United by Noble Lies

A March 2004 US House of Representatives Minority report entitled Iraq on the Record, The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq, found that, beginning twelve months prior to the commencement of hostilities in Iraq, key administration officials made ‘237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq’.

This figure ‘does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made.’

“[T]here’s overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, January 22nd 2004

If German-born philosopher Leo Strauss were still alive, he would no doubt have approved of his former protégés’ tactics.

Strauss agreed with the ancient philosophers that the foolish and vulgar masses had no natural right to liberty; that they should be subordinated by an intellectual elite. He further argued that the elite could not rule directly because the masses would distrust them. Instead, they should command the ear of those in power. As Shadia B Drury explains in her paper, Saving America, Leo Strauss and the neoconservatives …

…Strauss referred to the right of the superior to rule as “the tyrannical teaching” of the ancients which must be kept secret. But what is the reason for secrecy? Strauss tells us that the tyrannical teaching must be kept secret for two reasons – to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. After all, the people are not likely to be favourably disposed to the fact that they are intended for subordination.

Thus the intellectuals were required to manufacture ‘noble lies’ as a ‘necessary pabulum to placate the people and make them comply with the[ir] will.’

“…politics… requires that you treat your opposition as antagonistic to everything in which you believe. It’s not personal; you don’t have to hate your enemy. But you do have to be prepared to vanquish him if necessary.” – Carl Schmitt in his book, ‘In The Concept of the Political’

The ultimate goal of the noble lie is unity. As Strauss himself explains in a letter to fellow neoconservative god, Carl Schmitt:

[M]en can be unified, only in a unity against – against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men. The tendency to separate (and therewith the grouping of humanity into friends and enemies) is given with human nature; it is in this sense destiny, period.

Nowadays, the masses are unified by a pandemic ‘politicization of intelligence’, according to former CIA Chief of Counter-Terrorism, Vince Cannistraro. ‘[D]eliberate disinformation is being promoted. [The neoconservatives] choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious.’

What then are we to make of the current constant stream of anti-Iranian propaganda spewing out of every neoconservative orifice, including the recent suggestion by the Sunday Times that…

Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

When this appears under the headline, Al-Qaeda ‘planning big British attack’, and when the article includes ‘a leaked intelligence report’ assessment that ‘the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’’, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Iran has imminent plans to launch a nuclear attack on the UK.

And, it’s probably just a coincidence that this leaked report comes the day before the US was about to embark on ‘a four-day marathon of “simulated” terror attacks across the US and Europe’. This drill, known as Noble Resolve (how Straussian), ‘includes a simulated detonation of a “loose” ten-kiloton nuclear weapon [in] Virginia harbor, smuggled in by a “foreign nation.”’

Anyone who suspects that these events might be connected in a manner designed to prepare us for a switch from diplomacy to military conflict in an effort to curb Iran’s nuclear designs, is just a foolish vulgar mass.

Aren’t they?

AA Flight 11 – Mohamed Atta and the ‘Rosetta Stone’

According to the ‘official’ version of events…

At 5:33 on the morning of September 11th 2001, lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, and his co-conspirator, Abdulaziz al-Omari, checked out of room 232 of the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. Their operation, two and a half years in the planning, had entered its final phase.

They placed their baggage into their rented Nissan Altima and drove to Portland International Jetport, arriving at around 5:45. This gave them just enough time to catch the 6:00 commuter flight to Boston’s Logan airport, from where they would later board the 7:45 departure, Flight 11, to Los Angeles.

This connecting flight to Boston was the last leg of a rather circuitous journey for Atta, which saw him fly from Baltimore to Boston on the 9th, and having collected Omari, drive from Boston to Portland on the 10th. There appears to have been no good reason for the two men to have left Boston, and their decision to do so exposed them to potential delays that could have jeopardised their participation in the mission.

Everybody hates death, fears death… but only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking death – attributed to Mohamed Atta

Having arrived at the airport, Atta tried to check two items of baggage onto the 19-seat commuter flight to Boston. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, he…

…was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta’s selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft.

These measures, designed to establish that selectees with a high terrorism ‘risk score’ were not carrying explosives, ‘reflected the FAA’s view that non-suicide bombing was the most substantial risk to domestic aircraft.’

As the events unfolded, Atta’s bags remained in Boston’s Logan Airport; they hadn’t made it on to Flight 11. They were discovered later that day and conveniently found to contain what former FBI agent Warren Flagg described as ‘the Rosetta stone of the investigation’.

FBI agent James K Lechner lists the bags’ contents in an affidavit filed on September 12th. They included:

numerous documents, including a letter of recommendation and education-related documentation, bearing the names “Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed” and “Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed Atta”; a hand-held electronic flight computer; a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft; two videotapes relating to “air tours” of the Boeing 757 and 747 aircraft; a slide-rule flight calculator; a copy of the Koran.

One of the documents found was described by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post as ‘a cross between a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational mission checklist’. In it, the hijackers were reminded to bring ‘knives, your will, IDs, your passport… [and] to make sure that nobody is following you.’ Remarkably, ‘[t]he FBI found another copy of essentially the same document in the wreckage of United Flight 93… [which] suggest[s] the document was shared among at least some of the hijackers.’

Less widely reported, is the equally remarkable claim made by both Flagg and an unnamed former federal prosecutor that the second bag contained the identities of all 19 hijackers.

I want the clothes I wear to consist of three white pieces of cloth, not to be made from silk or expensive material – Mohamed Atta in his will

Lechner’s affidavit also contained a reference to the discovery of ‘a handwritten document in Arabic’; it was Atta’s will.

It is reasonable to assume that this will, although dated 1996, was still applicable as of September 11th. Having encouraged the other hijackers to bring their wills, it seems improbable that Atta himself would have been carrying one that had been superseded. Because of this, and in the context of the events that were about to unfold, both Atta’s instructions and the fact that he planned for the document travel with him seem incongruous. Could he have reasonably expected either his will or his body to have been recovered?

This is just one of a great many question arising from the above.

It would also be interesting to learn why Atta and Omari travelled from Boston to Portland on September 10th? Why did they catch a connecting flight back to Boston early on September 11th giving themselves little room for manoeuvre should they encounter any unforeseen delays?

Why did Atta (and at least one other hijacker who boarded Flight 93) carry operationally sensitive material with him on the morning of September 11th? Why did Atta carry his will with him and why did he instruct the other hijackers to do so? Why does Atta’s will contain instructions for the preparation and internment of his body?

Why were all these materials contained in checked-in baggage (and, therefore, inaccessible once loaded) as opposed to hand-held, carry-on baggage? Why did Atta’s bag not make it onto Flight 11?

And finally, did Atta himself make it aboard Flight 11?

This last question is not as outlandish as it first appears when you consider that Atta was selected for CAPPS screening, and that anyone thus selected was required to board their flight before their baggage was loaded. Further, one of the flight attendants aboard Flight 11, Madeline Amy Sweeney, managed to call ground staff at Boston whilst the hijacking was in progress. According to a BBC report, Sweeney ‘spotted only four’ hijackers and ‘the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the hijackers’ names’.

To my mind, those who planned and executed the attacks on 9/11 should have left nothing to chance. But, if the ‘official’ story is to be believed, then they clearly did. What’s more, they took unnecessary risks, none more inexplicable than those taken in the hours before the operation began.

Of course, it is always possible that the ‘official’ story is not accurate…

Part Five: Peak Oil and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Previous – Part Four: Operation Cyclone and the CIA’s Connection to Tim Osman

In 1956, Marion Hubbert King, a geophysicist with the Shell Oil Company, presented a paper to the American Petroleum Institute entitled ‘Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels’. He used this paper to make two predictions about the date the US would reach its peak rate of oil production: a low estimate, with a peak in 1965; and a high estimate, with a peak in 1970. Hubbert’s peak theory has proven to be broadly accurate – US production peaked in 1971.

“…it does pose a national problem of primary importance, the necessity, both with regard to requirements for domestic purposes and those for national defense, of gradually having to compensate for an increasing disparity between the nation’s demands for these fuels and its ability to produce them…” – Marion King Hubbert, writing in ‘Nuclear energy and the Fossil Fuels’

Working on the assumption that any given oil field has a finite endowment, Hubbert theorised that the production rate at a new reserve would increase exponentially at first before peaking at the depletion mid-point. Thereafter, the rate would decrease exponentially. He represented this by way of a broadly symmetrical bell-shaped graph, known as the Hubbert Curve. In simplistic terms, oil is plentiful and cheap to produce on the up-slope, but scarce and increasingly expensive on the down-slope.

By combining the Hubbert Curves of all known oil reserves, one can chart the overall rate of global oil production and estimate the date at which that rate will peak. In his paper, Hubbert placed ‘the date of the [world] peak at about the year 2000’. This is known as ‘Peak Oil’.

A post-Peak Oil world presents a potentially grave threat to mature, industrialised nations such as the US, whose manufacturing, construction, and transportation industries all require energy derived from oil. As Colin J Campbell, writing in The Energy Bulletin, points out, US economic expansion has historically been fuelled by debt, with cheap oil-based energy as collateral. But…

…[t]he decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges. The investment community however faces a dilemma. It desires to protect its own fortunes and those of its privileged clients while at the same time is reluctant to take action that might itself trigger the meltdown.

But declining oil production is only part of the problem; security of access is the other, particularly for the US, which consumes 25% of global output. The Hubbert Curve posits that if Peak Oil occurred in 2006 (as many now believe it did) then, absent of any mitigating factors, the rate of production in 2026 will be roughly equal to that of 1986. However, the combined effects of a growing population coupled with the increasing oil dependency of newly industrialised nations will lead to an escalation in resource-oriented competition.

To put this into perspective, in 1986 the rate of world oil production was just over 60 mb/d (million barrels per day) and the world’s population was around 5 billion. If Peak Oil occurred in 2006, then by 2026 the theoretical rate of production would also be around 60 mb/d, however, according to the US Census Bureau, the world’s population in 2026 will have grown to around 8 billion.

More significantly, growth in both population and oil consumption rates has not been and will not be uniform. Between 1986 and 2006, for example, the combined populations of China and India grew by around 31% (source: US Census Bureau), whilst the rest of the world grew by just 19%. Regional variations in oil dependency were even more pronounced, with consumption in China and India growing six times fatser than the overall world rate (source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2006).

Asia’s rapidly growing population and oil dependency thus presents a threat to the ability of the US to meet its energy needs. This threat will be exacerbated by a decline in the relative importance of its traditional sources and an increase in the relative importance of the Middle East.

“While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies…” – Dick Cheney, speaking at the London Institute of Petroleum in 1999 as CEO of Haliburton

Historically, despite acquiring around 10% of its oil imports from Saudi Arabia, the US has not relied heavily upon Middle East energy. Nonetheless, as Mamoun Fandy in his 1997 article for Foreign Policy in Focus explains, it has long viewed the region as vital to its strategic interests.

Securing the flow of affordable oil is a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy. The U.S. strategy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq, designed to ensure that neiher [sic] Iraq nor Iran is capable of threatening neighboring Gulf countries, is inextricably linked to Washington’s oil policy. Currently, U.S. domestic oil production supplies about 50% of total U.S. consumption. Foreign sources provide the rest, primarily Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, and several African countries.

But dependence upon Canada, Mexico and Venezuela cannot be regarded as a long-term solution to its domestic production deficit. These countries have or are about to experience their own peak. By contrast, the Middle East isn’t expected to peak until around 2011. Furthermore, by 2020, with production rates declining more rapidly elsewhere, the Middle East is expected to produce more oil than all other regions combined.

In 2001, The National Energy Policy Development Group (known as the NEPD Group and chaired by newly appointed-Vice President, Dick Cheney) alluded to this ‘crossover event’ in its ‘National Energy Policy’ report.

By 2020, Gulf oil producers are expected to supply between 54% and 67% of the world’s oil. Thus the global economy will almost certainly continue to depend upon the supply of oil from Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members, particularly in the Gulf.

At the time, Gulf oil producers accounted for just over 30% of total world production.

“I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. ” – Dick Cheney, speaking as CEO of Haliburton in 1998

But the Middle East is not the only region considered vital to US interests. The break-up of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Afghan-Soviet war has also led to a battle for energy dominance in and around the Caspian Sea. This battle has been termed the ‘New Great Game’ (see also Part Four: Operation Cyclone and the CIA’s Connection to Tim Osman), with interested parties competing not only for oil but also for the development of lucrative new transit routes as alternatives to the region’s existing infrastructure. Long-standing US policy goals regarding the now-independent littoral Central Asian Republics were reiterated in a statement to the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations by Doug Bereuter, the Chairman of the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. They include…

…fostering the independence of the States and their ties to the West; breaking Russia’s monopoly over oil and gas transport routes; promoting Western energy security through diversified suppliers; encouraging the construction of east-west pipelines that do not transit Iran; and denying Iran dangerous leverage over the Central Asian economies.

Throughout the 1990s, the pursuit of US policy was hampered by the highly politicised and unstable nature of the region, as well as its legacy infrastructure. As John Maresca, Vice President for International Relations at the Unocal Corporation explained to the House subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific:

Central Asia is isolated. Their natural resources are landlocked, both geographically and politically. Each of the countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia faces difficult political challenges. Some have unsettled wars or latent conflicts. Others have evolving systems where the laws and even the courts are dynamic and changing. In addition, a chief technical obstacle which we in the industry face in transporting oil is the region’s existing pipeline infrastructure.

Because the region’s pipelines were constructed during the Moscow-centered Soviet period, they tend to head north and west toward Russia. There are no connections to the south and east. But Russia is currently unlikely to absorb large new quantities of foreign oil. It’s unlikely to be a significant market for new energy in the next decade. It lacks the capacity to deliver it to other markets.

Maresca went on to outline the need for two major infrastructure projects. The first, a pipeline west from the Caspian, terminating at either Novorossiysk in the Black Sea, or else the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a route backed by US oil companies, including Unocal. The second…

…a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.

Both projects have since moved forward. An agreement was reached in 1999 to construct the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline; and, in 2002, a memorandum of understanding paving the way for the construction of a trans-Afghanistan natural gas pipeline was signed by the leaders of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan.

In an attempt to counter US growing hegemonic interest in the region, Russia and China, together with co-signatories, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (coloured blue in the map), signed the ‘Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions’, forming the ‘Shanghai Five’. Uzbekistan was admitted to the group in 2001 and it became known as the The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have all subsequently applied for membership to the SCO. At present they, together with Kazakhstan and India hold observer status (coloured green in the map).

The organisation’s declared aims are to develop a climate of regional ‘security and stability’; to promote ‘trade and economic relations among member states’; and to strengthen ‘coordination among member states on international arena’. These measures are intended to constrain the ‘three evil forces’ of ‘terrorism, separatism and extremism’; with the constraint of ‘separatism’ acting in part as a euphemism for Sino-Russian desires to prevent struggling Central Asian States from falling under Western spheres of influence.

More recently, Russia and China have begun to openly assert themselves. Russia, for example, has become increasingly reluctant to follow through on its commitment to relinquish state control of its energy reserves, and has challenged US interests in Algeria, where a recent arms deal was intricately woven into Russia’s participation in the development of Algeria’s energy production capabilities.

China has also been active in Africa, most notably in Angola, another key US supplier. Here it has helped to finance several infrastructure projects in a move that has seen Angola supplant Saudi Arabia as China’s largest exporter.

And, as reported by Reuters, China has begun ‘working on a raft of oil deals’ with Venezuela ‘giving impetus to President Hugo Chavez’s attempts to break his country’s dependence on oil exports to the United States’ and ‘stripping major US companies… of their majority stakes in heavy crude projects.’ This relationship will cause some consternation in the US, not only because of the effect it may have on US energy interests, but also because it has the potential to threaten the petrodollar’s hegemonic status. Venezuela, in common with some other major exporters to China, such as Iran, has been exploring a switch to the petroeuro as the unit of accounting for oil transactions (see also Part Two: The Bretton Woods Agreement and the Rise of the Petrodollar). If it does make this switch, it could well prompt China to step-up its diversification away from the dollar, which in turn could cause irresistible downward pressure on the US currency.

You can find out more about Peak Oil and related issues by visiting the web site of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO).

Exploiting the Damsel-in-Distress

As delighted as I am by the safe return of our sailors and marines from Iran, I can’t help but feel a real sense of disappointment at their decision to sell their stories to the media. I am equally disappointed with the Ministry of Defence for its decision to allow them to sell their stories, though I’m not at all surprised.

“Look after everyone for me, especially Adam and Molly, I love you all more than you will ever know.” – Faye Turney, in her letters from Iran

In a Statement issued on Sunday (9th April), the MoD said that its decision was ‘taken as a result of exceptional media interest,’ arguing that, in any event, their ‘human interest’ stories ‘were likely to have emerged via family and friends.’ In other words, it is a fait accompli. However, to my mind, this explanation does little more than divert our attention from the real reason for the decision, which is encoded in the final paragraph (emphasis added):

It was therefore decided to grant permission to speak to the media to those personnel that sought it, in order to ensure that the Navy and the MOD had sight of what they were going to say – as well as providing proper media support to the sailors and Marines in the same way as would have been the case in more ordinary circumstances.

Maybe I’m allowing my general mistrust of authority to cloud my judgement here, but this whole episode reeks of an MoD-inspired and controlled packaging exercise. Furthermore, it seems to me that this carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign began not with the release of our service personnel, but before they were even captured.

For example, the decision by both the BBC and The Independent newspaper to interview Faye Turney on March 22nd, less than 24 hours before she was seized, looks in retrospect to have been a most auspicious one. “Faye told me that if anything happened to her, she could rely on her family and friends,” reports the BBC’s Ian Pannell. “She said she loved her job, but above all her husband and her young daughter.” Turney herself went on to add that…

…by doing this job I can give [Molly] everything she wants in life and hopefully by seeing me doing what I do, she’ll grow up knowing that a woman can have a family and can have a career at the same time.

It is notable that, despite meeting nearly all fifteen soon-to-be-hostages, Ian Pannell had virtually nothing to say about Turney’s male colleagues. And, since we’re all suckers for a damsel-in-distress, things continued in much the same vein. Throughout the crew’s 13-day ordeal, the media’s attention rarely shifted from Turney. She was even described by Reuters as the ‘human face of [the] Iran-Britain crisis’. Now, having been released, she continues to be the centre of attention.

In order to see just how central, I did a quick Google search using each of the crewmembers’ names plus ‘Iran’. Faye ‘wife to Adam, mother to Molly’ Turney generated about 1,340,000 results. There were 79,000 for Adam Sperry; 78,600 for Nathan Summers; 282,000 for Chris Air; 245,000 for Felix Carman; 84,000 for Arthur Batchelor; 15,000 for Mark Banks; 64,800 for Joe Tindell; 19,200 for Danny Masterton; 18,200 for Paul Barton; 422 for Christopher Coe; 38,600 for Simon Massey; 37,300 for Andrew Henderson; 11,900 for Dean Harris; and 24,400 for Gavin Cavendish.

The way this affair has played out is in marked contrast to the low-key manner with which the government and media responded to the seizure of eight British servicemen by Iran in 2004. The main difference, I guess, is that no women were involved and, in any case, we were too bogged down in Iraq to concern ourselves with attacking Iran.

I also can’t help but wonder whether Turney has helped to deflect our attention from Gavin Cavendish, about whom suspiciously little is known.

Reflecting on Our Relationship With Iran

As fifteen British sailors held in Iran for 13 days arrived back in the UK, four British soldiers were reported to have been killed in a roadside bomb blast near Basra in southern Iraq.

“A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves… some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran.” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to the former US President Jimmy Carter, testifying before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on February 1st 2007.

For those who suspect the West is seeking to condition the public into supporting a military confrontation with Iran, Tony Blair’s reaction to news of the soldiers’ deaths was chilling. Having first stated that they were “killed as a result of a terrorist act,” he went on to add that…

…it is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act… was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident, but the general picture, as I have said before, is that there are elements, at least, of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in Iraq.

The inescapable conclusion Blair wants us to reach, despite his ostensible caution, is that Iran is guilty of vicariously murdering our troops. No mention was made of efforts to catch those directly responsible. Instead he chose to implicate Iran in a manner that was reminiscent of the Bush administration’s campaign to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks ahead of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He even attempted to compound our sense of outrage by asserting that this was an act of terrorism. However, in so doing, he has somehow robbed the term of any real meaning. If soldiers can be victims of a terrorist attack in a conflict such as the one in Iraq, then it is hard to imagine a definition of ‘terrorism’ that doesn’t cast the soldiers themselves and even Western governments as terrorists.

But most significant of all, was his observation that “[t]his is maybe the right moment to reflect on our relationship with Iran…” This rather sombre suggestion will have caused some alarm in Iran. They suspect the West of looking to stir up anti-Persian sentiment at every opportunity as a prelude to military intervention. This suspicion is further fuelled by recent allegations that the US is running covert operations in the region aimed at destabilising the Iranian government. Indeed, the speaker of their parliament recently accused the CIA of backing Jundullah, a militant Pakistani Islamist group with ties to both al Qaeda and the Taliban, which is believed to be responsible for a string of terrorist attacks against Iranian targets. The CIA is also alleged to be funding the Kurdistan Free Life Party, an armed Kurdish nationalist organisation that is opposed to the government of Iran; and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (aka MEK), which seeks to replace the government of Iran with its own leadership.

As frustrating as this must be to the Iranians, it won’t come as much of a surprise; the CIA does have a history of meddling in Iranian affairs. The most famous example, the 1953 joint Anglo-American plot known as Operation Ajax (or TPAJAX), led to the overthrow of then democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, and the installation of the ‘preferred’ General Fazlollah Zahedi. According to an account prepared in 1954 by one of the plot’s architects, Dr. Donald N. Wilber, the Allies had decided by the end of 1952 that…

…it had become clear that the Mossadeq government in Iran was incapable of reaching an oil settlement with interested Western countries; was reaching a dangerous and advanced stage of illegal, deficit financing; was disregarding the Iranian constitution in prolonging Premier Mohammed Mossadeq’s tenure of office; was motivated mainly by Mossadeq’s desire for personal power; was governed by irresponsible policies based on emotion; had weakened the Shah and the Iranian Army to a dangerous degree; and had cooperated closely with the Tudeh (Communist) Party of Iran.

But most of this is ‘padding’. In truth, we need look no further than the first and last ‘justification’ for the Allies’ motivation. For the US, it was the threat posed by the possibility that Iran would fall under Soviet influence; and for the British, who originally proposed the plot, it was the need to reverse some of the damage caused by Mossadeq’s decision to nationalise the country’s oil industry.

Nowadays, the West’s belligerence is predicated upon the hypothetical threat posed by a nuclear Iran, backed up by the allegation that Iranian elements are supporting insurgents within Iraq. Less widely publicised is Iran’s insistence that it be paid in petroeuros rather than petrodollars for its oil exports to Asia and Europe (see The Bretton Woods Agreement and the Rise of the Petrodollar).

It won’t have escaped anyone’s attention that there’s a great deal of oil there either.

AA Flight 77 – Timeline and Shoot Down Order

At 9:37 EDT on September 11th 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 was reported to have crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington DC. More than five years have passed and there is still a great deal of confusion over what really happened.

Whilst the debate about whether or not an aircraft actually hit the building rages, a number of other issues have slipped under the radar. One – the matter of who knew what and when – is replete with troubling contradictions and loose ends. This is a brief look at some of them.

“We, to this day, don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth.” – Thomas H. Kean, 9/11 Commission Chairman

When NORAD’s Colonel Alan Scott gave evidence to the 9/11 Commission on 23rd May 2003, he explained that…

[a]t 9:24 the FAA reports a possible hijack of 77. That’s sometime after they had been tracking this primary target. And at that moment as well is when the Langley F-16s were scrambled out of Langley.

Scott’s account is consistent with evidence provided by the FAA in the form of a written submission to the Commission entitled, ‘FAA Communications with NORAD on September 11th, 2001’. This was read out during the same hearing (emphasis mine).

Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA command center, FAA headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service and other government agencies. The U.S. Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD on a separate line. The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, including Flight 77. Other parties on the phone bridges in turn shared information about actions they were taken. NORAD logs indicate that the FAA made formal notification about American Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m. But information about the flight was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal notification.

NORAD’s logs do indeed corroborate the FAA’s claim. A news release, dated September 18th 2001, sets out the timelines for NORAD’s response to the hijackings, and includes the following information:

American Flight 77 – Dulles enroute to Los Angeles

FAA Notification to NEADS – 0924

Fighter Scramble – Order (Langley AFB, Hampton, Va. 2 F-16s) – 0924

Fighters Airborne 0930

Airline Impact Time (Pentagon) – 0937(estimated)

Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location – approx 12 min/105 miles

However, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission found that (emphasis mine)…

[a]t the suggestion of the Boston Center’s military liaison, NEADS contacted the FAA’s Washington Center to ask about American 11. In the course of the conversation, a Washington Center manager informed NEADS: “We’re looking – we also lost American 77.” The time was 9:34. This was the first notice to the military that American 77 was missing, and it had come by chance. If NEADS had not placed that call, the NEADS air defenders would have received no information whatsoever that the flight was missing, although the FAA had been searching for it. No one at FAA headquarters ever asked for military assistance with American 77.

It explained these timeline discrepancies away by stating that the ‘notice NEADS received at 9:24 was that American 11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington, D.C.’ It goes on to point out that ‘[i]n fact… NEADS never received notice that Flight 77 was hijacked’ but was reported simply as ‘lost’ at 9:34.

Thus the ‘phantom’ Flight 11 theory was born. No evidence was presented during any of the testimonial hearings to support this assertion; it was only uncovered by the Commission after studying taped conversations, logs and other records. Intriguingly, they were ‘unable to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information.’

These contradictions are perplexing. However, up to this point, the Commission’s timeline carries a greater degree of authority by virtue of our inclination to trust contemporaneous sources over oral testimony. But when you add the testimony of then US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta to the mix, we must conclude that either the Commission’s findings are flawed; the veracity of its source material was questionable; or else Mineta’s account was not only inaccurate, but was a total fabrication.

Mineta testified that he entered the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) at 9:20am and found Vice President Dick Cheney already in charge. Here is a condensed version of Mineta’s exchange with Commission Vice Chairman, Lee Hamilton.

MR. HAMILTON: I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane [was] coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” [during the course of his testimony, Mineta says that this series of exchanges began “Probably about five or six minutes” after entering the PEOC] Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant. And –

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.

Although Mineta’s Flight 77 timeline is at odds with the Commission’s findings, it is in strong agreement with the testimony given by Scott, the FAA and NORAD. It also appears to be supported by the NTSB’s ‘Flight Path Study – American Airlines Flight 77’, which is based upon an analysis of the Flight Data Recorder recovered from the scene. It states that…

[a]t approximately 9:29 AM, when the aircraft was approximately 35 miles west of the Pentagon, the autopilot was disconnected (f) as the aircraft leveled near 7000 feet.

This ties in well with Mineta’s claim that the aircraft was 50 miles out at or around 9:26 and suggests he was indeed in the PEOC when he said he was. And, unless Mineta is inexplicably mistaken, Cheney must also have been present at that time. This leaves us wondering how the Commission reached the conclusion that ‘the Vice President arrived in the [PEOC] shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.’ According to its ‘NOTES TO CHAPTER 1’, the source of this information was the Shelter Log. No mention is made of Mineta’s testimony throughout the whole of the Commission’s final report.

It also leaves us wondering about the true nature of what Lee Hamilton referred to as, ‘an order to shoot that plane down’. Based upon Mineta’s description of the exchange between Cheney and the aide, it is hard to believe that it was a shoot down order. If it had been, why would the aide have asked repeatedly if the order still stood? Surely such an order, having been given, would have stood until such time as the aircraft had either been shot down or else crashed.

A more logical conclusion is that Cheney gave a stand down order, perhaps at a time prior to Mineta’s arrival in the PEOC, when the aircraft’s destination was unclear. This would explain why the aide became increasingly anxious as the aircraft closed in on Washington. Furthermore, if this interpretation is correct, we can also infer that fighters were within striking distance of the inbound aircraft from at least 50 miles out; why else would the aide continue to ask if the order still stood unless the military were capable of acting upon a change to that order?

There is no public record of Cheney’s testimony to the Commission. It was given under the condition that he would not be required to take an oath; that his testimony would not be recorded; and that, whilst the Commission’s staff could take notes, they were not to be made public.

Which is a pity, because I feel sure he would have been able to shed some light on this episode.

NOTES:

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) describes itself as ‘a bi-national United States and Canadian organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and aerospace control for North America.’

According to Wikipedia, The Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), is a component of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It is responsible for providing detection and air defense for the U.S. states north of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, with the sector’s western perimeter running midway through the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and the western part of Kansas, slicing the panhandle of Oklahoma, and ending at the Red River on the northern border of Texas. The eastern perimeter of the sector is the Atlanta Ocean, and the northern perimeter is the Canadian border.

NEADS is operated by the Air National Guard (ANG) and reports to the Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR) headquarters, in Panama City, Florida, which in turn reports to NORAD headquarters, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lists Airspace and Air Traffic Management among its activities. Its role is to ensure ‘[t]he safe and efficient use of navigable airspace’ by operating ‘a network of airport towers, air route traffic control centers, and flight service stations.’ It also ‘develop[s] air traffic rules, assign[s] the use of airspace, and control[s] air traffic.’

Part Four: Operation Cyclone and the CIA’s Connection to Tim Osman

Previous – Part Three: Operation Gladio and The Strategy of Tension

Competition between Russia and the West – initially the British Empire – for supremacy in Central Asia began in the early 19th century with ‘The Great Game’.

Fearful that Imperial Russia might threaten its dominance of the Indian sub-continent, the British attempted to establish Afghanistan as a buffer state. By 1884, a combination of repeated local resistance and continued Russian expansion brought the two countries to the brink of war. Although war was averted and tensions eased with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), the period of detente soon ended with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Afghanistan subsequently signed a Treaty of Friendship with the newly formed Russian Soviet Republic and achieved political self-determination. This marked the beginning of a steady decline in British influence in Afghanistan.

After World War II, Britain was emasculated as an imperial force. An empowered United States, in line with the Truman Doctrine, sought to assert its influence in Central Asia. Its goals, however, were not simply to contain Soviet expansion, but also to develop and protect its energy interests in the region.

“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Cater

With Britain and Soviet Russia otherwise occupied, Afghanistan enjoyed a long period of relative stability. However, in 1973, the former Prime Minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan, seized power in a coup d’etat alleging government corruption and economic mismanagement. Daoud departed from tradition and replaced the Monarchy with a Republic, but he ran a repressive regime and failed to deliver the promised economic reforms. He also pursued a pro-Western policy, much to the chagrin of Soviet Premier, Leonid Brezhnev, who in turn encouraged the hitherto divided Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to re-unite.

At the same, the KGB began attempts to orchestrate a coup against Daoud. They sponsored riots, which broke out on the streets of Kabul in late 1977 and early 1978. The government responded by arresting several prominent PDPA members, one of whom, Mir Akhbar Khyber, was charged with being a KGB spy. When he was killed in custody, the KGB pointed the finger of blame at Daoud, claiming he had ordered the execution. Khyber’s funeral subsequently became the rallying-point for a mass demonstration of Communist unity against Daoud and his government. Daoud responded by ordering the arrest of the PDPA’s leadership, but he was too slow; on April 27, 1978, he was overthrown and executed (see The Saur Revolution). Nur Muhammad Taraki, the Secretary General of the PDPA, then became the first Communist leader of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Taraki’s government immediately began the process of reform. It laid out a Marxist agenda, which included land and education reforms, as well as more liberal attitudes towards women. These were seen as an affront to the traditional rural and feudal Afghan way of life; they were also seen as an attack on Islam. By mid-1978, mujahideen insurgents had already established a base in Pakistan and had turned to the West, in particular the United States, for support. Meanwhile, large parts of the country had revolted and the PDPA responded with disproportionate aggression, fuelling the rebellion and causing around half of the army to either desert or join with the insurgency.

In September 1979, Taraki was killed and Deputy Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, took control. Soviet leaders soon began to question his loyalty to Moscow following reports that he was purging the opposition of Soviet sympathisers and that he was a CIA agent. Indeed, the Soviets strongly suspected that the CIA had, for some time, been active within Afghanistan. On 27th December 1979, they intervened militarily in support of the Communist revolution.

The Soviet’s suspicion was later confirmed by the then US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998.

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the National Security Adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” – English proverb

In January 2005, the US Department of State published the CIA’s response to the hypothetical question: Has the CIA ever provided funding, training, or other support to Usama Bin Laden?

No. Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Usama Bin Laden. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with Bin Laden (emphasis in original)

More broadly, the Department of State asserted that…

The United States did not “create” Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. The United States supported the Afghans fighting for their country’s freedom — as did other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK — but the United States did not support the “Afghan Arabs,” the Arabs and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan for broader goals.

However, there is evidence to suggest that, not only did both the CIA and the US government have a relationship with Osama bin Laden, but that they were rather important ones.

The CIA’s support of the Islamic mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) relied heavily on the intermediation of Pakistani secret service agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Much of that support, whether in the form of recruits, finance or equipment, was distributed by the ISI to the mujahideen via Maktab al Khidamar (MAK), which was founded by Dr Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden (allegedly pictured above with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor).

Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA is said to have helped train over 100,000 Islamic insurgents at a cost of up to $20 billion. In his book, ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’, John Cooley reveals that some insurgents were recruited in the US and were sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, Camp Peary, where they received paramilitary training. Other ‘unqualified applicants’ were brought into the US using visas issued illicitly by the CIA, according to comments made by Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, during a radio interview on July 3rd 2002.

CBC: So what do you think you were dealing with here; it all sounds a bit like a case of visa fraud perhaps, but why to you think there was anything more than that?

Springman: Well initially I thought that is what it was. There was visa fraud. I had been told by one contact that the price for a visa at the American consulate was the equivalent of $2500 US. But once I got back to the United States, and was out of the foreign service, I ran across a couple of people with ties to the American government, that told me another story; that the CIA was recruiting fighters for the Afghan war against the then Soviets, and that their asset, Osama bin Laden was working with them. They had a recruiting office in Jeddah, they had a recruiting office in Riyadh, and third one somewhere in the Eastern province. And they would send these people to Jeddah, the fifth largest visa issuing post in the Middle East, for visas. They would apparently run these people straight over from their recruiting office over to my visa window. Well obviously, when they were not good solid businessmen, or good upstanding upper class people I would refuse them.

CBC: How many would you estimate that got into the United States that shouldn’t have through this back door?

Springman: Well, in my case I would say as many as 100.

CBC: And when you questioned them, what would they say were their reasons for expecting to get a visa with such slight credentials?

Springman: There was one instance of two Pakistanis who came to me, and they wanted to got to an American auto parts trade show. They couldn’t name the show, and they couldn’t name the city in which it was going to be held. And then the case officer came over and called me on the phone, and said, “Give them a visa”. I said “No, it doesn’t wash”. “Well, we need it, I’m sorry.” Then he went to the head of the consular section and got me overruled, and they got their visas. But when I complained to the powers in the consulate, and the people in Riyadh, I was told to keep quiet, that there was reasons for doing this, that it wasn’t a case of my poor judgment, it was this and it was that. This simply fueled my suspicions that something untoward was going on.

CBC: Was there ever any pattern to these applicants that you could see? To their situations, their skills, their nationalities?

Springman: They seemed to basically people with no real skills. Their nationalities for the most part were Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese. They were young, in their 20s and their 30s say, and they seemed to have no ties to any place in particular.

CBC: Where did Afghanistan seem to fit into this whole pattern? Because it seems they were going to the US to collect or be rewarded for some past deed, or to be trained for another. Where did Afghanistan fit in?

Springman: Afghanistan was the end user of their facilities. My sources told me that they were coming to the United States for training as terrorists, and they would be sent back to Afghanistan. But then the countries that had originally supplied them certainly didn’t want them back. These were people that had been given skills in overthrowing governments, destroying armored columns and things like this, and the various governments in the region frankly didn’t want them back, because they thought they might apply these skills at home.

Michael Springman’s assertion that Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset is corroborated by claims made in an article by J. Orlin Grabbe. Grabbe describes a meeting that took place in 1986 at the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California. This meeting was arranged at the behest of officials within President Ronald Reagan’s administration, who were pushing for arms supplies to the mujahideen to be accelerated. It was said to have been attended by Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI Senior Special Agent; Michael Riconosciuto, a weapons and explosives expert with links to the CIA; Ralph Oberg, who worked at the Afghan desk at the State Department; and Tim Osman, which Grabbe claims was ‘the name assigned to [Osama bin Laden] by the CIA for his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support and armaments’ (see ITEM 1 of what is purported to be an official document supporting this claim).

Next – Part Five: Peak Oil and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Part Three: Operation Gladio and The Strategy of Tension

Previous – Part Two: The Bretton Woods Agreement and the Rise of the Petrodollar

On March 12th 1947, US President Harry S Truman addressed a joint session of Congress and spoke about the need to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

Thus he encapsulated the ‘Truman Doctrine’; ostensibly a defensive containment policy aimed at limiting the expansion of Communism in post-war Europe. Truman subsequently signed the National Security Act of 1947, restructuring both the military and Intelligence communities, and creating the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

“I never heard of [Operation Northwoods]. I can’t believe the chiefs were talking about or engaged in what I would call CIA-type operations.” – Robert McNamara, Defense Secretary to President John F Kennedy

Initially, the CIA was responsible for psychological warfare. According to the National Security Council, “[t]he similarity of operational methods involved in covert psychological and intelligence activities and the need to ensure their secrecy and obviate costly duplication renders the Central Intelligence Agency the logical agency to conduct such operations.” Some within the Intelligence community had argued for a wider remit, including the reintroduction of the offensive covert paramilitary capability that had served the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), so well during World War II. Although the National Security Act did not explicitly authorise such activities, it did contain a catch-all clause, allowing the CIA to ‘perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.’ This rather ambiguous authority, coupled with the fact that the CIA had control of unvouchered funds, gave the organisation some latitude and meant that not all projects or project costs need be subject to Congressional scrutiny.

However attitudes hardened when, in early 1948, the Communist party seized political control in Czechoslovakia. National Security Council Directive 10/2 was introduced. It broadened the CIA’s responsibilities and established The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). The OPC was given direct access to both the State Department and the military without being required to work through the CIA’s administrative hierarchy. This revised mandate for the first time explicitly authorised the CIA to plan and conduct covert operations…

…which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Covert action shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.

“…the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.” – Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

Operation Gladio (and, ultimately, the Strategy of Tension) has its roots in the Truman Doctrine. Against a background of post-war poverty in Europe, Communism began to flourish. Communist parties enjoyed considerable electoral success, even in Western states such as Italy and France, where it became the largest single party. In response, Truman’s original pledge of military assistance to Europe was augmented by the Marshall Plan. NATO was also formed around this time, superseding the Treaty of Brussels. These developments prompted the US Department of State to undertake a review of US strategic policy and military programmes. The resulting plan, NSC-8, was signed by Truman in 1950 and signalled a shift from passive to active containment.

NCS-68 contrasted the fundamental purpose of America, which was to ‘assure the integrity and vitality of our free society’, with the Soviet’s perceived goal of bringing about ‘the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin.’

It further argued that ‘[p]ractical and ideological considerations therefore both impel us to the conclusion that we have no choice but to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom by its constructive application, and to attempt to change the world situation by means short of war in such a way as to frustrate the Kremlin design and hasten the decay of the Soviet system.’ Such was the zeitgeist into which Operation Gladio was born.

Operation Gladio was originally conceived by Allen Dulles, who went on to become the first civilian Director of the CIA. It was the Italian code name given to NATO’s clandestine stay-behind armies, which were left across Europe after the war to better train partisan groups to counter the threat of Communist expansion. Initially, these armies were coordinated solely by the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) until, upon the orders of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), a second command centre was formed in the shape of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC).

These stay-behind armies later became key backers in what was known in Italy as the Strategy of Tension. This right wing, anti-Communist programme was aimed at preventing the increasingly popular Italian Communist Party from participating in a governing coalition. It lasted for over a decade. Throughout the campaign, Gladio members employed both violent and non-violent methods to manipulate public opinion against the Party, often committing false flag attacks and then blaming them on Communist insurgents. These were conducted indiscriminately against both civilian and non-civilian targets, and included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano car bombing, the attempted assassination of former Interior Minister Mariano Rumor and the 1980 Bologna massacre.

Gladio first came to light in August 1990, when then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti gave testimony to a Senate subcommittee investigation into terrorism in Italy. Andreotti revealed that the secret army had been hidden within the Defence Ministry as a sub-section of the SISMI and its predecessor, the SOIS, Italy’s military secret service. This revelation infuriated the former Director of SIOS, Vito Miceli, who had “gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization.” An organisation, which according to Vincenzo Vinciguerra, one of the 1972 Peteano car bombers, was required to “attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game [in order to force] the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.” Subsequent investigations have since revealed that Gladio-style armies also operated in Belgium (SDRA8), Denmark (Absalon), Germany (TD BJD), Greece (LOK), Luxembourg (Stay-Behind), the Netherlands (I&O), Norway (ROC), Portugal (Aginter), Switzerland (P26), Turkey (Counter-Guerrilla), Sweden (AGAG), and Austria (OWSGV).

Following these disclosures, the European Parliament issued a Joint resolution condemning Gladio.

A. having regard to the revelation by several European governments of the existence for 40 years of a clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization in several Member States of the Community,

B. whereas for over 40 years this organization has escaped all democratic controls and has been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO,

C. fearing the danger that such clandestine network may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of Member States or may still do so,

D. whereas in certain Member States military secret services (or uncontrolled branches thereof) were involved in serious cases of terrorism and crime as evidenced by, various judicial inquiries,

E. whereas these organizations operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control and frequently those holding the highest government and constitutional posts are kept in the dark as to these matters,

F. whereas the various ‘Gladio’ organizations have at their disposal independent arsenals and military resources which give them an unknown strike potential, thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating or have been operating,

G. greatly concerned at the existence of decision-making and operational bodies which are not subject to any form of democratic control and are of a completely clandestine nature at a time when greater Community cooperation in the field of security is a constant subject of discussion,

1. Condemns the clandestine creation of manipulative and operational networks and Calls for a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organizations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret services of Member States or third countries;

2. Protests vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel at SHAPE and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a clandestine intelligence and operation network;

3. Calls on the governments of the Member States to dismantle all clandestine military and paramilitary networks;

4. Calls on the judiciaries of the countries in which the presence of such military organizations has been ascertained to elucidate fully their composition and modus operandi and to clarify any action they may have taken to destabilize the democratic structure of the Member States;

5. Requests all the Member States to take the necessary measures, if necessary by establishing parliamentary committees of inquiry, to draw up a complete list of organizations active in this field, and at the same time to monitor their links with the respective state intelligence services and their links, if any, with terrorist action groups and/or other illegal practices;

6. Calls on the Council of Ministers to provide full information on the activities of these secret intelligence and operational services;

7. Calls on its competent committee to consider holding a hearing in order to clarify the role and impact of the ‘Gladio’ organization and any similar bodies;

8. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Secretary-General of NATO, the governments of the Member States and the United States Government.

An Italian Senate report published in 2000, found that ‘[t]hose massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported…by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.’

You can read more about NATO’s stay-behind armies in Daniele Ganser’s book, ‘NATO’s secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe.’

Next – Part Four: Operation Cyclone and the CIA’s Connection with Tim Osman

Part Two: The Bretton Woods Agreement and the Rise of the Petrodollar

Previous – Part One: The Day the World Changed

If the McCollum Memo set out the means by which America would be drawn into World War II, the Bretton Woods Agreement and its precursor, The Atlantic Charter, set out the motivation.

When World War II broke out, President Franklin D Roosevelt’s interventionist stance was in marked contrast to the isolationist sentiment held by a great many Americans. Whilst they feared a repeat of the sacrifices made during World War I, he feared that, if allowed to succeed in Europe, the Axis powers would “be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against [the Western] hemisphere.” But he also recognised that intervention would leave the US in a position to exploit an economically exhausted post-war Europe – one that would ultimately be forced to abandon the protectionist measures that had hitherto frustrated US access to the global marketplace. With that in mind, and although somewhat politically constrained, he began to look for ways to support the Allied effort.

“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

By mid-1940, Germany had overrun France and the Low Countries. A resource-depleted Britain stood alone and vulnerable. On September 2nd 1940, and in defiance of the Neutrality Acts, the US agreed to transfer fifty destroyers to the British Royal Navy under the terms of The Destroyers for Bases Agreement. In exchange, the US was granted the lease of land on various British possessions, “freely and without consideration”, for the “establishment and use of naval and air bases and facilities for entrance thereto and the operation and protection thereof.”

Sensing that America’s isolationist resolve was waning, Roosevelt used his Great Arsenal of Democracy fireside speech of December 29th 1940 to argue that there was “far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis.” He continued this theme in his State of the Union Address (also known as the Four Freedoms speech) on January 6th 1941 “[A]t no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today,” he declared, before insisting that US “policy should be devoted primarily – almost exclusively – to meeting this foreign peril.”

His perseverance paid dividends. On March 11th 1941, in a move that would prove critical to the Allies’ eventual success, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act . This Act entitled the President to authorise the “manufacture [of defense articles] in arsenals, factories, and shipyards, [and] sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease [or] lend” them to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” Although primarily intended to help Britain, Lend-Lease appropriations totalling around $50 billion were eventually extended to more than 40 nations by the end of the war.

Almost immediately, those responsible for administering the Lend-Lease program sought to clarify the “extent to which [their] Government intends to commit itself with reference to the defeat of the Axis powers.” On July 9th, 1941, Roosevelt made his position clear by asking both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy to either in person, or through appointed representatives, explore “the overall production requirements required to defeat our potential enemies.” Preparation of the so-called ‘Victory Program’ was well under way by the time Roosevelt sat down with British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, at the Atlantic Conference to discuss the Anglo-American alliance.

“To do it full justice, one must describe the arrangement itself as an instrument of American domination.” – Daniel Singer, author of Whose Millennium, Theirs or ours?

On August 14th, Roosevelt and Churchill issued a joint statement setting out their vision for a post-war Europe. As well as seeking to establish ‘a wider and permanent system of general security’, the Atlantic Charter also contained measures aimed at tearing down the barriers to free trade. It called for ‘all States, great or small, victor or vanquished’, to be granted…

access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

…to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the objector securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

…[to] enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Nearly three years later, and with the war drawing to a close, these free trade principles took a broader and more substantive form under the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement. US policymakers understood that their own strong economy, which was based on a sustained period of uninterrupted military spending, must be used to drive global economic growth and prosperity in the post-war era. Without a market for exported goods, the US economy itself would be vulnerable. As Daniel Singer explains…

[o]n paper the draftsmen set up a multilateral, international institution to deal with the financial problems of the world. At its heart was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was to authorize the very exceptional adjustments in the fixed rates of exchange, but also to act as a supplier of liquidity. (Gradually it became a lender of last resort.) It was to fulfill this function thanks to a fund filled by members’ contributions according to a complex mechanism of quotas, determined by the given country’s economic strength, which also signaled the amount of money that country could borrow. To show accurately the crucial role of the United States, it is not enough to point out that the American quota in the IMF, by far the biggest, prevented any decision from being taken without Washington’s consent or even to stress that the new monetary arrangement was in fact a gold-dollar exchange standard, since all currencies were linked to the dollar valued at $35 per ounce of gold. To do it full justice, one must describe the arrangement itself as an instrument of American domination.

Thus the US exerted its predominance and Europe had little option but to acquiesce.

Initially, the Bretton Woods system worked well, with America’s economic strength providing a stable foundation upon which the world could emerge from the post-war doldrums. Dollars flowed out into the world economy through the institutions established under the agreement, as well as through US aid programmes such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. This in turn created more vibrant overseas markets for US corporations to tap in to. Before long, over half of the world’s international money transactions were dollar denominated, establishing it as the de facto global reserve currency.

However, by the late 1960’s, the system was in danger of collapse. The ability of the US to underwrite its military spending was predicated upon a world market without competition. The emergence of Germany and Japan as economic rivals, coupled with the spiralling inflation associated with the cost of persecuting the Vietnam War, upset the balance and led the US into a period of relative economic decline.

Dollar-holding countries, worried that the value of the US currency would plummet, began exchanging their reserves for gold. In August 1971, with dollars flooding back into the US and its gold supply greatly diminished, President Richard Nixon abandoned the gold standard, allowing market forces to determine the dollar’s floating value. Without firm backing, the dollar became volatile and inflation soared higher, fuelled by an ever-increasing wartime debt. At this point, the US looked for other ways of encouraging the rest of the world to accept dollars and then hold on to them.

The answer came in the form of ‘petrodollar recycling’. In 1974, through his close relationship with their royal family, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger persuaded Saudi Arabia to price its oil exports exclusively in US dollars. Thereafter, any nation wanting to purchase oil was required to pay for it in dollars. But since Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations could earn more from oil exports than they could invest in their own economies, they bought US Treasury bonds and deposited their surplus dollars in US banks where it was held as reserve currency. These banks then lent the money on to other countries through the dollar-denominated IMF, and they in turn used much of it to buy oil.

The effect of this ‘recycling’ is that oil-purchasing countries are required to hold considerable dollar reserves and sustain a trade surplus in order to do so. Conversely, the US can afford to run an enormous trade deficit on the back of its dollar exports. In simplistic terms, the US gets its oil for free. For example the US buys goods valued at $1 from Japan. Japan buys $1 of oil from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia buys a $1 debt instrument from the US. The US can now recycle that $1 to buy oil. Meantime, when Japan has more goods to sell, the US simply ‘creates’ more dollars. In practice, the US only pays the amounts required to both service the debt and ‘create’ the dollars.

But such an arrangement can only continue for so long as the petrodollar’s hegemonic status remains unchallenged. Saddam Hussein’s decision to switch the unit of accounting for all Iraqi oil transactions to the petroeuro in 2000 amounted to just such a challenge. Some argue it was one of the key factors behind the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, following which, the policy was quickly reversed. However, a number of other countries have since openly explored the possibility of a switch, including Libya, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and, perhaps most notably in the context of recent events, Iran (see also Part Five: Peak Oil and The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation).

You can read more about Iranian plans to switch to the petroeuro in William Clark’s essay, Iran’s New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency.

Next – Part Three: Operation Gladio and The Strategy of Tension

Part One: 9/11 – The Day the World Changed

At 08:46 EDT on September 11th 2001, the world changed forever. American Airlines Flight 11 was reported to have flown into WTC-1; America was under attack.

In the immediate aftermath, few people had any qualms about hunting down the alleged mastermind, Osama bin Laden. But there were some doubters. Over the years, their numbers have swollen. According to a Zogby International poll, dated August 30th 2004, 49.3% of New York residents believe that the US government ‘knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.’ Another Zogby International poll, dated 24th May 2006, revealed that 42% of Americans ‘…believe that the US government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks, saying there has been a cover-up.’ Type “9/11 conspiracy” into a search engine today and you’ll find some 2,500,000 results, many of them arguing that, not only did the US government know of the attacks in advance, but that some elements actually played an instrumental part in planning and executing them.

The purpose of this, the first in a series of articles, is to try to understand what has led some to think the unthinkable. This is by no means an exhaustive study, nor is it intended to be conclusive. Readers are encouraged to follow the links provided and draw their own conclusions.

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“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” – Herman Goering.

In November 1997, the John F Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board declassified a quantity of previously secret military records. Among them one that has become known as the ‘Northwoods Document’. This document set out a plan, codenamed Operation Northwoods, which was designed to persuade both the American public and the international community to support US military action against Cuba.

This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States. This plan would also properly integrate and time phase the courses of action to be pursued. The desired resultant from the execution of the plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western hemisphere.

This is a description of one of the plan’s most disturbing ‘projects’.

It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civilian aircraft enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any group of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.

a. An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civilian aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

b. Take off times of the drone and the scheduled aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly to an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone craft meanwhile will continue to fly he filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will being transmitting to the international distress frequency a “MAY DAY” message stating he is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO radio stations in the Western hemisphere to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to “sell” the incident.

Other ‘projects’ or ‘incidents’ that were considered included:

A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.

Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.

Lob mortar shells from outside the base into base; Some damage to installations.

Sabotage ships in harbour; large fires – napthalene.

We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.

We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.

We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated).

…the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement…

A “Cuban-based, Castro-supported” filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Caribbean nation…

The plan was approved and signed off on by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, in March 1962. It was, however, subsequently rejected, though it is not known for certain by whom. President Kennedy’s then Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, has always claimed not to have known of the plan’s existence, which suggests that President Kennedy himself rejected the plan.

One interesting point of note is that, in an interview with the Baltimore Sun (archived at Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) back in April 2001, Robert McNamara said: “I never heard of it. I can’t believe the chiefs were talking about or engaged in what I would call CIA-type operations.” His characterisation of Operation Northwoods as a ‘CIA-type’ operation is significant. It hints at what was considered typical and attaches a sense of legitimacy to the planners’ purpose.

As disturbing as the Northwoods Document is, ‘false flag’ operations are not uncommon. It is widely believed, for example, that the Reichstag Fire of 1933, which occurred in Germany just a few days before the 5th March elections, was a self-inflicted wound. Similarly, the 1954 Lavon Affair (or Operation Suzannah) and the Gleiwitz Incident of August 1939 are both believed to have been false flag attacks. Others are not so much single events as campaigns, as was the case with the Strategy of Tension (backed by a NATO stay-behind operation known as Operation Gladio) as well as the recent (unsubstantiated) claims made by the murdered Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, that the Russian government had committed acts of domestic terrorism and blamed them on the Chechnyans.

“By the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. You may find you can get away with Virtual Presidents, Virtual Prime Ministers, and Virtual Everything.” – Bill Clinton

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in 1997. It describes itself as a non-profit, educational organisation. Its stated aim is to promote American global leadership. More specifically, it called for the ‘need to increase defense spending significantly’. This is necessary to both, ‘challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values’, and ‘accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.’

Among it members, past and present, are Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Aaron Friedberg, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Since its inception, PNAC has published various books, policy documents and letters. Perhaps the best known is a report entitled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (RAD), dated September 2000. This document appears to demonstrate that several of those who subsequently went on to become key policy-shapers within President Bush’s administration were, in advance of the 2000 election, drawing up plans to take military control of the Gulf region. According to PNAC, this American hegemony in the Middle East (or pax Americana) would serve, among other things, to protect ‘enduring American interests in the region.’

However, PNAC was acutely aware that the strategic ‘transformation’ of the U.S. military required to ‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars’ would take time and would necessitate a huge increase in defence spending. They estimated this additional amount to be between $15 billion to $20 billion per annum. They articulated both the problem and solution most succinctly in Chapter V of RAD, entitled ‘Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force’, by suggesting that ‘the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.’

On the face of it, that seems benign enough, if perhaps a little insensitive. But for those familiar with the ‘McCollum Memo’, this particular evocation of the horrors associated with Pearl Harbor is a cause for some alarm.

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s immediate entry into World War II. Up until that point, public opinion towards entering the war had been divided. Pearl Harbor closed those divisions and caused Americans to unite. But did the attack really come as a surprise?

On October 7 1940, Lt. Com. Arthur McCollum, of the Office of Naval Intelligence, submitted a list of recommendations concerning America’s strategy in the Pacific to Navy Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of President Roosevelt’s most trusted military advisers. The memo outlined an eight-point plan apparently aimed at provoking Japan into attacking the United States. Throughout 1941, President Roosevelt implemented all eight recommendations and, on December 7th, Japan attacked.

Here is an extract from that memo (emphasis mine).

9. It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore, the following course of action is suggested:

A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

D. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.

E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

10. If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war.

If, as seems possible, President Roosevelt implemented these recommendations in order to ‘engineer’ the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, what was PNAC really thinking when it raised the possibility of a ‘catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor’ as a precursor to a pax Americana?

You can read more about the attack on Pearl Harbor both in an interview with Robert Stinnet, and in his book, ‘Day of Deceit’. There is also a great deal of information about the extent of President Roosevelt’s alleged foreknowledge in an article entitled Pearl Harbor: Mother of all Conspiracies.

Next – Part Two: The Bretton Woods Agreement and the Rise of the Petrodollar