Man to be arraigned in Dallas skyscraper bombing plot

08:18 AM CDT on Friday, September 25, 2009

By JASON TRAHAN, TODD J. GILLMAN and SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning NewsA 19-year-old Jordanian citizen is expected to make an appearance before a federal magistrate in Dallas this morning after authorities accused him of attempting to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested Thursday after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives in the underground parking garage of Fountain Place, a 60-story tower in the 1400 block of Ross Avenue at North Field Street, authorities said.

The arrest was part of an FBI sting operation that began after an agent monitoring an online extremist Web site discovered Smadi espousing jihad against the U.S. more than six months ago.

As more undercover Arabic-speaking agents engaged him, Smadi, living illegally in the U.S. in the small town of Italy, about 45 miles south of Dallas, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and expressed a desire to kill Americans, authorities said.

In conversations with agents posing as members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, Smadi said he came to the U.S. to wage jihad, or holy war. He told agents he wanted to target military recruitment centers, but eventually settled on financial institutions.

“I want to destroy … targets … everything that helps America on its war on Arabs will be targeted,” he told undercover agents in May.

The sting culminated in Thursday’s arrest after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the FBI, in the garage of the emerald-green glass office tower that is home to many businesses, including a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office.

Inside the SUV was a fake bomb, designed to appear similar to one used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Authorities say Smadi thought he could detonate it with a cellphone. After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents, and they drove several blocks away.

An agent offered Smadi earplugs, but he declined, “indicating that he wanted to hear the blast,” authorities said. He then dialed the phone, thinking it would trigger the bomb, authorities said. Instead, the agents took him into custody.

He was scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate at 11 a.m.

Counterterrorism officials heralded the Dallas arrest as an example of the proactive effectiveness of a reorganized FBI in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“A coordinated undercover law enforcement action was able to thwart his efforts and ensure no one was harmed,” said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security in Washington.

This case serves as a reminder “of the continuing threats of terrorism we face as a nation and the FBI’s resolve to meet those threats,” said Robert Casey, special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI office.

Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert said local authorities were notified of the operation before it happened. “We were clearly communicated to that there was not going to be a danger to anybody,” he said, praising cooperation between the law enforcement agencies.

Shortly after news of Smadi’s arrest was announced about 5:30 p.m., most workers at Fountain Place were just becoming aware of the incident.

“It’s kind of unnerving to think this could have happened,” said Stanley Spruiell, who works in an Environmental Protection Agency office on the sixth floor.

Although apparently not connected, the Dallas case comes in the wake of several recent high-profile terrorism arrests in Denver and New York and in a strikingly similar scheme in Illinois involving undercover agents providing an extremist with a fake bomb.

It’s unclear on which extremist Web site authorities encountered Smadi. Agents and private counterterrorism researchers lurk in such sites monitoring jihadist trends.

Authorities said agents tried to convince Smadi that he could carry out his jihad without lives lost – including his own.

“Smadi aggressively responded that he was going to commit significant, conspicuous violence as his jihad,” FBI Special Agent Tom Petrowski, who leads a Dallas counterterrorism squad focusing on al-Qaeda, wrote in an affidavit.

While under constant FBI supervision, Smadi also scoped out the Dallas National Guard Armory and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport but decided they were too secure.

He then settled on Fountain Place, one of the most recognizable buildings in Dallas’ skyline.

“It is a trade building,” he told the agents, saying he had planned to “bring down the building, God willing” on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Authorities said he later decided to do it after Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, which ended Sunday.

On Sept. 11, the Ellis County Sheriff’s Department arrested Smadi for having no driver’s license or insurance. He paid a $550 fine. No other details were released.

Smadi worked at Texas Best Smokehouse in Italy, which is in Ellis County. He lived nearby, alone in a housing development made up of dozens of small, individual dome structures along U.S. Highway 77. One friend described his home as simple; neat, with a surround-sound system, laptop, weight bench, TV and a bed.

Authorities wearing bulletproof vests and FBI jackets converged on the property Thursday afternoon, neighbors said. Through gaps in the shuttered blinds, the living quarters appeared to have been cleaned out of furniture by Thursday night.

During the day, agents questioned neighbors about how long they knew Smadi and whether they knew anything about his Internet use.

Friends, who knew him as “Sam,” said he lived there for about a year and that he was fun, easygoing and always willing to lend a hand. Several said he regularly offered them rides in his Honda sedan.

They were in disbelief at Thursday’s news.

“This comes as a shock to us; he was just an awesome person,” said friend Tabatha Rogers. “He was good to us.”

He loved techno music, had earrings in both ears, and he was often seen wearing a belt buckle decorated with rhinestones that formed a gun. Rogers said he looked just like “your average American rock star.”

Friends said he drank occasionally and smoked cigarettes.

One friend said they assumed he was from Texas, though they said they knew he was Muslim.

They said he was a cashier who worked long hours at the smokehouse. He liked to play with his neighbors’ children.

“I still don’t know how to wrap my head around it, as far as Sam doing something like this,” said Kellye Kines, 20, who lives at the development.

“I love Sam, but I have no remorse for him if that’s how he is,” she said.

It’s unclear how long Smadi has been in the U.S. Late Thursday, the FBI told key lawmakers that the suspect seems to have acted alone.

“The investigation determined Smadi was not affiliated with other terrorist organizations. That’s good news,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin.

McCaul, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee, is among the handful of lawmakers who will receive a classified briefing today on the case, which could clarify if the Dallas case is part of a pattern.

“Car bombs are what they used in the embassies in Africa – classic terror-style attack. On the other hand, this could be one of these lone-wolf type things,” McCaul said. “That’s my hope.”

But the spate of recent terrorism cases has raised immediate concerns. “There’s a lot of activity out there,” McCaul said, noting that “traditionally, al-Qaeda likes to test new presidents.”

In 1993, five weeks after President Bill Clinton took office, al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center, led by mastermind Ramzi Yousef.

The Sept. 11 attacks that brought down the New York landmark and killed thousands came less than nine months into George W. Bush’s presidency.

Jordanian diplomats in Washington are typically alerted by U.S. authorities when one of the kingdom’s citizens is arrested. “So far we haven’t received anything,” embassy spokeswoman Merissa Khurma said Thursday night.

She had no information about this suspect or the Dallas allegations, but said that in general, “Jordan’s position with regards to terror activities and terrorism in general is very clear. We have been on the forefront of the war on terror. We have and will continue to condemn any attacks, acts of terror, the killing of innocents.”

Staff writers Mark Norris, Brandon Formby, Jon Nielsen, Jennifer Emily and Selwyn Crawford contributed to this report.

Address: 1445 Ross Ave.

Height: 60 stories

Construction: 1984-86

Architect: I.M. Pei & Partners

Major tenants:

•Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

•Bracewell & Giuliani – On March 31, 2005, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined the firm as a name partner.

•U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

•Fidelity National Title Insurance Co.

•Tenet Healthcare announced in August that it planned to relocate to Fountain Place.

“We shall attack them in their very own homes. Brother, by God, we shall attack them in a manner that hurts, an attack that shakes the world. Oh Brother, let the backsliders know that the time for their destruction has come.”

“I want to destroy … targets … everything that helps America on its war on Arabs will be targeted.”

“By God who created me, there will not be a retreat at all, even if they take me to Guantánamo for the rest of my life. I will never forget Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, or any land where the call of, ‘There is no God but God, Muhammad is God’s Messenger’ is raised.”

“It will shake the currently weak economy in the state and the American nation because this bank is one of the largest banks in this city.”

“Millions of people would incur losses: unemployment, poverty, hunger, and a strike to the head of the government. Don’t forget the psychological impacts for the loss of this beautiful building. … Of course, our joy will be in the success of this operation.”

SOURCE: FBI intercepts reported in court documents

Man to be arraigned in Dallas skyscraper bombing plot | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

Sibel Edmonds, former contract-FBI translator/whistleblower and “most gagged person in U.S. history” has finally told all – to Antiwar.com’s Philip Giraldi. It’s all in the cover story for November’s issue of The American Conservative magazine, “Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?” which hits the stands on Tuesday.

Last month, Edmonds was deposed in a civil lawsuit for 6 hours (video and transcript here), and told as much of her story as she ever has, and all together in one place. Now, however, she has gone much further and apparently told Giraldi everything, less sources and methods.

For those who’ve been waiting for the day when this story would break back into the mainstream media, this may be the time to get out your trusty old letter-to-the-editor pen, set your speed-dial to the local morning news radio stations, and make sure to Facebook friend your 2nd cousin at CNN so you can send him a message when the article goes online.

How could they possibly continue to ignore such tales of drugs, guns, spies, lies, bribes, sex, blackmail, terrorism and the nuke black market from such an inside source?

Tuesday on Antiwar Radio, I’ll be speaking with Giraldi, David Rose and Joe Lauria – the journalists who’ve done the best and most “credentialed” reporting on her case – about all of Edmonds’ explosive allegations. Listen live 2-4 Eastern at Antiwar.com/radio.

(Cross-Posted at Stress.)

Sibel Edmonds’s Big Day « Antiwar.com Blog

Dow Jones Closes at Same Level as Day Before 9/11

Written by Kevin Coy

As the business networks and news networks continue their special coverage today on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a poignant level.  On September 10th 2001, the DJI closed at 9605, and today, the DJI closed at 9605.  In any other circumstance, it would be seen as simply coincidence, but with the anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy this weekend, and the rollercoaster that has been the last 12 months, the closing price seems all the more significant.

I’ve been following the markets for over a decade now, and I’ve learned that coincidence, irony and all the multitude of other ways of describing what has happened today simply don’t exist.  With this one I’m not so sure, I think there’s more to it.  I’m not ‘it was fate’ kind of guy, as I’m sure most traders aren’t, but there is a little something about today that seems somewhat surreal.  I just can’t put my finger on it.

Our thoughts go to the families of the victims and their friends today, a day that will always be remembered, and will never fade.

Kevin Coy, Managing Editor

Comments (1)

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World Business News – Dow Jones Closes at Same Level as Day Before 9/11

Former Accused Iraqi Agent Reveals Facts about 9/11 Warning.

By Michael Collins. Tuesday, 3 March 2009.

I first wrote about Susan Lindauer’s struggle against the Bush-Cheney regime in October 2007, “American Cassandra: Susan Lindauer’s Story.” This was initially published in “Scoop” Independent Media (complete series) and carried by a wide variety of concerned Internet news sites and blogs. This interview follows the full dismissal of charges against her just before President Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009 . This is the first in depth interview that Lindauer has offered regarding 911. Below is part one of the interview.

I asked Ms. Lindauer to make her own statement about why she’s willing to go into detail now about 911 and the governments handling of pre 911 intelligence.

“For five years, I was the poster child for President Bush’s retaliation against Americans who opposed his War Policy in Iraq. In March, 2004 the Justice Department indicted me for acting as an “unregistered Iraqi Agent” (not espionage), because I delivered a prescient letter to my second cousin, Andy Card, former Chief of Staff to President Bush, warning of the dire consequences of War.

“More dangerously, I had decided to talk. In February, 2004 I approached the senior staff of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain and asked to testify in front of the new blue ribbon Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Within a month, I was astounded to wake up one morning to hear FBI agents pounding on the door of my house in Maryland with an arrest warrant.

“The indictment called me “Symbol Susan.” It was a bizarre notation unsupported by any evidence or action in the indictment. It did however have one crucial purpose?to communicate a warning that anybody breaking ranks from the Bush White House should expect to be brutally crushed like I was.To speak the truth under President George Bush was the worst crime of all. It was treason.

‘But what exactly was the U.S. government trying to hide?

Read more »

Boom! Studios sends word that comics writer Mark Sable was detained by TSA security guards at Los Angeles International Airport this past weekend because he was carrying a script for a new issue of his comic miniseries Unthinkable. Sable was detained while traveling to New York for a debut party at Jim Hanley’s Universe today.

The comic series follows members of a government think tank that was tasked with coming up with 9/11-type “unthinkable” terrorist scenarios that now are coming true. (See this article for more on the series.)

Sable wrote of his experiences: “Flying from Los Angeles to New York for a signing at Jim Hanley’s Universe Wednesday (May 13th), I was flagged at the gate for ‘extra screening’. I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then ‘discovered’ the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated.

Read more here: Comics artist Mark Sable detained for Unthinkable acts – SFScope – Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror

Former Accused Iraqi Agent Reveals Facts about 9/11 Warning.

Read entire article here:

American Politics Journal – Susan Lindauer Blows the Whistle Again

So I refrained from rolling my eyeballs when he’d say things like, “I’m not sure the Pentagon was even hit by a plane — those photos could’ve been doctored!” And I kept my mouth shut when he’d futz around on the Internet all night, studying Bush’s family ties to the Saudis and the melting temperature of steel. I even started attending weekly “truth meetings” in a dusty church basement, pretending to be very interested as he’d mutter, “Yes! Exactly!” to people’s rambling diatribes.

Yes, I know it was nuts.

But it wasn’t the first time I’d feigned interest in a subject in order to please a guy. Ever since high school — when I studied up on third-level Urdunnir dwarfs so I could converse with my Dungeons & Dragons — obsessed boyfriend — I’ve adopted a variety of interests that were not my own. I’ve taken Krav Maga classes; I’ve thrown batches of toast at the screen during repeated viewings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’ve gone to Death Cab for Cutie concerts; I’ve hosted marathons of movies made by obscure Danish directors. I once seriously considered spending a week in the desert, unshowered, for Burning Man, with the arty, pot-smoking dude I was dating at the time.

I know it sounds a little pathetic, but I guess I just wanted whatever guy I was dating to like me. If he piqued my interest, I wanted to pique his. I wanted to be the woman who got all his pop-culture references (“I’ve never met a woman who’s into prog rock,” one carefully researched conquest enthused when I mentioned the band Genesis); I wanted to be a gal his friends thought was “awesome” — someone who inhabited his private world as comfortably as they did.

And yet, it was never a two-way street. Guys have been curious about my passions, sure, but they’ve never browsed my Gloria Steinem collection or bought pastry-making kits. Maybe it’s because women, ever the multitaskers, are always trying a little bit harder to make things happen, to make things work. To accommodate. Men, not so much. I once attempted to bake a cake with the 9/11 guy. After it was in the oven and I started to whip up some frosting, he balked and said it was getting late. Then he stayed up until dawn watching conspiracy-theory videos.

That’s when I decided enough was enough. Listening to Death Cab for Cutie was one thing; pretending that 9/11 was an inside job was another. Finally, I told my boyfriend I thought his theories were insane. After he accused me of betraying him and “the people,” we broke up. Now I just need to get rid of that prog-rock collection.

Autumn Whitefield-Madrano has worked for Self, Ms., and Playboy.

Women Seeking Approval – Seeking Approval in Relationships – Marie Claire

They Made a Killing.

Did people who knew about secret, CIA-led coups use that information to game the stock market?

By Ray FismanPosted Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008.

But UFC had friends in very high places—the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, John Moor Cabot, was the brother of UFC President Thomas Cabot. The secretary of state himself, John Foster Dulles, had done legal work for UFC, and his brother Allen Dulles was director of the CIA and also on UFC’s board. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now know that the various Cabots and Dulleses had a series of top-secret meetings in which they decided that Árbenz had to go and sponsored a coup that drove Árbenz from office in 1954.

With a U.S. puppet back in the president’s mansion, UFC’s profits were safe. But it appears the company wasn’t the only beneficiary of this Cold War cloak-and-dagger diplomacy: A recent study by economists Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu argues that those in on the planning process also profited handsomely. By tracking the stock prices of UFC and other politically vulnerable firms in the months leading up to CIA-staged coups in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and Iran, the researchers provide evidence that someone—perhaps one of the Dulleses, Cabots, or others in the know—was trading stocks based on classified information of these coups-in-the-making.

This exposé is a contribution to the rapidly expanding field of “forensic economics,” which tries to understand the who, what, and why of illicit transactions. Since these are activities that take place out of sight (at least when they’re done right), researchers are forced to look for fingerprints left in the data by smugglers, bribe-taking politicians, and other lawbreakers. 

Read more here:

Forensic economists examine the effects of CIA-led coups on the stock market. – By Ray Fisman – Slate Magazine

By Ben Farmer in Kabul.  17 February 2009.

Osama Bin Laden: The most likely candidate is in Parachinar which housed many mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Photo: AP

Using patterns of how animal species spread, the world’s most wanted terrorist can be tracked down to a town in the tribal region of North West Pakistan it is claimed.

By factoring in his need for security, electricity, high ceilings to accommodate his 6ft 4in frame and spare rooms for his bodyguards, the search can be further narrowed to three walled compounds.

Read more here:

Geography professor claims to have found Osama bin Laden – Telegraph

9/11 Commission Series

Memorandums for the Record (MFR)
During its investigation, the commission staff conducted over 1200 fact-finding interviews-the MFRs are summaries of these interviews.
This series is available online

Front Office Files
The front office consisted of Philip Zelikow, Executive Director; Christopher A. Kohm, Deputy Executive Director; Daniel Marcus, General Counsel and Steven M. Dunne, Deputy General Counsel. The front office dealt not only with administrative issues involving the structure and personnel of the commission, they also provided guidance to the commissioners on policy, strategy, and legal issues. The files, arranged chronologically by meeting/hearing date, contain agendas and minutes of commission meetings, briefing books for each meeting and public hearing, team work plans, and summaries of the status of each team’s progress.

Subject Files of General Counsel Daniel Marcus
These files, arranged alphabetically by subject, contain memoranda, correspondence, articles, work plans, briefs, and memoranda of understanding created and collected by Marcus in his capacity as the commission’s general counsel.

Subject Files of Deputy General Counsel Steve Dunne
These files, arranged alphabetically by subject, contain memoranda, correspondence, articles, legal research, subpoenas, and memoranda of understanding created and collected by Dunne in his capacity as the commission’s deputy general counsel.

Subject files of Special Assistant and Managing Editor Stephanie Kaplan
These files, arranged by subject and there under roughly chronologically, contain memoranda, notes and minutes of the commission’s meetings, and drafts of the final report created and collected by Stephanie Kaplan in her capacity as the commission’s special assistant and managing editor. These files also include notes by Deputy Executive Director Christopher Kojm.

Subject Files of Counsel Dana Hyde
These files, arranged by subject, contain memoranda for the record; notes of interviews with federal government personnel; briefing slides; articles; private sector reports; the commission’s briefing book for the June 17, 2004 public hearing; copies of records from federal agencies; drafts of Staff Statement #17 “Improving a Homeland Defense;” drafts of chapter one of the commission’s final report; the commission staff report entitled “The Story of the Financial Market Closure, September 11 – 17, 2001;” and other background materials compiled by team member Dana Hyde.

Team 1 Files
Team 1’s task was to examine issues relating to international terrorism and al Qaeda. These files contain intelligence reports and cables responsive to the commission requests to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s “We are at war” memorandum; threat assessments; congressional briefing summaries; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 302 reports; memorandums for the record and notes of interviews conducted by Team 1 staff; draft questions for interviewees; drafts of document requests; materials used to prepare for select Commission public hearings; transcripts of the U.S. vs. Usama Bin Laden trial of 2001; transcripts of public testimony and interviews; publishes articles and monographs; copies of materials from the congressional Joint Inquiry into the events of September 11, 2001; Team 1 work plans; and other records used by Team 1 to examine issues relating to international terrorism and al Qaeda. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 1A Files
Team 1A split from Team 1 to focus on al Qaeda’s role in the organization of the 9/11 Attacks. These files contain intelligence cables and reports; FBI 302s; memos and prints from the Automated Case System; handwritten notes of interviews; briefings; and foreign trips; drafts of statements and final report chapters; correspondence with agencies including document and briefing requests; memorandum for the record of interview including with FBI field office personnel and agents involved with the PENTTBOM investigation; published articles; and other records created and compiled by Team 1A during its investigation of the September 11, 2001 plot. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 2 Files
Team 2 was created to investigate intelligence collection, analysis, and management including oversight and resource allocation. These files contain memorandums for the record and notes of interviews conducted by Team 2 staff; draft questions for interviewees; printed Power Point slides sent to commission staff by government agencies; drafts of document requests; materials used to prepare for select commission public hearings; reports of government and private sector entities; transcripts of public testimony and interviews given by intelligence community leaders; published articles and monographs; congressional hearing transcripts; copies of materials from the congressional Joint Inquiry into the events of September 11, 2001; team work plans; team leader’s notes on staff meetings; administrative memorandums relating to the commission’s office policies; and other records used by Team 2 to examine issues related to intelligence collection, analysis, management, oversight and resources. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 3 Files
Team 3 was created to investigate international counterterrorism policy, including states that harbor or harbored terrorists, or offer or offered terrorists safe havens. This series contains memorandums for the record and notes of interviews conducted by Team 3 staff; draft questions for interviewees; prints of Power Point slides from briefings received by commission staff from agencies; drafts of document requests; materials used to prepare for select commission public hearings; drafts and final versions of commission staff statements and the team’s sections of the Final Report; reports of government and private sector entities; transcripts of public testimony and interviews given by government officials; published articles and monographs; a study of counterterrorism strategy from 1968-1993; copies of the final report of the congressional Joint Inquiry into the events of September 11, 2001; printed e-mails; correspondence; team work plans; team leader’s notes on staff meetings; administrative memorandums relating to the commission’s office policies; and other records used by Team 3 to examine issues relating to U.S. counterterrorism policy. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 4 Files
Team 4 was created to investigate terrorist financing. These records include government and private sector reports; slides of federal agency presentations given to commission staff; documents received by the commission from agencies; transcripts of court testimony and other court records including motions and other filings; congressional hearing transcripts; transcripts of interviews conducted by the commission; Team 4’s work plan; notes of commission staff meetings and interviews; and published articles and monographs. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 5 Files
Team 5 was created to investigate border security and foreign visitors. These files contain memorandums for the record and notes of interviews conducted by Team 5 staff; airman files on the four September hijackers; hijacker visa and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) files; articles printed from the Internet; congressional hearing transcripts; FBI files; U.S. District Court documents from terrorist trials; and other records used by Team 5 to examine border security and foreign visitor issues. Also included are drafts of Team 5’s monograph “9/11 and Terrorist Travel.” The records are arranged by subject.

Team 6 Files-closed
Team 6 was created to investigate law enforcement an intelligence collection inside the United States. This series has yet to be processed.

Team 7 Files
Team 7 was created to investigate commercial aviation and transportation security, including an investigation into the circumstances of the four hijackings. These files contain notes of interviews conducted by Commission staff; notes on visits to sites such as Logan International Airport and Dulles International Airport; slides of presentations given to Commission staff from federal agencies and private sector entities including the Transportation Security Administration of the Department of Homeland Security (TSA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), American Airlines, and United Airlines; documents received by the commission from agencies including the FBI and airlines; reports from the General Accounting Office (GAO) on transportation security; other government and private sector reports; drafts of chapter one of the commission’s final report; congressional hearing transcripts; and published articles and monographs. The records are arranged by subject.

Team 8 Files
Team 8 investigated the immediate response to the 9/11 attacks at the national, state, and local levels, including issues of continuity of government. Teams 8 and 9 were merged to access the local and national response on the day of September 11, 2001. The files contain records investigating the events of September 11, 2001 primarily relating to the activities of air traffic controllers, both military and FAA, and the military response by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and its Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS). The records also contain some materials relating to the emergency responses at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The records are arranged by subject.

Press Clippings
These records, arranged chronologically, consist of press clippings relating to the commission and its work.

Files of the New York City Office
The records of the New York City (NYC) Team reflect the commission’s examination of the immediate response to the 9/11 attacks. The NYC office also investigated the immediate response and subsequent recovery of businesses affected. The files are arranged primarily by staff person and reflect information collected by staff in the course of the investigation. There is some duplication within the files as several staff obtained and retained copies of the same documents.

9/11 Commission Series

EARLY 9-11 REPORTAGE REVEALS SURPRISES.
Columnist Robert Novak among the first to use the phrase “inside job” in connection with the events of September 11, 2001.

By Peter Duveen.

PETER’S NEW YORK, December 27, 2008–Married as we seem to be to the digital age, it is a great comfort to be able to occasionally resort to “hard copy,” tangible pieces of inked paper upon which much of the literary wealth of the world is recorded.

Recently, while searching my “hard copy” archives, I came across some issues of the New York Times and New York Post published within days of the events of September 11, 2001.

It is interesting to observe that what are often referred to by defenders of the government’s 9-11 storyline as “conspiracy theories” were first articulated by mainstream commentators and experts.

http://911blogger.com/node/18934

PETER’S NEW YORK

Norwegian Daily: Terrorists Working for Western Countries

It came to my attention that a senior correspondent, Kristin Aalen, working for a national Norwegian broadsheet – Stavanger Aftenbladet (Stavanger Evening News) – just recently printed a detailed article in the newspaper on Western covert operations sponsoring al-Qaeda after the Cold War… based almost entirely on my research in The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism.

Entitled “Terrorists Working for Western Countries” (24.11.08), it even gives a country-by-country summary breakdown complete with a handy geopolitical world map of the wide arc of these operations. It’s a very useful piece from a mainstream national European paper that very effectively summarises the thrust of my research into this unpalatable subject. A shame that the British press is so reticient about such issues.

The Cutting Edge: Norwegian Daily: Terrorists Working for Western Countries

Against the Militarized Academy

Thursday 20 November 2008

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced an effort to increase the militarization of higher education. (Photo: FilmMaker Magazine)
While there is an ongoing discussion about what shape the military-industrial complex will take under an Obama presidency, what is often left out of this analysis is the intrusion of the military into higher education. One example of the increasingly intensified and expansive symbiosis between the military-industrial complex and academia was on full display when Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the creation of what he calls a new “Minerva Consortium,” ironically named after the goddess of wisdom, whose purpose is to fund various universities to “carry out social-sciences research relevant to national security.”(1) Gates’s desire to turn universities into militarized knowledge factories producing knowledge, research and personnel in the interest of the Homeland (In)Security State should be of special concern for intellectuals, artists, academics and others who believe that the university should oppose such interests and alignments. At the very least, the emergence of the Minerva Consortium raises a larger set of concerns about the ongoing militarization of higher education in the United States.

In a post-9/11 world, with its all-embracing war on terror and a culture of fear, the increasing spread of the discourse and values of militarization throughout the social order is intensifying the shift from the promise of a liberal democracy to the reality of a militarized society. Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal – with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism – but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments – in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order. As Michael Geyer points out, what is distinctive about the militarization of the social order is that civil society not only “organizes itself for the production of violence,”(2) but increasingly spurs a gradual erosion of civil liberties. Military power and policies are expanded to address not only matters of defense and security, but also problems associated with the entire health and social life of the nation, which are now measured by military spending, discipline and loyalty, as well as hierarchical modes of authority.

As citizens increasingly assume the roles of informer, soldier and consumer willing to enlist in or be conscripted by the totalizing war on terror, we see the very idea of the university as a site of critical thinking, public service and socially responsible research being usurped by a manic jingoism and a market-driven fundamentalism that enshrine the entrepreneurial spirit and military aggression as means to dominate and control society. This should not surprise us, since, as William G. Martin, a professor of sociology at Binghamton University, indicates, “universities, colleges and schools have been targeted precisely because they are charged with both socializing youth and producing knowledge of peoples and cultures beyond the borders of Anglo-America.”(3) But rather than be lulled into complacency by the insidious spread of corporate and military power, we need to be prepared to reclaim institutions such as the university that have historically served as vital democratic spheres protecting and serving the interests of social justice and equality. What I want to suggest is that such a struggle is not only political, but also pedagogical in nature.

Over 17 million students pass through the hallowed halls of academe, and it is crucial that they be educated in ways that enable them to recognize creeping militarization and its effects throughout American society, particularly in terms of how these effects threaten “democratic government at home just as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries.”(4) But students must also recognize how such anti-democratic forces work in attempting to dismantle the university itself as a place to learn how to think critically and participate in public debate and civic engagement.(5) In part, this means giving them the tools to fight for the demilitarization of knowledge on college campuses – to resist complicity with the production of knowledge, information and technologies in classrooms and research labs that contribute to militarized goals and violence.

Even so, there is more at stake than simply educating students to be alert to the dangers of militarization and the way in which it is redefining the very mission of higher education. Chalmers Johnson, in his continuing critique of the threat that the politics of empire presents to democracy at home and abroad, argues that if the United States is not to degenerate into a military dictatorship, in spite of Obama’s election, a grass-roots movement will have to occupy center stage in opposing militarization, government secrecy and imperial power, while reclaiming the basic principles of democracy.(6) Such a task may seem daunting, but there is a crucial need for faculty, students, administrators and concerned citizens to develop alliances for long-term organizations and social movements to resist the growing ties among higher education, on the one hand, and the armed forces, intelligence agencies and war industries on the other – ties that play a crucial role in reproducing mili tarized knowledge.

Opposing militarization as part of a broader pedagogical strategy in and out of the classroom also raises the question of what kinds of competencies, skills and knowledge might be crucial to such a task. One possibility is to develop critical educational theories and practices that define the space of learning not only through the critical consumption of knowledge but also through its production for peaceful and socially just ends. In the fight against militarization and “armed intellectuals,” educators need a language of critique, but they also need a language that embraces a sense of hope and collective struggle. This means elaborating the meaning of politics through a concerted effort to expand the space of politics by reclaiming “the public character of spaces, relations, and institutions regarded as private” on the other.(7) We live at a time when matters of life and death are central to political governance. While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale pr oduction of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights.

Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world – including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.

(1). Brainard, Jeffrey. (April 16, 2008) “U.S. Defense Secretary Asks Universities for New Cooperation,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, online at http://chronicle.com/news/article/4316/us-defense-secretary-asks-universities-for-new-cooperation.

(2). Michael Geyer, “The Militarization of Europe, 1914-1945,” in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John Gillis (Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 79.

(3). William G. Martin, “Manufacturing the Homeland Security Campus and Cadre,” ACAS Bulletin 70 (Spring 2005), p. 1.

(4). Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). p. 291.

(5). See Cary Nelson, “The National Security State,” Cultural Studies 4:3 (2004), pp. 357-361.

(6). Chalmers Johnson, “Empire v. Democracy,” TomDispatch.com (January 31, 2007), available online at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views07/0131-27.htm

(7). Jacques Rancière, “Democracy, Republic, Representation,” Constellations 13:3 (2006), p. 299.

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t r u t h o u t | Against the Militarized Academy

Career Army Officer Sues Cheney, Rumsfeld For 9/11 Complicity

April Gallop files suit for failure to warn people inside Pentagon despite advance knowledge, as well as prior knowledge and complicity in terror attacks

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, December 18, 2008

A career Army officer who was injured in the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 is suing Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for failing to issue a warning that American Airlines Flight 77 was about to hit the building despite receiving knowledge of its approach some 20 minutes in advance.

Retired Army officer April Gallop, a ranking specialist with top secret clearance who began working at the Pentagon in 2000, has also filed suit against US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11.

Gallop was knocked unconscious when the roof collapsed in her office her and her 2-month-old baby sustained a serious brain injury after suffering the consequences of what Gallop describes as “two explosions”. Gallop does not believe that a Boeing 757 struck the building on 9/11. The lawsuit charges that the attack was “engineered by other means, a planted bomb or bombs and/or a missile,” citing the lack of plane debris witnessed after the attack, along with evidence from the “black box” discovered at the scene, which indicated that the plane passed low over the building immediately before the fireball was observed, as well as the complete failure of ground and air defenses which protect the Pentagon.

The official 9/11 timeline confirms that NORAD and the FAA knew that Flight 77 had been hijacked and was likely headed towards Washington at 9:24 a.m, 19 minutes before the Pentagon was struck. The gap between the second plane hitting the World Trade Center and the incident at the Pentagon was a full 40 minutes.

“The ex-G.I. plaintiff alleges she has been denied government support since then, because she raised ‘painful questions’ about the inexplicable failure of military defenses at the Pentagon that day, and especially the failure of officials to warn and evacuate the occupants of the building when they knew the attack was imminent” said Gallop’s attorney William Veale in a press release.

The suit charges that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers conducted a conspiracy to facilitate the attacks and alleges that other unnamed individuals had foreknowledge. The preliminary statement of the lawsuit charges that the attacks were staged so as to “Generate a political atmosphere of acceptance in which the new Administration could enact and implement radical changes in the policy and practice of constitutional government in our country.”

The text of the lawsuit lists a mountain of evidence indicating that top members of the Bush cabinet had a hand in the attacks, focusing not just on the Pentagon, but prior knowledge of the attacks and the inconceivable response to all four hijacked airliners on 9/11.

The suit cites the Project For a New American Century strategy documents as proof that top Neo-Cons were yearning for “a new Pearl Harbor” in order to whip up support for a pre-planned geopolitical agenda.

Read more »

(Seven Stories Press of New York is publishing an affordable softcover version of the invaluable scholarly volume, The Hidden History of 9-11. Here is their page dedicated to this updated second edition. To promote the book, Seven Stories has allowed us to publish an online version of the chapter by Professor Diana Ralph, dealing with the historical roots of “international terrorism”, Islamophobia, and imperial aggression. This chapter is typical of the scholarly detail in “Hidden History”. If you enjoy this chapter, please consider pre-ordering at Amazon, or Powell’s, or ordering directly from the Seven Stories website. Anyone interested in purchasing a bulk quantity should email Lars: lars@sevenstories.com ) .

Abstract: 

The 9-11 attacks were the pretext which sold the myth of evil Muslim terrorists imminently threatening Americans. That tale allowed the Cheney-led members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) to implement their 1990 DPG plan for world control. The “war on terror” has nothing to do with protecting the U.S. and world’s people from “terrorists”, and everything to do with securing the American empire abroad and muzzling democracy and human rights at home. Designed to inspire popular support for U.S. wars of world conquest, it is modeled on Islamophobic stereotypes, policies, and political structures developed by the Israeli Likkud and Bush Sr. since 1979. To defeat this plan, we must overcome our Islamophobic fear of “terrorists” and stand in solidarity with Muslims.

1. Why a 9-11 Pretext?

…the War against Terror is not really about terror….It’s about a superpower’s self destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony. (Arundathi Roy, 2004, p. 34).

Researchers are uncovering extensive, credible evidence that the official account of the 9-11 attacks is untenable. Although al Qaeda may have had the resources to get hijackers onto planes with box cutters, it did not have the power to shut down FBI investigations of the suspected hijackers, to set up distracting war games on 9-11-01, to issue stand-down orders preventing effective military response, or to cause two WTC towers plus Building 7 to collapse using demolition explosives (Griffin, 2004; 2005). Western intelligence knew about the 9-11 attack plans as early as 1995, and may have facilitated and exploited them for their own ends. Some suggest that the U.S. may even have directly planned and carried them out flying the planes by remote control.¹ Regardless of whether it simply facilitated the attacks or carried them out themselves, there is little doubt that the U.S. was involved (Ahmed, 2002, pp. 82-83).

If this is true, we need to ask, why would U.S. leaders risk such a colossal crime against the American people? What was the motive? What is the real agenda behind the “war on terror”? Is the security of Western (non-Muslim) people really threatened by Muslim fundamentalists, or have Muslims just replaced “communists” in the role of “enemy”?

This chapter explores the real motives and the Islamophobic cover story which underly the U.S. “war on terror”. It focuses on the inter-twined histories of Dick Cheney’s plan for world control and Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign for a “war on terror” against those critical of Israel and the United States. The “war on terror” distorts the concepts of “terrorism” and “security” in order to frighten Americans into sacrificing their actual security and into colluding in an unprecedented imperial campaign for world control. It poses a false dichotomy between “radical” and “moderate” Muslims, demonizing them when it is convenient for Western powers, and rewarding them as “moderates” when they serve Western interests, regardless of their actual ideologies or practices. Both for Muslims worldwide and those living in Western countries, the consequences have been catastrophic.

Read entire article here:

Islamophobia and the “War on Terror”: the Continuing Pretext for U.S. Imperial Conquest | 911blogger.com