Government Complicity in the 9/11 Attacks, Part 2

The Government knew what would happen on 9/11/2001

 

The many statements by Administration officials and others that the attacks, and suicide hijackings in general, were totally unexpected, is definitely false.  Much of this information is summarized in The War on Freedom (WOF), written in 2002 by political scientist and human rights advocate Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (www.globalresearch.org) in the UK.  The Clinton Administration must have considered the use of hijacked airplanes as missiles.  In 1993 the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict studied the use of airplanes to attack domestic targets.  The Pentagon, Justice Department, and Federal Emergency Management Agency were recipients of the study's report.  In 1994 a disgruntled Federal Express employee tried to hijack a DC-10 jetliner to crash into one of its facilities in Memphis in April.  1993 was the year a pilot almost succeeded in crashing a small plane into the White House, in September.  That December an al Qaida linked Algerian group tried to hijack an Air France plane, to crash into the Eiffel Tower.  In January 1995 the Philippines even discovered the precursor to the 9/11 plot, an al Qaida plan (Project Bojinka) to destroy 11 planes over the Pacific Ocean or use at least some planes to attack sites such as the headquarters of the CIA, the White House, the World Trade Center (WTC), and the Sears Tower.  United, Northwest, and Delta flights would be targeted. Allegedly, Ramzi Yousef, arrested in Pakistan and convicted of involvement in the 1993 bombing of the WTC, thought of the plans.  He was convicted on Sept. 11, 1996, a date likely to be marked by future plots.          

 

In response, the US government began watching for potential al Qaida members at American flying schools.  Aircraft were very closely watched during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.  Since 1994 the FAA has warned that al Qaida was a potential threat to US airlines.  In 1999 the National Intelligence Council warned that al Qaida could use a hijacked plane to attack a Federal building.  Beginning in October 2000, several sources report, the FBI collaborated with Italian security in analyzing wiretaps of a cell in Milan and discovered a potential plan to attack domestic targets with planes. In 2000-2001 the CIA provided the FBI with a list of approximately 100 possible al Qaida members in, or coming to, the country.  August 23, 2001 they specifically named Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, who were already connected to numerous terrorist acts and allegedly on American Airlines (AA) Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon.  Numerous papers report that the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency (NSA) were monitoring these men from at least 1999.  According to an article in Newsweek, al Mihdhar and al Hazmi lived for months, until August 2001, with an FBI informant, Abudssatta Shaikh.  They also met with the group referred to in the FBI's Phoenix Memo (described below) and were tied by documents to convicted would be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. 

 

An Internet feature of the Washington Post reported after the attack that the US, Israel, and the UK were alerted 6 and 3 months beforehand that Bojinka-style attacks on domestic US or Israeli targets were close to implementation.  Further information was being gathered by ECHELON, a multi-nation system capable of listening to all electronic communications in the world.  The system is an open secret and the EU, some of whose members reportedly participate in the system, confirmed that ECHELON exists.  ECHELON allegedly allows domestic spying, by allowing governments to say they received any domestic information from foreign sources.  The system has existed at least since 1995, according to Ahmed.

 

United Press International (UPI) has reported that the NSA has been able to listen to al Qaida telecommunications for years, at least since the 1998 East African US embassy bombings.  The NSA recorded conversations between Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) over the summer and did not notify other agencies and allegedly neglected to translate many of the calls, although Atta was on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list (according to Knight Ridder Newspapers).  The NSA has repeatedly claimed that intercepted messages were not translated beforehand or could not be separated from other intercepted messages.  Ruppert points out that this is very unlikely, since these were very wanted men, and the government reportedly has computer translation programs, presumably including an Arabic translator.  In February 2001 it was revealed by UPI that the NSA had broken al Qaida's encryption methods and it is known that the government was able to block al Qaida's cell phones and financial transactions.  Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, revealed after 9/11 that he had heard from the CIA and FBI that the government heard al Qaida members celebrating the attack.  Rumsfeld denied this and condemned the revelation.  ABC News reported that many phone calls to the US by reported al Qaida chief of operations Abu Zubaida had been recorded by the US before 9/11; the contents have not been released to the public. 

 

There were increasing, and increasingly specific, warnings approaching that September.  Former US National Coordinator for Counterterrorism Richard Clarke, told the New Yorker magazine that 10 months before 9/11 an attack was expected, followed 2 to 3 weeks later by indications that there would be an attack within a few weeks.  He warned the FAA directly in July 2001.  Measures had been proposed in the past that would have decreased terrorism threats to the airlines and safety problems, but apparently the FAA aided the industry in resisting these measures.  Intercepts from Afghanistan indicated preparation for an attack in late June or July.  That July, Italy warned of a suicide plane attack targeting Bush at the G8 Summit in Genoa.  Egypt confirmed this, in part through infiltration of al Qaida.  In late August security was increased at the WTC.   

 

Many US allies knew attacks were coming, and at least seem to have had detailed advance knowledge.  Russia reportedly warned in the weeks before 9/11 that there would be an attack on government buildings and airports with hijacked planes, 25 pilots having been trained (cited in Rubicon and WOF).  Le Figaro reported that French intelligence told the CIA that attacks were coming on US targets globally and allegedly the French and Arab sources provided further detailed warnings.  Jordan discovered that al Qaida was planning an attack using planes inside the continental US, according to an article in the International Herald Tribune.  A Moroccan agent penetrated al Qaida for two years and warned of a massive attack in summer or fall 2001.  He was not able to get further information because the US asked him to make a report in the US in person (from the same source as above).  Al Qaida members even warned of attacks themselves, in Arab immigrant papers in the UK around this time, according to the London Independent and Senator Feinstein (D-CA). According to NBC News, two days before 9/11 a foreign intelligence service let the US know that bin Laden had called his mother and said "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while."  The British heard bin Laden discussing the attacks in intercepted phone calls weeks before 9/11 (from the Sunday Times).  UK Prime Minister Blair said bin Laden told al Qaida members to gather in Afghanistan by the 10^th.  Twelve days before 9/11 Egyptian President Mubarak told the US an event was coming.  According to the German public television station ARD, Egypt had been monitoring Mohamed Atta's phone calls. An Iranian national imprisoned in Germany warned the US that the WTC would be attacked in the week of September 9^th, but apparently the US was uninterested in the warning.  The Germans confirmed to www.online.ie that the calls were made.        

 

Israel apparently had detailed knowledge and might even have been spying on the hijackers, in the US.  According to the London Telegraph, two senior Israeli Mossad agents came in August to personally warn the CIA and FBI that up to 200 terrorists were planning an attack.  Israeli spies were active in the same areas as the hijackers, Hollywood, Florida (where they lived close to Atta's post office box), San Diego, and Phoenix.  A leaked FAA memo from 9/11 said an Israeli civilian connected to Israeli counterintelligence was shot on American Airlines Flight 11 (Rubicon). Germany's Der Spiegel reported that Mossad had a list of 19 al Qaida members planning an impending operation.  The list included four of the alleged hijackers.  If the US government was conspiring with al Qaida, Israel seemingly was a partner, at least passively. 

 

Garth L Nicolson, Chief Scientific Officer and Research Professor at the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, CA reported to Ahmed's organization that he was warned in three or more instances, by retired military and intelligence members and the head of state of an unnamed North African country, that the Pentagon would be attacked on 9/11.  He believes his information was ignored by the many agencies he reported it to. 

 

Six weeks prior to 9/11 Ashcroft and others were warned of the date and targets of the attacks, and who was funding them, by lawyer David Schippers, the Chief Invesigative Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in 1998 and chief prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment.  Schippers says he received this information from three FBI agents who said their investigations were stymied and that they were threatened with prosecution if they revealed their information to the public.  The New American, a conservative magazine, interviewed FBI agents who confirmed that the information was well-known in the FBI before 9/11.  The conservative civil liberties group Judicial Watch joined with Schippers in sueing the government on behalf of Schippers' informants.   

 

Evidently many officials knew what was coming and avoided flying near 9/11.  Eights hours before the attack began, San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was called by unnamed flight security and told to be careful, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (SFC).  On the 10^th, a group of Pentagon leaders canceled a planned flight the morning of the attacks, according to Newsweek.  Earlier in the summer then Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped taking US commercial flights, according to an SFC article.  A week beforehand (says the London Times), famous author Salman Rushdie, who is guarded by the British Scotland Yard and British intelligence, was banned from taking domestic US and Canadian flights.  Also a week before the attacks, a radio talk show in the Cayman Islands, where many American businesses and capitalists send their money to escape taxes, was warned that al Qaida was about to carry out an attack (from MSNBC, September 16, 2001).  September 10^th employees of the Tokyo office of the Goldman Sachs company were warned to stay away from US government offices because of terrorism (Counterpunch magazine, September 14, 2001).  September 7^th the State Department warned citizens of an impending al Qaida attack, but the government should have expected a domestic angle, given the many warnings and the Project Bojinka scenario.                     

 

Parts of the US government, to their credit, apparently took some steps to protect the public in response to these specific warnings.  It is bad enough that the attacks happened despite the warnings.  Even worse is the abundant evidence that the government abetted the terrorists by repeatedly allowing them into the US, shielding them from detection, and even training them.  A later article will discuss how the US government under both Clinton and Bush II seemingly wanted, and still wants, bin Laden to remain free.   

 

Warnings from stock markets

 

Michael C. Ruppert cites sources suggesting that the CIA and other intelligence agencies monitor the financial markets in real time to watch for warnings of threats to the USA.  There were numerous ominous warnings in the days before Black Tuesday in put option trading in the stocks of many companies, oil, US Treasury bills, and gold.  A put option is an agreement to sell stock at the price when the sale is made, but not having to provide the stocks until later, so if the stock's price falls the seller can make a profit.  A call option is the reverse situation.  Basically these are gambles about how stock prices will change over time. 

 

Soon after the attacks, the SEC released a list of about 38 companies targeted by possible 9/11 insiders, trading in the USA, UK, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan (where trading was 8 times over average levels on the Osaka Exchange), and Singapore.  The Herzliya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism in Israel reported several very irregular trading incidents.  September 6-7 4744 put options on United Airlines were bought on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), against 396 call options.  Herzliya calculated that, if 4000 of these options were bought with advanced knowledge, insiders gained nearly $5 million dollars in these trades alone.  The day before 9/11, 4516 put options and 748 call options were bought on the CBOE, and 4000 of the put options would have resulted in profits of about $4 million dollars.  Together these put option trades were 6 times above the average level and this only occurred on the days mentioned above.  Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co had offices on 22 floors of the WTC and only 27 put options were traded on an average day. On the last three open trading days before the attacks 2157 put options were bought, and if 2000 were bought by insiders, conspirators gained about $1.2 million dollars.  These purchases were 27% above normal between September 7 and 10.  Merrill Lynch & Co, based in the WTC, on average sold 252 options, and on the four open days before the attacks, 1200% more put options (12,215) were bought.  If 11,000 were by insiders, they netted about $5.5 million dollars.  230,000 options on United Airlines were bought on the three open days before 9/11 for $2070 dollars (90 cents per share, selling for $12 dollars each by mid-October 2001).  Options for 231,300 shares, worth about $2.77 million dollars were left unclaimed.  Other sources reported a 90% increase in United Airlines put option purchases between September 6 and 10 (285 times higher that Thursday) and 60% higher for AA. These trades were very skewed to the put side, at a time when airline stocks were considered good buys, and the trades targeted exactly the airlines whose planes were hijacked.  Reuters reported on September 10^th that airline stocks were about to gain value, and that Goldman Sachs was "an aggressive buyer of airline stocks," and that one of its favored companies was American Airlines (cited by Ruppert).   

 

European states investigated trading involving Munich Re, Swiss Re, and AXA, a French company that owned at least 25% of American Airlines' shares, all of which were liable to pay for 9/11 damages.  The American investment bank, Alex Brown, part of Deutsche Bank, the largest bank in Europe, had a role in facilitating some of the United Airlines trades, and was the main facilitator of those regarding Munich Re.  The Bank is patronized by the bin Laden family and has ties to the Kuwait Finance House and the Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain, both having worked with al Qaida and not cooperating with US investigations. They were left out of the government's investigation of al Qaida's financial network.  Both also helped Bush conduct what looks like insider trading when he was an officer of Harken Energy.  Atta and several other alleged hijackers had accounts with Deutsch Bank.  Ruppert also points out that CIA Executive Director (the third highest office) AB "Buzzy" Krongard was chair of Alec Brown, vice chair of Banker's Trust Alex, after Banker's Trust bought Alex Brown.  Krongard was hired by the CIA in 1998, a year before Deutsch Bank bought Banker's Trust. 

 

In addition to the put options, 5-year US Treasury notes (T-bills) were suspiciously popular prior to 9/11, including a $5 billion dollar purchase (Wall Street Journal (WSJ), October 2, 2001).  Treasury bills are considered very safe investments and, expectably, they became more expensive after the attacks.  The company recovering data from surviving WTC computers estimated that at least $100 million dollars were illegally moved through the systems prior to and during the attack.  Former German member of parliament, overseeing the intelligence agencies, (and critic of the official story) Andreas von Bülow estimated that potential insider trading resulted in $15 billion dollars and CBS estimated that it was worth at least $100 million dollars (all cited in Rubicon).  John Kinnucan, Principal of Broadband Research, told the Montreal Gazette (September 19, 2001) that "I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly in the options markets" and CBS' 60 Minutes reported that "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market" (September 19, 2001).  "There have been fundamental movements in these [airline] markets, and the oil price rise just ahead of the attacks is otherwise inexplicable," unless due to insider trading, according to Ernest Welteke, president of the German Bundesbank (New York Times (NYT), September 28, 2001).       

 

In typical fashion, the 9/11 Commission said the trading was not by people with insider knowledge, after assuming that the US institution it claims placed most of the put options on United Airlines and a financial newsletter would not have had advanced knowledge, since they are American.  The Commission does not name these groups and it cites Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and FBI documents the public cannot view.  In their Report they say "From the outset, we have been committed to share as much of the investigation as we can with the American people." The Commission expects Americans to trust them, though they do not provide much in the way of grounds for that trust.  None of the results of the many financial investigations have been revealed to the public.