From The Weston A. Price Foundation:
What is going on? Is the coronavirus an infectious disease as we’ve been told? Is there a different way to understand viruses and our current health crisis? Dr. Tom Cowan challenges our paradigm of both in today’s podcast episode. He discusses Koch’s postulates: the standard by which scientists and doctors have long determined infectious diseases. And he explains why it’s problematic that this standard has not been applied on the coronavirus. He sheds light on the issues with testing using the RTPCR test. And he reveals a very different theory on how viruses spread, considering them messengers of sorts, that respond to poisons that jeopardize our health. He also addresses the part that our environment plays in wellness. He discusses air pollution and non-native electromagnetic frequencies—particularly 5G. He also goes back in time, pointing out how certain conditions that were factors at the time of the 1918 flu pandemic and polio, for example, are also at play today. Tom goes over all of the science in a logical, step-by-step fashion to help us get a grasp on how we got to where we are today. Highlights from the conversation include:
References
Engelbrecht, T., & Köhnlein, C. (2007). Virus mania. Trafford.
Kremer, H. (2008). The silent revolution in cancer and AIDS medicine. Berlin, Germany: H. Kremer. Firstenberg, A. (2020). Invisible Rainbow. Chelsea Green Publishing. Cowan, T. (2019). Cancer and the New Biology of Water. London, UK: Chelsea Green Publishing. Nuday, C. (2014). Water Codes: The Science of Health, Consciousness, and Enlightenment (1st ed.). Water Ink Publishing. Crowe, D. (2020). The Infectious Myth: A Book Project by David Crowe. Retrieved 21 May 2020, from https://theinfectiousmyth.com Virgin, S. (2014). The mammalian virome in genetic analysis of health and disease pathogenesis [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRVxTBuvChU Dossey, L. (2010). Larry Dossey, MD: The Art of Healing (excerpt) - A Thinking Allowed DVD w/ Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECA1PNJOQR0 PS22 Chorus "HALLELUJAH" Leonard Cohen. (2015). [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCLI7ewjvBo
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Transcript:
WARREN BUFFETT: Hello, everyone. EVERYONE: Mr. B.! DAVID ALLEN JONES: What’s your secret mission about? BUFFETT: It’s not my mission, but an idea that came from our good friend, Mr. Bill Gates. BILL GATES: Hi, kids. RADLEY HEMMING: The real, actual, in person Bill . . . Bill . . . ELENA RAMIREZ: He’s trying to say that we’re big fans, Mr. Gates. SOURCE: Secret Millionaires Club | The Gift – Bill Gates Ep 1 | Kid Genius Cartoons It’s a strange fact that Bill Gates’ hagiographers—PR hacks employed, more often than not, by large corporations that receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—consistently depict this drab software developer as a cartoon superhero, using his “superpower” of being very rich to help “save the planet.” JOHN BERMAN: Behind closed doors on this New York campus, a secret gathering of some of the world’s most powerful people: Gates, Buffett, Bloomberg, Winfrey. It was like . . . well, it was like the “Super Friends.” [Super Friends cartoon introduction plays] ANNOUNCER: In the great hall of the Justice League, there are assembled the world’s four greatest heroes. SOURCE: Elite Billionaires Meet in Secret (video no longer online) But these cartoon-fueled puff pieces reveal more than they know about Gates and the other mega-rich philanthropists they are attempting to idolize: they reveal that the idea of the selfless, billionaire do-gooder is a work of fiction so unbelievable it is only fit for Saturday morning cartoon fare. As we have seen in our first two explorations of Bill Gates’ role as global health kingpin, the seemingly selfless generosity of the Gates family through their eponymous foundation has in fact greatly increased their own wealth, with Bill Gates’ personal net worth having doubled in the past decade alone. But the takeover of public health that we have documented in How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health and the remarkably brazen push to vaccinate everyone on the planet that we have documented in Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World was not, at base, about money. The unimaginable wealth that Gates has accrued is now being used to purchase something much more useful: control. Control not just of the global health bodies that can coordinate a worldwide vaccination program or the governments that will mandate such an unprecedented campaign, but control over the global population itself. This is an exploration of Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid. You’re tuned in to The Corbett Report. From a journalistic standpoint, Good Morning America’s inane report on the secretive billionaire meeting that took place in New York in 2009 was a failure. It listed some of the meetings’ attendees and their combined net worth: BERMAN: Gates, Buffett, Bloomberg, Winfrey [. . .] Together with others in the meeting, including George Soros, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, they’re worth more than $125 billion. It turned to the senior editor of Forbes for a sound bite about what it would be like to witness such an assembly of wealth: MATTHEW MILLER: To have been in the room and see this meeting of the minds really would have been a fascinating thing. And it dutifully reported the participants’ own stated reason for holding the meeting. . . . BERMAN: That much money. That much power around one table. It begs the question, what were they doing? What were they scheming? Total world domination? This group, together for six hours, was talking about charity, education, emergency relief, global health. . . . Before wrapping up with another juvenile appeal to comic book superhero lore. [Video onscreen of various billionaires superimposed as Superheroes, such as Batman, Superman. Etc.] BERMAN: The new supermen and wonder woman. The superrich friends. Not fighting bad guys, but fighting for good, nonetheless. For Good Morning America, John Berman, ABC News. Yes, from a journalistic standpoint, Berman’s report was an utter failure. There was no attempt to question the participants about the meeting, no space for any criticism of these billionaires or questions about their motives, no adversarial journalism of any kind. But as a PR piece, it was brilliant. It leaves the viewer with a vague sense that some kind of gathering took place somewhere in New York in which rich people—who, let’s not forget, are superheroes—talked about charity. One would have to turn to print sources to discover that the meeting was held at the personal residence of Sir Paul Nurse, then-president of Rockefeller University; that the invitation to the gathering was co-written by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and David Rockefeller; or that the aim of the meeting was “to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population.” Given that these extraordinarily rich and powerful men—including Warren Buffett, David Rockefeller, and Ted Turner—have all expressed their belief that the growing human population is the greatest threat faced by humanity, it should not be surprising that they would convene a conference to discuss how best to channel their vast wealth into the project of reducing the number of people on the planet. Particularly unsurprising is that attendees of the meeting later dubbed Bill Gates—a man for whom population control is particularly close to his heart—as the “most impressive” speaker at the event. GATES: Here we can see a chart that looks at the total world population over the last several hundred years, and at first glance this is a bit scary. We go from less than a billion in 1800, and then 3, 4, 5, 6—and 7.4 billion, where we are today, is happening even faster. So, Melinda and I wondered whether providing new medicines and keeping children alive, would that create more of a population problem? SOURCE: Does saving more lives lead to overpopulation? SCOTT PELLEY: . . . and what the developing world does not need is more children. MELINDA GATES: And I think that was the biggest “ah-ha” to Bill and me when we got into this work. Because we asked ourselves, of course, the same hard-nosed question you’d ask, which is: “If you get into this work and you start to save these children, will women just keep overpopulating the world?” And thank goodness, the converse is absolutely true. SOURCE: Extra: Gates On Population Rates GATES: This is a very important question to get right, because it was absolutely key for me. When our foundation first started up, it was focused on reproductive health. That was the main thing we did, because I thought, you know, population growth in poor countries is the biggest problem they face. You’ve got to help mothers, who want to limit family size, have the tools and education to do that. And I thought, that’s the only thing that really counts. SOURCE: Bill Gates on Overpopulation and Global Poverty In recent years, critics have pointed to Bill Gates’ own words linking vaccination programs with his goal of reducing population growth. GATES: The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent. SOURCE: Innovating to zero! | Bill Gates SANJAY GUPTA: Ten billion dollars over the next 10 years to make it the year of the vaccines. What does that mean, exactly? GATES: Well, over this decade, we believe unbelievable progress can be made both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. We could cut the number of children who die every year from about nine million to half of that, if we have success on it. And the benefits there in terms of reducing sickness, reducing the population growth, it really allows society a chance to take care of itself once you’ve made that intervention. SOURCE: Sanjay Gupta MD February 5, 2011 But as any number of “fact-checking websites”—not to mention Bill Gates himself—are quick to point out, this doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means. GATES: What we found out is that as health improves, families choose to have less children. SOURCE: Does saving more lives lead to overpopulation? MELINDA GATES: The truth is that when people’s lives improve—when children survive, for instance, or when girls go to school—people start making decisions based on the expectation that their children will live and thrive. The result is smaller families and slower population growth. SOURCE: Does Saving Lives Mean Overpopulation? GATES: I came across articles that showed that the key thing you can do to reduce population growth is actually improve health. And that sounds paradoxical. You think, “OK, better health means more kids, not less kids.” Well, in fact, what parents are doing is they’re trying to have two kids survive to adulthood to take care of them. And so the more disease burden that there is, the more kids they have to have to have that high probability. So there’s a perfect correlation that, as you improve health, within a half generation the population growth rate goes down. SOURCE: Bill Gates on Overpopulation and Global Poverty Yes, the Gates’ stated plan is to reduce population growth by improving health. But the idea of using vaccines as sterilization agents—even without the public’s knowledge or consent—is not conspiracy lore, but documentable fact. It its 1968 annual report, the Rockefeller Foundation addressed the “Problems of Population,” lamenting that “[v]ery little work is in progress on immunological methods, such as vaccines, to reduce fertility, and much more research is required if a solution is to be found here.” The Foundation vowed to correct this problem by funding “established and beginning investigators to turn their attention to aspects of research in reproductive biology that have implications for human fertility and its control.” This was no empty promise. By the time of its 1988 Annual Report, the Rockefeller Foundation was able to report progress on its funding into contraceptive research, including NORPLANT, a contraceptive implanted under the skin of a woman’s upper arm and effective for five years. In its 1988 report, the Rockefeller Foundation was pleased to announce that NORPLANT—which was developed by the Rockefeller-founded Population Council—was “now approved for marketing in 12 countries.” The Rockefellers’ Population Council and other research organizations joined with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1972 to create a Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation. By 1995, they were able to report progress in “developing a prototype of an anti-hCG-vaccine,” which works by combining an immunogen formed from a synthetic peptide of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG)—a hormone secreted by the surface of the early embryo to remain implanted in the womb—with a toxoid carrier molecule. The vaccine stimulates an immune reaction, causing women to develop antibodies against the hormone, thus preventing them from carrying babies to term. But beginning in the 1990s, a series of scandals over WHO-led vaccination programs in the third world led to allegations that tetanus vaccines in places like the Philippines and Kenya were being laced with hCG in order to implement population control by stealth. The controversy generated by these stories led global institutions to step back from the campaign to champion population control by vaccine. But, as usual, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was there to renew interest, working with the UK government to host a “London Summit on Family Planning” in 2012 at which the foundation announced their support for funding the research, development and deployment of injectable contraceptives to the developing world. MELINDA GATES: You heard me talk earlier about Sadi, who I met in Niger. She was traveling fifteen kilometers to get an injection. But let’s ask ourselves, what if she didn’t have to travel to that clinic? If we put it in her perspective, how can we keep her in her village to get the contraceptives she wants? Well, Pfizer is testing a new form of Depo, the injection that she gets fifteen kilometers to get. They’re now putting it in a new form, a new device that can be given—it’s very, very small, it’s called Uniject. I think it’s going to be pictured here. It’s a high-quality product. It’s effective. It’s safe. It’s tiny, as you can see. And it can be put in a healthcare worker’s kit to give to the woman at the village level. So Sadi won’t have to go fifteen kilometers any longer to get that injection. SOURCE: Melinda Gates Keynote: London Summit on Family Planning | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation But the Gates were not content to stop there. In 2014 it was announced that Microchips Biotech, Inc., a company in Lexington, Massachusetts, had developed a new form of birth control: “a wireless implant that can be turned on and off with a remote control and that is designed to last up to 16 years.” According to MIT Technology Review, the idea originated when Bill Gates visited Robert Langer’s MIT lab in 2012 and asked him if it would be possible to create an implantable birth control device that could be turned on or off remotely. Langer referred Gates to the controlled release microchip technology he had invented and licensed to MicroCHIPS Biotechnology, and the Gates Foundation granted $20 million to the firm to develop the implants. Reducing population growth has, by Gates’ own admission, been a core mission of the Gates Foundation since its inception. But in order to really understand what Gates means by “population control,” we have to look beyond the concept of controlling population size. At its most fundamental level, the “population control” that Gates speaks of is not birth control, but control of the population itself. In order to understand the broader population control agenda and how it ties in to the Gates Foundation’s plans, we have to look at a puzzling development that took place in 2017. In that year, Gavi—the Gates founded and funded alliance that partners the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and the World Bank with vaccine manufacturers to help ensure “healthy markets” for vaccines—took a strange pivot away from its core mission of vaccinating every child on the planet to providing every child with a digital biometric identity. The idea was first floated by Gavi CEO Seth Berkley in a Nature article that year, “Immunization needs a technology boost,” where he states that the goal of 100% immunization will not be reached without “secure digital identification systems that can store a child’s medical history.” He then gives a specific example: “We are working with a company in India called Khushi Baby, which creates off-grid digital health records. A necklace worn by infants contains a unique identification number on a short-range communication chip. Community health workers can scan the chip using a mobile phone, enabling them to update a child’s digital record even in remote areas with little phone coverage.” This sudden interest in digital identity was no mere passing fancy for the vaccine alliance. Gavi doubled down by becoming a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance, a public-private partnership dedicated to spearheading a global digital biometric identity standard. Other founding members of the alliance include Gates’ first company, Microsoft, and The Rockefeller Foundation. In 2018, Gavi issued a call for innovation in digital technologies “for finding, identifying and registering the most vulnerable children.” The call specifically requested technologies for capturing, storing and enrolling the biometric details of infants on “rugged biometric devices.” Berkley continued to follow up on this idea in public engagements as one of the new core missions of Gavi. SETH BERKLEY: What’s interesting is that people tend to think of, you know, birth certificates as kind of a major document. But, you know, the most common—as I mentioned before—is not a birth certificate, is not a death certificate, is not a marriage certificate. The most common connection—vital registration for the population—is actually a child health card, because we reach more than 90 percent of children with at least one dose of vaccine as part of a routine, so they’re in the system. The challenge is that contact is not connected into the system. So, if you could connect it, then you have the ability to give them their basic identity papers. You have the ability, then, later on, if they want to own land or they want to have their rights, you’re able to help them with that. But, you know, we’re not currently taking advantage of that. And so the children get seen, they get enrolled in the health centers, but that information is not used for anything else. SOURCE: Mid-term review 2018 – Michael Froman and Seth Berkley Although vaccines and identity may seem unrelated, Bill Gates has spent the last few years funding research that can bring the two ideas together. Late last year, Gates once again turned to Robert Langer and his MIT colleagues to investigate new ways to permanently store and record the vaccination information of each individual. The result of their research was a new vaccine delivery method. They found that by using “dissolvable microneedles that deliver patterns of near-infrared light-emitting microparticles to the skin,” they could create “particle patterns” in the skin of vaccine recipients which are “invisible to the eye but can be imaged using modified smartphones.” Rice University describes the quantum dot tags left behind by the microneedles as “something like a bar-code tattoo.” So who was behind this development? As lead researcher Kevin McHugh explains: “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation came to us and said, ‘Hey, we have a real problem—knowing who’s vaccinated [. . .] So our idea was to put the record on the person. This way, later on, people can scan over the area to see what vaccines have been administered and give only the ones still needed.” The microparticles that form the fluorescent quantum-dot tags are delivered along with the vaccine, but they cannot be delivered by a traditional syringe. Instead, they must be delivered by a patch of microneedles made from a mixture of dissolvable sugar and a polymer, called PVA, as well as the quantum-dot dye and the vaccine. It should be no surprise, then, that Big Pharma vaccine manufacturers—in their scramble to produce the coronavirus vaccine that, Gates assures us, is necessary to “go back to normal”—have turned to a novel vaccine delivery method: a dissolvable microneedle array patch. NICK HARPER: The University of Pittsburgh is where the polio vaccine was first discovered. At the medical center, researchers are now developing a vaccine that is delivered using a dissolvable patch called a microneedle array. LOUIS FALO: Think about them as almost like a band-aid. And so the microneedle array is simply applied to the skin topically, pressed into place very shortly, and then taken off and thrown away and then the antigen is already delivered. SOURCE: Pharmaceutical companies scramble to produce coronavirus vaccine As is becoming evident, this new vaccine-delivered bar- code-like tattoo is about much more than simply ensuring that children get all their Gavi-recommended immunizations. On a recent “Ask Me Anything” thread on reddit, when asked “What changes are we going to have to make to how businesses operate to maintain our economy while providing social distancing?” Bill Gates answered: “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” In his answer, Gates fails to mention that he has himself been instrumental in kickstarting and funding the research into the very type of digital certificates for vaccination that he is speaking about, or that these “digital certificates”—likely, at first, to be a digital marker linked to a biometric ID—could very well one day take the form of vaccine-implanted quantum-dot tattoos. But, as in so many other aspects of the unfolding crisis, Gates’ unscientific pronouncement that we will need digital certificates to prove our immunity in the “new normal” of the post-coronavirus world . . . GATES: Eventually, what we’ll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who is a vaccinated person. SOURCE: How we must respond to the coronavirus pandemic | Bill Gates . . .is now being implemented by a number of governments. It is now being reported that Onfido, a tech startup specializing in AI-based biometric ID verification, is in talks with the British government to provide the type of “digital certification” Gates mentioned, dubbed an “immunity passport.” The proposed system would require would-be workers to use the Onfido-provided app to scan their face or other biometric data, link that information to a SARS-CoV-2 antibody test (or, eventually proof of coronavirus vaccination), and then have their picture taken and immunity verified every time they wish to access a restricted space or work environment. Last month, Onfido announced that it had raised $50 million in a round of investments led by Bill Gates’ old company, Microsoft. But this is not Gates’ first experience with the field of biometric identity. A decade ago, the government of India began what has been called “The Largest Social Experiment on Earth“: enrolling over one billion people in the largest biometric identification database ever constructed. The project—involving iris scanning and fingerprinting the entirety of the Indian population, recording their biometric details in a centralized database, and issuing them a 12-digit identity number that could be used to prove residence and access government services, all within the span of a few years—presented an incredible societal, legal and technological challenge. It’s no surprise, then, that the person who was brought in as the chief architect of the Aadhaar project when it was launched—Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian multi-national Infosys—is also a long-time friend of Bill Gates and a partner with Bill and Melinda Gates on a “philanthropic” venture called Co-Impact, which supports “initiatives to address major social challenges at scale.” Nilekani’s involvement in Aadhaar has even made him one of Gates’s “heroes,” featured in slick video promotions produced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. GATES: My friend, Nandan Nilekani, is one of India’s best-known entrepreneurs. He led the creation of the world’s largest biometric ID system. Now he’s working to promote his platform to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people. NANDAR NILEKANI: There are more than a billion people around the world who don’t have any kind of ID. You can’t do anything in life without an ID because people are mobile, they are migrant. And wherever they go, whether they want a job, or whether they want to board a train, or whether they want to get a bank account or get a mobile connection, if the person has no way of proving who they are, then they just won’t get access to those services. So the challenge we had was, how do we give a billion people, many of whom don’t have birth certificates, how do we give them an ID? Aadhaar is the world’s largest digital ID system, and entirely based using biometrics to ensure uniqueness. Our enrollment was very simple: name, address, date of birth, sex, email ID and phone number if you wish, and the biometrics. The ten fingerprints of both the hands, the iris of both the eyes, and a photograph. And in a few days, he will get his Aadhaar number in the mail. And that’s how a billion people got their IDs. SOURCE: Bill Gates’s Heroes in the Field: Nandan Nilekani And Gates has personally praised the Aadhar scheme as “a huge asset for India.” GATES: Well, Aadhaar is a huge asset for India. It was designed very well. The fact that you can make digital payments so easily, you can open a bank account . . . India’s a leader in that. Our Foundation, you know, worked with the Reserve Bank. You know, Nandar Nilekani and a group of people that he pulled together did a great job. SOURCE: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates speaks on Aadhar card digitisation | Exclusive But Gates is not merely an arms-length admirer of the Aadhaar experiment. He is not only personally connected to its chief architect. He is also connected to one of the key companies that spearheaded the technology that underlies the project’s biometric database. The company that provides the iris recognition technology at the core of the Aadhaar system, Idemia, also provides facial recognition systems for the Chinese government and is currently developing digital drivers licenses for use in the United States. Idemia even created the Khushi Baby identification necklaces with embedded microchips that Gavi CEO Seth Berkley touted in his Nature article. Unsurprisingly, the company receives support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through its involvement in the GSMA Inclusive Tech Lab. And now, Gates is funding a scheme to retool Aadhaar for a global rollout. In 2014, the World Bank created a multi-sector working group to launch the “Identification for Development Initative,” or ID4D, which aims to “support progress toward identification systems using 21st century solutions.” The World Bank cites goal 16.9 of the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals—vowing to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” in the next 10 years—as the basis for its initiative. But ID4D was little more than a pipe dream until 2016, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided “catalytic contributions” to launch the ID4D Multi-Donor Trust Fund, which enticed the UK, French and Australian governments, along with the Omidyar Network, into a partnership aiming to “shape global approaches and a shared vision on identification.” Unsurprisingly, this World Bank ID4D initiative includes Nandar Nilekani—Gates’ partner and the chief architect of Aadhaar—on its advisory council and Gates has said that he is funding the World Bank “to take this Aadhaar approach to other countries.” This headlong rush to capture the biometric details and assign digital identification to every person on earth is sold to the public under the guise of “financial inclusion.” The poorest people on the planet have trouble accessing financial services and receiving government aid because they don’t have official government identification papers. In this formulation, being issued a government ID—having one’s biometric details registered, tracked and databased by the government—is a “human right” that must be “secured.” It should be no surprise by this point that this “human right” also has direct benefits for big business and for the entities that are looking to exert greater control over the human population. Gates provided insight into the real purpose of this identification control grid in a speech at the Financial Inclusion Forum hosted by the US Treasury in 2015. GATES: Every country really needs to look through these KYC—know your customer—rules to make sure that customers are able to prove who they are. But of course in many countries you don’t have any type of ID system. And the lack of an ID system is a problem, not just for the payment system, but also for voting and health and education and taxation. And so it’s a wonderful thing to go in and create a broad identification system. Again, India is a very interesting example of this, where the Aadhaar system, which is a 12-digit identifier that’s correlated to biometric measures, is becoming pervasive throughout the country and will be the foundation for how we bring this low-cost switch to every mobile phone user in India. The same type of thing is happening now in in Pakistan and there’s early beginnings of creating these ID programs in Africa as well. We expect to be able to use the IDs so that when you show up for any government service—say, you walk into a primary health clinic—we’ll be able to take that bio ID very quickly and bring up your electronic health record. Even if you’ve moved from one part of the country to the other, you will be well tracked and well served without nearly as much paperwork or waiting. And so the ID system is foundational. SOURCE: Bill Gates at the Financial Inclusion Forum, December 1, 2015 The ID control grid is an essential part of the digitization of the economy. And although this is being sold as an opportunity for “financial inclusion” of the world’s poorest in the banking system provided by the likes of Gates and his banking and business associates, it is in fact a system for financial exclusion. Exclusion of any person or transaction that does not have the approval of the government or the payment providers. GATES: Once financial flows go underground—where you have lots of legitimate transactions mixed in with the ones you want to track—and once they’re going over a digital system that the US has no connection to, it’s far more difficult to find the transactions that you want to be aware of or that you want to block. SOURCE: Bill Gates at the Financial Inclusion Forum, December 1, 2015 And, once again, this is no mere theoretical talk from Gates. He has been intimately involved in this process of switching the world over to a digital payment grid tied to biometric identity. In 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped found the “Better Than Cash Alliance,” which brings together governments, international organizations and the private sector “to accelerate the transition from cash to digital payments globally.” And, when the Indian government made a bold move to demonetize large amounts of its circulating currency in order to draw off-the-books funds back under the purview of the Indian tax office, there was Gates to praise the move as an important step toward the creation of a brave new digital economy, tied, of course, to the Aadhaar ID grid. GATES: The bold move to demonetize high value denominations and replace them with new notes with higher security features is an important step to move away from a shadow economy to an even more transparent economy. And digital transactions really I think will rise dramatically here. In fact, I think in the next several years India will become the most digitized economy. Not just by size but by percentage as well. All of the pieces are now coming together. One piece of this that we enjoyed consulting with the government on, making sure it comes together in the right way, is the pending roll out of payment banks. This for the first time really will mean that you have full currency capability on those digital phones. Once you have that digital infrastructure, the whole way you think about government benefits can be done differently. [. . .] Over time, all of these transactions will create a footprint and so when you go in for credit the ability to access the history that you’ve paid your utility bills on time, that you’ve saved up money for your children’s education, all of those things in your digital trail, accessed in an appropriate way will allow the credit market to properly score the risk and therefore loosen up more money for investments, not only in the agricultural sector but for all the entrepreneurs in the country. SOURCE: PM at Niti Ayog’s Lecture Series: Microsoft Founder Bill Gates adressing India’s top policy makers The different parts of this population control grid fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The vaccination drive ties into the biometric identity drive which ties into the cashless society drive. In Gates’ vision, everyone will receive the government-mandated vaccinations, and everyone will have their biometric details recorded in nationally administered, globally integrated digital IDs. These digital identities will be tied to all of our actions and transactions, and, if and when they are deemed illegal, they will simply be shut off by the government—or even the payment providers themselves. The Indian experiment in pioneering this biometric digital economy—an experiment with which Gates has been so intimately involved—also provides a perfect example of just how such a system will be abused. In January 2018, a report in The Tribune revealed that all of the details, including the name, address, postal code, photo, phone number and email, of all billion-plus Aadhaar-registered Indians, was available for purchase on WhatsApp for 500 rupees, or about USD$7. The Unique Identification Authority of India that administers the Aadhaar scheme was then forced to admit that approximately 210 websites, including websites of the central government and state government departments, were displaying the list of government beneficiaries, along with their name, address, other details and Aadhaar numbers. Even more worryingly, newly obtained documents show that the Indian government is integrating Aadhaar-collected data to create a “360-degree database” that will “automatically track when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, or buys new property” and integrate that data into a real-time geo-spatial database built by the country’s space agency, ISRO. Only the most willfully obtuse could claim to be unable to see the nightmarish implications for this type of all-seeing, all-pervasive society, where every transaction and every movement of every citizen is monitored, analyzed, and databased in real-time by the government. And Bill Gates is one of those willfully obtuse people. SHEREEN BAHN: A current debate that’s on in India and globally as well [is] around data. Now, you’ve been an advocate of Aadhaar, you’ve supported it, you’ve defended it. And I think that the questions arise not on on whether it’s a good idea or not, but whether it should be made mandatory for every citizen for every service possible. Because it was envisaged as people accessing government subsidy, using the Aadhaar card to avoid duplication and leakages. The question, then, is that India today is still grappling with putting in place a privacy framework, a privacy regulation, a data protection regulation. In that context, then, does it make sense, even though the matter is in court today, to link Aadhaar to every possible service? GATES: Well, Aadhar is just something that avoids you pretending to be somebody else. That, you know, you can have, you know, fake people on the government payroll. Aadhaar, you know, prevents you being on that payroll as as a ghost worker. It prevents you from collecting things that you shouldn’t collect or accessing a health record you shouldn’t have access to. So the basic Aadhaar mechanism is an identity mechanism. And so it’s too bad if somebody thinks that because Aadhaar is there that in and of itself creates a privacy problem. SOURCE: Future Ready with Bill Gates (Exclusive Interview) | Bill Gates & Melinda Gates: The Philanthropists Gates’ response is, of course, disingenuous. The very purpose of a globally integrated ID grid and cashless payment architecture is to remove privacy from our lives. It should be no surprise, then, that this man who is not concerned about the privacy implications of a global, real-time electronic ID and digital payments grid, is also a prime investor in EarthNow LLC, a company promising to “deploy a large constellation of advanced imaging satellites that will deliver real-time, continuous video of almost anywhere on Earth.” No, this Gates-driven agenda is not about money. It is about control. Control over every aspect of our daily lives, from where we go, to who we meet, to what we buy and what we do. The irony is that this billionaire “philanthropist,” so often depicted as a cartoon superhero for his dazzling generosity, actually resembles nothing so much as a comic book supervillain, right down to the use of his vast wealth to sponsor Harvard University research into dimming the sun by spraying particles into the stratosphere. But once again, we are driven back to the question. Who is this person? What ideology is driving this quest for control? And what is the end goal of this quest? Who is Bill Gates?
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POPPY HARLOW: Ten billion dollars. I mean, just speak about the magnitude of that. That is by far the biggest commitment of the foundation, isn’t it, Bill? I mean, this is by far the largest. BILL GATES: That’s right, we’ve been spending a lot on vaccines. With this commitment, over eight million additional lives will be saved. So it’s one of the most effective ways that health in the poorest countries can be dramatically improved. SOURCE: Gates Foundation: $10 billion for vaccines In January of 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates used the World Economic Forum at Davos to announce a staggering $10 billion commitment to research and develop vaccines for the world’s poorest countries, kicking off what he called a “Decade of Vaccines.” GATES: Today we’re announcing a commitment over this next decade, which we think of as a decade of vaccines having incredible impact. We’re announcing that we’ll spend over $10 billion on vaccines. SOURCE: PBS News Hour January 29, 2010 Hailed by the Gates-funded media . . . HARI SREENIVASAN: For the record, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a NewsHour underwriter. SOURCE: PBS News Hour January 29, 2010 . . . and applauded by the pharmaceutical companies who stood to reap the benefits of that largesse, the record-setting commitment made waves in the international community, helping to underwrite a Global Vaccine Action Plan coordinated by the Gates-funded World Health Organization. But contrary to the Gates’ own PR spin that this $10 billion pledge was an unalloyed good and would save eight million lives, the truth is that this attempt to reorient the global health economy was part of a much bigger agenda. An agenda that would ultimately lead to greater profits for Big Pharma companies, greater control for the Gates Foundation over the field of global health, and greater power for Bill Gates to shape the course of the future for billions of people around the planet. This is Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World. You’re tuned into The Corbett Report.
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BILL GATES: Hello. I’m Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. In this video you’re going to see the future. SOURCE: Hello, I’m Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Who is Bill Gates? A software developer? A businessman? A philanthropist? A global health expert? This question, once merely academic, is becoming a very real question for those who are beginning to realize that Gates’ unimaginable wealth has been used to gain control over every corner of the fields of public health, medical research and vaccine development. And now that we are presented with the very problem that Gates has been talking about for years, we will soon find that this software developer with no medical training is going to leverage that wealth into control over the fates of billions of people. GATES: [. . .] because until we get almost everybody vaccinated globally, we still won’t be fully back to normal. SOURCE: Bill Gates on Finding a Vaccine for COVID-19, the Economy, and Returning to ‘Normal Life’ Bill Gates is no public health expert. He is not a doctor, an epidemiologist or an infectious disease researcher. Yet somehow he has become a central figure in the lives of billions of people, presuming to dictate the medical actions that will be required for the world to go “back to normal.” The transformation of Bill Gates from computer kingpin to global health czar is as remarkable as it is instructive, and it tells us a great deal about where we are heading as the world plunges into a crisis the likes of which we have not seen before. This is the story of How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health. You’re tuned in to The Corbett Report.
Dr. Andrew Kaufman is an American medical doctor, natural healing consultant, molecular biologist, inventor, expert witness and forensic psychiatrist who has been powerfully outspoken throughout the pandemic.
Speaking counter to the mainstream media, Dr. Kaufman has stated that a virus is not causing a new disease, there is no evidence of increased mortality and modern medicine is the leading cause of death. Having studied at M.I.T, Duke and the Medical University of South Carolina, he has published original research and lectured, supervised, and mentored medical students in all psychiatric specialties. His knowledge and experience has qualified you as an expert witness in local, state, and federal courts. Timestamps | Chapters 01:03 | Brian’s introduction. 01:49 | Broadcasting on Digital freedom platform for freedom of speech. 02:36 | Dr Andrew Kaufman says there is no evidence of Coronavirus causing a new disease. 09:43 | Statistics of total number of deaths are distorted by mis-recording tthe cause of death on death certificates. 16:44 | Pandemic is a completely manufactured crisis, our rights taken away leading towards social control. 19:47 | Freedom of speech is being stifled. 21:35 | Dr Andrew Kaufman sceptical of more deaths in Wuhan and the US during pandemic than usual annually. 24:49 | The way data is displayed can affect perception. 26:25 | Decreased mortality because of the lockdown, could be skewed. 28:09 | Medical care can cause deaths. 30:37 | What Dr Andrew Kaufman’s colleagues think of him for being outspoken. 33:59 | How medical school fees and training influence future practice of Doctors. 39:04 | What is happening in New York to justify lockdown there. 43:44 | Dr Andrew Kaufman’s views on 5G and suspected connection with Coronavirus. 54:55 | In virus and contagion research, whoever proposes a theory, they are the ones to prove it is accurate. 56:39 | Why the reaction of medical advisers seems to be to find a cure for this virus. 1:04:33 | The race to find a vaccine for Covid-19, Bill Gates involvement, invisible ink tattoos and gene therapy. 1:17:06 | Dr Andrew Kaufman is asking people to question what doesn’t seem to add up and why he is not following directives. 1:22:29 | The science behind wearing masks and social distancing. 1:29:54 | Thoughts on Dr Anthony Fauci during this time. 1:32:00 | The economic effect on the healthcare sector, companies and retail sector in the USA. 1:39:43 | What Exosomes are and what can affect them. 1:49:34 | Dr Andrew Kaufman’s advice to those questioning and those unwilling to question guidance. 1:59:08 | Brian’s summing up.
Who is Bill Gates? A software developer? A businessman? A philanthropist? A global health expert?
This question, once merely academic, is becoming a very real question for those who are beginning to realize that Gates' unimaginable wealth has been used to gain control over every corner of the fields of public health, medical research and vaccine development. And now that we are presented with the very problem that Gates has been talking about for years, we will soon find that this software developer with no medical training is going to leverage that wealth into control over the fates of billions of people. From Mercola.com: Today, we continue to provide you information about the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, April 6, 2020, there are more than 1.4 million cases worldwide and 370,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., with New York City being one of the hotspots.1,2 Here, I interview Shiva Ayyadurai, who has a Ph.D. in systems biology from MIT. What Is Systems Biology? His academic background gives Ayyadurai a slightly different perspective on this outbreak, as it focuses on the foundational causes of disease rather than the conventional medical paradigm that tends to focus on pharmaceutical remedies. Ayyadurai explains: “The MIT department of biological engineering was created in 2003. The notion was … that you needed an engineering approach to biology as new advances or new discoveries were coming out in biology. That created the department of biological engineering … One of the big things that took place in 2003 that led to the formation of that department was, in an ironic way, what occurred with the human genome project starting in 1993. We went into the genome project with a reductionist view of biology. Biologists essentially thought that the number of parts meant complexity. We knew in 1993, a worm had around 20,000 genes. So, we said, OK, we're going to start mapping out the human genome. We were at least 25 times more complex. The notion was we had about a half a million genes. By 2003, they only found 20,000 protein coding genes. That flipped biology on its head because it said, wait a minute, we have the same number of parts, and they thought genes were a reflection of complexity. That led to systems biology starting around 2003, which said, look, genes create proteins and these proteins interact. So, it's about all these interactions … Today, that has led to this field called epigenetics, in which we know that the external environment, what we interact with, can turn on and turn off genes. I came back to MIT in 2003. I did four degrees at MIT in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. My Master's was in design, but I always was fascinated with medicine.” The Cytosol Platform The project Ayyadurai took on for his Ph.D. thesis was to mathematically model the whole human cell. His work led to the creation of a platform called CytoSolve “cyto” standing for “cell.” This approach is different from biology, computer science and chemistry. “Biologists are essentially distributed knowledge engineers,” he says, “and the thing they're trying to understand is this thing called the body. No different than aeronautical engineers trying to build the airplane. The difference is when we build an airplane, we actually know what we want to build. And we know the parts in biology, we're finding the parts, that's what they're doing. Some biologists can win a Nobel prize just for looking at how two proteins interact. So, they're very focused on understanding these parts. So, imagine if we could create a technology where we could take those parts, integrate them, and then essentially let them be sort of focused in their silos. But there wouldn't be this framework that you could integrate, where you could integrate these molecular pathways. And that really created cytosol. To me, it was a big circling back because I grew up in India where my grandmother practiced traditional systems of medicine. In that system of medicine, they had diagnosis methods, they looked at you, they figured out your body type and they would figure out the right types of foods and medicines, herbs or even body work to get you back into balance. That was always seen as a ‘black art’ from a Western medicine [perspective]. [CytoSolve] lets us decipher what they were doing and actually understand these synergies. So that's what systems biology is about. It's taking an engineering systems approach to the body … It's literally understanding how to diagnose and assess and identify what the problem is, and then how to administer a prescription within a few minutes. It’s essentially an ‘AI’-type model.” COVID-19 — Health and Economic Perspectives As noted by Ayyadurai, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only highlighting our immune health but also our economic health. We're seeing the integration of medical policy and economic policy. “I had a very interesting discussion with a leading economist,” Ayyadurai says, “and he had a serious concern about the fact that economists are being forced to backfill in a misguided health policy, which is occurring. What he meant by that is, [they’re being told to] just use quantitative easing, which is basically printing money, and that will solve the problem. Now that entire process does two things. First of all, we have I think 10 million unemployment claims in March alone. In addition to that, you have the fact that we're going to print money, which … if you look, since 2008 and 2009, when quantitative easing started … that has essentially been the biggest transfer of wealth — to the 0.01%, again. It is essentially a weakened earning power and the [weakened value] of the dollar. So that's what's occurred. Now we have this COVID-19, and we have this economic overreaction, in my opinion, from the fear-mongering. In many ways, it reflects the immune system. The immune system fundamentally wants to operate well for you and maintain homeostasis, and it's the overreaction of a weakened and dysfunctional immune system that causes harm. Similarly, when you look at it from the economic standpoint, we have this unbridled overreaction, in my view. [We’re] not looking at what modern medicine is saying — that we should take a personalized medicine approach, right? One size doesn't fit all. This is basically flatten the curve: Kick the can down the street. We're just going to wait until, when? Until the vaccine is produced or until a drug comes out. The assumption is that the immune system of all of us is equally weak. That's what this is based on. The assumption is that all of us are going to get it and all of us will suffer from it. It's a very interesting model. Look at the person leading this health policy, Dr. Fauci. His background is from the pharmaceutical world … [and] when you look at the NIH and the CDC, these organizations are heavily, heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies. In that environment, the model has always been never to discuss immune health, what we can do to support the immune system. It's always under the assumption that there's this big boogeyman, that the virus harms your body. Most medical doctors, again, they're victims of this education. Many of them are taught the virus literally comes and attacks your body, and that a vaccine or a pharmaceutical intervention blocks it. It's not taught broadly that [the problem is that] the dysfunctional, weakened immune system is not running on all cylinders. One part of it can overreact, and that overreaction is what goes in and attacks your own tissues. So, the issue is, we're not having a discussion at all in the media about ‘How do you modulate that overreaction and support people's immune health?’” Similarly, Ayyadurai notes, the economic collapse is “a result of precisely engineered governmental policies,” even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest. Is COVID-19 a Real Pandemic? COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, and the World Health Organization did declare it a pandemic. However, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government. The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 million and 50 million. The bubonic plague also killed 50 million people, wiping out a shocking 60% of the European population. This is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.” COVID-19 presently affects a tiny fraction of the global population — about 1.4 million cases out of a global population of 7.78 billion3 — and even with a death toll of 81,000 worldwide,4 COVID-19 has had a miniscule impact, having killed a mere 0.00001% of the population. Don’t get me wrong. Any death is tragic. But any given individual’s risk of dying from the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease or cancer, for example, is greater than their risk of dying from COVID-19. Why is death from lifestyle-induced disease and environmental toxicity more preferable and acceptable than death from an infectious disease? Dying from a preventable medical mistake is also a greater risk, as that kills up to 440,000 Americans every year. Where’s the panic about that? Isn’t the idea that conventional medicine kills 440,000 people a year terrifying?! 1 in 5 elderly patients are also injured by medical care. Where are the calls to protect our aging loved ones from this threat? Were health policies more aligned with truth, we wouldn’t have these chronic disease epidemics and far fewer people would die from preventable medical mistakes. More people would lead healthy lives were they properly informed about what’s harmful and what’s healthy. Similarly, when it comes to COVID-19, there are simple strategies with which we can address this infection that does not require collapsing the global economy, creating unheard of unemployment and isolating everyone from human contact for weeks on end. You can find many articles detailing such strategies on my Coronavirus Resource Page. As noted by Ayyadurai, systems biology tells us that one size does not fit all. “We need to move to the right medicine for the right person at the right time,” he says. But this knowledge has not been applied in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is being treated as though they’re high risk for severe infection and death and therefore need to take identical precautions. So, what’s really going on here? “We have not said, ‘Hey, let's shut down the economy to address the fact that we have skyrocketing obesity taking place, skyrocketing diabetes,” Ayyadurai says. “So, the level of contradiction, the level of hypocrisy should wake up everyone to understand that there is another agenda. There is another agenda afoot. I repeat what my mentor said: ‘When things don't add up, take a step back and ask, what is the other agenda?’ And the only thing in a common-sense way that reveals itself to me is power, profit and control. Power, profit and control.” The Power, Profit and Control Agenda Like Ayyadurai, I believe the fearmongering is being used to suppress dissent, to crash the economy and to issue medical mandates. “If you look broadly, there were massive uprisings, antiestablishment uprisings [in different countries]. Well, they're all gone now. We don't even hear anything about them,” Ayyadurai says. He also believes this fearmongering and social isolation mandates will be used as a way to acclimatize people to accept state wants or what a few people deem is good for everyone. “That, I think, is the milieu being set up,” he says. “That's being teed up.” Indeed, it simply doesn’t add up when you look at mortality rates. “There's another agenda,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what I see, because it doesn't make any rational sense [to crash the economy over COVID-19]. I think that's why a number of the videos, the tweets I've done have gone viral, because to everyday working people, it doesn't make sense either. They're trying to sort this out.” Interestingly, this epidemic is taking place just a few months after Google began censoring holistic health news. So, people searching for sound nutritional strategies can no longer find them. Instead, they’re directed to Big Pharma-backed sites promoting conventional medicine. The censorship isn’t even about squashing nonscientific views anymore. Educated health professionals are being banned left and right simply for posting peer-reviewed studies showing nutraceuticals work, or that drugs or vaccines don’t work — including Ayyadurai himself, who got kicked off Twitter the day this interview was recorded over a vitamin D post. “It has essentially moved to a model of a finite set of people serving the interests of another finite set of people,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what's fundamentally going on. When we really look back at the history of ‘infectious diseases,’ what actually caused the real decline in infectious disease? … That came from sanitation, vitamin A, nutrition, elimination of child labor, refrigeration [and] infrastructure at the political level … Well, how did we get that? This is one layer people need to understand from a human standpoint. It came about because in the late 1800s, there was a massive force of the American working class who were militant, and they fought for those rights. People lived in squalor. No one cared for them. It was the uprising of those people and very, very powerful independently self-organizing systems, all over this country, that forced the elites to give them these basic infrastructures … So, what I see is the ability for people to organize and demand their rights and get them. That is what occurred in the late 1900s, and we got massive gains. Now look at infrastructure today. Dirty water, dirty air, dirty food … and we look at them in synergy, how they affect our body. None of that's discussed, none of that. I think the United States has a D+ in infrastructure. The roads, the bridges and the water systems [are all crumbling]. And when you don't fix these things in time, they affect all types of environmental things. The elite in this country do not want to address that. They want to always create a fake problem and a fake solution to consolidate power. And that's why when you look at this [COVID-19] phenomenon that's taking place, it's a penultimate of it … You create massive amounts of fear so people will be willing — because they're under economic stress, under what they think is a health [threat] — to give up their rights. And that's where I see this headed. So, this is an interesting convergence of … economic attack, attack on people's health, [and attack on] people's autonomy and freedom. Truth, freedom and health are all under attack … They do not want any discussion about indigenous people's medicines that have worked for centuries. They don't want to talk about simple solutions … so, they suppress discourse, suppress debate, suppress freedom, and move everything away from the scientific method — which is a process where you actually have to prove stuff, which is what they claim they want to do to scientific consensus. Freedom gets suppressed and now you can move truth to scientific consensus. So, you go from suppression of freedom to fake science or outdated science at best. And then that is used to create a fake problem and a fake solution. And then, if you go to the health part, what that means is you diminish people's health, you control people's health, and now you have a populace which is so controlled, they don't have the strength to fight for their freedom. So, you have the attack on freedom, the attack on truth, and the attack on health. All of those are interconnected. They too are a system from a systems perspective. Without freedom, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can’t have health. And without health we don't have the strength to fight for our freedom. And the way that truth actually is discovered should be through the scientific method. That's what's really been compromised, starting, I would say, in the late ‘50s.” Postal Service Could Be Used to Protect Free Communications To summarize, the three-pronged agenda is: Power, profit and control. To counteract that three-pronged threat, we need academic freedom and the freedom to discourse and debate. From that freedom, we get truth, and from truth, we’re able to understand health, not only physical health but also in the broadest sense the health of our systems, our infrastructure and environment. With health, we gain the strength to fight for even more freedoms. “For each one of those, there's a solution. For example, when you go to freedom, if you look at communication, right now we are heavily relying on Google, Facebook and three major telecom companies. So, basically, five CEOs control our communication. One phone call to them, and you can essentially shut down communication ... What is the solution? Well, it's going to sound weird, but … the founding fathers of this country created an institution called the United States Postal Service. Why did they create that? Because the crown was not allowing each individual to communicate. So, the notion of ‘the press’ was all of us. There was no New York Times. Each one of us were supposed to be the press ... If anyone interfered with your communications, [they got a] 20-year prison sentence. It was criminal. So, the entire postal service system was a decentralized environment enabling every American to communicate for pennies … In 1997 is when email volume overtook postal mail volume. I met with the executives of the postal service. I said, look, you guys should be living up to what you were chartered to do, which is to protect free communications. Why don't you offer a public email service and public social media services … that would be protected by the laws of the Constitution? No one, including the government, could interfere. They thought it was a ridiculous idea … In 2011, the postal services were going out of business. Why? Because all the best parts of the postal service were privatized into DHL and FedEx. So, I again hit them really hard. The inspector general, Dave Williams, called me up. He goes, ‘Shiva, why are you attacking us?’ I said, ‘Look, you guys are not doing your job. You're not in the postal mail business. You were supposed to be in the communications business. You are set up as a quasi-organization to protect our rights. So anyway, I did two chartered reports for them. My point is we need a digital rights act, and there is an institution [that can supply us with that]. It is the postal service, in my view. All these postal service locations could be converted to a mesh network. So, there is an opportunity to have a network by the people for the people. Now if someone wants to go use Google and Facebook and you can, but there needs to be a public common. Those few elite would object to this and have the power and control to prevent that from being implemented. Definitely. That's why I believe we need to have a mass movement. Nothing has ever been given to us. People think slavery ends one day and we have freedom the next. Every point in human history has always been people chipping away at slavery to get freedom from the elite." Decentralization Is the Name of the Game Ayyadurai discusses many additional issues and goes far deeper than I can summarize here, so please, listen to the interview in its entirety. He has many fascinating insights, ideas and solutions. For example, about 50 minutes in, he discusses how federally funded research systems can be improved to ensure scientific integrity and prevent scientific fraud. “We need to take power away from the academics,” he says, “and one way to do that is to force decentralization. That's a common theme here.” He also analyzes the health care model, and discusses how health care, as a system, can be improved while simultaneously being made far less expensive. “Broadly, we need to decentralize health care. The concept of centralized health care — which is what the purpose of this [COVID-19 pandemic is] — is that next year everyone's going to be mandated vaccines,” he says. “For them to crash the economy, to drive it into a depression, for them it's a relatively great return on investment. You make the fed print $6 trillion, but you're going to make $7 trillion to $8 trillion recurring revenue [by way of mandated, annual vaccinations] … So, we have to do whatever it takes to decentralize health care … When you look at these things I've said, it comes down to one word: Decentralization … I think the opportunity here is to start educating people. It is supposed to be We the People, and this does not mean it's going to happen without struggle. We may have to rise up and fight in ways that we haven't done before, just like those people did in the late 1800s, and the idea is to compel the thing. We need to build a broad-based movement bottom-up … And I think it begins with taking care of your health.” References Mercola, J. (2020). Systems Biologist Speaks Out About COVID-19 Response. Retrieved 18 April 2020, from https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/18/coronavirus-economic-impact.aspx
The Age of Terror was inaugurated with a series of controlled demolitions in New York City on September 11, 2001. Now the world is being led into the Age of Biological Terror with a controlled demolition of the economy that is already causing unprecedented carnage across markets and around the globe. As the dust settles on this demolition, an entirely new economy is ready to be erected in its place: one in which no citizen will be out of the sight of the all-seeing government. This week on The Corbett Report we examine the details of this collapse and why the bankster class is seeking to destroy the financial Ponzi scheme that they themselves created. References
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“But someone would have talked,” say the self-styled skeptics who believe the government’s official conspiracy theory of 9/11. “After all, every major conspiracy has its whistleblowers, doesn’t it?” But there’s a problem with this logically fallacious non-argument. “Someone” did talk. In fact, numerous people have come out to blow the whistle on the events of September 11, 2001, and the cover-up that surrounds those events. These are the stories of the 9/11 Whistleblowers. You’re tuned in to The Corbett Report. In 2001, Kevin Ryan was the site manager at Environmental Health Laboratories (EHL) in South Bend, Indiana. At the time, EHL was a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a global safety consulting and certification corporation that tests a range of consumer and industrial products for compliance with government safety standards. Among many other things, UL provides fire resistance ratings for structural steel components to insure compliance with New York City building codes. Just weeks after the events of September 11, 2001, UL’s then-CEO, Loring Knoblauch, visited Ryan’s EHL lab in South Bend. During his speech there, Knoblauch assured the lab’s workers that UL “had certified the steel in the World Trade Center buildings” and “that we should all be proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions.” Knowing UL’s role in producing a fire resistance directory and providing ratings for steel components, Ryan thought little of the statement at the time. But Ryan’s curiosity about UL’s role in the certification of the World Trade Center steel was piqued when, in 2003, he began to question the lies that the Bush administration had used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and, eventually, to question the official story of September 11th itself. Recalling Knoblauch’s comments about UL’s role in certifying the Trade Center steel shortly after 9/11, Ryan began to take a professional interest in the official investigation into the Twin Towers’ destruction, an investigation in which UL itself was to play a part. As Ryan began to learn more about the issues involved with the destruction of the towers and the ongoing investigation into that destruction, his concerns only grew. Why had the actual steel evidence of the towers’ destruction been illegally removed and disposed of before a proper investigation could take place? Why did not one or two, but three modern, steel-frame buildings completely collapse due to fire on 9/11 given that such an event had never taken place before? Why did the towers fail at all when John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing the towers, claimed in 1993—just five years before his death—that his own analysis of jet plane crashes and ensuing fires in the towers had concluded that “the building structure would still be there”? And why had Knoblauch himself bragged about UL’s role in testing the World Trade Center steel—a test that would have rated the floor components for two hours of fire resistance and the building columns for three hours—when the North Tower “failed” in 102 minutes and the South Tower came down in just 56 minutes? These concerns prompted Ryan, in October 2003, to write directly to Loring Knoblauch, outlining his thoughts and “asking what [Knoblauch] was doing to protect our reputation.” But if Ryan was expecting Knoblauch to put his mind at ease about these issues, he was sorely disappointed. Instead, Knoblauch—who included Tom Chapin, then the head of UL’s fire resistance division, in the email chain—wrote a response that only raised more questions than it answered. KEVIN RYAN: Knoblauch copied Tom Chapin on his response to me, because it was Tom’s job as the leader of the fire resistance division to really address these kinds of things. And interestingly, Tom Chapin had written a letter to the editors at The New York Times in 2002 where he basically admitted, again, that UL’s testing had been behind the fire resistance of the World Trade Center towers. And so I’ve written about that a little bit, but he was very clear that the World Trade Center stood for as long as it did because of UL’s testing. And the problem of course with that is that the South Tower lasted for only 56 minutes after it was hit, and the testing that was required by New York City code was three hours of fire resistance for the columns and two hours for the floor assemblies. So 56 minutes and those ratings do not add up. That’s just not something that should go unquestioned. So Loring Knoblauch wrote back to me after my questions in—it must have been October 2003 when I wrote to him. He wrote back to me a month later and he said all these things about how the company had tested the steel components used to build the World Trade Center towers. What he meant is we had tested samples of those and provided ratings for fire resistance to the New York City code—again, three hours for columns and two hours for floor assemblies. And that information established the confidence that the buildings would stand in those fire durations. And the test that was used was ASTM E119, which is the standard test used for this purpose. And UL is the leader in doing that testing, so it wasn’t a surprise. And not only that, but NIST—the government agency NIST [the National Institute of Standards and Technology]—had made clear in some of their progress reports that UL had consulted with the construction companies for the World Trade Center towers, and throughout the building of the buildings that UL had provided that information. So it’s really not a surprise at all. And Tom Chapin replied further to me that the NIST agency was doing an investigation and asked me, basically, to have patience. And I did for maybe the next year. In 2002, NIST began its three-year, $16 million study of the Twin Towers’ “failure.” Tom Chapin had assured Ryan that UL was cooperating with this investigation and that his concerns would be allayed once the final report was released. But by 2004, it was already clear that there were serious problems with that report and its preliminary findings, including findings from tests conducted by UL on mock-ups of the WTC floor assemblies that contradicted NIST’s own conclusions about the buildings’ destruction. RYAN: Well, it’s very important to understand that with the official accounts for the World Trade Center, there were a number of explanations given in the early years. And for the towers the one that was settled upon and that lasted for three years was the pancake theory. And the pancake theory was this concept where the floor assemblies had heated up and sagged and this steel had softened or weakened and then they started to collapse upon each other in a pancake fashion. And then the columns basically just folded inward. So that was the official account, really. It was given by the FEMA investigators Corley and Thornton and others—who coincidentally had also given us the official account for the Oklahoma City bombing. But in this video from the television program Nova, it was captured for everyone’s benefit in little videos . . . animations. And so the pancake theory was the official account. And UL tested the floor assemblies basically for the possibility of this in August 2004. So this was, again, nine months or ten months after I had asked my original questions. And they did so by using different assemblies with varying amounts of fireproofing. One of the assemblies had basically no fireproofing on it at all, and they ran it through this furnace in this ASTM E119 test and concluded in the end that there would be no collapse. That the floors would not collapse even at temperatures and times greater than what we’re seeing at the World Trade Center. And they made that clear. NIST made this clear, that the pancake theory was not supported. So that left us all at that time with no explanation, in 2004, three years later. Having invaded Iraq, having done so much to invest in the official account that the World Trade Center had been destroyed by these planes. And that was a difficult situation for NIST and for everyone. Realizing that UL was not pressing NIST on the discrepancies in its findings, Kevin Ryan took matters into his own hands and, on November 11, 2004, wrote directly to Frank Gayle, the director of NIST’s Twin Towers investigation. That email began: “As I’m sure you know, the company I work for certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings. In requesting information from both our CEO and Fire Protection business manager last year, I learned that they did not agree on the essential aspects of the story, except for one thing—that the samples we certified met all requirements. They suggested we all be patient and understand that UL was working with your team, and that tests would continue through this year. I’m aware of UL’s attempts to help, including performing tests on models of the floor assemblies. But the results of these tests appear to indicate that the buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel.” After pointing out the problems raised by NIST’s own investigation—including the tests that disproved claims that the steel in the floor area simply “melted”—Ryan got to the heart of the matter: “This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company. “There is no question that the events of 9/11 are the emotional driving force behind the War on Terror. And the issue of the WTC collapse is at the crux of the story of 9/11. My feeling is that your metallurgical tests are at the crux of the crux of the crux. Either you can make sense of what really happened to those buildings, and communicate this quickly, or we all face the same destruction and despair that come from global decisions based on disinformation and ‘chatter.'” Predictably, if unfortunately, Gayle never responded to the email. However, Ryan made the important decision to share the email, and his concerns, with the broader public: RYAN: Frank did not respond, no. Actually, that letter was sent to him and then also copied to a couple of people who were trying to find more information. Trying to find the truth about what happened on 9/11. Those two included David Griffin, who had just recently written a book, and Catherine Austin Fitts, the director of 911Truth.org. Dr. Griffin asked me almost immediately if he could share it publicly. And, of course, with some hesitation, but knowing the importance in believing what I wrote, I told him it was OK. And overnight there must have been tens of thousands of people reading this letter on the web and people calling our offices in South Bend at UL constantly, and calling me at home constantly. I think a lot of people were feeling the same—they were thinking the same thing: That clearly there was something wrong here and the story was not explaining what we needed to know. So Dr. Gayle did not respond. He’s never responded. Maybe one day I will talk to him personally and find out what he thinks. But, you know, these things are clear in terms of job—this is not really just a career decision, although it is—it’s a career decision. It’s more than that, it’s a decision about, you know, what kind of world we want to live in, and at a time where that kind of decision is really important. Because, you know, the book Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be a fiction and it’s evolving into reality. Ryan did not engage in these actions naïvely. He knew that allowing his concerns to go public would focus public attention on himself and on UL and that such actions would have ramifications for his employment. But if he was bracing himself for those ramifications, he didn’t have long to wait. His email to Frank Gayle was sent on Thursday, November 11, 2004. It was published on the web the following day. Immediately, Ryan’s phone was ringing off the hook and UL was being contacted for comment. That weekend, the company reached out to him to let him know the consequences of his actions. RYAN: The Human Resources folks called me that weekend and asked if I would contact the people on the web who had published it and ask that it be taken down. And I refused to do that and told them that I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. And I think it was at that very point that they started making the plans to terminate me. So I had actually taken the next Monday off of work and that was convenient. It allowed me to get my thoughts together. And then on Tuesday when I came in—which I believe was the 16th—the leaders from the Northbrook—Chicago—office were there, and they had told me they would be: “Please make sure you’re there.” They brought a letter on UL letterhead and made it clear that, you know, they felt that I had practiced poor judgment in writing this letter and sending it to their client NIST. It had harmed their relationship with NIST, and thereby I was terminated. So, yeah, that was a tough spot for my family and I. But my wife has been supportive. She knows the idealistic nature of her husband, I think, and she knew why it was important. And we’ve done fine, we’ve gotten by and gotten other jobs. And that’s—I believe people should recognize that it’s not the end of the world to lose your job. Sometimes it’s a new beginning that is useful. Not for courting controversy, but merely for pointing out the glaring truth, Ryan was fired from his job. Like so many other whistleblowers in so many other stories, Ryan paid a price for doing what his conscience demanded. Also like many other brave men and women who have been thrust into the position of blowing the whistle, Ryan has found a way to thrive despite the setbacks. Rather than keeping quiet and moving on with his life, Ryan has doubled down on his efforts, founding several action groups, editing the Journal of 9/11 Studies, writing articles and books on the subject of 9/11, volunteering on the board of directors of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, delivering lectures on the destruction of the World Trade Center, and continuing to raise public awareness of the problems with the official story of the founding event of the “War on Terror.” In the end, despite the high price he paid career-wise, Ryan feels that his decision to blow the whistle and call out the self-contradictions of the NIST investigation was worth it. After all, it is only when those who know the truth are unafraid to step up and speak it, regardless of the personal consequences, that we will ever hope to achieve true justice. RYAN: What I’ve been able to benefit from is understanding a lot more about society, history, politics, being better at communicating myself. And I’ve met a lot of great people. We’ve worked together to raise awareness and try to bring justice for 9/11. You know, I’ve met and presented with 9/11 victims’ family members. I’ve met 9/11 Commission leaders and other people who were very central to this story. So many great researchers. So many great people. So overall it was definitely worth it for me. It’s a personal decision, of course, and it has to be motivated by trying to do some good. If it’s not motivated by trying to do some good then you’re doing the wrong thing. Cate Jenkins Watch this video on BitChute / YouTube or Download the mp4 TRANSCRIPT Of the many scenes from September 11, 2001, that have been etched into the public consciousness, few are as iconic as the images of the survivors and first responders escaping Ground Zero completely covered in dust from the destruction of the Twin Towers. And of the many, many lies told by government officials in the days following the attacks, few have been as blatant or as clearly documented as the lies about the safety of that dust propounded by the EPA and its administrator at the time, Chrstine Todd Whitman. CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: We know asbestos was in there, was in those buildings. Lead is in those buildings. There are the VOC’s [Volatile Organic Compounds], however, the concentrations are such that they don’t pose a health hazard. SOURCE: Christie Whitman says air is safe days after 911 WHITMAN: Well, if there’s any good news out of all this, it’s that everything we’ve tested for, which includes asbestos, lead, and VOCs, have been below any level of concern for the general public health. Obviously, for those who are down here, these are very important . . . SOURCE: Sanjay Gupta reports: Terror in the dust WHITMAN: Statements that EPA officials made after 9/11 were based on the judgment of experienced environmental and health professionals at the EPA, OSHA and the CDC, who had analyzed the test data that 13 different organizations and agencies were collecting in Lower Manhattan. I do not recall any EPA scientist or experts responsible for reviewing this data ever advising me that the test data from Lower Manhattan showed that the air or water proposed long-term health risks for the general public. SOURCE: Air Contamination at Ground Zero – C-Span As we now know, these statements were all lies. As early as September 18th, the very same day that Whitman was assuring New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had already detected sulfur dioxide levels in the air so high that “according to one industrial hygienist, they were above the EPA’s standard for a classification of ‘hazardous’.” And even in those early days, first responders were already reporting a range of health problems, including coughing, wheezing, eye irritation and headaches. Even so, Whitman and the EPA persisted in perpetuating the lies about the dust, assuring New Yorkers that respirators were not needed outside of the “restricted area” around Ground Zero. And, as we examined in 9/11 Suspects: Christine Todd Whitman, it was later confirmed that the White House had been editing the EPA’s press releases on the air quality in Manhattan and removing warnings about the air safety all along. LISA MYERS: In the wake of 9/11, there were serious concerns about whether the air around Ground Zero was filled with toxins, unsafe for workers and residents. But by September 18th, many New Yorkers were back in their apartments and on the job, partly because of this press release that day from the Environmental Protection Agency, reassuring New Yorkers that their air is safe to breathe. Was that press release misleading? NIKKI TINSLEY: It was surely not telling all of the truth. MYERS: In an exclusive interview, Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, the EPA’s top watchdog, tells NBC News the agency simply did not have sufficient data to justify such a reassurance. In fact, a new report by Tinsley’s office says at the time, more than 25 percent of dust samples collected before September 18th showed unsafe levels of asbestos. And the EPA had no test results at all on PCBs, dioxins or particulates in the air that can cause respiratory problems. TINSLEY: The EPA did not give the people of New York complete information. MYERS: So what happened? Tinsley’s report charges in the crucial days after 9/11 the White House changed EPA press releases to “add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” September 13th, the EPA draft release, never released to the public, says, “EPA ‘testing terrorized sites for environmental hazards.'” The White House changes that to EPA “reassures public about environmental hazards.” September 16th, the EPA draft says, “recent samples of dust on Water Street show higher levels of asbestos.” The White House version: “new samples confirm ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and is not a cause for public concern.” And the White House leaves out entirely this warning, that “air samples raise concerns for cleanup workers and office workers near Water Street.” SOURCE: Officials claim EPA Misled Public about Safety of Air Quality at Ground Zero What many do not know, because their story has been largely ignored and marginalized, is that there were officials within the EPA who were desperately trying to blow the whistle on the agency’s lies. Officials like Cate Jenkins. Dr. Cate Jenkins had joined the EPA in December 1979, serving as an Environmental Scientist with EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER). Her work included “detecting hazardous waste and developing regulations for their control,” a role that took on special importance in the wake of the toxic dust clouds covering Manhattan on 9/11. Unlike many of the other 9/11 whistleblowers, however, the events of September 11, 2001, did not represent the first time Dr. Jenkins had to blow the whistle on her own agency. Jenkins dealt with many hazardous waste products in her job, but she specialized in dioxin (a.k.a. Agent Orange), a contaminant of wood preservatives that was used in the Vietnam War as a defoliant. Monsanto Chemical Corporation was the largest producer of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and it was a series of Monsanto-sponsored studies in the early 1980s that led the EPA to conclude that “human evidence supporting an association” between dioxin and cancer “is considered inadequate.” In February 1990, Jenkins wrote a memo to the EPA Science Advisory Board alleging that the Monsanto-sponsored studies were fraudulent, and that the studies, if performed correctly, would have shown the carcinogenic effects of dioxin. The memo caught the attention of the press and, under the glare of a media spotlight, the EPA launched a criminal investigation of Monsanto. That investigation was opened on August 20th and closed less than two years later, but, as EPA whistleblower William Sanjour notes, “the investigation itself and the basis for closing the investigation were fraudulent.” No attempt was even made to determine the scientific validity of the studies in question, and the EPA declined to pursue the matter because of statute of limitations technicalities. The EPA did, however, find time to mount a campaign of retribution against Jenkins for having the audacity to blow the whistle on the agency and its listing practices for hazardous chemicals. Her workload was reduced and higher-ups at the EPA immediately began talking about shunting her off into a purely administrative position where she would “not be involved with anything that puts her in direct contact with the regulated community or the public.” Her supervisor even wrote a letter to Monsanto apologizing for Jenkins’ memo questioning their studies. Jenkins filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, and, in a series of cases that were appealed all the way up to the Secretary of Labor himself, it was found that she had been unfairly retaliated against for her whistleblowing and the EPA was ordered to reinstate her in her previous position. But as nightmarish as that years-long, potentially career-ending ordeal in whistleblowing was for Dr. Jenkins, it was nothing compared to the ordeal she would have to face after “the day that changed everything.” Beginning shortly after the attack, and continuing for years afterward, Dr. Jenkins attempted to bring the EPA’s faulty and fraudulent air quality testing practices to the attention of anyone who would listen. According to the Administrative Review Board of the US Department of Labor: “Beginning in 2001, Jenkins made numerous disclosures and complaints alleging that the EPA engaged in improper laboratory testing, falsified a regulation governing exposure safety standards, and knowingly covered up the toxic properties of the dust emanating from the September 11, 2001 [9/11] World Trade Center [WTC] disaster. The improper testing and cover-up, Jenkins claimed, contributed to excessive and harmful toxic dust exposures of WTC ‘First Responders’ and others sufficient to later cause respiratory and other serious and debilitating disease. Jenkins disseminated these disclosures and complaints to her supervisors and others at EPA, to the EPA Inspector General’s Office, members of Congress, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as to state officials, state elected representatives, law firms representing WTC First Responders, citizens, and the media. Her disclosures were posted on web sites and repeatedly quoted in the press and television broadcasts, and by members of Congress.” One of these early memos, dated January 11, 2002, was written on EPA letterhead and addressed to “Affected Parties and Responsible Officials.” It examines the case of Libby, Montana—a designated “Superfund” site, where the federal government is paying to help residents clean the “interiors of homes and residential soils [that] have been contaminated with asbestos from an adjacent vermiculite mining operation.” Jenkins compared the levels of contaminated dust particles found inside apartments in Lower Manhattan after 9/11 to dust samples taken in Libby, finding that the New York samples contained 22 times higher concentrations of asbestos than the Montana samples. As Jenkins noted: “The logical question thus arises: Why is EPA leaving people to their own devices in the cleanup of New York City, while intervening to clean homes at taxpayer expense in Libby?” Worse, a team of independent scientists hired by tenant groups and New York political leaders found much higher samples of asbestos in the dust than what the EPA was reporting. As Dr. Jenkins told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time: “For every asbestos fiber EPA detected, the new methods used by the outside experts found nine. [. . .] This is too important a difference to be ignored if you really care about the health of the public.” CATE JENKINS: New York City directly lied about the test results for asbestos in the air. When they finally released them, they doctored the results. They changed high hazardous levels to zero when they finally released them. SOURCE: 911 Dust and Deceit at the World Trade Center After years of internal memos, press interviews and other tireless efforts to blow the whistle on the severe health issues that would develop as a result of the EPA’s deliberate cover-up, the mainstream media was finally forced to begin covering the issue in 2006, after many of the Ground Zero clean-up workers and the residents of Manhattan were beginning to succumb to the effects of the deadly dust. In 2006, after a federal judge ruled that Whitman’s post-9/11 lies were “conscience-shocking” and that she would not be granted immunity for her actions, the media finally began to cover the story. The New York Times, CBS and other outlets all ran stories on the scandal, and they all quoted from Jenkins’ memos and featured interviews with Jenkins herself. After the 5th anniversary came and went on September 11, 2006, however, the media’s attention turned elsewhere and the story drifted out of the attention of the public once again. But Dr. Jenkins’ attempt to obtain justice for the victims of this horrendous crime did not end there. In 2007, she penned a remarkable 134-page letter addressed to then-Senator Hillary Clinton, as well as Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, calling for a Senate investigation of the falsification of pH corrosivity data for World Trade Center dust. The thoroughly documented letter, containing over 300 footnotes and citations, included a detailed analysis of the falsification of WTC pH data by groups like the US Geological Survey, and the remarkable story of how “In May 1980, EPA’s hazardous waste program falsified pH levels (changed the numbers) that the UN World Health Organization (WHO) International Labour Organization (ILO) determined would invariably result in corrosive permanent tissue damage (chemical burns).” In a much shorter—though no-less-explosive--letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation written at the same time, Jenkins also called for the FBI to open a criminal investigation into the EPA’s cover-up. This was followed up with an additional letter to the FBI in 2008, where Jenkins went even further, alleging fraud in pH testing of WTC dust and providing documentation that the EPA lab had diluted WTC dust almost 600 times with water before testing it for corrosivity. Remarkably, despite her very public and very serious charges against the federal agency, and despite her past experience blowing the whistle on the EPA and subsequent years-long court battle to retain her position, Jenkins told Occupational Hazards magazine in 2002 that she did not fear losing her job over her comments. “All [EPA] management has to do is say, ‘Stop,’ and they haven’t,” she said, adding that as an EPA official, speaking out about lapses in the agency’s WTC effort does not require courage, just plenty of hard work. Despite this belief, Dr. Jenkins was indeed fired from the EPA on December 30, 2010. The firing followed a series of inane workplace incidents that resulted in suspensions and other retaliatory measures against Jenkins. The chain of events included Jenkins sending an email under the title “Op-Ed: Should EPA Institute a Workplace Fragrance Ban as Part of its Endocrine Disruptor Initiative?” after an encounter with a heavily-perfumed IT tech triggered an asthma attack in Jenkins, and her supervisor recommending that she be suspended, as the email—which was only sent to other EPA staff—”could have misled recipients as to whether it was an official EPA communication.” Eventually, the supervisor claimed that the series of incidents culminated with Jenkins threatening him in a workplace incident that was witnessed by no one. As the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who supported Jenkins in her ordeal with the agency, summarized: “Dr. Cate Jenkins, a senior chemist with more than three decades of agency tenure, publicly charged that due to falsified EPA standards, First Responders waded into dust so corrosive that it caused chemical burns deep within their respiratory systems. After raising the issue to the EPA Inspector General, Congress and the FBI, Dr. Jenkins was isolated, harassed and ultimately removed from her position on December 30, 2010 by EPA, based upon an un-witnessed and contested claim that the soft-spoken, petite childhood polio survivor threatened her 6-foot male supervisor.” Continuing through a series of appeals, legal wrangling and bureaucratic red tape, Jenkins succeeded in having her employment reinstated in 2012. AMY GOODMAN: A government whistleblower who was fired after exposing the dangers of asbestos and dust on workers at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11 has been reinstated to her job following a federal court decision. Cate Jenkins, a chemist who worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, was the first EPA official to warn that dust in the air around the World Trade Center could pose a serious health risk. But the head of the EPA at the time claimed there was no reason for concern. Jenkins accused the EPA of intentionally hiding the dangers of air pollution at Ground Zero. She was fired in 2010. A federal court has now ruled Jenkins must be reinstated and given back pay. SOURCE: Democracy Now, May 8, 2012 Incredibly, even this was not the end of Jenkins’ ordeal. Instead of returning her to her daily work duties in 2012 as ordered, the EPA instead kept Jenkins on paid administrative leave and then re-filed the same charges against her in 2013. Less than a year after being ordered to give her her job back, the agency was instead trying to take it away again, saying that Jenkins had failed to prove that the EPA was retaliating for her whistleblowing. The agency’s move was especially galling, given that Jenkins had yet to be given a chance to prove her case. Part of the reason that the EPA had been ordered to restore Jenkins to her job was because the agency had been found to have destroyed records pertaining to her case and otherwise obstructed discovery. In fact, her case that the EPA had retaliated against her for her whistleblowing was still before the Department of Labor. The entire legal ordeal proceeded for years, finally coming to an end in 2018—a full eight years after the agency’s first attempt to fire her—when the Department of Labor confirmed a 2015 decision that the EPA had “retaliated against [Jenkins] for her reports to Congress and the FBI, and to the public through the media, about her allegations of violation of environmental laws and regulations by the EPA in connection with the rescue and cleanup operations at the WTC, in violation of the whistleblower provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.” After nearly two decades of research and whistleblowing and almost ten years of legal nightmare, Jenkins was finally vindicated. She had been unjustly fired for attempting to call attention to the agency’s wrongdoings, and she was restored to her position. But although this victory is to be celebrated, it comes as slim comfort to those seeking justice for the victims of 9/11, not just those killed in the buildings that day, and not just the victims of the wars that have been waged in the name of September 11th, but the victims of the toxic dust that Cate Jenkins and others have been warning about since the events unfolded. And meanwhile, those who pushed the deadly lies about the air quality have moved on with their lives, continuing their careers and only occasionally being confronted by the independent media that is still attempting to shed light on the story. DERRICK BROZE: Ms. Whitman, I appreciate your talk in there. You guys mentioned voting and the power of shaming voters. I feel like there’s probably a lot of folks who feel like you might need to be shamed since it’s been 17 years since 9/11 and nearly 10,000 people are now sick with 9/11-related illnesses. And I know you apologized about it two years ago and you were cleared in the courts, but all evidence points to your time in the Bush administration clearly led to people being sick and led to people getting cancer and other 9/11-related illnesses. WHITMAN: Everything that I said was based on the best available science at the time. Science has progressed now. I think we found things that we didn’t know then. But I never said anything that wasn’t predicated on what the scientists told me. That morning—every morning—I had a conference call with the scientists: “What is safe to say? What can I say? What shouldn’t I say?” And they kept repeating that they were seeing nothing in their studies that show that there was a long-term health consequence from the air in Manhattan in general and Lower Manhattan in general. SOURCE: Christine Todd Whitman (Fmr EPA head) Confronted About 9/11 First Responder Deaths They may not be the lies we think of when we think of the lies of 9/11—lies which led to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan and contributed to the illegal invasion of Iraq—but the EPA’s lies about the World Trade Center dust, too, have proven deadly. And, like a Cassandra cursed with the ability to foresee a grim future that she could not prevent, Cate Jenkins spent decades of her life warning of the consequences of those lies. And for her service, she faced years of persecution. Worst of all, her warnings were dismissed until they could no longer be denied. And there are still those who claim that 9/11 does not have its whistleblowers. WHITMAN: To say [that] because a draft press release changes that somehow that’s nefarious manipulation is . . . It’s mind-boggling that you leap to that conclusion. BARRY JENNINGS Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4 TRANSCRIPT JEFF ROSSEN: So now they’re walking back toward the World Trade Center. And as we keep letting you hear the personal stories the survivor stories of exactly what happened inside the World Trade Center when that first plane went in—and of course the collapses since then—we’re going to bring more of those to you now. Barry Jennings, you were on the eighth floor. You work for the city housing department. Explain to me the moment of impact. BARRY JENNINGS: Well, me and Mr. Hess, the corporation counsel, were on the 23rd floor. I told him, “We gotta get out of here.” We started walking down the stairs. We made it to the 8th floor [later clarified to be the 6th floor]. Big explosion! Blew us back into the 8th floor. And I turned to Hess and I said, “This is it, we’re dead. We’re not gonna make it outta here. . . .” I took a fire extinguisher and I bust the window out. This gentlemen heard my cries for help. This gentleman right here. And he said kept saying “Stand by, somebody’s coming to get you.” They could they couldn’t get to us for now because they couldn’t find us. You thought that was it. I thought . . . I go, “We’re dead.” I thought that was it. I started praying to Allah that that’s it, we’re going. SOURCE: Barry Jennings – 9/11 Early Afternoon ABC7 Interview In 2001, Barry Jennings was the Deputy Director of Emergency Services for the New York City Housing Authority. After the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM on the morning of 9/11, Jennings was called to the city’s Office of Emergency Management in World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) along with Corporation Counsel Michael Hess to help coordinate the emergency response. Entering Building 7 together before the strike on the South Tower at 9:03 AM, Jennings and Hess were surprised to discover that the office had been abandoned. Receiving a phone call from his superior, Jennings was warned to leave the building immediately. Descending via the stairwell, Jennings and Hess reached the 6th floor before an explosion blew them back up to the 8th floor, trapping them inside the building. After hours of chaos and confusion, including the collapse of the Twin Towers and repeated attempts to draw the attention of first responders, the pair were finally rescued by firefighters. Hours later, World Trade Center Building 7, also known as the Salomon Brothers Building, collapsed at free-fall acceleration directly into the path of most resistance. After seven years of investigation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) determined that the building had not come down due to explosives or controlled demolition, as many alleged, or due to structural damage from the collapse of the Twin Towers, an explosion in the building’s fuel oil systems, or any of the other suggestions that had been put forward and retracted by NIST over the course of its investigation. Instead, NIST spokesman Shyam Sunder insisted that the building had collapsed due to ordinary office fires. SHYAM SUNDER: The collapse of World Trade Center 7 on 9/11 was a rare event. Our study has identified thermal expansion as a new phenomenon that can cause the collapse of a structure. For the first time, we have shown that fire can induce a progressive collapse. SOURCE: Investigation of World Trade Center Building 7 Jennings’ remarkable story was captured by Jeff Rossen, reporting on the ground for WABC-TV, just moments after he and Hess had been rescued from the building. But it wasn’t until several years later that Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the creators of Loose Change—the first viral internet documentary—discovered the clip of that interview from the day of 9/11 and realized that Jennings’ testimony was one of the few eyewitness accounts of one of the deepest mysteries of that day: The destruction of WTC 7. JASON BERMAS: So while we were doing research for, obviously, our next cut of the film, Loose Change: Final Cut—you know, Loose Change Second Edition gave us a real opportunity to go around doing investigation. And we had had so much archived footage sent to us, because this was long before the days of the internet where you get something high-quality on the spot. And Dylan found footage of Barry Jennings that had been unedited that we had not seen that really suggested that he was absolutely in Building Seven. And we also correlated that with him being with Michael Hess. And Michael Hess was the right-hand man of Giuliani. He was the city corporation counsel. Here’s a still shot of him behind me. And then you can see him here sitting next to Giuliani, so pretty much as close as it gets. And, you know, we made this connection. And actually I had reached out to Hess via email. I heard nothing back—and to, you know, the proper parties, nothing back. But Dylan tracked down Barry Jennings in his city office and Barry did respond. And Barry said, “Come on down!” So me and Dylan went down with the camera, and once we got in there and started talking to him, I remember like the first thing that I saw—you know, he was obviously, I’d say, not the highest up guy, but very—you know, he had his own office, he was well respected. He had the key to the city. You know, he had talked about the key to the city after this event, and he even told us how he had seen Loose Change Second Edition. Basically, what I can remember: He was pretty sympathetic to our cause. He talked to us about Fahrenheit 9/11. And from there we tried to find a spot to get him, and I remember he drove us out there. We were in the back, one of his suits hanging up. I remember we even talked about his family, you know, being out in Long Island. Very friendly guy. And we got him on the pier. And listen: The interview is what it is. We’ve released it in full. We didn’t add anything. We didn’t coerce the guy. And I think what he says is about as telling as it gets. “As telling as it gets.” Indeed, Barry Jennings’ story is telling. As the only documented eyewitness testimony of the events taking place inside World Trade Center 7 during the hours of the attack, the accounts of Barry Jennings and Michael Hess are essential to coming to an understanding of the destruction of that building. And, most telling of all, it contradicts the official, government-approved story of Building 7’s destruction in many important ways. BARRY JENNINGS: As I told you guys before, it was very funny. I was on my way to work and the traffic was excellent. I received a call that a small Cessna had hit the World Trade Center. I was asked to go and man the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at World Trade Center 7 on the 23rd floor. As I arrived there, there were police all in the lobby. They showed me the way to the elevator. We got up to the 23rd floor, me and Mr. Hess, who I didn’t know was Mr. Hess at the time. We got to the 23rd floor. We couldn’t get in. We had to go back down. Then security and the police took us to the freight elevators, where they took us back up and we did get in. Upon arriving into the OEM EOC [Emergency Operations Center], we noticed that everybody was gone. I saw coffee that was on the desk. The smoke was still coming off the coffee. I saw half-eaten sandwiches. And only me and Mr. Hess were up there. After I called several individuals, one individual told me to leave, and leave right away. Mr. Hess came running back in. He said, “We’re the only ones up here, we gotta get out of here.” He found the stairwell. So we subsequently went to the stairwell and were going down the stairs. When we reached the 6th floor, the landing that we were standing on gave way. There was an explosion and the landing gave way. And I was left there, hanging. I had to climb back up. And now I had to walk back up to the 8th floor. After getting to the 8th floor, everything was dark. It was dark and it was very, very hot. Very hot. I asked Mr. Hess to test the phones as I took a fire extinguisher and broke out the windows. Once I broke out the windows, I could see outside below me. I saw police cars on fire. Buses on fire. I looked one way, the building was there. I looked the other way, it was gone. I was trapped in there for several hours. I was trapped in there when both buildings came down. The firefighters came. They came to the window. Because I was going to come out on the fire hose. I didn’t want to stay any longer. It was too hot. I was gonna come out on the fire hose. They came to the window and they started yelling, “Do not do that. It won’t hold you.” And then they ran away. See, I didn’t know what was going on. That’s when the first tower fell. When they started running, the first tower was coming down. I had no way of knowing that. Then I saw them come back. Now I saw them come back with more concern on their faces. And then they ran away again. The second tower fell. So as they turned and ran the second time, the guy said, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back for you.” And they did come back. This time they came back with 10 firefighters. And they kept asking, “Where are you? We don’t know where you are.” I said, “I’m on the north side of the building.” Because when I was on the stairs, I saw “North Side.” All this time, I’m hearing all types of explosions. All this time, I’m hearing explosions. And I’m thinking that maybe it’s the buses around me that were on fire, the cars that were on fire. I don’t see no . . . you know? But I’m still hearing these explosions. When they finally got to us and they took us down to what they called the lobby . . . Because I asked them when we got down there, I said, “Where are we?” He said, “This was the lobby.” And I said, “You gotta be kidding me.” It was total ruins. Total ruins. Now keep in mind: When I came in there, the lobby had nice escalators. It was a huge lobby. And for me to see what I saw was unbelievable. And the firefighter that took us down kept saying, “Do not look down!” And I kept saying, “Why?” He said, “Do not look down.” And we were stepping over people. And, you know, you can feel when you’re stepping over people. They took us out through a hole, that . . . I don’t know who made this hole in this wall. That’s how they got us out. They took us out through a hole through the wall to safety. As they were taking me out, one firefighter had fallen. I believe he was having a heart attack. But before that, this big giant police officer came to me. And he said, “You have to run!” I said, “I can’t run. My knees are swollen.” He said, “You’ll have to get on your knees and crawl, then!” He said, “Because we have reports of more explosions.” And that’s when I started crawling, and I saw this guy fall behind me. His comrades came to his aid and they dragged him to safety. I was looking for an ambulance for my knees, and at that time they told me we gotta walk 20 blocks to a refuge. Before I got there, Eyewitness News grabbed me and started interviewing me. And that’s basically it. SOURCE: Barry Jennings Uncut To those unfamiliar with the official story of WTC 7, this might seem like just another account of the terror, confusion and heroism that the victims of that day faced during their harrowing ordeal. But this is not the case. Jennings’ story is in fact full of details that directly contradict NIST’s pronouncements on the destruction of the building. Most notably, Jennings’ vivid description of the explosions that were taking place in the building during his ordeal is in direct contradiction to NIST’s assertion in its FAQ on WTC 7 that, although NIST “investigated the possibility” of explosions contributing to the building’s demolition, “NIST concluded that blast events inside the building did not occur and found no evidence supporting the existence of a blast event.” In fact, not only is there ample evidence, available to anyone interested, that there were explosions going on in the building shortly before it went down, but Jennings’ personal account confirms that there were numerous explosions taking place inside WTC 7 in the morning, hours before the building was destroyed. The BBC, in its “Conspiracy Files” program on “The Third Tower,” tries to muddy the waters by implying that the explosions that Jennings testified to were in fact the dust and debris from the Twin Towers’ demolitions impacting Building 7. JENNINGS: At that time I received a phone call from one of my higher-ups and he said, “Where are you?” and I said, you know, “The emergency command center.” And then he came back, he said, “Get out of here get out of the area.” NARRATOR: At 9:59 the 1,300-foot South Tower collapses. [. . .] JENNINGS: I wanted to get out of that building in a hurry so I started—instead of taking one step at a time, I’m jumping landings. When I reach down to the 6th floor, with this eerie sound the whole building went dark and the staircase that I was standing on just gave way. NARRATOR: At 10:28 the North Tower collapses in just 11 seconds. SOURCE: BBC Conspiracy Files: The Third Tower With their editing and narrative intrusions, the BBC makes it seem that the explosions that Jennings and Hess experienced were just remnants of the Twin Towers hitting WTC 7. But in his interview with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, Jennings was completely adamant that he could still see both towers standing after the explosions happened. JENNINGS: What happened was, when we made it back to the 8th floor—as I told you earlier, both buildings were still standing, because I looked. [He points] Two. [He pauses] I look one way, look the other way—now there’s nothing there. When I got to the 6th floor, there was an explosion—that’s what forced us back to the 8th floor. Both buildings were still standing. Keep in mind, I told you the fire department came . . . and ran. They came twice. Why? Because tower 1 fell and then tower 2 fell. And then when they came back, they came back, they came back all concerned like to get me the hell out of there. And, and they did. And we got out of there. I got into the building a little before nine. . . . A little after nine. I didn’t get out of there until, like, 1:00. It is important to note that Jennings’ story does not present a different view of the official story of 9/11; it undermines that story entirely. Multiple explosions taking place in the lower floors of Building 7 before the Twin Towers’ destruction shows that NIST was wrong to dismiss the possibility of explosive demolition of WTC 7. Given that the explosions that trapped Jennings and Hess was not falling debris from the Twin Towers and was not a fuel oil tank explosion—a point stressed by Jennings and confirmed by NIST—then the most likely possibility—pre-planted explosives that were timed to go off during the attacks—remains not only uncontested, but unconsidered by NIST or any other investigative agency. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission—which called Jennings in to question him about his story in one closed-door meeting that was never followed up—did not even mention the stunning, symmetrical, free-fall demolition of World Trade Center Building 7 in its final report on the attacks. The BBC, as we have seen, attempted to bring Jennings’ story in line with the official story by purposely misleading its viewers about the timeline that Jennings himself insisted on. And NIST, infamously, took seven years to finally offer an account of Building 7’s collapse; an account so absurd as to be self-refuting: SUNDER: Here’s a video taken on 9/11 that shows WTC 7 collapsing. Note the kink in the East penthouse and the progression of the screening wall and the West penthouse collapsing from East to West. Here is our structural model showing the building collapsing, which matches quite quite well with the video of the event. Most remarkable of all, and conveniently left out of the account of every so-called “debunker” of Jennings’ testimony, is what Jennings himself felt about the destruction of Building 7. JENNINGS: Well, I’m just confused about one thing and one thing only. Why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place. I’m very confused about that. I know what I heard. I heard explosions. The explanation I got was it was the fuel oil tank. I’m an old boiler guy. If it was a fuel oil tank, it would have been one side of the building. When I got to that lobby, the lobby was totally destroyed. It looked like King Kong had came through it and stepped on it. It was so destroyed, I didn’t know where I was. And it was so destroyed, they had to take me out through a hole in the wall. A makeshift hole that I believe the fire department made to get me out. Given Barry Jennings’ personal experience, what did he make of the BBC’s attempts to alter the timeline of his story? How did he react to the official government viewpoint that no explosions took place in the building that day? What did he think of NIST’s refusal to even examine the evidence of controlled demolition of WTC 7 or their own computer-generated model of how “thermal expansion” and regular office fires brought down a 47-story steel-framed office tower? Sadly, we will never know. When Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas released a small clip of their interview, Jennings’ job was threatened and he asked that the interview not be included in Loose Change: Final Cut. The full interview was not released until after the BBC released their Third Tower documentary in which Jennings claimed to be unhappy with how his testimony was “portrayed” by Avery and Bermas. No further interview or follow-up with Jennings about his comments or about the way the BBC portrayed his story was possible. In September 2008, just as NIST was presenting its final report concluding that WTC 7 had spontaneously collapsed from ordinary office fires, it was reported that Barry Jennings had passed away in hospital the month before. No further details of his death were offered. Dylan Avery, seeking to bring closure to Barry Jennings’ life, answer questions about his death, and honor the bravery of a 9/11 survivor who spoke the truth even when it was unpopular, hired a private investigator to determine the circumstances of Jennings’ death. In a remarkable and bizarre turn of events, however, after pursuing the case, the investigator referred the matter to the police, refunded his fee, and told Avery never to contact him again. To this day, no time or cause of death of Barry Jennings has ever been publicly announced or confirmed. Despite the sad and confused ending of this tale, there is still hope. Hope that the courage Jennings had in standing up and telling the truth—even though it was not what the government, NIST, or the promoters of the official 9/11 story wanted to hear—will not be wasted. Hope that, ultimately, the historical record, and the truth itself, will out. BERMAS: I think the strongest lesson to be learned about Barry Jennings is that the historical record is the historical record, no matter how hard you try to spin it. For instance, you know, now with these Dark Overlord documents leaking, there’s litigation talking about the transformers being blown up in the bottom of the building. OK, now if that had happened, we would have had a visual event much like what happened with the Con Edison transformer blowing less than six months ago. It did not happen. And yet on paper and litigation and in official documents it does again and again. Well, it’s a cover-up. The man stepped over bodies. We know that happened. He and Hess both talked about internal explosions. That building housed the CIA, the Secret Service, the SEC. I mean, I could go on. It’s unbelievable. And I really hope with this latest litigation we finally get to the truth, no matter what. And I would hope that Barry would want the truth, no matter what he may have said in that BBC documentary. Because I spent time with the man. I was in his back seat, and he sure as hell wanted the truth then. And so now, all these years later, those who are still seeking the truth are left in the same position as Barry Jennings himself was when he first talked to Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas: Looking at his own experience inside WTC 7 on 9/11 and the government’s official explanation of those experiences, and realizing that the two do not add up. Jennings and the other 9/11 whistleblowers are those special few who can stand up and say that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. JENNINGS: Well, I’m just confused about one thing and one thing only. Why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place. I’m very confused about that. I know what I heard. I heard explosions. MICHAEL SPRINGMANNWatch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4 TRANSCRIPT In the days after September 11th, 2001, while the toxic dust was still settling on Lower Manhattan, details began to emerge about the terrorists who had allegedly hijacked the fateful 9/11 flights. Names and pictures were released to the public and broadcast around the world. Ziad Jarrah. Hani Hanjour. Marwan al-Shehhi. Mohamed Atta. Even before the official story had begun to coalesce, the foreign faces and unfamiliar names flashing across the screens seared themselves into the consciousness of a traumatized public and left little doubt: This attack was the work of Muslim terrorists. But at the same time, information began to come out that created problems for this narrative. Reports of these devout Muslim fundamentalists drinking alcohol and partying in strip clubs. Revelations that two of the suspects had been allowed into the US after being identified as Al Qaeda agents. Confirmation that these same agents lived with an FBI asset while in the US. And even the testimony of a senior military intelligence official that a counter-terror program had been specifically warned not to investigate Mohamed Atta in the lead-up to 9/11. WYATT ANDREWS: According to Congressman Kurt Weldon, it was a secret Pentagon intelligence unit code named Able Danger that knew a year before 9/11 that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta was in the United States and connected to Al Qaeda. CONGRESSMAN KURT WELDON: And as you can see, they identified Mohamed Atta’s cell. ANDREWS: In the summer of 2000, he says, the Pentagon’s special ops command had identified two terrorist cells inside the US, and knew of the connection between Atta and three other men who became hijackers. When the agents recommended telling the FBI, Weldon says Clinton administration lawyers said “No,” because Atta was in the country legally and could not be targeted by military intelligence. WELDON: And their recommendation to bring the FBI in, to take that cell out, which was ignored, and they were told you can’t do that. ANDREWS: So a year before 9/11 they had their picture—they had the picture of Mohamed Atta-- WELDON: Yes. ANDREWS: And they knew roughly where he was? WELDON: Yes. SOURCE: Able Danger – CBS, CNN News, August 9, 2005 But of the many bizarre pieces of the alleged 9/11 hijacker puzzle, none gets closer to the heart of the mystery than the seemingly innocuous revelation that 14 of the alleged hijackers’ visas to enter the United States had been issued at the same office: the US consulate in Jeddah. That so many of the visas were issued from a single office may seem like a minor footnote at first glance, but it is not. In fact, the Jeddah consulate is not just another US consular office. It has a history of issuing visas to terrorists at the request of the CIA. Just ask Michael Springmann. J. Michael Springmann was a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service who joined the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration, serving as an economic/commercial officer in Stuttgart from 1977 to 1980 and as a commercial attaché in New Delhi from 1980 to 1982. In 1987, having passed the foreign service exam and gone through an orientation program, Springmann was assigned to the Jeddah consulate in Saudi Arabia. Whatever he was expecting to find awaiting him in his new office, it’s safe to say that it didn’t take long for Springmann to find that the reality was going to be very different. As he writes in his exposé of his time at the Jeddah consulate, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World, “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a mysterious and exotic place, but it was nowhere near as exotic and mysterious as the American consulate general on Palestine Road.” J. MICHAEL SPRINGMANN: Well, when I got to Saudi Arabia I began hearing all kinds of strange things about the problems my predecessor had made for me. I heard this in fact from Walter Cutler, the American ambassador, just before I left. He spent 45 minutes telling me about all the problems that my predecessor Greta Holtz had created, and I thought, “Gee, she’s going to make my career for me!” And I get to Jeddah and I’m being requested: “It’s your decision of course, Mike, but we have this problem here with this visa and we have an especially good contact and we’d like to have the person get a visa to come to the United States. Can you do it?” And I’d interview them and I’d give them the visa. And after a while, these people began to be really strange characters that had no ties to either Saudi Arabia or to their own country and I would refuse them. And I would get a rocket from the Consul General, Jay Freres, who’s dead now, about, “Why didn’t you issue the visa? This guy is a good contact.” I said, “Well, he couldn’t prove he had any ties either to Saudi Arabia or to his own country that was strong enough to make him return from the United States to Saudi Arabia or to his own country.” There’s no set list of contacts and connections, but it’s things like having a job, having businesses, having property, having family, something that would prevent you from staying in the United States and disappearing into the woodwork. And it got to the point where it was, “Either issue the visa or you’re not going to work for the State Department anymore.” And as time went by I found out that, of some 20 Americans, there were only three, including myself, that I knew for a certainty to work for the Department of State. The rest worked for the CIA or the National Security Agency. Eventually reassigned as a political/economic officer in Stuttgart and, finally, as an economic analyst for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, it took years for Springmann to fully comprehend the story that he had found himself in the middle of during his time at the Jeddah consulate. A key piece of that puzzle was provided when Springmann returned to the US and talked to journalist Joseph Trento, who informed him that the Jeddah office was being used by the CIA to ship in Osama Bin Laden’s associates for training in the US. SPRINGMANN: So I came across Joe Trento, the journalist, in the middle of all of this, and he said, “Well, what you were doing in Saudi Arabia was issuing visas to the Mujahedin who were being recruited for Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.” And then the penny dropped and my eyes were opened and I said, “Yeah! That explains why they got so ferocious when I said no to these visas and why they stonewalled me when I tried to find out what was going on.” I was talking formally to people. I talked formally to the Bureau of Consular Affairs when I was in Washington on the advice of the consul for consular affairs in Riyadh. And then I talked to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs for the House of Representatives. I talked to the Government Accountability Office, which is a watchdog for Congress on the executive branch, and got nowhere. People just didn’t want to talk to me. And I said, “Well, this is really strange.” And it bears out exactly what Trento had said: that they had an intelligence operation going on. And according to Joe, the reason they didn’t tell people in Jeddah about this was they wanted plausible deniability. They wanted to be at arm’s length from what people were saying and saying, “Well oh, gee. We didn’t know anything about that. He made a mistake. He didn’t get with the program. He didn’t know what was going on. He was violating the law. Put him in jail. Fine him.” Whatever. Although the idea seems outlandish from a post-9/11 perspective, at the time it was not particularly surprising. The CIA had worked with Osama Bin Laden and other so-called “Mujahedin,” including many Saudis who had been drawn to Afghanistan to fight America’s arch-enemy, the Soviets, during the Afghan War. There were glowing articles framing Bin Laden as an “Anti-Soviet warrior” who was “on the road to peace” in mainstream publications well into the 1990s. And in the weeks after 9/11 it was even reported in the pages of Newsweek that in the late 1980s—precisely at the time that Springmann was stationed at the Jeddah consulate—”the veterans of the [Mujahedin’s] holy war against the Soviets began arriving in the United States—many with passports arranged by the CIA.” One infamous example of an intelligence agency helping a known terrorist to enter the United States in this period came in the case of Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheik.” In December 1990 it was revealed that the Blind Sheik had “slipped into the United States” despite being on a State Department terrorist watch list. At the time, the State Department insisted “[t]hey made a mistake” by issuing him a tourist visa from the United States Embassy in Khartoum. But three years later, the truth finally came out. As The New York Times reported in 1993 after a State Department inspector general investigation: “Central Intelligence Agency officers reviewed all seven applications made by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman to enter the United States between 1986 and 1990 and only once turned him down because of his connections to terrorism.” In this context, the revelation that Springmann was being directed by the CIA to let Mujahedin into the US for training was not unthinkable or outlandish conspiracy conjecture. On the contrary, it was practically expected. As Springmann himself admits, if he had simply been informed at the time that the CIA was helping to facilitate such an operation in support of their foreign policy goals against the Soviet Union, he probably would have went along with it. SPRINGMANN: And you know it goes back to Trento saying, “Well, they wanted somebody—some ‘schlub’ is his word—to be there and take the heat if something went wrong. And at the time I was dumb enough that if they’d explained it to me, “Yes, we’re recruiting the Mujahedin” I would have said, “Well, yeah, OK, this is an important foreign policy goal. I hate those godless communist bastards! So yeah, I’ll go with this.” But they never did. And it would have saved a lot of effort on my part and saved a lot of embarrassment on their part, because I’ve been writing and talking about this for the last 25 years. Springmann’s attitude is reflective of much of the American public’s perception of Muslim terrorists in the late 1980s. As tools of US foreign policy—convenient pawns to be wielded on the global chessboard against America’s enemies—they were not regarded as enemies themselves, but embraced as “freedom fighters” and “anti-Communist warriors.” KENNETH BRANAGH: US National Security Adviser Brzezinski flew to Pakistan to set about rallying resistance. He wanted to arm the Mujahedin without revealing America’s role. On the Afghan border near the Khyber Pass, he urged the Soldiers of God to redouble their efforts. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: We know of their deep belief in God, and we are confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours. You will go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side. SOURCE: Soldiers of God PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The goal of the United States remains a genuinely independent Afghanistan, free from external interference, an Afghanistan whose people choose the type of government they wish, an Afghanistan to which the four million refugees from Soviet aggression may return in safety and, yes, in honor. On behalf of the American people, I salute Chairman Khalis, his delegation, and the people of Afghanistan themselves. You are a nation of heroes. God bless you. SOURCE: Remarks Following a Meeting With Afghan Resistance Leaders and Members of Congress But that was before “the day that changed everything.” After the FBI released their list of suspected 9/11 hijackers, it didn’t take long for questions to emerge about these men, their background, and their travels. What paper trail and travel documents had been left in their wake? How did they obtain their visas to enter the US? Where did they obtain them? When? Which consular officers were in charge of issuing the visas, and were there any irregularities in the process? It took years for these questions to be answered, but when they were, the results were scarcely believable. Not only had 14 of the alleged hijackers’ visas been obtained from the same Jeddah consulate that the CIA had used to funnel terrorists to the US during Springmann’s tenure, but 12 of those visas were issued by a single consular officer: Shayna Steinger. A Columbia University graduate with no apparent foreign service background, Steinger was appointed as a consular officer in 1999 and arrived in Jeddah for her first foreign service assignment on July 1, 2000. From that point on, she proceeded to issue the visas to more than half of the alleged hijackers, many of them based on incomplete applications and fraudulent documents. Saeed al Ghamdi received two visas, one in September, 2000, and the other in June, 2001. His second application was incomplete, lied about his earlier visa and was linked to a different passport with fraudulent features. Both visa requests were approved by Shayna Steinger. Hani Hanjour received a visa from Steinger in September 2000, just two weeks after she rejected his first application. In subsequent investigations, she gave conflicting accounts of why she denied Hanjour’s visa the first time and why she issued it the second time. Despite numerous errors on their applications which normally would have gotten them rejected, on October 24, 2000, Steinger issued visas to both Waleed and Wail Alshehri. And, later that week, despite an incomplete application and suspicious indicators in his passport, Steinger issued a visa to Ahmed Alnami. From the time of her arrival at Jeddah until just weeks before the attacks, the pattern continued: Men with incomplete, error-ridden applications and fraudulent or suspicious documents had their visas rubber-stamped by Steinger and, in September, their names and faces ended up on the FBI’s hijack suspect list. In researching his book, Springmann tracked down and confronted Steinger about her time at Jeddah and her role in issuing these visas. SPRINGMANN: So in the course of doing more research I ran across Jon Gold, who was a 9/11 researcher and an activist, and he came up with Shayna Steinger’s name. She was my successor several times removed who was in Jeddah and who had issued visas to 11 of the 15 Saudis who got the visas in Saudi Arabia to go fly airplanes into American buildings. I said, “Wait a minute. What is this?” She was hired out of Columbia University with no real background in foreign affairs that I could see at a very high “GS” or foreign service level of about an FSO-4, which is maybe a GS-13, I guess, in the civil service. And she went on for a full 20 years with the State Department and retired, if she in fact worked for State. And after a bit I came across—or, actually, a journalist came across me and said, “Look, I found Shayna Steinger out in Iowa. Do you want to talk to her about your experience and her experience and compare them?” So I did. I called her up. I found her phone number and she was living with her mother. And we had a bit of a fight to get her to talk to me, and I said, “Look, you either talk to me or I’ll write an article about it.” So she finally broke down and we talked, but only in general terms, saying, “Well, yes, I did the right thing. I did what I was told. They did an investigation. They cleared me.” And I said, “Well, what was the story? You know, my understanding was they were recruiting terrorists for the Mujahedin to come to the US for training at US military facilities, generally on the East Coast. And they even had 52 recruiting offices in the United States, including one in Washington, D.C., but I could never find any background exactly where they were located.” And she said, “I didn’t do anything wrong. I just did what I was told.” And it was kind of like talking to my cats sometimes. They were there and they knew you were talking to them but they didn’t give you any real good answers. So the book went out. It’s never been challenged by the government, but it’s gotten me interviewed, such as with you and with a lot of September 11th people. Like so many of the 9/11 whistleblowers, Springmann paid a heavy price for his desire to tell the truth. His refusal to bow to the CIA and issue visas to unqualified applicants during his time at Jeddah, his refusal to stop asking questions about the operation he had been involved in after he was transferred elsewhere, and his refusal to stop speaking about the visas for Al Qaeda long after he left the State Department have had drastic repercussions on his career and his personal life. SPRINGMANN: Once I was out of State I found I couldn’t get a job anywhere. I mean, I spoke several languages to a greater or lesser extent, I had experience working on three continents, I knew how to manage offices. I couldn’t get a job, and I got the impression after a bit that I was being blacklisted. So I hired one of these resume checking services out in California and asked them to ask around. So they called up Day Mount and pretended to be someone hiring me and wanted to know how I was as an employee in Jeddah and what he thought of me and could he think of anything that special that I had done. And he said, “Well, I can’t think of anything really right off the bat,” and he came up with these weasel-worded responses to their questions, which gave the impression that, no, you shouldn’t hire this guy. But he didn’t come out and say that, but it was by implication very, very clear that Mike Springmann is not to be touched. So then I went to law school and worked at getting a job after law school. I started asking around when I was in law school. I interned in various organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. I talked to various national security organizations and found out that I couldn’t get a job again to save my soul. [. . .] I tried writing. I tried everything I could think of. And while collecting unemployment I was told to issue them reports on how many people I talk to during the week, and I would send page after page after page in of companies I applied to that I had hoped would fit my talents and abilities, but got nowhere. So I figured, you know, the government is still in there pitching, trying to keep me out of any kind of a gainful employment, because that’s how you get rid of people permanently. They don’t have any money, they can take your house, you have no money to do anything except put food on the table, if you can. So it was a very nasty few years. And for all of this sacrifice, we are still no closer to learning the truth about the Jeddah consulate and the CIA operations there than we were two decades ago. That 14 of the 19 alleged hijackers received their visas from the same office—12 from the same consular officer—is just the start of a deep and largely unexplored rabbit hole that brings not just the travel patterns or the intelligence connections but the very identity of those suspects into question. Biographical details and pictures of two separate Ziad Jarrahs have been released to the public, and in fact multiple photographs of a number of the alleged hijackers appear to be pictures of entirely different people. A Waleed Al Shehri appeared alive and well in Morocco after 9/11 to protest the use of his name and photograph in stories about the supposed hijackers, and he was joined by an Abdulrahman al-Omari in Jeddah, who the FBI were forced to apologize to for falsely naming as a suspect. Newsweek reported that five of the alleged hijackers received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s. Amidst the confusion, FBI Director Robert Mueller was forced to admit that the Bureau was “not certain” as to the identity of several of the men on their suspect list. These issues remain untouched and largely forgotten by a public that, through a process of suggestion and association, have come to believe largely without question that the 19 faces in the iconic “hijacker line-up” are the perpetrators of 9/11. It is only through the story of people like Mike Springmann that we can begin removing those layers of lies and obfuscations from the story of 9/11 and come to a better understanding of the truth. And, in the end, that idea—that we can get closer to the truth, that wrongs can be righted and lies exposed—is the idea that motivates whistleblowers like Mike Springmann. Whistleblowers who have come forward at great personal expense to shine light on these long-buried and inconvenient truths. SPRINGMANN: I think, you know, I have to look at what I did and look at myself, and, as the story goes, look at your face in the mirror every morning. But I’ve been reading some emails sent to me by a good lawyer contact, lobbyist and attorney, on stoicism. And there have been things from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and other folks. And one of the things that I saw was their comment that--memento mori—that you expect to die and you don’t fear death. You don’t look forward to death, but at the end of the day you think, “Well, what have I done this day, the last day that might be the rest of my life? I may not wake up tomorrow morning. Have I balanced the accounts? Have I done something of substance? Have I tried to rectify a wrong. Have I tried to do something good to balance out the evil in the world?” [. . .] So that’s one of the reasons why I keep doing this. I figure if I’ve got nothing else to do for the rest of my life, I’ve got to square the balance, and, regrettably, I’ve got to say, educate the ignorant if I can. WILLIAM RODRIGUEZWatch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4 TRANSCRIPT When people talk of the bravery exhibited by ordinary men and women during the traumatic hours of the 9/11 attacks, they are talking about people like William Rodriguez. Indeed, of the many stories of selflessness and courage to have emerged from that fateful day, it would be difficult to find one more heroic than that of William Rodriguez, dubbed the “last man out” because, as a janitor holding a master key to the buildings, he risked his life till the very moment of the Tower’s destruction, helping those trapped inside the Towers to escape. RAMON TAYLOR: William Rodriguez was working as a janitor at the World Trade Center when the towers were attacked. Using a master key, he ran to open as many doors as he could before exiting and becoming buried alive. WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ: So they started looking under the rubble, and once I got pulled from under the rubble I was—after, I was in shock. Why? Because I couldn’t find any of those buildings. SOURCE: 9/11 Survivor Recounts His Experience SADE BADERINWA: Rodriguez had one of only five master keys to unlock the doors in the middle stairwell and lead firefighters up floor by floor. RODRIGUEZ: So I went and I picked up the man in the wheelchair and I started going down. The building started to oscillate so hard. BADERINWA: He saved several lives that day. Then suddenly Rodriguez heard a terrible rumbling like the sound of an earthquake. RODRIGUEZ: I saw—it was a total disaster. And all I hear is “Run! Run! Run! BADERINWA: Like so many others, Rodriguez ran from the cloud of debris and dove under a fire truck. SOURCE: William Rodriguez on the news on 9-11-06 WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ: We went up by the stairs with the Port Authority police to start rescuing people. A lot of people were coming out, but there was a lot of people that stayed there. And we brought a lot of people on wheelchairs and a lot of people on gurneys, all [the] people that couldn’t make it because there was no elevator service. The elevator went out. SOURCE: CBS – 9-11 William Rodriguez interview 9/11 NIST FOIA – WCBS Dub2_30 REPORTER: The World Trade Center towers were built as a class “A” building. That means that, in the case of a fire, every third floor in both towers is closed to prevent a backdraft. It is the reason that Rodriguez’ master key was so crucial to getting people out. RODRIGUEZ: It was hard. The amount of heat that was generated because of the fire was coming down. The smoke . . . It was an acrid smoke because you could feel it on your throat. REPORTER: He saw firefighters carrying a hundred pounds’ worth of equipment on their backs waiting for a freight elevator that would never come. That elevator was demolished. So Rodriguez led them up another way, using a back pathway that only he knew. After the sky lobby collapsed he finally listened to police, who told him to get out. He was not prepared for what he was about to see. RODRIGUEZ: When I look around I find all the bodies of the people that jump out of the building. They came out of the building and they say, “I saved myself!” And a piece of debris came in and killed them. SOURCE: 9/11 Tribute – Custodian William Rodriguez As one of the heroes of that day, a man whose story encapsulates all the tragedy and drama of 9/11, William Rodriguez is no stranger to the glare of the media spotlight. Not only has he been interviewed for dozens of news programs and reports on the events of September 11, 2001, and been featured as a spokesman for the survivors at multiple events and on many reports, he has also been awarded for his courage that day and even invited to a White House dinner, where he was honored by President Bush for his bravery. But carefully curated from most mainstream reports on Rodriguez’ remarkable story is an equally remarkable fact: This 9/11 hero is in fact a 9/11 whistleblower, someone who has contradicted the official story of the September 11th attacks from day one. According to Rodriguez, the first explosion that he felt that day was not the impact of the plane nearly 100 stories above him, but an explosion below him, from one of the sub-basement levels. RODRIGUEZ: That morning I was supposed to be there at 8 o’clock in the morning every day. I called my supervisor because I was not going to work, I was gonna take a sick day. Made it there at 8:30 in the morning, go straight to the lobby, down to the basement. The building has six sub-levels of basement: B1, B2 . . . all the way down to B6. Basement six, basement five, all the way up to basement one were all Port Authority areas. Some of them have parking for tenants, some of them have storage. B1 office . . . B1 level is where they have the support office for my company, the cleaning company, American Building Maintenance. So I was talking to the supervisor, and at 8:46 we hear “BOOM!” An explosion so hard that pushed us upwards in the air. Upwards. And it came out from below us. From the mechanical room that was right below us. And it was so loud and so powerful that all the walls cracked, the false ceiling fell on top of us, the sprinkler system got activated, and everybody started screaming so loud because they didn’t know what was going on. And the first thing I’m going to say is that a generator just blew up on the B2 level—the level below me. And everybody’s screaming. And when I’m going to verbalize it, six to seven seconds after, we hear “BAH!” The impact all the way on the top of the building of the plane. Two different events separated by almost seven seconds. Separated by time. And now, I work in the building for 20 years. I know the difference of the sound coming from the top and one from the bottom. So when everybody started—”What the heck is going on?”—a person comes running into the office saying, “Explosion! Explosion!” His hands extended, all the skin pulled from under his armpits on both arms. Hanging! And we thought it was clothing—it was part of his clothes—until he gets closer. He was coming like this, like a zombie. “Explosion! Explosion!” And when I looked at him, I realized it was his skin. Like when you take off a glove and you let it hang. And when I get to see his face, all this part was hanging off his face and everybody started screaming in horror. And I say, “Don’t move!” The guy was a black guy named Felipe David. Worked for a company called Aramark. SOURCE: William Rodriguez’s story Rodriguez’ story provides startling and credible eyewitness testimony that undermines the official myth that there were no explosives in the Twin Towers that morning. Rodriguez is insistent on a number of points: That there was a loud and distinct noise at 8:46 AM, that it came from beneath them in the sub-basement level and blew them upwards, and that it notably preceded the sound of the plane impact above them. This has led Rodriguez to conclude that there was an explosion in the sub-basement before the plane impacted the North Tower, something which the 9/11 Commission and other official government investigations into the attacks denies. And, importantly, Rodriguez has been telling this same story—including the same detail about Felipe David—since the day of 9/11 itself. AARON BROWN: William Rodriguez is a maintenance worker at the Trade Center, I believe. In any case, he’s on the phone with us now. Mr. Rodriguez, can you hear me? RODRIGUEZ: Yes, I can hear you clearly. BROWN: Tell me where you were when—well, which of the two buildings were you in? RODRIGUEZ: I work on the Building One. The one that got hit the first time. BROWN: Tell me what happened. RODRIGUEZ: I was on the basement, which is a support floor for the maintenance company. And we hear like a big rumble—not like an impact, like a rumble—like something . . . like moving furniture on a massive way. And all of a sudden we hear another rumble and a guy comes running—running—into our office, and all his skin was off his body. All his skin. We went crazy. We started screaming. We told him to get out. We took everybody out of the office, outside to the loading dock area. And then I went back in. And when I went back in I saw people—I heard people that were stuck on an elevator—on a freight elevator, because all the elevators went down. And water was going in and they were probably getting drowned. And we get a couple of pipes and open the elevator and we got the people out. SOURCE: William Rodriguez interview, CNN, 13:33, 9/11 If it were only William Rodriguez who heard, saw and experienced explosions inside the Twin Towers that morning, then such testimony would be easy enough to rationalize away. Maybe Rodriguez had become confused in the chaos of that morning. Maybe he had interpreted the sound and explosion incorrectly. Maybe he was lying to gain attention. But William Rodriguez is not the only person who heard, saw and experienced explosions inside the Twin Towers that morning. In fact, hundreds of people, including office workers, police, firefighters and others have reported explosions all throughout the morning, from before the moment of plane impact all the way up to the explosive demolition of the towers themselves. FEMALE BYSTANDER: What was it like? TYRONE JOHNSON (FDNY LADDER 24): Horrible. The whole building just collapsed on us. Inside the lobby. MALE BYSTANDER: Was that a secondary explosion? JOHNSON: Yes, it was. Definitely a secondary explosion. We was inside waiting to go upstairs and on our way upstairs the whole fucking thing blew. And it just collapsed on everybody inside of the lobby. MALE BYSTANDER: That must be the first tower coming down-- JOHNSON: I don’t know about the first one, but the second one . . . It was terrible. Then there was a third one, too, after that one. MALE BYSTANDER: There was an explosion after that? JOHNSON: Yes, there was. Everybody was just inside the building, waiting to go upstairs and it just let loose. Everything just let loose inside the building. MALE BYSTANDER: So what you’re telling me is that there was the plane or whatever hit the building, then a secondary explosion-- JOHNSON: There was like three explosions after that. We came in after the fire—We came when the fire was going on already. We was in the staging area inside the building, waiting to go upstairs. And then an explosion. The whole lobby collapsed on the lobby inside. SOURCE: 9/11 FireFighters – THREE Explosions After Plane Hit WTC REPORTER: And you were working there? KENNY JOHANNEMAN: Yes, I was right there. I was in the B—I was down in the basement. Came down. All of a sudden the elevator blew up. Smoke. I dragged a guy out. His skin was hanging off and I dragged him out. And I helped him out to the ambulance. SOURCE: 9/11 Eyewitness to Twin Towers Basement Explosion? REPORTER: Arthur Del Bianco is one of the lucky few, able to tell a tale of survival from a hospital bed. ARTHUR DEL BIANCO: All of a sudden there was, like, “BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!” Like bullet shots. And then, all of a sudden, three tremendous explosions and everything started coming down. SOURCE: 9/11 Eyewitnesses to WTC Demolition Explosions EYEWITNESS: I think a bomb went off in the lobby first, then a plane hit the building. Then another plane hit the other building. But when I was coming through the doors on the other side of the Trade Center, something—either they blew the lobby up, or something. Because it blew the glass out of the doors and knocked us all down and I got a—smoke and everything on me. SOURCE: 9/11 Eyewitnesses to WTC Demolition Explosions Fireman 1: We made it outside, we made it about a block-- Fireman 2: We made it at least two blocks and we started running. Floor by floor, it started popping out-- Fireman 1: It was as if they had detonated–as if they were planning to take down a building. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM-- Fireman 2: All the way down. I was watching it and running. SOURCE: Bombs + Explosions at the WTC Complex on 9/11/01 These stories, collected haphazardly by reporters at the scene that day, paint a very different picture of 9/11 than that portrayed by NIST and the 9/11 Commission. Rather than a progressive collapse due to fire and burning jet fuel, these stories suggest that what was happening inside the Twin Towers that morning was in fact a series of explosive events. Explosive events that were powerful enough to cause internal collapses within the buildings well below the points of the plane impact and fires, and even, according to multiple witnesses, events that preceded the impact of the plane. But is there more systematic and rigorously collected evidence of these explosions? Is there a repository of such testimony that would confirm what Rodriguez and many others have affirmed since the day of 9/11 itself: namely, that there were explosions taking place inside the buildings that morning? In fact, there is such a repository. In the wake of 9/11, New York Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen ordered the collection of oral testimony from firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians who responded to the attacks that morning. That collection, amounting to more than 12,000 pages of testimony from 503 people, was then promptly sealed. It took a lawsuit and four years of court battle for the collection to be finally released to the public. One of the researchers who spent time poring over that testimony was Graeme MacQueen, a retired associate professor at McMaster University and the former director of that university’s Peace Studies Center. What he found in that repository of oral history, and presented in a scholarly article for The Journal of 9/11 Studies, was an unmistakable pattern: Time after time, these first responders reported experiencing explosions in the Twin Towers. Explosions that cannot be accounted for in NIST’s official explanation of the towers’ destruction. GRAEME MACQUEEN: There is other eyewitness explosion evidence that corroborates Rodriguez, at least in a general way. Meaning that there were people talking about explosions in the basement. There were lots of people talking about tremendous explosions and fire in some of the elevators—blowing the doors off elevators. And some of this testimony can be found on the internet. I found some of it in the FDNY oral histories. You know, firefighters talking about the doors being blown off elevators. And so there was some kind of very destructive event. Also the windows in the lobby, which were very strong windows, were blown out by the time most of the firefighters got there. And as one of them said, it looked like a plane hit the lobby. There were other explosions that went off over the next hour or so, before the buildings started to come down. And when they came down, there were patterns of explosion from around the point of plane impact all the way down. Apparently we were supposed to believe that the building was coming down because of structural failure. But again, these were timed very well to go off in a particular way. This is one of the reasons we know that these were explosions and that this was a controlled demolition. There were patterns. And they were explosions that were extremely strong, taking out these massive buildings and pulverizing them in less than 20 seconds. This was not structural failure. Rodriguez’ story was not some fanciful invention that he spun during the most dramatic and horrific hours of his life; it is a story that fits into a pattern of explosive testimony related by many other witnesses that day. It is also a story that is deeply uncomfortable for those in the government and the media who were eager to celebrate the acts of bravery New Yorkers committed that day, but who will never report the explosive truth about the events at the World Trade Center that demolishes the official government conspiracy theory of 9/11. It is remarkable that Rodriguez, immediately recognized and celebrated for his heroism on that day, would continue to insist on his story even as the official story—the one that insisted there were no explosives used that day—began to take shape. But he did. For years, Rodriguez used his speaking opportunities on mainstream media and at memorials and commemoration events to inform the public about explosions in the Twin Towers that morning. Unsurprisingly, despite the attention and accolades he received for his remarkable story in the early days of 9/11, he soon found himself becoming persona non grata in the mainstream media because he refused to go along with the official lies about what happened that morning. RODRIGUEZ: It says, “Safety Fire Department of New York.” ANASTASIA CHURKINA: A rescue jacket he wore over his torn shirt. A lantern from the rubble. RODRIGUEZ: It doesn’t work, but another memory from 9/11. CHURKINA: And a piece of marble from high up on the 44th floor. This saved for a decade. RODRIGUEZ: I put it in my pocket because it was just such a shocking realization. CHURKINA: As well as memories that he relives every single day. RODRIGUEZ: And I was pulled on the rubble and I started looking for all the people and I only found pieces of human beings. CHURKINA: William Rodriguez, a janitor in the Twin Towers for almost 20 years and 9/11 survivor who saved hundreds of lives on September 11th by unlocking door after door for firefighters and dragging out at least a dozen people with his own bare hands. Known as the “last man out” before the World Trade Center collapsed, his unlikely story had the media glued to him like bees to honey. Becoming a voice for the victims, Rodriguez was honored as an American hero, only to be left homeless in the aftermath of the tragedy. RODRIGUEZ: Funny thing: I will give the 800 number on camera, and when I called the 800 number they denied me the help. CHURKINA: And shunned by the mainstream media soon after. RODRIGUEZ: Censorship. I believe that censorship started from the very beginning, because when I was telling my story they told me, “Oh, cut this out. Cut this out.” CHURKINA: No longer sweetheart of American broadcasts, William now talks mostly to foreign outlets. The reason: His version of 9/11 differed from the official scenario. NEWS REPORT: It was the first hijacked plane that hit the-- RODRIGUEZ: “It was the first hijacked plane.” No, hello! That was an explosion before the plane hit the tower. SOURCE: 9/11 survivor censored by media Even more remarkably, Rodriguez went beyond simply telling the truth about what he witnessed that day. Little known even to those who are familiar with his story is that Rodriguez has used his notoriety and media opportunities to advocate for 9/11 survivors who are suffering from the health effects incurred in the aftermath of the towers’ destruction. He has even taken the fight for 9/11 Truth to the political arena, forcing the government’s hand in convening a public commission to investigate the attacks, something that the Bush administration fought tooth and nail to prevent. RODRIGUEZ: The 9/11 Commission is a book of 576 pages . . . 576 pages of lies. Because the 9/11 Commission exists because I went with three other people to Congress to ask that we wanted a formal investigation of the events of 9/11. And you may remember that the president said, “We don’t need an investigation. We know who did it.” That was the wrong thing to say to the families. We had the right and we wanted to know. So we pressed for an investigation. They didn’t want it. So we used a technique that they have used against a lot of the people with the excuse of the war. We put widows, we put wives, we put fathers that love their loved ones on every television show and every news network to ask for an investigation. And they couldn’t handle the emotional toll that that will create on the American public. So we got the investigation. I testified behind closed doors. They didn’t want me to do the testimony in an open hearing. Everything else—everybody else—open hearings. You saw the hearings. Mine was behind closed—I agreed because I did not know what was the process and I thought up to that point that they were going to do the right thing. We created a family steering committee and we gave the Commission 168 questions to answer. We only have 22 of those questions answered. We wanted to have a family member to be part of the Commission, and they say, “We don’t want to allow that because they will have access to national security papers” and a lot of flimflam and baloney. We never got it. So we have to press for questions to be answered. We never got those answers. Up to that point we thought that they were going to do the right thing. The final report shows up . . . What a surprise! My whole testimony was omitted. It doesn’t appear. 27 people that I gave them to interrogate, they didn’t call them. Not even one of them. SOURCE: What Really happened on 9/11? – William Rodriguez That the 9/11 Commission’s work was subverted and undermined by conflicts of interest and deliberate cover-up is perhaps to be expected. But the efforts of people like William Rodriguez have been instrumental in advocating for those left quite literally in the dust of 9/11. Those whose stories are too problematic for the official 9/11 narrative to be given any credence or attention. As Graeme MacQueen points out, the story told by William Rodriguez and the other witnesses to explosions in the Twin Towers that day is not a peripheral issue or a minor footnote in the story of 9/11. On the contrary, it is of central importance. Either Rodriguez and the other witnesses to explosions independent of the planes and fires are wrong, or they are right. And if they are right, we are forced to the conclusion that the official story of 9/11 is not just mistaken, but that it is a deliberate fraud that has been perpetrated on the American public—and the broader public around the world—for nearly two decades. MACQUEEN: Well, that would obviously indicate that somehow this building was wired for explosions and that there had been a plan made in advance of the plane attacks to destroy this building. And that means the official story about, you know, Mohamed Atta and the other 18 hijackers flying planes is an incorrect story. That it indicates that there was—to use the classic word—an inside job. Somehow, insiders—deep insiders—got in the building and readied it for annihilation on that day. It also indicates that the story we’ve been told is false, and really knowingly false. Because, of course, Rodriguez and many other eyewitnesses to explosions were ignored, or silenced, or lied about by the official investigating agencies. Which means that the whole 9/11 story is a fraud. Ultimately, the story of Rodriguez is important, not just for what it tells us about the official 9/11 narrative, or even for what it tells us about the way that power operates in society. It is important because it shows us what ordinary men and women are capable of in extreme situations. It reminds us that, in times of distress, we are still capable of coming together to help those around us. And it provides us with an example of someone who will not stop telling his truth, even when it becomes unpopular. RODRIGUEZ: Our wounds are still open. We’re still hurting. We’re still going through the process of traumatic shock syndrome—PTSD. You call me a hero, I call myself a survivor. For me, the heroes died on 9/11, in my opinion, because they died helping others. I just had the only tool available for me at that time to do great things, so I was—I’m a survivor. I have that survival skill. Why did I survive and my friends didn’t? And now, 16 years after, it hits me stronger because I see the families. I see new families that came out from people that I saved and I always wonder, you know, what would have happened if those people that I lost—those 200 friends—will be alive today. It hits you. It hits you hard. So 16 years after, we’re still dealing with the backlash of what happened on that day. 9/11 changed me. It changed the world. We all know that. But it changed me in more ways than I expected. SOURCE: The MSM Censored Full Story of William Rodriguez THE COMMISSIONERSWatch this video on BitChute / DTube / Minds.com / YouTube or Download the mp4 TRANSCRIPT Of all the 9/11 whistleblowers, perhaps the most noteworthy are the 9/11 Commissioners themselves. The 9/11 Commission (formally “The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States”) was set up by President George W. Bush, who dragged his heels a full 441 days before finally establishing a body to investigate the events of September 11, 2001, and “to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding” them. But that remarkable gap between the events and the empaneling of the Commission was not due to mere laziness; Bush actively resisted any investigation for as long as he could, taking the extraordinary and unprecedented step of personally asking Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit Congress’ investigation into those events. It was only when the political pressure to form a commission of inquiry became too great for Bush to resist that he authorized the commission and nominated a chairman: Henry Kissinger. PRESIDENT BUSH: Today I’m pleased to announce my choice for commission chairman: Dr. Henry Kissinger. REPORTER: Dr. Kissinger, do you have any concerns about once the commission begins it work and fingers point to valuable allies—say, Saudi Arabia for example—what policy implications could this have for the United States, particularly at this delicate time? HENRY KISSINGER: I have been given every assurance by the President that we should go where the facts lead us. SOURCE: Henry Kissinger and the 9/11 Commission Kissinger’s reputation as a cover-up artist and tool of the political establishment was such that even The New York Times speculated that Bush’s nomination of him showed that the president wanted to contain the investigation into 9/11, not enable it. 9/11 victims’ family members, similarly concerned that Kissinger was being appointed to run a cover-up commission, challenged him to his face to release the client list of his political consulting business. NARRATOR: Several family members approached Kissinger and requested a meeting at his office in New York. Prior to the meeting, Kristen Breitweiser conducted a thorough investigation of Kissinger’s potential conflicts of interest. PATTY CASAZZA: Probably much to the chagrin of some of the people in the room, Lorie (Van Auken) asked some very pointed questions. “Would you have any Saudi-American clients that you would like to tell us about?” And he was very uncomfortable, kind of twisting and turning on the couch. And then she asked “whether he had any clients by the name of Bin-Laden.” And he just about fell off his couch. NEWS REPORTER: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped down from the position Friday. MINDY KLEINBERG: We thought the meeting went well. SOURCE: 9/11: Press For Truth The next morning, Kissinger resigned his post as head of the 9/11 Commission and former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton were appointed chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, to take his place. Remarkably, the suggestions of political cover-up did not end there, nor were they confined to a marginalized “lunatic fringe” of “conspiracy theorists” derided by the establishment media. The remarkable and almost completely unreported fact is that six out of the 10 commissioners--Kean and Hamilton, as well as Bob Kerrey, Tim Roemer, John Lehman and Max Cleland—have all expressed concern that the Commission was misled, stymied, hampered by conflicts of interest, and, ultimately, forced to participate in a politically motivated cover-up. In their book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, and in press conferences and interviews at the time the report was released, Kean and Hamilton famously remarked that the commission had been “set up to fail.” EVAN SOLOMON: Even Lee Hamilton, the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission itself, admits to us that the process he headed up was seriously flawed. LEE HAMILTON: So there are all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail. We got started late. We had a very short time frame; indeed we had to get it extended. We did not have enough money. They were afraid we were going to hang somebody. SOURCE: 9/11 Commission “Failed” – Lee Hamilton – CBC THOMAS KEAN: But it was very difficult. And Lee and I write in our book that we think the commission in many ways was set up to fail. SOURCE: Hamilton and Kean on September 11 Terrorist Attacks As it turns out, the majority of the commissioners felt that the commission had been lied to, deliberately obstructed, undermined by the White House, or set up with staff that had conflicts of interest in the investigation. One of these concerned commissioners, Max Cleland, resigned because the commission had been “deliberately compromised by the President of the United States.” Commissioner John Lehman, meanwhile, admitted on NBC Nightly News that the Commission had to go through Karl Rove and other senior White House members to access key documents in their investigation and that “[w]e purposely put together a staff that had—in a way—conflicts of interest,” stressing, lest there be any doubt, that “[a]ll of the staff had, to a certain extent, some conflict of interest.” Commission members even considered bringing criminal charges against Pentagon officials who had deliberately lied to them about the military’s complete lack of response on that day. But perhaps the most cryptic of all the dissenting commissioners was Bob Kerrey. In 2009 he remarked that 9/11 was a “30-year old conspiracy,” but no mainstream reporter has ever followed up with him to clarify this statement. JEREMY ROTHE-KUSHEL: Do you support a criminal investigation into 9/11? Because I know yours was an exposition. It was not a criminal investigation. BOB KERREY: I don’t think so, but I don’t know. I mean, I do support a permanent commission to examine not just that but lots of other things in this area. ROTHE-KUSHEL: But if it’s a permanent cover-up then it’s—I mean, if it is an act of war and it’s hiding things—which everyone on your Commission knew, that the Pentagon was changing their stories, lying to you—then it’s a cover-up of an act of war, and under Article 3 Section 3 of the Constitution it’s treason. So unless we get to the very bottom of it then we’re still talking a treasonous exposition. KERREY: This is a longer conversation, I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the bottom of it. ROTHE-KUSHEL: We have to or we can’t save our country, sir. KERREY: I don’t think—well, if that’s the condition upon which we’re going to be saving our country—because the problem is, it’s a 30-year-old conspiracy. ROTHE-KUSHEL: No, I’m talking about 9/11. KERREY: That’s what I’m talking about. ROTHE-KUSHEL: Oh, you are. You mean . . . KERREY: Anyway, I gotta run. SOURCE: 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey finally confesses 9-11 Commission could not do it’s job – Part 3 of 3 It is utterly remarkable that the 9/11 Commission and its final report are still held up as the final word on the events of September 11, 2001, when a majority of its own Commissioners admit that the commission was a cover-up and did not get to the bottom of the story. Even more remarkable is that this fact has never even been mentioned, let alone examined, in any mainstream media report. And, despite the fact that the majority of Americans believe the government is concealing what it knows about the events of September 11th from the public, to this day anyone who raises questions about the Commission or its findings is treated as a conspiratorial loony by those same media personalities who refuse to report on the 9/11 Commission’s own whistleblowers. It should be apparent by this point that the old argument that “someone would have talked” is not just fallacious, but factually incorrect. There have, in fact, been numerous whistleblowers with documentable evidence of the frauds and fictions that have been constructed around the official 9/11 narrative. Their disclosures put the “but someone would have talked” doubters in an uncomfortable predicament: Either they are lazy—boldly pronouncing on issues they have not themselves bothered to investigate—or they are lying. What is especially galling when the so-called “skeptics” use the “someone would have talked” fallacy is that the whistleblowers have in fact done everything possible to publicize their stories—holding press conferences, filing formal appeals, joining whistleblower organizations, and making themselves available for interviews. For their heroic efforts, these brave men and women have been fired from their jobs, shunned by former colleagues, smeared by the mainstream media, and ignored by the public. “Someone would have talked.” Indeed, numerous “someones” have talked. Some of them have even screamed. But when their cries are ignored, the stories of the 9/11 whistleblowers sound like the proverbial trees falling in the forest with no one around to hear them. Unless and until we give these valiant men and women a voice, then we will never hope to learn the truth about 9/11. The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.
A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings:
These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns. In the modern age of democracy and volunteer armies, a pretense for war is required to rally the nation around the flag and motivate the public to fight. That is why every major conflict is now accompanied by its own particular bodyguard of lies. From false flag attacks to dehumanization of the “enemy,” here are all the examples you’ll need to help debunk a century of war lies.
Transcript:
When we remember the events of 9/11, we are often invited to reflect on how the attack came out of the clear, blue sky. Until the terror began to unfold in real time on everyone’s television screen, it was just another beautiful, blue sky day, a perfect day for aviation. CNN ANCHOR: It is 8 AM in Salisbury, North Carolina, 7:00 a.m. in Chicago, 5:00 a.m. in Calaveras County, California, where the news is being made on this Tuesday, September 11th. CNN ANCHOR 2: From CNN… MATT LAUER: Anyway, that’s all coming up. 8:01 let’s get to the top news stories of the morning. For that we turn to Anne Curry. ANN CURRY: Because now we have a camera. Katy, Matt and Al, thank you so much this morning. Good morning, everybody, again. SARAH FERGUSON: …but isn’t in America, in politics, isn’t spinning…What is spinning, Charlie? CHARLIE GIBSON: Well, spinning is getting out your point of view, trying to put your interpretation on something. FERGUSON: So do you think there is a lot of spinning done in politics… FOX ANCHOR: …Miss America pageant, but this year things are different. Contestants will be quizzed on current events, US history and government. 10 of the 51 contestants got a preview. Among the questions: Naming the current vice president, and knowing what happened December 7th, 1941. Two contestants didn’t know Dick Cheney was the vice president and four missed the bombing of Pearl Harbor. EARLY SHOW: Miles and miles of sunshine. Miles Davis. Going to put Miles out there today. Nice as it could be across the Northeast. Rough seas still from from the chop from that hurricane, but other than that it’s kind of quiet around the country. We like quiet. It’s quiet. It’s too quiet. SOURCE: “It’s Too Quiet” The Early Morning Television of 9/11/2001 But that was merely the public’s impression of the events from ground level. Little did we know at the time, 9/11 was not a normal day of blue sky aviation. On the contrary, it was one of the busiest days in the history of American aviation, a dense forest of live fly exercises, drills, simulations, fake radar injects and utter confusion. And that was before the attacks even began. This is the story of 9/11 that you didn’t watch unfold on your TV that fateful day in 2001. This is the story of the 9/11 War Games. PART ONE – WAR GAMES It only stands to reason that government employees, armed forces and first responders spend a considerable amount of time every year training to respond to crises. A major, catastrophic event may only happen once in a lifetime, but if and when it does occur, the appropriate personnel need to know how to respond. Not all military exercises and government drills are the same, however. These training events can range all the way from computer simulations and war games—where no personnel are deployed and no physical resources are committed—to live field exercises where real people use real equipment and even real munitions to practice responding to real-world emergencies or simulate real warfare. And as these drills and exercises move from abstract models to real-life exercises, the line between reality and simulation can become blurry. What does it mean, then, when a simulation of an emergency takes place at the exact same place and time as that real emergency is happening in real life? PETER POWER: Today we were running an exercise for a company—bearing in mind I’m now in the private sector—and we sat everybody down in the City. A thousand people involved in the whole organization, but the crisis team. And the most peculiar thing was we based our scenario on the simultaneous attacks on that underground and mainline station so we had to suddenly switch an exercise from fictional to real. [. . . ] INTERVIEWER: Just to get this right, you were actually working today on an exercise that envisioned virtually this scenario? POWER: Almost precisely. SOURCE: Peter Power 7/7 Terror Rehearsal In the hours after the July 7th, 2005 bombings in London, Peter Power gave a series of interviews to various outlets confirming that he had been running an exercise at the exact time of the attack. That exercise envisioned bombs going off at Liverpool Street, King’s Cross, and Russell Square at exactly the same time as real bombs were going off at those very locations. PETER POWER: At half past 9 this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now. HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise? POWER: Precisely. SOURCE: Peter Power 7/7 Terror Rehearsal What are we to make of this? Is this just a remarkable coincidence? Proof of the the keen insight of advisors like Peter Power in correctly predicting the locations and times of likely terror attacks? Or something altogether different? And, if this was set up by some intelligence agency or someone with advance knowledge of the real attack, what would be the point? Why would they bother to schedule a drill “rehearsing the event” at the same time as the event itself? Just as there are various kinds of drills, war games and exercises, so, too, are there different ways that such simulations could be used to help facilitate an actual event. A drill could be used to distract security services and hinder responses, for example, thus helping an attack to succeed. Or the exercise could act as an alibi in case the plot is discovered before it can take place. Or, in an even more chilling scenario, a war game or training event could be used to recruit patsies who, believing they are only taking part in an exercise, unwittingly move people or equipment into place for a real attack. KIMMY: Yes! I am the king! Numero uno, baby. Mmmm mmmm. (The Gunmen walk over to Kimmy.) BYERS: Find something? KIMMY: Yep. I wound up in some government think-tank’s upload directory. Here’s your scenarios, ladies. BYERS: It’s in clear. Counter-terrorism scenarios. War games developed for the Defense Department. FROHIKE: What’s Scenario 12-D? (Kimmy clicks on the file. A dialog box on the screen opens.) FILE INFO scenario_12D.txt Domestic Airline In-Flight Terrorist Act LANGLY: Airline terrorism? That doesn’t make sense. Your father was murdered over a war game? BYERS: Download it. SOURCE: 9/11 X-Files – The Lone Gunmen Pilot (Predictive Programming) Incredibly, the plot of the pilot episode of “The Lone Gunmen,” a spin-off of the popular X-Files television program, aired in March 2001, depicted a scenario in which a group of government insiders piggy-backed on a military war game involving a hijacked airplane to remote control a civilian passenger jet into the World Trade Center. BYERS SNR: What the hell are you doing? Why can’t you stay out of this. Leave me buried. BYERS: What is scenario 12-D? (BYERS SNR doesn’t respond.) BYERS: We know it’s a war game scenario. That it has to do with airline counter-terrorism. Why is it important enough to kill for. BYERS SNR: Because it’s no longer a game. BYERS: But if some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario, then why target you for assassination? BYERS SNR: Depends on who your terrorists are. BYERS: The men who conceived of it the first place. You’re saying our government is planning to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airline? BYERS SNR: There you go again. Blaming the entire government as usual. In fact, a small faction … BYERS: For what possible gain? BYERS SNR: The Cold War’s over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market’s flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you’ll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed. But as outlandish as this idea seems to those not immersed in military history or strategy, the idea of a war game “going live” is not limited to the world of fiction. In fact, it is a real and openly-acknowledged secret among military planners that such exercises can be used as an operational cover for a real attack. Reflecting on lessons learned from his tenure as Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, Casper Weinberger observed that “the difference between a realistic exercise or maneuver and what could be preparations for an attack, that line is sometimes quite blurred.” And Weinberger should know. It was under his watch that a “fictional” war game scenario brought the world to the brink of a very real global thermonuclear war. In 1983, at the height of Cold War tensions over the Reagan Administration’s moves to increase the US nuclear arsenal and his national security directive calling for the ability to win a nuclear war, NATO decided to simulate a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in an exercise dubbed “Able Archer 83.” As recently declassified documents show, the exercise was unprecedented in its scale and scope, even involving a very real radio-silent air lift of 19,000 US troops to Europe. So realistic was the build up of forces and the preparations for nuclear strikes during these “war games” that, as we now know from these documents kept hidden from the public for 30 years, Able Archer 83 very nearly caused a real nuclear exchange. But these concerns about war games going live did not end with the break up of the Soviet Union. On September 10, 2001, the Russian Air Force began a week-long training exercise over the North Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. The exercise simulated a Russian bombing attack in response to NATO aggression. On September 9, 2001, NORAD announced they would be deploying additional fighter aircraft to Forward Operating Locations in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor the exercise and “ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained.” The Russians called off their war game when the 9/11 attacks began to unfold. Military planners know that simulations and war games can be used as cover for real attacks. But what about 9/11? Were there any exercises, simulations or drills that had a bearing on what was happening on that fateful day? PART TWO – PREPARATIONS In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration’s mantra became that no one could have imagined such an attack before it took place. REPORTER: Why shouldn’t this be seen as an intelligence failure, that you were unable to predict something happening here? CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Steve, I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. SOURCE: Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002 DONALD RUMSFELD: First, I must say, I know of no intelligence during the roughly six plus months leading up to September 11 th that indicated terrorists intended to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into the Pentagon or the World Trade Towers. If we had had such information, we could have acted on it. SOURCE: September 11 Commission: Defense GEORGE W. BUSH: Nobody in our government, at least, and I don’t think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale. SOURCE: President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference, April 13, 2004 But, like everything else the Bush Administration told the public about 9/11, this, too, was a lie. Not only had government officials “envisioned flying airplanes into buildings” or “using an airplane as a missile,” but multiple agencies trained for just such an event prior to 9/11. In fact, as General Richard Myers—Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005—went on to tell the 9/11 Commission, this precise scenario of a hijacked jet being flown into a high value target was drilled by NORAD not once or twice but five separate times in the run-up to September 11th. On November 6th, 1999, they simulated an event in which terrorists hijacked a passenger jet flying out of JFK with the intention of crashing it into the United Nations building in New York. On June 5th, 2000, they simulated two hijackings, one in which the terrorists intended to fly the plane into the Statue of Liberty, and the other in which the intended target was the White House. An October 16th, 2000, NORAD drill saw a hijacker once again targeting the UN building, as did a nearly identical exercise on October 23rd of that year. One of NORAD’s pre-9/11 hijack drills even saw the World Trade Center itself become the intended target. Other exercises involved not just hijacked jets as weapons, but tested NORAD’s response to simultaneous hijackings being used in a coordinated attack on American airspace. MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, obviously it would be hard to imagine posturing for the exact scenario. But isn’t it a fact, sir, that prior to September 11th, 2001, NORAD had already in the works plans to simulate in an exercise a simultaneous hijacking of two planes in the United States? GEN. MCKINLEY: Colonel Scott, do you have any data on that? I’m not aware of that, sir. I was not present at the time. MR. BEN-VENISTE: That was Operation Amalgam Virgo. SOURCE: Terrorist Attacks and Response Amalgam Virgo is an annual NORAD field training exercise, meaning that real aircraft are deployed and actual personnel are used to “simulate” real-life situations. The planning document for Amalgam Virgo 01, which took place in June 2001, featured a picture of Osama Bin Laden surrounded by airplanes. Amalgam Virgo 02, which was already in the planning stages on 9/11 and actually took place in June 2002, involved a simulated hijacking of a real Delta Airlines 757 by “military personnel acting as civilian passengers” and ran through multiple scenarios for stopping the plane from reaching its target, including a shoot down. But as uncanny as these similarities are to real life events, declassified documents from the 9/11 Commission archive show that many other types of hijack scenarios were practiced in the three years before September 11th. These documents prove that many of the lies told about the “confused” response to the 9/11 attacks are just that: lies. We have long been told, for instance, that NORAD wasn’t set up to deal with a domestic hijacking threat because the agency was solely focused on outward threats. RICHARD MYERS: It’s the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward. Those were the orders that NORAD had and has had for — ever since the end of the Soviet Union when we had at that time I think it was 26 alert sites around the United States and we’d gone down to seven. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 But time after time between 1999 and 2001, NORAD simulated so-called “inside-inside” events, where domestic airliners bound for domestic destinations were hijacked en route. General Myers simply lied when he said that NORAD’s defenses were only directed toward outside threats. As these documents show, NORAD was actively engaged in modeling domestic terror threats, not only domestic civilian airliner hijackings but even one scenario, dubbed “Fertile Rice,” in which Osama bin Laden directed an attack on Washington using a drone aircraft laden with explosives. And these were not the only pre-9/11 “training” events that bore a striking resemblance to the actual attacks. The specific scenario of a plane crashing into the Pentagon was drilled not just once or twice, but at least three separate times in the year prior to September 11th. In October 2000, a Pentagon mass casualty exercise, or “MASCAL,” envisioned a scenario in which a passenger jet hit the Pentagon. Army medics, the Arlington Fire Department and other emergency responders participated in the drill. In May 2001, another Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise tested responses to a passenger jet crashing into the Pentagon’s courtyard. This time, the tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic participated in the training. Lieutenant Colonel John Felicio, deputy commander for administration of the DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic, later remarked: “You know, it was kind of eerie. The scenario we had for these MASCALS was very similar to what actually happened. Our scenario for both MASCALS was a plane flying into the Pentagon courtyard.” Then, in August 2001, just one month before 9/11, yet another Pentagon mass casualty exercise practiced building evacuation. As General Lance Lord, Commander of Air Force Space Command, later noted: “Purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise included a plane hitting the building.” “Purely a coincidence.” Time after time after time after time after time in the months leading up to the attacks, military personnel and first responders were trained to respond to the very events that the public is asked to believe actually took place on the day of 9/11. Some of these training exercises even involved real aircraft being “pretend” hijacked by real military personnel “acting as civilian passengers.” Purely a coincidence. As we can see, the idea that no one could have predicted the attacks of September 11th is not just a lie, but an absurd lie. In fact, the sheer number of times those very scenarios were exercised before they took place by itself raises the question of what these war game planners knew about what was set to take place that day. But as remarkable as all of these drills and exercises are, more remarkable still are the similarities between the events of 9/11 and the war games that we now know were taking place that very morning. PART THREE – TRAINING DAY Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawns temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. A perfect day for aviation. Meanwhile, all around the country, military personnel, first responders and government officials prepare for one of the busiest days of “simulated” terror in history. In New York City, preparations continue for “Operation Tripod,” an exercise run by the New York City Office of Emergency Management involving hundreds of personnel from FEMA and other disaster response agencies. The exercise simulates a bioterrorist attack on New York, and on the morning of September 11th equipment is already in place at Pier 92—just four miles north-northwest of the Twin Towers—to treat the “victims” of this pretend attack. RUDY GIULIANI: … on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here from FEMA, from the Federal Government, from the State Emergency Management Office and they were getting ready for a drill for a bio-chemical attack. So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill, the equipment was already there. SOURCE: 9/11 Commission Hearings May 19, 2004 And on the 97th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, a team of technology consultants who have flown in from California for the occasion are running an emergency drill in the offices of Fiduciary Trust. Meanwhile in Washington, members of the 12th Aviation Battalion, in charge of “aviation support for the White House, US government officials, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, and other government agencies” are two hours away from their base, participating in their annual weapons training. 12 miles south of the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir begins a garrison control exercise drilling the base on its response to a simulated terrorist attack. Firefighters at Fort Myer, just 1.5 miles from the Pentagon, are sitting down for an “aircraft crash refresher class.” Matthew Rosenberg—an Army medic at the DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic—sits down in Corridor 8 of the Pentagon to “study a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place.” And in Chantilly, Virginia—just four miles from the runway of Dulles Airport—the military and CIA personnel who staff the National Reconaissance Office are beginning an exercise in which a plane crashes into their building. Members of the Joint Special Operations Command (the US military’s “top counterterrorism unit”) are in Hungary preparing for “Jackal Cave,” a highly-classified joint readiness exercise. Fighter pilots deployed to monitor the Russian Air Force’s training exercise in the Arctic are readying themselves for a day of maneuvers in Alaska and Northern Canada. And at NORAD’s combat operations center at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, military commanders are preparing for one of the busiest days of war games and exercises in the history of the United States. BARRIE ZWICKER: Michael Ruppert is standing by at his office in Sherman Oaks, California. Michael, thanks for this. What is the reason for the failure of US military jets to show up in a timely fashion on 9/11? MICHAEL RUPPERT: Well, the simple fact is, Barrie, that they didn’t know where to go. The reason that they didn’t know where to go was because a number of conflicting and overlapping war game exercises were taking place, one of which, Northern Vigilance, had pulled a significant number of North American fighter aircraft into Canada and western Alaska and and northern Alaska in a mock Cold War hijack exercise. There was another drill, Vigilant Guardian, which was a hijack exercise, a command post exercise, but it involved the insertion of false radar blips on to radar screens in the NorthEast Air Defense Sector. In addition we have a confirmation thanks to General Richard Myers who was acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who told Richard Clarke, as reported in Clarke’s book, that there was another exercise, Vigilant Warrior, which was, in fact, according to a NORAD source a live fly hijack drill being conducted at the same time. With only eight available fighter aircraft, and they have to be dispatched in pairs, they were dealing with as many as 22 possible hijacks on the day of 9/11 and they couldn’t separate the war game exercises from the actual hijacks. SOURCE: The Great Deception Yes, on the morning of September 11, 2001, the stage was perfectly set for an unprecedented day of simulated terror throughout the northeastern United States. And then it all happened for real. PART FOUR – THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE 08:37:52 BOSTON CENTER: Hi. Boston Center T.M.U. [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out. POWELL: Is this real-world or exercise? BOSTON CENTER: No, this is not an exercise, not a test. SOURCE: Vanity Fair Confusion. 08:52:40 NASYPANY: This is what I got. Possible news that a 737 just hit the World Trade Center. This is a real-world. And we’re trying to confirm this. Okay. Continue taking the fighters down to the New York City area, J.F.K. area, if you can. Make sure that the F.A.A. clears it— your route all the way through. Do what we gotta do, okay? Let’s press with this. It looks like this guy could have hit the World Trade Center. SOURCE: Vanity Fair Chaos. 09:49 HERNDON CENTER: Ah, do we wanna think about, ah, scrambling aircraft? FAA HEADQUARTERS: Ah, (sighs) oh God, I don’t know. HERNDON: Uh, that’s a decision someone is gonna have to make probably in the next 10 minutes. FAA HQ: Uh, you know everybody just left the room. SOURCE: Rutgers Law Review Paralysis. There are many ways to describe the FAA, DoD and NORAD response to the events of 9/11. But given that, according to the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, not a single fighter jet was able to intercept a single hijacked airliner between the first hijacking report at 8:20 AM and Flight 93’s downing nearly two hours later at 10:03 AM, the claim that the response to these events was actually enhanced by the war games and exercises taking place that morning is downright absurd. REP. CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: The question was we had four war games going on on September 11th, and the question that I tried to pose before the secretary had to go to lunch was whether or not activities of the four war games going on on September 11th actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks. GEN. RICHARD MYERS: The answer to the question is no, it did not impair our response. In fact, General Eberhart, who was in the command of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, he testified in front of the 9/11 Commission, I believe—I believe—he told them that it enhanced our ability to respond, given that NORAD didn’t have the overall responsibility for responding to the attacks that day. That was an FAA responsibility. SOURCE: Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Budget MR. ROEMER: General Eberhart, a question about our training posture on the day of 9/11. On page five of our Staff Statement, the FAA says at 8:38 in the morning, “Hi, Boston Center, TMU, we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York and we need you guys to — we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there. Help us out.” NEADS says, “Is this real world or an exercise?” My question is, you were postured for an exercise against the former Soviet Union. Did that help or hurt? Did that help in terms of were more people prepared? Did you have more people ready? Were more fighters fueled with more fuel? Or did this hurt in terms of people thinking, “No, there’s no possibility that this is real world; we’re engaged in an exercise,” and delay things? Or did it have both impacts? GEN. EBERHART: Sir, my belief is that it helped because of the manning, because of the focus, because the crews — they have to be airborne in 15 minutes. And that morning, because of the exercise, they were airborne in six or eight minutes. And so I believe that focus helped. The situation that you’re referring to, I think, at most cost us 30 seconds — 30 seconds. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 These lies have been carefully crafted over years and presented in such densely-packed soundbites that it is difficult to deconstruct them all. General Myers’ assertion that it was not NORAD but the FAA that had the responsibility to respond to the attacks that morning is one such lie. In reality, NORAD is specifically tasked with dealing with such events itself, not waiting passively for FAA orders. NORAD’s own regulations for dealing with hijacked jets specifically state that “FAA Authorization for Interceptor Operations is not used for intercept and airborne surveillance of hijacked aircraft within the [continental United States].” And General Eberhart’s assertion that the confusion over whether the events that were unfolding were real world events or merely exercises “cost us 30 seconds” is belied by the actual audio recordings of the FAA and NORAD response that morning. Time and time again throughout the entire morning, air traffic controllers and military operators are forced to clarify that the events being reported are not part of an exercise. 08:37:52 BOSTON CENTER: Hi. Boston Center T.M.U. [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out. POWELL: Is this real-world or exercise? BOSTON CENTER: No, this is not an exercise, not a test. SOURCE: Vanity Fair 08:37:56 WATSON: What? DOOLEY: Whoa! WATSON: What was that? ROUNTREE: Is that real-world? DOOLEY: Real-world hijack. WATSON: Cool! SOURCE: Vanity Fair 08:42:59 NASYPANY: Fourteen forty three, look for it, right there, ok, mode three, fourteen forty three, last known. No, this is real world. Ok, we’re in the high chair. SOURCE: Rutgers Law Review 08:43:06 FOX: I’ve never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise. SOURCE: Vanity Fair 08:57:11 NASYPANY: Think we put the exercise on the hold. What do you think? [Laughter.] SOURCE: DRM1_DAT2_Channel2_MCC_Op [TRANSCRIPT] This persistent confusion over the reality of what was happening that day is hardly surprising. Although the exact details are still shrouded under a cloud of official secrecy, on the morning of 9/11 NORAD was in the middle of a week-long war game that “coincidentally” included simulated hijackings of passenger jets. “Vigilant Guardian” is an annual command post exercise involving all levels of NORAD command. Vigilant Guardian 01 was a week-long war game described as a “simulated air war,” and, just two days before 9/11, it had involved a simulated terrorist hijacking of a civilian passenger jet by terrorists intending to blow the plane up with explosives over New York City. Even more remarkably, on the very morning of September 11th, they were planning to simulate another passenger jet hijacking just one hour after the attacks began to unfold. In 2006, Vanity Fair reporter Michael Bronner was the first journalist given access to the tapes of NORAD operations that morning. In his subsequent article on the subject, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,” Bronner talked to Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Nasypany, the mission-crew commander on the “ops” floor at the Northeast Air Defense Sector on the morning of 9/11. “When they told me there was a hijack, my first reaction was ‘Somebody started the exercise early,'” Nasypany later told me. The day’s exercise was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a “traditional” simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum. “I actually said out loud, ‘The hijack’s not supposed to be for another hour,'” Nasypany recalled. As a command post exercise, Vigilant Guardian was not conducted with real airplanes but what’s known as “sim over live,” where simulated aircraft are injected into NORAD’s air traffic system. Although the official narrative holds that the simulated injects were cleared from NORAD’s radars as soon as they appeared, thus causing no confusion, the actual NORAD tapes tell a different story. At 9:04 AM, directly after Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, two officers monitoring the events at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) can be heard to refer to the events as potential exercise “inputs.” 09:04:50 SPEAKER 1: Is this explosion part of that that we’re lookin’ at now on TV? SPEAKER 2: Yes. SPEAKER 1: Jesus … SPEAKER 2: And there’s a possible second hijack also—a United Airlines … SPEAKER 1: Two planes?… SPEAKER 2: Get the fuck out … SPEAKER 1: I think this is a damn input, to be honest. SOURCE: Vanity Fair At 9:09 AM, one NEADS technician complains about the exercises taking place and the confusion with real world events. BACKGROUND MALE SPEAKER: Langley’s on battle stations. FEMALE SPEAKER: Fuck. FEMALE SPEAKER 2: What? BACKGROUND MALE SPEAKER: Battle stations. FEMALE SPEAKER: Langley. FEMALE SPEAKER: LFI. FEMALE SPEAKER: I know. I hope they cancel the exercise, because this is ridiculous. SOURCE: DRM1_DAT2_Channel_4_ID_Op [TRANSCRIPT] And at 9:15 AM, an off-duty NEADS technician calls in to ask about the day’s events and the ongoing exercise. SGT. ZUBON: You guys watching the news? NEADS TECHNICIAN: Yeah, they’ve got it on in the battlecab right now. ZUBON: Oh, do they? NEADS: Yeah. ZUBON: Yeah, I’ve been watching it for about ten minutes, and I said “I wonder if they’re--did they suspend the exercise?” NEADS: Not at this time, no. ZUBON: Not yet? NEADS: But I think they’re going to. I don’t know. (Laughing). ZUBON: Yeah, I would imagine. NEADS: Things look pretty horrific out there. SOURCE: 0915 Not at this time Remarkably, at 9:30 AM, a full hour and ten minutes into the attacks, simulated aircraft were still being injected into the radar screens at NEADS. One frustrated staff member directing the response on the NEADS operations floor had to order his coworkers to “turn their sim switches off,” stopping the fake simulations from confusing the radar operators. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You know what, let’s get rid of this goddamn sim. Turn your sim switches off. Let’s get rid of that crap. SOURCE: RM1_DAT2_Channel2_MCC_Op [TRANSCRIPT] Even worse, at the same time as these false inputs were distracting the radar operators, real military aircraft that are taking part in the live-fly exercises that day are further complicating the response to the attacks. MALE SPEAKER: Boston Center T.M.U., yeah, we’ve got a question for you. BACKGROUND MALE: Yes, sir. MALE SPEAKER 1: We’re wondering if we should tell them to return to Base if they’re just on training missions, or what you guys-- BACKGROUND MALE: No, no. They’re actually on the active air per the DO out there. BACKGROUND MALE: Is this guy launched (inaudible)? BACKGROUND MALE: Everybody’s who’s up, you want them up? BACKGROUND MALE: Yes, we did send the ones home that were on the training mission. BACKGROUND MALE: OK. BACKGROUND MALE: They are sent home. (Simultaneous background conversations) BACKGROUND MALE: But the Pantas are out there from Otis. MALE SPEAKER: Right. I understand that. I’m talking about— I think there’s somebody training up in the Falcon Acts area right now. BACKGROUND MALE: No. BACKGROUND MALE: Falcon. Stand by. Let me-- MALE SPEAKER: Just in general anybody that’s training. BACKGROUND MALE: Anybody in training, send them home? Missions are Falcon send them home? BACKGROUND MALE: Right. BACKGROUND MALE: Yeah, go ahead and send them home. MALE SPEAKER: OK, fine. SOURCE: RM1_DAT2_Channel2_MCC_Op [TRANSCRIPT] Even more incredibly, false radar injects continued to show up on radar screens at NORAD’s Operations Center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, at 10:12 AM, a full nine minutes after the attacks had ended. CAPT. BRIAN NAGEL: Sim…or, sorry, northeast weapons. CAPT. TAYLOR: Hello, this is Captain Taylor calling from Cheyenne Mountain test control. NAGEL: Yes. TAYLOR: What we need you to do right now is to terminate all exercise inputs coming into Cheyenne Mountain. NAGEL: Yes. Can you call 6180 extension for that, please? TAYLOR: 6180? NAGEL: You bet, he’ll give you that. TAYLOR: I’ll do that. NAGEL: OK, thank you. SOURCE: DRM2_DAT1_Channel_20_SD2_TK.zip [TRANSCRIPT] In the face of this overwhelming documentary evidence that the exercises taking place that morning were a persistent source of distraction that significantly complicated response efforts, the retort of the 9/11 Commission and its proponents that these false radar blips were a minor issue that “at most cost us 30 seconds” rings exceedingly hollow. But that official story becomes even more implausible when it is learned that air traffic controllers and military personnel were not responding to four, clearly reported hijacked aircraft, as the public now imagines it, but as many as 29 potential hijackings. MAJ. GEN. LARRY ARNOLD: We were in the process of launching aircraft all over the country during that timeframe. We had multiple aircraft called hijacked all over the country. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 GEN. MYERS: In fact, as General Arnold said, we fought many phantoms that day. […] We got many aircraft calls inbound that morning that turned out to be phantoms. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 These false reports included:
But the most baffling of all of these reports involved American Airlines Flight 11, the Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles that, according to the official government conspiracy theory, was hijacked by Mohamed Atta and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Incredibly, air traffic controllers and military fighter jets spent much of the crucial time in the midst of the 9/11 attacks dealing with a completely false report that Flight 11 had not crashed into the World Trade Center at all, but was instead still airborn and heading towards Washington. COLIN SCOGGINS: Scoggins, (FAA) military (operations specialist), Boston Center. I just had a report that American 11 is still in the air and it’s on its way towards — heading towards Washington. NEADS TECHNICIAN: American 11 is still in the air-- SCOGGINS: Yes. NEADS: —on its way towards Washington? SCOGGINS: It was another aircraft that hit the tower. That’s the latest report we have. NEADS: Okay. SCOGGINS: I’m going to try to confirm an ID for you, but I would assume he’s somewhere over either New Jersey or somewhere further south. NEADS: Okay. So American 11 isn’t a hijack at all, then, right? SCOGGINS: No, he is a hijack. NEADS: American 11 is a hijack? SCOGGINS: Yes. NEADS: And he’s going into Washington. SCOGGINS: This could be a third aircraft. SOURCE: NEADS Tapes: The “Phantom Flight 11 Call” on 9/11 This completely false report, phoned in by FAA military operations specialist Colin Scoggins, further confused the already overwhelmed NEADS technicians. In response, NEADS Mission Crew Commander Kevin Nasypany scrambled some of the only fighters in the entire defense sector to chase after this phantom flight. 09:21:50 NASYPANY: O.K. American Airlines is still airborne—11, the first guy. He’s heading towards Washington. O.K., I think we need to scramble Langley right now. And I’m—I’m gonna take the fighters from Otis and try to chase this guy down if I can find him. SOURCE: Vanity Fair So confusing was this series of events that even years later at the 9/11 Commission hearings, both commissioners and military commanders struggled to even communicate about the problem itself, let alone determine how such a false report persisted for so long. MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick. MS. GORELICK: A couple of follow-up questions. First, for General Arnold, you testified before us before that the jets were scrambled in response to Flight 93, not American 11, and when you were asked about-- GEN. ARNOLD: I was wrong. I was wrong. MS. GORELICK: Yeah. But—but the question about that is, and I want to be fair to you and give you an opportunity to respond, you said that the reason that you were wrong was that you hadn’t had an opportunity to listen to the tapes, or the tapes were not accessible. But, I mean, we have—I’m just holding four of them — different headquarters and CONR logs that are—that clearly reflect that the scrambling was done in response to this phantom American 11, which didn’t exist anymore. And it was responsibility, as I recall, to do the after-action report, or to lead it, or to be in part responsible for it. Did you not look at the logs in that process? GEN. ARNOLD: Well, you refer to an after-action report that I was—that we didn’t do. I mean, I don’t recall doing an after- action report-- SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Why did no one mention the false report received from FAA that Flight 11 was heading south during your initial appearance before the 9/11 Commission back in May of last year? And why was there no report to us that contrary to the statements made at the time, that there had been no notification to NORAD that Flight 77 was a hijack? GEN. LARRY ARNOLD: Well, the first part of your question—Mr. Commissioner, first of all, I would like to say that a lot of the information that you have found out in your study of this of this 9/11, the things that happened on that day, helped us reconstruct what was going on. And if you’re talking about the American 11, in particular, the call of American 11, is that what you are referring to? MR. BEN-VENISTE: Yes. GEN. ARNOLD: The American 11, that was—call after it had impacted, is that what you’re referring to? MR. BEN-VENISTE: No. I’m talking about the fact that there was miscommunication that Flight 11 was still heading south instead of having impacted-- GEN. ARNOLD: That’s what I’m referring to. That’s correct. […] MR. BEN-VENISTE: General, is it not a fact that the failure to call our attention to the miscommunication and the notion of a phantom Flight 11 continuing from New York City south in fact skewed the whole reporting of 9/11, it skewed the official Air Force report, which is contained in a book called “The Air War Over America,” which does not contain any information about the fact that you were following, or thinking of a continuation of Flight 11, and that you had not received notification that Flight 77 had been hijacked? GEN. ARNOLD: Well, as I recall, first of all, I didn’t know the call signs of the airplanes when these things happened. When the call came that American 11 was possible hijacked aircraft, that aircraft just led me to come to the conclusion that there were other aircraft in the system that were a threat to the United States. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 PHILIP ZELIKOW: In their testimony, and in other public statements, NORAD officials also stated that the Langley fighters were scrambled to respond to the notifications about American 77 and/or United 93. These statements were incorrect as well. The report of American 11 heading south as the cause of the Langley scramble is reflected not just in taped conversations at NEADS, but in taped conversations in FAA centers, on chat logs compiled at NEADS, continental region headquarters, and NORAD, and in other records. Yet this response to a phantom aircraft, American 11, is not recounted in a single public timeline or statement issued by FAA or DOD. Instead, since 9/11, the scramble of the Langley fighters has been described as a response to the reported hijacking of American 77, or United 93, or some combination of the two. This inaccurate account created the appearance that the Langley scramble was a logical response to an actual hijacked aircraft. SOURCE: September 11 Commission Hearing, June 17, 2004 False radar inputs. Military aircraft participating in exercises in the middle of a crisis. Civilian aircraft squawking false hijack reports. Fighter jets chasing phantom planes. Which of these reports were merely the “fog of war” so often referred to by promoters of the official 9/11 story, and which were part of the exercise themselves? Were there field exercises of hijackings taking place that morning that were then mistaken for the real thing? What part did these war games and exercises play in hampering the response of the many military officers who had spent their whole careers training to protect American airspace? Did the war games help the perpetrators of 9/11 in their attack? The answers to these questions, like so many other questions about the events of September 11th, remain shrouded under a veil of official government secrecy. PART FIVE: BEYOND COINCIDENCE “Purely a coincidence.” According to the official story of 9/11 itself, we are told that simulated hijackings were taking place at the same time as real-life hijackings. That an airplane-into-building drill was occurring at the same time as airplanes were flying into buildings. That false radar blips and fake hijack reports were competing for the military’s attention with real-world radar blips and hijack reports. And throughout it all, technicians, operators, military personnel and air traffic controllers were constantly seeking reassurance that what they were seeing was not part of an exercise. Purely a coincidence? Or part of a pre-meditated plan? And if this unprecedented tangle of exercises, drills and simulations was part of a pre-meditated plan, what was that plan? What would be the point of simulating the attacks even as the attacks themselves were taking place? MICHAEL RUPPERT: For me, the pivotal evidence absolutely demonstrating direct government complicity in and management of the attacks was found in a number of undisputed yet virtually unaddressed war games that I have shown were being conducted, coordinated, and/or controlled by Vice President Dick Cheney or his immediate staff on the morning of September the 11th. The names of those wargames are known to include: Vigilant Guardian, Vigilant Warrior, Northern Guardian, Northern Vigilance, and Tripod. There is a possibility that Northern Guardian is a duplicate name, but the remaining exercises are indisputably separate events with different objectives. All have been reported by major press organizations relying on undisputed quotes from participating military and FAA personnel. They have also been confirmed by NORAD press releases. All, except for Northern Vigilance and Tripod II, had to do with hijacked airliners inside the continental United States, specifically within the northeast air defense sector or NEADS, where all four 9/11 hijackings occurred. According to a clear record, some of these exercises involve commercial airline hijackings. In some cases, false blips or “injects” were deliberately inserted into FAA and military radar screens, and they were present during at least the first attacks. This effectively paralyzed fighter response because with only eight fighters available in the region, there were as many as 22 possible hijackings taking place. Other exercises, specifically Northern Vigilance, had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast US just before 9/11 into northern Canada and Alaska. In addition, a close reading of key news stories published in the spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were live-fly exercises, where actual aircraft—likely flown by remote control—were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life. All of this as the real attacks began. The fact that these exercises have never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press or publicly by Congress—or at least publicly in any detail whatsoever by this so-called “independent” 911 Commission—made me think that they might be the holy grail of 9/11. And that’s exactly what they turned out to be. Only one war game exercise, Vigilant Guardian, was mentioned in a footnote to the Kean Commission report, and then it was deliberately mislabeled as an exercise intended to intercept Russian bombers instead of a hijack exercise in the northeast sector. Even then a deliberate lie was told to the American people as NORAD commander General Ralph Eberhart testified to the Commission that the exercise actually expedited US Air Force response during the attacks. Before the Commission’s final hearing I undertook a direct investigation in an attempt to learn more details about each of the exercises and specifically who was controlling them or had planned them to take place on September the 11th, where it’s abundantly clear based upon the record of statements made by the US Air Force and FAA personnel that the games had effectively paralyzed fighter response during the attacks. SOURCE: 9/11 Omission Hearings – Michael Ruppert On Dick Cheney – 9/9/2004 The exercises taking place on 9/11 could only be to the benefit of the attackers. No stand down order would have kept any dedicated fighter pilot worth his salt grounded during the only attack on his country’s air space in his lifetime. But if those fighter pilots and their commanders had no idea what was real and what was fake, what was an actual threat and what was just a phantom blip, then their response could be effectively contained. And it was. The utter “failure” of the air response that morning is proof of that. But if the simulations and war games on the morning of 9/11 were part of a pre-meditated plan on the part of the attackers, then the obvious question is who were the attackers? Are we to believe that the dastardly Al Qaeda masterminds not only perpetrated the simultaneous hijacking of four civilian airliners, turning off the plane’s transponders and putting them through a series of maneuvers that even advanced pilots could not replicate to hit their targets with pinpoint accuracy, but also penetrated the command structure of the US military and NORAD itself to direct the planning and scheduling of simultaneous war games mirroring their own plot to confuse the air response to the attacks? Because if that sounds like outlandish comic book fantasy, then there is only one other possible conclusion: That members of the National Command Authority, the US military and NORAD in a position to plan and schedule such exercises were the attackers themselves. BYERS: What is scenario 12-D? (BYERS SNR doesn’t respond.) BYERS: We know it’s a war game scenario. That it has to do with airline counter-terrorism. Why is it important enough to kill for. BYERS SNR: Because it’s no longer a game. BYERS: But if some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario, then why target you for assassination? BYERS SNR: Depends on who your terrorists are. BYERS: The men who conceived of it the first place. You’re saying our government is planning to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airline? BYERS SNR: There you go again. Blaming the entire government as usual. In fact, a small faction … BYERS: For what possible gain? BYERS SNR: The Cold War’s over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market’s flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you’ll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed. But that’s “just fiction” and the fact that it all happened in real life a few months later is just another “pure coincidence.” The truth of what happened that morning would be remarkably easy to come to if those involved in the planning and execution of the day’s training events were to open the records and allow independent examination of the precise situations that were being trained that day, how those scenarios were arrived at, who planned them, who was in charge of them, what radar injects and false reports and live-fly simulations were taking place, how these exercise inputs were relayed to technicians and air traffic controllers, and what steps were taken at what times to allow those events to continue even as the attacks they were supposed to be simulating were actually happening in real life. But we shouldn’t expect the guilty parties to indict themselves, and so it is no surprise at all that the official government investigation into 9/11 studiously avoided facing any of these issues head on. VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Ask about the war games that were planned for 9-11. MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick. MS. GORELICK: Um. VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Tell us about the 9-11 war games. MS. GORELICK: Could you please be quiet, we only have a few minutes with General Myers, and I would like to ask a question. VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Tell us about the war games. MS. GORELICK: I’m sorry. MR. KEAN: I would ask please for the people in the audience to be quiet if you want to stay here. SOURCE: 9/11 Commission hearing June 17, 2004 So what does it mean when a simulation of a catastrophic and catalyzing event takes place at the exact same place and time as that event is happening in real life? This is one of the many crucial questions of 9/11 that have been swept under the rug over the past 17 years. But it is not a rhetorical question. It is a very real question with a very real answer. And until that question is answered, we will never find justice for the victims of 9/11. FOX: I’ve never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise. Transcript:
WERNER BAUMANN: Hello. Today I’m happy to announce that this Thursday Bayer will complete the acquisition of Monsanto. This is good news for several reasons… SOURCE: Statement by Werner Baumann on the expected closing of the acquisition of Monsanto If you had told someone two decades ago that by 2018 the company that commercialized chemical warfare and the company that commercialized Agent Orange were going to team up to control a quarter of the world’s food supply, chances are you would have been labeled a loony. Unless your name was Robert B. Shapiro. He was CEO of Monsanto from 1995 to 2000, and in 1999 he told Business Week that the company’s goal was to wed “three of the largest industries in the world—agriculture, food and health—that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration.” With this month’s announcement that Bayer has completed its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, it is hard to deny that Shapiro’s vision has been realized. Too bad for all of us that vision is a nightmare. Because, contrary to the feel-good corporate propaganda being churned out by the company’s PR department—propaganda that would have you believe that this merger will be good for the environment, for farmers, for ending global hunger, and, incidentally, for lining the pockets of shareholders—these two corporate giants are in fact committed to the consolidation and transformation of the world’s food supply in the hands of the genetic engineers. Monsanto and Bayer are a match made in hell. This is The Corbett Report. It is hardly surprising that the first thing Bayer did after completing their takeover of Monsanto earlier this month was to announce that they were dropping the Monsanto name, merging the two companies’ agrichemical divisions under the “Bayer Crop Science” name. After all, as everyone knows, Monsanto is one of the most hated corporations in the world. HOST: In the film Food Evolution, Neil Degrasse Tyson notes that Monsanto is one of the most hated companies in the world. Why do people have such strong feelings toward Monsanto? SOURCE: Why is Monsanto Hated? MARINA PORTNAYA: The worldwide March Against Monsanto has drawn hundreds out onto the streets here in New York City, with people seizing the opportunity to voice their concerns and opposition to GMO foods. SOURCE: March against Monsanto: World rallies to protest GMO in 38 countries, 428 cities LUKE RUDKOWSKI: Why are you here? PROTESTER: I am here because I have a loathing hatred for the company Monsanto, which a lot of people don’t know that Monsanto is actually just a chemical company and they have no business basically dictating our food supply. SOURCE: Why Are People Protesting GMO’s [sic] and Monsanto ANCHOR: New at noon: The City of Seattle is suing biotech giant Monsanto to make it pay for removing cancer-causing chemicals in the water. The city says the company knowingly dumped the compounds in the city’s drainage system and the Duwamish River for years. Seattle needs to build a storm water treatment plant to clean the system that will cost about 27 million dollars. Six other major municipalities sued Monsanto as well. SOURCE: Seattle Sues Monsanto For KNOWINGLY Dumping Cancer Causing Chemicals Into City’s Drainage System MIKE PAPANTONIO: Environmental lawyers have begun filing lawsuits against Monsanto for cancer deaths related to their product Roundup. What these lawsuits are showing is an effort—both on the part of Monsanto and the US government—to minimize the message about the dangers of Roundup in relationship to human cancer. SOURCE: Lawsuits Helping To Expose Monsanto’s Deadly Roundup Cover-up BILL MOYERS: Now your bullseye is on Monsanto. Why is Monsanto so crucial to this fight over seeds? VANDANA SHIVA: Monsanto is crucial to this fight because they are the biggest seed company now. Monsanto is privatizing the seed. They control 95% of the cotton in India, 90% of the soy in this country. They’ve taken over most of the seed companies in the world. SOURCE: Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically-Modified Seeds This hatred of Monsanto is not unreasonable. It is, after all, difficult to think of a company that has ruined the lives of more people around the world, either directly through its coercive and litigious practices against small farmers the world over, or indirectly through the pollution of the food supply with their genetically modified crops. Many are familiar with the company’s sordid past, including its role in the development of Agent Orange and its contribution to the epidemic of farmer suicides in India. But in recent years Monsanto has gained special notoriety for its attempts to push the boundaries of patent law in a self-admitted effort to gain a monopoly over the world’s food supply. Even worse, Monsanto has, thanks to a revolving door with the highest levels of the US government, been not just evil, but extraordinarily effective in spreading its evil seed around the world. That revolving door has seen literally dozens of top Monsanto executives drift in and out of the US government agencies that, laughably, are said to “regulate” the agrichemical business, including Dennis DeConcini, the former US Senator who now acts as legislative consultant for Monsanto; Mickey Kantor, the Commerce Secretary under President Clinton who also served on Monsanto’s board of directors; Michael Taylor, Obama’s Deputy FDA Commissioner who had previously served as Monsanto’s Vice-President for Public Policy; Linda Fisher, who was appointed Deputy Administrator of the EPA in 2001 fresh off a five-year stint as Monsanto’s Vice- President of Government and Public Affairs; and US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who served as a corporate lawyer for Monsanto in the 1970s. These officials have helped smooth the way for Monsanto to achieve a number of key corporate objectives, including the passage of the infamous “Monsanto Protection Act” in 2013. TABETHA WALLACE: First off, President Barack Obama recently signed into law what many are calling the “Monsanto Protection Act.” Monsanto, the world’s leading producer of genetically modified food, will benefit greatly from the bill, since the legislation gives companies dealing in modified organisms and genetically engineered seeds immunity from federal courts. (Nothing creepy about that.) The bill states that even if future research shows that GMOs or GE seeds cause significant health problems, cancer, etc, anything, that the federal courts no longer have any power to stop their spread, use, or sale. Interesting to note the bill carrying the Monsanto rider has virtually nothing to do with food, agriculture, or consumer health. It was inserted into a spending bill through lobbying efforts and the good work of freshman Senator Roy Blunt. TYREL VENTURA: Well, congratulations Mr. Blunt! WALLACE: Well done! VENTURA: Very good. WALLACE: Maybe write him a letter. VENTURA: I love Mr. Blunt because Monsanto’s such a wonderfully healthy, nutritious company. WALLACE: Really looking out. It’s amazing. And the Center for Responsive Politics notes that Senator Blunt received $64,250 from Monsanto for his campaign committee between 2008 and-- VENTURA: Nothing to do with him making a protection bill or anything like that. That was just purely good citizenry at work. WALLACE: Of course. Mr. Blunt has been the largest Republican recipient of Monsanto funding as of late. VENTURA: Oh, lovely. So basically Mr. Blunt gave him an out clause. We don’t know what these GMO seeds and all that crazy shit that they do does. Sorry for the sailor talk. But you know we don’t know what these cats do. They basically are poisoning the plants to kill bugs and-- WALLACE: Their pesticides are actually killing the bee population. There’s research to prove it, and now because of this law technically we can’t do anything. VENTURA: Yeah, we can’t go back as citizens. The government can’t go back and sue them or hold them accountable for any of the actions that they’ve done. This is beautiful. This is wonderful politics as usual. You know, the old pay-to-play kind of technique of “we’ll give you X amount of dollars, get you elected, and then help us out here.” SOURCE: Obama and the Monsanto Protection Act But, ironically, of all the corporations in the world, Bayer is one of the few that could compete with Monsanto for its position as the world’s most evil company. MIKE PAPANTONIO: There are two huge issues with this Bayer Monsanto merger. The first is, that it’s going to raise food prices all across the United States and even beyond our borders. Farmers have already experienced a 300% price increase in recent years, on everything from seeds to fertilizer, all of which are controlled by Monsanto. And every forecaster is predicting that these prices are going to climb even higher because of this merger. So we’re going to have this massive price hike at a time when 14 million Americans have already been unable to provide food for their families, and then we’re going to have this ethical problem that’s plagued both of these corporations for decades. Let’s start with Monsanto. This is a company that produced Agent Orange, which resulted in one of the largest human-induced health epidemics in modern history. They made dioxin, they created and distributed PCBs across the planet, and now, pending litigation against them for Roundup is right there. Looking at their rap sheet would scare the heck out of anybody with a brain. They’re in the business … Actually, really, when you drill down to it, it looks more like a cancer business than anything. They’ve been hit for false advertising and bribing public officials. Then, move to Bayer. We’ve got Bayer and we’ve got Monsanto. Move to Bayer. This is a company that’s joined at the hip with the Nazis, during World War II. They produced a clotting agent for hemophiliacs, in the 1980s, called Factor VIII. This blood-clotting agent was tainted with HIV, and then, after the government told them they couldn’t sell it here, they shipped it all over the world, infecting people all over the world. That’s just part of the Bayer story. Right now, they’re facing lawsuits over products like Yaz, Xarelto, Essure, Cipro. In fact, the company, in 2014 annual report, listed 32 different liability lawsuits that the company’s now facing. So now you have the worst of the worst joining with the worst of the worst, and we have this magnificent experience of greed with these two huge corporations. This is a merger of evil, probably second only to the kind of merger that we’d see with DuPont and Dow Chemical. It’s an ugly story. Again, the media is missing the point. They’re not looking at all behind what these people are … They’re people. These corporations are regarded as people. If these are people on a witness stand, it’s going to be a very ugly cross examination. These are people who should probably be in prison, rather than engaging in mergers. SOURCE: Nazi Ties & Agent Orange: The Real Bayer-Monsanto Merger Story – The Ring Of Fire Although less well-known by the general public, Bayer’s shameful history is, like Monsanto’s, a case study in corporate psychopathy. Founded in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer and Johann Friedrich Weskott, it wasn’t until 1899 that the company trademarked its most well-known product: aspirin. Less well-remembered is the fact that Bayer was the first company to trademark heroin, which they marketed as a “non-addictive” alternative to morphine and a “cough suppressant.” But it was under the stewardship of Carl Duisberg at the turn of the 20th century that the company began to develop its psychopathic character. In 1914 the German Ministry of War appointed Duisberg as one of the co-directors of a commission into the use of dangerous byproducts from the chemical industry. Unsurprisingly, Duisberg and his fellow directors jumped at the opportunity to turn their waste into profit by recommending the development of chlorine gas for use on the battlefield, a direct contravention of the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, which Germany had signed just seven years earlier. Bayer, under Duisberg’s command, did not just participate in the development and use of poison gas in warfare; they spearheaded it. Duisberg personally oversaw the earliest tests of poison gas and bragged about its lethal capabilities: “The enemy won’t even know when an area has been sprayed with it and will remain quietly in place until the consequences occur.” Setting up a School for Chemical Warfare at Bayer headquarters in Leverkusen, Duisberg also oversaw the development of phosgene and mustard gas, which he urged the German government to use: “This phosgene is the meanest weapon I know. I strongly recommend that we not let the opportunity of this war pass without also testing gas grenades.” On April 22, 1915, Duisberg got his wish. On that day 170 tons of chlorine gas was used against French troops at Ypres, Belgium, killing 1,000 and injuring a further 4,000. Attacks on the British followed days later. In all, some 60,000 people died as the result of the chemical warfare perfected by Bayer and urged on by Duisberg, one of the great, largely-forgotten atrocities of the First World War. Most galling of all, Duisberg was not ashamed of his accomplishments. On the contrary, he was immensely proud of them. He even commissioned famed artist Otto Bollhagen to paint the scene of the earliest poison gas test at Cologne. Duisberg so enjoyed the finished result that he had it hung in his breakfast room at Bayer headquarters in Leverkusen. Later, Duisberg—inspired by a tour of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in the US—wedded Bayer to the IG Farben chemical cartel. As I explained in “How Big Oil Conquered the World,” IG Farben was a key player in the burgeoning oiligarchy of the early 20th century, boasting key oiligarchs like Royal Dutch Shell’s Prince Bernhard and Standard Oil’s Walter Teagle on the boards of its various branches. Bayer’s Duisberg served as the head of its supervisory board. Joining Duisberg on the board was Fritz ter Meer, who oversaw the construction of the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz, which ran on slave labor and participated in human experimentation. After the war, ter Meer was sentenced to seven years in prison for his participation in looting and enslavement of the camp prisoners, but was released in 1950 for “good behaviour,” and, in 1956 became chairman of Bayer AG, newly resurrected from the ashes of IG Farben. But this legacy of death is not some ancient relic of Bayer’s distant past. Decade after decade, the company continues to be involved in scandal after scandal, involving wanton environmental destruction, injury, and even mass murder. JAMES EVAN PILATO: “Bayer Accidentally Funds Study Showing Its Pesticide is Killing Bees, Promptly Denies Conclusions” A large-scale study on neonicotinoid pesticides is adding to the growing body of evidence that these agricultural chemicals are indeed harming bee populations (to say the very least). Carried out at 33 sites in the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary, the study found that exposure to neonicotinoids “left honeybee hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and solitary bees produced fewer queens.” SOURCE: Interview 1283 – New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato FARRON COUSINS: Mirena is a chemical-coated soft plastic IUD that proved to be a huge moneymaker for Bayer. But part of the reason that this particular contraceptive was so profitable was because Bayer was deliberately overstating the benefits of their device and not disclosing some of the rare but dangerous side effects. For example, in April of 2009 the FDA had to issue a warning letter to Bayer HealthCare because its website for Mirena made a number of claims that were simply untrue or unproven. Bayer was so busy making claims that the IUD was a perfect solution for busy moms and would increase women’s sex lives while making them look and feel great that it forgot to mention that the device is recommended for women who have already had at least one child. The company also declined to state that the Mirena IUD increases the risk of ectopic pregnancies, which is when a fertilized egg attaches to an area other than the uterus. SOURCE: Lawsuit Claims Bayer Birth Control Device Linked to False Brain Tumors ANA KASPARIAN: So the CEO was actually speaking to Bloomberg Businessweek, and he is trying to appeal the Indian court’s decision to allow this patent for another company. He said the following: “We did not develop this medicine for Indians. We developed it for Western patients who can afford it.” CENK UYGUR: Uhhhh. Uhhhh. Look at that face. That’s the kind of face that would say a thing like that. Doesn’t he look so smiley? “Oh, please. We didn’t develop this for Indians! We developed it for Westerners who are rich!” SOURCE: ‘Our Cancer Drug Is For Rich Westerners, Not Poor Indians’ MIKE PAPANTONIO: In the 1980s Bayer Corporation produced a medicine that was supposed to improve the lives of hemophiliacs. Bayer didn’t tell those hemophiliacs that their product was infected with HIV. Because of that, entire families of hemophiliacs died with AIDS as the virus spread within households. When Bayer was ordered to stop selling their drug in America, they dumped their AIDS-laden product in Asia and killed Asian families. No one with Bayer management was arrested. No one who made these psychopathic-quality decisions went to prison. They claimed the protection of their status as a corporation. That corporate status gave management the ability to kill people for profit and not go to prison. SOURCE: Bayer Corporation Infected Hemophiliacs With HIV Indeed, it is not difficult to see why these two companies—each one a titan of its respective industry, each one guilty of the most atrocious crimes against humanity and the destruction of the environment—would feel an affinity for each other. But why merge? What does a pharmaceutical giant have to gain from buying out and merging with an agrichemical giant, especially one that carries as much baggage as Monsanto? If the connection between these corporate behemoths seems tenuous, then perhaps the key to understanding it is presented in that 1995 quote from former Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro: “We’re talking about three of the largest industries in the world—agriculture, food and health—that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration.” Integration of agriculture, food and “health” is the goal, and once that goal is reached the entire life support system of the human population, including all of our food and “medicine,” will be in the hands of a few mega-corporations. Indeed, the history of the production of food and pharmaceuticals has always followed the same trajectory: away from natural, abundant, locally-produced organic materials and toward artificial, scarce, factory-produced synthetic alternatives. Control of the global food supply is, needless to say, along with control of money and oil, one of the pillars upon which the globalist oligarchs seek to construct their system of total control. Although there is no proof whatsoever that he said it, the dubious quote sometimes attributed to Henry Kissinger is nonetheless quite true: “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” The process of consolidating these industries is of course nothing new. In fact, it started long ago. As I explained in “How Big Oil Conquered the World,” even the current agrichemical industry has to be seen in its historical context as a fusion of the petrochemical fertilizer giants (Dupont, Dow, Hercules Powder and other businesses in the Standard Oil orbit) with the “ABCD” seed cartel of Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. These previously separate fields were gradually consolidated under the flag of “agribusiness,” itself developed at Harvard Business School in the 1950s with the help of research conducted by Wassily Leontief for the Rockefeller Foundation. And as I also explained in “How Big Oil Conquered the World,” Big Pharma, too, was a creation of the same drive toward consolidation, and spearheaded by the same people. From the Carnegie and Rockefeller-funded institutionalization of the medical profession to Standard Oil’s role in supplying the petrochemicals for the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry to the role of Rockefeller Institute researchers like Cornelius Rhoads, who developed chemotherapy from the mustard gas pioneered by Bayer, the overlap of the oligarchical interests in cementing global control has been abundantly clear. Then, with the advancement of GMO technology in the 1980s and 1990s (again, with considerable help from the Rockefellers and other oiligarchical interests), new opportunities for consolidation presented themselves. Seeds used to be sold by seed companies, and fertilizers and herbicides used to be sold by chemical companies. But then the GMO “revolution” came along and all of these companies spun off “biotech” branches to genetically engineer seeds. That, in turn, opened up opportunities to create GMO seed strains that are tailored to work with patented herbicides and fertilizers. The combination of GMO seeds and specially tailored agrichemicals has been especially lucrative for Monsanto, which was the first to capitalize on those synergies when it won regulatory approval for its first Roundup Ready soybeans in 1994. Roundup, aka glyphosate, has gone on to become the most-used agricultural chemical in the history of the world. Monsanto and Bayer—not to mention their cohorts in the agrichemical, pharmaceutical, and euphemistically-named “life sciences” industries—are ultimately seeking the same thing: complete control over the population, from the genetic engineering of its food supply to the control of its “medicines” and chemicals. It is a race toward complete centralization, and with this acquisition, Bayer and Monsanto are getting a head start. Particularly frightening, then (though hardly surprising), that this latest round of consolidation is being spearheaded by two corporations as thoroughly deplorable as Bayer and Monsanto. Bayer: One of the pieces of I.G. Farben’s grim (and oiligarchical) legacy; supplier of chemicals for the poison gas attacks of WWI; knowing seller of HIV-contaminated vaccines; mass murderer of bees; seller of tainted GMO crops. And Monsanto: Dumper of toxic chemicals; proud seller of carcinogens; suer of farmers; cause of farmer suicides; suppressor of scientific dissent. Are you feeling safe, knowing that a quarter of the world’s food supply will soon be in their combined hands? If not, then all of the efforts that have been made in recent years to “March Against Monsanto” must be translated into a “Boycott Against Bayer” and all of their friends in the burgeoning biotech/big agra/seed cartel GMO franken-industry. It is only by increasing our support for locally sourced, organic, heirloom seed-grown produce that we can hope to supplant this new mega-giant and consign it to the dustbin of history where it belongs. Transcript:
Greed is not a fundamental aspect of human nature. Greed is a consequence of scarcity. If you and I are living in incredible abundance such as used to exist 200 years ago the fish were so thick on the water that looked like you could walk across the rivers under those conditions, greed is ridiculous. If we're sitting among piles apples that have fallen on the ground, it would be ridiculous for me to like gather them all to myself and they're going to get my pile when there's other piles sitting all over the place. If you do not have a perception of scarcity, then greed is a foreign emotion. What we've done is we've created scarcity. The money system creates artificial scarcity where there need be none. It's an abstraction, it's bits and computers, but we use it to exchange things that do come from nature. So if you use something that's unnatural to buy and sell things that are natural then you're going to have a problem. If the unnatural part expands exponentially and forces the natural part to expand exponentially too. The healthy economy shouldn't be thought of as a separate entity, [you know] from the natural ecology but as an extension of the ecology and so what do we have to do to make an economy operate according to ecological principles. The main principle is waste is food. There's no externalities. We don't start with raw materials and end up with toxic waste, but everything that's produced, [you know, like] the manure of a cow is food for the worms, and the manure of the worms is food for the soil organisms, and that's food for the grass, and that's food for the cows - it's a closed loop. The decaying currencies' obey nature's law of return. They decay, and then can be reborn into a different form. [The] sacred economy is an economy in which everybody is an artist, and in which everybody's gifts are applied to a beautiful purpose - a purpose that's beautiful to them. In the future, career counselors, [they], won't say "ok, so you have these gifts. How can you use these to make a living? How can you commercialize these? How can you make money from these?" The career counselor will say, "what would you like to give to the world? What do you do that feels good?" And, collectively we will reorient our thinking to, what can we as human beings create that's beautiful to us. Beauty will become the new motivating program. Instead of security, or survival, or domination. That's what our divine gifts are for. We're supposed to look upon our works and say, "that's good."
The presence of former military and intelligence officials in newsrooms was once thought controversial. In 2008, the New York Times wrote an investigative analysis outlining the George W. Bush administration’s use of military analysts to shape terrorism coverage. Internal Pentagon documents referred to them as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.” The largest contingent of analysts were affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the investigation found. ReferencesRT International. (2018). ‘News directly from the CIA’: Ex-director Brennan hired by NBC. [online] Available at: https://www.rt.com/usa/417937-cia-john-brennan-nbc/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2018].
A design flaw, more accurately described as an exploit, affecting owners of Windows PCs with Intel processors has been discovered. A software update has been released by Microsoft that fixes the security flaw but could cause the performance of the Intel chips to slow down by as much as 30%. The Intel processor flaw is related to software "kernels" - the core of an operating system. At the most basic level, the kernel handles the interactions between the operating system and the processor. In this case, the issue apparently is linked to an exploitable security flaw in the way that the kernel of the Microsoft Windows operating system interacts with Intel processors. In theory, a hacker could exploit this undesirable interaction, using malware, and bypass normal security measures, enabling hackers to "observe" passwords, encryption keys, and other sensitive personal data on computers. The underlying root of the issue has to do with Intel's own processors. Intel-based PCs running the Linux operating system suffer from the same problem. This could have big implications for cloud computing, given that Linux is popular in datacenters. Additionally, Apple Mac computers are also reportedly affected and will require an update to fix, as the flaw is primarily based in the physical Intel chip design. It is currently unclear how the flaw and any update fixes will affect Apple computers. Initial reports indicated that the security flaw was limited to Intel processors, but chipmaker ARM has since said that chips based on its technology are also affected. Intel, AMD, ARM, original equipment manufacturers, and operating system vendors, have been collaborating to come up with fixes and mitigations for the issue since the discovery of the exploit. Repairs will involve software and firmware updates on both the hardware and the software sides. Intel CEO States Flaw Discovered Months Ago According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, the widespread microprocessor flaw was discovered by Google months ago, in June of 2017. Even more alarming is the discovery of $24 million worth shares sold by Mr. Krzanich, months after he had been informed of the security vulnerability — but before the problem was publicly known. The stock sale left Krzanich with just 250,000 shares of Intel stock — the minimum the company requires him to hold under his employment agreement. The sell-off could draw even more scrutiny now, given the news about the security vulnerability and the timing of when Intel knew about it. Intel claims Krzanich's sale was preplanned and had nothing to do with the newly disclosed chip vulnerability— but that plan was put in place months after it learned of the chip vulnerability. References Villas-Boas, A. (2018). Intel CEO: Google discovered the chip problem 'months ago'. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-google-discovered-the-chip-flaw-months-ago-2018-1 [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018].
Villas-Boas, A. (2018). Windows PCs could get a big performance slowdown because of a flaw in Intel chips. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-cpu-flaw-big-performance-slowdow-windows-pc-2018-1 [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018]. Wolverton, T. (2018). Intel was aware of the chip vulnerability when its CEO sold off $24 million in company stock. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold-shares-after-company-was-informed-of-chip-flaw-2018-1 [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018]. From Corbettreport.com: When WWII ended and the American deep state welded the national security establishment into place with the National Security Act, the world entered into a new era: the era of the military-industrial complex. But when the Cold War ended and the “Clash of Civilizations” became the new existential threat, the deep state found an opening for another paradigm shift. As the all-pervasive threat of terrorism became the carte blanche for total surveillance, the powers-that-shouldn’t-be found the organizing principal of our age would not be military hardware, but data itself. Welcome to the age of the information-industrial complex. This is The Corbett Report. Of all the things that President Dwight D. Eisenhower did during his years in office, it is for a single phrase from his farewell address that he is best remembered today: “the military-industrial complex.” “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” It is not difficult to see why these words passed so quickly into the political lexicon. Think of their explanatory power. Why did the US use inflated estimates of Russian missile capabilities to justify stockpiling a nuclear arsenal that was more than sufficient to destroy the planet several times over? The military-industrial complex. Why did America send 50,000 of its own to fight and die in the jungles of Vietnam, killing untold millions of Vietnamese (not to mention Cambodians)? The military-industrial complex. Why did the US use the public’s fear and anger over 9/11 and a phony panic over non-existent weapons of mass destruction to justify the illegal invasion and trillion dollar occupation of Iraq? The military-industrial complex. Why did Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama expand the fictitious “war on terror” into Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, refuse to close Guantanamo despite his earlier promises to the contrary, commit US forces to “kinetic military action” in Libya without so much as seeking Congressional approval, and launch a new era of covert drone warfare? The military-industrial complex. Why has Trump not only continued but further expanded the US military presence in Africa, increased US aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia, actively enabled the war crimes in Yemen that have led to the largest cholera outbreak in human history, and killed more civilians in his first 9 months in office than former drone-king Obama killed in his entire 8 year presidency? The military-industrial complex. When you think about it, it’s rather remarkable that such a phrase was ever uttered by a President of the United States, much less a former five-star general. Could you imagine any modern-day President talking about something like the “military-industrial complex” and its attempted “acquisition of unwarranted influence” without immediately dismissing the idea as a conspiracy theory? Over the decades there has been much speculation about Eisenhower’s use of the phrase, and what precisely he was warning against. Some have argued that the phrase was prompted by Eisenhower’s discovery that the Rand Corporation was grossly misrepresenting the Soviet’s military capabilities to John F. Kennedy, who ended up using the Rand invented (and completely fictitious) “missile gap” threat as a cornerstone of his 1960 presidential election campaign. Whatever the case, it is perhaps time to revisit Eisenhower’s most famous speech. What Eisenhower is ultimately describing is the rise of American fascism; the merger of government and corporate power. What term can better capture the nature of early 21st century American political life? Is there any longer any doubt that the military-industrial complex has reached its ultimate expression in firms like Blackwater (aka “Xe” aka “Academi”) and its military contractor brethren? Is there any other word but ‘fascism’ to describe a state of affairs when a Secretary of Defense can commission a study from a private contractor to examine whether the US military should be using more private contractors, only for that same Secretary of Defense to leave office and become president of the company that conducted the study, only to leave that company to become Vice President of the US and begin waging a war that relies heavily on no-bid contracts awarded to that same company based on the recommendation that it made in its original study? Yet this is precisely the case of Dick Cheney and Halliburton. It would be difficult to think of a more blatant example of the military-industrial complex fascism that Eisenhower was warning of. But as it turns out, there was another warning about fascism embedded in that farewell address that has received far less attention than the ‘military-industrial complex’ formulation, perhaps because there is no catchphrase hook to describe it: “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.” Given that this warning came in 1961, before the age of communications satellites or personal computers or the internet, it was a remarkably prescient observation. If scientific research half a century ago was dominated by federal grants and expensive computer equipment, how much more true is that for us today, half a century later? So what is the problem with this? As Ike explained: “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Here again the warning is of fascism. But instead of the military-industrial fascism that dominated so much of the 20th century, he was describing here a new fascistic paradigm that was but barely visible at the time that he gave his address: a scientific-technological one. Once again, the threat is that the industry that grows up around this government-sponsored activity will, just like the military-industrial complex, begin to take over and shape the actions of that same government. In this case, the warning is not one of bombs and bullets but bits and bytes, not tanks and fighter jets but hard drives and routers. Today we know this new fascism by its innocuous sounding title “Big Data,” but in keeping with the spirit of Eisenhower’s remarks, perhaps it would be more fitting to call it the “information-industrial complex.” The concept of an information-industrial complex holds equally explanatory power for our current day and age as the military-industrial complex hypothesis held in Eisenhower’s time. Why is a company like Google going to such lengths to capture, track and database all information on the planet? The information-industrial complex. Why were all major telecom providers and internet service providers mandated by federal law to hardwire in back door access to American intelligence agencies for the purpose of spying on all electronic communications? The information-industrial complex. Why would government after government around the world target encryption as a key threat to their national security, and why would banker after banker call for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be banned even as they plan to set up their own, central bank-administered digital currencies? The information-industrial complex. The effects of this synthesis are more and more felt in our everyday lives. Every single day hundreds of millions of people around the world are interfacing with Microsoft software or Apple hardware or Amazon cloud services running on chips and processors supplied by Intel or other Silicon Valley stalwarts. Google has become so ubiquitous that its very name has become a verb meaning “to search for something on the internet.” The 21st century version of the American dream is encapsulated in the story of Mark Zuckerberg, a typical Harvard whizkid whose atypical rise to the status of multi-billionaire was enabled by a social networking tool by the name of “Facebook” that he developed. But how many people know the flip side of this coin, the one that demonstrates the pervasive government influence in shaping and directing these companies’ rise to success, and the companies’ efforts to aid the government in collecting data on its own citizens? How many know, for instance, that Google has a publicly acknowledged relationship with the NSA? Or that a federal judge has ruled that the public does not have the right to know the details of that relationship? Or that Google Earth was originally the brainchild of Keyhole Inc., a company that was set up by the CIA’s own venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, using satellite data harvested from government “Keyhole” class reconnaissance satellites? Or that the former CEO of In-Q-Tel, Gilman Louie, sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided 12 million dollars of seed money for Facebook? Or that in 1999, a back door for NSA access was discovered in Microsoft’s Windows operating system source code? Or that Apple founder Steve Jobs was granted security clearance by the Department of Defense for still-undisclosed reasons while heading Pixar in 1988, as was the former head of AT&T and numerous others in the tech industry? The connections between the IT world and the government’s military and intelligence apparatus run deep. In fact, the development of the IT industry is intimately intertwined with the US Air Force, the Department of Defense and its various branches (including, famously, DARPA), and, of course, the CIA. A cursory glance at the history of the rise of companies like Mitre Corporation, Oracle, and other household electronics and software firms should suffice to expose the extent of these relations, and the existence of what we might dub an “information-industrial complex.” But what does this mean? What are the ramifications of such a relationship? Although the signs have been there for decades, perhaps the most startling example of what lies at the heart of this relationship has been revealed by the whistleblowers at the heart of the National Security Agency, one of the most secretive arms of the American intelligence apparatus. While Edward Snowden has received the most attention with his “revelation” of the PRISM program, much of the information about the NSA’s ability to surveil all electronic communications has been revealed over the past decade by NSA whistleblowers like Russ Tice, William Binney, Thomas Drake and J. Kirk Wiebe, third-party contractors like Snowden and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, and independent journalists like James Bamford. Together, the story they tell is of a truly Orwellian society in which all communications are being captured and analyzed by the NSA, and, with the advent of facilities like the new data center in Utah, presumably stored indefinitely for use at any future time in any future investigation for any pretense by anyone with authorization to access that data. According to Snowden, this includes lowly third-party contractors like himself operating at NSA subcontractors like Booz Allen Hamilton in the vast (and expanding) private intelligence industry that has grown up around the information-industrial complex in the exact same way as private military contractors like Blackwater formed around the military-industrial complex. In some ways, this information-industrial complex is even more insidious than its military-industrial counterpart. For all of the ills caused by the military-industrial complex (and there are many), at the very least it required some sort of excuse to drain the American people’s resources, and its failures (like the Vietnam quagmire or the debacle in Iraq) happened in the clear light of day. In the information-industrial complex, where vast spying programs happen in the shadows and under the cover of “national security” it takes whistleblowers and insiders willing to risk it all even to find out what is being done by these shadowy agencies and their private sector contractors. Even worse, the entire Orwellian spy grid is being run on the flimsiest of pretenses (the “war on terror”) that has no defined end point, and “justifies” turning that spy grid inward, on the American people themselves. Surely Eisenhower never envisaged the monstrosity that this information-industrial complex has become, but the foresight he saw in identifying its early stages over half a century ago is remarkable. The problem is that we are even further away from heeding the warning that he delivered in that 1961 address than we were at that time: “It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” If only this was the rhetoric that was shaping today’s debate on the issue, instead of the well-worn canard that we must “strike a balance” between freedom and security. Sadly, until such time that the National Security Act of 1947 is repealed and the cover of national security is lifted from the dark actors that populate this sector, the information-industrial complex is unlikely to be quashed-or even hampered-anytime soon. ReferencesCorbett, J. (2017). Episode 325 – The Information-Industrial Complex : The Corbett Report. [online] Corbettreport.com. Available at: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-325-the-information-industrial-complex/ [Accessed 18 Dec. 2017].
The Paradise Papers is a global investigation into the offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 95 media partners explored 13.4 million leaked files from a combination of offshore service providers and the company registries of some of the world’s most secretive countries. The files were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Paradise Papers documents include nearly 7 million loan agreements, financial statements, emails, trust deeds and other paperwork from nearly 50 years at Appleby, a leading offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond. The documents also include files from a smaller, family-owned trust company, Asiaciti, and from company registries in 19 secrecy jurisdictions. The records range from complex, 100-page corporate transaction sheets and dollar-by-dollar payment ledgers to simple corporate registries of countries, such as Antigua & Barbuda, that do not publicly list names of company shareholders or directors. As a whole, the 1.4 terabyte data leak exposes offshore holdings of political leaders and their financiers as well as household-name companies that slash taxes through transactions conducted in secret. Financial deals of billionaires and celebrities are also revealed in the documents. The Paradise Papers files include far more information about U.S. citizens, residents and companies than previous ICIJ investigations – at least 31,000 of them. ICIJ collaborated with more than 380 journalists working on six continents in 30 languages. Many team members spent a year using online platforms to communicate and to share documents. Journalists tracked down court records, obtained financial disclosures of politicians in Africa, Europe, and Latin and North America, filed freedom of information requests and conducted hundreds of interviews with tax experts, policymakers and industry insiders. Corrupt governments & corporations can't hide in the information age; transparency & accountability is the only solution. ReferencesICIJ. (2017). Paradise Papers Exposes Donald Trump Russia Links and Piggy Banks of the Wealthiest 1 percent. [online] International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Available at: https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/paradise-papers-exposes-donald-trump-russia-links-and-piggy-banks-of-the-wealthiest-1-percent/ [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017]. Main, L., Wilkinson, M. & Koloff. S. (2017). Paradise Papers: What is the leak and who is behind the firm Appleby?. [online] Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-06/what-are-the-paradise-papers-and-what-is-the-firm-appleby/9075640 [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017]. Chapman University completed its fourth annual Chapman University Survey of American Fears (CSAF). In May of 2017, a random sample of 1,207 adults from across the United States were asked their level of fear about eighty different fears across a huge variety of topics ranging from crime, the government, the environment, disasters, personal anxieties, technology and many others. The goal of the CSAF is to collect annual data on the fears, worries and concerns of Americans, the personal, behavioral and attitudinal characteristics related to those fears, and how those fears are associated with other attitudes and behaviors. The results, perhaps, are not very surprising. Below is a list of the 10 fears for which the highest percentage of Americans reported being “Afraid,” or “Very Afraid.” Americans are more afraid than they use to be. In every wave of the survey before 2017, there was only one item where a majority of Americans said they were "afraid" or "very afraid", and that was corruption of government officials. In this years survey, there were five items where a majority of Americans said they were afraid. Corruption of government officials still topped the list and it increased nearly 14%. ReferencesChapman University. 2017. The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 4. Orange, CA: Earl Babbie Research Center [producer]. https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2017/10/11/americas-top-fears-2017/
Transcript:
Forget for one moment everything you’ve been told about September 11, 2001. Instead let’s ask ourselves one question: What was 9/11? A terrorist atrocity? An attack on America? The first salvo in a new war? “A day that changed everything”? The question may seem simple, but how we answer it is of vital importance. It determines how we proceed with our investigation of that day. And once you strip away the emotional rhetoric and the fear-inducing imagery, we’re left with a simple truth: 9/11 was a crime. And as with any crime, there is one overriding imperative that detectives must follow to identify the perpetrators: Follow the money. This is an investigation of the 9/11 money trail. The 9/11 Heist In 1998, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to privatize the World Trade Center, the complex of office towers in Lower Manhattan that they had owned and operated since their construction in 1973. In April 2001 an agreement was reached with a consortium of investors led by Silverstein Properties, and on July 24th, 2001, Larry Silverstein, who already owned World Trade Center Building 7, signed a 99-year lease for the Twin Towers and Buildings 4 and 5. The lease was for $3.2 billion and was financed by a bridge loan from GMAC, the commercial mortgage arm of General Motors, as well as $111 million from Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre, individual real estate investors. Silverstein Properties only put down $14 million of its own money. The deal was unusual in a variety of ways. Although the Port Authority carried only $1.5 billion of insurance coverage on the WTC complex, which earlier that year had been valued at $1.2 billion, Silverstein had insisted on doubling that amount, insuring the buildings for $3.55 billion. Silverstein’s insurance broker struggled to put that much coverage in place and ultimately had to split it among 25 dealers. The negotiations were so involved that only temporary contracts were in place for the insurance at the time the lease was signed, and by September the contracts were still being finalized. Silverstein’s group was also explicitly given the right to rebuild the structures if they were destroyed—and even to expand the amount of retail space on the site if rebuilding did take place. Within hours of the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th, Silverstein was on the phone to his lawyers, trying to determine if his insurance policies could “construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.” Silverstein spent years in the courts attempting to win $7.1 billion from his $3.55 billion insurance policy and in 2007 walked away with $4.55 billion, the largest single insurance settlement ever. As soon as the deal was announced, Silverstein sued United and American Airlines for a further $3.5 billion for their “negligence” in the 9/11 attacks, a claim that was struck down by the courts but is still on appeal. Perhaps even more outrageously, in a secret deal in 2003, the Port Authority agreed to pay back 80% of their initial equity in the lease, but allowed the Silverstein group to maintain control of the site. The deal gave Silverstein, Goldman and Cayre $98 million of the $125 million they put down on the lease, and a further $130 million in insurance proceeds that were earmarked for the site’s rebuilding. In the end, Silverstein profited from the 9/11 attacks to the tune of $4.55 billion and counting. But that’s the 9/11 insurance heist you saw. There was a much deeper, more complex, and well-hidden heist that was taking place behind closed doors on September 11, 2001, deep in the heart of the World Trade Center itself. Marsh & McLennan is a diversified risk, insurance and professional services firm with over $13 billion in annual revenue and 57,000 employees. In September of 2001, 2,000 of those employees worked in Marsh’s offices in the World Trade Center. Marsh occupied floors 93 to 100 of the North Tower, the exact area of the impact and explosion. In the year prior to 9/11, Marsh had contracted with SilverStream software to create an electronic connection between Marsh and its clients for the purpose of creating “paperless transactions.” SilverStream had already built internet-based transactional and trading platforms for Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Banker’s Trust, Alex Brown, Morgan Stanley and other financial services firms that were later involved in 9/11, but this new project was unlike anything that had been attempted before. Richard Andrew Grove, the salesperson who handled the Marsh & McLennan project for SilverStream, explains. RICHARD GROVE: In 2000 SilverStream was contracted by Marsh to provide a technological solution beyond what we had done for any of the above-named companies; insofar as it would be used to electronically connect Marsh to its major business partners via internet portals, for the purpose of creating “paperless transactions” and expediting revenue and renewal cycles, and built from the ground up at the client’s site. SilverStream provided a specific type of connectivity that was used to link AIG and Marsh & McLennan—the first two commercial companies on the planet to employ this type of transaction—and in fact Marsh was presented with something called the ACORD Award in the summer of 2001 for being the first commercial corporation to do so…. And what you should take away from that is this: it means that no other companies were doing this type of transaction. So the question in your mind should be: What then were Marsh and AIG doing, and why did they need to leverage technologies that no other commercial entity on the face of the earth needed to conduct business? Once securing the contract, SilverStream then stationed approximately 30-to-40 developers at Marsh, and this team was led by two-to-three managers, with whom I liaised to ensure delivery of the “solution” that was promised. The development team regularly worked late into the night, if not all night, and sometimes worked seven days a week in order to adhere to Marsh’s indicated pre-September 11th deadline. (SOURCE: Project Constellation) But it was not long before severe irregularities in the billing of the account for this project led Richard Grove into the heart of a deeper mystery about the software, and about the work he was engaged in. RICHARD GROVE: I first noticed fiscal anomalies with respect to the Marsh.com project, when I was in a meeting on the 98th floor in October of 2000 with a gentleman named Gary Lasko. Gary was Marsh’s North American Chief Information Officer, and that particular afternoon a colleague and I helped him identify about $10,000,000 in suspicious purchase orders—after I recognized that certain vendors were deceiving Marsh, and specifically appeared to be selling Marsh large quantities of hardware that were not necessary, as this was later confirmed by Gary. I brought my concerns up to executives inside of SilverStream, and I was urged to keep quiet and mind my own business. I went to an executive at Marsh, and he advised me to do likewise…. But then I mentioned it to a few executives at Marsh whom I could trust—ike Gary Lasko…and Kathryn Lee, Ken Rice, Richard Breuhardt, John Ueltzhoeffer—people who became likewise concerned that something untoward was going on. The concerned colleagues I just mentioned were murdered on September 11th, and the executives who expressed dismay at my concerns are alive and free today because of it. I feel that it’s no coincidence, as the Marsh executive who urged me to drop my line of inquiry made sure that his personnel, who I just mentioned, were in the office bright and early for a global conference call before the staff meeting upon which I was to intrude—a conference call which I was informed this executive in question conducted but attended from the safety of his Upper West Side apartment. (SOURCE: Project Constellation) The global conference call with Marsh’s IT staff on the morning of 9/11, a meeting that included the staff who were investigating the suspicious billing on the SilverStream deal, was confirmed in a 2006 interview with Marsh’s then-Chief Information Officer, Ellen Clarke. Richard Grove had been asked to attend the meeting but was stuck in traffic on the way to the Towers when the attack began. His friends at Marsh were not so lucky: 294 Marsh employees, including all of the participants in the conference call in the North Tower, died that morning. Meanwhile the Marsh executive who had scheduled the meeting, the same one who had asked Grove to drop the issue of the billing anomalies, was safe in his apartment, attending the meeting via telephone. So what was the Marsh.com project really about? Why was it so important for it to be finished before September 11th, and what kind of transactions did it enable? More importantly, what information was lost when the data center on the 95th floor of the North Tower suffered a direct hit on 9/11 and the buildings were demolished? A partial answer comes from reports that emerged in late 2001: that a German firm, Convar, had been hired to reconstruct financial data from the hard disks recovered at Ground Zero. The firm talks about this work in its promotional videos. September the 11th, 2001. The whole world is in shock following the attacks on the World Trade Center. Convar has some solutions to offer. Data stored on countless hard drives retrieved from the collapsed towers was believed to have been lost, but Convar’s specialists can render irreplaceable information readable again at Europe’s only high-security data recovery center. Burnt, crushed or dirty storage media are ready to relinquish their secrets by the time we finish. (SOURCE: CONVAR – Repair & Service Center) More details on the work come from an IDG News Service story posted to CNN.com in December 2001. Under the headline “Computer disk drives from WTC could yield clues,” the article notes: “An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York’s World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.” A Reuters article from the same time, later posted to Convar’s website, offers revealing glimpses into the investigation’s early results. It quotes Peter Herschel, Convar’s director at the time. “The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amid all the chaos the criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start. Of course it is also possible that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for the unusual rise in business volume. It could turn out that Americans went on an absolute shopping binge on that Tuesday morning. But at this point there are many transactions that cannot be accounted for. Not only the volume but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that. There is a suspicion that these were possibly planned to take advantage of the chaos.” It also quotes Richard Wagner, one of the companies data retrieval experts. “There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million. They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the mainframes were destroyed.” Was the revolutionary electronic trading link between AIG and Marsh being used to funnel money through the World Trade Center at the time of the attack? Were the attack perpetrators hoping that the destruction of Marsh’s data center, on the 95th floor at the dead center of the North Tower explosion, would conceal their economic crime? One piece of corroborating evidence for this idea comes from author and researcher Michael Ruppert, who reported in 2004 that immediately before the attacks began, computer systems in Deutsche Bank, one of SilverStream’s other e-link clients, had been taken over from an external location that no one in the office could identify. MICHAEL RUPPERT: Within, I would guess — I’d have to go back and look at the book, but it was no more than a week of the attacks — I was being contacted by a lot of people, from inside official sources who were raising a lot of questions. This one particular person was extremely credible. They absolutely convinced me they had been an employee of Deutsche Bank in the Twin Towers, and they told me very clearly that in the moments right before the attacks and during the attack — there was a 40-minute window between the time the first plane struck the World Trade Center and the second plane — that Deutsche Bank’s computers in New York City had been “taken over.” Absolutely co-opted and run. There was a massive data purge, a massive data download, and all kinds of stuff was moving. And what this person said very clearly was that no one in the Deutsche Bank offices in the towers at the time had the ability to prevent what was going on from any of their terminals. (SOURCE: Terror Trading 9/11) Sadly, no answer to the questions raised by these accounts is forthcoming from Convar. After the initial reporting on the investigation, which noted that the company was working with the FBI to recover and analyze the data, Convar now refuses to talk about the information they discovered. DUTCH REPORTER: Is it true that large amounts of money were transferred illegally out of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11, just before the attacks? CONVAR SPOKESMAN: If you would look on the website, I would say “Yes.” DUTCH REPORTER: Uh huh. CONVAR SPOKESMAN: Because that was the information from a previous release. DUTCH REPORTER: Uh huh. CONVAR SPOKESMAN: If you were to ask me today I would need to tell you I could not give you any additional information about that. I’m really sorry about… DUTCH REPORTER: What if I were to ask you one year ago? What would you have… CONVAR SPOKESMAN: I would have said that what we have there is what we said before. Yes, exactly. (SOURCE: Dutch TV show Zembla investigates 9/11 theories) At the time of 9/11, Marsh’s chief of risk management was Paul Bremer, the former managing director of Kissinger and Associates who went on to oversee the US occupation of Iraq. On the morning of 9/11 he was not in his office at Marsh & MacLennan, but at NBC’s TV studio, where he was delivering the official story of the attack. NBC4 ANCHOR #1: Can you talk to us a little bit about…about…who could…I mean, there are a limited number of groups who could be responsible for something of this magnitude, correct? PAUL BREMER: Yes, this is a very well-planned, very well-coordinated attack, which suggests it is very well-organized centrally, and there are only three or four candidates in the world really who could have conducted this attack. NBC4 ANCHOR #2: Bin Laden comes to mind right away, Mr. Bremer. PAUL BREMER: Indeed, he certainly does. Bin Laden was involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center which had as its intention doing exactly what happened here, which was to collapse both towers. He certainly has to be a prime suspect. But there are others in the Middle East, and there are at least two states, Iran and Iraq, which should at least remain on the list of potential suspects. NBC4 ANCHOR #2: I don’t recall anything like this. Pearl Harbor happened a month before I was born and I hear my parents talk about that as a seminal event in their lives all the time. I’m not aware of anything like this in the United States before. Americans are now — I think it’s fair to say — really scared. Should we be? NBC4 ANCHOR #1: This is a day that will change our lives, isn’t it? PAUL BREMER: It is a day that will change our lives, and it’s a day when the war that the terrorists declared on the United States — and after all, they did declare a war on us — has been brought home to the United States in a much more dramatic way than we’ve seen before, so it will change our lives. (SOURCE: Paul Bremer interview, NBC) 9/11 Insider Trading On September 12, 2001, before the dust had even settled on Ground Zero, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into a chilling proposition: that an unknown group of traders with advance knowledge of the 9/11 plot had made millions betting against the companies involved in the attacks. ANTONIO MORA: “What many Wall Street analysts believe is that the terrorists made bets that a number of stocks would see their prices fall. They did so by buying what they call ‘puts.’ If you bet right the rewards can be huge. The risks are also huge unless you know something bad is going to happen to the company you’re betting against. DYLAN RATIGAN: This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life. ANTONIO MORA: One example, United Airlines. The Thursday before the attack more than two thousand contracts betting that the stock would go down were purchased. Ninety times more in one day than in three weeks. When the markets reopened, United’s stock dropped, the price of the contracts soared, and someone may have made a lot of money, fast. DYLAN RATIGAN: $180,000 turns into $2.4 million when that plane hits the World Trade Center. ANTONIO MORA: It’s almost the same story with American Airlines. DYLAN RATIGAN: That’s a fivefold increase in the value of what was a $337,000 trade on Monday (September 10, 2001). ANTONIO MORA: All of a sudden becomes what? DYLAN RATIGAN: $1.8 million. ANTONIO MORA: And there’s much more, including an extraordinarily high number of bets against Morgan Stanley and Marsh & McLennan, two of the World Trade Center’s biggest tenants. Could this be a coincidence? DYLAN RATIGAN: This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence.” (SOURCE: 9/11 Wall Street Blames Put Option Inside Trading On Terrorists) Although the put options on American and United Airlines are usually cited in reference to the 9/11 insider trading, these trades only represent a fraction of the suspicious trades leading up to the attack. Between August 20th and September 10th, abnormally large spikes in put option activity appeared in trades involving dozens of different companies whose stocks plunged after the attack, including Boeing, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Munich Re and the AXA Group. Traders weren’t just betting against the companies whose stocks dove after 9/11, however. There was also a sixfold increase in call options on the stock of defense contractor Raytheon on the day before 9/11. The options allowed the traders to buy Raytheon stock at $25. Within a week of the attack, as the American military began deploying the Raytheon-supplied Tomahawk missiles they would eventually use in the invasion of Afghanistan, the company’s share price had shot up 37% to over $34. The SEC weren’t the only ones interested in this particular 9/11 money trail, either. Investigations into potential insider trading before the attacks were opened by authorities around the globe, from Belgium to France to Germany to Switzerland to Japan. It wasn’t long before this global financial manhunt started yielding clues on the trail of the terror traders. On September 17th, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Martino, addressing Italian Consob’s own investigation into potential 9/11 trading, said: “I think that there are terrorist states and organizations behind speculation on the international markets.” By September 24th, the Belgian Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, was confident enough to publicly announce Belgium’s “strong suspicions that British markets may have been used for transactions.” The president of Germany’s central bank, Ernst Welteke, was the most adamant: “What we found makes us sure that people connected to the terrorists must have been trying to profit from this tragedy.” These foreign leaders were not alone in their conviction that insider trading had taken place. University of Chicago finance professor George Constantinides, Columbia University law professor John Coffee, Duke University law professor James Cox and other academics as well as well-known options traders like Jon Najarian all expressed their belief that investors had traded on advance knowledge of the attacks. The scale of the SEC investigation was unprecedented, examining over 9.5 million securities transactions, including stocks and options in 103 different companies trading in seven markets, 32 exchange-traded funds, and stock indices. The probe drew on the assistance of the legal and compliance staff of the 20 largest trading firms and the regulatory authorities in ten foreign governments. The Commission coordinated its investigation with the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Treasury. The result of this investigation? “We have not developed any evidence suggesting that those who had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks traded on the basis of that information.” Although this sounds like the investigation did not find evidence of insider trading, a second look reveals the trick; they are not saying that there was no insider trading, only that there is no evidence that “those who had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks” participated in such trading. But this begs the question: Who had that advance knowledge, and how did the SEC determine this? The 9/11 Commission Report begs the question even more blatantly in their treatment of the anomalous put option activity on United Airlines stock on September 6: 95% of the puts were placed by “a single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.” Again, it is taken as a foregone conclusion that a lack of ties to “al Qaeda” means there could not have been advance knowledge of the attack, even if the evidence shows insider trading took place. To be sure, insider trading almost certainly did take place in the weeks before 9/11. Although some have used the Commission report to conclude that the story was debunked, the intervening years have seen the release of not one, not two, but three separate scientific papers concluding with high probability that the anomalous trading was the result of advance knowledge. In “Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” University of Chicago professor Allen Poteshman concluded: “Examination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks.” In “Detecting Abnormal Trading Activities in Option Markets,” researchers at the University of Zurich used econometric methods to confirm unusual put option activity on the stocks of key airlines, banks and reinsurers in the weeks prior to 9/11. And in “Was There Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?” a team of researchers concluded that abnormal activity in the S&P index options market around the time of the attack “is consistent with insiders anticipating the 9-11 attacks.” The only question, then, is who was profiting from these trades and why was no one ever indicted for their participation in them? One lead is pursued by researcher and author Kevin Ryan. In “Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11,” he examines an FBI briefing document from 2003 that was declassified in 2009. It describes the results of FBI investigations into two of the pre-9/11 trades that the Bureau had identified as suspicious, including the purchase of 56,000 shares of Stratesec in the days prior to 9/11. Stratesec provided security systems to airports (including, ironically, Dulles Airport, as well as the World Trade Center and United Airlines) and saw its share price almost double when the markets re-opened on September 17th, 2001. The trades traced back to a couple whose names are redacted from the memo, but are easily identifiable from the unredacted information: Mr. and Mrs. Wirt D. Walker III, a distant relative of the Bush family and business partner of Marvin Bush, the President’s brother. The document notes that the pair were never even interviewed as part of the investigation because it had “revealed no ties to terrorism or other negative information.” In addition to begging the question, this characterization is provably false. As Ryan noted in a conversation with financial journalist Lars Schall: KEVIN RYAN: “Wirt Dexter Walker at Stratesec hired several people from a company called The Carlyle Group, and The Carlyle Group had Bin-Laden family members as investors. Also Wirt Walker’s fellow (inaudible) director James Abrahamson was a close business associate of a man named Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani businessman and Mansoor Ijaz claimed to be able to contact Osama Bin-Laden on multiple occasions. So there does seem to be some circumstantial evidence indicated that these people were connected to Al-Qaeda, at least to the point where we should investigate. LARS SCHALL: And isn’t it also true that some members of the Bin-Laden family were actually in Washington at the gathering of The Carlyle Group on 9/11? KEVIN RYAN: That’s true. The Carlyle Group had a meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington on September 11th and present there were former President George H. W. Bush, James Baker and the brother of Osama Bin-Laden. I believe his name was Salem, I can’t recall his exact name. But they were there, investors from the Bin-Laden family meeting with Carlyle Group representatives in Washington on September 11th.” (SOURCE: Terror Trading 9/11) Was this why the FBI thought better of questioning him over his highly profitable purchase of Stratesec shares right before 9/11? The CIA figures prominently in another line of investigation. One suspicious United Airlines put option purchase that was investigated by the FBI involved a 2,500-contract order for puts in the days before 9/11. Instead of processing the purchase through United Airlines’ home exchange, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, the order was split into five 500-contract chunks and run through five different options exhchanges simultaneously. The unusual order was brokered by Deutsch Bank Alex. Brown, a firm that until 1998 was chaired by A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, a former consultant to CIA director James Woolsey who at the time of 9/11 was himself the Executive Director of the CIA. MICHAEL C. RUPPERT: So right after the attacks of 9/11 the name Buzzy Krongard surfaced, it was instant research that revealed that Buzzy Krongard had been allegedly recruited by CIA Director George Tennant to become the Executive Director at (the) CIA, which is the number three position, right before the attacks. And Alex Brown was one of the many subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, (which was) one of the primary vehicles or instruments that handled all of these criminal trades by people who obviously knew that the attacks were going to take place where, how and involving specific airlines. (SOURCE: Terror Trading 9/11) Perhaps the most frank admission of insider trading is notable for three things: It was recorded on video, it has never been investigated by any agency or law enforcement official, and it was made by former CIA agent and frequent foreign policy commentator Robert Baer, the real-life inspiration for the character portrayed by George Clooney in “Syriana.” Talking to citizen journalists after a speaking event in Los Angeles in 2008, Baer was recorded on video making a startling assertion about 9/11 insider trading: JEREMY ROTHE-KUSHEL: …the last thing I want to leave you with is the National Reconnaissance Office was running a drill of a plane crashing into their building and you know they’re staffed by DoD and CIA… ROBERT BAER: I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego and said “Cash me out, it’s going down tomorrow.” JEREMY ROTHE KUSHEL: Really? ROBERT BAER: Yeah. STEWART HOWE: That tells us something. ROBERT BAER: What? STEWART HOWE: That tells us something. ROBERT BAER: Well, his brother worked at the White House. (SOURCE: WeAreChangeLA debriefs CIA Case Officer Robert Baer about apparent Mossad and White House 9/11 foreknowledge) This truly remarkable statement bears further scrutiny. If Baer is to be believed, a former CIA agent has first-hand knowledge that a White House insider had foreknowledge of the attacks, and to this day not only has Baer never revealed the identity of this person, but no one has questioned him about his statement or even attempted to pursue this lead. So how is it possible that the SEC overlooked, ignored, or simply chose not to pursue such leads in their investigation? The only possible answer, of course, is that the investigation was deliberately steered away from such persons of interest and any connections that would lead back to foreknowledge by government agencies, federal agents, or their associates in the business world. Unfortunately, we will likely never see documentary evidence of that from the Commission itself. One researcher requesting access under the Freedom of Information Act to the documentary evidence that the 9/11 Commission used to conclude there had been no insider trading received a response that stated “that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.” Instead, we are left with sources that refuse to be identified, saying that CBOE records of pre-9/11 options trading have been destroyed and [with] second-hand accounts of traders who had heard talk of an event in advance of 9/11. In a round-about way, perhaps the 9/11 Commission reveals more than it lets on when it tries to dismiss key insider trades with the pithy observation that the traders had no conceivable ties to Al Qaeda. If those with foreknowledge of the attacks weren’t connected to Al Qaeda, what does that say about the identity of the real 9/11 perpetrators? ANTONIO MORA: ABC News has now learned that the Chicago Board of Options Exchange launched their investigation into the unusual trading last week. That may have given them enough time to stop anyone from profiting from death here in the U.S. It may also give investigators, Peter, a “hot trail” that might lead them to the terrorists. PETER JENNINGS: Thanks very much. As a reminder of the complications here, the Secretary of the Treasury said here today of this investigation, “You’ve got to go through ten veils before you can get to the real source.” ANTONIO MORA: Yeah. PETER JENNINGS: Thanks, Antonio. (SOURCE: 9/11 Wall Street Blames Put Option Inside Trading On Terrorists) PTech and Vulgar Betrayal PTech was a Quincy, Mass.-based company specializing in “enterprise architecture software,” a type of powerful computer modeling program that allows large-scale organizations to map their systems and employees and to monitor them in real time. The person running this software has a “God’s-eye” view of processes, personnel and transactions, and even the ability to use this data to foresee problems before they happen and to intervene to stop them from happening. As a senior consultant working on risk management for JPMorgan at the time of 9/11, Indira Singh was looking for exactly this type of software to implement the bank’s next-generation risk blueprint. In her search for the ultimate risk management software, PTech’s name was floated as the best candidate for the task. INDIRA SINGH: I had a good life. I did “risk” at JP Morgan Chase, just to take a break from all the heavy stuff. What I’d do was to devise a way to monitor everything going on in a very large company to stop big problems from happening. There is that little cloud there and my very bizarre picture of how I think about this problem. I am a person who was merging two disciplines: Risk Management and something called “Enterprise Architecture” which is fairly esoteric but at the end of the day, we seek to prevent large problems from happening anywhere in a large global enterprise. At JP Morgan I was working on the next generation “risk blueprint” which is all about how to prevent these things from happening. Bad business practice such as money laundering, rogue trading and massive computer failures, anything you could imagine (that) could go wrong. I had a lot of leeway consulting as a “Senior Risk Architect” to think out of the box and actually get my ideas implemented. I was funded out of a strategic fund, I reported to the directors and I was pretty happy. JP Morgan thought very highly of me and they were thinking of funding, in conjunction with my project in D.C., the next-generation risk software. What I need to do (and) what I did was (find) a really smart piece of software. Really, really smart. It’s job would be to think about all of the information and this is where you may connect a dot. The job of this software would be to think about all of the information that represented what was going on in the enterprise at any given time as bank business was being transacted world-wide. For example, it would (act) as a surveillance software that looked for trading patterns that indicated that someone was up too no good and then do something about it: send a message somewhere, send transaction information somewhere, perhaps shut their system down, perhaps shut another system down, perhaps start something else up elsewhere. This type of capability is very, very essential in today’s world. However this kind of software is not found in Microsoft or not even in IBM. A small group of very esoteric software companies make this kind of enterprise software and it is very pricey. So you can’t afford to pick wrong and I asked all my colleagues who were industry gurus; what would they recommend for this? My buddies recommended PTech. (SOURCE: 9/11 Omission Hearings – Indira Singh Reads Sibel Edmonds’ Letter – 9/9/2004) Indeed, it’s not difficult to see why PTech came so highly recommended. Given the nature of this sensitive risk-management work, only a company with experience delivering software to large-scale organizations with secrets to protect would fit the bill, and in this regard PTech did not disappoint. Their client roster included a veritable who’s who of top-level corporate and governmental clients: the FBI, the IRS, NATO, the Air Force, the Naval Air Command, the Departments of Energy and Education, the Postal Service, the US House of Representatives, the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, even the White House. From the inner sanctum of the White House to the headquarters of the FBI, from the basement of the FAA to the boardroom of IBM, some of the best-secured organizations in the world running on some of the most-protected servers housing the most sensitive data welcomed PTech into their midst. PTech was given the keys to the cyber kingdom to build detailed pictures of these organizations, their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and to show how these problems could be exploited by those of ill intent. But like all such systems, it could be exploited by those of ill intent for their own purposes, too. Given the nature of the information and secrets being kept by its clients, it should come as no surprise that many of PTech’s top investors and employees were men with backgrounds that should have been raising red flags at all levels of the government. And as it turns out, at least one of these men did raise red flags with a pair of diligent FBI field agents. In the late 1990s, Robert Wright and John Vincent—FBI special agents in the Chicago field office—were running an investigation into terrorist financing called Vulgar Betrayal. From the very start, the investigation was hampered by higher-ups; they were not even given access to the computer equipment needed to carry out their work. Through Wright and Vincent’s foresight and perseverance, however, the investigation managed to score some victories, including seizing $1.4 million in terrorist funds. According to Wright, “these funds were linked directly to Saudi businessman Yasin al-Qadi.” Yasin al-Qadi is a multi-millionaire businessman and philanthropist who, according to business associates, liked to boast of his relationship with former Vice President Dick Cheney. But in the late 1990s he was sanctioned by the UN Security Council for his suspected links to Al Qaeda, and after 9/11 he was put on a terrorist watch list by the US Treasury for his suspected ties to terrorist financing. During the 1990s, as Vulgar Betrayal was being thwarted from opening a criminal investigation into his activities, the Qadi-backed investment firm Sarmany Ltd. became an “angel investor” to a software startup called PTech, providing $5 million of the initial $20 million of capital that got PTech off the ground. At the time, PTech’s CEO denied that al-Qadi had any involvement with the company other than his initial investment, but the FBI now maintains he was lying and that in fact al-Qadi continued investing millions of dollars in the company through various fronts and investment vehicles. Company insiders told FBI officials that they were flown to Saudi Arabia to meet PTech’s investors in 1999 and that al-Qadi was introduced as one of the owners. It has also been reported that Hussein Ibrahim, PTech’s chief scientist, was al-Qadi’s representative at PTech and al-Qadi’s lawyers have admitted that al-Qadi’s representative may have continued to sit on PTech’s board even after 9/11. Ibrahim himself was a former president of BMI, a New Jersey-based real estate investment firm that was also one of the initial investors in PTech and provided financing for PTech’s founding loan. PTech leased office space and computer equipment from BMI and BMI shared office space in New Jersey with Kadi International, owned and operated by none other than Yassin al-Qadi. In 2003, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said: “BMI held itself out publicly as a financial services provider for Muslims in the United States, its investor list suggests the possibility this facade was just a cover to conceal terrorist support.” Suheil Laheir was PTech’s chief architect. When he wasn’t writing the software that would provide PTech with detailed operational blueprints of the most sensitive agencies in the U.S. government, he was writing articles in praise of Islamic holy war. He was also fond of quoting Abdullah Azzam, Osama Bin Laden’s mentor and the head of Maktab al-Khidamat, which was the precursor to Al-Qaeda. That such an unlikely cast of characters were given access to some of the most sensitive agencies in the U.S. federal government is startling enough. That they were operating software that allowed them to map, analyze and access every process and operation within these agencies for the purpose of finding systemic weak points is equally startling. Most disturbing of all, though, is the connection between PTech and the very agencies that so remarkably “failed” in their duty to protect the American public on September 11, 2001. BONNIE FAULKNER: Could you describe the relationship of PTech with the FAA? PTech worked with the FAA for several years, didn’t they? INDIRA SINGH: Yes. It was a joint project between PTech and MITRE. It is interesting. They were looking at, basically, holes in the FAA’s interoperability with responding with other agencies—law enforcement—in the case of an emergency such as a hijacking. They were looking for the escalation process—what people would do, how they would respond in case of an emergency—and find the holes and make recommendations to fix it. Now if anyone was in a position to understand where the holes were, PTech was, and that is exactly the point: if anybody was in a position to write software to take advantage of those holes, it would have been PTech. BONNIE FAULKNER: Was there a reference to PTech having operated in the basement out of the FAA? INDIRA SINGH: Yes. Typically, because the scope of such projects are so over-arching and wide-ranging, when you are doing an enterprise architecture project, you have access to how anything in the organization is being done, where it is being done, on what systems, what the information is. You have carte blanche. If it is a major project that spends several years, the team that comes in has, literally, access to almost anything that they want because you are operating on a blueprint level, on a massive scale. So, yes, they were everywhere, and I was told that they were in places that required clearances. I was told that they had log-on access to FAA flight control computers. I was told that they had passwords to many computers that you may not, on the surface, think has anything to do with finding out holes in the system, but let’s say you isolated part of a notification process that was mediated by computer and you wanted to investigate it further, then you would typically get log-on access to that computer. From that, back upstream or downstream. So, who knows? From my own experience I could have access to almost anything I wanted to in JP Morgan Chase. And did not, for the reason that if anything went wrong, I did not want to have the access. But if you were up to no good as an enterprise architect with such a mandate, you typically could have access to anything. (SOURCE: Guns n Butter: Indira Singh, PTech and the 911 software) So who was really behind PTech? Did Ziade, Ibrahim and the others somehow evade the due diligence of all of the government agencies and multinational corporations that PTech contracted with? Did PTech just happen to end up working on the interoperability of the FAA and the Pentagon systems on the morning of 9/11? Did al-Qadi’s friend Dick Cheney really know nothing of Qadi’s connections or activities? Was this all some devious Al Qaeda plot to infiltrate key systems and agencies of the US government? Not according to the people who were really investigating the company. INDIRA SINGH: Who’s really behind PTech is the question. Correct. I asked that of many intelligence people who came to my aid as I was being blacklisted and I was told: “Indira, it is a CIA clandestine operation on the level of Iran-Contra.” And I have reason to believe this because CARE International is a renamed version of Al Kifah, which was the finding arm for WTC 93, prior to Al Kifah it was called Maktab al-Khidamat which was the funding arms for the Afghani mujahidin. It was how the moneys got to Osama Bin-Laden through the Pakistani ISI. I asked the FBI in Boston: ‘”How come Mak was being run out of Ptech and 9/11?” and that jived with a lot of what intel was telling me that “it’s a CIA front, shut up and go away.” At that level I said “Well why doesn’t the FBI take advantage of their celebrated difference with the CIA’ and I was told ‘because at that level they work together.” (SOURCE: 9/11 Omission Hearings – Michael Ruppert & Indira Singh Q&A – 9/9/2004) So what did the 9/11 Commission have to say about PTech? Absolutely nothing. The co-chair of the commission, Thomas Kean, had been involved in a $24 million real estate transaction with BMI, one of the PTech investors, but no mention was made of that at the time and the Commission never looked into PTech or its activities on 9/11. Meanwhile, Cheney’s friend al-Qadi has since been removed from the Swiss, European, UN Security Council and US Treasury terrorist sanctions lists. And Robert Wright? After Vulgar Betrayal was shut down, the FBI did eventually raid PTech’s offices in December 2002…but not before the company was given advance warning of the “raid.” The very next day then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge declared that PTech “in no way jeopardizes the security of the country.” Oussama Ziade is still wanted by the FBI for lying about al-Qadi’s involvement with the company, but the case is now cold. ROBERT WRIGHT: To the families and victims….of September 11th…on behalf of John Vincent, Barry Carnaby and myself…we’re sorry. (SOURCE: 9-11 FBI Whistleblower Robert Wright Testimony) The Pentagon’s Missing Trillions DONALD RUMSFELD: The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world’s last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk. (SOURCE: Defense Business Practices) On September 10, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared a new war. Not a war on a shadowy terrorist organization in Afghanistan, or even a war on terror, but a war on the Pentagon itself. DONALD RUMSFELD: The adversary is closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy. (SOURCE: Defense Business Practices) Perhaps it is no surprise that Rumsfeld felt compelled to declare a war on the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. The issue of the Pentagon’s $2.3 trillion accounting nightmare had been dogging him since his confirmation hearings in January of 2001. Although Rumsfeld was interested in pushing forward a modernization of the military that was projected to cost an additional $50 billion in funding, that agenda was politically impossible in the face of the Department of Defense’s monumental budget problem. SEN. BYRD: How can we seriously consider a $50 billion increase in the Defense Department budget when DoD’s own auditors—when DoD’s own auditors—say the department cannot account for $2.3 trillion in transactions in one year alone. Now, my question to you is, Mr. Secretary, what do you plan to do about this? DONALD RUMSFELD: Decline the nomination! (Laughs.) (Laughter.) Ah! Senator, I have heard -- SEN. BYRD: I don’t want to see you do that! (Laughter.) SEN. LEVIN: (Sounds gavel.) We’ll stand adjourned, in that case! (Laughter.) DONALD RUMSFELD: Senator, I have heard some of that and read some of that, that the department is not capable of auditing its books. It is — I was going to say “terrifying.” (SOURCE: Defense Secretary Nomination Hearing Jan 11 2001) “Terrifying” only begins to describe the problem. The Department of Defense’s own Inspector General report for Fiscal Year 1999 noted that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service had processed $7.6 trillion of department-level accounting entries in that year. Of that amount, only $3.5 trillion could be properly accounted for. $2.3 trillion in transactions were fudged to make entries balance, run through without proper documentation, or made up entirely. The Inspector General’s office did not even examine the other $1.8 trillion in transactions because they “did not have adequate time or staff to review” them. In 2002 one DFAS accountant blew the whistle on the problem and the cover-up that was underway to stop investigators from finding out where the money went. VINCE GONZALES: $2.3 trillion with a “T.” That’s 8,000 dollars for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million. JIM MINNERY: We know it’s gone, but we don’t know what they spent it on. VINCE GONZALES: Jim Minnery, a former Marine turned whistleblower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency’s balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records. JIM MINNERY: The director looked at me and said, “Why do you care about this stuff?” That took me aback, you know. My supervisor asked me why I care about doing a good job. VINCE GONZALES: He was reassigned, and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off. JIM MINNERY: They’ve got to cover it up. (SOURCE: 9-11 Pentagon missing $2.3 trillion) As Comptroller of the Pentagon from 2001 to 2004, Dov Zakheim was the man tasked with solving this problem. DONALD RUMSFELD: There are all kinds of long-standing rules and regulations about what you can do and what you can’t do. I know Dr. Zakheim’s been trying to hire CPAs because the financial systems of the department are so snarled up that we can’t account for some $2.6 trillion in transactions that exist, if that’s believable. And yet we’re told that we can’t hire CPAs to help untangle it in many respects. REP. LEWIS: Mr. Secretary, the first time and the last time that Dov Zackheim and I broke bread together, he told me he would have a handle on that 2.6 trillion by now. (Laughter.) But we’ll discuss that a little -- DONALD RUMSFELD: He’s got a handle; it’s just a little hot. (Laughter.) (SOURCE: Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee: FY2002 Budget Request) From 1987 to 2001, Zakheim headed SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor providing airwarfare, cybersecurity and advanced military electronics to the Department of Defense and DARPA. SPC’s “Radar Physics Laboratory” developed a remote control system for airborne vehicles that they were marketing to the Pentagon prior to 9/11. Zakheim was also a participant in drafting “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a document that called for a sweeping transformation of the US military, including the implementation of the $50 billion missile defense program and increased use of specialized military technologies. The paper even noted how “advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.” “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was a white paper produced by the Project for a New American Century, a group founded in 1997 with the goal of projecting American global dominance into the 21st century. Joining Zakheim in the group were a host of other neocons who ended up populating the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Jeb Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld. In their September 2000 document, the group lamented that their plan for transforming the military was not likely unless a defining event took place, one that would galvanize public opinion: “[T]he process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” DONALD RUMSFELD: We know that the thing that tends to register on people is fear, and we know that that tends to happen after there’s a Pearl Harbor, tends to happen after there’s a crisis. And that’s too late for us. We’ve got to be smarter than that. We’ve got to be wiser than that. We have to be more forward-looking. There’s a wonderful book on Pearl Harbor by Roberta Wohlstetter, and a forward by Dr. Schelling, that talks about this problem of seeing things happen and not integrating them in your mind and saying, “Yes, we need to be doing something about that now,” that I reread periodically because it’s so important. (SOURCE: Defense Secretary Nomination Hearing Jan 11 2001) And on 9/11/2001, America received its new Pearl Harbor. The attack on the Pentagon struck Wedge One on the west side of the building. An office of the U.S. Army called Resource Services Washington had just moved back into Wedge One after renovations had taken place there. The office was staffed with 45 accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts; 34 of them were killed in the attack. A 2002 follow-up report from the DoD Inspector General on the missing trillions noted that a further $1.1 trillion in made up accounting entries were processed by the Pentagon in fiscal year 2000, but they did not even attempt to quantify the missing funds for 2001. The Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, later explained they were unable to produce a financial report for 2001 at all due to “the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.” Before becoming Secretary of the Army, Thomas White was a senior executive at Enron. Enron was one of the largest energy companies in the world, posting a $111 billion profit in 2000 before being exposed as an elaborate corporate accounting fraud in 2001. The SEC, which investigated the Enron scandal, occupied the 11th to 13th floors in World Trade Center Building 7, and their offices were destroyed on 9/11, destroying 3,000 to 4,000 documents on active investigations in the process. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rumsfeld’s War on the Pentagon’s Bureaucracy did not yield the results he promised. By 2013, the unaccountable money in the Pentagon’s coffers had reach $8.5 trillion. REPORTER: The latest scandal to hit Washington comes from a report revealing the Pentagon “misplaced” $8.5 trillion. Military leaders have also been found ordering subordinates to doctor books to hide the missing money. This is the conclusion of a special report by Reuters. One former Pentagon employee, Linda Woodford, said she spent 15 years there falsifying financial records. Woodford had a job checking Navy accounting records against figures supplied by the Treasury Department. She said money was missing from the report every month. (SOURCE: $8.5 Trillion Missing From Pentagon Budget) GAYANE CHICHAKYAN: National security expert Steve Miles is here with me to help us crunch these numbers. $8.5 trillion unaccounted for? STEPHEN MILES: That’s a lot of money. This is the kind of thing that you would think would bring Capitol Hill to a screeching halt. There’d be hearings almost every day. You’d have various committees looking into it. None of that. It just leads to massive waste and there can be all sorts of fraud that you don’t know about. Just one example, when the Inspector General looked at Iraq — which was a lot of money, but in the grand scheme just a portion of the money the U.S. spent — what they found was about $50 billion of the money the U.S. spent there was wasted and about $6 billion was completely lost. They had no idea where it went, it was completely unaccounted for. Put that in perspective. That’s about the amount of money that other countries would spend on their defense, total. And that’s just the loose pocket change that we lost in the couch. GAYANE CHICHAKYAN: One thing I found very interesting in this report is that the Pentagon apparently uses standard operating procedure to enter false numbers, or so-called “plugs,” to cover lost or missing information in their accounting in order to submit a balanced budget to the Treasury. So they can write in everything. STEPHEN MILES: This is probably the most shocking part of this. They get to the end of the day and they say, “Oh, there’s money missing, what do we do?” “Well, we’ll just put a number in there that says it’s there and we’ll sort it out later.” Again this is the type of operating practice that if you did it in your own business—if you try to do it with your own taxes for the government—they’d haul you off to jail. (SOURCE: Black Budget: US govt clueless about missing Pentagon $trillions) But then, given that the trillions have never been accounted for, and given that American defense spending soared to record levels after the attack, perhaps Rumsfeld’s war on the Pentagon, the one he announced on September 10th, was successful after all. And perhaps September 11th was the key battle in that war. DONALD RUMSFELD: Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. (SOURCE: Defense Business Practices) No Conclusion Insurance scams and insider trading, electronic fraud and Vulgar Betrayal, missing money and evidence destroyed. There are at least 8.5 trillion reasons to investigate the money trail of 9/11. Curious, then, that the US government’s final word on the attacks, the 9/11 Commission Report, concluded that the money trail was not worthy of investigation at all. In Chapter Five of the report, the commission noted: “To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.” 9/11 was a crime. And as every detective knows, the first rule of criminal investigation is to follow the money. So why did the 9/11 Commission specifically reject this rule? The answers to 9/11 are not going to come from the suspects of the crime. Instead, it’s up to investigators to continue to unearth the true evidence on the 9/11 money trail. Follow the money… Did you ever wonder how we keep people fighting with each other? Or obeying our silly rules? Or actually loving their captors and slavemasters? This morning we're going to brief you on just that. Are you ready to begin?
Transcript:
9/11 was a crime. This should not be a controversial statement, but given how 9/11 was framed as a terrorist attack or even an “act of war” from the very moment that it occurred, it somehow is. If we lived in a world of truth and justice, 9/11 would have been approached as a crime to be solved rather than an attack to be responded to. Let’s imagine for a moment that we did live in such a world. If there were some crusading District Attorney who actually wanted to prosecute the crimes of 9/11, how would he begin? Where would he start to unravel a plot so immense, one involving so many layers of obfuscation and the active collusion of some of the most powerful members of the perennial ruling class of America, the deep state? Like a prosecutor trying to bring down a mafia kingpin, it is unlikely that such an investigation would start by bringing the suspected mastermind of the plot to trial. Such a vast and intricate operation would be picked apart from the outside, starting with people on the periphery of the plot who could be forced to testify under oath and who could provide leads further up the ladder. As more and more of the picture was filled in, the case against the inner clique who ran the operation would begin to strengthen, and, gradually, more and more central figures could be brought to trial We may not live in a world where such a criminal investigation is taking place, but we are trying the crimes of 9/11 in the court of public opinion. There are still untold millions who think of 9/11 truth as a fringe movement driven by rash speculation and unwarranted leaps of logic. So what if we “prosecuted” some of these peripheral figures—the ones who are demonstrably and provably involved in the events of that day or the cover up of those crimes—in that court of public opinion? Over the course of The Corbett Report’s existence, I have looked at many figures who no doubt feature more prominently in the 9/11 plot itself from an operational standpoint: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Larry Silverstein, Dov Zakheim, Paul Bremer, Richard Armitage. Today we will look at some of the other suspects in that crime; not ringleaders or masterminds, not even people who were likely to know about the plot ahead of time. But those who helped cover up those crimes for the real perpetrators. These are the stories of the 9/11 Suspects. Skip to Rudy Giuliani / Christine Todd Whitman / Philip Zelikow / Robert Baer / Ralph Eberhart / Dancing Israelis Suspect #1: Rudy Giuliani After stepping down as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani tried to launch himself as a national political leader on the back of the single defining event of his career. In the end he failed miserably, with voters immediately seeing his ploy for what it was: base political pandering. But what many do not realize is that Giuliani’s case is not just that of another ghoulish politician parading on the corpses of those who died on his watch for his own political gain. On the day of 9/11, while the remains of the twin towers and WTC7 were still smoldering, one of Mayor Giuliani’s first concerns was clearing away the evidence from the crime scene. RUDY GIULIANI: We were able to move 120 dump trucks out of the city last night, which will give you a sense of the work that was done overnight. 1st NY RESIDENT: It’s wild out here. They just keep coming look! It doesn’t stop. There’s more, I keep thinking it’s the end but it’s not. (SOURCE: Donald Trump Commission on TERRORISM NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani = Criminal Destruction of Evidence WTC) Despite reassurances that the rapid removal of the evidence from Ground Zero was important for “emergency access,” this process went far beyond merely clearing a path for rescue workers. As Erik Lawyer, founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth points out, the massive operation to haul away over 1.5 million tons of debris and to sell much of the steel to Chinese firm Baosteel at discount prices was not just an overzealous approach to clearing the area, but was itself a crime. ERIK LAWYER: 9/11 was the greatest loss of life and property damage in U.S. fire history. This should of been the most protected, preserved, over-tested and thorough investigation of a crime scene in world history. Sadly it was not. What was it? Well, we know from their (NIST) admission the majority of the evidence was destroyed. Like Richard (Gage) said, (in) 22 years of experience I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.I was out at the site, I saw trucks leaving faster than anywhere I’ve ever seen but I accepted it at the time and for years I accepted it because it was a recovery and rescue operation and that’s normal to have something like going. Again, we’d never seen anything like it but that was expected. What I didn’t know for years was what was going on behind the scenes was that evidence was being destroyed when it was shipped off. By their own admission, the NIST investigation of Tower 7 had no physical evidence. How do you investigate a crime when you’ve destroyed all the evidence? It doesn’t make sense. They also admit that they refused to test for explosives or residue of thermite. Now this is what I’m going to go into real quickly is that there are national standards for for an investigation. That’s what all of us are asking fir. An investigation that follows national standards and holds people accountable. (SOURCE: Fire Fighter Erik Lawyer Slams NIST And The 9/11 “Investigation“) Needless to say, an investigation of the 9/11 crime scene following the national investigation standards has never been conducted and never will be as Giuliani oversaw the illegal destruction of the evidence itself. To add insult to this injury, in 2003 New York City Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch revealed that in the mad scramble to get rid of the crime scene evidence, human remains from the World Trade Center had been left at the Fresh Kills landfill where the debris was sorted and the steel was sold. In 2007 Eric Beck, a senior supervisor of the recycling facility that sifted the debris, admitted that some of those human remains ended up in a mixture that was used to pave roads and fill potholes in New York City. But as grotesque as such revelations are, they are not the most shocking part of Giuliani’s 9/11 story. In the late 1990s the Mayor oversaw the creation of a state-of-the-art $13 million emergency command center to coordinate the city’s disaster recovery and response efforts. Located on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7, just across Vesey Street from the Twin Towers, the center—dubbed by local press at the time as “Giuliani’s bunker”—included reinforced, bulletproof, and bomb-resistant walls, its own air supply and water tank, beds, showers to accommodate 30 people, and three backup generators. It could be used to monitor all of New York’s emergency communications frequencies and was staffed 24 hours a day. And yet, remarkably, on the morning of 9/11, neither Mayor Giuliani nor any other city personnel or police or fire department officials were in the bunker after the Twin Tower strikes. BARRY JENNINGS: As I told you guys before it was very, very funny. I was on my way to work and the traffic was excellent, I received a call that a small Cessna had hit the World Trade Center. I was asked to go and man the Office of Emergency Management. Upon arriving into the OEM EOC, we noticed that everybody was gone. I saw coffee that was on a desk, the smoke was still coming off the coffee. I saw half-eaten sandwiches. (SOURCE: Barry Jennings WTC 7 (Explosions) Interview) So why wasn’t the Mayor and the city’s emergency personnel in the location that had been purpose built for just such an event? According to Giuliani, they had been told to evacuate because they had been given a warning that the Twin Towers were going to collapse. A warning that was evidently not passed on to any of the emergency personnel that were still working in the buildings. RUDY GIULIANI: I went down to the scene and we setup headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the head of Emergency Management and we were operating out of there when we we’re told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building. So we were trapped in the building for 10-15 minutes and finally found an exit, got out, walked North and took a lot of people with us. (SOURCE: ABC Sept. 11, 2001 12:41 pm – 1:23 pm ABC 7, Washington, D.C.) Giuliani in his own words has admitted that he was warned that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. This despite the fact that there was no possible way for this to be predicted in the first hour of the unfolding disaster. Even more incredibly, despite being given this warning, no effort was made to pass it on to the police, firefighters and other responders who were still working in and around the buildings. When, precisely, was this warning given, and by whom? Why, despite acting on this warning himself, did Giuliani make no effort to pass the warning on to others? Predictably, when confronted with these questions by activists during his 2008 presidential campaign, Giuliani merely smiled and denied that he had ever received such a warning. SABRINA RIVERO: You reported to Peter Jennings that on 9/11 that you knew that the World Trade Center Towers were going to collapse. No steel structure has ever in history has ever collapsed due to a fire. How come the people in the building weren’t notified and who else knew about this and how do you sleep at night? RUDY GIULIANI: Ma’am, I didn’t know that the towers were going to collapse. TOM FOTI: You reported it Peter Jennings. You indeed said that you were notified that the towers were going to collapse while you were inside. Not sure exactly where you were prior to, but you said it on ABC video with Peter Jennings in an interview, that you were aware that the towers were going to collapse in advance. We’d like to know who told you the towers were going to collapse in advance, Sir? We’d also like to know who else you told? RUDY GIULIANI: Well the fact is that I didn’t realize that the towers would collapse. I never realized that. (SOURCE: WeAreChange Confronts Giuliani on 9/11 Collapse Lies) So where was the Mayor on 9/11? On Pier 92, which was already set up as a functional command center due to a full-scale emergency “drill” by FEMA that, by a remarkable coincidence, had been scheduled for the following day. RUDY GIULIANI: . . . and we selected Pier 92 as our Command Center. The reason Pier 92 was selected as the Command Center was because on the next day, on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here from FEMA, from the Federal Government, from the State Emergency Management Office and they were getting ready for a drill for a bio-chemical attack. So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill, the equipment was already there. So we were able to establish a Command Center there within 3 days that was 2 and a half to 3 times bigger than the Command Center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center and it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed. (SOURCE: 9/11 Commission Hearings May 19, 2004) Mayor Giuliani oversaw the illegal destruction of the 9/11 crime scene and is criminally liable for the deaths of hundreds of emergency workers for not passing on prior warnings about the collapses of the Twin Towers. It is no wonder, then, that the Fire Department of New York so passionately detest Giuliani for his actions in disgracing their fallen brothers and covering up the 9/11 crime. HAROLD A. SCHAITBERGER: Rudy Giuliani has used the horrible events of September 11th, 2001, to create a carefully crafted persona. But the fact is what Rudy portrays is not a full picture of the decisions made that led, in our view, to the unnecessary deaths of our FDNY members and the attempt to stop the dignified recovery of those lost. The urban-legend of “America’s Mayor” needs to be balanced by the truth. (SOURCE: Giuliani Gets Exposed As Fraud by Firefighters) So what is the reward for Giuliani’s criminal actions on 9/11? An offer to become the head of the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a Trump presidency, of course. This is the state of American politics, and this is precisely why a true investigation of what happened on 9/11 never has, and never will, be conducted by the US government itself. Suspect #2: Christine Todd Whitman The “dust lady” photo has become one of the iconic images of 9/11. The image of a woman, shocked and disoriented, completely covered in dust from the demolition of the Twin Towers, brings the nearly incomprehensible events of that day down to a human scale. But of course the “dust lady” was not the only one to feel the effects of the blanket of dust that descended on Manhattan after the towers fell. In the hours, days, and weeks that followed, thousands upon thousands of victims, first responders, emergency personnel, clean up crews, and residents were subjected to the poisonous stew of asbestos, benzene, mercury, lead, cadmium and other particulates from which many are now dying. CBS REPORTER: Dr. David Prezant, Chief Medical Officer with the New York Fire Department, spent 7 years examining more than 10,000 fire-fighters. Those who were at the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and those who weren’t. DR. DAVID PERZANT: And we found an increase in all cancers, combined. A 19% increase in cancers compared to the non-exposed World Trade Center group. (SOURCE: 9/11 first responders and cancer) ABBY MARTIN: Talk about the most pressing medical issues facing 9/11 first responders right now. JOHN FEAL: Cancer. In the beginning, in the first few years it was respiratory but now it’s cancers and this is just the first wave of cancers, the blood cancers, the leukemias, the organ cancers but in 5 or 10 more years you’re going to see the asbestos cancers. There will be another wave of cancers and like I tell everybody, this is a generation long issue and a generation long illness. (SOURCE: 9/11 Cancers Killing First Responders | Think Tank) KEN GEORGE: Every morning I wake up I gotta take 33 pills within the course of the day. At 47 years old I have lungs of an 80 year old man that would’ve been a smoker. People say you have to forget about 9/11 and I say how could I forget about 9/11 when every morning I gotta take this medication and walk around with an oxygen tank. (SOURCE: NYC 9/11 Rescuers Experience Lingering Health Problem) If the brave men and women who had rushed to the World Trade Center in the chaotic days after 9/11 to help with the search and rescue had done so knowing the risks they were facing, that would be one thing. But of course they did not. They had been given false assurances by Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator who assured the public just days into the clean up that the air was safe to breathe. CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: We know asbestos was in there, was in those buildings. Lead is in the those buildings. There are the VOC’s [Volatile Organic Compounds], however, the concentrations are such that they don’t pose a heath hazard. (SOURCE: Christie Whitman says air is safe days after 911) As the weeks and months dragged on, Whitman, the EPA and its officials made statement after statement after statement reaffirming that contaminant levels were “low or non-existent” and that the air quality in Manhattan posed “no public health concern.” We now know that these reassurances were outright lies. On September 18th, the very same day that Whitman and the EPA were encouraging New Yorkers to return to work, the agency detected sulfur dioxide levels in the air so high that “according to one industrial hygienist, they exceeded the EPA’s standard for a classification of ‘hazardous.'” By that time, first responders were already reporting a range of health problems, including coughing, wheezing, eye irritation and headaches. The evidence continued to pour in that there were serious health concerns for those in and around Manhattan, but the information was suppressed almost as quickly as it was discovered. When a local lab tested dust samples from near the WTC site and found dangerous concentrations of fiberglass and asbestos, the New York State Department of Health warned local labs that they would lose their licenses if they processed any more “independent sampling.” When US Geological Survey scientists began performing tests on their own dust samples, they were shocked at the “alphabet soup of heavy metals” they found in it. They forwarded this information to the EPA, but the agency continued to assure the public that there was no evidence of long term health risks. The drama continued to unfold as information poured in about benzene, lead and other environmental toxins. Yet on September 18th the EPA specifically advised the public against wearing respirators outside the World Trade Center restricted area. Then, just two weeks later, the agency distributed respirators to their own staffers at the EPA’s Region 2 building on Broadway Street. As scientists, industrial hygenists, and even other government officials began to accuse the EPA of covering up the true extent of the problem in New York, the agency continued with its dogged assertion that the air was safe to breathe. It wasn’t until 2003 that the EPA’s own Inspector General revealed that the White House had been editing the agency’s press releases all along, finding that “the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” When new documents were released to the public in 2011 on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it was discovered that this editing was even worse than originally feared. ANTHONY DePALMA: There were clear warnings. Specifically on Water Street, which for those people in this area know is not far from Wall Street, that showed that the levels of contaminates in the air was too high people to go back. That (warning) was removed which was bad enough and then replaced with a recommendation that people go back to work. They were urged to go back. Even thought the early samples were showing that there were high-levels of contaminates. JUAN GONZALEZ: And you point out also that in many cases they (EPA) were telling people that is was safe before they had even finished conducting initial tests. ANTHONY DePALMA: In one email exchange that happens on the 13th (of September), so it’s just a day and a half later, the people in Washington at the White House Council on Environmental Quality are telling the people up here, “Hey, Christine Whitman is coming up. She’s going to talk to reporters because all of the results so far have been so positive.” Well, all of the results so far showed almost nothing because there were almost no results and yet they were committed to this message of reassurance despite the facts. And that’s not the way it should happen. (SOURCE: 9/11 Debris Linked to Cancer, Details Emerge on How Officials Downplayed Ground Zero Dangers) Outraged at the fact that they had been lied to and their lives put at risk, residents and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn sued Whitman and the EPA in 2004. In a 2006 ruling allowing the class action lawsuit to proceed, Judge Deborah A. Batts of Federal District Court in Manhattan excoriated Whitman, finding that her baseless assurances that the air was safe “increased, and may have in fact created, the danger” to people living and working in the area. Ruling that the EPA did, in fact, make “misleading statements of safety” about the air quality, Judge Batts said: “The allegations in this case of Whitman’s reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking.” Batts’ decision was overturned by a panel of judges in 2008, who ruled that misleading the public and contributing to the health problems and deaths of untold Ground Zero workers was not conscience shocking enough to override her immunity from prosecution as a federal agent. If Whitman has a conscience at all, it is evidently not shocked by any of these accusations. She has not only never conceded guilt or even expressed sorrow for the ongoing sickness and deaths that her action helped bring about, she has repeatedly defended the actions of herself and the EPA in general. CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: Statements that EPA officials made after 9/11 were based on the judgement of experienced environmental and health professionals at the EPA, OSHA and the CDC, who had analyzed the test data that 13 different organizations and agencies were collecting in Lower Manhattan. I do not recall any EPA scientist or experts responsible for viewing this data ever advising me that the test data from Lower Manhattan showed that the air or water proposed long-term health risks for the general public. (SOURCE: Air Contamination at Ground Zero – C-Span) Whitman’s lies are not just those of another self-serving politician looking to save their job or stay out of jail. They are the lies of someone who has contributed to the deteriorating health and even the death of thousands of innocent men and women. For the victims of Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and all of the other agencies and officers who lied to the public about the health risks in New York, 9/11 is not a single day of horror that occurred a decade and a half ago. It is a slowly unfolding nightmare, one that every day brings them one step closer to their grave. The “dust lady” is one of the icons of the tragedy of that day. Should it be any surprise, then, that she, too, was ravaged by 9/11 related diseases and ultimately died of cancer last year? She was not the first person to die from the aftermath of 9/11. And, thanks to Christine Todd Whitman and the liars at the EPA who have consigned untold thousands to a similar fate, she will not be the last. DAVID MILLER: My name is David Miller. On September 11, 2001, along with hundreds of my fellow troops I went to Ground Zero. No one asked us. No orders were given. We went because our city, our country, our neighbors were under attack and we knew what to do, or at least we thought we did. On September 13th we marched back in, in groups of twos and threes at first and then dozens until there must of been more than 200 of us. Carrying ropes, ladders, tools of every kind back into the smoke and the poison and rubble were we reached an intersection with hundreds of civilians cheering us on. Our uniforms were torn and soiled, our resolve was simple. To stay and dig as long as we had any hope to save anybody. I want to tell you about how sick some of these brave men and women have become. I want to tell about how the Mayor refused to accept the fact that not dozens, not hundreds but many thousands of us were contaminated, sickened and poisoned by the most toxic combinations of building materials in the history of disaster relief and that for 5 terrible years he ignored that fact. 5 years of our family members watching us drop dead. And every time Popular Mechanics calls the people of this movement, nuts, these propagandists—professional liars and tools who can not even by any stretch of the imagination be considered journalists—strike another nail into the coffin of another rescue worker (SOURCE: The 9/11 Chronicles: Part One, Truth Rising) Suspect #3: Philip Zelikow It took President Bush an extraordinary 441 days after 9/11 to establish a commission to investigate the events of September 11, 2001. And it was not just the case that Bush was slow in acting; he actively resisted any investigation for as long as he could, taking the extraordinary and unprecedented step of personally asking Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit Congress’ investigation into those events. In the end, the commission was severely underfunded, severely rushed, and, as commission chairman, Thomas Kean, later admitted: THOMAS KEAN: We think the (9/11) Commission in many ways was set up to fail. (Source: C-SPAN: Thomas Kean Speaks at the National Press Club – September 11, 2006) But the most unmistakable sign that Bush was only interested in appointing a cover up commission to “investigate” the largest attack on US soil in modern history was his initial choice for commission chairman. PRESIDENT BUSH: Today I’m pleased to announce my choice for commission chairman: Dr. Henry Kissinger. REPORTER: Dr. Kissinger, do you have any concerns about once the commission begins it work and fingers point to valuable allies, say Saudi Arabia for example, what policy implications could this have for the United States particularly at this delicate time? HENRY KISSINGER: I have been given every assurance by the President that we should go where the facts lead us. (Source: Henry Kissinger and the 9/11 Commission) Not even the New York Times could believe that Henry Kissinger, the consummate Washington insider, could pretend to conduct an independent fact-finding investigation into 9/11. “It is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed,” The Times editorialized after the announcement. Kissinger may have been prepared for such polite disagreement with his appointment. But he was not prepared to meet the 9/11 widows whose tireless efforts had forced the creation of the commission in the first place. NARRATOR: Several family members approached Kissinger and requested a meeting at his office in New York. Prior to the meeting Kristen Breitweiser conducted a thorough investigation of Kissinger’s potential conflicts of interest. PATTY CASAZZA: Probably much to the chagrin of some of the people in the room, Lorie (Van Auken) asked some very poignant questions. “Would you have any Saudi-Amercian clients that you would like to tell us about?” and he was very uncomfortable kind of twisting and turning on the couch and then she asked, “whether he had any clients by the name of Bin-Laden?” And he just about fell off his couch. NEWS REPORTER: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, stepped down from the position Friday. MINDY KLEINBERG: We thought the meeting went well. (Source: 9/11: Press For Truth) Kissinger was dethroned and the commission went ahead under chairman Thomas Kean and vice chair Lee Hamilton. But while Kissinger’s appointment and resignation received all the attention, the White House was busy slipping another agent into the commission through the back door. In January of 2003, just weeks after Kissinger stepped down, it was quietly announced that Philip D. Zelikow would take on the role of executive director. As executive director, Zelikow picked “the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses.” In effect, this was the man in charge of running the investigation itself. So who was Philip Zelikow? The commission’s press release announcing his position described him as “a man of high stature who has distinguished himself as an academician, lawyer, author and public servant.” Although they noted his position at the University of Virginia and his previous role as executive director for the National Commission on Federal Electoral Reform, curiously missing from this brief bio are the multiple conflicts of interest that show how the Bush administration essentially put one of its own in charge of investigating how the Bush administration “failed” on 9/11. In 1995 he coauthored a book with Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. He was part of the transition team that helped the Bush administration take over the White House from the Clinton administration. He was even a member of Bush’s post-9/11 Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. But perhaps most incredibly, Zelikow actually authored the Bush administration’s 2002 “National Security Strategy” that outlined the preemptive war doctrine that would be used against Iraq. This, however, is something that not even 9/11 commissioners Kean or Hamilton themselves knew at the time the commission was formed. PHILIP SHENON: (Philip) Zelikow was the author of a very important document issued by the White House in September 2002 that really turned military doctrine on it’s head and said that the United States could become involved in preemptive war, preemptive defense. That we could attack a nation that didn’t pose an immediate military threat to this country. And obviously in September of 2002 it sure appeared that that document was being written with one target in mind: Iraq. Now as I say, the author of the document at the time was anonymous. We didn’t know that Philip Zelikow had written this thing and that becomes known I think widely on this day, if only in the final months of the 9/11 Commission investigation and it appeared to pose yet another conflict of interest for Zelikow. MICHAEL DUFFY: Just to be clear, the pre-emptive doctrine comes out in September of 2002. The Commission is created formally in . . . SHENON: December 2002. DUFFY: . . . and do Kean and Hamilton, when they hire Zelikow, are they aware of his role as the author of the preemptive doctrine? SHENON: I don’t believe so. (Source: After Words with Philip Shenon, March 2008) These conflicts of interest were not merely theoretical. After the victims’ family members discovered Zelikow’s links to the Bush administration, he was forced to recuse himself from the proceedings of the commission (which he himself was directing) that had to do with the Bush White House transition or the National Security Council. Hearing of Zelikow’s appointment, former counter terrorism czar Richard Clarke (who Zelikow helped to demote during the Bush transition), remarked that “The fix is in,” wondering aloud: “Could anyone have a more obvious conflict of interest than Zelikow?” Key staffers and even one of the commissioners threatened to quit the commission altogether when learning of Zelikow’s history. When the 9/11 victims’ family members discovered Zelikow’s links, they protested his appointment. But unlike with Kissinger, this time their concerns were dismissed and Zelikow plowed ahead. As even Zelikow himself admits, his ties to the very figures he was supposedly investigating are a legitimate concern, and any real investigation of the 9/11 cover up would begin with him. PHILIP ZELIKOW: There’s a whole welter of conspiracy theories about 9/11 floating around the internet, on videocasettes. There’s a whole cottage industry in this, which if you haven’t read much about it then you’re a fortunate person. I get a lot of this. I actually figure very largely in a number of key conspiracy theories. [Laughter] No, to be fair, I worked with Condi Rice, right? I worked with her in the administration of Bush 41, so I guess I could be read as a plausible henchman executing a cover up. And it’s a legitimate concern, especially if I hadn’t had 81 other staffers keeping their eagle eye on me. (Source: Road to 9/11 : and where we are today) Conveniently left out of Zelikow’s story about the “81 staffers” keeping their eye on his decisions is that they were staffers who were hired by him and under his complete control. In fact, Zelikow took over the hiring of the commission staff and even stopped staffers from communicating directly with the commissioners themselves. In the first few months, the 9/11 commissioners themselves rarely even visited the commission because Zelikow denied them their own offices or the ability to hire their own staffers. The most remarkable example of Zelikow’s dictatorial control came in March 2003, just three months into the commission’s 16-month investigation began. It was at that time, before the commission had even convened a single hearing, that Zelikow, along with long-time associate and commission consultant Ernest May, co-wrote a complete outline of the final report. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Before the staff even had its first meeting, Zelikow had written, along with his former professor, Ernest May, a detailed outline of the commission’s report, complete, as Shenon put it, with chapter headings, sub-headings, and sub-sub-headings. When Kean and Hamilton were later shown this outline they worried that it would be seen as evidence that the report’s outcome had been predetermined, so the three of them decided to keep it a secret from the rest of the staff. When the staff did finally learn about this outline a year later they were alarmed. Some of them circulated a parody entitled ‘The Warren Commission Report: Preemptive Outline.’ One of its chapter headings read: ‘Single Bullet: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence Yet, But Really, We’re Sure.’ The implication was that the crucial chapter in the Zelikow-May outline could have been ‘Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence Yet, But Really, We’re Sure.’ (Source: The Toronto Hearings on 9/11 Uncut – David Ray Griffin – Day 1) So what exactly did Zelikow do as executive director? He allowed information in the commission’s final report derived from illegal CIA torture sessions, despite not having access to the evidence of those sessions themselves (which were later illegally destroyed). This included the testimony of alleged “9/11 mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was waterboarded 183 times in a single month, whose children were kidnapped by the CIA, who was told that his children were going to be tortured with insects, and who eventually confessed to a whole series of plots, including bombing a bank that didn’t exist at the time he was arrested. More than one quarter of the footnotes in the final commission report source from this torture testimony, and as Zelikow himself admitted, “quite a bit, if not most” of the commission’s information on the 9/11 plot itself came from this testimony. Zelikow denied interviews and documents to staffers investigating the Saudi connection to the attacks, eventually firing one of them and removing the text of their investigation from the final report. He personally rewrote a commission staff statement to suggest a systematic link between Al Qaeda and Iraq before 9/11, outraging the authors of the original statement. He worked behind his own staffer’s back to stop them from serving the Pentagon a subpoena to answer about information NORAD was withholding from the commission. He sat on a proposal to open a criminal investigation into FAA and military officials who lied to the commission for months, and then forwarded that proposal not to the Justice Department, who could have brought criminal charges, but to the Inspector General, who could not. And he covered up information on Able Danger, a military intelligence team that had identified several of the alleged 9/11 hijackers in the country before 9/11. Col. ANTHONY SHAFFER: After the initial disclosure, Dr. Zelikow came to me at the end of the meeting, gave me his card and said: “What you said today is critically important. Very important. Please come see me when you return to Washington, D.C.” I returned to Washington, D.C., January 2004, call in, they say “We want to see you, stand by.” Nothing happens. A week goes by. I call again, they say: “We don’t need you to come in. We have all the information on Able Danger we need, thank you anyway.” And that was where it ended. JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Alright, so the information that you told Dr. Zelikow in Afghanistan about the CIA interfering with your ability to provide actionable intelligence to the United States government–intelligence that might have helped them find out who caused, 9/11–you were not permitted to testify about it? Col. ANTHONY SHAFFER: That’s correct. JUDGE NAPOLITANO: OK. (Source: Judge Napolitano Exposing 9-11 Cover-Up With Col. Anthony Shaffer) From the initial outline to the final report, Zelikow carefully guided the process, hiring and firing the staff, directing their research efforts, deciding on witnesses, scrubbing information, and shielding his former colleagues in the White House from criticism. But perhaps more remarkable than the fact that “the fix was in” from the moment he took over the commission and began working on the predictive outline of the final report, is that he had in fact written about 9/11 and its eventual aftermath in 1998, three years before September 11th. In an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger,” written for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs in November 1998, Zelikow and co-authors Ashton Carter and John Deutsche ask readers to imagine a catastrophic act of terrorism like the destruction of the World Trade Center. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently. Zelikow’s amazing prediction becomes somewhat less remarkable when we learn his own self-described expertise in the creation and management of “public myth.” In a separate 1998 article on public myths, Zelikow identifies “generational” myths that are “formed by those pivotal events that become etched in the minds of those who have lived through them,” before noting that the current set of public myths, formed during the New Deal in 1933, are currently fading. Convenient for Zelikow, then, that the “Pearl Harbor” event that would define the next “generational” myth, known as the “War on Terror,” would arrive just three years later, and that he would be in charge of the commission tasked with creating and managing the public perception of that myth. Indeed, given his central role in the cover up of 9/11 and deflecting concern away from legitimate 9/11 suspects, any true investigation into the events of September 11th would involve a thorough interrogation of Philip D. Zelikow. Suspect #4: Robert Baer A 21 year veteran of the CIA, Robert Baer is billed as “one of America’s most elite intelligence case officers.” Having worked field assignments in Lebanon, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq and other international hotspots, he was praised by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh as “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.” He has written multiple books based on his experiences with the agency. He has worked as a consultant on documentary and television projects. He regularly appears as a commentator on CNN and other news outlets, and he writes a regular column on intelligence matters for Time. George Clooney’s character in Syriana, Bob Barnes, is based on Baer and his experiences with the CIA. “… and 90% of what’s left is in the Middle East. This is fight to the death.” “I think we’ve got something that utilizes your … specific skills set. “His moneys in a lot of dark corners.” CLOONEY: “I want you to take him from his hotel, drug him, put him in the front of a car and run a truck into him at 50 miles an hour.” “It’s good to have you back in town, Bob.” (Source: ‘Syriana’ Trailer) Robert Baer retired from the CIA in 1997 and received the agency’s Career Intelligence Medal the following year. In short, he is a serious and well-respected career intelligence official. All of this makes it particularly stunning that in 2008 he told a team of citizen journalists in Los Angeles that he knew a man who “cashed out” the day before 9/11. JEREMY ROTHE-KUSHEL: …the last thing I want to leave you with is the National Reconnaissance Office was running a drill of a plane crashing into their building and you know they’re staffed by DoD and CIA… ROBERT BAER: I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego and said ‘cash me out, it’s going down tomorrow.’ JEREMY ROTHE-KUSHEL: Really? ROBERT BAER: Yeah. STEWART HOWE: That tells us something. ROBERT BAER: What? STEWART HOWE: That tells us something. ROBERT BAER: Well his brother worked at the White House. (SOURCE: WeAreChangeLA debriefs CIA Case Officer Robert Baer about apparent Mossad and White House 9/11 foreknowledge) Given Robert Baer’s experience and training, it is difficult to comprehend just how significant the information that he just casually admits here really is. We are left with only two possibilities: either Baer is lying, or he has direct knowledge of someone “whose brother worked at the White House” who had foreknowledge of the 9/11 plot. There is no middle ground here. The man Robert Baer claims to know is at least an accessory before the fact to the crimes of 9/11, if not an actual accomplice or co-conspirator in those crimes. By failing to report this information to the investigative authorities, Baer leaves himself open to being an accessory after the fact to those same crimes. Title 18 Section 3 of the US Code defines the criteria for an “Accessory After the Fact” to a crime committed against the United States: Whoever, knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact. Given the exceptionally grave nature of this admission and its repercussions, one would suppose that Baer has been questioned by other media and/or the FBI and made to discuss in detail precisely who it was who cashed out and how he knew about the 9/11 plot in advance. But one would be wrong. Since making this stunning admission to the cameras of We Are Change Los Angeles, no one has ever asked Baer for more information about the case. So what does Robert Baer say about the possibility of a 9/11 inside job? In 2007, writing about the CIA’s admission that they illegally destroyed the videotaped interrogations of high profile terror suspects, Baer said: I myself have felt the pull of the conspiracy theorists — who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, somehow pulled off by the U.S. government. For the record, I don’t believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the Pentagon. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn’t all that good at it, and certainly couldn’t carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with. But just one year before he gave a very different answer to Thomas Hartmann on his radio show. THOMAS HARTMANN: So are you personally of the opinion, obviously you can’t speak for the CIA or your previous activities with the agency, but are you of the opinion that there was an aspect of “inside job” to 9/11 within the U.S. Government? ROBERT BAER: There’s that possibility. The evidence points at it. HARTMANN: And why is not being investigated? BAER: Why isn’t the WMD story being investigated? Why hasn’t anybody been held accountable for 9/11? I mean, we held people accountable after Pearl Harbor. So why has there been no change of command, why have there been no political repercussions? Why has there not been any sort of exposure on this? It really makes you wonder. (Source: Robert Baer on 9/11) So why is Robert Baer hiding the identity of a 9/11 accomplice or co-conspirator? And will the FBI be asking him for details of this story any time soon? Until the American public show some interest in this shocking admission, it is unlikely that anything will happen. Suspect #5: Gen. Ralph Eberhart According to the official story of September 11, 2001, four hijacked airliners flew wildly off course over the most sensitive airspace in the United States for 109 minutes without being intercepted by a single fighter jet. As Commander-in-Chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command on 9/11, General Ralph Eberhart was in charge of the largest failure to defend North American airspace in history. Rather than accepting blame for his command’s complete lack of response that morning, however, or even expressing regret about what had occurred, General Eberhart instead spent the rest of his career attempting to pin the blame for this failure squarely on the FAA. GEN. EBERHART: You’ve read a lot over the last two and a half years about what NORAD did and did not do that morning and should have done in the years and months leading up to that attack. Ground truth is that NORAD was charged to support the FAA in the event of a hijacking. Our role was to respond to the request from FAA to get airborne, fly, shadow the hijacked airplane, say whether the hijacked airplane was following the instructions of the air traffic controller, of FAA, and in the terrible situation that that plane crashed, or that airplane exploded in mid-air, document that tragedy. (Source: Homeland Defense in the Global War on Terrorism) Although Eberhart’s version of events was cemented into place as the official story of 9/11 propounded by the 9/11 commission, they are in fact self-serving lies. In Eberhart’s version of events, NORAD is completely subordinate to the FAA. In reality, however, NORAD is specifically tasked with dealing with such events itself, not waiting passively for FAA orders. NORAD’s own regulations for dealing with hijacked jets specifically state that “FAA Authorization for Interceptor Operations is not used for intercept and airborne surveillance of hijacked aircraft within the [continental United States].” These standard operating procedures were not merely theoretical, or some obscure regulation that would have been unfamiliar to the four-star general in charge of defending American airspace. In the year 2000 alone, NORAD scrambled fighters in response to “unknowns”–pilots who didn’t file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency–129 times. Perhaps even more remarkable, however, is that Eberhart and NORAD offered not one, not two, not three, but four separate timelines of their complete lack of response that morning. The first, offered by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers just two days after the attacks during his confirmation hearings in the Senate, claimed that not a single fighter was scrambled to intercept any of the airliners until after the incident at the Pentagon. One week later, NORAD released a partial timeline that indicated they had in fact received advance notification about three of the planes with as much as 20 minutes warning, more than enough time for the planes to have been intercepted. A third story emerged in May 2003; this time, NORAD was only contacted about Flight 175 at 9:05, 3 minutes after it crashed into the south tower. The official story, found in the 9/11 Commission’s final report, was that NORAD received no advance notice of any of the flights. Eberhart and the military were completely exonerated. However, Eberhart had testified in October 2001 that NORAD had been notified about Flight 77 at 9:24 AM. The 9/11 Commission determined that this was a lie. Regardless of the truth or untruth of any of these accounts, the simple fact is that, according to the 9/11 Commission itself, Eberhart had lied to Congress, which is in fact a crime. By the 9/11 Commission’s own account, Eberhart should have been tried. But Eberhart’s lies do not end there. GEN. EBERHART: Many people will talk about that they knew that there was going to be an attack. They knew that people were going to take over an aircraft and fly it into a building. I can tell you that there was no credible intelligence at that time to go build a defense against that type of attack. Tragically, we were wrong. We were wrong. (Source: Homeland Defense in the Global War on Terrorism) Once again, Eberhart’s depiction of events is a self-serving and easily demonstrable lie. Not only had NORAD envisioned such a scenario, they had been training for it extensively in the years leading up to 9/11. Between October 1998 and September 2001, NORAD had conducted 28 exercise events involving hijackings. At least five of those hijack scenarios involved “a suicide crash into a high-value target.” Furthermore, at least six of the exercises took place completely within American airspace, putting to rest the oft-heard excuse that NORAD wasn’t prepared for threats from within the US. Another note that would be of interest to prosecutors looking at potential foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks pertains to Eberhart’s dual role as Commander-in-Chief of US Space Command, where he was responsible for setting something called the “Infocon threat level.” Established in March 1999, the Infocon threat level was designed as a measure of the threat to Defense Department computer systems and networks and different levels required different protocols for securing communications and information systems. At 9:09 PM on September 10, 2001, less than 12 hours before the attacks began, Eberhart reduced Infocon to Level 5 , the lowest threat level, making it easier for hackers to compromise Defense Department systems and controls. Eberhart has never been asked about this change in the public record. There are a laundry list of other questionable actions that Eberhart took on 9/11:
Ralph E. Eberhart remains at large. Suspect #6: The Dancing Israelis DAN RATHER: Some evil is just … it can’t be explained. DAVID LETTERMAN: Are these people happy? Are they joyous now? Are they celebrating? Thank God? DAN RATHER: Oh absolutely, they’re celebrating. There’s one report, this has not been confirmed but there is several eye[witness] reports that there was a cell, one of these cells across the Hudson River. And they got on the … this is the report and I emphasize that I don’t know this for a fact but there’s several witnesses who say this happened. They got on the roof of a building to look across, they knew what was gonna happen. They were waiting for it to happen and when it happened they celebrated. They jumped for joy. (SOURCE: The Late Show with David Letterman – 09/17/01) In the days after 9/11, while Ground Zero continued to smolder, millions heard Dan Rather and various media outlets repeat vague and unconfirmed reports of arrests that took place that day. These rumors held that Middle Eastern men, presumably Arabs, were arrested in explosive-packed vans in various places around the city on September 11th, and that some had even been photographing and celebrating those events. What most do not realize is that those reports were not mere rumors, and we now have thousands of pages of FBI, CIA and DOJ reports documenting those arrests. MARIA: I grabbed my binoculars and I’m trying to look at the Twin Towers but what caught my attention was down there I see this van parked and I see 3 guys on top of the van. They seemed to be taking a movie and I could see that they were like happy and laughing. They didn’t look shocked to me, you know what I mean? They didn’t look shocked. (SOURCE: The Five Dancing Israelis – 9/11/2001 – Our Purpose Was To Document The Event) The men were spotted shortly after 8:46 AM, yet somehow at this early stage, just minutes after the first plane strike on the World Trade Center, they were already positioned in a parking lot in Liberty State Park, taking pictures of the towers and celebrating. They left the scene shortly after being spotted and at 3:31 PM the FBI issued an all points bulletin advising officers in the Greater New York area to be on the lookout for a “White, 2000 Chevrolet van…with ‘Urban Moving Systems’ sign on back.” At 3:56 PM, the van was spotted traveling eastward on State Route 3 in New Jersey and pulled over by Officer Scott DeCarlo and Sgt. Dennis Rivelli of the East Rutherford police department. Inside they found five men: Sivan Kurzberg and his brother, Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omar Marmari. BERNICE STEGERS: A major terrorist man-hunt began and, just 6 hours after the attack, the van was stopped at a roadblock by patrolman Scott De Carlo. SCOTT De CARLO: We were asked to detain the van and the passengers. They were just removed from the vehicle, patted down for safety precautions and detained. I think once the FBI arrived, one of them stated that they were on our side or something to that effect. (SOURCE: The 9/11 Conspiracies – Ch 4) According to the police report of the incident, Sivan Kurzberg told Officer DeCarlo: “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” Their official story: they were just Israeli tourists working for a moving company who had heard about the first World Trade Center strike and rushed to get a better view of the events. BERNICE STEGERS: They told interrogators they were working for Urban Moving, a shipping and storage firm run by an Israeli businessman, who often employed Israeli students without work permits. The men say there was an innocent explanation for what was found in the van. and their behavior on 9/11. They were, they say, “simply on a working holiday.” PAUL KURZBERG: We heard in the news that one of the plane was crashing down the buildings and we thought it was an accident at the beginning. So, we went up to the roof of Urban Moving and we saw the building burning. YARON SCHMUEL: There is a better view from a building in Jersey that is up a hill, straight-line to the World Trade Center. We decided to go up there, it’s 2-3 minutes from the office, stand over there and take some pictures. Everyone wants pictures like this in his camera. (SOURCE: The 9/11 Conspiracies – Ch 4) Although this narrative is still trotted out when the story of the dancing Israelis is raised in the media, it is an easily demonstrable lie. FBI reports confirm that the men were not taking somber pictures of a horrific event. When their 76 pictures were developed, they revealed the men had indeed been celebrating; smiling, hugging each other, and high-fiving. One of the pictures even featured Sivan Kurzberg holding a lighter up with the burning tower in the background. And these were no ordinary tourists. Oded Ellner had $4,700 stuffed into his sock. They lied to the police about where they had been that morning. They were carrying plane tickets for immediate departure to different places around the globe. The FBI confirmed that two of the men had ties to Israeli intelligence and came to suspect that they had indeed been on a mission for the Mossad. And of course, after returning to Israel Ellner claimed on national Israeli TV that they had been sent there “to document the event.” ODED ELLNER (Translation): And at that point we were taken for another round of questioning. This time related to us allegedly being members of Mossad. The fact of the matter is, we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event. (SOURCE: Inside Israel) Their purpose was to “document the event”? But how could they possibly have known what “event” they were documenting at that point, before the second plane strike when those few who even knew about the situation had assumed it to be an accident or pilot error? And when did they arrive at the parking lot to “document the event” anyway? The FBI reports show how the men gave confused and often conflicting accounts of when and how they learned about what was happening and when they arrived at the parking lot. Oded Ellner even said they had arrived their shortly after 8:00 AM, which would have been 45 minutes before the attacks even began [see page 45 here]. This is in line with one of the eyewitnesses that had placed their Urban Moving Systems van at the parking lot at 8:00 AM [see page 33 here]. How could they have been in place and ready to “document the event” unless they knew what was about to happen? Anyway you cut it, this story is unbelievable. Men with documented connections to Israeli intelligence and working in the United States without appropriate permits were detained after having been caught celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center at a time when no one knew that the WTC strike was an attack. So surely these men are locked behind bars to this day, right? Surely they were transferred to Guantanamo and held without trial for 15 years as part of the “War on Terror,” weren’t they? No. They were immediately transferred to federal custody, held for 71 days, and then deported back to Israel. The owner of the “Urban Moving Systems” company that had employed them, Dominik Suter, was investigated by the FBI, too. They concluded that “Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation” and even seized records and computer systems from the company’s offices. When they went back to question him again on September 14th, he had fled back to Israel. And what about the dancing Israelis’ pictures themselves? The Justice Department destroyed their copies on January 27, 2014. And these intelligence agents on an intelligence mission who were there to “document the event” of 9/11 before anyone knew 9/11 was taking place? Don’t worry, they were just spying on Arab terrorists. ELIZABETH VARGAS: And while the FBI or certain sources might believe that in fact they were Israeli intelligence, they don’t believe that the US was a target. That they were actually investigating Muslim groups? JOHN MILLER: They believe if this was an intelligence operation by Israel, that it was focused on the Islamic groups and charities that raise money for groups that are considered by US Law Enforcement and others terrorist groups. You’ll note that after September 11th, the US moved on many of these groups with indictments, arrests, raids on their headquarters, something that hadn’t happened prior to this. ELIZABETH VARGAS: These are groups that Israel believe have been funding Hamas and other terrorists organizations? JOHN MILLER: Groups that are responsible for most of the suicide bombings there. (SOURCE: ABC News 20/20 preview – June 21, 2002) But this story is not merely preposterous on its face; even the implications of this story are themselves preposterous. If indeed the “official story” is a ridiculous lie, then are we to believe that these crack Israeli Mossad operatives who were presumably aware of the attack that was about to take place had been sent to photograph the burning tower from a parking lot across the Hudson River? And that these specially trained intelligence professionals on their super secret mission were celebrating, high-fiving and going out of their way to be noticed in performance of their task? This is equally preposterous. The only other possible conclusion is that these men were serving merely as a distraction. That they were not there to photograph for Israeli intelligence one of the most heavily photographed scenes in the world on that morning, but instead to be noticed and arrested as a way to divert attention from a much bigger and more sinister story. So if they were meant to distract from a bigger story, what story could that possibly be? BRIT HUME: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation but later took responsibility for his work. Now, Fox News has learned some US investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the US. Who may have known things they didn’t tell us before September 11th. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a 4 part series. CARL CAMERON: Since September 11th more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained. Either under the new PATRIOT anti-terrorism law or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the Unites States. There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9/11 attacks but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are “tie-ins” but when asked for details he flatly refused to describe them saying: “Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about the evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information. Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israelis since September 11th, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes. ARI FLEISCHER: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with it. I’m not familiar with the report. COLIN POWELL: I’m aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they are being detained and the other aspects of your question, whether it’s because they are in intelligence services or what they were doing, I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that. CARL CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained and many deported since September 11th, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year. In what government documents describe as, “An organized intelligence gathering operation designed to “penetrate government facilities.” Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there, but they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise and either worked for AMDOCS or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week the Israeli Embassy here in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States. [. . .] BRIT HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something? CARL CAMERON: Well it’s very explosive information obviously and there is a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected. None of it necessarily conclusive. It’s more when they put it all together a big question they say is, “How could they have not have known?” Almost a direct quote, Brit. (SOURCE: Israeli software spying on US – FOX – Dec 2001) The most phenomenal part of this report is not that it was eventually erased from the web by Fox News itself, but that it ever made it to the air at all. In December of 2001, Fox News investigative reporter Carl Cameron filed an explosive 4-part series that went in-depth into an Israeli art student spying ring that had been under investigation before 9/11, extensive Israeli wiretapping of sensitive US government communications, and the 60 Israeli spies that were detained in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Unsurprisingly, the story was quickly dropped and no mainstream journalists dared to continue probing into the matter. This is the real story of Israeli spies and 9/11; not some vague rumours about some dancing Israelis but an FBI dragnet that swept up the largest foreign spying ring ever caught red-handed on American soil. And although the FBI were convinced that these spies knew about 9/11 in advance, their investigations were stifled and the issue was swept under the rug. Rather than making Israel enemy number one in the war on terror, Israel remains to this day the US’ “most important ally.” HILLARY CLINTON: And if I’m fortunate enough to be elected President, the United States will re-affirm we have a strong and enduring national interest in Israels security. (SOURCE: Hillary Clinton AIPAC Full Speech – March, 2016) DONALD TRUMP: In 2001, weeks after the attacks on New York City and on Washington and frankly the attacks on all of us, attacks that were perpetrated by the Islamic fundamentalists, Mayor Rudy Giuliani visited Israel to show solidarity with terror victims. I sent my plane because I backed the mission for Israel 100%. (SOURCE: Donald Trump AIPAC Full Speech – March, 2016) But perhaps this is understandable. After all, we all remember how Yasser Arafat gloated about 9/11 and said it was good for Palestinians, right? Oh wait, that wasn’t Yasser Arafat. It was Benjamin Netanyahu. AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli newspaper, Maariv, has reported Israels former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly said the September 11th attacks have been good for Israel. Netanyahu said: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” (SOURCE:“Sept 11 was good for Israel” – Democracy Now – April 17, 2008) DONALD TRUMP: My name is Donald Trump and I’m a big fan of Israel. And frankly a strong Prime Minister, is a strong Israel and you truly have a great Prime Minister in Benajim Netanyahu, there’s nobody like him. He’s a winner, he’s highly respected, he’s highly thought of by all. And people really do have great, great respect for whats happened in Israel. So vote for Benjamin, terrific guy, terrific leader, great for Israel. (SOURCE: Donald Trump Endorsement for Prime Minister Netanyahu) Given that the ultimate consequence of 9/11 was the beginning of a now 15 year long struggle to transform the Middle East, a struggle that the neocons that went on to populate the Bush administration had been openly advocating since the “Clean Break” policy paper in the mid-1990s, it isn’t hard to see how the September 11th attacks were indeed a boon for Israel. But information linking Israeli spies to advance knowledge of 9/11 remains “classified information.” In a world of true justice, the dancing Israelis and other Israeli spies with insider advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, who openly celebrated those attacks, would be the targets of the “war on terror,” not its beneficiaries. |
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