osama bin Laden plotting attacks on New York with a real-life Scarface. It almost makes the devastating 9/11 plot seem amateurish.

And so it was little wonder Tuesday that no less than Dennis Ross, the former Israeli-Palestinian envoy for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.ŸW. Bush, called the narco-terror link "the single greatest threat" to U.S. efforts to wipe out al-Qaida in Afghanistan and nearby regions.

"This is a long-haul project," Ross said of U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. "There can't be half measures."

Another American diplomat, Elizabeth Jones, a former ambassador to Kazakhstan, added "there is a severe risk" that an alliance of drug dealers and terrorists may even be close to seizing control of wide swaths of Afghanistan. She called on the international community, possibly NATO, to step forward and deal with "the nexus of narcotics and terrorism," but cautioned: "The trick is how best to do that."

The lack of clear answers is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the debate over terrorism and U.S. foreign policy. As Lee Hamilton, the former vice chairman of the 9/11 commission who led Tuesday's seminar, noted: "All the rhetoric looks quite good. The question is how far will we go in terms of implementation."

In Afghanistan, the possible solutions to dealing with the growing trade range from force to financing: more troops to stop farmers from planting heroin poppies or more money to pay them to plant other crops. Elsewhere, however, the foreign policy problems are not so much about planting seeds as much as changing hearts, especially among those who preach a radical brand of Islam that promotes terrorism.

"The world confronts you with choices," said Ross, just back from observing the early stages of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. "Sometimes, you have to take the least bad."

In the war on terror, the least bad solution may come down to figuring out how to persuade Afghan farmers to plant corn.

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyNjMmZmdi ZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY3MzgyNTQmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZU VFeXk5

Bman

08-12-2005, 10:24 PM

Hopsicker is on top of it, once again

http://www.madcowprod.com/0812201.gif

August 12, 2005-Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

The importance of this week’s revelation that an Army intelligence unit was tracking Mohamed Atta’s movements in the U.S. during 1999 and 2000 is so mind-boggling that it seems nobody quite gets it yet...

You’ve been hearing it for three years in articles in the MadCowMorningNews, and in “Welcome to TerrorLand.”

Now you can hear it from an elite Army intelligence unit, one with at least several patriots with very large cojones. Their testimony is clear, explicit, and uncompromisingly contradicts the FBI's official story. Only one conclusion can be drawn from it...

The FBI has been telling a massive lie to the 9.11 Commission and the American people, a lie whose result has been to halt in its tracks, as a Commission spokesman freely admitted on Thursday, the investigation into the murder of almost 3000 people.

People go to jail for that sort of thing, don’t they?

God willing, we may be about to find out.

The Dog Ate the 9.11 Commission's Homework

9.11 Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Thursday excused the Commission’s decision to withhold from their Report any mention of the Army Able Danger intelligence unit in Tampa which was tracking Mohamed Atta and other members of his terrorist cadre during 1999 and 2000.

Felzenberg cited the fact that the information provided to them by military officers in the unit did not agree with the FBI’s timeline concerning Atta’s arrival in the U.S.

Information provided by a military officer from Able Danger did not make it into the final report, “because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks,” Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said.

Staff investigators became wary of the officer, Felzenberg stated, after he stated that the military unit had identified Atta as having been in the United States by late 1999 or early 2000. 'The investigators knew this was impossible, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000.”

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report."

Forget Jamie Gorelick. Forget trumped-up allegations that former Clinton Administration officials were weak on terror...

Al Felzenberg is lying. So is the FBI.

The Big Question Nobody's Asked

911 Commission did no independent investigation of their own. Instead they relied entirely on the much criticized and beleaguered FBI... an Agency whose competence has been questioned by prominent individuals across all party lines... An Agency which has never managed to offer a coherent account of such investigative niceties as an accurate chronology of when Atta arrived in the United States, and what he did (and with whom) when he got here.

Here’s the big question nobody seems to be ready to ask: Upon what basis did the 9.11 Commission conclude that the FBI’s timeline was correct and that an elite Army Intel unit was mistaken in saying they were tracking Mohamed Atta roaming freely across America during 1999 and 2000?

We’d love to hear Felzenberg hem and haw his way around that.

So too, we suspect, would relatives of the innocent murdered victims.

What's at Stake: The Fate of what's left of what used to be called The Free World.

The controversy over news that an Army intelligence unit was tracking the movements in the U.S. of Mohamed Atta’s terrorist cadre during 1999 and 2000 offers the last best hope for Americans to take a close look at the FBI’s timeline of Mohamed Atta’s time in the U.S.

What they will see is a tissue of lies comprising a deliberate cover-up.

Calling unwelcome attention to the massive inaccuracies in the FBI’s timeline was probably not Republican Curt Weldon’s purpose when he brought the story to light...But if his efforts to implicate Clinton Administration officials results in highlighting the FBI's incomplete and corrupt investigation, we think he get some kind of medal, maybe called the Inadvertent 'Dumb-Ass' Hero Award.

We suspect his Republican friends would much prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. Because it isn’t just one elite Army Intel unit that’s saying it... In the aftermath of the 9.11 attack numerous eyewitnesses came forward to attest to Atta’s presence in the U.S. before June of 2000.

Their number even includes a U.S. Government official with a signed and dated loan application from Mohamed Atta his-ownself.

In interviews with major news organizations Johnelle Bryant, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that Atta and three other September 11th terrorists visited her Florida office seeking a government loan.

ABC’s Brian Ross reported: “Johnelle Bryant is the USDA loan officer in Homestead, Florida, who Atta approached in May of 2000, long before al-Qaeda and bin Laden were household words.”

Mr. Atta swung by in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about it.

"At first," she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that she was, in his words, "but a female."

"I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me."

Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and then remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."

Here’s the kicker, or rather, the smoking gun: Before Atta left her office he filled out a loan application.

Loan applications are dated, aren’t they? That’s why Johnelle Bryant knows exactly when Atta was in her office. so, without even referencing any of the other numerous indicators of Atta’s presence in the U.S., one thing that can be said with absolute certainty:

The FBI’s timeline, their chronology of events, the essential tool of any homicide investigation, is wrong. And not wrong by accident, either.

Wrong on purpose. Wrong by design.

By the way: don’t try dropping by Bryant’s Homestead office to confirm the details with her, as we did...She’s no longer there.

She’s (presumably) been airlifted to the Island of Lost Witnesses.

Another Question We Bet You Thought Has Already Been Answered

Where did Atta and Marwan first go to flight school in the US.?

If you answered “Huffman Aviation” you’d be wrong That’s because the flight school Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi first attended in the U.S. has never been named.

It is unknown. It is The Mystery Flight School.

The name of the first school Atta attended would seem to be one of the first facts uncovered in the 9/11 investigation. But it hasn’t been... After first visiting a flight school in Norman Oklahoma, the FBI said Huffman Aviation was the first flight school Atta attended. But the owner of Huffman Aviation, Rudi Dekkers, denied it, declaiming responsibility for the terrorists having been allowed into the U.S.

On the morning after the disaster anchor Jane Clayton of the CBS Morning News asked Dekkers: “How was it that they (Atta and Marwan) could gain access and admittance to your school?

“Well, they didn’t came through our paperwork,” Dekkers replied.

In interviews as well as sworn testimony before Congress, Dekkers passed any blame onto the first flight school the terrorists first attended.

It was this school, Dekkers said, which held responsibility for Atta’s INS paperwork and visas, not his.

“Like if they were calling from Europe and we know two months ahead and we know they are showing up. As I say, they came from another flight school out of Florida. Probably that flight school did all the INS paperwork with them in their country.”

“Another flight school out of Florida.”

He was equally vague later that day on ABC’s Good Morning America. Only now he changed the location of the unnamed first school. Correspondent Jim Mora asked Dekkers: “Now, how did they get to you? Did they apply to the school? Did they just show up?”

“No, they just walked up into the front door,” Dekkers replied. “Apparently they were flying at another school—I’ve heard Tampa; I can’t confirm that.”

This is a really obscure flight school. It has no name. Its located somewhere out of Florida, but near Tampa.

Dekkers’ reference to Atta’s first flight school—attended before he came to Huffman Aviation—went completely un-remarked upon in the national media. And Dekkers didn’t just mention the mystery flight school once or twice...

He did it numerous times. “The two men were clearly from the Middle East,” he told the New York Times on September 13. “They complained that they had begun instruction elsewhere but didn’t like the school.”

Did the New York Times ask Dekkers where “elsewhere” had been? They did not.

The Washington Post reported a similar story on Sept. 19,2001 quoting Dekkers saying Atta and Al-Shehhi showed up complaining about the experience at “another school.” “Another school.” Located where?

Did the Post ask for the name of this flight school located elsewhere? They did not. Or if they did, they’re not telling us.

Making this omission seem even more sinister is the Post’s own headline. A headline like “Hijack Suspects Tried Many Flight Schools” promises, at a bare minimum, a story containing a list of the flight schools “tried.”

When two of the largest and most respected newspapers in America are both guilty of an omission this glaring, what other conclusion is there than that a massive cover-up is in progress?

"I said up North somewhere. Why do you want to know?"

Even in his sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, 2002, Dekkers is vague about the earlier flight school attended by Atta and Al-Shehhi. This time he places it ‘up North.’ “They had stated they were unhappy with a flying school they attended up North,” Dekkers told the Committee.

Maybe they just weren't all that interested. Maybe not. Maybe the reason officials insist with a straight face that Atta did not arrive before June of 2000 is that telling the truth will open up a big ‘can of worms.’

During April and May of 1999, for example, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Ft. Myers, FL. has accused Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers of using three separate Lear jets to take 26 unsupervised and unauthorized passenger flights from Naples, Florida to numerous locations around the country. Reportedly, they were flying rich Saudi Princes around.

But whatever it was Hilliard and Dekkers were up to in 1999 proved more than a little dangerous to one man, Robert Michael Johnson. A six-passenger Cessna 210 belonging to Hilliard crashed in the Gulf two miles off the Naples Pier in early February, resulting in the death of the pilot. The cause of the deadly crash remains unclear.

Not by accident, either... “A federal investigation into a fatal plane crash offshore from Naples may be hampered because the aircraft's owner has suspended salvage operations,” reported the Feb 9, 1999 Fort Myers News-Press. "AeroJet Service Center called off the salvage operation, apparently because it was costing more than the aircraft was worth."

This news may not have helped the dead pilot’s mom gain closure. But hey... you have to break a few eggs, right?

One last example will have to suffice. We can feel a queasiness coming on, a need to excuse ourselves and go throw up.

Regular readers of the MadCowMorningNews are already well aware of Atta’s presence in Venice in April and May of 2001, where he lived right across from Rudi Dekker’s Huffman Aviation at the Venice Airport.

"Somebody didn't get the memo, okay? It was an honest mistake."

But that’s too easy. Poetic justice would be to let the FBI hoist itself with its own petard:

Mohamed Atta’s sojourn in Charlotte County is not even in the official story, which is really strange, because the FBI itself wrote a memo to the INS which was introduced in court during the deportation hearing of a Tunisian flight student at the Charlotte County Airport who was suspected of espionage.

If they had known anybody would be paying attention, they’d have probably remanded her to a military tribunal.

Professional Aviation at the Charlotte County Airport catered to a student body consisting mainly of foreign nationals from the small Mediterranean country of Tunisia, considered a moderate Arab state. There were so many Tunisians at the school that it made the news well before the 9/11 attack...

“From the steady hand on the throttle to the aviator sunglasses, Mariem Ezzahi looked every bit like the experienced pilot she hopes to be back in her native country of Tunisia,” reported the Charlotte Sun-Herald. “Mariem’s goal is to become a commercial pilot like her late father, who flew jets for Tunis Air, the country’s national airline.”

Alas, Mariem got stiffed by the owners of the school, who, come to think of it, just might get their paychecks from the same place as Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard. Dozens of Tunisian students were left stranded by the bankrupting of the flight school at the Charlotte County Airport. Wally Hilliard, who knew Mohamed Atta personally while he was “attending” his flight school, pulled the same scam in Orlando.

Many student pilots lost their life savings. The story received a flurry of local media attention. Students picketed the company’s offices and staged a sit-in. Television news crews from Charlotte County and Fort Myers broadcast their plight.

Then three of the Tunisian students attending Professional Aviation were taken into custody during the week after the attack...

One of them was 21 year-old Maryem Bedoui.

When Professional Aviation went under, Bedoui moved to Venice and took lessons from the “Quiet” Magic Dutch Boy, Arne Kruithof, located two doors down from the loudmouth Magic Dutch Boy’s school, Huffman Aviation.

During a deportation hearing in Bradenton, Florida Bedoui told the Judge that she had been friends with one of Atta’s roommates, but she denied knowing Atta, and denied involvement or knowledge of the 9/11 plot.

But the FBI wrote a letter to the immigration judge presenting evidence for why Bedoui should be deported. The letter said Bedoui attended flight schools in Punta Gorda at the Charlotte County Airport and in Venice at the same time hijackers Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were there.

And this is where the FBI get caught telling a Big Lie. Because according to the FBI’s chronology Atta and Al-Shehhi were only at Huffman Aviation from July to December 2000.

And Maryem Bedoui didn’t enter the U.S. until 2001.

The revelation that this nations chief investigative agency has knowingly fabricated their chronology of Atta’s time in the U.S. might be cause for nothing but a shrug. After all, Democratic Republics have had trouble with their own Praetorian Guards since Roman times.

But looking at the “Big Picture” may provide little solace to anyone who saw a loved one hanging half-in and half-out of a window 100 stories above the earth on the morning of September 11, 2001.

If some find it difficult to stomach taking the long view, who can blame them?

Maybe what the FBI is really trying to say is: “It just can’t be helped.”

We'll see...

http://www.madcowprod.com/08122005.html

Ono

08-13-2005, 12:35 AM

Thought you might be interested in this since you seem to be fond of Hopsicker:

http://www.veniceflorida.com/features/hopsicker.htm

Bman

08-14-2005, 12:08 AM

Thought you might be interested in this since you seem to be fond of Hopsicker:

http://www.veniceflorida.com/features/hopsicker.htm

Thanks Ono.. I hadn't seen that

That's a fairly objective article, in my opinion.. He's right about Hopsicker jumping around and asking alot of WHYs, without really coming out and piecing it altogether

But just when you're ready to write the guy off, something comes out that proves him right...

Like this Able Danger story

I think the guy has uncovered enough to keep digging

Thanks again

Bman

Ono

08-14-2005, 12:11 AM

You're welcome. I was careful to make sure it was unbiased for you. :)

Bman

08-14-2005, 12:57 AM

You're welcome. I was careful to make sure it was unbiased for you. :)

hahah.. thanks

I saw that other hatchet job they did on him recently.. Of course he rebutted it on his website.. so, whats the use of printing that whole exchange?

Bman

08-17-2005, 01:30 AM

DAY OF INFAMY 2001

'Able Danger' specialist: I briefed 9-11 staff

Army officer involved in gleaning Atta intel in 2000 speaks out

Posted: August 17, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A military intelligence specialist who says he personally told 9-11 commission staff about the fact Defense Department investigators tracking al-Qaida were prevented from passing along information on the presence of Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers in the U.S. more than a year before the terrorist attack has gone on the record about the incident.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer was involved in the Army's "Able Danger" efforts to identify and target al-Qaida on a global basis using advanced technology and data analysis, which began in 1999. He told Fox News he personally briefed commission staff in October 2003 about the Atta findings.

Though Atta's sleeper cell was identified in 2000, the information was not shared with the FBI apparently due to the Clinton-era "wall of separation" between intelligence and law enforcement. There reportedly also were concerns about the fact Atta was in the country legally at the time.

Shaffer has been working with Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., the lawmaker who last week first publicized information about the intelligence failure.

"What we talked about to the 9-11 commission was we found that these guys matched a pattern that matched the Brooklyn location" of an al-Qaida sleeper cell, Shaffer told Fox.

Staff at the 9-11 commission say nothing they received from the Pentagon backed up Shaffer's claim.

"None of the documents turned over to the commission mentioned Mohamed Atta or any of the future hijackers," a commission spokesman told the news channel.

Shaffer disputes that fact.

"I'm told confidently by the person who did move the material over that the 9-11 commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents," Shaffer noted. "I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent."

When Weldon first revealed the Able Danger information, commission staff denied they were briefed on it. Later, the panel said personnel were briefed but that the information about Atta sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about the terror leader, so it was not included in the final report. Weldon says commission staff were briefed on the matter three times.

Shaffer compared the absence of the al-Qaida info from the 9-11 panel's report to an infamous World War II attack.

"Leaving out a project targeting al-Qaida as a global threat a year before we're attacked by al-Qaida is equivalent to having an investigation of Pearl Harbor and somehow leaving out the Japanese," Shaffer said.

Fox News noted Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year over a disputed phone bill and allegations he hadn't gone through the proper chain of command to obtain an award for Able Danger. The specialist's attorney says no formal action has been taken against Shaffer.

There is growing concern that the Justice Department blocked the transmission of the intelligence from the Defense Department to the FBI because of the "wall" placed between foreign intelligence-gathering agencies and domestic law-enforcement agencies by Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.

Gorelick's later presence on the 9-11 commission was criticized by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others because she was placed in a position of reviewing her own policies during the Clinton administration.

There are also concerns that the staff of the 9-11 commission was stacked with former Clinton administration operatives who had a vested interest in covering up any of its failings.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45811

zapcomix

09-11-2005, 05:22 AM

I've been talking with another poster and we've come up with a THEORY (ie, its not PROVEN, nor do we say that it is), that perhaps the 9/11 terrorists were running drugs for the CIA but, unbenounced to the CIA, they were also double agents working for Bin Laden...
Working for the CIA running drugs... at the same time planning 9/11 with bin Laden... ... ... not PROVEN...THEORY... ...

Based on anything besides your alcohol deluted imagination.

It's easy as fuck to type whatever you want and you have the constitutional right to do so, but at the same time I (we) have that same right to tear apart your "theory." If you get humiliated in the process...well, shit happens.

Bman

10-18-2005, 11:34 PM

More evidence that terrorists were PROTECTED and even now, that knowledge continues to be surpressed.

Why?

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/printer_2418.shtml

Last Updated: Oct 18th, 2005 - 14:07:44

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Able Danger" & 9/11 Foreknowledge
by William F. Jasper
October 31, 2005

The ongoing coverup concerning the secret Able Danger operation provides further evidence that the "war on terror" is a farce.

There was nothing in outward appearance to draw attention to the four-bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse. Nonetheless, the attention of the intelligence services of Germany, the U.S., Israel, and other Middle Eastern and European countries had been drawn to the nondescript flat in Hamburg, Germany, as early as 1998. That was when Mohammed Atta signed the lease and he and Ramzi bin al Shibh moved in. Soon thereafter, it was identified by intelligence agencies as a target of interest. It became known as the hub of al-Qaeda's "Hamburg Cell."

Over the next two and a half years, dozens of al-Qaeda operatives, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 "mastermind," passed through the 54 Marienstrasse apartment. Twenty-nine al-Qaeda recruits from the Middle East or Northern Africa listed it as their registered address. Mohammed Atta would later be labeled, after the fact, as the "ringleader" of the 9/11 terrorists who hijacked four jetliners to use as missiles against targets in New York City and Washington, D.C. Atta is believed to have been the suicide pilot who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. His Hamburg roommate, Ramzi bin al Shibh, captured in Pakistan in 2002, has been described by U.S. officials as the al-Qaeda "coordinator and paymaster" for 9/11. In the months leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network were under intense scrutiny by intelligence services worldwide.

Cover Story Wearing Thin

Over the past several years, as more and more evidence has come out, it has grown more and more difficult for U.S. government officials to sustain the cover story that they had no way of anticipating the attacks. As it turns out, U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts were almost tripping over each other as they shadowed the al-Qaeda network across the face of the planet. The FBI and CIA were tracking al-Qaeda operatives and their activities in the U.S. and overseas. The National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting and recording the telephone calls of many al-Qaeda operatives, including Osama bin Laden himself. More recently, it has come to light that a super-secret Pentagon operation, known as "Able Danger," was also tracking and monitoring al-Qaeda. Using advanced computer "data mining" capabilities, the Able Danger team reportedly identified Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Midhar, and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of an al-Qaeda cell code-named "Brooklyn" because of its connections to New York City.

According to Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), in September 2000 the Able Danger team initiated at least three separate efforts to get its information on the hijackers to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." That was one year before 9/11. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Schaffer, one of the principal members of Able Danger, has stated in interviews given this past August that Able Danger had identified five al-Qaeda cells, including two of the three cells that ultimately would be used to pull off the 9/11 terror attacks. Lt. Col. Schaffer set up one Able Danger/FBI meeting in the fall of 2000. It was canceled — as were all other efforts to inform the FBI — per orders from higher-ups in the Department of Defense.

Was the intelligence developed by Able Danger of sufficient quality, specificity, and credibility that it could have and should have been used to prevent the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., that claimed almost 3,000 lives? We don't know the answer to that question since the executive branch has been blocking efforts by Congress and the public to gain access to information about Able Danger. This much we do know: first, the Clinton administration in 2000 and then the Bush administration in 2001 failed to heed the Able Danger warnings on al-Qaeda. Moreover, Clinton administration officials ordered the main Able Danger files destroyed in 2000; Bush administration officials ordered Lt. Col. Schaffer's duplicate Able Danger files destroyed in 2004. Both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration have attempted to cover up the existence of Able Danger and its findings. The official, bipartisan 9/11 Commission also covered up the existence of this operation and its findings. In recent months, members of the Able Danger team who have spoken out have been subjected to official harassment and intimidation. Considerable effort is being expended by Donald Rumsfeld's minions in the Defense Department to keep all information about this operation under wraps.

The first major exposure of Able Danger came on June 27 of this year, when Rep. Curt Weldon, who is vice chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, delivered a 45-minute speech on the House floor outlining the nature of the operation and the data it had developed on al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. Since then, Operation Able Danger has been the subject of growing controversy and intense international interest. Congressional hearings on Able Danger were scheduled, postponed, and rescheduled. Finally, on September 21, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a long-awaited hearing on Able Danger. It was a letdown; the Pentagon blocked the star witnesses from testifying. Able Danger team members James D. Smith and Lt. Col. Schaffer sat mute in the audience, prevented from testifying by the Bush/Rumsfeld Defense Department. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and other committee members, both Republicans and Democrats, angrily accused the Defense Department of obstructing the Senate's investigation.

Stung by the congressional criticism and the unfavorable public and media reaction to its stonewalling and obstruction, the Pentagon suddenly became cooperative — or so it seemed. On September 23, Senator Specter announced that new Able Danger hearings had been rescheduled for October 5 and that now the Pentagon would allow the witnesses to testify. However, Mark Zaid, the attorney for Schaffer and Smith, said the Defense Department had told him that his clients would not be allowed to testify. Mr. Zaid turned out to be correct. The October 5 hearings were canceled. When THE NEW AMERICAN contacted Mr. Zaid on October 5, he expressed the hope that there would still be hearings before the end of the year, but he had no idea when they might be.

Unfettered hearings in which Able Danger members are allowed to testify freely might provide useful information about al-Qaeda as well as about who was responsible — in both the Clinton and Bush administrations — for failing to heed the warnings of the Able Danger staff. However, there are some false assumptions underlying the arguments of Rep. Weldon and other advocates of Able Danger. Chief among these is the assumption that if only the FBI and the CIA had been given Able Danger's data on the al-Qaeda cells, they would have "taken out" the terrorists — either overseas or in the U.S. — prior to 9/11.

This line of argument dovetails with the standard conclusion of virtually every other official "investigation," to wit, 9/11 was an "intelligence failure" that demonstrated "lack of coordination and cooperation" among U.S. agencies. And the solution to this problem, we have been told, is to reward incompetence by giving the agencies involved still larger budgets and more manpower, and to combine them all together in a new gargantuan super-bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security.

However, as we noted above and will detail further below, the failure to "take out" the al-Qaeda cells before the deadly 9/11 attacks was not due to a lack of information. Whatever useful data Able Danger might have been able to offer concerning Mohammed Atta and his associates would have been superfluous. The FBI and CIA had been tracking the al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators very closely for years — both in the U.S. and overseas, using both technical means and human intelligence. Dedicated FBI and CIA field operatives had warned their superiors repeatedly and had urged them to authorize the arrest of the terrorists. Those sensible pleas by agents in the field were rejected repeatedly by decision makers at the top levels of the federal government. Even worse, as we will show, co-conspirators with the 9/11 terrorists have been allowed to remain free and roaming at large in the United States. Many U.S. decision makers, instead of being penalized for their failures (or worse) in regard to 9/11, have received promotions! The agents who tried to warn and protect the country have been muzzled.

Disturbing Pattern

The continuity of coverup and conspiracy from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration to suppress Able Danger follows a disturbing pattern that is demonstrated in these cases directly related to 9/11:

• Hamburg Cell. Mohammed Atta, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and their roommates in Hamburg came under surveillance by German intelligence and the CIA in 1998 because of their association with al-Qaeda operatives in Hamburg who had been linked to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Those operatives included Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammad Haidar Zammar, Said Bahaji, and Mounir al-Motassadek. The CIA station chief in Hamburg, Tom Volz, who posed as a U.S. embassy employee, actually tried to recruit Darkazanli as an informant in late 1999 and 2000. CIA agent David Edger shadowed the Hamburg Cell for several years, before returning to the U.S. in 2001 to take a professorship of political science at Oklahoma University at Norman, coincidentally, just a few blocks from an apartment where an al-Qaeda cell operated that included 9/11 terrorists Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Zacarias Moussaoui.

• San Diego Cell. Even the 9/11 Commission Report, which whitewashed federal government failures, acknowledged that the failure to identify hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar when they entered the U.S. was one of the biggest "lost opportunities." The CIA had tracked both men to the "secret" al-Qaeda planning meeting for 9/11 in Malaysia, where they and other participants were photographed and videotaped by the CIA and Malaysian intelligence. The FBI claims that the CIA didn't inform them about the two men, so they had no way of knowing about them.

That won't wash. Available evidence shows the FBI had multiple tails on the duo in San Diego, where Hazmi and Midhar lived with former San Diego State professor Abdussattar Shaikh, an acknowledged longtime undercover asset of the FBI! What's more, the two terrorists had regular contacts with several other area jihadists who had long been under FBI surveillance, including Omar al-Bayoumi, an agent of the Saudi government whom federal authorities acknowledge as a primary financial conduit for Hazmi and Midhar. Hazmi worked (illegally) at a San Diego convenience store/gas station owned by Osama Mustafa, a militant who had been under FBI surveillance since 1994 because of his violent threats and his membership in the PLO and PFLP terrorist groups.

These and a host of other red flags had caused FBI Agent Stephen Butler to press his superiors to take action against Hazmi and Midhar, but they refused. "He saw a pattern, a trail, and he told his supervisors, but it ended there," said one congressional investigator of Butler's predicament. FBI officials have blocked Butler from testifying before any of the 9/11 investigations.

• Phoenix Cell. FBI informant Aukai Collins, who monitored Middle East terrorist suspects for the FBI for four years in Phoenix, claims to have told the FBI about 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour while Hanjour was in flight training in Phoenix. Collins said the FBI knew Hanjour lived in Phoenix, knew his exact address, his phone number, and even what car he drove. "They knew everything about the guy," Collins claims. In July 2001, Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams sent an electronic memo to FBI headquarters in Washington outlining his investigation into area flight schools that led him to believe al-Qaeda may be using U.S. flight schools to train terrorists as pilots. He recommended that the FBI should conduct an investigation of flight schools nationally to see if this was happening. His memo was never acted on.

• Brooklyn Cell. The official 9/11 Commission Report has this to say about Ali Mohamed and his terrorist cell: "As early as December 1993, a team of al Qaeda operatives had begun casing targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and became an instructor at Fort Bragg. He had provided guidance and training to extremists at the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, including some who were subsequently convicted in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center." Known as "Al Qaeda's California connection," Mohamed worked for the FBI's Sacramento office, while training terrorists and escorting top al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on a fundraising tour of the Golden State in 1995.

Mohamed pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in 2000 and was held in U.S. custody. Incredibly, he has been released and is now again on the streets. He can hardly be anything except a government agent provocateur.

• Minnesota. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," would have gotten away scot-free if FBI officials in Washington had had their way. Thanks to FBI field agents like Coleen Rowley, who tenaciously dug in their heels on the issue, he was not released and was still in custody when the 9/11 attacks occurred.

• Norman Cell. In addition to Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the al-Qaeda cell that operated out of Norman, Oklahoma, included convicted felon Melvin Lattimore, a convert to militant Islam who now goes by the name Majahid Abdulquaadir Menepta.

Mr. Lattimore/Menepta's credit card was used to help finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing masterminded by Ramzi Yousef. He was identified by an FBI informant as a top suspect in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and was identified by witnesses interviewed by this magazine as being in the company of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Menepta's roommate Hussain al-Attas drove Moussaoui to Minnesota. According to FBI documents, 9/11 hijacker Salem al-Hazmi was also seen at Menepta's apartment, and when FBI agents visited the apartment three weeks before 9/11, they saw several men fleeing through the back door of the apartment. The airline ticket for 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah (United Airlines Flight 93) was purchased from an Oklahoma University computer terminal just a few blocks from Menepta's apartment.

Like Ali Mohamed, Mr. Lattimore/Menepta is almost certainly a federal agent provocateur. As we have reported in a previous article ("Al-Qaeda's OKC-9/11 Ties," July 26, 2004), it is almost impossible rationally to explain his record in any other way. When Menepta was picked up and prosecuted, it was for only a minor weapons violation. He was sentenced to a few months in prison and is now back on the streets. Thus, a man who has been tied to the three most important terrorist attacks in U.S. history — 1993 WTC, 1995 OKC, and 9/11 — has been purposely set loose.

The current coverup of the terrorist bombing in Norman, Oklahoma, outside the stadium during the Oklahoma University-Kansas State football game on October 1 is yet another wake-up call. The 85,000 fans inside the stadium — and a national television audience — were the intended targets. Fortunately, the suicide bomber was unable to get inside the stadium and took only his own life. However, federal authorities have rushed to cover up all evidence that the bombing was a terrorist effort involving foreign nationals.

The official story is that the bomber was a mentally unstable student, Joel Henry Hinrichs III, with no ties to Islamic jihadists. However, news organizations and confidential sources in Oklahoma have challenged that account, producing contradictory evidence showing that Hinrichs was indeed involved with a ring of Pakistanis who were Islamic fanatics. (See article on page 19.)

Time for Truth, Not Partisan Politics

Predictably, Republicans and Democrats are both trying to use the Able Danger revelations for partisan purposes, to portray the opposition as weak and irresponsible on terrorism and national security. But like the Oklahoma football bombing and a number of other incidents, the ongoing Able Danger stonewalling demonstrates a continuity of pernicious policy that transcends party lines.

According to Rep. Weldon, two weeks after 9/11 he was provided with data from Able Danger that included "an extensive analysis chart of Al Qaeda, which I immediately took to the White House and personally delivered to then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Mr. Hadley was extremely interested in the chart and said that he would take it to the President."

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, Rep. Weldon said: "And I can tell you this — I talked to Mr. Hadley three months ago when I briefed him on another issue, and I said, remember that chart that I gave you? And he said, yes, I remember it." However, Mr. Hadley, who has since been promoted to national security adviser, has been mum on the issue of that meeting.

One of the peripheral issues that has become a main bone of contention in the whole matter is whether or not the chart provided to Hadley actually included a photo of Mohammed Atta. According to Lt. Col. Schaffer and other Able Danger team members, the chart (roughly four-and-a-half feet by five feet) included a photo of Atta and showed his linkage to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the blind sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman, who was convicted and sent to prison on bombing conspiracy charges.

The Pentagon's story on the chart evolved through several stages. Initially, Defense Department officials claimed that there was no evidence that a chart ever existed. Then the chart's existence was acknowledged, but it was alleged that the data on it was non-specific. Then it was asserted that the chart had not included a photo of Atta. But on September 2, Rep. Weldon announced that on the previous day he had been to a Pentagon briefing in which officials "confirmed that five credible witnesses did see the 9/11 ringleader, Mohammad Atta, in data produced by Able Danger prior to the 9/11 attacks."

That "official" line could change again, of course, if an investigation proceeds. But Lt. Col. Schaffer and other Able Danger members are being pressured to drop the matter.

Likely as a penalty for not keeping silent, Schaffer's security clearance has been revoked. In October 2003, while stationed in Afghanistan, Schaffer briefed Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and other Commission staff members on Able Danger. According to Schaffer, Zelikow stated that this was very important information, gave Schaffer his card, and told him to get back in touch when he returned to Washington, D.C. However, Schaffer says that when he called Zelikow's office in January 2004 to set up an appointment, he was given the brush off. When he called again, he was told Dr. Zelikow had all the information he needed on Able Danger and there was no need for a meeting. Shortly thereafter he was hit out of the blue with charges that he had run up unauthorized telephone charges, to the tune of $67. According to Schaffer, the Pentagon spent "in our estimation $400,000 to investigate all these issues simply to drum up this information." That fits a pattern of retaliation against other government whistleblowers who have been faced with similar charges.

Many additional examples could be cited to amplify this pattern. It is a pattern that reflects not incompetence or "lack of coordination" but something much worse. It is a pattern of conscious, purposeful action aimed at thwarting those who are tasked with defending America in the "war on terror." It is a pattern that is being carried out by policymakers at the highest levels of our government, and it is time to ask why.

After It Happened

11-16-2005, 12:33 PM

I heard the CIA was running the 9/11 terrorist operatives: in a leash operation, and that The Base is infact an american operational group established and maintained since Aphganistan vs the Russians and since 9/11.

Drugs(intra-operational sales in Moslim countries) piracy(illegal sofware production and viral contamination) prostitution ( eastern europe) and gun smuggling for eurasia as normal destablisation, and especially in China and India, this was only a fractional part of there operational goals...Also that in somalia, the americans actually got kicked by local gangs; of which none like the moslims, even though in the US it was reported as otherwise, the oil region is the USA's ultimate goal there. It should be noted that the FBI knew of the 9/11 attack; and that they watch CIA and NSA communications and sometimes intercept organisational strains of The Base...

The first attack on the Twin Towers was stopped by the FBI the second also intercepted; yet the CIA on both occasions settled the two situations into the background, and usually they only do that for their own, black operation groups...scary. Also all attacks since Bush came to power have been centered on other parts of the coalition world, and not the US...

In the end they were all dead, so who's got the last bullet then?

After It Happened

11-17-2005, 10:37 AM

I'd rather sweat in peace...

Then bleed in war....

I saw that on a t-shirt.....

Bman

03-21-2006, 09:09 AM

Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006

FBI agent testifies supervisors blocked him from probing Moussaoui

BY JAMES GORDON MEEKNew York Daily NewsALEXANDRIA, Va. - Zacarias Moussaoui's lawyers on Monday turned another prosecution witness's testimony into evidence that could help save the al-Qaida conspirator from execution.

Minneapolis FBI Agent Harry Samit alleged that "criminally negligent" bureau supervisors in Washington repeatedly blocked him from probing Moussaoui after his Aug. 16, 2001, arrest.

The refusal by FBI headquarters to let agents search the possessions of a suspect Samit exhaustively labeled a "terrorist" in e-mails meant that clues to other operatives weren't discovered until after Sept. 11, Samit said.

"I accused the people at FBI headquarters," Samit said, referring to an internal memo he wrote after the attacks.

"Of criminal negligence?" asked defense lawyer Edward MacMahon.

"Yes, sir," Samit replied. "They obstructed."

Moussaoui's lawyers are trying to prove that he shouldn't be executed based on the government's claim that it could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks if he had admitted the al-Qaida suicide hijack plot was under way.

Samit bristled when MacMahon said he "blew an opportunity" to search Moussaoui's hotel room in secret using special intelligence-gathering authority.
"That's totally false," he said.

But Samit aimed most of his bitterness at superiors
.
The legal hurdles were like a "rectal (exam) with a microscope," he said.
Samit said he fretted to superiors that Moussaoui would hijack a London-to-New York flight and "he'd have the fuel onboard to reach D.C." The Secret Service was even alerted that Moussaoui had talked about being interested in seeing the White House and Empire State Building, he said.

"You moved heaven and earth to get a warrant to search this man's belongings," MacMahon said. The agent agreed.

In the first week of the Moussaoui trial, an FBI agent grudgingly admitted the bureau knew in the early 1990s that al-Qaida had trained operatives in karate and knives and how to hijack aircraft. The FBI also knew a decade ago that Osama bin Laden sent his personal pilot to the same Oklahoma flight school as Moussaoui, the agent said.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/nation/14148796.htm

Strike4ce

04-02-2006, 08:13 PM

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html

candypreet

04-07-2006, 01:06 AM

very good thread

Bman

04-17-2006, 11:58 PM

Updates and more info.. be sure to read this thread

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30695

Bman

09-25-2006, 10:33 AM

http://www.madcowprod.com/09062006.html

Excerpt from a long article

The Biggest Censored Story of the 21st Century

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” --Thomas Pynchon

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

September 6, 2006--Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

In the days after the 9.11 attack, virtually every television newscast in America was filled with disclaimers from the owners of the Florida flight schools which trained the hijacker pilots, hammering home the message that they only taught how to fly light planes, which in no way prepared anyone to fly jetliners, and were thus innocent of any wrongdoing.

But based on a newly-discovered brochure for a flight school owned by Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard (right), whose school taught both pilots who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the MadCowMorningNews has discovered evidence that the assertion is untrue.

A copy of a brochure from Hilliard and Dekkers’ Naples flight school, Ambassador Airways, was sent to us by a pilot and former marine who said he was fed up with corruption in Florida. The brochure, shockingly, states the flight school offers “Professional Flight Training” in the form of an “ATP Flight and Ground Training Package” which meets the “aeronautical experience requirements” necessary to become an airline transport (ATP) pilot.

The designation allows pilots to get jobs flying jets at regional carriers around the world, and may explain how Atta came into possession of an airline pilot's uniform he was said to have worn.

The 9/11 Investigation? What 9/11 investigation?

Breaking the big taboo

The new discovery highlights the inadequacy of the various 9.11 investigations while throwing a spotlight once again on the murky backgrounds and potential criminality of the individuals in the U.S., Rudi Dekkers and Wallace J. Hilliard, who hosted the terrorist hijackers. The two men are already the subject of the biggest censored story of the nascent 21st century, to wit:

Just three weeks after Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi arrived on July 3, 2000 to attend the flight school at Huffman Aviation in Venice, FL., the owner of the flight school, Wallace J. Hilliard, had his Learjet surrounded by DEA agents with submachine guns on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport.

Agents found 43 pounds of heroin, arrested everyone onboard, and confiscated the plane.

Any honest prosecutor in the country would have instantly linked the huge heroin haul discovered on the flight school owner’s plane to Mohamed Atta’s arrival at his flight school, and understood that he was looking into the heart of a continuing criminal conspiracy.

Before 9/11, someone with big clout in the Bush Administration was buying heroin from Osama bin Laden

stewey

09-27-2006, 05:43 PM

So what is your theory behind 9/11?

And why would the CIA have people have people run drugs? What purpose would it serve?

Strike4ce

10-02-2006, 09:52 AM

So what is your theory behind 9/11?

And why would the CIA have people have people run drugs? What purpose would it serve?

Yes, its a pretty stupid theory.

mez31

10-02-2006, 10:07 AM

Bman

10-02-2006, 10:52 AM

So what is your theory behind 9/11?

And why would the CIA have people have people run drugs? What purpose would it serve?

Well, let's walk this through..

Why would the CIA sell illegal arms to Iran??

To fund ILLEGAL operations that could not be paid for out of the NORMAL CIA budget.

Same thing with drugs.

The CIA has been connected to the drug trade for some time, as I have documented pretty thoroughly in this thread.

You can CHOOSE simply not to believe it. That's fine. But the evidence is there, and it makes perfect sense as to "why" they're doing it.

Same reason they sold arms to Iran, illegally. In that case they wanted to fund the Contra's in Nicaragua, but Congress had made it illegal to do so.. So the CIA had to run a "black operation" to get the money and give it to the Contras.

Do you know what I'm referring to, or is this all a big revelation to you?

Dell

10-05-2006, 07:25 AM

Bman

10-06-2006, 08:52 AM

I could see this.

The more I see, the more convinced I've become.

Bman

04-20-2007, 09:34 AM

interesting

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

April 20, 2007 Friday

Miami airport was hub of drug ring, feds say

Associated Press

MIAMI - Miami International Airport was the hub of a cocaine and heroin trafficking ring that used cargo workers to smuggle drugs, federal authorities said Thursday in announcing an indictment charging 29 people, including 12 airport workers.

The airport workers were employees of various cargo airlines that operate internationally. The smuggling operation that began in 2002 raised questions about how easily terrorists or other criminals could use similar means.

"You clearly had conspirators on the inside to help that take place," U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said of the drug operation. "That raises alarms about what may or may not be smuggled through these channels."

Announcement of the indictment came the same day that Lauren Stover, security and communications chief at the Miami airport, said in testimony to Congress that past drug trafficking rings led to improved security, such as more criminal background checks.

The investigation resulted in the seizure of more than 500 pounds of cocaine and 81 pounds of heroin. Of the 29 indicted on a variety of drug charges, 18 are in custody in the United States and six in Colombia, Acosta said. The rest are at large.

TrustButVerify

10-01-2007, 03:19 PM

I thought you might find this interesting Bman:

Who owned drug plane that crashed in Mexico?
Jet carrying $4 million in cocaine has past that includes flights to Guantanamo Bay.

By By Jay Root and Kevin G. Hall

McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Friday, September 28, 2007

MEXICO CITY — U.S. authorities are assisting the Mexican government in the investigation of an American business jet that crashed in Cancún this week with four tons of cocaine on board, officials said Thursday.

One of the men listed as the registered owners of the plane, Joao Luiz Malago, said from Brazil that his Florida-based company had sold the aircraft for $2 million on Sept. 16 to a Lakeland, Fla., man and his partner, who Malago thought was from Miami.

Malago said he feared that the man was dead because he hasn't been answering his phone.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico had no information on any U.S. citizens being killed or arrested in connection with the crashed aircraft, a 1975 model Gulfstream II.

"We're in the process of a judicial investigation that the Mexican government is conducting and we are providing information," said an embassy official, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "Part of that investigation is to find out more about where this plane came from and who had it before."

Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington and Guantánamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantánamo.

No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantánamo directly from the United States.

The jet, with the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.

The Mexican attorney general's office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatán Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons.

Two men were arrested and jailed on drug trafficking charges in Mérida, officials said. They declined to identify the men, however.

The aircraft was sold Aug. 30 to Donna Blue Aircraft, owned by two Brazilians: Malago and his partner, Eduardo Dias Guimaraes. Both men said they'd sold the aircraft to two Florida men Sept. 16.

"We are not the owners of the plane," said Guimaraes, reached in Goiania in central Brazil.

He deferred most questions to his partner, Malago, who said from São Paulo that Donna Blue purchased the aircraft in July from a company that had owned it for 10 years and then flipped it quickly to two Florida businessmen who paid for it in full.

McClatchy is withholding the names of the alleged new owners of the plane because they couldn't be reached for confirmation.

The Gulfstream was awaiting documentation when it departed at 5:10 p.m. Sept. 18 from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to Toluca, outside Mexico City, Malago said.

He said he learned of Monday's crash after receiving a call from an insurance company but had been unable to reach the new owner by phone.

He said he knew nothing of the plane's history or what use it had been put to previously.

At the time of the Guantánamo flights, the plane's operation was managed by Air Rutter International, a California-based air charter service, but was owned by someone else.

Air Rutter's owner, Bill Cripe, refused to identify that owner, except to say he was a reputable businessman. Cripe also said he didn't know about any flights to Guantánamo.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/09/28/0928mexicojet.html

TrustButVerify

10-01-2007, 03:33 PM

Drugs on crashed plane belonged to Mexico's biggest dealer

By Jay Root and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007

MEXICO CITY — The four tons of cocaine found aboard a U.S.-registered business jet that crashed in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Monday belonged to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, this country's most notorious drug trafficker, Mexican authorities said Friday.

The business jet that was transporting the dope to Mexico from Colombia was purchased just a week before the crash by a U.S. pilot with a history of legal and financial problems in Florida, interviews and official records indicate, but whether the pilot still owned the plane at the time of its crash is unknown.

The complex sale of the Gulfstream II jet and its end in the Mexican jungle highlight the increasingly complicated illicit drug trade. A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the trade generates as much as $23 billion a year for Mexico-based drug cartels.

U.S. authorities say as much as 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the U.S. is shipped through Mexico.

At least three suspects, including a Mexican pilot, are in Mexican custody. Mexican authorities say two of the men offered them money if they would give back the cocaine and release any crewmembers.

The Gulfstream II departed Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Sept. 18. In the days between then and the plane's crash, it apparently flew to Mexico, then to Colombia and was on its way back to Mexico when Mexican anti-drug aircraft intercepted it.

"The cocaine was to be delivered to El Chapo,'' said an official in the Mexican attorney general's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We do know it was from Colombia.''

Guzman has acquired an almost mythic status in Mexico. After breaking out of jail in 2001, he has repeatedly eluded capture and is revered in some parts of this impoverished nation as a Robin Hood figure who distributes some of his ill-gotten gains to the poor.

How the U.S.-registered Gulfstream ended up in the hands of Guzman's violent Sinaloa Cartel isn't clear.

A bill of sale obtained by McClatchy Newspapers indicates that Florida pilot Clyde O'Connor bought the plane on Sept. 16 — eight days before it went down in the Yucatan jungle. Another Florida pilot, identified by his license number and signature as Greg Smith, also signed the document, but his relationship to O'Connor isn't detailed.

According to electronic court records, O'Connor, 42, was found guilty of criminal safety violations — described as "improper/insufficient safety equipment or lights" — in 2001. Records also show two bankruptcy filings, one in 1997 and another in 1998.

Ten years later, his financial problems apparently had abated. Two Brazilians — the last registered owners of the plane — said O'Connor wired them $2 million to purchase the business jet earlier this month.

The Brazilians provided McClatchy with the bill of sale, but the Federal Aviation Administration said it hadn't received the change-of-ownership paperwork.

Attempts to reach O'Connor and Smith weren't successful; the listed phone number for one of O'Connor's companies, Execstar Aviation in Fort Lauderdale, was disconnected.

Interviewed by phone from the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, one of the Brazilians, Joao Luiz Malago, said Friday that O'Connor and Smith had told him they planned to resell the aircraft. The FAA confirmed that the two men are licensed Florida pilots in good standing.

Malago said O'Connor struck a hard bargain, negotiating him down from a desired sale price of $2.3 million to $2 million.

"This guy was a pain," recalled Malago. "Finally we got to a point that we found a good number for me and for him was $2 million."

Logs found on a plane-tracking Web site, www.flightaware.com, show that a flight plan was filed for the Gulfstream two days later for a trip from Fort Lauderdale to Cancun, but who piloted the craft is unknown. FAA records show that neither O'Connor nor Smith was certified to fly a multiengine aircraft like the Gulfstream. The plane crashed near Merida, 200 miles from Cancun.

Getting to the bottom of the plane's ownership and circuitous trajectory are key pieces of a criminal investigation that Mexican authorities are conducting with the aid of American diplomats and law enforcement, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, officials said.

"U.S. law enforcement and other government authorities are still looking into the history of the plane and its ownership and any possible implications that would have for criminal activity,'' said Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

Malago and his business partner, Eduardo Dias Guimaraes, had owned the plane only since August, when their Florida-based Donna Blue Aircraft, an aviation sales company, bought the plane from a holding company owned by New York real estate developer and thoroughbred horse owner William Achenbaum.

Adding to the plane's mystery are allegations that it made trips in 2003, 2004 and 2005 between the United States and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists is located.

Employees of Achenbaum wouldn't discuss how the plane was used while he owned it. They referred calls to William Cripe, who runs Air Rutter International in Long Beach, Calif. Cripe said he leased the plane for a year until it was sold, using it in his charter service. He said the plane didn't fly to Cuba or to the Caribbean while his company operated it.

(Root, of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported from Mexico City. Hall reported from Mexico City).

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/20104.html

This is from a blog:

By mac2151 | bio
McClatchy, The Miami Herald & Cannonfire have all reported on another drug jet downed in Mexico.

This second plane supposedly carried 4 tons of cocaine and crashed somewhere near Cancun. It's almost as if these drug smugglers have been cursed with the Mexican/Jet version of a kite-eating-tree.

Witnesses in Mexico claim that the drug plane kept circling until it simply ran out of fuel. Although, unverified accounts claim that the plane was being chased by a beagle, adorned with goggles & scarf, sitting atop a bullet riddled dog house. And, crash scene investigators did report finding an empty can that read "For Dogs Who Flew In World War I And Can Speak A Little French."

McClatchy let the dogs out on the story, but the post at Cannonfire and a link to Hotel Online is what got the dogs to howl'in.

This second drug plane, previously owned by William Achenbaum, worked out of Richmor Aviation & visited Gitmo.

Bojinka Conspiracy terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad, and fellow terrorists, studied at Richmor.

The post at the Hotel Online link at Cannonfire states that Achembaum wanted the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort in Miami. Achenbaum was in a pissing contest with R Donahue Peebles for the hotel. Peebles was a business associate of the late, and murdered, Gus Boulis of SunCruz/Abramoff fame.

Stuart Kapp of the law firm of Proskauer Rose was one of the lawyers representing Achembaum on the hotel deal.

Dietrich L Snell was the USA that prosecuted the Richmor trained terrorist Abdul Murad. Snell ended-up at Proskauer Rose with Achembaum attorney Kapp.

Snell also served as the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission.

Stuart Hoffman of Hunton & Williams was the attorney for Peebles. Hunton & Williams also represented at least one, or more, of the Florida casino boats.

Bruce Hoffman was the so-called terrorism expert from Georgetown who testified before Congress recently.

Total Score To Date: Good guys - 2, Bad Guys - 930.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/mac2151/2007/oct/01/beagle_2_drug_jets_0

TrustButVerify

10-01-2007, 03:54 PM

Another Blog:

Another coke jet mystery

Long-time readers will recall last year's enigma of the spooked-up Skyway jet, found on a Mexican tarmac with five tons of cocaine aboard. Now we have the sequel: A Gulfstream II jet, loaded with a similar amount of cocaine (accounts vary, but four tons is the most commonly-cited figure) crashed in the Mexican jungle near Cancun on September 26.

According to McClatchy reporters Jay Root and Kevin G. Hall, the coke belonged to the notorious -- and, in some quarters, celebrated -- drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who has a Robin Hood-eque reputation of helping the poor. The flight was delivering drugs from Colombia to El Chapo's headquarters in Mexico.

A number of oddities commend this incident to our respectful attention, not least among them the plane's history: The European press has reported that this same Gulfstream II, tail number N987SA, took part in the CIA's controversial "rendition" program, which transported prisoners to torture-friendly lands.

The suspicious flights occurred in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

This background makes the "Who owned the plane?" of rather more interest than "Who owned the coke?" We will return to the issue of ownership shortly. First, another mystery:

Why did the jet go down?

News reports from Mexico universally declare that the aircraft was spotted flying in a wide, circular pattern over the Mexican town of Tixkokob, not far from Cancun. Onlookers called the Mexican police and army. Helicopters followed the jet for over two hours until it crashed in a forested location outside the city.

No fire attended the crash, indicating that the craft had simply run out of fuel.

No bodies were found.

The obvious inference: The pilot and passengers parachuted out of the airplane. But why?

Most accounts hold that the army helicopters did not begin a pursuit until the Gulfstream was observed lingering over Tixkokob. One tenuous and unconfirmed German-language article suggests that the craft had been pursued from the moment it entered Mexican airspace. To the best of my knowledge, there are no published eyewitness reports of a pursuit craft before the army choppers were called in.

Maddeningly inconsistent reports hold that Meixican police later arrested the pilot and one or two other crew members, who were discovered some distance from the crash site. The Chinese news agency Xinhua describes the pilot as a 35 year old Colombian. According to another account, he has tried to bribe his way out of detention.

Who owned the jet?

Close followers of the 2006 Skyway tale will recall that, in the weeks before the fatal flight, the jet underwent a series of rapid ownership transfers -- even though it still carried the Skyway logo. The final "owner" was an untraceable party in Simi Valley, California.

A similar pattern obtains in the present case. The aircraft was sold at the end of August to Donna Blue aviation, located in Florida. The firm appears to be an on-paper front company for a pair of Brazilian investors, Joao Luiz Malago and Eduardo Dias Guimaraes.

A Google search on Malago indicates that he is a lawyer in Brazil who played a role in a 2006 court case in Venezeula (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://bolivar.tsj.gov.ve/decisiones/2006/julio/139-26-WP01-P-2005-012309-WP01-P-2005-012309.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DJoao%2BLuiz%2BMalago%26hl%3Den%26safe %3Doff%26rlz%3D1B2GGGL_en___US241%26sa%3DG). That case involved a Brazilian aircraft that had flown from Bogota, Colombia to Caracas, Venezuela.

Malago has told McClatchy reporters Root and Hall that he did not own the Gulfstream II with the N987SA tail number at the time of the crash. The Brazilians claim that they quickly "flipped" the airplane, selling it for $2 million to a Florida pilot named Clyde O'Connor. The drug flight began within 24 hours of this sale.

Little is known about O'Connor beyond these facts:

-- He was not licensed to pilot a Gulfstream II.
-- He filed for bankruptcy in 1998.
-- He was found guilty of a safety violation in 2001.
-- He ran a charter airline company called Execstar Aviation in Fort Lauderdale.

Execstar's suspiciously skimpy web page is here. (http://www.charterhub.com/dealers/detail.asp?pcid=1239037&guid=) The company's listed address is 5535 Northwest 23rd Avenue # 16; the phone number is (954)776-1633. At present, nobody at the company is answering the telephone. The web page lists the company's fleet: "...a Hawker, King Airs, Baron 58's, Cessna 402 for passenger service and a Cessna 207 for cargo services." No mention of the recently-purchased Gulfstream II.

This 2002 article refers to Execstar as a $4 million, 22 employee operation which benefited from the post 9/11 delays at airports. For a man who had suffered a recent bankruptcy, O'Connor apparently had surprising access to funds.

Who owned the jet at the time of the alleged rendition flights?

Here, the trail gets murky.

Before the sale to Malago, the jet was leased to (some accounts say owned by) Air Rutter International (http://www.arijets.com/), a charter airline service operating out of Long Beach, California and Farmingale, New York. Their present fleet includes four Gulfstreams and two Bombadier Challengers.

I have seen no indications that this company, run by a man named William Cripe, is anything other than a reputable and honest charter airline service. Cripe insists that the jet did not make any trips to Guantanamo or other "rendition" sites during the time when his firm used the craft. As noted earlier, those flights are said to have occurred during the 2003-2005 period; Cripe seems to have leased the jet after this time.

The man he leased it from -- the actual owner of the jet -- is a rather interesting figure: New York landowner, developer and race horse enthusiast William Achenbaum.

Achenbaum and his son Michael are best-known as the owners of the Gansevoort Hotel in New York City. They were the key figures in a heated (and rather amusing) local controversy over a billboard which critics considered an eyesore. In 2004, Achenbaum ran into difficulties when he attempted to purchase another hotel in Miami (http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2004_3rd/Aug04_PalmCrowneMortgage.html) for $54 million.

A quick Google search has uncovered no allegation of illegal activity involving Achembaum -- except for this story (http://www.sevenstories.com/closeup/index.cfm?page=hess_new.htm), which claims that a broker for Achenbaum tried to bribe a city official back in 1976.

According to this German-language article (http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/4296112/)(the reliability of which I cannot yet determine), the actual operator of the craft during the 2003-05 time frame was Richmor Aviation "which offers airplanes for subletting, some of which were used for the conspiratorial operations of the CIA." The Richmor home page is here (http://www.richmor.com/); they also have a flight school. (http://www.richmorflightschool.com/)

Richmor, based in Schenectady County, has indeed been identified in a number of stories tracking the rendition flights. See, for example, the web page here (http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=goJTI0OvElH&b=953489&template=x.ascx&action=5834) and the SourceWatch profile here (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richmor_Aviation%2C_Inc.).

At least one plane supplied by Richmor has become known as a possible transport of suspects in CIA extraordinary rendition operations. The Gulfstream jet in question is owned by Assembly Point Aviation, an Albany, New York company owned by Phillip H. Morse, a part owner of the Boston Red Socks and a successful catheter salesman.

The plane in question sported two different license tags, one was N85VM, and the other was N227SV. These two tags correspond to the Gulfstream with the serial number 1172.

This plane has made over 50 trips to Guantanamo with trips throughout the Middle East, Europe, as well as domestic flights in the US for Red Sox events.

Note the pattern: A New York businessman buys a Gulfstream which is operated by Richmor, which uses the jet for "spooky" activity.

A terror connection?

In the 1990s, the Richmor name came up during the investigation of the Bojinka terror plot, which had targeted the Pentagon and CIA headquarters.

Plotter Abdul Hakim Murad told investigators that he had received flight training in the United States -- as had ten co-conspirators, who came from Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Murad, Ramzi Yousef, and Khaled Sheik Muhammed shared an apartment in the Philippines, where police found a Richmor business card. Investigators later determined that Murad and other Bojinka conspirators had studied at Richmor (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10840-2001Sep22).

The coincidence is striking: A terrorist who hoped to destroy CIA headquarters picked a flight school later associated with CIA covert activities.

So far, I have seen no hard evidence that Achenbaum had any knowledge of the rendition flights. Indeed, at this time, only one foreign-language source links the jet to Richmor. Moreover, I know of no evidence that any previous owner of the jet was aware of the recent drug flight.

One must simply take note of two facts:

1. Acording to various published reports, the jet has a history linked to American intelligence.

2. According to a small library of books about the covert world, American intelligence has a history linked to the drug trade.

Final note: In 2005, a Clyde O'Connor living in Tamarac, Florida (a suburb near Fort Lauderdale) wrote a letter to the editor (http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2005-11-03/news/letters-for-november-3-9-2005/) which calls America a "police state." He applauds the death of a local cop (http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2005-10-20/news/a-tragedy-of-errors/) and expresses an intense dislike for the police. If O'Connor is lucky, the authorities who may now be interrogating him have never read this letter.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/09/another-coke-jet-mystery.html

Bman

10-02-2007, 12:50 PM

The coincidence is striking: A terrorist who hoped to destroy CIA headquarters picked a flight school later associated with CIA covert activities.

Just like Mohamed Atta at Huffman Aviation!

TrustButVerify

10-03-2007, 03:30 PM

The coincidence is striking: A terrorist who hoped to destroy CIA headquarters picked a flight school later associated with CIA covert activities.

Just like Mohamed Atta at Huffman Aviation!

That's what I found interesting as well...especially given that it was Florida (again) where all of these shady characters were located.

Also, the fact that O'Connor filed for bankruptcy not once...but twice (in '97 and '98) and then managed to turn up with $2million to buy a jet.

Yes this is eerily similar to Rudi Dekkers, who owned Huffman Aviation

Dekkers is a Dutch national with a highly questionable past. The St. Petersburg Times will later comment, he “seems to have benefited from the same type of casual scrutiny of visa applicants that let the 9/11 hijackers live and train here [in the US].” Even before 9/11, he has “a long history of troubled businesses, run-ins with the Federal Aviation Administration and numerous lawsuits… It is the kind of checkered history, experts say, that should have raised questions both before and after the 9/11 attacks about Dekkers’ fitness to run a school that trained pilots.” Having previously run a computer company in Holland that went bankrupt, he’d moved to Naples, Florida in 1992. After running a computer chip exporting company, he’d started Ambassador Airways. Yet he’d been so late on some of his bills there that at one point the Naples airport refused to sell him aviation fuel, even if he paid cash. At some point in 1999 the FAA revoked his pilot’s license for 45 days—a severe penalty—for several violations, including “operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner.” In spite of Dekkers’ dubious history and the fact that his Ambassador Airways is struggling, Wally Hilliard, a prominent retired businessman, loans him $1.7 million to buy Huffman Aviation.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=rudi_dekkers_1

So why do these losers with a history of financial troubles and failed business always seem to get loans of around $2Million to buy planes or open aviation companies that just all happen to be involved in drug smuggling, terrorism, and have ties to the CIA?

That's a rhetorical question ;)

TrustButVerify

10-10-2007, 07:40 PM

update, update, update!

Sloppy Tradecraft Exposes CIA Drug Plane

WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Oct 08, 2007
by Daniel Hopsicker

Seventeen months after an American-registered DC9 airliner was busted with 5.5 tons of cocaine, a major international scandal is brewing over a second drug trafficking incident in Mexico's Yucatan involving an American-registered jet owned by a dummy front company of the kind usually associated with the CIA.

A weekend visit to “Donna Blue Aircraft Inc” of Coconut Beach FL., the company which FAA records show owned the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash-landed with 3.7 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan two weeks ago, has revealed that the company’s listed address is an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.

There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed (http://www.madcowprod.com/donnablue.htm) at the Florida Dept. of Corporations, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL.

However, there were, oddly enough, a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite.

Phone calls to Butters Development (http://www.butters.com/), the industrial park's leasing agent, went unreturned.

Moreover the brief description of Donna Blue on its Internet page, apparently designed to “flesh out the ghost a little,” is such a clumsy half-hearted effort that it defeats the purpose of helping aid the construction of a plausible “legend,” or cover, and ends up doing more harm than good...

For example, the website features a quote from a satisfied Donna Blue Aircraft customer. Unfortunately his name is “John Doe.” (http://donnablueaircraft.com/testimonials.html) And the listed phone number is right out of the movies: 415.555-5555 (http://donnablueaircraft.com/contact.html).

Its known in the trade as "sloppy tradecraft."

"Its My Party and I'll Bust Who I Want To"

The biggest clue to date to the true identity of the individuals or organization operating behind the dummy front of "Donna Blue Aircraft" may lie in its initials, "DBA," for "doing business as."

It is the kind of cute nomenclature for which "the boys" are known to be fond.

For the Bush Administration, which recently launched a PR offensive announcing major gains in the multibillion-dollar anti-drug effort in preparation for asking Congress for a $1 billion Plan Colombia-type aid package to help Mexico fight drug traffickers, the controversy could not have come at a worse time.

The billion dollars in proposed U.S. aid, Mexican newspapers pointed out, will only be used to target drug traffickers with no obvious ties to American intelligence.

Leading to this extraordinary skepticism is the fact that recent investigations into downed drug planes have suffered, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border, from a certain murkiness.

New Scientific Discovery Links Drug Planes to Quarks

Mexican authorities and the American DEA have apparently concluded that Mankind’s knowledge of the ownership of large commercial and business jets busted carrying multi-ton loads of narcotics is governed, like the understanding of the movement of subatomic quarks, by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

The more influential the listed owner of the plane is, the more uncertain the identification becomes. The whole business, suggested a story which ran on the Associated Press (http://www.madcowprod.com/knight_ridder_washington_bureau.htm), quickly moves beyond the realm of human ken…

“How the U.S.-registered Gulfstream ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery,” reported the Associated Press.

How indeed? Let’s take a look.

When the company’s principals, Joao Luiz Malago and Eduardo Dias Guimaraes, both Brazilian, forcefully denied that they still owned the plane, claiming it had been sold several weeks earlier to two American pilots in Florida, officials at the DEA (which sent a six-man team to the Yucatan crash site) the FBI, and the FAA were all conspicuous by their silence.

Since then, there has been a growing perception expressed in the Mexican press that the owners of both of the American-registered drug plane’s seem to enjoy an apparent immunity from prosecution.

Set a Straw Man Up, Set a Straw Man Down

The proprietary company of the unit, Donna Blue Inc. Aircraft (DBA), is another mystery and probably it is a ghost company,” reported Mexico City’s La Reforma.

Indications point to the conclusion that their skepticism is justified.

Increasing suspicion even more was the suggestion, in a report of a committee of the European Parliament, that in addition to having been used in drug trafficking the Gulfstream II had flown CIA rendition flights to Guantanamo.

Unnamed authorities quoted in Associated Press accounts dismissed this report, saying there was no evidence the plane flew renditions, but failed to address the fact that Guantanamo is highly restricted airspace, and any plane landing there can be presumed to be working for the U.S. Government.

What has raised the crash-landing of the Gulfstream II drug plane with U.S. Government connections to the level of real outrage is its extraordinary similarity to the DC9 airliner caught a year and a half ago, after which the planes’ registered owner suffered no ill consequences from having his airplane caught with 5.5 tons of cocaine onboard.

There are “wonderful similarities,” Mexican newspaper Por Esto reported drolly, “between the Gulfstream which crash-landed in the tiny hamlet of Tixkokob and the DC9 busted in Ciudad del Carmen which help explain why, despite the fact that almost 18 months has passed, the American owner of the DC9 has not been charged with any crime.”

Ghost Fleets of Ghost Planes owned by Ghost Companies

The reference is to information contained in a series of articles in the MadCowMorningNews detailing connections between the DC9 and the national Republican Party, like its unpaid use flying current Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez around the state during his last week blitz before his election to the Senate in 2004.

The DC9’s owner was identified in FAA documents as Royal Sons’ Inc., owned by Frederic Geffon of St. Petersburg.

Yet despite the fact that Geffon back-dated sales documents and then had them faxed to the FAA several days after his DC9 was already in the news for the big bust, no action has been taken against Geffon, or any other owners of the plane.

Geffon claimed he had sold the DC9, several weeks before it was caught, and identified the buyer as an “airplane broker” in California who investigation revealed has no history of selling airplanes.

The circumstances of the subsequent “investigations” share many similarities. The governments involved—Mexico, the United States, Venezuela, and Colombia—all appear unable to agree on who owned the planes when they were busted.

In both cases Mexican authorities were quick to arrest individuals who authorities labeled crew members on the drug flights.

The Third Rail, The Big Taboo, & The Big Fix

But the plane’s ownership has been made to appear “murky,” although the owners of the planes at the time they were caught are clearly named in FAA documents. And both plane’s American owners appear to be escaping Scot-free.

Could the confusion be deliberate?

An aviation executive in Venice thought so. "When it comes to registering airplanes, it’s the Wild West out there," he explained. “An airplane is a mobile, big ticket item. Yet there are no airport police doing ramp checks, or checking N numbers at airports.”

“The FAA system for registering airplanes is little-changed from when it was started back in the good ol boy days of the 1930’s. Each plane has a paper folder, for example, stuffed with all correspondence regarding airworthiness and ownership relating to that plane.”

“Its an antiquated system which some feel is kept deliberately in place to encourage a certain ambiguity when a plane is interdicted. When a change of registration is mailed in, the FAA places a plane’s folder in what they call “suspense.”

“That’s a tremendous inducement to anyone with a chance of having a plane nabbed to keep floating sales in progress. The CIA, for example, is very adept at keeping files on its planes “in suspense.”

An airplane associated in some way with the U.S. Government, said an aviation source with a smirk, would have definite advantages for a drug smuggler.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on...

The first incident—the DC9 “Cocaine One” saga studiously ignored in the American press, save for an error-filled apologia in the plane’s owners hometown St. Petersburg Times—dropped from sight quickly with no apparent serious ramifications.

Two weeks ago in the Yucatan, events took a similar turn. And both incidents now seem headed for similar outcomes.

Today only elements of the “wised-up” Mexican press are crying foul.

After being owned for nearly a decade by ARI, Air Rutter International, the Gulfstream apparently changed hands-- at least two, and by one account, three--times in recent weeks.

However the MadCowMorningNews has learned new details that throw suspicion on the claim that two American pilots in Fort Lauderdale Florida could have paid $2 million cash, as described by Donna Blue execs, for the Gulfstream II business jet...

It's a deadly game of musical chairs. What will happen when the music stops?

http://www.madcowprod.com/10092007.html

Bman

10-13-2007, 03:02 PM

That's what I found interesting as well...especially given that it was Florida (again) where all of these shady characters were located.

Also, the fact that O'Connor filed for bankruptcy not once...but twice (in '97 and '98) and then managed to turn up with $2million to buy a jet.

Yes this is eerily similar to Rudi Dekkers, who owned Huffman Aviation

So why do these losers with a history of financial troubles and failed business always seem to get loans of around $2Million to buy planes or open aviation companies that just all happen to be involved in drug smuggling, terrorism, and have ties to the CIA?

That's a rhetorical question ;)

You have done well, young Jedi!

malum

10-13-2007, 03:48 PM

Conspiracies built on lies are bound to fall...

'LOVER': Amanda Keller

"It was my bad for lying. I really didn't think about it until after I did it."
By HEATHER ALLEN

heather.allen@heraldtribune.com (heather.allen@heraldtribune.com)

For five years, Amanda Keller has been portrayed by conspiracy theorists as Mohamed Atta's lover.

But the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11. And, for the first time, federal investigators say she's right.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060910/NEWS/609100466/1007/BUSINESS

I believe there is some very good journalism on this subject being done by Daniel Hopsicker at www.madcowprod.com (http://www.madcowprod.com)

http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6022004.html

“Top Ten Things You Never Knew About Mohamed Atta.”

From “Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9/11 Cover-up in Florida.”

from page 1

NUMBER 10: Intimidated Witness #1: Atta's American girlfriend.

Mohamed Atta had an American girlfriend with whom he lived for two months in Venice, FL., a lingerie model named Amanda Keller. You haven’t heard her story because she was intimidated into silence by the FBI.

In the aftermath of the attack she spoke only a dozen words to the press: “I can't really discuss anything. I'm afraid I'll get in trouble."

NUMBER 9: Mohamed Atta, Beastie Boys fan.

Atta often listened to them non-stop.

“One time I got mad cause he broke one of my knick-knacks, so I snapped his CD’s in half,” said Amanda Keller, his erstwhile American girlfriend. “I broke all of his CD’s, cause they drove me crazy, he played the ‘Beastie Boys’ nonstop."

In the aftermath of the argument, Atta told her why he was such a big fan. “He told me about this girl he’d dated in France, that had his son,” said Keller. “He didn’t tell anyone else about that, for some reason he felt he could spill his guts to me. His son was like nine, he said. He said his son was the reason he liked the Beastie Boys so much, cause they were his son’s favorite band.”

NUMBER 8. Mohamed Atta, Islamic Party Animal

"Atta and his crew were always flush with lots and lots of money," said Stephanie Frederickson, a 50-year old housewife and foster mother who with her husband lived right next door to Atta’s apartment. “Those guys were all really party animals."

During their brief time together, Amanda and Atta went out almost every night, she said, and were part of a social scene at clubs like Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota. “When we went out we would meet pilots from Africa, Germany, and there were always lots of Arabs.”

In fact, Atta was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore enough expensive gold jewelry that a waitress in Venice thought he might be in the Mob.

NUMBER 7. Mohamed Atta liked pork chops.

“Islamic fundamentalist” Mohamed Atta loved pork chops, according to former girlfriend Amanda Keller. In fact, she said this was 'fanatical Islamo-fascist' Atta's one endearing trait.

Devout Muslims don’t eat pork, do they?

NUMBER 6. Mohamed Atta didn’t come to the U.S. to learn to fly.

Atta was already a licensed pilot when he arrived in the US., with pilot’s licenses from half a dozen countries, and while at Huffman Aviation was not treated like a 'newbie' pilot, but accorded the privileges of a flight instructor.

And instead of attending just one flight school, Huffman Aviation, as the FBI states, his path took him through at least three Florida flight programs, not including his visit to a flight school in Oklahoma and a stint at the first flight school he attended in the U.S., whose name, oddly enough, remains unknown.

If Atta's real reason for being in Florida wasn’t to go to flight school... “why then was he here?”

That facts this basic remain unknown illustrates the extent of the official blackout on information about 9/11.

NUMBER 5. Mohamed Atta's email list included people working for U.S. Defense contractors.

One, for instance, worked for Canadian firm Virtual Prototypes, which helped develop the avionics for F-15, F-22 and B-2.. Mohamed Atta’s kept an email list, showing him to have been in contact with employee's of US Defense contractors.

Atta’s emails are reprinted in "Welcome to Terrorland's 40-page Appendix, filled with never before seen photos and documents about the terrorist conspiracy.

NUMBER 4. Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer’s School at Maxwell Air force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Witnesses there recall him having been introduced around at an officers' club party. Mohamed Atta and at least five other of the nineteen terrorists participated in military training at secure military facilities in the United States. A 'Mohamed Atta' attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Others of the terrorists studied in exchange programs at US Defense installations like the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA.

NUMBER 3. Mohamed Atta got dumped by his American girlfriend.

“The day I stopped liking him,” Keller says today, “was when I saw him for the first time out at the pool. He was wearing a lime-green Speedo. He had a flanky ass.”

He had also embarrassed her in a night club, which turned out to be the beginning of the end. “We were at Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota near the quay,” Amanda stated. “Angelina, Olivia, Timothy, Juergen, Sabrina, Mohamed, Wolfgang…they were all there.”

“And Mohamed, like a dumbass was standing on top of a speaker dancing. The man could not dance to save his life, he was real stiff, just kind of shaking, doing the ‘Roxbury head bob’ thing. He just embarrassed me instantly when we got there, and I just pretended I didn’t know him.”

NUMBER 2. Mohamed Atta was in Venice, Florida at least three times during the last six weeks of his life.

The FBI is covering this fact up, perhaps because it will lead to questions about the identities of those who Atta had gone to the retirement community on Florida’s Gulf Coast to meet, which included “Magic Dutch Boy” Rudi Dekkers.

And, the NUMBER 1 Thing You Never Knew About Mohamed Atta:

1. Mohamed Atta was a psychopath.

“He told me he’d get even with me,” Amanda Keller said, after she threw him out of the apartment they shared. “He said, ‘You will be sorry for this.’”

He revenged himself by disemboweling her pet cat and and dismembering its half-dozen baby kittens, then strewing the pieces around her apartment to be discovered when she returned home from work after a long night at the “lingerie model” escort service in Sarasota she worked for to the apartment that was now hers alone.

Amanda kept a pet dog, and several cats as well, one of whom had just had a litter, she informed us haltingly. There were six adorable kittens. But when she flicked on the lights in her apartment, she didn’t hear any noises coming from them, and she couldn’t see any of the kittens...

Voice cracking with horror, she told us what she saw when she turned on the light: pieces of dead kittens—kitten parts—strewn all over the living room. “She(the mother cat) had had a litter of six. Only one survived…The mother was gutted on my kitchen table. And there were little baby cat parts all over the place.”

“The only ones to survive were my little dog that hid under the couch, and my Siamese who sat on top of the fridge behind the cookie jar. My friend Page came in with me, and helped me pick up little kitten parts that were all over the apartment.”

Chopping up kittens across from the Venice Airport

In an apartment directly across the street from the Venice Airport, the American girl who had just spurned Atta was on her hands and knees picking up kitten parts. Amanda Keller moved out of the apartment that same day, and never returned.

Numerous descriptions of Atta have painted him as menacing, dark, glaring, sometimes just wooden. We even heard speculation, from people who had been in his presence in Venice, that they suspected he might have been brainwashed.

But after listening to Amanda Keller’s story, which we will see fully corroborated by credible witnesses, we can answer one of the open questions about the 9/11 attack: Why was Mohamed Atta chosen to commit one of history’s most unspeakable crimes?

Because he could. He was capable of it. Not just capable... he was perfect for the job. He does not deserve the ‘heroic suicide’ mantle placed on his shoulders by aggrieved Arab radicals. Any self-respecting Islamic fundamentalist should be ashamed that he sprang from their number. Atta wasn’t a hero. He belonged in a psych-ward.

Mohamed Atta was a psychopath. A Kitten Killer. We’re in Jeffrey Dahmer territory here.

Bman

02-01-2008, 02:49 PM

http://www.madcowprod.com/headmanled.gif

January 31, 2008
by Daniel Hopsicker

New revelations in the broadening scandal kicked off by two CIA and Dept of Homeland Security-linked airplanes busted in Mexico with multi-ton loads of cocaine point to a level of criminality and turpitude well beyond the corruption at U.S. Customs in South Florida to which officials have already admitted.

A central figure in the Customs corruption probe is Guyanese pilot Michael Francis Brassington, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, a name familiar to readers who have followed the unfolding and still largely untold story of the activities and associates of the terrorist hijackers while in Florida...

Michael Brassington was the co-pilot on a drug running Lear jet (N351WB) caught by DEA agents at Orlando Executive Airport in July of 2000 carrying 43 pounds of heroin.

The Lear jet’s owner, Wallace J Hilliard, also owned the Venice FL flight school where, at that very moment, the two terrorist pilots who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center Towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, were receiving flight training.

Today's $64,000 Question

In the current Customs scandal Brassington is under suspicion for trafficking drugs, passports, people, currency, and diamonds into the U.S. through two airports in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with the assistance of high-level officials in U.S. Customs and the FAA.

Discovery of Brassington’s participation in the rampant Customs corruption in South Florida raises questions about whether the criminal turpitude of officials there may have contributed to the breech in American national security which allowed 19 terrorist hijackers, whose identities in some cases were already known to authorities, to roam freely in the U.S. before the 9/11 attack.

In other words, was a dirty operation engaged in drug trafficking and weapons smuggling, run with assistance from the highest levels of the U.S. Government, responsible for creating the opening which allowed 19 terrorists to murder 3000 people?

The Alphonso Bowe Smuggling Group, LTD.

We first learned of Brassington’s recent activity from a former Customs Agent, who was able to confirm that Brassington was the co-pilot when Wally Hilliard’s Lear jet was busted in Orlando.

When Brassington entered the U.S. through Customs at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on April 6th, 2004, the agent on duty was a rookie Customs inspector working the night shift at the General Aviation Facility.

J. L. Sanders was the unlucky Inspector charged with checking Brassington through Customs that night. When he entered Brassington’s name into his computer, the July 2000 heroin bust came up on his screen.

Nor was that Brassington's only red flag.

“In the 'active lookout' it stated Brassington was known for bringing in suspect passengers,” Sanders told us.

“Brassington handed me a manifest for the flight from Executive Flight Support, which I found out later was owned by Wally Hilliard, and managed by Afphonso Bowe,” Sanders stated. "So Brassington apparently still has some kind of financial relationship with Hilliard.”

Huffman Aviation flight school owner Wally Hilliard is the owner of Executive Flight Support FBO (fixed base of operations) in Nassau. Alphonso Bowe manages the facility for him.

“The charter company Brassington was flying for is controlled by a family suspected of running an organized drug ring," said Sanders.

“In the Customs computer system, the terminology used to describe the criminal organization associated with Executive Flight Support is the ‘Alfonso Bowe Smuggling Group.’

"Here's my card. Call us when she comes out of the coma."

Other indications that Michael Brassington might be operating with a wink and a nod' from corrupt government officials can be found in recent documents.

An “unusual” relationship between Brassington and U.S. officials is hinted at in the sometimes harsh wording of an NTSB decision affirming an emergency order of revocation issued against the pilot in 2005 for a variety of violations, including a spectacular near-fatal crash at Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey in February 2003.

The airplane accident for which he was facing the music was so colorful it led the local evening news that night in New York City...

Brassington was piloting a Challenger business jet which overran the runway during an aborted takeoff, ploughed through the airport fence, and went flying across a busy highway, slamming into a moving automobile before coming to rest after crashing into a warehouse.

The plane was demolished. Injuries were remarkably few, except for an innocent civilian driving down the street minding his or her own business…

“One passenger in the car remains in a coma,” a story about the crash reported dryly, “while lawyers wait in the wings.”

For all this, Brassington's punishment seemed remarkably light to one NTSB administrator, who put his feelings into a dissenting opinion...

“My expectation of the Administrator in pursuing egregious safety violations of this nature is that she would pursue every violation demonstrated by the evidence. (Yet) for reasons not explained in the record, (italics ours) the Administrator chose to allege a violation of the safety check requirement for only the flight on January 2, 2005.”

Magically Mushrooming

The CIA drug plane scandal began when two American-registered planes with ties to the CIA and the Dept of Homeland Security were caught in Mexico’s Yucatan, a popular refueling stop between Colombia and the U.S.

The first, a DC9 airliner (N900SA) busted carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine, had been painted to impersonate aircraft from the Dept of Homeland Security.

The Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) caught in September with at least 4 tons (estimates vary) had been used in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition operation for several years. Prior to that, pilot Greg Smith flew for both the CIA and DEA in operations in Colombia during the 1990’s, Narco News reported, and mainstream media sources in Colombia state the Gulfstream was often seen there.

The scandal mushroomed exponentially last month when Mexico’s Attorney General announced that the sale of the two drug running American planes had been part of a huge 50-plane deal between Mexico’s dominant Sinaloa cartel, and unnamed sellers.

The Mexican Attorney General’s announcement diplomatically left the American side of the equation unstated. But if the Sinaloa Cartel hadn’t purchased the 50 planes from the pages of Trade-a-Plane, they had, presumably, dealt with as-yet unnamed drug lords in the U.S.

Drug Lord-less U.S. goes it alone... again.

The problem is immediately obvious. Top DEA officials have stated categorically that there are no American drug lords.

Once again, the U.S. is alone among nations.

The scandal also claimed its latest victim yesterday, with the arrest of the Chief of Staff and head of intelligence of the Judicial Police, Ricardo McGregor, in Mexico City.

McGregor is accused of giving a “heads up” to suspected Sinaloa cartel money man Pedro Alphonso Alatorre to move large sums from one of his money exchanges in advance of the arrest for paying $50 million in laundered money to buy 50 planes in the U.S.

Customs corruption in Mexico and Latin America is an ingrained and decades old practice historically used by political leaders there for personal purposes and to pay off political debts.

But in the case of the two downed American planes, Mexican authorities have so far charged, in addition to McGregor, dozens of government employees and officials, from local police officers to Federal Police, Civil Aviation officials, Airport Administration personnel, and even two pilots working for Mexico’s National Water Commission.

A pilot who 'disappears'

This is not to say that things are jes’ all right south of the border, and that no sleight of hand is being practiced.

One example: when the Gulfstream business jet crashed, Mexican newspapers reported that government authorities caught the pilot, Edic Munoz Sanchez, who had been injured in the crash. They even published his mug shot.

In later reports, however, his name has been completely dropped. When seven people were charged with being present at the scene recently, his name was absent.

He has been "disappeared."

In stark contrast, American authorities have been totally silent. No officials have been charged, with no indication given that even the American owners of the two planes at the time they were caught are under suspicion.

"Eleven months and change and we're gone"

Well, maybe not entirely silent. There has been a certain amount of discreet passing-the-buck at the DEA in the form of denials by officials there of either any DEA investigation or involvement in the case.

Several DEA sources have stated that the reason there is no DEA investigation ongoing is that, because the case involves corruption in a U.S. Custom’s “rogue operation,” it is being investigated internally by the Inspector General’s Office in the Dept. of Homeland Security.

However, the MadCowMorningNews has learned that the existence of any federal investigation in the scandal remains a matter of speculation.

An official in the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office, Tamara Faulkner, told the MadCowMorningNews in a phone call last week that the Department’s practice is to neither confirm nor deny the existence of any internal investigation conducted by the Inspector General’s office.

So, let's see... Two American planes carrying ten tons of cocaine worth at least several hundreds of millions of dollars get caught red-handed. No Americans are charged with any crime.

And you and I, the American people, are not entitled to know if there's any federal investigation.

What we want to know is: how does that make you feel?

But don't tell us. Tell them.

http://www.madcowprod.com/01312008.html

TrustButVerify

04-13-2008, 03:30 AM

Cocaine planes make a "Bogotá Connection"

By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Fri Apr 11th, 2008 at 09:18:22 PM EST

Federal Aviation Administration records obtained recently by Narco News offer some razor sharp evidence that a fat line of connections in the ongoing cocaine plane mystery leads right back to the nose of the U.S. government.
At the time a Gulfstream II jet, packed with nearly four tons of cocaine, crashed in Mexico’s Yucatan on Sept. 24 of last year, the owners of that jet were Clyde O’Connor and Greg Smith — both pilots who hail from Florida.

Both men have since vanished like vapor in the wake of that ill-fated Gulfstream II’s misadventure, but the paper trail has now caught up to them.

The Gulfsteam II jet (with the tail number N987SA) has been linked to past use in the CIA’s terrorist rendition program, according to media reports and an investigation by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
And now, via FAA and other documents obtained by Narco News, both Smith and O’Connor have been connected to yet another jet that has been used by U.S. government agencies (including the DEA, FBI and CIA) to advance covert operations targeting Latin America.

That jet is a Hawker business-class cruiser with the tail number N230TS. FAA records show that between Feb. 9, 2001, and June 16, 2005, Clyde O’Connor bought and sold this Hawker jet a total of five times through a series of three companies in which he is listed as an officer or “member.” In other words, O’Connor was essentially moving the Hawker jet back and forth between companies he controlled, according to the FAA records.

Those companies are the following:

Shewcon LLC of Miami, Fla.; Edax Investment Corp. of Nassau, Bahamas; and Core Investments of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (See link to the FAA records here.)

This is the same Clyde O’Connor who, according to a bill of sale, was listed along with Greg Smith as the owner of the Gulfstream II cocaine jet when it crashed in Mexico in late September 2007.

The Bogotá Connection

The man at the center of this latest intrigue over the cocaine planes is a known CIA asset named Baruch Vega.

Pleadings filed as part of a DEA agent’s wrongful termination case brought before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board in 2004 describe Vega as a “FCI-CI or Foreign Counterintelligence Service Confidential Informant, who had been brought in by the CIA.”

Vega claims that between 1997 and 2000 an individual named Greg Smith — the same Greg Smith listed on the bill of sale for the Gulfsteam II — was brought in by the FBI to pilot some 25 to 30 flights between Florida and Latin America as part of a U.S. government-sanctioned operation targeting Colombian narco-traffickers. Vega played a key role in that operation, which involved the DEA and FBI as well as the CIA — all using Vega as their common asset.

Vega also concedes that he is not really certain whom Smith worked for at the time, despite the FBI introduction. “He could have been working with CIA or U.S. Customs. I don’t really know,” Vega says.

In a lawsuit Vega filed in September last year in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., he claims that the U.S. government owes him $28.5 million for the services he provided as part of that U.S.-government-sanctioned operation, which helped the U.S. government net 114 Colombian narco-trafficking targets.

From Vega’s lawsuit, filed on Sept. 21:

In or about 1996 and 1997, [Vega] became a documented confidential informant for the United States of America, specifically, two federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and later, for the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”).
… Mr. Vega was not a traditional informant and his methodology was anything but parochial. Mr. Vega engineered a plan/program that proved to be innovative and very successful.

Mr. Vega would play and later, in fact did play, the role of an intermediary (or broker) between Colombian drug traffickers, some then unknown (and thus, unidentified) to U.S. law enforcement, others already identified (by their real names or nicknames as “suspects”) by U.S. law enforcement and, others already indicted, for drug trafficking and/or money laundering charges in various federal districts across the United States of America.

Vega’s plan, as explained in his pleadings, involved what might best be described as an elaborate U.S. government-sanctioned extortion scheme. Vega, “at great danger to himself,” approached Colombian narco-traffickers and convinced them to “negotiate their criminal exposure” with the U.S. government rather than waiting to be indicted, arrested and extradited, Vega claims in his litigation.

Vega leased the Hawker jet (tail number N230TS) used for these narco-trafficker recruiting missions through Smith’s Florida-based company, called Aero Group Jets, according to the MSPB pleadings.

However, Vega ran into a problem in the course of his work in Latin America. He and a Florida team of DEA agents involved in the operation uncovered a pattern of corruption in the U.S. Embassy in Colombia.

This corruption, since dubbed the Bogotá Connection, was revealed in a series of government documents uncovered previously by Narco News, including an internal U.S. Justice Department document known as the Kent memo, which advances detailed allegations of a criminal conspiracy involving corrupt U.S. law enforcers who operated in league with corrupt Colombian police, key Colombian narco-traffickers and paramilitary groups.

After Vega and the Florida DEA agents reported this alleged corruption in early 2000, they became the targets of a criminal investigation themselves (prompted by charges made by the top DEA agent in Bogotá at the time) and the alleged corruption in the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá was subsequently covered up, according to the Kent memo and DEA sources.

Vega was arrested in late March 2000 and spent 52 days in jail before he was released. The criminal investigation against him and the Florida agents was eventually dropped for lack of evidence. However, Vega was later subjected to an IRS investigation, which resulted in a misdemeanor charge for failing to file his 1998 tax return on time. In the course of the ordeal, Vega was outed as a CIA asset.

Paper shuffle

In late 1999, Vega made an offer to purchase the Hawker jet from its owner, a Florida company called Lonestar Aviation Inc. Smith, through Aero Group Jets, served only as a chartering service for the jet, but did not hold the title to the aircraft, Vega says.

However, about a month prior to his arrest, and while he was flying in the Hawker on missions for the U.S. government, Vega alleges the jet was essentially stolen out from under him, despite some $200,000 he claims had been deposited toward the lease/purchase deal.

Documents filed with the FAA include both a lease/purchase contract for the Hawker, allegedly signed by Vega, as well as a lease termination agreement, also allegedly signed by Vega and dated Feb. 9, 2001. Vega insists he never signed either of those documents and alleges those documents contain forged signatures.

At the request of Narco News, two federal law enforcement veterans with experience in examining handwriting — though neither of them handwriting experts — reviewed the signatures on the FAA documents, as well as Vega’s signature on the original “offer to purchase” document, which Vega provided to Narco News and which he says contains his real signature.

One of the law enforcers concluded that all of the signatures likely belonged to Vega while the other law enforcer concluded that the signatures on the FAA documents appeared to be penned by an individual (or individuals) other than Vega.

As a result, absent expert analysis, you, kind reader, will have to make your own determination as to Vega's veracity on this matter. The signatures can be found at this link [FAA documents with Vega’s signature] and at this link [the “offer to purchase” document with Vega’s verified signature].

Vega clams that after he was released from jail in the summer of 2000, he attempted to catch up with the Hawker jet, hoping to clean up the loose ends on the lease/purchase deal. However, he alleges that an FBI agent contacted him and ordered him to “stay away” from the Hawker. Vega says he had little choice but to comply at that time since he was still in the scopes of a criminal investigation.

Vega contends he had no knowledge of what happened to the jet after that point, until Narco News contacted him with the information contained in the FAA documents.

The importance of this small matter of signatures boils down to whether Vega was an active participant in moving the Hawker jet to O’Connor’s various and apparent shell companies, or whether he is, as he claims, a victim of some larger conspiracy.

“This is too coincidental for all these same players to be involved in this [the Hawker and the Gulfstream II jets],” Vega says.

More coincidences

Smith and his partner O’Connor purchased the Gulfstream II jet, according to FAA records and the bill of sale, about a week before its cocaine payload unexpectedly hit the ground in Mexico’s Yucatan last fall. The seller was a Florida company called Donna Blue Aircraft Inc. — which is owned by two Brazilians, one of whom is Joao Malago, who also is a business partner in a company called Atlantic Alcohol with an individual named Larry Peters, owner of Florida-based Skyway Aircraft Inc.

Atlantic Alcohol, which has operations in Brazil, the British West Indies and the Dominican Republic, is based at 341 8th Ave. Southeast in St. Petersburg, Fla., according to Dun & Bradstreet, a popular business research service. That’s the same address listed on the Web site for Larry Peters’ Skyway Aircraft Inc.

Skyway Aircraft Inc. sold a Beech 200 aircraft to a Venezuelan purchaser in October 2004, about a month before it was apprehended in a Nicaraguan cotton field linked to a payload of some 1,100 kilos of cocaine. The Beech 200 was found in Nicaragua bearing a false tail number (N168D), which FAA records show is registered to a North Carolina company called Devon Holding and Leasing Inc.

According to press reports and an investigation conducted by the European Parliament into the CIA’s terrorist rendition program, Devon Holding is a CIA shell company and N168D is a tail number to a CIA aircraft.

In addition, Skyway Aircraft Inc. in December 2006 sold a Cessna Conquest II aircraft to a Venezuelan purchaser allegedly linked to a drug trafficking organization, according to a pending criminal case filed in October 2007 in federal court in Miami. Between October 2003 and January 2008, a total of nine aircraft were registered to Skyway Aircraft Inc. just prior to being exported to Venezuelan purchasers, including the Beech 200 and Conquest II, FAA records show.

Information on where the Hawker jet was during the four years that O’Connor’s various companies owned it was not available.
However, in June 2005, O’Connor’s Core Investments sold the Hawker to a company called Dodson International Parts Inc. of Rantoul, Kansas, FAA records show.

Dodson emerged from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in December 2004, court records show, and lists as one of its affiliates a company called Dodson Aviation. The president of both companies is Robert L. Dodson Jr., according to the bankruptcy court records.

Dodson Aviation made headlines back in 2004 in relation to another jet that it sold to some African purchasers.

The Kansas City Star reported at the time:

A Rantoul, Kan., firm says it faxed to the American Embassy in South Africa on Wednesday sale documents for an airliner seized by Zimbabwe authorities claiming it ferried mercenaries.
The nearly 40-year-old plane was seized by President Robert Mugabe's forces on Sunday. The government says that instead of carrying just a crew of seven as claimed, the plane had 64 persons aboard along with supplies that might be construed as military material.

A tail number from the plane suggested that it was registered in the United States to Dodson Aviation in Rantoul. The company, however, said the federal registry is lagging behind its sale of the Boeing 727-100 turbo jet.

Company director Robert Dodson Sr. said the sale was completed March 1, after weeks of negotiations with Logo Logistics Co., a firm he believed to be a South African diamond mining company.

It’s worth noting what the online investigative publication TalkingPointsMemo had to say about Dodson’s plane mishap at the time:

If you've been reading the news the last few days you may have noticed this odd and somewhat mysterious story of a US-registered cargo plane loaded with 64 "mercernaries" and various military equipment which was impounded Sunday night at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe "after its owners had made a false declaration of its cargo and crew."
When asked about it on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said "We have no indication this aircraft is connected to the U.S. government."

The comment from the State Department is quite revealing, since it appears this whole cocaine planes mystery might well be a simple case of planes flying quite purposefully with “no indication.”

Stay tuned ….

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2008/4/11/211822/931

Bows

04-24-2008, 01:07 AM

pilobolus

05-13-2008, 07:50 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URVaQ3v0svE

Bman

10-27-2009, 10:35 PM

CIA wouldn't be involved in the heroin trade in Afghanistan, would it?

nah..never
October 28, 2009

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

By DEXTER FILKINS (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per), MARK MAZZETTI (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and JAMES RISEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/james_risen/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
This article is by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen.

KABUL, Afghanistan (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) — Ahmed Wali Karzai (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/ahmed_wali_karzai/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/opium/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org), and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/obama-defends-afghanistan-timetable/?scp=1&sq=caucus%20afghanistan%20obama%20strategy&st=cse).

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/hamid_karzai/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org) as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperated with American civilian and military officials, but did not engage in the drug trade and did not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/muhammad_omar/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai’s role in the drug trade (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html) were not conclusive.

“There’s no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/drug_trafficking/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), certainly nothing that would stand up in court,” said one American official familiar with the intelligence. “And you can’t ignore what the Afghan government has done for American counterterrorism efforts.”

At the start of the Afghan war, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, American officials paid warlords with questionable backgrounds to help topple the Taliban and maintain order with relatively few American troops committed to fight in the country. But as the Taliban has become resurgent and the war has intensified, Americans have increasingly viewed a strong and credible central government as crucial to turning back the Taliban’s advances.

Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is setting off anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai’s suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafialike way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.

These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it,” a senior American military officer in Kabul said. Like most of the officials in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the information.

“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”

American officials say that Afghanistan’s opium trade, the largest in the world, directly threatens the stability of the Afghan state, by providing a large percentage of the money the Taliban needs for its operations, and also by corrupting Afghan public officials to help the trade flourish.

The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration. They have pressed him to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he has so far refused to do so.

Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

In the interview in which he denied a role in the drug trade or taking money from the C.I.A., Ahmed Wali Karzai said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for “expenses,” but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he was not compensated for that assistance.

“I don’t know anyone under the name of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Karzai said. “I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan.”
Mr. Karzai acknowledged that the C.I.A. and Special Operations troops stayed at Mullah Omar’s old compound. And he acknowledged that the Kandahar Strike Force was based there. But he said he had no involvement with them.

A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/teresa_mother/index.html?inline=nyt-per), she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per) took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/asia/30afghan.html) at the office of a local prosecutor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Qati’s death remain shrouded in mystery. It is unclear, for instance, if any agency operatives were present — but officials say the firefight broke out when Mr. Qati tried to block the strike force from freeing the brother of a task force member who was being held in custody.

“Matiullah was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Karzai said in the interview.

Counternarcotics officials have repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai — or even begin a serious investigation of the allegations against him. In fact, they say that while other Afghans accused of drug involvement are investigated and singled out for raids or even rendition to the United States, Mr. Karzai has seemed immune from similar scrutiny.

For years, first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have said that the Taliban benefits from the drug trade, and the United States military has recently expanded its target list to include drug traffickers with ties to the insurgency. The military has generated a list of 50 top drug traffickers tied to the Taliban who can now be killed or captured.

Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai’s involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counternarcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.

The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai was able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice,” the former official said.

Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to single out other drug lords.

In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/drug_enforcement_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org) interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Hajji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison this year.

Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti and James Risen from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

Klaus

11-09-2009, 11:10 PM

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

Hmmmmmm..... I am sure there is a perfectly simple explanation!

pilobolus

08-16-2010, 10:08 PM

Money Laundering and the Global Drug Trade are Fueled by the Capitalist Elites (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20210)

by Tom Burghardt

When investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker broke the story four years ago that a DC-9 (N900SA) "registered to a company which once used as its address the hangar of Huffman Aviation, the flight school at the Venice, Florida Airport which trained both terrorist pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, was caught in Campeche by the Mexican military ... carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine destined for the U.S.," it elicited a collective yawn from corporate media.

And when authorities searched the plane and found its cargo consisted solely of 128 identical black suitcases marked "private," packed with cocaine valued at more than $100 million, the silence was deafening.

But now a Bloomberg Markets magazine report, "Wachovia's Drug Habit," reveals that drug traffickers bought that plane, and perhaps fifty others, "with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.," Wachovia and Bank of America.

The Justice Department charge sheet against the bank tells us that between 2003 and 2008, Wachovia handled $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchanges, "the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history."

"A sum" Bloomberg averred, equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product."

Since 2006, some 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. Thousands more have been wounded, countless others "disappeared," torture and illegal imprisonment is rampant.

In a frightening echo of the Reagan administration's anti-communist jihad in Central America during the 1980s, the Bush and now, Obama administration has poured fuel on the fire with some $1.4 billion in "War on Drugs" funding under Plan Mérida. Much of that "aid" is destined to purchase military equipment for repressive police, specialized paramilitary units and the Mexican Army.

There is also evidence of direct U.S. military involvement. In June, The Narco News Bulletin reported that "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations."

One former U.S. government official told investigative journalist Bill Conroy, "'Black operations have been going on forever. The recent [mainstream] media reports about those operations under the Obama administration make it sound like it's a big scoop, but it's nothing new for those who understand how things really work'."

But, as numerous investigations by American and Mexican journalists have revealed, there is strong evidence of collusion between the Mexican Army and the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels. A former Juarez police commander told NPR in May that "the intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that [Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman] Chapo's [Sinaloa] cartel is the strongest."

The cosy relations among the world's biggest banks, drug trafficking organizations and the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus is not however, a new phenomenon. What is different today is the scale and sheer scope of the corruption involved. As Michel Chossudovsky points out,

"This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places." As legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions, including the military." (The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Montreal:Global Research, 2010, pp. 195-196)
While the Bloomberg story should cast new light on highly-profitable links amongst major financial institutions and narcotrafficking organizations in what may be protected drug rackets green-lighted by corrupt officials, media silence, particularly by outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and theFinancial Times, threaten to propel what should be an international scandal into a one-off news item scheduled for a trip down the memory hole.

"Cocaine One"

If, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claims "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist," then perhaps too, drug cartels work their "market magic" with their own "hidden fist" or, as the Russians like to say akrysha, a web of protectors--and facilitators--drawn from business, finance, organized crime and the secret world of intelligence.

Dubbed "Cocaine One" by Hopsicker, the DC-9 was curious for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that "one of the chief shareholders" of a dodgy outfit called SkyWay Aircraft "is a private investment bank in Dallas which also raised funds for a Mexican industrialist with reported ties to a Cali and Juarez Cartel narcotics trafficker."

More curious still, the airline kitted-out its fleet with distinctive colors and a seal "designed to impersonate planes from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security." And when he learned that "SkyWay's genesis can be traced to In-Q-Tel Inc., a secretive, Arlington, Va., investment group owned, operated, and financed out of the black box budget of the Central Intelligence Agency," well you can bet corporate media ran themselves ragged investigating that!

To top it off, when another drug plane crash landed in the Yucatan Peninsula eighteen months later and broke apart, a Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) that spilled "4 tons of cocaine across a muddy field," Hopsicker reported that it had originated from the same network and used the same source for its financing, the "Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, a country-wide network of currency exchanges."

And to make matters even more intriguing from a parapolitical perspective, after searching through FAA records Hopsickerdiscovered that the Gulfstream II business jet "was owned by a secretive Midwestern media baron and Republican fund-raiser, who had a business partner who, incredibly, owned the otherAmerican drug plane, the DC-9, recently busted in Mexico."

In fact, as Bloomberg investigative journalist Michael Smith learned years later, these were the same planes and samecurrency exchange which Hopsicker reported back in 2007 traffickers had used to purchase drug jets with funds laundered through Wachovia.

"One customer that Wachovia took on in 2004 was Casa de Cambio Puebla SA," Smith wrote. The Puebla, Mexico currency exchange was the brainchild of Pedro Alatorre, a "businessman" who "had created front companies for cartels."

Alatorre, and 70 others connected to his network, were seized in 2007 by Mexican law enforcement officials. Authorities discovered that the accused drug money launderer and airline broker for the cartels controlled 23 accounts at the Wachovia Bank branch in Miami and that it held some $11 million, subsequently frozen by U.S. investigators.

In 2008, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Alatorre, now awaiting trial in Mexico along with three other executives, charging them with drug trafficking and money laundering, accusing the company of using "shell firms to launder $720 million through U.S. banks." The Justice Department is currently seeking Alatorre's extradition from Mexico.

According to Bloomberg, "Puebla executives used the stolen identities of 74 people to launder money through Wachovia accounts." Jose Luis Marmolejo, the former head of the Mexican attorney general's financial crimes unit told Smith, "Wachovia handled all the transfers, and they never reported any as suspicious."

Some $300,000 was transferred by Wachovia to a Bank of America branch in Oklahoma City. With cash in hand Bloomberg reports, traffickers "used the funds to buy the DC-9 through Oklahoma City aircraft broker U.S. Aircraft Titles Inc." When queried by Smith about the sale, "U.S. Aircraft Titles President Sue White declined to comment."

Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the Wachovia case said in a press release that "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations."

Yet, as Hopsicker wrote nearly three years ago, "the politically-explosive implications of the scandal may explain why American officials have been reluctant to move against, or even name, the true owners of the planes and basically 'turned a blind eye' to the American involvement exposed by the drug trafficking seizures."

As of this writing, no Americans have been criminally charged in the cash-for drug planes banking conspiracy.

"Troubled Assets" or Something More Sinister?

When Wells Fargo bought Wachovia, once America's fourth largest bank in 2008 at the fire-sale price of $12.8 billion, the bank and its former CEO, Kennedy "Ken" Thompson, who "retired at the request of the board" before the full-extent of the financial meltdown hit home, were in deep trouble.

Before the Wells takeover, Wachovia had been on a veritable shopping spree. After the firm's 2001 merger with First Union Bank, Wachovia merged with the Prudential Securities division of Prudential Financial, Inc., with Wachovia controlling the lion's share of the firm's $532.1 billion in assets. This was followed by the bank's purchase of Metropolitan West Securities, adding a $50 billion portfolio of securities and loans to the bank's Lending division. In 2004, Wachovia followed-up with the $14.3 billion acquisition of SouthTrust Corporation.

Apparently flush with cash and new market clout, Wachovia set it sights on acquiring California-based Golden West Financial. Golden West operated branches under the name World Savings Bank and was the nation's second largest savings and loan. At the time of the buy-out, Golden West had over $125 billion in assets. For Wachovia however, it was a deal too far.

With an enormous housing bubble fully inflated, and a new speculative merger-mania in full swing, one can only surmise that the need for liquidity at any price, had driven banking giants such as Wachovia to play dumb when shadier, yet highly-profitable transactions, such as the "arrangement" with Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, were involved.

Bleeding cash faster than you can say "mortgage backed securities," Wachovia was on the hook for their 2006 $26 billion buy-out of Golden West Financial at the peak of the housing bubble, a move that BusinessWeek reported generated "resistance from his own management team" but ignored by Thompson.

Why? "Because no one outside of Thompson and Golden West CEO Herb Sandler seemed to like the deal from the moment it was announced," a company insider told BusinessWeek.

While the buy-out may have given Thompson "the beachhead in California he had long desired ... the ink was barely dry on the Golden West deal in late 2006 when the housing bubble in markets including California and Florida began to deflate."

Hammered by the housing bust, Wachovia's share price, which had risen to $70.51 per share when the Golden West deal was announced had slid to $5.71 per share by October 2008. In other words, Wachovia, along with the world's economy, began circling the proverbial drain.

However you slice it, although it was clear that the Golden West deal had gone south quicker than you can say "credit default swaps," this didn't seem to stop Wachovia from paying "smartest guy in the room" Thompson $15.6 million in total compensation in 2007, a year after the fatal Golden West transaction. Nor did these losses stop the bank from showering Thompson with a severance package worth nearly $8 million.

But was something else going on here?

Continued at link above...