Fire in the C Ring But Not in the D Ring?

Fire on the C ring but not on the D ring? 

Gosh, I never noticed this before but it just jumped out at me now for some reason.

Look at the extensive evidence of fire on the C ring-- particularly where the "double doors" are blown out. Why isn't there corresponding fire on the D ring? The D ring should have been impacted more heavily than the C ring by the plane. This makes no sense for a plane hit, but does support the idea that explosives were used to bomb the C ring. Also, note how far off the fire was from the supposed path of the plane (indicated by the red line).

A few posts ago I went over why Barbara Honegger thinks the Pentagon was bombed instead of hit by a plane. This is the first photographic evidence I've found that strongly supports that idea.

Note: I suppose the official explanation for this fire pattern is that the plane only went through the first and second floors, the D ring was covered over the first and second floors and the fire only emerged of the C ring on the A-E drive out of the first and second floors. I suppose this is plausible. However, it seems very strange to me that damage from a LARGE JET PLANE entering the building would be limited to ONLY the BOTTOM TWO FLOORS. Are we supposed to believe that parts of the plane were powerful enough to travel through three building rings-worth of walls and interior compenents, yet these same plane pieces were not powerful enough to punch through the second floor ceiling?

Yeah, right.

Why Did the 7/7 London Bombers Leave Behind 16 Bombs?

The London bombers left a stash of 16 unexploded bombs in a car, some packed with nails, it was revealed today.

Security experts believe the July 7 plot, which killed 56 people, may have been planned to be much larger and the explosives intended for a second strike.

The bombs were recovered from a car believed to have been rented by suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer, according to ABC News.

The vehicle was found five days after the attacks in Luton, where the bombers boarded a train to London.

Need I mention that this really takes the wind out of the idea that the 7/7 bombers were suicide bombers?

CIA Viewed from the Left and the Right

Digby has a good post about how liberals and conservatives think about the CIA. I think he gets it about right. Key excerpt:

I've been thinking a lot about how the Plame affair has brought up an interesting political contradiction: the right is now openly contemptuous of the CIA while the left is a vocal supporter. I think it's probably a good idea to clarify that bit so we don't get confused. The fact is that both sides have always been simultaneously vocal supporters and openly contemptuous of the CIA, but for entirely different reasons.

I usually don't speak for "the left" but for the purpose of this discussion I will use my views as a proxy for the lefty argument. I'm not generally a big fan of secretive government departments with no accountability. I always worry that they are up to things not sanctioned by the people and it has often turned out that they are. I have long been skeptical of the CIA because of the CIA's history of bad acts around the world that were not sanctioned or even known by more than a few people and were often, in hindsight, wrong --- like rendition, for instance. I don't believe that we should have a secret foreign policy operation that doesn't answer to the people. They tend to do bad shit that leaves the people holding the bag.

But I didn't just fall out of the back of Arnold's hummer, so I understand that a nation needs intelligence to protect itself and understand the world. I also understand that the way we obtain that information must be kept secret in order to protect the lives of those who are involved in getting it. I have never objected to the idea that we have spies around the world gathering information about what our enemies are up to. I also think that intelligence should, as much as possible, be objective and apolitical. Otherwise, we cannot accurately assess real threats. If the CIA (and the other intelligence agencies) only make objective analyses, the buck will stop at the president, where it always properly should.

Therefore, I see this Plame affair -- and the larger matter of the pre-war WMD threat assessment -- as a matter of compromised intelligence and an extension of the 30 year war the right has waged against what it thinks is the CIA's tepid threat analysis. Never mind that the right's hysterical analyses have always turned out to have been completely wrong.

But then accuracy was never the point because the right takes the opposite approach to the CIA's proper role. They have always been entirely in favor of the CIA working on behalf of any president who wanted to topple a left wing dictator or stage a coup without congressional knowledge. This is, in their view, the proper role of the CIA --- to covertly advance foreign policy on behalf of an executive (of whom they approve) and basically do illegal and immoral dirty work. But they have never valued the intelligence and analysis the CIA produced since it often challenged their preconcieved beliefs and as a result didn't validate their knee jerk impulse to invade, bomb, obliterate, topple somebody for reasons of ideology or geopolitical power. The CIA's intelligence often backed up the success of the containment policy that kept us from a major bloody hot war with the commies --- and for that they will never be trusted.(See Team B, and the Committee on the Present Danger parts I and II.)

More on Haroon Rashid Aswat

I previously posted that the London bombing mastermind was an intelligence asset of some sort here.

Here is more info on Aswat:

Former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus claims alleged London bombing mastermind Haroon Rashid Aswat is a "double agent" who "works for the MI6".

For those who don't know who he is, Loftus is the author of "The Secret War Against the Jews", a (highly recommended) book resulting from his research into American corporations' and intelligence agencies' collusion with the Nazis before, during and after WWII, research which he conducted with an above top secret security clearance which gave him access to hitherto secret intelligence archives. He is now usually billed as a "terrorism expert".

Prosecutors in Seattle wanted to indict Aswat in 1999 for trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, but were ordered not to touch him by the highest level in the Justice Department. According to Loftus, the reason was that Aswat was an agent of British intelligence. He claims that "while British police were trying to catch him, the MI6 were trying to hide him".

Aswat allegedly left London for Pakistan on July 6, one day before the London bombing. He was then arrested in Pakistan, but released within 24 hours. He reportedly travelled to Zimbabwe and then Zambia, where he may have been arrested again (conflicting reports).
(http://www.foxnews.com / - click on "video" under "Answering questions", then click "Nabbed - finally".)

It would appear that someone's got some splainin' to do. Loftus says the CIA and Israeli intelligence have been critical of the MI6 for giving terrorists a free pass to operate in London, and he claims the reason for doing so has been "appeasement" - we leave you alone, you leave us alone. But many have suspected, long before 9/11, that radical Islamists have been used as a tool for Britain's covert foreign policy, notably in Bosnia in the 90s, when it is alleged that the MI6 clandestinely recruited young radicals in Britain's Pakistani community to fight a guerrilla war against the Serbs.

Former MI5 officer David Shayler has alleged, and French intel sources have corroborated, that the MI6 paid a Libyan al-Qa'ida cell £100,000 in 1995 to assassinate colonel Qaddafi.
(see http://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/0,2759,339663,00.html for a collection of stories on Shayler)

And then there's this, reported in the Independent in January this year:

The Independent is reporting today that in his testimony before a US military tribunal, Bisher al-Rawi claims that he acted as a "go-between" for MI-5 and Abu Qatada, "the militant Islamic cleric alleged to be al-Qa'ida's "spiritual leader" in Europe." Al-Rawi was seized (kidnapped?) by US intelligence agents in 2002 while on a business trip to Gambia, on the strength of his relationship with Qatada.

Al-Rawi has named three MI5 agents - "Alex", "Matthew" and "Martin" - and asked that they be called as defence witnesses. The tribunal agreed, but "the British Government refused to allow them to give evidence.

(...)

The Independent closes with this:

His claims follow allegations, by Islamist militants as well as French security sources, that Abu Qatada had contacts with British intelligence, which the Palestinian strongly denies. His legal advisers are adamant that he was only questioned as part of routine attempts by MI5 to gather intelligence about Islamist groups in the UK.
(http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/mi5-asset... - The Independent link appears to have expired)

Haroom Rashid Aswat, Abu Qatada - which other "al-Qa'ida leaders" are or have been on Her Majesty's payroll, or at least have enjoyed cordial relations with Her security services? Isn't this a question the British media, in particular, ought to be asking? Furthermore, Mr Aswat is not the only "al-Qa'ida member" who appears to have been "untouchable" while in the US - the 19 9/11 hijackers and their associate Zaccharias Moussaoui seem to have been as well. The sabotage by the highest levels in the FBI of Coleen Rowley's desperate attempt to investigate Moussaoui, for instance, is a striking parallel to the "hands-off" order regarding Aswat, and it's far from being the only one.

I should point out, Webster Tarpley, in his excellent book "Synthetic Terror 911: Made in USA" goes into detail about how British intelligence coddles Islamic extremists, such that London is derisively called "Londonistan".

Has the Blogosphere Been Infiltrated by the CIA?

Just a general question. I don't have any evidence they have. However, blogs are a powerful new medium, and the CIA wants to control information and push propaganda-- thus it is natural they would try to get into blogs.

I wonder if at least some of the big liberal blogs have CIA ties, and whether this is why they refuse to really question 9/11. Granted, lots of ordinary people refuse to question 9/11. However, liberal blogs can act as a gatekeeper of what is "allowable" for liberals to question, and can therefore modulate the discourse.

I always find it odd that powerful liberal/progressive/Democratic blogs get involved in trivial and often boring debates over what some conservative goon said or meant, when at the same time, they seem to have no interest in the fascinating analyses that go on in the 9/11 skeptic community. And these are analyses of 9/11 that have could have incredible significance over the whole political landscape!

There is simply no doubt that if 9/11 truths were widely disseminated that it would radically shake the political foundations of this country.

Maybe that is what they are afraid of? Particularly since the Democratic party has invested so heavily in the bin Laden-9/11 myth? Much more so than the Republicans, as a matter of fact.

As a life-long Democrat, this really bothers me.

Was the Pentagon Actually Hit by Pre-planted Bombs?

The information here comes from a workshop run by Barbara Honegger at the Truth Emergency Convergence meeting on Sunday July 24, 2005 at American University in Washingon DC.

I have decided to break the info I learned from Barbara Honegger (BH) into two separate posts. This is part two. Part one, about what time the Pentagon was hit is here.

BH was an official in the Reagan administration and resigned in protest over his policies. She is a self-described former whistleblower and is now a military-affairs reporter. She has written a book, "October Surprise", about the Iran-Contra affair. She worked with Mike Ruppert on his "Crossing the Rubicon" but does not endorse all of Ruppert's conclusions-- particularly about Cheney being the mastermind behind 9/11 (and I agree with her).

BH describes the Pentagon hit as the "Rosetta Stone" and the "Holy Grail" of 9/11 because what happened there was very important for understanding 9/11 in general.

A key point is that the hit on the Pentagon, the killing of military personnel, was critical for engaging the military in this new "war", as opposed to 9/11 merely being a larger version of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In this post, I am not going to try and validate everything BH says, merely present what she presented. At the end of the post, I will add other pieces of evidence that support her thesis.

To cut to the chase, BH thinks the Pentagon was NOT hit by flight 77, but rather sets of bombs, a truck bomb (on a green fire-truck) and bombs planted inside the Pentagon as well. She this was perhaps followed by a heat-seeking missile. She does not claim to know exactly what hit the Pentagon, but doesn't think it was flight 77.

So why does she think this?

First, where the Pentagon was hit is highly suspicious, the "violent event" precisely took out two groups of people: the naval Command Center and the Army's Financial Auditing Office (this is significant because shortly before 9/11, Rumsfeld announced that huge amounts of money had been lost by the Pentagon).

Second, the dearth of airline debris that was found.

Third, the size of the initial hole in the Pentagon facade was too small for a 757.

Fourth, the initial report from Associated Press of what happened at the Pentagon described a "booby-trapped truck bomb".

Fifth, she describes the account of Robert Andrews, who was the Head of Special Operations at the Pentagon at this time (note: I have verified this). He says after he heard of what happened at the WTC on 9/11, he went to a special counter-terrorism center in the basement of the Pentagon (near where the "violent event" was). While he was in there, monitoring the situation, he says at 9:32am there was an explosion that almost completely destroyed the counter-terrorism center. He managed to escape and here is where is gets really interesting: Andrews said he emerged out on ground level at the innermost A ring of the Pentagon and he saw dead bodies on the ground there. This was a face-to-face interview between Honegger and Andrews, and BH said that immediately after Andrews said this, he blushed, as if he had said something he didn't want to say or mean to say.

6) After the "violent event" at the Pentagon, people started evacuating the building, and many people were loudly saying a bomb had gone off.

7) An Army auditor from Fort Monouth was working at the Pentagon during this time, and he said on 9/11 when he got off the Metro subway at the Pentagon, he saw bomb-sniffing dogs. This was the only time he ever saw bomb-sniffing dogs at the Pentagon. This auditor also confirmed that the violent event happened at 9:32am.

So this is the extent of what BH said relating a bomb event at the Pentagon. I don't think she is a complete flake, and I take what she says seriously. She was one of the first people to report about the military wargames on 9/11 and she was completely right about that.

Here are some other pieces of evidence that fit the explosives theory:

At least two witnesses smelled "cordite", a product of high explosives.

The linear path of damage through the E-D-C rings of the Pentagon never really made complete sense to me for plane damage, particularly considering all the pillars and inner walls in the way.

In the damaged area, one section of the ceiling is blown out, see orange rectangle here. Note how the columns are more heavily damaged here than before and after-- almost as if there was a specific explosive event here. This piece of evidence has been noted by Dave McGowan here (scroll down).

US Congressional Representative John Murtha had an early report that a bomb went off at the Pentagon.

I have heard rumors that there was some sort of terror exercise at the Pentagon on 9/11 (hence the bomb-sniffing dogs), but I don't have a specific reference.

The French author Thierry Meyssan, famous for his missile-into-the-Pentagon theory, actually initially proposed that the Pentagon was hit by a truck bomb.

The web-site 911-strike deals with what happened at the Pentagon and entertains the idea of pre-planted bombs.

Finally, there is the testimony of April Gallup (this was related at the workshop by author Jim Marrs who interviewed her), who was at the Pentagon when the violent event happened-- she actually crawled out of the hole in the E ring where the plane supposedly went in, and she saw no evidence of a plane. When she was in the hospital, she was visited by government-suit types who wouldn't say where they were from but kept drilling it into her head that a plane had hit the Pentagon. Marrs thought that they were "debriefing her" and getting her story straight.

So what to make of all this?

Of course, skeptics to this will always say "What happened to the real flight 77?" "What about all those eye-witnesses of a plane?"

My answer is a) I don't know, but there are several possibilities, and b) they are lying or they saw something besides flight 77, such as a missile.

One possibility we can't rule out is that there were planted bombs AND that flight 77 also hit the Pentagon. This might account for the evidence best-- particularly the massive confusion over when the Pentagon was hit, although it is really just a theory like anything else. And I have gone over on this site many times why flight 77/a Boeing 757 is unlikely to have hit the Pentagon. Nonetheless, combining a plane stirke with bombs is what has been proposed for the WTC hit as well.

I strongly think that something happened at the Pentagon besides a plane strike.

The planted bombs and a heat-seeking missile strike is feasible, but there is little evidence for a missile, really.

In general, I think it is quite possible that the evidence of a 757 hitting the Pentagon, such as airplane debris, was planted. The best way to do this would be to package bombs with the airplane parts in different parts of the Pentagon. While this may seem absurd, remember this section of the Pentagon had been recently renovated and non-military people had access to the building. The planting of the 757 parts may have been done in conjunction with the renovation. I know it sounds absurd, but I think it is possible that all the evidence of a plane hitting the Pentagon is a massive illusion-- including the downed-light poles on the highway. This would mean the eye-witnesses again, are either lying or they saw a plane fly over the Pentagon at the same time the bombs went off.

Familiar People

One really odd thing about the the Truth Emergency Convergence meeting I went to on Saturday and Sunday July 23-24, 2005 in Washingon DC was seeing a bunch of people in the audience I KNOW I've seen before but couldn't quite place them. It was very eery. Where on earth would I have seen people before who came to a 9/11 conspiracy meeting? I've never been to a 9/11 conspiracy meeting before. I haven't even watched any 9/11 videos, except for the ones on 911busters.com, and I don't think these people I saw this past weekend were in there.

Btw, I am working on the second part of the Barbara Honegger Pentagon post. It is just taking some time to put it together. Hopefully I will have it up later tonight.

A Member of the Mainstream Media Finally Gets It About Iraq!

Bob Herbert-- It's all about oil.

Astoundingly honest:

But dreams of empire die hard. American G.I.'s are dug into Iraq, and the bases have been built for a long stay. The war may be going badly, but the primary consideration is that there is still a tremendous amount of oil at stake, the second-largest reserves on the planet. And neocon fantasies aside, the global competition for the planet's finite oil reserves intensifies by the hour.

Lyndon Johnson ignored the unsolicited advice of Senator George Aiken of Vermont - to declare victory in Vietnam in 1966. The war continued for nearly a decade. Many high-level government figures believe that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for a minimum of 5 more years, and perhaps 10.

That should be understood by the people who think that the formation of a permanent Iraqi government will lead to the withdrawal of American troops. There is no real withdrawal plan. The fighting and the dying will continue indefinitely.

Refusing the Evidence

An excellent piece by TV-NewsLIES.

WHY AMERICANS REFUSE TO BELIEVE
THE 9/11 EVIDENCE!!!
blind2blind2blind2

An Analysis by TvNewsLIES.org - April - 2005

The attacks of 9/11 were so unthinkable that most Americans would refuse to believe the complicity of their own government, even if presented with a mountain of evidence.

Very simply, it is possible to escape blame if you do something that nobody in the world believes you could do.

PROLOGUE

When I was 11 years old I sat next to my friend and fellow class clown Jeffery, quietly thinking of ways to torture the unsuspecting substitute teacher. Jeffery and I were competing comedians, always trying to "get over" on each other in school. Jeffery was good and there were no limits to what he would do.

On this particular day we sat next to each other, sharing one of the double desks with which Brooklyn school children of the 70’s were so familiar. As our unsuspecting substitute turned his back to write something on the black board, Jeffery raised his arm and launched all his own books across the room in the direction opposite from where I was seated, immediately turning towards me with a look of horror and shock plastered on his face. The teacher, alarmed by the noise of the book launching, spun around only to see Jeffery's books scattered around the room. His loose leaf binder had opened up and produced an explosion of confetti in the form of notes and homework sheets.

A quick glance our way by the teacher brought into view a shocked Jeffery, who appeared to be the victim, sitting right next to me and staring at me with an expression of, "What the hell did you just do?" splashed on his face. I sat there, speechless, as the person on the right side of Jeffery's books prior to their launch to the left. I had nothing to say because the truth was simply not believable and no convincing lie presented itself.

Anyone witnessing this scene from the teacher’s vantage point could only come to one conclusion, Jesse did it. Even if I tried to explain that Jeffery launched the books, who would believe me? After all, who would have done this to his own property? Jeffery would have to spend the next hour or so reassembling his loose leaf binder. There is no way he would have done this to himself. No way, except for one thing...he did do this to himself, his motive...comedy. I was the patsy for two good reasons. First, I was sitting right there when it happened’ and second - I had a history of being a clown. I understood why people thought I was guilty and let me be the first to commend Jeffery for executing the perfect crime. He did the unthinkable and set up a patsy with his convincing claim of innocence.

In this sad, but true story, I was kicked out of the class by our substitute teacher. I was only 11 years old but I knew enough to understand that there was no way in hell that anyone would believe me if I told the truth and said that Jeffery was guilty of tossing his books . And so, having no proof that I was blameless, I swallowed my defeat and walked out of the room wondering what form my revenge against Jeffery would take.

The point to be made is this: sometimes, the more outrageous an action, the easier it is to get away with. Sometimes, there is no way that people can connect the criminal with the crime: the very idea of guilt is so far out of the norm as to be unthinkable.

snip

Ironically, it’s almost funny when the fact-based 9/11 research community gathers to discuss the events of that day. The official government version of what happened loses so much credibility in the light of the available facts, films, testimony & chronicled history that it is almost impossible not to laugh in disbelief when we start to share what we know. The evidence that has been amassed is so persuasive as to rip the official version of 9/11 to shreds. And still, there is no one but ourselves to hear us.

We go on and on and on like people obsessed because as responsible citizens of the world we have assigned ourselves the task of exposing the truth. But we also have to accept the obstacles we face. We must understand how and why people refuse to believe what we say despite all the evidence in our possession. To explain that phenomenon I think about my friend Jeffery and his book launch. He did something no one believed he could possibly have done. As a result, he carried it off.

The people who were responsible for the attacks of 9/11 did something so unbelievable that most people would not believe they did it, even if presented with conclusive evidence of their guilt. As a result, they also carried it off, and the evidence be damned.

In the end, there is always the comment by those who would discredit the research and the evidence that has been uncovered. The defenders of the official version of 9/11 inevitably ask how so many people could keep a secret. "Wouldn't someone have blown the whistle by now?" is the constant challenge by the champions of denial. How naïve they are.

At the higher levels of government the issue is no longer about secrecy, but about survival. The extent of the 9/11 crimes are so great that a very real scenario of self preservation has arisen. It may well be that whistle blowers fear the consequences of exposing the truth about 9/11, not to themselves, but to the nation.

It is highly probable that they believe that their testimony would lead to the end of the United States of America as a viable power.

In this worst case scenario, the good people in our government and in our intelligence community may really fear that America would never ever regain its credibility in the world, and would never again be respected or trusted. They may envision a terrible time when the United States would relinquish its leadership position in the world and sink to the position of a rogue nation that had committed an unforgivable atrocity against its own people for political purposes. If this is so, can anyone blame them for not coming forward to expose what they know?

A deep love of country might easily create a dilemma for those who know the truth. What would happen at that unimaginable moment when a ranking government official was charged with complicity in 9/11? Would the nation recover? Could the nation heal after such a huge betrayal of the trust that has been cultivated and nurtured over our 230 year history as a nation?

The people who were involved in 9/11 know that there is more at stake than their exposure. They already have the blind loyalty of those Americans who would refuse to believe they could possibly have been involved. . But deep in their corrupted souls they also have another ace in the hole. They are counting on the protection of those who fear for the stability of the nation. They are convinced of their own invincibility and really believe that they will never be held accountable. But they also believe that no one of credibility will step forward to expose them.

As I did with Jeffery, let me be the first to admit that these folks seem to have committed the perfect crime. Not in the sense that they will never be discovered, but in the sense that they believe it will do more harm to the country to expose them than to play along with their charade.

But, in fact, they are badly mistaken. The United States of America will not crumble with the revelation of their actions because our foundation is too strong to falter at their hands. History is never without obstacles to progress and this ordeal will not be an exception. On the contrary, if and when the truth is ever known, this nation will be stronger and nobler for that knowledge.

This sums up my thinking about this issue very well.

Bush and the Timing of the Pentagon Hit on 9/11-- A Key Insight Into What the Secret Service May Have Known on 9/11

The information here comes from a workshop run by Barbara Honegger at the Truth Emergency Convergence meeting on Sunday July 24, 2005 at American University in Washingon DC. This was the only workshop I was able to attend. I was actually very lucky to stumble on this workshop because it was on the Pentagon hit, a part of 9/11 I have been extremely interested in. I truly stumbled upon this workshop because I didn't know my way around and this was the first workshop I found.

I have decided to break the info I learned from Barbara Honegger (BH) into two separate posts. This is part one.

BH is a former whistleblower and is now a military-affairs reporter. She worked with Mike Ruppert on his "Crossing the Rubicon" but does not endorse all of Ruppert's conclusions-- particularly about Cheney being the mastermind behind 9/11 (and I agree with her).

BH describes the Pentagon hit as the "Rosetta Stone" and the "Holy Grail" of 9/11 because what happened there was very important for understanding 9/11 in general.

A key point is that the hit on the Pentagon, the killing of military personnel, was critical for engaging the military in this new "war", as opposed to 9/11 merely being a larger version of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Okay, to the meat of it-- the exact time of the Pentagon hit has been in dispute since 9/11. Initially, the time was 9:47am, then 9:45am, then 9:42am, then finally 9:37am as the final time settled on by the 9/11 commission. So there clearly has been some doubt about the timing of the event.

Strikingly, BH has extremely strong evidence from several different sources that the Pentagon was hit between 9:31am and 9:32am, five to six minutes earlier than even the earliest time officially admitted. This is physical evidence (stopped clocks) and several witnesses to the Pentagon hit (as she calls it the "violent event" since it wasn't clearly a plane hitting-- this will be in part two).

So why is this five minutes SO IMPORTANT???

We don't truly know, but BH has a very interesting and feasible idea, and it relates to what Bush was doing on that morning.

Remember, he was sitting in the classroom after the first plane hit, was supposedly told the second tower was hit in the classroom but did NOTHING for many minutes. In fact, Bush lingered in the classroom for a long time, in part because his aides told him to stall and not to say anything yet about the WTC attacks.

Here's the interesting part: Bush left the classroom at 9:32am.

The idea therefore, is that Bush and his people ONLY reacted to 9/11 when the MILITRARY had gotten hit. They didn't really care so much about civilians dying.

The reason they are lying about the time of the Pentagon hit is that it gives Bush cover so it makes it look like he wasn't leaving the classroom just after learning the Pentagon was hit. The lie about the timing was all about public relations! They didn't want the public to know that Bush did nothing until it was clear there was an attack on the military and that he didn't react to "mere civilians" being hit.

I think this theory makes a lot of sense.

Of course, beyond this, the really interesting question is: what the HELL hit the Pentagon????

In my next post I'll tell you what I learned from BH about what HIT the Pentagon.

Hint: she doesn't think flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

UPDATE: I didn't cross-check what Honegger was saying with other sources so just took her word that he left at 9:32am.

But according to Paul Thompson's timeline, Bush left the classroom at 9:29am, then at 9;34am was rushed out of the school-- it looks like only after the Pentagon was hit at 9:32am did they realize Bush was in danger!

This makes even more sense now! They must have been expecting the twin tower attack but not the pentagon hit. When the Pentagon was hit, they knew Bush might be a target as well.

This implies that the PENTAGON HIT WAS UNEXPECTED!

This also makes me wonder if the other hijacked planes, 77 and 93 were possible back-up planes for the WTC hit? Because the secret service had to know other planes were hijacked when Bush was in the classroom, but they didn't do anything UNTIL the Pentagon was hit!

Random Points

I am still looking for a large chunk of time in which to post on the really interesting stuff I learned about the pentagon hit, but until then, here are a few thoughts relevant to 9/11 and our current situation:

1) a much more appropriate name for conspiracy theories is "deep politics"-- let's start using it.

2) the NORAD multiple plane hijacking exercises run before 9/11 and on 9/11, as Barbara Honegger has pointed out, is really the best example of specific foreknowledge of 9/11 by the military-- they were PRACTICING TO DEFEND AGAINST MULTIPLE HIJACKINGS!

3) A 757 is a much smaller plane than a 767, and the 757 only has one main aisle versus two aisles in a 767. Thus, the 767 presents more of a challenge for hijacking than a 757. Yet, on 9/11, the two 767's that were hijacked (supposedly), flight 11 and flight 175, had the same number of hijackers as the 757 that was supposedly hijacked, flight 77: FIVE. Flight 93 was also supposed to have five hijackers but they lost one and only had four. Moreover, a 767 needs many more flight attendants (nine) than a 757 (five). Again, this raises logistics problems for the hijackings. One really has to wonder why the hijackers used the same number of men for the 757s as the 767s.

4) The Plame leak prosecutor Fitzgerald may be the only person at this point in time who is capable of stopping the madness of the Bush administration.

5) 9/11 awareness is still growing and we must increase our effort to expose this massive fraud. Greater public awareness of 9/11 has the strong potential to bring down the Bush administration and change this country for the better.

Why These Are NOT ORDINARY TIMES We Are Living In

This is fucking ridiculous, the kind of ridiculousness that could get a LOT of people killed:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

Yes, let's just all go to hell because no one is willing to "damage" their careers.

And how much do you want to bet there are nice plans in the works for "another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States"?

These are NOT ORDINARY TIMES, and we must fight this lunacy with all we have.

9/11 Truth Rally in Lafayette Park on July 23rd, 2005

This was a lot of fun, some of my favorite 9/11 people were there and spoke:
David Ray Griffin
Paul Thompson
Webster Tarpley

Tarpley in particular was very forceful and compelling.

Also good to hear speak were:
Morgan Reynolds (who was a real surprise treat-- very energetic)
Robert Bowman (didn't know him before but was very good)
Nafiz Ahmed (heard of him but hadn't read his stuff or heard him speak before-- he was low-key but very good)


Morgan Reynolds stuck around after his speech and was very affable and talked with me and others about 9/11. He is a very connected guy and a good ally for 9/11 truth.

I also met Nico Haupt (aka Ewing2001) for the first time-- he is an intense character. Lean and wolf-like, a smoker. He passed out some literature, some key points on 9/11 and had a sheet rebutting Karl Schwarz's 9/11 theories. I will post some of this stuff in the future.

Somewhat Off-Topic, But Unbelievably Maddening

White House threatens veto on detainee policies.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday threatened to veto a massive Senate bill for $442 billion in next year's defense programs if it moves to regulate the
Pentagon's treatment of detainees or sets up a commission to investigate operations at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.

The Bush administration, under fire for the indefinite detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and questions over whether its policies led to horrendous abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, put lawmakers on notice it did not want them legislating on the matter.

In a statement, the White House said such amendments would "interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war."

"If legislation is presented that would restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice," the bill could be vetoed, the statement said.

You know, sometimes, you really have to step back in awe at the unmitigated gall of this administration.

Imagine that-- the Congress actually trying to legislate something decent and humane that would help our troops have the higher moral ground. But the Bush admin. says NO FUCKIN' WAY.

Then there is also the head-exploding hypocrisy of the Bush administration saying that diverting resources from the war would weaken the fight against terrorism.

Not only are these guys are evil mother-fuckers, but they IN-YOUR-FACE evil motherfuckers.

I'm Back from the Truth Emergency Convergence Rally

held in Washington DC over this past weekend. I'll be posting much more on this, but right now, let me just say a couple of things.

First, due to other family-related plans, I wasn't able to go to nearly everything I would have liked. The rally in Lafayette Park on Saturday was really fun and had some good energy. Turnout for the rally could have been better but wasn't bad. The people that were there were awesome. I met and saw in person a lot of people whose work I knew from the internet but never saw before. In retrospect the whole thing was a novel and exciting event. I'm very glad I went, although the trip was tiring.

The 7/21 London "Bombings"

are very bizarre for a few reasons. First, they come right after I found this weird story about British MI-6 Agents trying to blow up Chicago subway trains being arrested.

Second, is how all four attacks failed-- only the detonators seem to have gone off on the bombs.

Third, is how confused the story is--it is still not clear whether the police have arrested any suspected bombers yet, since they seem to have survived the attacks.

The fact that there were four bombs, three on a train and one on a bus is clearly some signature here.

But most strikingly is how the bombs didn't go off.

Either these were the lamest terrorists imaginable (failed at making four out of four bombs), or their MI-5/MI-6 controllers didn't WANT the bombs to go off.

I suspect it was the latter-- this attack wasn't really meant to hurt anyone, merely to send a message.

What message?

It's hard to believe that it is a mere coincidence that the US congress was debating renewal of the USA Patriot Act on the same day the bombs went off.

Of course, other more generic messages probably were about staying in Iraq and to keep thinking about invading Iran.

Another thing this particular scenario accomplishes is the capturing of "live terrorists". Assuming these captured bad guys never receive any normal judicial treatment, i.e. are held as "enemy combatants", they can be used as a convenient source of "information" about how these bad guys were linked to Al Qaeda and how now the authorities have rolled up the terror cell and how these new bombers were linked to the old bombers. In other words, the government can wrap up everything in a nice neat package that says whatever they want it to say.

As I Predicted...

the London bombing mastermind is well-known to western intelligence and even trained in the US to boot.

Aswat has been known to Western intelligence services for more than three years after the FBI accused him of trying to set up al-Qaeda training camps in the US.

Can you say "asset"?

I knew you could.

Were British MI-6 Agents Trying to Blow Up Chicago Subway Trains?

I'm really not sure what to make of this, but it is intriguing as hell:

Tony Blair's MI-6 Agents Caught Trying To Blow Up Chicago Subway:

To Derail US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's Grand Jury Investigations of Bush-Blair White House Leaks

By Tom Heneghan & Stew Webb Federal Whistleblowers

Heneghan-Webb Presidential & Vice Presidential Candidates 2004

VIVA' LA FRANCE:

French Intelligence and The U.S. Marshall Service Monday night July 18, 2005 caught four of Tony Blair's British MI-6 Agents trying to bomb the Chicago Subway system. The four were charged in Federal Court today with explosives.

Chicago US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald served Tony Blair a subpoena in the CIA Valerie Plame case on July 13, 2005 to answer questions regarding his role in the leaks connected to George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condi Rice, Andrew Card, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. Tony Blair has not yet responded to his subpoena. George W. Bush has not responded to his subpoena either. Tony Blair had supplied George W. Bush with falsified British Intelligence stating that Iraq leader Saddum Hussein had obtained "Yellow Cake" Nuclear materials from Nigeria. This was the reason Bush gave to start the war in Iraq. This has all now been proven to be lies by Bush and Blair. CIA Valerie Plame's husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson submitted his report prior to the Bush-Blair lies that Nigeria never sold yellow cake to Iraq. Wilson came forth stating Bush lied in his State of the Union address to the nation. Valerie Plame's CIA Network was further investigating Bush & Cheney's orchestrated attack on America on 9-11-2001. New York Police Bernard Kerik who ran a FEMA operation out of pier 29 known as Code Angel also known as Tripod II planted the bombs on the 7 World Trade Center Building that were demolished on 9-11-2001. This operation was a US Justice Department operation involving Gary Best of Defense Intelligence Agency a George H. W. Bush Shadow Government Crony who is currently in Prison in the French Guinea for espionage against the French Government. Best has admitted to French Authorities of his 9-11 involvements. As I am writing this press release two more British MI-6 agents were arrested a few minutes ago details are forthcoming.

The Stewweb website has some wild stuff about 9/11, it is rather over-the-top. Check out the 2004 Presidential Platform for Thomas G. Heneghan, candidate for President of the United States of America and Stewart A. Webb, candidate for Vice President of the United States of America. The platform sounds pretty good for the most part. I admire their sentiments on many counts.

"Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center"

From "Garlic and Grass":

The odd, swift collapse of WTC7 made me reconsider the Twin Towers and how they fell. As I had with WTC7, I first studied video footage available on the web. Then I acquired and watched a DVD of the collapses, frame by frame.

What struck me first was the way the second plane hit WTC2, the South Tower. I noticed that this plane, United Airlines Flight 175, which weighed over 160,000 pounds and was traveling at 350 mph, did not even visibly move the building when it slammed into it. How, I wondered, could a building that did not visibly move from a heavy high speed projectile collapse at near freefall speed less than an hour later?

Next, I turned my attention to steel beams that fell in freefall next to the building as it collapsed. The beams were falling at the same rate that the towers themselves were descending. Familiar with elementary physics, including principles of conservation of energy and momentum, this seemed quite impossible if the towers were indeed “pancaking,” which is the official theory.

The height of the South Tower is 1362 feet. I calculated that from that height, freefall in a vacuum (read, absolutely no resistance on earth) is 9.2 seconds. According to testimony provided to the 9-11 Commission, the tower fell in 10 seconds. Other data shows it took closer to 14 seconds. So the towers fell within 0.8-4.8 seconds of freefall in a vacuum. Just like WTC7, this speed seemed impossible if each of the 110 floors had to fail individually.

As I was considering this, another problem arose. There is a principle in physics called the Law of Conservation of Energy. There is also the Law of Conservation of Momentum. I'll briefly explain how these principles work. Let’s assume there are two identical Honda Civics on the freeway. One is sitting in neutral at a standstill (0 mph). The other is coasting at 60 mph. The second Honda slams into the back of the first one. The first Honda will then instantaneously be going much faster than it was, and the second will instantaneously be going much slower than it was.

This is how the principle works in the horizontal direction, and it works the same in the vertical direction — with the added constant force of gravity added to it. Jim Hoffman, a professional scientist published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals, took a long look at all of this. He calculated that even if the structure itself offered no resistance — that is to say, even if the 110 floors of each tower were hovering in mid-air — the "pancake" theory would still have taken a minimum of 15.5 seconds to reach the ground. So, even if the building essentially didn't exist — if it provided no resistance at all to the collapse — just the floors hitting each other and causing each other to decelerate would've taken 15.5 seconds to reach the ground.

But of course the buildings did exist. They had stood for over 30 years. The floors weren't hovering in mid-air. So how did the building provide no resistance?

Yet another observation one makes in watching the collapsing towers is the huge dust clouds and debris, including steel beams, that were thrown hundreds of feet out horizontally from the towers as they fell. If we are to believe the pancake theory, this amount of scattering debris, fine pulverized concrete dust, and sheetrock powder would clearly indicate massive resistance to the vertical collapse. So there is an impossible conflict. You either have a miraculous, historical, instantaneous, catastrophic failure that occurs within a fraction of a second of freefall and that kicks out little dust, or you have a solid, hefty building that remains virtually unaffected after a massive, speeding projectile hits it. You either have a house of cards or a house of bricks. The building either resists its collapse or it doesn't.

And we know the WTC Towers were made of reinforced steel and concrete that would act much more like bricks than cards.

Thus, put simply, the floors could not have been pancaking. The buildings fell too quickly. The floors must all have been falling simultaneously to reach the ground in such a short amount of time. But how?

The author is Dave Heller "who has degrees in physics and architecture, is a builder and engaged citizen in Berkeley, California."

I think this argument is the key to why the collapses of WTC 1, 2 and 7 can't have been progressive "pancake" collapses: the extreme speed at which they happened.

Did Two of the London Bombers Get Cold Feet and Later Get Shot by Police?

'Police shot bombers' reports New Zealander

A New Zealander working for Reuters in London says two colleagues witnessed the unconfirmed shooting by police of two apparent suicide bombers outside the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf in London.

The New Zealander, who did not want to be named, said the killing of the two men wearing bombs happened at 10.30am on Thursday (London time).

Following the shooting, the 8000 workers in the 44-storey tower were told to stay away from windows and remain in the building for at least six hours, the New Zealand man said.

He was not prepared to give the names of his two English colleagues, who he said witnessed the shooting from a building across the road from the tower.

Reports of attacks carried out by suicide bombers have been rife in London.

Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported an unconfirmed incident of police shooting a bomber outside the HSBC tower.

Canadian Brendan Spinks, who works on the 18th floor of the tower, said he saw a "massive rush of policemen" outside the building after London was rocked by the bombings.

Were the London Bombers "Drug Mules"?

Xymphora puts out a reasonable theory:

I think the most likely scenario is that they were tricked into thinking they were involved as drug mules in the movement of drugs from Leeds to London (see also here). They would have no need to be concerned about the video cameras, as they would have no fear of being seen together and leading authorities back to their 'cell' (which of course doesn't exist). The rucksacks too big for the bombs inside might have been filled with stuffing intended to feel that they were filled with drugs. Their instructions would have been to meet with someone either on a particular subway car or bus, or at the end of a particular subway or bus route, and hand over the rucksack. Then they would all assemble at a central location in London to receive their payments.

No Islamic will or video celebrating suicide, no public celebration of the 'martyrs', unsatisfactory assumption of responsibility, overly large rucksacks, happy-go-lucky bombers with no concerns about being videotaped together or leaving behind identification that would lead back to the 'cell' which supposedly had plans for future attacks, uncharacteristic candidates for suicide bombers - it all adds up to one thing. Someone tricked the four into believing they were drug mules. Once we accept that fact, we have to accept that there is absolutely no reason to believe the Official Story that this violence was connected to Islamic terrorism. It could have been set up by anybody, including the intelligence organization of any country. Of course, the fact that four Muslim men were chosen as the patsies gives us a clue as to who might have been involved.

It is an attractive theory, however, a comment here makes several good points:

Somebody's already made this point but a 30 year old special needs teacher with a young family doesn't fit the the drug runner profile either. Aside from being Muslim, the only other thing that appears to connect these guys is a love of sport - if you wanted to work up an alternate story I'd start with that angle.

But I personally wouldn't

The drug mule scenario seems to be gaining ground on certain blogs that doubt the official explanation for the London Bombings.

This is really dangerous.

The consequences are that it will divide those who are sceptical and the alternate explanation may also serve as a 'straw man' that the authorities can knock down and discredit all those who doubt.

There's plenty wrong with the current story being told by the authorities. We would all be better advised to keep the ball in their half of the field, and pick at what's wrong in what they're saying, rather than setting up speculative alternate explanations that they can attack and serve as a distraction.

Don't repeat the mistakes of the past, please...

Another commenter at the same place also has some interesting points:

I note the good advice to concentrate on the endless flaws in the Official Version. The pattern of some of these flaws I do find suggestive, however.

Has anyone else wondered if the rucksacks and those carrying them are what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin"?

The circumstances of the blasts suggest they were unlikely to be hand-delivered - their simultaneity and all going off in trains. This seems even less credible performed by dupes and in a tight 20 minutes from Kings Cross. What if the bombs were put under or in the trains overnight? Like Madrid. Each bomb in a different carriage 1-2-3 from front to look random. Getting everyone to focus on these 4 individuals and their motivation has dragged attention from the blasts themselves. 2 eyewitnesses in bomb carriages on BBC site described a hole ripped in the floor and inspection covers blown out. Observer report on 10 July included hole ripping through floor as one of the features of their reconstruction. Very unlikely with bomb placed on floor, surely?

The 4th guy gets connected to the bus bomb, an odd event which is intended to be suggestive of the non-existent rucksack bombs. Another apparently random, "human error" touch. This bomb too has been pre-placed. Look at the bombed bus photos and recall what the police have been saying about where it went off. Have a look at the back of one of those same London buses. The bus blast serves as proof of the rucksack bombs and it gives a focus for the visual appetite of the media. Compare number of images of bus to Tube. I've only seen one long shot of a train. Another big distraction is the notion of small bombs, let alone home-made. These bombs don't really seem small to me, knocking down a wall next to one train and damaging the tunnel above another. Stops people thinking about big bombs, professionally placed, unchallenged, like Madrid.

People will notice that it would be hard to steer these 4 guys into the right carriages in the right trains and onto the 30 bus. Who says they were in these places? The police seemed satisfied that them recording the presence of ID at the bomb sites is quite sufficient. No DNA tests for example. (The Sun reported the Jamaican guy's wife demanding DNA proof.) The 4 were 4 of the first 5 dead identified, weren't they?

The wealth of CCTV evidence is a bit conspicuous by its absence, isn't it? The bus is already written off. Just one of those things, it seems, from police reaction. Bomb on bus and out-of-action CCTV can not possibly be connected in Scotland Yard's mind, like possible signs of a criminal having been on the vehicle overnight. Where is the film from the various bombed trains? Have we seen even the much-cited Kings Cross footage, come to that? No footage showed any rucksack bombers at Madrid, ditto the 9/11 hijackers. We must await revelations.

Another advantage of dead men is that you can say and write whatever you like about them. If these guys' ID hadn't been found on those trains and they were not presumed dead, none of this stuff about them could be put in media releases or placed in the media, could it? And what might people be thinking in that absence?

Yes, many suspicious things here and I'm glad to see British skeptics thinking about this.

What Drives The Phenomenon of Suicide Bombers

Xymphora:

From an interview by Scott McConnell in The American Conservative of Robert Pape, a man who has studied suicide bombers all over the world and has written a book about suicide bombing called "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism", here are a few comments by Professor Pape:

"Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources - Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others - so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.

This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka."

and (my emphasis in bold):

"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign - over 95 percent of all the incidents - has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

and:

"Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us."

and:

"I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn't occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils."

The West's current problem with terrorism has only one solution, the withdrawal of Western troops from the Middle East and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Occupied Territories. Any time you read somebody writing about the necessity of fighting the 'war on terror', and of the dangers of 'appeasement', you are reading somebody who has a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, and everything to do with keeping the occupying troops in place. If it is so important to keep the troops in place - whether it be for American corporate control of the oil fields or the building of an Israeli Empire - the West is going to have to get used to accepting the cost of increasingly severe terrorist attacks. The 'war on terror' as conceived by the neocons is:

* immoral, as it further punishes the victims of Western aggression;

* insane, as it advocates stopping terrorism by increasing the activity that caused the terrorism in the first place; and

* senseless, as it simply cannot be won.

Interestingly, the London bombers do NOT really fit into this suicide bomber mold.

Plane Swaps on 9/11, Bomber Swaps on 7/7?

Pictures of Hasib Hussain do not match descriptions of the 7/7 bus bomber.

London Bomb Ingredients and Linking a Bomber to British Intelligence

A London Times article starts out saying: "Explosives match al-Qaeda blueprint for bombmaking" and says how the manufacturing of the bombs matches Al Qaeda designs.

But then they end the article with this kicker:

The bombs detonated in the Underground and on the bus appear to have been a carefully balanced mix of commercially available materials and military-style ingredients. The evidence of this explosive primer in the four London bombs indicates for the first time that the ingredients were acquired in this country and not brought in from abroad.

Interestingly, the French have annoyed the British by spilling the beans that the bombs had military ingredients, criticizing the Iraq war and releasing other key info:

Britain's era of good will with Europe lasted 48 hours — all because of the French. After the July 7 terrorist attacks in London, Scotland Yard brought together law enforcement and intelligence officials from two dozen European countries and the United States, sharing crucial intelligence and pleading for help in tracking down the bombers. But the continentwide spirit of cooperation was shattered when Christophe Chaboud, France's new antiterrorism coordinator, broke the cardinal rule of the club. He leaked. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde that appeared on newsstands on July 11 — two days after the exceptionally open briefing — Chaboud announced that he knew ''the nature of the explosives'' used in the London bombings. It ''appears to be military, which is very worrisome,'' he said, adding: ''We're more used to cells making homemade explosives from chemical substances.''

But Chaboud did not stop with his assessment of the explosives and their origins, which, it turned out, were wrong. He plunged into politics, saying Europe was a more dangerous place because of the war in Iraq. ''The war in Iraq has revived the logic of total conflict against the West,'' he declared, without adding the obvious: that Britain supported the war and France did not. The British reacted with fury, sending communiqués to a number of European friends that expressed deep disappointment that the bonds of trust had been broken, according to two European officials who received the missives. So poisonous is the atmosphere that the talk in European intelligence circles is that the British feel that the French may have leaked bad information on purpose. ''They believe they released this incorrect information deliberately,'' said the head of a European intelligence agency. The result, he added, is ''there's not much good will left between them.''

It seems to me as though Chaboud WAS correct, both about the bombs and about the war.

Then get this:

After an emergency EU summit meeting of justice and interior ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, suggested that part of the cell responsible for the London terror attacks had been arrested in the past. The remarks prompted an immediate response from the British home secretary, Charles Clarke, who had called the meeting. ''I've heard Sarkozy's remarks to the press, and there is absolutely no foundation in them,''

Oh really, Mr. Clarke? Have you seen this story:

MI5 said bomber was not a threat. One of the London bombers was investigated by MI5 last year but was deemed not to be a threat, it has been revealed. Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was subject to a routine assessment by the security service because of an indirect connection to an alleged terror plot.

Hmmm, one of the bombers was investigated by an intelligence service but was then ignored. Where have I heard that before? Where? Where? Where?

And just how likely IS it that these intelligence agencies dropped the ball on these people and had NO IDEA what these terrorists were up to?

Were the London Bombings Done by Suicide Bombers?

WAS IT SUICIDE?
Why did they buy return train tickets to Luton? Why did they buy pay & display tickets for cars? Why were there no usual shouts of 'Allah Akhbar'? Why were bombs in bags and not on their bodies?
By Jeff Edwards

THE London bombers may have been duped into killing themselves so their secrets stayed hidden.

Police and MI5 are probing if the four men were told by their al-Qaeda controller they had time to escape after setting off timers. Instead, the devices exploded immediately.

A security source said: "If the bombers lived and were caught they'd probably have cracked. Would their masters have allowed that to happen? We think not."

The evidence is compelling: The terrorists bought return rail tickets, and pay and display car park tickets, before boarding _ a train at Luton for London. None of the men was heard to cry "Allah Akhbar!" - "God is great" - usually screamed by suicide bombers as they detonate their bomb.

Their devices were in large rucksacks which could be easily dumped instead of being strapped to their bodies. They carried wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other personal items. Suicide bombers normally strip themselves of identifying material.

Similar terror attacks against public transport in Madrid last year were carried out by recruits who had time to escape and planned to strike again.

Bomber Hasib Hussain detonated his device at the rear of the top deck of a No 30 bus, not in the middle of the bottom deck where most damage would be caused.

Additionally, two of the bombers had strong personal reasons for staying alive.

Jermaine Lindsay's partner Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, mother of his one-year-old son, is expecting her second baby within days. Mohammed Sidique Khan's wife Hasina, mum of a 14-month-old daughter, is also pregnant.

Our source disclosed: "The theory that they were not a suicide squad is gathering pace. They were the weakest link.

"We think it's possible they were told that when they pressed buttons to set off timers they'd have a short time to abandon the bombs and get away before the blast. Instead, the bombs exploded immediately."

Another intelligence source added: "Whoever is behind this didn't want to waste their best operatives on a suicide mission. Instead they used easily recruited low-grade men who may have believed they'd walk away."

(snip)

Police are urgently investigating the missing 81 minutes between Hussain arriving from Luton in London and the time his bomb went off.

His device may have malfunctioned. He may have lost his nerve. Or he may have panicked when he discovered the Northern Line, on which he is thought to have been due to travel, was suspended.

Officers want to discover if Hussain met anyone else who either strengthened his faltering resolve or reset his flawed bomb.

So again, the bombers were low-level patsies. It's quite possible they were duped into believing they could ditch the bags and escape.

It is interesting the alleged bus bomber, who detonated his bomb last, did it when and where he did. Did he find out what happened to his colleagues and worried he wouldn't have time to escape? Did he try to put the bomb in a place where he thought he could get away?

But really, this all begs the most important question: who was controlling these bombers?

Random thought: is it possible some drug has been developed that turns ordinary people into suicide bombers? Or is Islam really that powerful? Or are mind control techniques being used?

Certainly, someone is making extreme use of this suicide bomb practice in Iraq lately.

Lastly, here are some good "tin-foily" articles on the London bombings:

Mutiple parallels between 7/7 and 9/11.

20 good questions Re: London bombings

The ever changing story of the London bombings (as the official story clicks in).

Miscellaneous interesting details on the bombings

More miscellaneous interesting details on the bombings including a clarification from Peter Power about his terror drill on 7/7.

Patsies

The alleged London bombers.

Germaine Lindsay: Jamaican-born man living in Buckinghamshire. Believed to have carried out King's Cross attack.

Mohammad Sidique Khan: Aged 30, from Beeston, Leeds, recently moved to Dewsbury, married with baby. ID found at Edgware Road blast site.

Hasib Mir Hussain: Aged 18, lived Holbeck, Leeds. Reported missing on day of bombings. Said to have turned very religious two years ago. ID found in No 30 bus.

Shehzad Tanweer: Aged 22, born Bradford, lived Beeston, Leeds. Studied religion in Pakistan. Forensic evidence linking him to Aldgate blast.

I would bet a fair amount of money that whoever set-up these patsies (be they real suicide bombers or just poor souls who were used unwittingly) for the attacks, i.e. the terrorist controller, has links to or is well-known by British intelligence.

Uh-Oh

"Poll: Bush Approval Rating at 42 Percent"

It's getting close to desperation time for Bush. Would they dare to try another terror attack?

I'm Back

Sorry for the absence. I went away on a family vacation and I thought I would have internet access-- but I didn't!

Although I was initially quite upset at not being able to access the internet and post on my blog, it was actually a nice break from being away from the computer and the 24 hour news cycle and all the 9/11 unpleasantness as well.

The vacation wasn't so much of a break for me-- when you have little kids, vacations are mostly about making them happy-- but overall it was fun and rather nice to get away from things.

I will start posting regularly tomorrow.

Just to Clarify...

I find it hard to believe Bush or Blair "ordered" 9/11 or the London bombings.* In fact, I imagine Bush and Blair are truly disturbed by these terror attacks, and don't wish them on their peoples. But, these are also cold calculating men, and very willing to cover up government complicity in these terrible deeds-- but as a practical matter, it seems unlikely that they would directly order these attacks.


Much more likely is that the 9/11 and London (and probably Madrid and possibly Bali) attacks were run by the same international gang of criminals that uses "Al Qaeda" or Islamic extremists as proxies. This international gang of criminals would primarily be an Anglo-American cabal of elites with strong ties to the US and British government. The Bush Family Evil Empire most likely comprises a large segment of this "gang".

All these attacks were meant to send messages to the US and British governments-- a message for war on the Middle East, a clash of civilizations, a start of world war four and for massive hegemony over oil-rich Middle-East and Asian nations.

*Karl Rove on the other hand-- I'm not sure I would put anything past him. The Plame affair, as I said before, is small potatoes.

Terrorist Math: 3+1=4

I noticed a strange coincidence with 9/11 and the London bombings, although what it means I don't know for sure-- I think maybe it is some sort of signature to show these acts were done by the same people.

On 9/11, 4 planes were hijacked, 3 hit buildings, 1 didn't-- this 1 plane crashed on the ground, and much later than the first 3 planes.

On 7/7, 4 mass transit vehicles were bombed, 3 subway trains (inside the ground), 1 bus above ground-- and this bus was bombed much later than the 3 trains.

Is this all just a coincidence?

It is hard to believe it is.

Why Would the London Bombers Do the Bombing at the Same Time as an Ongoing Terror Drill?

A Couple of Reasons:

1) it provides an easy way to plant the bombs-- a perfect pretext. If anyone is caught, they just say they were running a drill. They were just following orders, someone just gave them the package to put there.

2) the drill may momentarily delay the emergency response due to confusion whether it is a drill or real-- allowing extra time for the conspirators to get away.

3) most importantly is that it provides a signal that the bombings were done with inside knowledge. These bombings aren't for simply scaring the public, they are meant to send a signal to people like Bush and Blair that they better "get with the program". In this case, the program may be not withdrawing from Iraq or the program may even be invading Iran.

And here is one indication that this drill is important-- none of the major media outlets have reported this after the BBC5 interview. Surely this is interesting news that is relevant to a major story! But the media is covering it up, probably because it so obviously points to an inside job-- and of course the MAINSTREAM MEDIA SIMPLY REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER THAT POSSIBILITY.

A Good Rundown on Interesting Aspects to the London Bombing

Here, by Ewing2001 of "911 skeptics unite!" fame.

Lots of good info.

It's like 9/11 all over again (but on a smaller scale).

Listening to Terrorism "Experts"...

is really a waste of time.

Half the stuff they say is obvious and predictable, the other half they pull out of their asses.

Interview with Webster Tarpley on the London Bombings

here.

From 7/7, so doesn't have all the new info, but still-- Tarpley is calling it Synthetic Terror right off the bat.

UPDATE: Listening to the show. It is fascinating. Lots of recent politics. Tarpley says the London bombing was a message to Bush from the "invisible government" about taking on Iran. Also refers to the recent scares in DC over planes breaking DC airspace. Talking about Bush getting a right-wing opposition and "watergating" Bush.


FURTHER UPDATE: Link is busted. I couldn't fix it, sorry. The 30 minutes I heard was quite good.

Why Do Security Cameras Always Fail When You Need Them to Catch Terrorists?

British Transport Police have recovered nearly a million used tickets from barriers across the rail network, hoping some will carry the bombers' fingerprints as they travelled into London.

But the investigation received a serious setback when it was discovered the CCTV cameras on the bus that blew up were not working so detectives will not get vital images of the bomber.

One senior Yard source said: "It's a big blow and a disappointment. If the cameras had been running we would have had pin-sharp close-up pictures of the person who carried out this atrocity.

"We don't know if the driver forgot to switch them on or if there was a technical problem but there are no images."

The bus had four cameras - one covering people getting on, the second at the exit doors and one on each deck scanning the length of the vehicle.

But the anti-terrorist squad are confident that other CCTV footage will help nail the three other terrorists.

Senior sources at the Yard said they were seizing film from an estimated 2,000 cameras in the biggest operation of its kind.

What an amazing coincidence. Four cameras on the bus, none of them worked.

This is amazingly like the multiple airport security cameras on 9/11 that apparently failed to catch images of the hijackers before they got on the planes...

Unbelievable

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack; Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames.

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

You can bet the farm that this story will never appear in the mainstream media again.

Read the rest of the article too-- there are important parallels of this attack to 9/11 and other terror attacks.

In A Weird Article About the CIA in Italy, A Weird Story About the CIA and 9/11

I'm not sure what to make of this:

In fact, the CIA, despite his law-enforcement limitations - agents were not supposed to carry weapons in the US, and did not have the power of arrest - decided to put bin Laden out of business by setting up his host, Afghanistan's Taliban, as the perpretrator of coordinated hijackings in the States, efforts intended to blackmail America into making further concessions to terrorists. To arrange the operation. A. B. 'Buzzy' Krongard, who thought that killing bin Laden - what the Clinton administration had repeatedly attempted - would only make matters worse, was appointed Executive Director.

With the Bureau deeply in the doghouse, it was essentially forced to delegate responsibility for keeping track, and rendering harmless the growing number of Al-Qaeda operatives in America, seeking training to crash airliners into public buildings, to the Agency. As Freeh was being forced out, so was counterterrorism expert O'Neill, who fervently believed that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack the WTC again, taking up the post of security director of the complex instead, and in which he died on the fatal day.

Meanwhile, squad superivor Thomas Frields of the Bureau's Washington Field Office somehow lost a tip from a former Iranian intelligence officer four months before the 9/11bombings that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack targets in Chicago, LA, and NYC with suicide bombers using planes. Then Frields claims that he never saw the report from Phoenix agent Kenneth J. Williams in July that a suprising number of Arabs were taking flying lessons. Then Frields refused the request from the Bureau's general counsel in Minneapolis, Coleen Rowley, that a warramt be issued to inspect visa violator Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop on suspicion that he wanted, as Paul Sperry wrote for WorldNetDaily.com on March 28, 2004, "...to take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center."

To keep track, and counter these growing threats, the CIA recruited teams from the Special Activites Division for the operation - to accompany the highjacked aircraft to LA where the unsuspecting hijackers would be overwhelmed by the forces hidden within the aircraft and on the ground. This would then justify Operation Gateway to eliminate the Taliban regime - what Bush's National Security advisers had approved a $200 million authorization a week before the attacks to get things started.

To start the ball rolling in the airliners, the Agency placed a squad of agents on the second plane leaving Boston, even a larger group on the one going from Newark to San Francisco, and three agents - along with Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, and general overseer of the operation - on the plane which crashed into The Pentagon. The first plane from Boston - the one carrying operation leaders Khalid-Al-Midhar and Nawaq-Al-Hamzi - had no agents on it for fear that their presence would tip off the highjackers.

The only trouble with the plan was that the planners had not taken seriously the claim that Arabs would act as suicide bombers, and that the highjackers could have the expertise to fly the planes into pre-selected targets. The scope of this miscalculation was well demonstrated when Ms. Olson frantically called her husband, Ted, twice for further instructions, air defense directors did not know whether the highjackings were part of a planned exercise or the real thing, and the President and his security in Florida reacted laconically to the unfolding tragedy. They knew that the presidential party had nothing to worry about, as it was well away from any possible action. Little wonder that the government was most dogged in preventing the release of the full passsenger lists for the flights for fear of disclosing that its countermeasures constituted the making of a terrible tragedy.

Given its scope, though, the Bush administration could not act, much less acknowledge, as if anything this monstrous had happened. Denial, and belated admissions of serious incompetence -especially regarding the Bureau, its new Director Robert Mueller having yet to take command -became the order of the day. To clean up the record, as best it could, the Bureau appointed Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds, assuming that she would do the job.

Instead, Edmonds made a terrible case of counterterrorism look even worse. She went through all the untranslated and unused material, hundreds if not thousands of them, that the Bureau had indicating the attacks, and charged that the people responsible for preventing them - now counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, Radical Fundamentalist Unit chief David Frasca, Frields, headquarters supervisory special agent Michael Maltbie, and others - had benefited, been promoted, for their "incompetence and corruption". Alledegly, on the very morning of the attacks, Frasca called Rowley, and told her not to proceed with her investigation of Moussaoui "...because Minneapolis might 'screw up' something else going on elswhere in the country."

"Edmonds was fired last year," the Ceneter for Media & Democracy reported in 2003, "after reporting her concerns to FBI officials." Her subsequent efforts to force her rehiring, and to gain compensation for denial of her rights were frustrated by Attorney General John Ashcroft's claiming the State Secret Privilege. Once she started talking to the Senate's Judiciary Committee and the 9-11 Commission behind closed doors about specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weapons, and specific individuals and activities, the Justice Department reclassified information regarding her to prevent further disclosure to her astonishing story.

This article is by someone named Trowbridge H. Ford, who seems to have written a large number of very obscure books on English history.

This scenario that CIA agents were on the hijacked flights is basically the 9/11 sting operation scenario I have talked about before.

There may well be something to this idea, but I do NOT think it explains everything about 9/11-- for instance the lack of air defenses. Possibly this "sting operation" with the CIA agents was actually the live-fly hijacking drill that Mike Ruppert discovered was being run on 9/11.

But this scenario is certainly something to keep in mind, and it does explain why there would be a cover-up and why the passenger manifests have not been released.

On the other hand, it is hard to believe that the "poor" CIA agents had no idea that the planes would be crashed and that they could do nothing to stop it.

Perhaps the CIA agents were actually the hijackers (running the "drill"), and the planes were swapped for remote drones? Or the CIA agents were set-up themselves and the planes were taken over by remote control?

Thus, although this scenario is interesting, it raises just as many questions as it answers. And finally, how does this Trowbridge H. Ford know this information anyway? Mr. Ford seems to have some good knowledge of the CIA from his essay, but is this just open-source information or does he have an inside source?

Lots of Doubts

about the London bombing out in the conspiracy blogosphere...

There is a lot of good information in these pieces.

The best part is that it seems that many people have not been so easily fooled this time-- and more and more people are waking up to the bullshit going on.

Did the British Warn the Israelis or Did the Israelis Warn the British?

Accounts differ:

The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7.

Several hours later, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom officially denied reports that Scotland Yard passed any information to Israel regarding the bombings, and British police denied they had any advanced warning of the attacks. The British authorities similarly denied that any information exchange had occurred.

Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned “minutes before” the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks “a couple of days” previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack.

Sad and Disturbing

AN ATTACK ON ARAB LONDON. News reports are in about the location of the Tube bombs, and the stations picked for the horrific rush-hour assaults are especially chilling. These attacks were not just attacks on our closest ally, but on the very idea of Arab and Muslim integration into the West. Among the targets in the worst attack on London since World War II was the Edgware Road station, located in the heart of wealthy, assimilated Arab London. Middle Easterners of a variety of religions and South Asian Muslims are a substantial minority of the population in London, and the Edgware Road area is the pre-eminent Arab neighborhood in the city, with a fantastic variety of Lebanese coffee shops, Saudi grocery stores, and Persian restaurants. Some even call it "Little Lebanon," though the residents and shop clients come from all over the Middle East and North Africa, and the area especially attracts a young, hip crowd that compares it to Amman or Dubai. Edgware Road is Arab London's main street.

Though we have no idea yet whether the stations or train lines that were bombed were specifically targeted, it's hard to imagine that whatever terrorist organization or cell was behind the attacks failed to consider the symbolic power of an attack on Edgware Road.

Furthermore, the timing of the attacks and their location along the arc of the Metropolitan and Circle lines spreading along in time and space from East London -- where 60 percent of London Muslims reside -- suggests a specific intention with regard to targets. After all, the Circle line can just as easily take riders to Westminster's collection of government buildings as to Edgware Road. And Al-Qaeda has a history of engaging in symbolically significant attacks against financial centers, banks, military installations, and government buildings. Why not against Arab allies of the West, as well?

The New York Times is now reporting that the other underground bombs appear to have detonated close to the Liverpool and King's Cross stations, which are transportation hubs connecting overland trains to the underground. But Edgware Road is not a hub in the same way.

In recent months we've seen Islamic jihadists increasingly going after targets in the Arab and Muslim world who have allied themselves with the west. The victims of the bombing attacks and terrorist incidents in Iraq are overwhelmingly Arab Muslims. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has just claimed that it killed the Egyptian envoy to Iraq, after condemning him as "the ambassador of the infidels." When the casualty count is in, I suspect some fraction of the victims of today's henious attacks will be Arab or Muslim, as well.

Some Relevant Information About London and Islamic Terrorism

from Webster G. Tarpley "Synthetic terror 911: Made in USA":

AL QAEDA AND LONDONISTAN

The role of London as the leading center of Islamic radicalism has been an open secret for years, but has never been reported by the US controlled corporate media. In the nineteenth century, when Mazzini and Marx operated out of London, the slogan was that “England supports all revolutions but her own.” In the post-colonial world, the British have found it to their advantage to encourage violent movements which could be used for destabilizations and assassinations in the former colonies, which their ex-masters did not want to see become strong and effective modern states. Between 1995 and 1999, protests were lodged by many countries concerning the willingness of the British government to permit terror groups to operate from British territory. Among the protestors were: Israel,Algeria, Turkey, Libya, Yemen, India, Egypt, France, Peru, Germany, Nigeria, andRussia. This is a list which, if widely known, might force certain US radio commentators to change their world picture about who is soft on terrorism.

A number of groups which were cited as terrorist organizations by the US State Department had their headquarters in London. Among them were the Islamic Group of Egypt, led by Bin Laden’s current right-hand man, Zawahiri, who was a known participant in the plot to assassinate Egyptian President Sadat; this was also the group which had murdered foreign tourists at Luxor in an attempt to wreck the Egyptian tourist industry. Also present in London were Al Jihad of Egypt, Hamas of Palestine, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria (responsible for large-scale massacres in that country), the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which attacked targets in Turkey, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) of Sri Lanka, who assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi. Sheikh Bakri, Bin Laden spokesman’s spokesman, was openly active in London into mid-1998 and later; he gave a press conference after the bombings of the US East African embassies. The killings of figures like Sadat and Rajiv Ghandi should indicate the scale of the destabilization in developing countries of which some of these groups are capable. Non-Anglo-Saxon press organs have from time to time pointed up the role of London in worldwide subversion. “The track of … the GIA leader in Paris leads to Great Britain. The British capital has served as logistical and financial base for the terrorists,” wrote Le Figaro on Nov. 3, 1995, in the wake of a murderous terror attack carried out in France. A report by the French National Assembly in October 2001 alleged that London played the key role as clearinghouse for money laundering of criminal and terrorist organizations.

On March 3, 1996: Hamas bombed a market in Jerusalem, leaving 12 Israelis dead. A British newspaper reported soon after: “Israeli security sources say the fanatics…are funded and controlled through secret cells operating here….Military chiefs in Jerusalem detailed how Islamic groups raised £7 million in donations from British organizations.” (Daily Express, London, March 5, 1996) In the midst of a campaign of destabilization against Egypt in the mid-1990s, the semiofficial organ of the Egyptian government pointed out that “Britain has become the number one base in the world for international terrorism.” (Al Ahram, Cairo, September 7, 1996) Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted that “…some states, like Britain, give political asylum to terrorists, and these states will pay the price for that.” (Al-Hayat, September 18, 1996) British newspapers were also alarmed by the level of Islamic extremist activity they saw around them. By the late 1990s, there were so many Islamic extremists in London that the city had acquired the nickname of “Londonistan.” The leading right-wing paper in the UK wrote: “Britain is now an international center for Islamic militancy on a huge scale…and the capital is home to a bewildering variety of radical Islamic movements, many of which make no secret of their commitment to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals.” (London Daily Telegraph, November 20, 1999) President Putin of Russia saw a direct link between the London Islamic scene and terrorism in his own country. He said in an interview with a German news magazine: “In London, there is a recruitment station for people wanting to join combat in Chechnya.

Today–not officially, but effectively in the open–they are talking there about recruiting volunteers to go to Afghanistan.” (Focus, September 2001) Brixton Mosque was one of the notorious centers for terrorist recruitment in the heart of London. This was the home base of Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen put on trial in Alexandria, Va. It was also the home of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber of December 2001. Imam Qureshi of Brixton and others were allowed by the British authorities to preach anti-US sermons to the some 4,000 Muslim inmates in British prisons, and thus to recruit new patsies for the world-wide terror machine. According to Bakri, Bin Laden’s spokesman, during the late 1990s 2,000 fighters were trained yearly, including many in the US because of the lax firearms legislation. The rival of Brixton Mosque was the equally redoubtable Finsbury Mosque, the home of the Saudi demagogue al Masri, who was finally taken into custody in the spring of 2004. There is every reason to believe that London is one of the main recruiting grounds for patsies, dupes, fanatics, double agents, and other roustabouts of the terrorist scene.

BRITISH TERROR SCHOOLS FOR PATSIES"

A window into the London state-sponsored synthetic terror milieu came in December 2001, when British authorities were forced to arrest and question Mark Yates, a selfstyled security expert who ran a firearms training camp in Alabama. Yates was suspected of helping Islamic terrorist patsies from Britain who were to hone their marksmanship skills on American soil before going off to fight for Islamic causes around the globe.

Yates, a British bodyguard and firearms trainer who had operations in both the United Kingdom and the United States, allegedly offered “live fire” weapons training in America for aspiring holy warriors. British police thought that Yates was involved on the US end of the “Ultimate Jihad Challenge” training program offered on the London market by the Sakina Security Services company, owned by Suleiman Bilal Zain-ul-abidin. Yates, who was also the operations and training director at the Ground Zero firearms training camp outside Marion, Alabama, denied everything. “Ultimate Jihad Challenge” included instruction in “art of bone breaking,” and learning to “improvise explosive devices.” British Muslims would be given the opportunity to squeeze off up to 3,000 rounds at a shooting range in the United States before heading off to fight for Islamic causes around the world. “All serious firearms training must be done overseas” because of British gun laws, advertising for the course noted. British prosecutors said their investigators had searched Zain-ul-abidin’s apartment and seized documents believed to be related to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, anti-Semitic material and what appeared to be disabled firearms, including a rifle and two handguns. The Sunday Telegraph reported about another military training course, this time at a secret camp near the village of Yetgoch in southern Wales. Young Muslims and others
learned how to use Uzi machine guns at the camp, which was run by Trans Global Security International.

The reports of the Welsh training camp rekindled a debate in Britain over how the UK had become a hotbed for military recruitment by radical Islamic elements. Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a firebrand Islamic leader in London, founder of the fundamentalist al-Muhajiroun organization, and Bin Laden’s sometime spokesman, said in 2000 that between 1,800 and 2,000 British Muslims were going abroad each year for military training. “We find young men in university classes or mosques, invite them for a meal
and discuss … ongoing attacks being suffered by Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine or Kashmir,” Bakri Mohammed said. “We … make them understand their duty to support the jihad (holy war) struggle verbally, financially and, if they can, physically in order to liberate their homeland.” Bakri’s al-Muhajiroun group, like al Qaeda, advocated wiping out the world’s 50-plus existing Muslim-majority states and replacing them with a single “khilafah” (caliphate), or Islamic state. (Sunday Telegraph, MSNBC, December 27, 2001)

Satellite phone records of a phone used by Osama bin Laden during 1996-98, revealed that “Britain was at the heart of the terrorist’s planning for his worldwide campaign of murder and destruction,” according to the London Sunday Times. Bin Laden and his most senior aides made more calls to Britain than to any other country; they made more than 260 calls from Afghanistan to 27 numbers in Britain. According to documents from the trial of the US east African embassy bombings, the telephone was bought in 1996 with the help of Dr Saad al Fagih, 45, the head of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia. Al Fagih had been regularly used by the BBC as an expert on Bin Laden. His credit card was also used to buy more than 3,000 minutes of pre-paid airtime. The records showed calls to ten other countries, the next most frequent after the UK being Yemen. There were no calls to Iraq. (London Sunday Times, March 24, 2002)