September 11 Part 2

Neoconservative ideas to transform the U.S. into a "dominant force" do not come out of nowhere!
9/7/2006 9:30:00 AM GMT













This is a research article by Rudo de Ruijter, containing about a hundred facts leading ultimately to the U.S. war against Afghanistan. For each of them reliable sources are mentioned. It is a disturbing article, if you don’t know these facts yet.

For fair use, you may publish and/or forward this article.

Since 1993, in India, Enron had invested $ 2.9 billion for a power plant near Bombay. Originally it had counted on cheap supply of gas from Turkmenistan via the planned pipeline through Afghanistan. The power plant project had turned into a nightmare.

Enron had faced severe criticism over their contemptuous way of doing business. They had experienced severe opposition from the local population after hiring police officers to beat down protests of opponents. Charges had been filed against the company for human right violations. [39]

Last but not least, Enron’s deliveries to the regional electricity company were invoiced more than double the price of power from other suppliers. [51] Taking into account the real cost beared by the regional electricity company, Enron's price was even 700 percent higher. [52] The regional electricity company could not pay Enron's bills anymore. As retaliation, in January 2001, Enron had cut the power to 200 million people in Northern India, while demanding three times the normal price. [53] (Around the same time, Enron was provoking power cuts in California as well, to force higher prices. [54])

In 1997 Enron had started gas projects in Uzbekistan, for which George W. Bush had had personal contacts with the Uzbek ambassador.

As soon as the Bush administration was in place, vice president Cheney would reward Enron for their support during the elections. Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, had a wish list that was almost entirely included in Cheney's proposals for the new U.S. energy policy. [55] Cheney also intervened to help Enron collect a $64 million debt for its power plant near Bombay, during a meeting with Indian opposition leader Sonia Ghandi in Washington on June 27 2001. [56]

Enron - BinLaden
Enron had also connections with the construction firm BinLadin from Saudi Arabia, with which it constructed a power plant in the Gaza strip. (The power plant would not be finished before Enron's bankruptcy in December 2001.) [57]

Binladen - Carlyle
The wealthy bin Laden family is well known to the Bush family. Salem bin Laden supplied part of the money for George W. Bush’s first oil company, Arbusto, in 1978. [58] His father, George H.W. Bush, joined the Carlyle group after being US' president, [59] and developed relations with the BinLadin company. [60] He met the family in November 1998 and in January 2000. [61]

Bin Laden also invested in the Carlyle group. H.W. Bush still met with Shafig bin Laden, Osama's brother, on September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks, at the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group. [62] Like Enron, Carlyle had grown tremendously.

In the early 1990s son Bush had been member of the board of a catering service company for airliners. [60] Carlyle had bought the catering company. Although the catering service crashed, Carlyle grew to be an important defence contractor in the U.S. [61] A bunch of well-known former politicians, including George W. Bush father, former UK Prime Minister John Major and former president of the Philippines Mister Ramos, are making a lot of money from the "war on terror". [59]

Osama
There is a terrible lot of information available about bin Laden's son, Osama. However, almost all of it comes from sources that cannot be verified, like comments by unknown people who would have known him or met him. Other stories are based on allegations by people who have big business interests in the "war on terrorism", like the Bush. One step further, you find the comments by officials "convinced" that everything that has been said about Osama is true.

On the other extremity, there is the image Osama draws of himself in an interview by CNN reporter Peter Arnett in 1997. According to this interview he is, first of all, a man of faith, who understands people who fight against the U.S. soldiers that came to steal the oil and who attacked the Islamic religion. He denies having organized any attacks against the U.S. himself. [63] (Many people will remember a videotape with “Osama's confession”, that he knew about the attacks of 9/11 in advance, which turned out to be a fake. [64])

Osama would become Bush's key excuse to invade Afghanistan. On September 17, 2001 Bush would declare Osama bin Laden was wanted "dead or alive". [65]

Why did Osama bin Laden stay in Afghanistan? Here too, different sources give different stories. He had already been in Afghanistan during the eighties, helping the mudjahedeen fight against the Soviet occupation (as did the U.S.). Back in Saudi Arabia in 1989, he had opposed the king's alliance with the U.S.

When his passport was confiscated, he at first fled back to Afghanistan, and then settled in Sudan in 1992, where all Muslims were welcome after a regime change the year before. In 1994, because of his support to fundamentalist Muslim movements, Saudi Arabia revoked his citizenship and froze his funds. [66]

After the assassination attempt against Egyptian president Mubarak in Ethiopia on June 26, 1995, Sudan was accused of being behind it. The relations between Egypt and Sudan deteriorated in the current of 1995.

At this point, let us jump to Afghanistan. In February 1996 things went wrong for the U.S. pipeline project in Afghanistan. President Rabbani of Afghanistan contracted the Argentinean BRIDAS instead of UNOCAL for the construction and exploitation of the gas pipeline. For the US, to get the pipeline project back in the hands of UNOCAL, Rabbani would have to disappear. But who could be accused if Rabbani were killed?

Back to Sudan. March 8, 1996, the U.S. suddenly asked Sudan to extradite Osama. It did not specify to which country. Since the Saudis took his passport and nationality away, Osama had few options. On May 18, 1996, he left Sudan and returned to Afghanistan. [67]

Years afterward, many people were still wondering why he had not been arrested at that occasion.

In Afghanistan, events would take a different turn. From March 20 to April 4, 1996, Taliban leaders had held a shura (meeting) and concluded with a jihad against Rabbani. [68] Osama arrived on May 18, but would not get involved. On September 27, the Taliban conquered Kabul and president Rabbani fled and joined the Northern alliance. At that moment things must have looked hopeful for the UNOCAL pipeline project. Unfortunately for them, in November 1996 BRIDAS signed a new contract with the Taliban.

Ultimately this would lead to the Taliban being evicted from power. Clinton would not attack Afghanistan after the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, maybe thanks to Monica Lewinsky. Bush did, after "the catastrophic and catalysing events" of 9/11.

After having used the presence of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan as his key excuse to invade the country, Bush would state, on March 13, 2002, he wasn't truly that concerned about Osama bin Laden. [69]

Karzai
After the US conquest of Afghanistan (or at least of its capital), UNOCAL's advisor Hamid Karzai would be appointed Chairman of the interim administration of Afghanistan. On June 16, 2002, even before there was an elected president, Karzai would sign an official agreement with Turkmenistan and Pakistan for a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. [70]

But even if the gas pipeline would come too late to transport Turkmen gas to Pakistan, Afghanistan remains an interesting booty. It has its own gigantic gas field south of the Turkmen field, near Mazar e Sharif. It has also several oil fields and coal. Furthermore, in the 1970s British geologists had already found 1600 locations with minerals.

Preparations for 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan:

Timing of the attacks
As noticed above, the timing for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa helped Clinton, as it drew away the attention from his threatening conviction of perjury in the Monica Lewinsky affair, and focused on the common enemies: the terrorists.

The invasion of Afghanistan would have to wait for the next US president. Between 1998 and 2001 there was enough time to plan everything carefully. Below we will notice, that the attacks of 9/11 occurred at the very moment everything was in place. The only thing missing was a pretext to get support from Congress, from the U.S. population and the rest of the world…

Military preparations:

For the U.S. to invade Afghanistan at the other side of the world was a delicate operation. Step by step the U.S. had pushed its influence and control in the former Soviet republics. U.S. oil and gas related companies had started up activities in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and the U.S. military had gained influence in the region, challenging Russia and China in their backyards.

Already in 1997, north of Afghanistan, the US had considerably expanded its military "cooperation" with Kazakhstan, which forms the buffer with Russia. [71] In 1999, closer to Afghanistan, the US expanded its presence in Kyrgyzstan [72], and in Uzbekistan, one of Afghanistan's direct neighbours. [73] In April 14-15, 2000, Uzbek and US troops conducted joint military exercises. [74]

East of Afghanistan the US administration has strong ties with the Pakistani intelligence service. Its director, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, was with U.S. officials the week before and during the attacks of 9/11. [75] On the west side, F-15s were based in Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey and the Fifth fleet was permanently based in the Persian Gulf. [76]

For the war in Afghanistan, huge transports of troops and material had to be organized well before the invasion. On November 7, 2000, the day all US-citizens were occupied with the election of their president, the UK announced its biggest military exercise since the Gulf War, operation Swift Sword (Saif Sareea in Arabic), involving 24,000 troops and a lot of heavy material. [77]

The exercise took place on the coast of Oman, a strategic location, since all oil tankers from the Persian Gulf region (Saudi-Arabia, the United Arabic Emirates, Qatar, Quait, Iraq and Iran) have to cross the Gulf of Oman. Here the UK maintains a War Material Storage. [78] The exercice had been scheduled from September 15 until the end of October 2001, [79] The UK would start moving troops and material to Oman in August 2001.[80] The UK participated in the invasion. [81]

From October 8 until the end of October, 2001 another military operation was planned in Egypt: NATO Operation Bright Star. It was the world's largest exercise including more than 11 Nations, and more than 70,000 troops (among which 23,000 from the U.S.) participating. [82]

Among several other "coincidental" military moves towards Afghanistan, we notice that on July 23, 2001, the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was sent out from Bremerton (on U.S. West coast) to the Arabian Sea. It arrived just in time to launch the first air strikes on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. [83]

Diplomatic preparations:

On the diplomatic front, to lower the risk of upsetting China, on June 19 2001, Bush had proposed to attend the APEC summit in Shang Hai and was expected to meet president Zemir between October 15 and October 21 2001. [84] & [85] (Bush's meeting with presidents Zemir and Putin took place on October 20, 2001) [86]

Besides, in 2001 China was completing its bilateral agreements with all 37 WTO members to become a full WTO-member. China wanted to become member since many years. China's bilateral agreement with Mexico would be the last and this would complete China's membership. [87] In July 2001 Bush would polish his relations with Mexico, "lobbying" against US unfair import restrictions on Mexican trucks. [88]

This was probably not only to get the Mexicans in the right mood to sign with China, but also because Mexico would be a member of the UN Security Council in 2002 and 2003. China reached its bilateral agreement with Mexico and became a WTO member on September 13, 2001. [89]

Bush's unmanned systems:

In the summer of 1999, a number of US embassies on the African continent were closed for the weekend because of suspicious people hanging around. [16] A few days later Clinton had issued its order prohibiting commercial transactions with the Taliban. [18] A few months later George W. Bush presented his ideas of defence "on the troubled frontiers of technology and terror."

He said, "In the air, we must be able to strike from across the world with pinpoint accuracy - with long-range aircraft and perhaps with unmanned systems." [19]

In September 1999 Bush still said "perhaps". He was still considering. This was at a time when the market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) for both military as well as civil aviation was rapidly developing. [90] By 2001 there were more than 60 types of UAVs world wide, from small models to big planes. [91]

At the time of Bush's speech in 1999, the U.S. was developing the Global Hawk [92], a military UAV with a wing span comparable to a Boeing 737, which had made its first flight from Edwards Air Force Base, CA on 28 February 1998. [93] After Bush became president, on April 23, 2001 the Global Hawk made a historical first unmanned test flight to Australia. [94]

9/11
Not all of the material about 9/11 has been released to the public. Some of the reliable evidence has been confiscated by the CIA. [95] Statements of officials often turned out to be contradictory. And, in particular about possible advanced knowledge, the White House has confiscated dozens of documents from the 9/11 Commission. [96] It doesn't make truth finding easier.

The official version of the events on 9/11 involves a very high number of coincidences that facilitated the "success" of the attacks.

A nationwide military exercise, Global Guardian, originally planned for November 2001, is in full swing, creating confusion between exercises and real-world events. [97]
A large-scale military exercise, Vigilant Guardian, is taking place and involves all of NORAD, that normally sends fighter jets after civil airplanes several times a week, when flight control operators report incidences. [97]
The Vigilant Guardian exercise simulates an air attack on the United States. [97]
NORAD is also running a planned real-world operation named Operation Northern Vigilance, for which many NORAD fighters are located in Alaska and Canada. [98]
Operation Northern Vigilance also creates false blips on radar screens at least until the second plane crashes into the World Trade Centre. [99]
In Washington a planned National Reconnaissance Office exercise involves a scenario of an airplane as a flying weapon. [97]
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is flying across the Atlantic on the way to Europe. [97]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency Director is at a conference in Montana. [97]
FAA hijack coordinator, who has to contact the National Military Command Centre in case of hijacks, is in Puerto Rico and cannot be reached. [97]
All of the FBI's anti-terrorist and top special operations agents are, together with the members of the CIA's anti-terrorist task force, on a training exercise in Monterey, California. [97]
For the day of 9/11, the commander of the National Military Command Centre had requested to be replaced by someone without experience. [97]
For FAA's new National Operations Manager it is the first day on the job. [98]
The hijackers can board without trouble, since the official no-fly list is only used for international flights and, curiously, not for domestic flights. [22] & [23]
Informed a few minutes after the start of the first hijack (Flight 11), American Airlines top management decide to "keep it quiet". [97]
Boston flight controllers do not follow normal procedures and waste time by contacting various military bases, instead of NORAD. [97]
After NORAD is finally informed, two F-15s will remain on the ground and only take off when Flight 11 already crashes into the WTC. [97]
For various reasons F-16s will only arrive on the scene after the last plane has crashed. [97] & [99]
A decision is taken to ground not only civil airplanes, but also all military planes. [99]
The presumed hijacker pilot of flight 77 was not able to fly a Cessna without difficulty in August, but succeeded to spiral down a Boeing 757 and hit the Pentagon a few meters above the ground on September 11. [100]
The President doesn't give any orders responding to the attack until just before the last plane crashes. [97]
Above I only mentioned those coincidences that facilitated the success of the attacks. If I were to build a story on such series of coincidences, no one would believe me. Well, I would not either. Keeping the things in their context, it makes more sense to look at them as facts, and not as coincidences.

All released details show that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out with military precision. However, the hijackers on the planes would have been improvised pilots without the extraordinary skills needed to fly in the way that has been reported. [101] & [102]

In addition, they would not have been intelligent enough to foresee the reactions triggered by their actions. Apparently they had so little political awareness, that they had not heard about the neoconservatives waiting for such a "catastrophic and catalysing event" to speed up U.S.' conquests.

The success of the plan relied on a lot of advanced knowledge of the situation that day, like the confusion offered by planned military exercises and the scenarios played by them, like the confusion offered by fake radar blibs, like traffic controllers lacking of primary radar images in specific areas, like the absence of several experienced officers in the command chains responding to the hijacks, like the absence of armed jet fighters to frustrate their plans.

All this seems more likely to be the work of a more influential and well trained organization, an organization willing to provide the justification for the neoconservatives' conquest plans, with Afghanistan as the first target.

It does not seem likely to me, that such an organization would let the success of its operation depend on the improvised skills of the hijackers. It makes more sense to suppose the hijackers were not in control. (In spite of an overheard phrase in the cockpit of the fourth plane, having been translated as "Pull it down" and by officials interpreted as "Crash the plane" [102]) It seems more likely the operation was conducted on the “troubled frontier of technology and terror”, and that technology had taken over the controls.

Transponders
The two types of planes used, the Boeing 757 and 767, can be controlled remotely. Robert Ayling, a former boss of British Airways, suggested in the Financial Times a few days after 9/11, that those aircraft can be commandeered from the ground and controlled remotely in the event of a hijack. [13] On 9/11 the remote control would have been in the hands of the wrong people.

If we look closer to the remote control scenario, we notice that if the published details about the transponders are right:

- 1- the transponder of the second 767 is turned off shortly after the first 767 crashes.

- 2- the transponder of the second 757 is turned off shortly after the first 757 crashes.

So, it looks as if one remote pilot handled the two 767s one after the other, and another remote pilot handled the two 757s one after the other. ([104] 9/11 Commission Report, P.32, 8:47 & 9:41)

It has also been reported that a C-130 military cargo plane was tailing flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. The same C-130 was behind flight 93 when it crashed. Did the plane play a role? Or was it just a coincidental tourist, flying around while all other planes had been ordered to land? [101], [105], [106]

The hijackers hijacked?

Although the official story expects us to believe the hijackers wanted to fly into the WTC and the Pentagon, the released pieces of cockpit conversations offer no indications to support this theory. Although mountains of stories and counter-stories have been published about the hijackers, I did not find a single verifiable element.

If the hijackers were to support some Arabic or Islamic cause, they would probably have been in a stronger position if they had returned to airports with four planes and hundreds of U.S. citizens in their might. They could have negotiated the release of political prisoners. They could have demanded a retreat of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia. They could have pleaded any cause they were after.

Did the hijackers really have in mind to strike the WTC and the Pentagon or were they overruled by the organization that had "contracted" them? Will we find out? According to the official story, all radio contact and overhearing of cockpit conversations stopped before the planes made their final approach to the WTC and the Pentagon. If the hijackers were to create the biggest possible spectacle, wouldn't they have shouted a last accusation against the U.S.? Or a last glorious prayer to Allah? Or were they surprised and in panic when they flew into the buildings?

Conclusion
The Afghan pipelines are only one step in U.S. political moves to take over the influence in the oil and gas rich former Soviet republics. Consuming 25 percent of the world oil consumption, their imperialism is first of all about energy. Today the U.S. already relies for over 60 percent on foreign oil, a percentage that is quickly increasing. The neoconservative ideas to transform the U.S. into a "dominant force" do not come out of nowhere.

The thought that they needed a "catastrophic and catalysing event" was not just motivated by the personal financial benefits several of them get from the war industries. It was also a sign of panic of a nation facing drying up oil wells and preparing itself to conquer foreign oil wells until the last drip is gone.

See Part I:

“Pipelines to 9/11”: The Struggle to control oil on the east side of the Caspian Sea


NOTES:
[51] http://www.atimes.com/reports/CA13Ai01.html#top5

[52] http://www.alternet.org/story/12525/

[53] http://www.atimes.com/reports/CA13Ai01.html

[54] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1972574.stm

[55] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020415/nichols

[56] http://www.guardian.co.uk/enron/story/0,,636530,00.html

[57] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=300#a0699powerplant

[58] http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/saudi.html

[59] http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

[60] http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,583869,00.html

[61] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-479

[62] http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911

[63] http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

[64] http://welfarestate.com/wtc/faketape/

[65] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/18/wbush18.xml

[66] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/etc/cron.html

[67] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0396sudansquabble

[68] http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/taliban_timeline.htm

[69] http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_101504W.shtml

[70] http://www.pakistaneconomist.com/issue2002/issue23/f&m.htm

[71] http://www.stimson.org/rd-table/ctr-kaz.htm

[72] http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t04282002_t0427jpc.html

[73] http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5491-7.cfm

[74] http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/09/383c3d03-2526-446e-943d-f81dfddbdc68.html

[75] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html

[76] http://www.eias.org/publications/bulletin/2001/eboctnov01.pdf

[77] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/oman-o09.shtml

[78] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/thumrait.htm

[79] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1012044.stm

[80] http://wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/oman-o09.shtml

[81] http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,581416,00.html

[82] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/bright-star.htm

[83] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Carl_Vinson_(CVN-70)

[84] http://transcripts.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/19/china.russia/index.html

[85] http://www.china.org.cn/english/12585.htm

[86] http://www.worldpress.org/europe/0302express.htm

[87] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IB91121.pdf

[88] http://telaviv.usembassy.gov/publish/peace/archives/2001/august/0801e.html

[89] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IB91121.pdf

[90] http://www.marketresearch.com/product/print/default.asp?g=1&productid=144390

[91] http://www.armada.ch/01-5/cgdrones.pdf

[92] http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/global_hawk.htm

[93] http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/global_hawk.htm

[94] http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-01d.html

[95] http://web.archive.org/web/20010921200613/www.washtimes.com/national/20010921-90259475.htm

[96] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A30240-2004Feb10¬Found=true

[97] http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911

[98] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-1683

[99] http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?day_of_9/11=dayOf911&timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=100

[100] http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hanjour.html

[101] http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911&startpos=200

[102] http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?day_of_9/11=dayOf911&timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=300

[103] http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=787987

[104] http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

[105] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-2034

[106] http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/05/31_catlinb_airguardmuseum/


Rudo de Ruijter
Independent researcher
Olivier van Noortstraat 13
6991 BG Rheden
Netherlands
rudoderuijter@wanadoo.nl