443 Professor Richard Falk joins the 9/11 Dissidents

Professor Richard Falk joins the 9/11 Dissidents

(1) Richard Falk & 9/11
(2) Richard Falk doubts 9/11 orthodoxy, citing David Ray Griffin & other scholars
(3) UN chief condemns Richard Falk's comments on 9/11 cover-up
(4) Richard Falk Reponds to The Lobby's Vilification
(5) Call to Arms against UN Rapporteur Richard Falk over 9/11
(6) Insider Trading before 9/11
(7) German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals
(8) British intelligence report: Mossad ran 9/11 Arab hijacker cells - Wayne Madsen
(9) Cell phone calls from Flight 93 were impossible. Without those hoax calls, we would not have blamed Arabs
(10) Chilcot Inquiry like 9/11 Commission - both included a pro-war Jewish Zionist historian
(11) 9/11 Families Ask: Why did WTC7 collapse?
(12) Giuliani meets Olmert, declares, "We're together with you. We are bound by blood"
(13) Huffington Post refuses Jesse Ventura article arguing 9-11 was a conspiracy
(14) Guess Who Michael Moore's Agent Is?
(15) Persecuted FEMA 9-11 Photographer Fights Extradition
(16) Huge building burns in South Korea – does not collapse
(17) Harvard paper recommends "Cognitive infiltration" of Dissident groups by Government agents

(1) Richard Falk & 9/11 - Peter Myers, January 29, 2011
Richard Falk is probably the most eminent person who has taken a Dissident position 9/11. He's not the only Professor to do so - rather, one of many - but it is his diplomatic position is what makes him special. This also means that he will be subjected to extreme pressure - and that he has already shown great courage.

For an introduction to 9/11, please see my webpage http://mailstar.net/wtc.html.

I have much material there attesting that Mohamed Atta was a Mossad agent. For example, his girlfriend said, on video, that he could speak Hebrew.

Item 8 is a Wayne Madsen report, based - he says - on a British intelligence report - that Mossad agents ran the Arab hijacker cells. Specifically, that Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated "Al Qaeda" cells and then took them over; the Arab members thought they were working for Bin Laden.

In the first part of the report, dated January 24, there's no mention of Atta being a Mossad agent. But in an UPDATE of January 25, Madsen says he's been informed of this.

Item 17 reports a strategy for countering "Conspiracy theories" - devised at Harvard University - through "Cognitive infiltration" by Government agents

(2) Richard Falk doubts 9/11 orthodoxy, citing David Ray Griffin & other scholars

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/13/interrogating-the-arizona-killings-from-a-safe-distance/

Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance

by Richard Falk

January 13, 2011

I spent a year in Sweden a few years after the assassination of Olaf Palme in 1986, the controversial former prime minister of the country who, at the time of his death, was serving as a member of the Swedish cabinet. He was assassinated while walking with his wife back to his apartment in the historic part of the city after attending a nearby movie. It was a shocking event in a Sweden that had prided itself on moderateness in politics and the avoidance of involvement in the wars of the twentieth century. A local drifter, with a history of alcoholism, was charged and convicted of the crime, but many doubts persisted, including on the part of Ms. Palme, who analogized her situation to that of Coretta King, who never believed the official version of her martyred husband's death.

I had a particular interest in this national traumatic event as my reason for being in Sweden was a result of an invitation to be the Olaf Palme Professor, a rotating academic post given each year to a foreign scholar, established by the Swedish Parliament as a memorial to their former leader (after the Social Democratic Party lost political control in Sweden this professorship was promptly defunded, partly because Palme was unloved by conservatives and partly because of a neoliberal dislike for public support of such activities).

In the course of my year traveling around Sweden, I often asked those whom I met what was there view of the assassination, and what I discovered was that the responses told me more about them than it did about the public event. Some thought it was a dissident faction in the Swedish security forces long angered by Palme's neutralist policies; some believed it was resentment caused by Palme's alleged engineering of Swedish arms sales to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s; some believed it was the CIA in revenge for Palme's neutralism during the Cold War; some believed it could have criminals in the pay of business tycoons tired of paying high taxes needed to maintain the Swedish maximalist version of a welfare state; and there were other theories as well. What was common to all of these explanations was the lack of evidence that might connect the dots. What people believed happened flowed from their worldview rather than the facts of the event—a distrust of the state, especially its secret operations, or a strong conviction that special interests hidden from view were behind prominent public events of this character.

In a way, this process of reflection is natural, even inevitable, but it leads to faulty conclusions. We tend to process information against the background of our general worldview and understanding, and we do this all the time as an efficient way of coping with the complexity of the world combined with our lack of time or inclination to reach conclusions by independent investigation. The problem arises when we confuse this means of interpreting our experience with an effort to provide an explanation of a contested public event. There are, to be sure, conspiracies that promote unacknowledged goals, and enjoy the benefit of government protection. We don't require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.

The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since 2001. What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.

This brings me to the Arizona shootings, victimizing both persons apparently targeted for their political views and random people who happened to be there for one reason or another, innocently paying their respects to a congresswoman meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. As with the Palme assassination, the most insistent immediate responses come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence.

On one side are those who say that right-wing hate speech and affection for guns were clearly responsible, while Tea Party ultra-conservatives and their friends reaffirm their rights of free speech, denying that there is any connection between denouncing their adversaries in the political process and the violent acts of a deranged individual seemingly acting on his own. If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and get the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.

Such an investigation would contrast with the official '9/11 Commission' that proceeded with most holds barred. What has been already disturbing about the Arizona incident are these rival rushes to judgment without bothering with evidence. Such public irresponsibility polarizes political discourse, making conversation and serious debate irrelevant.

There is one more issue raised, with typical candor and innocence, by the filmmaker, Michael Moore. If a Muslim group had published a list of twenty political leaders in this country, and put crosshairs of a gun behind their pictures, is there any doubt that the Arizona events would be treated as the work of a terrorist, and the group that had pre-identified such targets immediately outlawed as a terrorist organization? Many of us, myself included, fervently hoped, upon hearing the news of the shootings, that the perpetrator of this violence was neither a Muslim nor a Hispanic, especially an illegal immigrant. Why? Because we justly feared the kind of horrifying backlash that would have been probably generated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, and their legion of allies. Now that the apparent perpetrator is a young white American, the talk from the hate mongers, again without bothering with evidence, is of mental disorder and sociopathology. This is faith-based pre-Enlightenment 'knowledge.'

What must we learn from all of this? Don't connect dots without evidence. Don't turn away as soon as the words 'conspiracy theory' are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe. Don't link individual wrongdoing, however horrific, to wider religious and ethnic identities. We will perish as a species if we don't learn soon to live together better on our beautiful, globalizing, and imperiled planet.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Read more articles by Richard Falk.
http://richardfalk.wordpress.com

(3) UN chief condemns Richard Falk's comments on 9/11 cover-up

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 26.01.2011 12:54 PM
Subject: UN chief condemns Richard Falk's comments on 9/11 cover-up

[Hillel Neuer is the Executive Director of UN Watch…the Geneva based international version of ADL of Abraham Fox or Middle East Forum/Jihad Watch run by Daniel Pipes that challenges anyone who criticizes Israel's oppression of Palestinians. UN Watch was established in 1993 under the Chairmanship of Ambassador Morris B. Abram, the former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. Below is a recent statement from Mr. Neuer]

"The UN's obsession with Israel not only harms Israel, it harms the peace process, and it harms the UN as a whole," said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. "It prevents the UN from being effective for human rights victims who never get their day of international attention." -- Interview on Russia Today TV, Dec. 30, 2010.

UN Watch's open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Ban Ki Moon is letting the Israel-bashers of the Human Rights Council make the UN look bad," NY Daily News, January 21, 2011. ______

U.N. chief condemns rights expert's 9/11 comments

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70O05O20110125

UNITED NATIONS | Mon Jan 24, 2011

(Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned "preposterous" comments by a U.N.-appointed expert on Palestinian rights that there was a cover-up over the September 11 attacks, Ban's chief of staff said on Monday.

The official, Vijay Nambiar, said however that it was not up to Ban to fire the expert, U.S. academic Richard Falk, as demanded by UN Watch, a Geneva-based advocacy group.

Falk wrote in a blog this month that there had been an "apparent cover-up" by U.S. authorities over the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.

He said mainstream media had been "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."

In a letter to Ban last Thursday, UN Watch director Hillel Neuer called on the U.N. chief to "strongly condemn Mr. Falk's offensive remarks -- and ... immediately remove him from his post."

A letter of reply from Nambiar said Ban "condemns (Falk's) remarks. He has repeatedly stated his view that any such suggestion is preposterous -- and an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack."

Nambiar said Falk and other rights experts were not appointed by Ban but by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, a 47-nation body created by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006. "Their continuance in their jobs is thus for the Council to decide," he added.

UN Watch says on its website it is a non-governmental organization, accredited with the United Nations and affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, that aims to monitor U.N. performance against the yardstick of the U.N. Charter.

It supports U.N. goals but frequently criticizes the Human Rights Council, saying it constantly berates Israel but ignores many rights violations by developing countries. It has often targeted Falk, the council's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, for anti-Israeli comments.

In a statement, Neuer welcomed Nambiar's letter but said the Human Rights Council could not be trusted to fire Falk. He said Ban and U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay had "the power and responsibility to play an influential and decisive role."

(4) Richard Falk Reponds to The Lobby's Vilification

From: chris lenczner <chrispaul@netpci.com> Date: 29.01.2011 07:56 PM
Subject: Richard Falk Reponds to The Lobby's Vilification

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/01/27/richard-falk-reponds-to-the-lobbys-vilification/

By Richard Falk in Foreign Policy Journal

January 28, 2011

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/28/supplemental-blog-on-arizona-shootings/

Because my blog prompted by the Arizona shootings <http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/13/interrogating-the-arizona-killings-from-a-safe-distance/> has attracted many comments pro and con, and more recently has been the object of a more selective public attack on me personally, I thought it appropriate to post a supplementary blog with the purpose of clarifying my actual position and re-focusing attention on the plight and suffering of the Palestinian people being held in captivity. In the background, are crucial issues of free speech, fairness in public discourse, and responsible media treatment of sensitive and controversial affairs of state.

Both the UN Secretary General and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations harshly criticized some remarks in my personal blog that mentioned the 9/11 attacks. They referred to the views expressed there as 'despicable and deeply offensive,' 'noxious, 'inflammatory,' and 'preposterous.' Their comments were apparently made in response to a letter written to the UN Secretary General by the head of UN Monitor, a Geneva-based highly partisan NGO, that called misleading attention to this passage in the blog. Ambassador Rice called for my dismissal from my unpaid post as an independent Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council with a mandate to report upon the Israeli observance of "human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."

For anyone who read the blog post in its entirety, it should be plain that the reference to the 9/11 issues is both restrained and tangential. What is stressed in the blog is the importance of carefully examining evidence before drawing conclusions about political and legal responsibility for highly sensitive public acts, and the importance for the serenity of the society of achieving closure in a responsible manner. I never endorsed doubts about the official version of 9/11 beyond indicating what anyone who has objectively examined the controversy knows — that there remain certain gaps in the official explanation that give rise to an array of conspiratorial explanations, and that the 9/11 Commission unfortunately did not put these concerns to rest. My plea was intended to encourage addressing these gaps in a credible manner, nothing more, nothing less. I certainly meant no disrespect toward the collective memory of 9/11 in the country and elsewhere. On the contrary, my intention was to encourage an investigation that might finally achieve closure with respect to doubts that remain prevalent among important sectors of the public, including among some 9/11 families.

What seems apparent from this incident, which is itself disturbing, is that any acknowledgement of doubt about the validity of the official version of the 9/11 events, while enjoying the legal protection of free speech, is denied the political and moral protection that are essential if an atmosphere of free speech worthy of a democracy is to be maintained. When high officials can brand someone who raises some doubts in the most cautious language as 'an enemy of the people,' then there are either things to hide or a defensive fury that is out of all proportion to the provocation. To seek further inquiry into the unanswered questions about 9/11 is surely not an unreasonable position

What is dismaying to me is that neither the office of the Secretary General nor the U.S. Mission to the United Nation made any effort to contact me to seek clarification of my remarks on these issues that are not connected with my UN role prior to making their insulting criticisms damaging to my reputation. I would think that as a representative of the UN and a citizen of the United States, I am at least entitled to this minimal courtesy, and more substantially, that whatever criticisms are made are based on what I said rather than on a manifestly inflammatory letter written by the UN Monitor, that has made a habit of publicly attacking me in consistently irresponsible and untruthful ways, presumably with the intention of diverting attention from my criticisms of Israel's occupation policies in the Palestinian territories. It is always more tempting to shoot the messenger than heed the message. A similar tactic, what I call 'the politics of deflection' was deployed over a year ago in a shabby attempt to discredit the distinguished South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, a person of impeccable credentials as an international public servant. The intention was again to avoid a proper focus upon the devastating findings and recommendations of the Goldstone Report submitted to the United Nations after conducting a scrupulous inquiry into the allegations of violation of law associated with the Israeli attacks on Gaza between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009.

I remain determined to report as fully and honestly as possible about the massive human rights violations confronting Palestinians who have now lived without rights under occupation for more than 43 years, and to do my best not to let such personal attacks impair my capacity to carry out the assignment that I was invited to perform by the UN.

What the United States Government, the Secretary-General and the media should be focused on is the ongoing, widespread and systematic violation of Palestinians' human rights by Israel. Only since the beginning of 2011, at least four Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli forces and more than 33 others have been injured. This is in addition to the expansion of settlements, home demolitions, forced evictions and displacement of Palestinian families, revocation of residency permits and forced transfers, particularly devastating in East Jerusalem, detention and mistreatment of over 6000 Palestinians, including children, as well as the illegal blockade of Gaza. My forthcoming report to the Human Rights Council addresses these and other severe ongoing violations of Palestinian rights by Israel.

- Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Read more articles by Richard Falk.
http://richardfalk.wordpress.com

(5) Call to Arms against UN Rapporteur Richard Falk over 9/11

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/28/why-the-fuss-the-call-to-arms-against-un-rapporteur-richard-falk-for-alluding-to-gaps-in-the-911-official-story/

Why the Fuss? The Call to Arms against UN Rapporteur Richard Falk for Alluding to Gaps in the 9/11 Official Story

by Elizabeth Woodworth

January 28, 2011

A former Princeton international law professor has been condemned by the UN Secretary General and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for alluding to "an apparent cover-up" of the events of September 11th, 2001.

On January 11, 2011, UN Special Envoy to Palestine Richard Falk posted on his personal blog an article entitled "Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance."[1]

Dr. Falk made a tangential point in his blog-post that governments too often abuse their authority by treating "awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets".

To illustrate the point, he referred to gaps and contradictions in the official account of the 9/11 attacks, which have been documented in the scholarly works of Dr. David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of philosophy of religion and theology.

"What seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred," wrote Falk.

On January 20th, executive director Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, a European NGO, called upon UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the remarks made by Falk, and to fire him, claiming that Falk had "endorsed the conspiracy theory that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government and not Al Qaeda terrorists." [2]

On January 24th, in a reply to Hillel Neuer, Vijay Nambiar, Ban Ki-moon's Chief of Staff, responded that the Secretary-General "condemns these remarks. He has repeatedly stated his view that any such suggestion is preposterous — and an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack."[3]

The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, called for Falk's removal, stating that "Mr. Falk's comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them in the strongest terms." [4]

Surely, in light of what Falk actually said, these indignant cries on behalf of the victims seem more than a little apoplectic.

If Falk's suggestions were so "preposterous" and "offensive", they might have been dismissed as the ravings of a madman.

So why did officials bring out their cannons to shoot at a sparrow?

Well, turning to the work of Professor Griffin we find that there were 115 omissions and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report, though Falk did not, in his brief remarks, provide details. [5]

A search of the Internet reveals 12 professional organizations calling for a new investigation, including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (with over 1,400 professional members), Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Military Officers for 9/11 Truth, and Scientists for 9/11 Truth.

In August, 2005, the New York Times printed the oral testimonies of 118 firefighters and emergency workers who reported stunning, graphic evidence of enormous explosions, including mysterious blasts in the deep sub-basements of the buildings long before the towers fell.[6]

More recently, a nine-author peer-reviewed study, which showed that the World Trade Center dust appeared to contain residue of explosive material (nanothermite), made headlines for the first week of February 2010 in major Danish newspapers. [7]

This news never reached the North American media.

A December 2010 poll by the prestigious Emnid Institute showed that 89.5% of Germans doubt the US official story about the September 11th attacks.[8]

The 9/11 commissioners themselves, in a 2008 op-ed piece to the New York Times, bemoaned the withholding of witness evidence to the 9/11 Commission by the CIA: "What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction." [9]

Perhaps this sparrow is worth a cannon or two.

In other words, was Falk attacked so strongly to try to make people fear suggesting in public even the possibility that the official story is problematic?

Notes

[1] Richard Falk. "Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance." http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/interrogating-the-arizona-killings-from-a-safe-distance/

[2] "U.N. Chief Urged to Fire Official for Promoting 9/11 Conspiracy Theory" http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=9039887

[3] Letter to Mr. Neuer, January 24, 2011, http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/01/25/ngo-says-richard-falk-has-zero-credibility-urges-un-chief-to-fire-him/

[4] Rice calls for removal of U.N.'s Palestine rapporteur, JTA, January 26, 2011, http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/26/2742718/rice-calls-for-removal-of-uns-palestine-rapporteur

[5] David Ray Griffin. The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Olive Branch Press, 2004.

[6] "The September 11 Records," New York Times, August 12, 2005, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html

[7] Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al., "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 (April 3, 2009): 7-31 http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf.

[8] "Exklusiv-Umfrage des Wissensmagazins Welt der Wunder: Wem glauben die Deutschen noch?" December 22, 2010, http://www.bauermedia.de/weltderwunder.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=750&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4&cHash=6e15318bbc#content

[9] Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, "Stonewalled by the C.I.A.," New York Times, January 2, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html

(6) Insider Trading before 9/11

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/18/evidence-for-informed-trading-on-the-attacks-of-september-11/

Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11

by Kevin Ryan

November 18, 2010

Just after September 11th 2001, many governments began investigations into possible insider trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day. Such investigations were initiated by the governments of Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, and others. Although the investigators were clearly concerned about insider trading, and considerable evidence did exist, none of the investigations resulted in a single indictment. That's because the people identified as having been involved in the suspicious trades were seen as unlikely to have been associated with those alleged to have committed the 9/11 crimes.

This is an example of the circular logic often used by those who created the official explanations for 9/11. The reasoning goes like this: if we assume that we know who the perpetrators were (i.e. the popular version of "al Qaeda") and those who were involved in the trades did not appear to be connected to those assumed perpetrators, then insider trading did not occur.

That's basically what the 9/11 Commission told us. The Commission concluded that "exhaustive investigations" by the SEC and the FBI "uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions." What they meant was that someone did profit through securities transactions but, based on the Commission's assumptions of guilt, those who profited were not associated with those who were guilty of conducting the attacks. In a footnote, the Commission report acknowledged "highly suspicious trading on its face," but said that this trading on United Airlines was traced back to "A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda."[1]

With respect to insider trading, or what is more technically called informed trading, the Commission report was itself suspect for several reasons. First, the informed trades relating to 9/11 covered far more than just airline company stock. The stocks of financial and reinsurance companies, as well as other financial vehicles, were identified as being associated with suspicious trades. Huge credit card transactions, completed just before the attacks, were also involved. The Commission ultimately tried to frame all of this highly suspicious trading in terms of a series of misunderstandings. However, the possibility that so many leading financial experts were so completely wrong is doubtful at best and, if true, would constitute another unbelievable scenario in the already highly improbable sequence of events represented by the official story of 9/11.

In the last few years, new evidence has come to light on these matters. In 2006 and 2010, financial experts at a number of universities have established new evidence, through statistical analyses, that informed trades did occur with respect to the 9/11 attacks. Additionally, in 2007, the 911 Commission released a memorandum summary of the FBI investigations on which its report was based.[2] A careful review of this memorandum indicates that some of the people who were briefly investigated by the FBI, and then acquitted without due diligence, had links to al Qaeda and to US intelligence agencies. Although the elapsed time between the informed trades and these new confirmations might prevent legal action against the guilty, the facts of the matter can help lead us to the truth about 9/11.

Early signs

Within a week of the attacks, Germany's stock market regulator, BAWe, began looking into claims of suspicious trading.[3] That same week, Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Martino, made it clear that he had concerns by issuing this public statement: "I think that there are terrorist states and organisations behind speculation on the international markets."[4]

Within two weeks of the attacks, CNN reported that regulators were seeing "ever-clearer signs" that someone "manipulated financial markets ahead of the terror attack in the hope of profiting from it." Belgian Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, said that there were strong suspicions that British markets were used for transactions.[5] The CIA was reported to have asked the British regulators to investigate some of the trades.[6] Unfortunately, the British regulator, The Financial Services Authority, wrote off its investigation by simply clearing "bin Laden and his henchmen of insider trading."[7]

Conversely, German central bank president, Ernst Welteke, said his bank conducted a study that strongly indicated "terrorism insider trading" associated with 9/11. He stated that his researchers had found "almost irrefutable proof of insider trading."[8] Welteke suggested that the insider trading occurred not only in shares of companies affected by the attacks, such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. [9]

The extent of the 9/11-related informed trading was unprecedented. An ABC News Consultant, Jonathan Winer, said, "it's absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to Europe."[10]

By October 2001, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the four other options exchanges in the US had joined forces with the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate a list of 38 stocks, as well as multiple options and Treasury bonds, that were flagged in relation to potential informed trades. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt gave testimony to the House Financial Services Committee at the time, saying, "We will do everything in our power to track those people down and bring them to justice."[11]

Mary Bender, chief regulatory officer at the CBOE, stated "We've never really had anything like this, [the option exchanges are] using the same investigative tools as we would in an insider-trading case. The point is to find people who are connected to these heinous crimes."

The people ultimately found included an unnamed customer of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown (DBAB). This involved a trade on United Airlines (UAL) stock consisting of a 2,500-contract order that was, for some reason, split into chunks of 500 contracts each and then directed to multiple exchanges around the country simultaneously.[12] When the 9/11 Commission report pointed to a "single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda," it was referring to either DBAB or its customer in that questionable trade.

Michael Ruppert has since written about DBAB, noting that the company had previously been a financier of The Carlyle Group and also of Brown Brothers Harriman, both of which are companies closely related to the Bush family. Ruppert also noted that Alex. Brown, the company purchased by Deutsche Bank to become DBAB, was managed by A.B. (Buzzy) Krongard, who left the firm in 1998 to join the CIA as counsel to director George Tenet.[13] Krongard had been a consultant to CIA director James Woolsey in the mid 1990s and, on September 11th, he was the Executive Director of the CIA, the third highest position in the agency.

Stock and Treasury bonds traded

In 2002, investigator Kyle Hence wrote about the stocks involved in the SEC's target list. Those that had the highest examples of trade volume over the average were UAL [285 times over average], Marsh & McLennan (Marsh) [93 times over average], American Airlines (AMR) [60 times over average], and Citigroup [45 times over average].[14] Other stocks flagged included financial firms, defense-related companies, and the reinsurance firms Munich Re, Swiss Re and the AXA Group. Put options for these reinsurance firms, or bets that the stock would drop, were placed at double the normal levels in the few days before the attacks. Regulators were concerned about "large block trades" on these stocks because the three firms were liable for billions in insurance payouts due to the damage inflicted on 9/11.[15]

{comment (Peter Myers): The Marsh & McLennan homepage says, "Marsh & McLennan companies are among the world's leading global advice and solutions providers in risk, strategy and human capital." http://www.mmc.com/}

The four highest-volume suspect stocks — UAL, Marsh, AMR and Citigroup — were closely linked to the attacks of 9/11. The two airline companies each had two planes hijacked and destroyed. Marsh was located in the exact 8 floors out of 110 in the north tower of the WTC where Flight 11 impacted and the fires occurred. Citigroup was the parent of Travelers Insurance, which was expected to see $500 million in claims, and also Salomon Smith Barney, which occupied all but ten floors in World Trade Center (WTC) building 7. Oddly enough, Salomon Smith Barney had both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on its advisory board until January 2001.

Marsh occupied a number of floors in the south tower as well. This is where the office of Marsh executive, L. Paul Bremer, was located. Bremer was a former managing director at Kissinger Associates and had just completed leading a national terrorism commission in 2000. The San Francisco Chronicle noted that Bremer was a source of early claims that rich Arabs were financing Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. In an article on the 9/11 informed trades, the Chronicle reported that "The former chairman of the State Department's National Commission on Terrorism, L. Paul Bremer, said he obtained classified government analyses early last year of bin Laden's finances confirming the assistance of affluent Middle Easterners."[16]

On the day of 9/11, Bremer was interviewed by NBC News and stated that he believed Osama bin Laden was responsible and that possibly Iraq and Iran were involved too, and he called for the most severe military response possible. For unknown reasons, Google removed the interview video from its servers three times, and blocked it once.[17]

The trading of Treasury bonds just before 9/11 was also flagged as being suspicious. Reporters from The Wall street Journal wrote that the "U.S. Secret Service contacted a number of bond traders regarding large purchases of five-year Treasury notes before the attacks, according to people familiar with the probe. The investigators, acting on a tip from traders, are examining whether terrorists, or people affiliated with terrorist organizations, bought five-year notes, including a single $5 billion trade."[18]

Some reports claimed that the 9/11 informed trades were such that millions of dollars were made, and some of that went unclaimed. [19] Others suggested that the trades resulted in the winning of billions of dollars in profits. One such suggestion was made by the former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, who said that the value of the informed trades was on the order of $15 billion.[20]

The FBI Investigations

In May 2007, a 9/11 Commission document that summarized the FBI investigations into potential 9/11-related informed trading was declassified. [21] This document was redacted to remove the names of two FBI agents from the New York office, and to remove the names of select suspects in the informed trading investigations. The names of other FBI agents and suspects were left in. Regardless, some information can be gleaned from the document to help reveal the trades and traders investigated.

On September 21, 2001, the SEC referred two specific transactions to the FBI for criminal investigation as potential informed trades. One of those trades was a September 6, 2001 purchase of 56,000 shares of a company called Stratesec, which in the few years before 9/11 was a security contractor for several of the facilities that were compromised on 9/11. These facilities included the WTC buildings, Dulles airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off, and also United Airlines, which owned two of the other three ill-fated planes.

The affected 56,000 shares of Stratesec stock were purchased by a director of the company, Wirt D. Walker III, and his wife Sally Walker. This is clear from the memorandum generated to record the FBI summary of the trades investigated.[22] The Stratesec stock that the Walkers purchased doubled in value in the one trading day between September 11th and when the stock market reopened on September 17th. The Commission memorandum suggests that the trade generated a profit of $50,000 for the Walkers. Unfortunately, the FBI did not interview either of the Walkers and they were both cleared of any wrongdoing because they were said to have "no ties to terrorism or other negative information." [23]

However, Wirt Walker was connected to people who had connections to al Qaeda. For example, Stratesec director James Abrahamson was the business partner of Mansoor Ijaz, who claimed on several occasions to be able to contact Osama bin Laden.[24] Additionally, Walker hired a number of Stratesec employees away from a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group called BDM International, which ran secret (black) projects for government agencies. The Carlyle Group was partly financed by members of the bin Laden family.[25] Mr. Walker ran a number of suspicious companies that went bankrupt, including Stratesec, some of which were underwritten by a company run by a first cousin of former CIA director (and President) George H.W. Bush. Additionally, Walker was the child of a CIA employee and his first job was at an investment firm run by former US intelligence guru, James "Russ" Forgan, where he worked with another former CIA director, William Casey.[26] Of course, Osama bin Laden had links to the CIA as well.[27]

Another trade investigated by the FBI, on request from the SEC, focused on Amir Ibrahim Elgindy, an Egyptian-born, San Diego stock advisor who on the day before 9/11 had allegedly attempted to liquidate $300,000 in assets through his broker at Salomon Smith Barney. During the attempted liquidation, Elgindy was said to have "predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000."[28]

The 9/11 Commission memorandum suggests that the FBI never interviewed Mr. Elgindy either, and had planned to exonerate him because there was "no evidence he was seeking to establish a position whereby he would profit from the terrorist attacks." Apparently, the prediction of a precipitous drop in the stock market, centered on the events of 9/11, was not sufficient cause for the FBI to interview the suspect.

In late May 2002, Elgindy was arrested along with four others, including an FBI agent and a former FBI agent, and charged with conspiracy to manipulate stock prices and extort money from companies. The FBI agents, Jeffrey A Royer and Lynn Wingate, were said to have "used their access to F.B.I. databases to monitor the progress of the criminal investigation against Mr. Elgindy."[29] A federal prosecutor later accused Elgindy, who also went by several aliases, of having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Although the judge in that case did not agree with the prosecutor on the 9/11 informed trading accusation, Mr. Elgindy was eventually convicted, in 2005, of multiple crimes including racketeering, securities fraud, and making false statements.

The Boston office of the FBI investigated stock trades related to two companies. The first was Viisage Technologies, a facial recognition company that stood to benefit from an increase in terrorism legislation. The Viisage purchase, made by a former employee of the Saudi American Bank, "revealed no connection with 9/11." However, the Saudi American Bank was named in a lawsuit brought by the 9/11 victims' families due to the bank having — "financed development projects in Sudan benefiting bin Laden in the early 1990s."[30]

The second company investigated by the Boston FBI office was Wellington Management, a company that allegedly held a large account for Osama bin Laden. The FBI found that Wellington Management maintained an account for "members of the bin Laden family" but dropped the investigation because it could not link this to "Osama, al Qaeda, or terrorism."[31]

Although the connections to al Qaeda in three of these cases (Walker, the Viisage trader, and Wellington Management) can be seen as circumstantial, the amount of such evidence is considerable. The quality of the FBI investigations, considering the suspects were not even interviewed, was therefore much less than "exhaustive", as the 9/11 Commission characterized it.

The summary of FBI investigations released by the 9/11 Commission also described how the Commission questioned the FBI about damaged computer hard drives that might have been recovered from the WTC. This questioning was the result of "press reports [contending] that large volumes of suspicious transactions flowed through the computers housed in the WTC on the morning of 9/11 as part of some illicit but ill-defined effort to profit from the attacks."[32] The Commission came to the conclusion that no such activity occurred because "the assembled agents expressed no knowledge of the reported hard-drive recovery effort" and "everything at the WTC was pulverized to near powder, making it extremely unlikely that any hard-drives survived."

The truth, however, is that many such hard-drives were recovered from the WTC and were sent to specialist companies to be cleaned and have data recovered. A German company named Convar did a good deal of the recovery work.

In December 2001, Reuters reported that "Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings." Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at Convar, testified that "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 main frames were destroyed." Director of Convar, Peter Henschel, said that it was "not only the volume, but the size of the transactions [that] was far higher than usual for a day like that."[33]

By late December 2001, Convar had completed processing 39 out of 81 drives, and expected to receive 20 more WTC hard drives the next month. Obviously, the 911 Commission memorandum drafted in August 2003 was not particularly reliable considering it reported that the FBI and the 911 Commission had no knowledge of any of this.

Statistical confirmations

Considering that the FBI and 9/11 Commission overlooked the suspicious connections of informed trading suspects like Wirt Walker, and also claimed in 2003 to have no knowledge of hard drive recoveries publicly reported in 2001, we must assume that they did a poor job of investigating. Today, however, we know that several peer-reviewed academic papers have reported solid evidence that informed trades did occur. That is, the conclusions reached by the official investigations have now been shown, through scientific analysis, to be quite wrong.

In 2006, a professor of Finance from the University of Illinois named Allen Poteshman published an analysis of the airline stock option trades preceding the attacks. This study came to the conclusion that an indicator of long put volume was "unusually high which is consistent with informed investors having traded in the option market in advance of the attacks."[34] Long puts are bets that a stock or option will fall in price.

The unusually high volume of long puts, purchased on UAL and AMR stock before these stocks declined dramatically due to the 9/11 attacks, are evidence that the traders knew that the stocks would decline. Using statistical techniques to evaluate conditional and unconditional distributions of historical stock option activity, Professor Poteshman showed that the data indicate that informed trading did occur.

In January 2010, a team of financial experts from Switzerland published evidence for at least thirteen informed trades in which the investors appeared to have had foreknowledge of the attacks. This study focused again on a limited number of companies but, of those, the informed trades centered on five airline companies and four financial companies. The airline companies were American Airlines, United Airlines and Boeing. Three of the financial companies involved were located in the WTC towers and the fourth was Citigroup, which stood to lose doubly as the parent of both Travelers Insurance and the WTC 7 tenant, Salomon Smith Barney.[35]

More recently, in April 2010, an international team of experts examined trading activities of options on the Standard & Poors 500 index, as well as a volatility index of the CBOE called VIX. These researchers showed that there was a significant abnormal increase in trading volume in the option market just before the 9/11 attacks, and they demonstrated that this was in contrast to the absence of abnormal trading volume over periods long before the attacks. The study also showed that the relevant abnormal increase in trading volume was not simply due to a declining market.[36] Their findings were "consistent with insiders anticipating the 9-11 attacks."

Conclusion

In the early days just after 9/11, financial regulators around the world gave testimony to unprecedented evidence for informed trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day. One central bank president (Welteke) said there was irrefutable proof of such trading. This evidence led US regulators to vow, in Congressional testimony, to bring those responsible to justice. Those vows were not fulfilled, as the people in charge of the investigations let the suspects off the hook by conducting weak inquiries and concluding that informed trading could not have occurred if it was not done directly by Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda.

The "exhaustive investigations" conducted by the FBI, on which the 9/11 Commission report was based, were clearly bogus. The FBI did not interview the suspects and did not appear to compare notes with the 9/11 Commission to help make a determination if any of the people being investigated might have had ties to al Qaeda. The Commission's memorandum summary suggests that the FBI simply made decisions on its own regarding the possible connections of the suspects and the alleged terrorist organizations. Those unilateral decisions were not appropriate, as at least three of the suspected informed trades (those of Walker, the Viisage trader, and Wellington Management) involved reasonably suspicious links to Osama bin Laden or his family. Another suspect (Elgindy) was a soon-to-be convicted criminal who had direct links to FBI employees who were later arrested for securities-related crimes.

The FBI also claimed in August 2003 that it had no knowledge of hard drives recovered from the WTC, which were publicly reported in 2001. According to the people who retrieved the associated data, the hard drives gave evidence for "dirty doomsday dealings."

The evidence for informed trading on 9/11 includes many financial vehicles, from stock options to Treasury bonds to credit card transactions made at the WTC just before it was destroyed. Today we know that financial experts from around the world have provided strong evidence, through established and reliable statistical techniques, that the early expert suspicions were correct, and that 9/11 informed trading did occur.

People knew in advance about the crimes of 9/11, and they profited from that knowledge. Those people are among us today, and our families and communities are at risk of future terrorist attacks and further criminal profiteering if we do not respond to the evidence. It is time for an independent, international investigation into the informed trades and the traders who benefited from the terrorist acts of September 11th.

Notes

[1] National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, July 2004, p 172, and Chapter 5, footnote 130, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf

[2] 9/11 Commission memorandum entitled "FBI Briefing on Trading", prepared by Doug Greenburg, 18 August 2003, http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00269.pdf

[3] Dave Carpenter, Exchange examines odd jump: Before attack: Many put options of hijacked planes' parent companies purchased , The Associated Press, 18 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/cjonline_oddjump.html

[4] BBC News, Bin Laden 'share gains' probe, 18 September 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1548118.stm

[5] Tom Bogdanowicz and Brooks Jackson, Probes into 'suspicious' trading, CNN, 24 September 2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20011114023845/http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/24/gen.europe.shortselling/

[6] James Doran, Insider Trading Apparently Based on Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks, The London Times, 18 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/londontimes_insidertrading.html

[7] David Brancaccio, Marketplace Public Radio: News Archives, 17 October 2001, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2001/10/17_mpp.html

[8] Paul Thompson and The Center for Cooperative Research, Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 – and America's Response, Harper Collins, 2004. Also found at History Commons, Complete 9/11 Timeline, Insider Trading and Other Foreknowledge http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=insidertrading

[9] Associated Press, EU Searches for Suspicious Trading , 22 September 2001, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34910,00.html

[10] World News Tonight, 20 September 2001

[11] Erin E. Arvedlund, Follow The Money: Terrorist Conspirators Could Have Profited More From Fall Of Entire Market Than Single Stocks, Barron's (Dow Jones and Company), 6 October 2001

[12] Ibid

[13] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: the decline of the American empire at the end of the age of oil, New Society Publishers, 2004

[14] Kyle F. Hence, Massive pre-attack 'insider trading' offer authorities hottest trail to accomplices, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), 21 April 2002, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html

[15] Grant Ringshaw, Profits of doom, The London Telegraph, 23 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/telegraph_profitsofdoom.html

[16] Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur, Suspicious profits sit uncollected: Airline investors seem to be lying low, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 September 2001, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fchronicle%2Farchive%2F2001%2F09%2F29%2FMN186128.DTL#ixzz14XPGwh6e

[17] Lewis Paul Bremer III on Washington, DC, NBC4 TV, 11 September 2001, Vehmgericht http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/08/lewis-paul-bremer-iii-on-washington-dc.html

[18] Charles Gasparino and Gregory Zuckerman, Treasury Bonds Enter Purview of U.S. Inquiry Into Attack Gains, The Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2001, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/wallstreetjournal100201.html

[19] Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur

[20] Tagesspiegel, Former German Cabinet Minister Attacks Official Brainwashing On September 11 Issue Points at "Mad Dog" Zbig and Huntington, 13 January 2002, http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/VonBuelow.html

[21] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[22] The 9/11 Commission memorandum that summarized the FBI investigations refers to the traders involved in the Stratesec purchase. From the references in the document, we can make out that the two people had the same last name and were related. This fits the description of Wirt and Sally Walker, who are known to be stock holders in Stratesec. Additionally, one (Wirt) was a director at the company, a director at a publicly traded company in Oklahoma (Aviation General), and chairman of an investment firm in Washington, DC (Kuwam Corp).

[23] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[24] Sourcewatch, Mansoor Ijaz/Sudan, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mansoor_Ijaz/Sudan

[25] History Commons, Complete 911 Timeline, Bin Laden Family, http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?financing_of_al-qaeda:_a_more_detailed_look=binladenFamily&timeline=complete_911_timeline

[26] Kevin R. Ryan, The History of Wirt Dexter Walker: Russell & Co, the CIA and 9/11, 911blogger.com, 3 September 2010, http://911blogger.com/news/2010-09-03/history-wirt-dexter-walker-russell-company-cia-and-911

[27] Michael Moran, Bin Laden comes home to roost : His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story, MSNBC, 24 August 1998, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101

[28] Alex Berenson, U.S. Suggests, Without Proof, Stock Adviser Knew of 9/11, The New York Times, 25 May 2002, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E4DB143BF936A15756C0A9649C8B63

[29] Alex Berenson, Five, Including F.B.I. Agents, Are Named In a Conspiracy, The New York Times, 23 May 2002

[30] History Commons, Complete 911 Timeline, Saudi American Bank, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=saudi_american_bank

[31] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[32] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[33] Erik Kirschbaum, German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals, Reuters, 16 December 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/reuters_wtc_drives.html

[34] Allen M. Poteshman, Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, The Journal of Business, 2006, vol. 79, no. 4, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/503645

[35] Marc Chesney, et al, Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the Options Markets, Social Sciences Research Network, 13 January 2010, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522157

[36] Wing-Keung Wong, et al, Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?, Social Sciences Research Network, April 2010, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588523


(7) German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals

http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/reuters_wtc_drives.html

December 16, 2001 09:24 PM ET

By Erik Kirschbaum

Original Link: http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=458677

PIRMASENS, Germany (Reuters) - German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center on September 11.

Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the planes hit the twin towers?

Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded?

A world leader in retrieving data, German-based firm Convar is trying to answer those questions and help credit card companies, telecommunications firms and accountants in New York recover their records from computer hard drives that have been partially damaged by fire, water or fine dust.

Using a pioneering laser scanning technology to find data on damaged computer hard drives and main frames found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and other nearby collapsed buildings, Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings.

"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," said Convar director Peter Henschel.

"Of course it is also possible that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for the unusual rise in business volume," he told Reuters in an interview.

PROFITING FROM DISASTER?

"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," Henschel said.

"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."

Nearly 3,300 people were killed in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center.

Some 30,000 people in the buildings, symbols of America's financial might, were able to escape between the time the planes crashed and about an hour later when they collapsed -- even though many of the unmanned computers continued working.

The United States blames the al Qaeda group led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden for the attack and has since waged war on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that sheltered them.

ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE OF ATTACK?

There are several data retrieval companies in the United States and Europe, but Convar said it has won the lion's share of the contracts from the World Trade Center because of its laser scanning technology.

Convar developed the laser scanner two years ago that made it possible to retrieve data from badly damaged computers.

With a staff of 30 in its high-security facility in Pirmasens near the French border, the firm has worked with the U.S. armed forces in Germany as well as German federal police for the last 15 years.

Its offices in Pirmasens, a town of 36,000 still suffering from the departure of some 4,000 American soldiers stationed here during the Cold War, are closely guarded behind high fences and monitored by dozens of security cameras.

Inside the building, an endless series of code-operated door locks keeps unwelcome visitors away. In the center of the facility is a 120 square meter (1,292 square foot), dust-free "clean room" where the damaged computer drives are coaxed back to life.

Citing client privacy, Henschel declined to say which companies Convar is working for, or provide details about the data retrieved so far. But he said the raw material, up to 40 gigabytes per computer hard drive, is sent immediately by satellite or courier back to New York.

MONEY TRAIL

Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster.

"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," Wagner said. "They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed."

The companies are paying between $20,000 and $30,000 for each computer recovered, Henschel said.

The high recovery costs are one reason why only a limited number of hard drives are being examined. Convar has turned down a request by one British newspaper to try to recover personal last hour e-mails sent by someone trapped in the doomed building.

Henschel said the companies in the United States were working together with the FBI to piece together what happened on September 11 and that he was confident the destination of the dubious transactions would one day be tracked down.

"We have been quite surprised that so many of the hard drives were in good enough shape to retrieve the data," he said.

"The contamination rate is high. The fine dust that was everywhere in the area got pressed under high pressure into the drives. But we've still been able to retrieve 100 percent of the data on most of the drives we've received.

"We're helping them find out what happened to the computers on September 11 as quickly as possible. I'm sure that one day they will know what happened to the money."

Fair Use Notice

(8) British intelligence report: Mossad ran 9/11 Arab hijacker cells - Wayne Madsen

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 26.01.2011 08:34 AM

January 24, 2011 -- SPECIAL REPORT.

British intelligence report: Mossad ran 9/11 Arab "hijacker" terrorist operation

by Wayne Madsen

publication date: Jan 22, 2011

subscription only (thanks Paul):
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110122

a free version (while it lasts) is at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RoK70P7ZRpAJ:thisaintmyfirstrodeo.blogspot.com/+%22British+intelligence+reported+in+February+2002+that+the+Israeli+Mossad+ran+the+Arab%22&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&ie=UTF-8

NOTE: the UPDATE Wayne Posted on January 25 is ONLY available at the 2nd (cache) link

British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. WMR has received details of the British intelligence report, which, was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated "Al Qaeda" cells in Hamburg (the Atta-Mamoun Darkanzali cell), south Florida, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the months before 9/11. The Mossad not only infiltrated cells but began to run them and give them specific orders that would eventually culminate in their being on board four regularly-scheduled flights originating in Boston, Washington Dulles, and Newark, New Jersey on 9/11.

The Mossad infiltration team comprised six Israelis, comprising two cells of three agents, who all received special training at a Mossad base in the Negev Desert in their future control and handling of the "Al Qaeda" cells. One Mossad cell traveled to Amsterdam whereb they submitted to the operational control of the Mossad's Europe Station, which operates from the El Al complex at Schiphol International Airport. The three-man Mossad unit then traveled to Hamburg where it made contact with Mohammed Atta, who believed they were sent by Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they were sent by Ephraim Halevy, the chief of Mossad.

The second three-man Mossad team flew to New York and then to southern Florida where they began to direct the "Al Qaeda" cells operating from Hollywood, Miami, Vero Beach, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach. Israeli "art students," already under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration for casing the offices and homes of federal law enforcement officers, had been living among and conducting surveillance of the activities, including flight school training, of the future Arab "hijacker" cells, particularly in Hollywood and Vero Beach.

In August 2001, the first Mossad team flew with Atta and other Hamburg "Al Qaeda" members to Boston. Logan International Airport's security was contracted to Huntleigh USA, a firm owned by an Israeli airport security firm closely connected to Mossad -- International Consultants on Targeted Security - ICTS. ICTS's owners were politically connected to the Likud Party, particularly the Netanyahu faction and then-Jerusalem mayor and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Olmert who personally interceded with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to have released from prison five Urban Moving Systems employees, identified by the CIA and FBI agents as Mossad agents. The Israelis were the only suspects arrested anywhere in the United States on 9/11 who were thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The two Mossad teams sent regular coded reports on the progress of the 9/11 operation to Tel Aviv via the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. WMR has learned from a Pentagon source that leading Americans tied to the media effort to pin 9/11 on Arab hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban were present in the Israeli embassy on September 10, 2001, to coordinate their media blitz for the subsequent days and weeks following the attacks. It is more than likely that FBI counter-intelligence agents who conduct surveillance of the Israeli embassy have proof on the presence of the Americans present at the embassy on September 10. Some of the Americans are well-known to U.S. cable news television audiences.

In mid-August, the Mossad team running the Hamburg cell in Boston reported to Tel Aviv that the final plans for 9/11 were set. The Florida-based Mossad cell reported that the documented "presence" of the Arab cell members at Florida flight schools had been established.

The two Mossad cells studiously avoided any mention of the World Trade Center or targets in Washington, DC in their coded messages to Tel Aviv. Halevy covered his tracks by reporting to the CIA of a "general threat" by an attack by Arab terrorists on a nuclear plant somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. CIA director George Tenet dismissed the Halevy warning as "too non-specific." The FBI, under soon-to-be-departed director Louis Freeh, received the "non-specific" warning about an attack on a nuclear power plant and sent out the information in its routine bulletins to field agents but no high alert was ordered.

The lack of a paper trail pointing to "Al Qaeda" as the masterminds on 9/11, which could then be linked to Al Qaeda's Mossad handlers, threw off the FBI. On April 19, 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller, in a speech to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, stated: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States, or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot."

The two Mossad "Al Qaeda" infiltration and control teams had also helped set up safe houses for the quick exfiltration of Mossad agents from the United States. Last March, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from two El Al sources who worked for the Israeli airline at New York's John F. Kennedy airport that on 9/11, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off from JFK bound for Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the airline. The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. military officials were on the scene at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control authorities to clear the flight for take-off. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on September 11." WMR has learned from British intelligence sources that the six-man Mossad team was listed on the El Al flight manifest as El Al employees.

WMR previously reported that the Mossad cell operating in the Jersey City-Weehawken area of New Jersey through Urban Moving Systems was suspected by some in the FBI and CIA of being involved in moving explosives into the World Trade Center as well as staging "false flag" demonstrations at at least two locations in north Jersey: Liberty State Park and an apartment complex in Jersey City as the first plane hit the World Trade Center's North Tower. One team of Urban Moving Systems Mossad agents was arrested later on September 11 and jailed for five months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Some of their names turned up in a joint CIA-FBI database as known Mossad agents, along with the owner of Urban Moving Systems, Dominik Suter, <http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/downloads/20110123_1/download> whose name also appeared on a "Law Enforcement Sensitive" FBI 9/11 suspects list, along with the names of key "hijackers," including Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour, as well as the so-called "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui.

Suter was allowed to escape the United States after the FBI made initial contact with him at the Urban Moving Systems warehouse in Weehawken, New Jersey, following the 9/11 attacks. Suter was later permitted to return to the United States where he was involved in the aircraft parts supply business in southern Florida, according to an informe3d source who contacted WMR. Suter later filed for bankruptcy in Florida for Urban Moving Systems and other businesses he operated: Suburban Moving & Storage Inc.; Max Movers, Inc.; Invsupport; Woodflooring Warehouse Corp.; One Stop Cleaning LLC; and City Carpet Upholstery, Inc. At the time of the bankruptcy filing in Florida, Suter listed his address as 1867 Fox Court, Wellington, FL 33414, with a phone number of 561 204-2359.

From the <http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/downloads/20110123/download> list of creditors it can be determined that Suter had been operating in the United States since 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1993, Suter began racking up American Express credit card charges totaling $21,913.97. Suter also maintained credit card accounts with HSBC Bank and Orchard Bank c/o HSBC Card Services of Salinas, California, among other banks. Suter also did business with the Jewish Community Center of Greater Palm Beach in Florida and Ryder Trucks in Miami. Miami and southern Florida were major operating areas for cells of Israeli Mossad agents masquerading as "art students," who were living and working near some of the identified future Arab "hijackers" in the months preceding 9/11.

ABC's 20/20 correspondent John Miller ensured that the Israeli connection to "Al Qaeda's" Arab hijackers was buried in an "investigation" of the movers' activities on 9/11. Anchor Barbara Walters helped Miller in putting a lid on the story about the movers and Suter aired on June 21, 2002. Miller then went on to become the FBI public affairs spokesman to ensure that Mueller and other FBI officials kept to the "Al Qaeda" script as determined by the Bush administration and the future 9/11 Commission. But former CIA chief of counter-terrorism Vince Cannistraro let slip to ABC an important clue to the operations of the Mossad movers in New Jersey when he stated that the Mossad agents "set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area." The "intelligence operation" turned out to have been the actual 9/11 attacks. And it was no coincidence that it was ABC's John Miller who conducted a May 1998 rare interview of Osama Bin Laden at his camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden played his part well for future scenes in the fictional "made-for-TV" drama known as 9/11.

WMR has also learned from Italian intelligence sources that Mossad's running of "Al Qaeda" operatives did not end with running the "hijacking" teams in the United States and Hamburg. Other Arab "Al Qaeda" operatives, run by Mossad, were infiltrated into Syria but arrested by Syrian intelligence. Syria was unsuccessful in turning them to participate in intelligence operations in Lebanon. Detailed information on Bin Laden's support team was offered to the Bush administration, up to days prior to 9/11, by Gutbi al-Mahdi, the head of the Sudanese Mukhabarat intelligence service. The intelligence was rejected by the Biush White House. It was later reported that Sudanese members of "Al Qaeda's" support network were double agents for Mossad who had also established close contacts with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and operated in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Eritrea, as well as Sudan. The Mossad connection to Al Qaeda in Sudan was likely known by the Sudanese Mukhabarat, a reason for the rejection of its intelligence on "Al Qaeda" by the thoroughly-Mossad penetrated Bush White House. Yemen had also identified "Al Qaeda" members who were also Mossad agents. A former chief of Mossad revealed to this editor in 2002 that Yemeni-born Mossad "deep insertion" commandos spotted Bin Laden in the Hadhramaut region of eastern Yemen after his escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, following the U.S. invasion.

French intelligence determined that other Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jewish Mossad agents were infiltrated into Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates as radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the "Muslim Brotherhood" agents actually were involved in providing covert Israeli funding for "Al Qaeda" activities. On February 21, 2006, WMR reported on the U.S. Treasury Secretary's firing by President Bush over information discovered on the shady "Al Qaeda" accounts in the United Arab Emirates: "Banking insiders in Dubai report that in March 2002, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill visited Dubai and asked for documents on a $109,500 money transfer from Dubai to a joint account held by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi at Sun Trust Bank in Florida. O'Neill also asked UAE authorities to close down accounts used by Al Qaeda . . . . The UAE complained about O'Neill's demands to the Bush administration. O'Neill's pressure on the UAE and Saudis contributed to Bush firing him as Treasury Secretary in December 2002 " O'Neill may have also stumbled on the "Muslim Brotherhood" Mossad operatives operating in the emirates who were directing funds to "Al Qaeda."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sharjah's ruler, Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, who survived a palace coup attempt in 1987, opened his potentate to Russian businessmen like Viktor Bout, as well as to financiers of radical Muslim groups, including the Taliban and "Al Qaeda."

Moreover, this Israeli support for "Al Qaeda" was fully known to Saudi intelligence, which approved of it in order to avoid compromising Riyadh. The joint Israeli-Saudi support for "Al Qaeda" was well-known to the Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah-based aviation network of the now-imprisoned Russian, Viktor Bout, jailed in New York on terrorism charges. The presence of Bout in New York, a hotbed of Israeli intelligence control of U.S. federal prosecutors, judges, as well as the news media, is no accident: Bout knows enough about the Mossad activities in Sharjah in support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where Bout also had aviation and logistics contracts, to expose Mossad as the actual mastermind behind 9/11. Bout's aviation empire also extended to Miami and Dallas, two areas that were nexuses for the Mossad control operations for the "Al Qaeda" flight training operations of the Arab cell members in the months prior to 9/11.

Bout's path also crossed with "Al Qaeda's" support network at the same bank in Sharjah, HSBC. Mossad's phony Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt and Yemen controlled financing for "Al Qaeda" through the HSBC accounts in Sharjah. Mossad's Dominik Suter also dealt with HSBC in the United States. The FBI's chief counter-terrorism agent investigating Al Qaeda, John O'Neill, became aware of the "unique" funding mechanisms for Al Qaeda. It was no mistake that O'Neill was given the job as director of security for the World Trade Center on the eve of the attack. O'Neill perished in the collapse of the complex.

Mossad uses a number of Jews born in Arab countries to masquerade as Arabs. They often carry forged or stolen passports from Arab countries or nations in Europe that have large Arab immigrant populations, particularly Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

For Mossad, the successful 9/11 terrorist "false flag" operation was a success beyond expectations. The Bush administration, backed by the Blair government, attacked and occupied Iraq, deposing Saddam Hussein, and turned up pressure on Israel's other adversaries, including Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israelis also saw the U.S., Britain, and the UN begin to crack down on the Lebanese Shi'a diamond business in Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa, and with it, the logistics support provided by Bout's aviation companies, which resulted in a free hand for Tel Aviv to move in on Lebanese diamond deals in central and west Africa.

Then-Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented on the 9/11 attacks on U.S. television shortly after they occurred. Netanyahu said: "It is very good!" It now appears that Netanyahu, in his zeal, blew Mossad's cover as the masterminds of 9/11.

UPDATE: Wayne Madsen Report: Atta a Mossad agent or double agent

January 25, 2011 -- Was Atta an agent for the Israelis? Reliable sources believe he was.
Following <http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110122> yesterday's WMR special report on the 9/11 "hijacking" cells being run by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, we have been contacted by reliable sources who have evidence that "lead hijacker" Mohamed Atta and his cohort, Ziad Jarreh, may have been Mossad agents or double agents. There is also no actual proof that any of the "hijacking" teams ever made it aboard any of the four flights on 9/11. Autopsies of bodies discovered at the Pentagon yielded no Arab identities and there were no Arab names on any of the flight manifests.

In September 2009, WMR reported: "Last year, two Lebanese brothers Ali Jarreh and Youssef Jarreh were arrested by Lebanese authorities who linked the pair to an espionage cell responsible for the car bombing assassination of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008. The Jarrahs were found by the Lebanese Army in possession of 'communication devices and other sophisticated equipment.' The Jarrahs arrested by the Lebanese had been recruited by the Mossad in the 1980s when Israel occupied a large section of Lebanon. And for a Paul Harvey-like rest of the story, they are related to Ziad Jarreh, the man who was said to have been a close associate and fellow hijacking planner of Mohamed Atta and whose American visa was found with photo and visa number largely intact in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11."

WMR has also been informed by a Joint Terrorism Task Force source stationed in New York in 2001 that Atta lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey in August 2001 and was protected by <http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20070411_2> Israeli "art students" who lived close to Atta in Fort Lee. The art students, identified as Mossad agents by the FBI and CIA, lived in Fort Lee from June to September 2001.

Atta maintained high-level contacts in Saudi intelligence and Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), giving the Mossad plausible deniability of any relationship with Atta. FBI teams were denied access to the passenger manifest of the El Al plane that exfiltrated scores of Mossad agents from New York's JFK airport to Tel Aviv in the afternoon of 9/11. There is reason by some FBI agents to believe that "Mohamed Atta" was among the passengers on the El Al escape flight.

(9) Cell phone calls from Flight 93 were impossible. Without those hoax calls, we would not have blamed Arabs

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 29.01.2011 02:05 AM
Subject: Cell phone calls from Flight 93 were impossible and therefore they were hoaxes!! (old info that is worth revisiting)

http://911scholars.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cell-phone-calls-from-hijacked

Cell Phone Calls From Hijacked 911 Airliners Were Impossible

Without the faked cell phone calls from the hijacked planes, Middle Easterners could not have been blamed for 9/11!!

The experts were right; cell phone calls on planes bounce all over the place.

{some out-of-date links follow. See, instead, The Cellphone and Airfone Calls from Flight UA93, by Professor A. K. Dewdney <http://www.physics911.net/cellphoneflight93>.
Note that Physics911 has moved from .org to .net}

This is an admission that they did not have the technology for cell phone transmission available in 2001. The planes could make air to land calls, but they were not via cell phones. There was a study by a professor that said it was impossible to make a cell phone call above a few thousand feet, even though the 911 Commission said they occurred.  Plus no one was able to produce a bill for the all of the alleged cell phone calls.

No Cell Phone Calls From Hijacked 911 Airliners
See http://www.rense.com/general40/nocell.htm.

8-14-03.

From John Kaminski: "Without the phone calls from the hijacked planes, we wouldn't have blamed Middle Easterners."

http://www.rense.com/general40/nocell.htm

An experiment was conducted to see if cell phones can work in airplanes. The experimenters found that the percent of success rate of contact was as follows:

                  89% connected at 2,000 feet
                  44% at 4,000 feet
                  30% at 6,000 feet
                  9% at 8,000 feet

Flight 93 was flying at 35,000 feet.

Therefore a cell phone connection would have been impossible.

Also see Planes of 911 Exceeded Their Software Limits from which the following is snipped:

”When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is that your cell phone needs to contact a transponder. Your cell phone has a max transmit power of five watts, three watts is actually the norm. If an aircraft is going five hundred miles an hour, your cell phone will not be able to 1) Contact a tower, 2) Tell the tower who you are, and who your provider is, 3). Tell the tower what mode it wants to communicate with, and 4). Establish that it is in a roaming area before it passes out of a five-watt range.

“This procedure, called an electronic handshake, takes approximately 45 seconds for a cell phone to complete upon initial power up in a roaming area because neither the cell phone nor the cell transponder knows where that phone is and what mode it uses when it is turned on.

"At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone's five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. Though it is sometimes possible to connect during takeoff and landing, under the situation that was claimed the calls were impossible.”

Therefore, the calls from the airplane were faked, no ifs or buts.

http://www.memes.org/modules.php?
op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1996&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

So the CNN story “Hijacked Passenger Called 911 on Cell Phone” found at (http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/911.call) was a complete hoax .

 Flight 93 was a story-lie that was cunningly planted by the perpetrators of 9/11, a lie that has been repeated so often by the complicit mainstream media that it is now regarded by most of the public as being true (see J. Goebbels), with a Hollywood movie to be made about the mythical event.

(10) Chilcot Inquiry like 9/11 Commission - both included a pro-war Jewish Zionist historian

From: James Morris <justicequest2000@yahoo.com> Date: 02.12.2010 03:32 PM

The Chilcot Inquiry: Britain's 9/11 Commission

by Maidhc Ó Cathail

http://www.america-hijacked.com/2010/12/01/the-chilcot-inquiry-britains-911-commission/

== The Chilcot Inquiry: Britain's 9/11 Commission

by Maidhc Ó Cathail / January 5th, 2010

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/the-chilcot-inquiry-britain%E2%80%99s-911-commission/

All too often, official inquiries are conducted by the very people who should themselves be under investigation.

In this respect, Britain's Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq war bears a distressing similarity to the 9/11 Commission.

In a remarkable symmetry, both inquiries involve a Jewish Zionist historian, who not only advised his country's leader to go to war against Iraq, but actually provided the ideological justification for that unnecessary war.

Preemptive Wars

Perhaps Philip Zelikow was one of the few people who was not surprised by his appointment as executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission. After all, the Professor of History at the University of Virginia had shown uncanny prescience in foreseeing an event such as 9/11 itself. In 1998, as project director of the Catastrophic Terrorism Group, Zelikow had written:

"An act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people … would be a watershed event in America's history.… Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a 'before' and 'after.'"

Yet despite his awareness of an imminent threat of "catastrophic terrorism" against the United States, in the Bush administration Zelikow was instrumental in downgrading the status of the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke.1 Effectively cutting off his direct access to the President, this prevented Clarke from discussing al-Qaeda with George W. Bush before September 11.

In an even clearer conflict of interest, as a member of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Zelikow had authored the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States. Dubbed the "Bush Doctrine" by the Washington Post's hawkishly pro-Israeli columnist Charles Krauthammer,2 it advocated the necessity of "preemptive war." Based on a policy first mooted in 1992 by two other Jewish neoconservatives, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby,3 the Zelikow Doctrine provided the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

While Bush probably believed he was "ridding the world of evil," Zelikow knew exactly why Iraq was being targeted. In a rare moment of candour, he told an audience at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002:

"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it's the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."

Nevertheless, as executive director of the 9/11 Commission Zelikow did his very best to "sell" the Iraq war to the American people. The first expert witness he called had "no special expertise on the events of September 11," but that didn't seem to matter too much. Instead of discussing 9/11, Abraham Sofaer, a board member of the pro-Israeli Koret Foundation, made an impassioned speech in support of the "preemptive war" against Iraq.4

An even more controversial "expert" witness called was Laurie Mylroie. Known as the "neocons' favourite conspiracy theorist," the American Enterprise Institute scholar had made a career out of seeing the hand of Saddam Hussein behind every anti-American terrorist attack during the previous decade. Her 2000 book, Study of Revenge, in which she laid out her flimsy case against Saddam, acknowledged the assistance of Wolfowitz and Libby, and was blurbed by Richard Perle as "splendid and wholly convincing."

Exercising a scepticism toward Mylroie's "batty" theories lacking in much of the media coverage, one of the 9/11 widows lambasted Zelikow for this transparent "sales pitch for the Iraq war."

Zelikow's persistent efforts to rewrite the Commission staff's reports to give the impression of a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "horrified" some of his staff, many of whom considered him a "White House mole."5 Little did they suspect, however, that Zelikow's loyalties might lie much further afield.

Humanitarian Wars

If British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were genuinely interested in finding out why his predecessor followed George Bush into the Iraq quagmire, his appointment of Sir Lawrence Freedman to the five-member Chilcot Inquiry was an odd choice. As the political editor of the BBC's Newsnight programme, Michael Crick, pointed out, "Critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!"

Crick was referring to a Freedman memo which formed the basis of Tony Blair's 1999 Chicago speech, "The Doctrine of the International Community." In what became known as the "Blair Doctrine," Freedman had offered an answer to the specious question: "When was military action justified for liberal, humanitarian reasons?"

In addition to the Freedman Doctrine's justification of military intervention in "rogue states" such as Iraq, Freedman has admitted that he "instigated" a pre-war seminar for the British Prime Minister, because he was "aware of misgivings among some specialists in Iraq about the direction of policy." Clearly, Freedman has no such "misgivings" himself about the illegal invasion of Iraq. It was, he claims, motivated by "rather noble criteria."6

In his recent book, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, Freedman is dismissive of those who suspect less "noble" motives for the war.

"Another popular theory," he writes, "is that U.S. foreign policy was effectively hijacked by a group of neoconservatives with a grand design to reshape the Middle East. A conspiratorial version of this theory argues that the aim was to help Israel, by removing a leading rejectionist state from the scene."

Presumably, the consistency of the prescriptions that runs from Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," through Perle, Feith and Wurmser's "A Clean Break," to the so-called "Bush Doctrine" is merely coincidental. Evidently, the learned Professor of War Studies needs to read "The Israeli Origins of the Middle East War Agenda" in Stephen Sniegoski's?The Transparent Cabal.

Perhaps it is also "conspiratorial," or worse, to wonder about the media's hyping a book which obscures why America "confronts" Israel's enemies in the Middle East, while one which exposes the Zionist agenda gets the silent treatment.7 But it certainly is cause for concern when Freedman's book, which also opts for the euphemism of a "security fence" to describe Israel's Apartheid Wall, and repeatedly refers to the illegally occupied West Bank as Judea and Samaria,8 is given such credence.

Just as the Zelikow-directed 9/11 Commission suppressed evidence that the main motive for the September 11 attacks was American support for Israel,9 Freedman's presence on the Chilcot Inquiry is a clear indication that there will be no inquiry into the role of Zionist insiders in taking Britain to war against Iraq—a country that posed a threat not to British interests but to Israel's regional hegemony.

1.Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, p. 63. [?]

2.Charles Krauthammer, "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe," Washington Post, September 13, 2008. [?]

3."1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance," RightWeb, March 12, 2008. [?]

4.Shenon, p. 104. [?]

5.Shenon, p. 322, 107. [?]

6.Richard Ingrams, "The insistent doubts about Chilcot's tame professor," The Independent, December 5, 2009. [?]

7.Paul Gottfried, "The Transparent Cabal," Taki's Magazine, September 17, 2008. [?]

8.Jason Burke, "From Washington to Kabul the hard way," Guardian, September 21, 2008. [?]

9."What motivated the 9/11 Hijackers? See testimony most didn't," Representative Press, You Tube video. [?]

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer. His work has been published by Al Jazeera Magazine, Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Khaleej Times, Palestine Chronicle and many other publications. Read other articles by Maidhc.

This article was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 8:59am and is filed under War Crimes, Zionism.

(11) 9/11 Families Ask: Why did WTC7 collapse?

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 30.11.2010 12:01 PM

http://www.alternet.org/news/148867/9_11_families_ask%3A_what_happened_to_the_third_building_that_collapsed_in_the_wtc_attacks?

9/11 Families Ask: What Happened to the Third Building That Collapsed in the WTC Attacks?

A new ad campaign featuring the family members of 9/11 victims, which does not focus on conspiracy theories, is getting serious treatment in the mainstream media.

November 15, 2010

A new television ad campaign featuring the family members of 9/11 victims has succeeded in garnering what 9/11 activists have lacked for years: serious treatment in the mainstream media.

Granted, that media was Fox News host Geraldo Rivera, who in a former iteration ran a Jerry Springer-like daytime talk show. That and, the last time Rupert Murdoch's conservative-tilted television channel seriously talked about issues pertaining to 9/11, they were calling for a public official's resignation over a signature on one of the "9/11 truth" petitions.

Still, at the end of his serious-yet-brief treatment of questions surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7, pictured), Rivera admitted that the activists had made him "much more open minded" about questions surrounding 9/11.

Rivera spoke in response to an ad playing in 30-second bytes on screens all around New York City, which does not focus on conspiracy theories. It does not feature hip-hop beats in the background or winded, red-faced protesters dressed in black shouting at reporters. It doesn't even mention President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney or the systemic failures in America's air defenses.

Instead, it puts the spotlight on people who lost family members in the 2001 attacks. Patriotic background music plays as viewers are gently reminded that not two, but three buildings collapsed on 9/11.

"Although the official explanation is that fire brought down building seven, over 1,200 architects and engineers have looked into the evidence and believe there's more to the story," they say.

Then they implore viewers to help them seek justice, for their families, simply by visiting a web site: buildingwhat.org.

Their campaign's name, "Building What?" was allegedly taken from the response offered by New York Supreme Court Justice Edward H. Lehner, when asked if he knew about WTC 7.

(12) Giuliani meets Olmert, declares, "We're together with you. We are bound by blood"

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/giuliani-meets-with-israels-olmert/

June 18, 2007, 10:29 AM

Giuliani Meets With Israel's Olmert

By MARC SANTORA

Rudolph Giuliani, who has had close ties to Jewish leaders since he was mayor of New York City, met privately with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today.

The two, who have known each other for more than a decade, met privately for about an hour. Mr. Olmert was in New York to meet with U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and is scheduled to meet later with President Bush.

Mr. Olmert's visit comes at a particularly tumultuous time for his country, with the prospect for peace with the Palestinians as bleak as ever.

Gaza was taken over by Islamic militants from Hamas last week and Israel has yet to decide on what approach it will take towards the territory on its southern border.

While Mr. Giuliani's aides did not provide details about what the two leaders discussed, Mr. Giuliani has proven himself a staunch supporter of Israel over the years. The meeting is something of a coup for the Giuliani campaign, as the 2008 candidates compete for the support of Jewish voters.

He was popular among Israeli political leaders even before New York was attacked by terrorists in 2001. Mr. Giuliani, now campaigning for president of the United States, still proudly boasts of once having Yassir Arafat thrown out of an event at Lincoln Center.

In December 2001, Mr. Giuliani visited Israel with a delegation of other New York political leaders and declared: "We're together with you. We are bound by blood."

On that same trip, during a luncheon given by then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Mr. Giuliani joked that he had only left America four times as Mayor and three of those trips were to Israel.

"So I'm a half Israeli citizen now," he said. ==

(13) Huffington Post refuses Jesse Ventura article arguing 9-11 was a conspiracy

From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2004@yahoo.com> Date: 13.03.2010 01:20 AM

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25002.htm

Mainstream Paper Refuses Ventura's 9-11 Commentary

By Jesse Ventura

Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 01:08 PM

Editor's Note: The following column by former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was removed by Huffington Post after it was published March 9 and replaced with a note that states the site "prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories -- including those about 9/11."

You didn't see anything about it in the mainstream media, but at a recent conference in San Francisco, more than 1,000 architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9-11.

That's right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy—because they don't buy the government's version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the twin towers and WTC Building 7.

Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: "The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction."

He's especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 47 stories came down in "pure free-fall acceleration" that afternoon, even though it was never hit by an aircraft. This is a subject I take up in my new book, American Conspiracies, published by Skyhorse. An excerpt follows: Some people have argued that the twin towers went down, within a half hour of one another, because of the way they were constructed. Well, those 425,000 cubic yards of concrete and 200,000 tons of steel were designed to hold up against a Boeing 707, the largest plane built at the time the towers were completed in 1973. Analysis had shown that a 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour (and those had four engines) would not cause major damage. The twin-engine Boeing 757s that hit on 9-11 were going 440 and 550 mph.

Still, we are told that a molten, highly intense fuel mixture from the planes brought down these two steel-framed skyscrapers. Keep in mind that no other such skyscraper in history had ever been known to collapse completely due to fire damage. So could it actually have been the result of a controlled demolition from inside the buildings?

I don't claim expertise about this, but I did work four years as part of the Navy's underwater demolition teams, where we were trained to blow things to hell and high water. And my staff talked at some length with a prominent physicist, Steven E. Jones, who says that a "gravity driven collapse" without demolition charges defies the laws of physics.

These buildings fell, at nearly the rate of free-fall, straight down into their own footprint, in approximately 10 seconds. An object dropped from the roof of the 110-story-tall towers would reach the ground in about 9.2 seconds. Then there's the fact that steel beams that weighed as much as 200,000 pounds got tossed laterally as far as 500 feet.

NIST started its investigation on Aug. 21, 2002. When their 10,000-page-long report came out three years later, the spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest a controlled demolition. But Jones also says that molten metal found underground weeks later is proof that jet fuel couldn't have been all that was responsible. I visited the site about three weeks after 9-11, with Gov. Pataki and my wife Terry. It didn't mean anything to me at the time, but they had to suspend digging that day because they were running into heat pockets of huge temperatures. These fires kept burning for more than three months, the longest-burning structure blaze ever.

And this was all due to jet fuel? We're talking molten metal more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Probably the most conclusive evidence about a controlled demolition is a research paper (two years, nine authors) published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal in April 2009. In studying dust samples from the site, these scientists found chips of nano-thermite, which is a high-tech incendiary/explosive. Here's what the paper's lead author, Dr. Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen's chemistry department, had to say about the explosive that he's convinced brought down the twin towers and the nearby Building 7:

"Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2,500 degrees Centigrade [4,532 degrees Fahrenheit]. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel."

Gage is one of hundreds of credentialed architects and structural engineers who have put their careers on the line to point out the detailed anomalies and many implications of controlled demolition in the building collapses. As he puts it bluntly: "Once you get to the science, it's indisputable."

A former Navy Seal, professional wrestler and actor Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota on the Reform Party ticket in 1998 where he served until 2002.

(14) Guess Who Michael Moore's Agent Is?
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wolves/moore.html

whatreallyhappened.com
July 31, 2004

Rahm Emmanuel, former Clinton adviser, current congressman from Illinois, staunch supporter of Israel, and suspected by many of being "Mega", the Mossad mole in the Clinton White House, has a brother, Ari Emmanuel, who just happens to be Michael Moore's agent.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is a powerful antiwar statement and needs to be supported for that reason. This coming election, we need to vote out the warhawks, both Republican and Democrat.

However, I would like to ask Michael Moore a few questions regarding his implication that Saudi Arabia was behind 9-11.

Question 1: If Saudi Arabia were behind 9-11, why didn't they leave the United States BEFORE the attack? It is an established fact that companies like Odigo received an advance warning of the 9-11 attacks before the hijacked planes had even left the ground, as reported in Ha'Aretz and the Washington Post. If the Saudis were behind 9-11 and were kind enough to warn Odigo, then why did they themselves wait until AFTER the attacks before they left, when the requirement for special permission from Bush would only call attention to their departure?

Question 2: Is Michael Moore aware that the video tape of Osama "confessing" to 9-11 has been proven a fake?

Question 3: Is Michael Moore aware that just ten days after 9-11, the FBI stated (and CNN reported) that the 9-11 perpetrators were using skillfully made fake IDs with identities stolen from Arab men?

Question 4: Is Michael Moore aware that FBI Director Robert Mueller has admitted in public that there is actually no evidence that proves the named 9-11 hijackers were actually on the aircraft?

Question 5: Calling attention to the Anthrax letters case, in which letters which appeared to to be written by Arab Muslims contained Anthrax spores identified as coming from a US Government laboratory. Is Michael Moore aware that neither of the two suspects in the case, Dr. Stephen Hatfill or Dr.Philip Zack, are Arabs, and doesn't this case prove that Arabs are being framed for terror attacks in the United States?

Michael Moore rightly condemns the US Government for the USAPATRIOT act's draconian assault opon our rights. However, one of those rights is that nobody shall be declared guilty of a crime without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. As Michael Moore professes a deep respect for American values, he should not glibly declare that someone is guilty of a crime without being able to make his case beyond that reasonable doubt.

There is a reasonable doubt.

And if Michael Moore is a reasonable man who respects American principles, he must acknowledge that.

(15) Persecuted FEMA 9-11 Photographer Fights Extradition

From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2005@yahoo.com> Date: 30.10.2010 02:04 AM

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/fema_9-11_photographer_243.html

By Pat Shannan

For five weeks following the 9-11 attacks, high-ranking FEMA official Kurt Sonnenfeld was given unlimited access to the various crime scenes as an official videographer.

However, when Sonnenfeld discovered that his official documentation contradicted the U.S. government's account of the events, he refused to be a part of a cover-up and did not turn over the tapes to officialdom.

This was when his troubles began, and seven years ago he fled to Argentina in fear for his life but remains in possession of the video evidence. For the U.S. government, Sonnenfeld, 41, is a troublesome witness on the loose, whose documented evidence can expose its fraudulent account of 9-11. This places him in a unique, but extremely vulnerable position. He was jailed for seven months in 2002 on trumped-up charges before being exonerated by a Denver court.

Add two favorable rulings by an Argentine federal court and two more by the Argentine Supreme Court and Sonnenfeld has a total of five impartial courts that have now looked at the evidence and ruled in his favor.

However, the federal government is determined to do whatever it takes to retrieve Sonnenfeld's material and silence him. This has converted him into the refugee that he never meant to be.

Although many of his large-format tapes were stolen during his imprisonment, he still had some videos that were in a box of junk cassettes marked "recycle." His description of the actual happenings of 9-11 from his book, The Persecuted, reads like a report from the pages of AMERICAN FREE PRESS.

Read more at the above link...

(16) Huge building burns in South Korea – does not collapse
 
Fire Consumes WTC 7-Size Skyscraper, Building Does Not Collapse

Russia Today

Oct 2, 2010

http://www.prisonplanet.com/huge-building-burns-in-south-korea-does-not-collapse.html

A massive fire broke out on Friday in a 38-floor apartment and office building in South Korea's southern port city of Busan. No deaths were reported. The fire official could not say how many people remained in the building, only that residents were still being rescued, some by helicopter from the building's roof. Busan, South Korea's second-largest city and a major seaport, is located about 400 km (250 miles) southeast of Seoul. The fire started early Friday morning in a janitor's closet on the fourth floor of the high-rise building located in the city's plush beachside Haeundae district. ==

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/10/113_73830.html

10-01-2010 16:50

Fire guts high-rise building in Busan

{photo} A helicopter drops water to put out a blaze at the Wooshin Golden Suites apartment block in Haeundae, Busan, Friday. The fire was extinguished two-and-a-half hours after it started. No casualties were reported but the authorities estimated the damage to the building to be substantial. / Korea Times photo by Lee Sang-deokBy Bae Ji-sook {end}

A fire engulfed a 38-story apartment building in the southeastern port city of Busan, Friday. ... ==

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/10/01/2010100101859.html

Massive Fire Engulfs 38-story Building in Busan

A massive fire swept all the way up to the rooftop of a 38-story apartment and office building Friday morning in Busan leaving four people injured.

Nearly two hundred firefighters were dispatched to the site but the flames which officials say originated in the garbage room on the 4th floor spread at a rapid pace. According to investigators, strong coastal winds and highly flammable wall material could have fueled the blaze.

Local authorities say no serious casualties occurred since residents were evacuated soon after the fire broke out but some are being treated at nearby hospitals for smoke inhalation. ==

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20101002-240198.html

Sat, Oct 02, 2010
The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

Fire at S.Korea high-rise apartment under control

A BLAZE at an apartment building was brought under control after reaching the rooftop of the 38-story complex in a fire Friday authorities say seems to have started at a garbage collection room, Yonhap News reported. No casualties were reported.

Firefighters battled the blaze for more than two and a half hours as it spread through the stairways after being first spotted at around 11.30 am (12.30pm Singapore Time). ...

(17) Harvard paper recommends "Cognitive infiltration" of Dissident groups by Government agents

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

Conspiracy Theories

Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard University - Harvard Law School

Adrian Vermeule
Harvard University - Harvard Law School

January 15, 2008

Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03
U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 199
U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 387

Working Paper Series
Date posted: January 17, 2008 ; Last revised: January 18, 2010

This paper can be downloaded free of charge from the Social Science Research Network at:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084585

Preliminary draft 1/15/08

Abstract

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories ... Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a "crippled epistemology," in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.

Introduction ...

Part II discusses government responses and legal issues, in light of the discussion in Part I. We address several dilemmas of governmental response to conspiracy theories, such as the question whether it is better to rebut such theories, at the risk of legitimating them, or to ignore them, at the risk of leaving them unrebutted. Conspiracy theories turn out to be especially hard to undermine or dislodge; they have a self-sealing quality, rendering them particularly immune to challenge. We suggest several policy responses that can dampen the supply of conspiracy theorizing, in part by introducing diverse viewpoints and new factual assumptions into the hard-core groups that produce such theories. Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such. ...

Consider, for example, the view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; that doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus; that the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile ...

Of course some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true. The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials ...

French author Thierry Meyssan, whose book "9/11: The Big Lie" became a bestseller and a sensation for its claims that the Pentagon explosion on 9/11 was caused by a missile ...

These are circumstances in which arguments by outsiders, unconnected with the group, will lack much credibility, and fail to have much of an effect in reducing polarization. As we will explore below, these circumstances imply that direct government rebuttals of the reigning conspiracy theory will prove ineffective; government will instead do best by using various tactics of cognitive infiltration to break up the polarized information cluster from within. ... Once polarization occurs or cascades arise, and the group's median view begins to move in a certain direction, doubters and halfway believers will tend to depart while intense believers remain. The overall size of the group may shrink, but the group may also pick up new believers who are even more committed, and in any event the remaining members will, by self-selection, display more fanaticism. Group members may engage in a kind of double-think, segregating themselves, in a physical or informational sense, in order to protect their beliefs from challenge by outsiders. Even if the rank and file cannot coherently do this, group leaders may enforce segregation in order to insulate the rank and file from information or arguments that would undermine the leaders' hold on the group. ...

An obvious answer is to maintain an open society, in which those who are tempted to subscribe to conspiracy theories do not distrust all knowledge-creating institutions, and are exposed to corrections. But we have seen that even in open societies, conspiracy theories have some traction; and open societies have a strong interest in debunking such theories when they arise, and threaten to cause harm, in closed societies.

Here we suggest two concrete ideas for government officials attempting to fashion a response to such theories. First, responding to more rather than fewer conspiracy theories has a kind of synergy benefit: it reduces the legitimating effect of responding to any one of them, because it dilutes the contrast with unrebutted theories. Second, we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. ...

3. Cognitive infiltration

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that constitute these networks and groups.

How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups, including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior, their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts. Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action. ...