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Mueller’s Record of Framing Innocent People – Chapter Two

Eric Zuesse

NOTE: This is the second half of a two part article. Before continuing, please be sure to read the first half, Parts 1-4, available here.

Part Five

Soon after the 2002 mid-term elections, Bush virtually abandoned the Afghan people: the BBC’s Michael Buchanan reported on 13 February 2003, under the heading, “Afghanistan omitted from US aid budget,” that even Republican congressmen were “shocked” at the President’s zeroing-out of Afghan-aid funds; and, as a result, “The United States Congress has stepped in to find nearly $300m in humanitarian and reconstruction funds for Afghanistan after the Bush administration failed to request any money in the latest budget.” And the yawning gap in the nation’s domestic security remained.

As one of the nation’s thousands of Bush-unfunded local “first responders” to terrorism, Baltimore’s Mayor Martin O’Malley, noted, in a Houston Chronicle op-ed on 21 February 2003, “With the exception of some additional airport security, next to nothing has been invested in protecting America’s population centers or its economic infrastructure.” He went on to ask rhetorically, and then to answer, his own key questions about the President’s post-9-11 policies:

“If our own teenage graffiti vandals can get to the chemical cars passing through American cities on our railroads, how hard could it be for al Qaeda? Not hard at all, when you consider there are five security guards monitoring CSX tracks between Richmond, Va., and Wilmington, Del., two fewer than there were on Sept. 11, 2001. If the drug cartels’ cocaine and heroin can still flow uninterrupted into America’s unprotected and uninspected ports, how hard could it be for … Osama bin Laden to smuggle a dirty bomb or a nuke? Not hard at all when, on average, 2 percent of America’s incoming port cargo is inspected, about the same percentage as on Sept. 11, 2001.” America’s President, obviously, had other priorities. And O’Malley boldly condemned those priorities, saying, “There is another dangerous, undeniable truth here: The federal government can’t invest in homeland security when the Treasury is bled dry by incessant tax cuts and the ensuing deficits they cause.”

On 31 March 2003, the New York Times editorialized against “Undercutting the 9/11 Inquiry,” and noted that, “the federal investigative committee so reluctantly supported by the White House” was shocked to find that it was unfunded by the White House, whose “assurances led them to believe needed funds would be included in the supplemental war budget sent to the Capitol last week. But the commission’s $11 million request was not there.”

The Bush-appointed, bipartisan, James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Iraq Study Group Report, was issued on 7 December 2006, and it stated:

“All of our efforts in Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by … [the fact that] Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency.”

“As an intelligence analyst told us, ‘We rely too much on others to bring information to us, and too often don’t understand what is reported back because we do not understand the context of what we are told.’”

On top of this, the Administration had been outright lying to the American public: “There is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. … A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database.”

Democratic Senator Bob Graham, after ten years on the Intelligence Committee, published in 2004 Intelligence Matters, and stated (p. 169): “Our investigators found a CIA memo dated August 2, 2002, whose author concluded that there is incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government.” The book’s dustcover summarized highlights from the Senator’s book:

“At one point, a terrorist support network conducted some of its operations through Saudi Arabia’s U.S. embassy — and a funding chain for terrorism led to the Saudi royal family.

“In February 2002, only four months after combat began in Afghanistan, the Bush administration ordered General Tommy Franks to move vital military resources out of Afghanistan for an operation against Iraq — despite Franks’s privately stated belief that there was a job to finish in Afghanistan, and that the war on terrorism should focus next on terrorist targets in Somalia and Yemen.

“Throughout 2002, President Bush directed the FBI to limit its investigations of Saudi Arabia, which supported some and possibly all of the September 11 hijackers.

“The White House was so uncooperative with the bipartisan inquiry that its behavior bore all the hallmarks of a cover-up.

“The FBI had an informant who was extremely close to two of the September 11 hijackers, and actually housed one of them, yet the existence of this informant and the scope of his contacts with the hijackers were covered up.

“There were twelve instances when the September 11 plot could have been discovered and potentially foiled.

“Days after 9/11, U.S. authorities allowed some Saudis to fly, despite a complete civil aviation ban, after which the government expedited the departure of more than one hundred Saudis from the United States.

“Foreign leaders throughout the Middle East warned President Bush of exactly what would happen in a postwar Iraq, and those warnings went either ignored or unheeded.

“As a result of his Senate work, Graham has become convinced that the attacks of September 11 could have been avoided, and that the Bush administration’s war on terrorism has failed to address the immediate danger posed by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia.”

Greg Palast, the investigative reporter for the BBC and Guardian, wrote in his 2003 The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (pp. 98-100) about George W. Bush’s policy, which Bush put into place right at the start of his Presidency, to squelch all intelligence investigations into the supply of money and weapons to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. Palast quoted from FBI memos marked “SECRET,” and also from a source who was “a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity.”

Palast wrote:

“After Bush took office, he [my source] said, ‘there was a major policy shift’ at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to ‘back off’ from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks.”

Furthermore, “The Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.”

This was the crucial investigation into the activities of Dr. A.Q. Khan, who was the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, and who was selling nuclear materials to Islamic groups outside Pakistan. Only after 9/11 did Bush permit these investigations to resume. Until at least 9/11, Bush was stifling ongoing intelligence work against Osama bin Laden. He seems to have been reluctant to permit spying upon Osama or any Saudi aristocrats. The Bushes shared an aristocratic outlook with their friends and business partners the Saudi royals.

On 15 November 2002, Philip Taubman headlined an “Editorial Notebook” in the New York Times, “Inside the Saudi Royal Cocoon: A World Where Flattery And Servility Abound,” and he said that theirs was “a world so distorted by sycophancy that it would be a miracle if they could see the full dimensions of the problems Saudi Arabia faces. Obsequiousness oozes through the Saudi court like oil.”

Taubman noted, however, that, “Fawning aides are hardly unique to Saudi Arabia. The White House has sometimes served as a protective bunker for presidents who were cut off from the country and surrounded by servile advisers.” Bush had been surrounded by that since birth, long prior to the White House’s “protective bunker.” He shared more in common with Osama bin Laden than he did with the victims of 9/11. One thing he shared with bin Laden was religious fundamentalism. Another was a belief that the only moral authority for laws is God — not democracy, not the will of the public.

Maybe the 9/11 families should have been suing President Bush instead of the Sauds.

When the 9/11 Commission was finally established — despite the President’s opposition, but largely under his control — one of the victim family members, Mindy Kleinberg, in testimony on 31 March 2003, available at www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing1/witness_kleinberg.htm, presented a cogently documented argument to the effect that there existed serious reason to believe that the Bush Administration had actively impeded FBI, FAA, NORAD, and other federal agencies’ attempts to prevent the attacks.

She made clear some reasons why the White House would wish to hinder this investigation, as they were in fact so obviously doing. An excellent book that fills in many of these blanks, but that leaves unanswered the questions that the Bush Administration succeeded in blocking, is the 2002 The War on Freedom, by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed.

Since that’s a superb work of comprehensive serious nonfiction portraying the U.S. leadership as assisting anti-U.S. terrorism, it was rejected by all major publishers, and the author was lucky even to find a publisher at all: the obscure Tree of Life Publications. However, that book’s conclusion was implicitly endorsed a year later (29 July 2003) by former White House Counsel John Dean at http://writ.findlaw.com/dean/20030729.html: “The 9/11 Report Raises More Serious Questions About The White House Statements On Intelligence”: “It seems very probable that those in the White House knew much more than they have admitted, and they are covering up their failure to take action” to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

Several articles are available on the web presenting strong evidence that the Bush Administration possessed overwhelming advance-warning to place the U.S. intelligence community on highest alert in August of 2001, for an almost certain huge attack being imminently planned by al Qaeda on targets inside America, using planes as bombs.

One category of such articles are major-media U.S. news reports from the period prior to the Administration’s clampdown on U.S. reporting about the Government’s foreknowledge of Al Qaeda’s plans. On 13 February 2001, UPI’s Richard Sale headlined “NSA Listens to bin Laden,” and revealed that the National Security Agency had decoded Al Qaeda’s encryption system and knew the contents of e-mails and phone calls from Osama bin Laden.

Another was an NBC News report, on 1 October 2001, which the network soon removed from its website, but which remained widely quoted on the web, and which stated that, on September 9th, just two days prior to the attacks, Osama had informed his adoptive mother, Al Kalifa bin Laden, during a phone conversation with her, that, “In two days, you’re going to hear big news, and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” NBC was reporting this not in order to raise questions about President Bush, but to counter-argue Osama’s public assertions that Osama wasn’t behind the 9/11 attacks.

Perhaps also belonging in this same category, or else reflecting the more disciplined Bush propaganda period afterward, was a Knight Ridder report from Jonathan S. Landay, on 6 June 2002, headlined “NSA Didn’t Share Key Pre-Sept. 11 Information, Sources Say,” and which opened: “A secretive U.S. eavesdropping agency monitored telephone conversations before Sept. 11 between the suspected commander of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and the alleged chief hijacker, but did not share the information with other intelligence agencies, U.S. officials said Thursday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the conversations between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta were intercepted by the National Security Agency.”

If the NSA, or else the CIA, did, in fact, hide such information from the White House, then President Bush should have immediately “cleaned house” at the respective Agency, which he didn’t do. More likely, therefore, is that Bush either received the information (despite his disavowals), or else that he wanted deniability of his possessing the information, and thus practically prohibited such reports from even reaching his desk.

Either way, President Bush would have been co-responsible, along with Al Qaeda, for 9/11 — a conclusion that will be further documented. On 18 October 2003, the New York Times headlined “Early Warnings on Moussaoui Are Detailed,” and reported: “The Central Intelligence Agency warned its stations around the world in August 2001 that Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested in Minnesota after raising suspicion at a flight school there and that he was a ‘suspect airline suicide hijacker.’”

The attorney for the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, Coleen Rowley, joined local FBI agent Harry Samit, to urge Washington to check out Moussaoui, but the key FBI officials in Washington, David Frasca and Michael Maltbie, refused. Frasca and Maltbie ended up being promoted by the Bush Administration; Rowley and Samit were iced for their having tried to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Samit’s 70 urgent requests to Washington failed to obtain from Frasca and Maltbie anything but runarounds during the two weeks prior to 9/11.

Who was the FBI’s chief during that period? It was Robert Mueller. He led the FBI from 4 September 2001 to 4 September 2013. He was the coverup man, regarding the Sauds, the redirect-blame man, regarding Iraq and Iran.

In another category of documentation of the Administration’s advance warning of the 9/11 attacks are independent reports on the web bringing together the revelations from numerous other reliable sources. One such report, from Michael C. Ruppert, at fromthewilderness.com, on 22 April 2002, is titled “The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9-11 Attacks.” It assembled numerous indications that someone, or some group, possibly Al Qaeda itself, possibly Bush insiders, knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, and were even set up to profit enormously from this advance knowledge. For example:

  • A jump in UAL put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack. [CBS News, Sept. 26]
  • A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal on the day before the attacks. [CBS News, Sept. 26]
  • No similar trading occurred on any other airlines. [Bloomberg Business Report, the Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzliyya, Israel citing data from the CBOE]
  • Morgan Stanley saw, between Sept. 7 and Sept.10, an increase of 27 times (not 27 percent) in the purchase of put options on its shares. [ICT Report, ‘Mechanics of Possible Bin-Laden Insider Trading Scam,’ Sept. 21, citing data from the CBOE]
  • Merrill-Lynch saw a jump of more than 12 times the normal level of put options in the four trading days before the attacks. [Ibid]
  • How much money was involved? Andreas von Bülow, a former member of the German Parliament responsible for oversight of … intelligence services estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion.
  • Not a single U.S. or foreign investigative agency has announced any arrests or developments in the investigation of these trades, the most telling evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks. This, in spite of the fact that former Security and Exchange Commission enforcement chief William McLucas told Bloomberg News that regulators would ‘certainly be able to track down every trade.

The Bush Administration failed to pursue, at all, this goldmine trail of evidence. Robert Mueller failed to follow any of those leads.

If the inside investment group carrying out these transactions — and presumably profiting billions from them — was Al Qaeda (or else an Al Qaeda front), then Al Qaeda must have greatly increased its financial resources from the 9/11 attacks. If, on the other hand, it was, let’s say, the Republican Party, then the beneficiaries would have been Al Qaeda’s American allies — not much different.

Two other such comprehensive reports suggesting possible Bush complicity in the 9/11 attacks include, first of note, from Kate Clark in Britain’s Independent, on 7 September 2002, “The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was ignored”; and second of note, from truthout.com’s Wm. Rivers Pitt, on 20 June 2002, “All Along the Watchtower.”

The piece by Pitt was especially incriminating, because it discussed the $7 billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of 14 victim families and 400 other plaintiffs of the 9-11 attacks, filed by Republican attorney, Stanley Hilton, on 3 June 2002, in San Francisco U.S. District Court, alleging that Bush “let it happen on purpose,” and that “the Bush administration got the pipeline it wanted.” Pitt added that, “Even the most hardened political observer must admit the dismal truth — September 11th was the greatest thing ever to happen to the Bush administration.”

Osama bin Laden did far more for Bush than even Enron corporation’s Ken Lay did, though not quite as much as did the 2000 Green Party U.S. Presidential candidate Ralph Nader. (Nader’s nearly 2% of the Florida vote placed G.W. Bush into the White House, by draining from Democrat Al Gore far more than the mere one-hundredth of one percent of Florida’s votes that separated Gore from Bush. Nader also tipped New Hampshire to Bush. If either state had gone to Gore, there wouldn’t have been able to be any Supreme Court resolution of the election and Gore would straightforwardly have become President.) Osama bin Laden’s 9-11 terror attack did more than anything else to retain Bush in the White House. A community of interests certainly existed between bin Laden and Bush, perhaps even stronger than that which had existed between Ken Lay of Enron, and Mr. Bush.

Furthermore, Bush blocked progress on the fight against Al Qaeda, until 9/11 hit. On 5 August 2002, TIME’s Michael Elliott bannered “They Had a Plan: Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda”, and Elliott reported, for example, that “John O’Neill led the FBI’s National Security Division, commanding more than 100 experienced agents. … O’Neill’s boss, Assistant FBI Director Barry Mawn, spent part of his time pleading with Washington for more agents, more linguists, more clerical help. He got nowhere.”

O’Neill’s office was in the World Trade Center, and had responsibility for the investigation of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the ship which Al Qaeda had struck during the closing days of the Clinton Administration. “Heeding the pleas from the FBI’s New York City office, where Mawn and O’Neill were desperate for new linguists and analysts, acting FBI Director [Thomas] Pickard [the temporary FBI chief, between Freeh and Mueller] asked the Justice Department [including, until 10 May 2001, Deputy Attorney General Mueller] for some $50 million for the bureau’s counterterrorism program. He was turned down. In August, a bureau source says, he appealed to Attorney General Ashcroft. The reply was a flat no.”

Mueller also was active in the cover-up of Bush’s lies about Iraq.

On 11 February 2003 — shortly before we invaded and destroyed Iraq — FBI Director Mueller testified, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that: “Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam may supply al-Qaeda with biological, chemical, or radiological material.” He just reiterated the President’s lies, and his concern wasn’t to raise any question about them, but to reinforce them.

That was the actual counter-terrorism performance of the George W. Bush Administration: an American bulls-eye waiting passively for whatever Al Qaeda would fire at it. And all of this occurred after Berger had told Rice, “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.” Berger had simply assumed that the people replacing the Clinton Administration would care about the welfare of the American people, just as Bill Clinton’s people did (at least somewhat). This assumption turned out to be false.

Part Six

As for the devout Bush Administration’s “services” to the direct victims of the 9/11 attacks, there was a little-noticed major news story from Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, on 16 April 2003, which, for some mysterious reason, appeared only on that magazine’s website, at http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/901320.asp.

Inconspicuously headlined there as, “A Legal Counterattack,” it reported that the law firm defending Saudi Arabia (or, more appropriately, defending the Saudi royal family), against a $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the victims of 9/11, was Baker Botts, headed by Bush confidant and former Secretary of State, the WASP gang’s leading consiglieri, James Baker, who had also masterminded G.W. Bush’s legal campaign to stop the 2000 Florida vote-recount, and co-headed the White House’s official ‘investigation’ and account of 9/11. This report mentioned that the Saudis had approached many other high-priced law firms, but were turned down by several, because, as one of these lawyers said, “I kept asking myself, ‘do I want to be representing the Saudis against the 9-11 families — especially after all the trouble we had getting cooperation from the Saudis on terrorism’,” and, “I finally just said no.”

Salon.com’s Eric Boehlert headlined, on 18 June 2003, “Bush’s 9/11 Coverup?” reporting that, “Family advocates … wanted to know why the government — and specifically the Bush administration” (including Bush’s FBI-coverup Director, Robert Mueller) was “so reluctant to find answers to any of the obvious questions about what went wrong that day, why so little has been fixed, and why virtually nobody has accepted any responsibility for the glaring failures.” But what were failures from the victims’ standpoint, were Mr. Bush’s (and his sponsors’) greatest triumph, from his (and their) political (and financial) standpoint. And then President Bush returned Al Qaeda’s favor, by invading Iraq, thus pumping up Islamic hatred of Americans, and recruitments by Al Qaeda — and weapons-sales by Lockheed Martin etc.

Back again to Newsweek’s Isikoff and Hosenball (only three weeks after their notable “A Legal Counterattack”), and buried again only on the magazine’s website, at http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/910676.asp, were more ugly details of Bush’s dogged efforts to sabotage the investigation by the 9/11 commission whose very creation he had opposed. This 7 May 2003 article was titled, “September 11 Showdown.” Among the barriers the White House was putting up: “Commission members argue that they can’t possibly do their job to write the authoritative history of 9-11 if they can’t discover what the federal government has learned from al Qaeda operatives” whom the Government had in custody.

An AP story on 24 June 2003 by Ted Bridis and John Solomon was headlined, “Officials: U.S. Slow on Bin Laden Drones,” and reported that, “When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Quaida leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year.” Bush wanted to protect bin Laden at least until he hit.

On 15 August 2005, Michael Hirsh of Newsweek headlined “CIA Commander,” subheaded that the U.S. “Let bin Laden Slip Away,” and reported: “In a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency’s Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora — intelligence operatives had tracked him — and could have been caught. ‘He was there,’ Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK.” Berntsen’s book, Jawbreaker, was published later in 2005, providing extensive details on this operation, despite the Pentagon’s continued denials that anyone knew whether bin Laden was among the Al Qaeda forces fleeing Tora Bora.

During the President’s press conference on 13 March 2002, just shortly after his initial failure to have captured/killed bin Laden, he was asked, “Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that?” In his response, Bush said, “You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.” The reporter, obviously shocked, followed up with, “But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?” Bush replied: “I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” He never had been; he had refused to be — especially prior to 9/11. Does this suggest he wanted the 9/11 attacks in order to have a “justification” to invade Iraq? Was President Bush a traitor, or only a fool?

Either way, thousands of Americans died on 9/11 due to bin Laden — and Bush’s approval ratings from voters shot up by 40% as a result of bin Laden’s attack, and stayed high through the 2002 mid-term congressional elections, and even till the 2004 Presidential election. America has a history of re-electing wartime Presidents. (The only exception was Lyndon Johnson, who quit because his own Party didn’t support his Vietnam war; Republican presidents never face that kind of problem, because conservatives support conquest in principle.) Bush followed this long tradition, even though he failed miserably as Commander-in-Chief and didn’t even really care about the public, at all.

Fairly late in the Bush II regime, on 10 September 2006, the Washington Post headlined “Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold’: U.S. Steps Up Efforts, But Good Intelligence On Ground Is Lacking.” Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson blew the lid off the Republicans’ claims to be strong against terrorism. They reported that bin Laden was initially concerned about his danger of being captured. “That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts … that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan.”

These Special Forces were pulled out “to prepare for war in Iraq.” Even in March 2002, Bush was so obsessed with Saddam Hussein, that resources were drawn off from the bin Laden hunt. “‘I was appalled when I learned about it,’ said [Flynnt L.] Leverett,” who was “then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council. … ‘It’s very likely that bin Laden would be dead or in American custody if we hadn’t done that.’ … White House spokeswoman Michele Davis said she would not comment.”

(We’ll have occasion to come back to that report again later, because the rest of it deals with how the Administration wasn’t even primarily concerned with success in the war against terrorists. He didn’t have his eye on that ball.)

CNN’s “Inside Politics” with Judy Woodruff, reported, on 30 April 2001 — in other words prior to 9/11 (and this “prior” is shocking in the given context) — “The State Department officially released its annual terrorism report just a little more than an hour ago, but unlike last year [under President Clinton], there’s no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official tells CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden and ‘personalizing terrorism.’” Bush downplayed bin Laden as soon as Bush entered the White House. Instead, he refocused against Saddam Hussein, right away.

As Afghanistan was falling back under increasing Taliban control during 2006, President Bush’s friend and head of the Senate, Bill Frist was quoted in an AP article on October 3rd, from Afghanistan, “Frist Says Afghan War Can’t Be Won”: “U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Monday that the war against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan could never be won militarily, and he urged support for efforts to bring ‘people who call themselves Taliban’ into the government.” Did the Democrats, and Presidents FDR and Truman, say to Germany, “Let’s bring ‘people who call themselves Nazis’ into the German Government”?

The only war that Republicans were really determined to win was the one which Bush had in mind from even before he entered the White House: the war in Iraq. Forget about 9/11, was the Republicans’ real attitude. Bush had brought on the 9/11 attacks only so that he could have a pretext for “regime change” in Iraq. Once that objective in Iraq was achieved, the Republicans didn’t much care about what happened in Afghanistan (no oil there) — let the Taliban and Islamic Law come back in that country, and all those Afghan girls be kicked out of school again. What was really important now was keeping our military bases in Iraq.

Forget about the bloodshed and the futility of it all, the never-ending war and death. What’s important is that military contractors were making billions, and were kicking back millions of it into Republican campaign war chests (and into the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and other neoconservative Democrats) — for the Republicans’ real domestic war, against the (non-neocon) Democrats. Thus, “Frist said … the only way to win [in Afghanistan] was to ‘assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government.’” (So: goodbye, Hamid Karzai; you’ve served your purpose.)

The 9-11 Commission, which the President and his Republican Congress reluctantly set up to investigate the attacks, was, at its start, strongly inclined to shift blame away from the Bush Administration. And yet a Bush-incriminating story from this commission appeared in the New York Times as early as 23 November 2002, under the headline “9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined.”

Then, another, and even more incriminating, report appeared in the pro-Bush Chicago Tribune as early as 24 May 2003. Bryan A. Keogh wrote from Washington, under the headline, “9/11 Panel Told of Cover-Ups Before Attacks,” and subheaded, “Witnesses: U.S. suppressed warnings.” This story said: “The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were made possible by gaping holes in airline security, government cover-ups that prevented problems from being fixed and a failure to respond to a growing threat that terrorists might use airliners as weapons, witnesses told an independent commission this week.

‘The notion that these hijackings and terrorism were an unforeseen and unforeseeable risk is an airline and FAA public-relations management myth’ said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general at the Department of Transportation, in testimony Friday [May 23].”

Remarkably, “Despite often-conflicting testimony at the hearings, commission chairman Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey [Republican] governor, said the panel gained considerable insight into how the attacks occurred. ‘We’ve certainly learned about the failures of the system on 9/11,’ he said.” The Guardian reported on 10 July 2003 that Mr. Kean had said the day before, “I think the commission feels unanimously that it’s some intimidation” the Administration was applying against all government employees who wished to cooperate with their investigation. Even Republicans had to admit that President Bush, whose sole supposed argument for re-election was that he was good at protecting the American people from terrorism, had no real argument at all to continue in office, other than his possessing the largest campaign kitty in history.

That money shared common interests with the Saudi royal family. Catherine Arnie headlined “The Secret Saudi Flight on 9-13 Could Be the Key to the Bush-Saudi-Al Qaeda Connection” at www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=14289, arguing credibly that President Bush was on the side of the people who financed the 9-11 attacks, namely the Saudi royal family, and not on the side of the United States. This would also explain a report from Jeff Gerth in the New York Times on 15 May 2003, headlined, “C.I.A. Chief Won’t Name Officials Who Failed to Add Hijackers to Watch List.” It opened:

Seven months after telling Congress he would do so, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has yet to provide the names of agency officials responsible for one of the most glaring intelligence mistakes leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, according to Congressional and agency officials. Soon after the attacks, the mistake emerged, showing that the Central Intelligence Agency had waited 20 months before placing on a federal watch list two suspected terrorists who wound up as hijackers. Had the information about the two hijackers been promptly relayed to other agencies, the government might have been able to disrupt, limit or possibly even prevent the terrorist attacks, intelligence officials and Congressional investigators said.”

The report went on to note that, though Mr. Tenet would not name the C.I.A. officials who had failed, he did, in fact, promote two of them. So, he, himself, was responsible for this. The same day’s edition of the Times led with a story headlined, “Ambassador Says Saudis Didn’t Heed Security Request,” reporting that though the car bombing of the American compound in Riyadh that had occurred on 12 May 2003 had been anticipated and the U.S. had requested the Saudi royal family to increase its security protection of Americans in their country, this request had gone unheeded.

On 28 May, the Times headlined, “A Saudi Editor Who Offended Clerics Is Ousted From His post.” It reported that the Saudi royal family had fired an editor for his criticizing Muslim clerics who were preaching support for terrorism against the West. This same Saudi royal family are present and past business partners of the Bush family. 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers were Saudis. Immediately after 9-11, when all U.S. flights were grounded, the only non-military planes in the U.S. skies were the Bush Administration’s whisking out of the United States members of both the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. Rumors of this were confirmed by Bill Andrews writing in Scotland’s Edinburgh Evening News, on 3 September 2003, under the heading “Bin Laden Family’s US Exit ‘Approved’.” His report opened: “The United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden’s family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed. Former White House counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke said the Bush administration sanctioned the repatriation of about 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians, including relatives of the al-Qaeda chief.”

Apparently, the order came through the State Department; it would have to have originated from President Bush himself. On 11 April 2004 writing in the Boston Globe, Craig Unger said, “The White House told me that it is ‘absolutely confident’ the Sept. 13 flight from Tampa did not take place.”

Then, on 9 June 2004, Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg [Florida] Times, reported, “For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports. … But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA [Tampa International Airport] officials have confirmed that the flight did take place.” On 22 July 2004, Dana Milbank headlined in the Washington Post, “Plane Carried 13 Bin Ladens,” and reported: “At least 13 relatives of Osama bin Laden, accompanied by bodyguards and associates, were allowed to leave the United States on a chartered flight eight days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a passenger manifest released yesterday. … The passenger list was made public by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who obtained the manifest from officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport.”

Bush had been lying during almost three years. As Gerald Posner pointed out in an op-ed in the New York Times on 27 July 2004, the final report of the 9/11 Commission “fails to mine any of the widely available reporting and research that establishes” Saudi royal financing of the attacks. Furthermore, “The report fails … to note that when the flights occurred, air-space was open only to a limited number of commercial — not private — planes,” and these jets were all private.

The Times headlined on 17 October 2002, “Report Says Saudis Fail to Crack Down on Charities That Finance Terrorists,” and reported:

“Al Qaeda’s terror network derives most of its financing from charities and individuals in Saudi Arabia, but the kingdom has ‘turned a blind eye to this problem,’ according to a new report … by a committee sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. … The council’s report goes further by concluding for the first time that Saudi Arabia is the single largest source of terrorist financing. … In one of its starkest conclusions, the report said, ‘It is worth stating clearly and unambiguously, if only because official U.S. government spokespersons have not: for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for Al Qaeda, and for years Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem.”

On 10 September 2006, the Washington Post, in that blockbuster story mentioned earlier, “Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold’: U.S. Steps Up Efforts, But Good Intelligence On Ground Is Lacking,” reported that: “Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies. … In early November 2002, … a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader,” and Donald Rumsfeld got angry at this, because the NSA had given the intelligence to the CIA for this job. “‘Why aren’t you giving it to us?’ Rumsfeld wanted to know. [Michael] Hayden [the NSA chief] … told Rumsfeld that the [NSA’s] information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well.”

It’s not yet clear whether Rumsfeld was an insider on the 9/11 operation. How could he not have been, given the facts which Michael Kane brought together on 27 March 2004, at Global Research, under the headline “Elephants in the Barracks”? But the indications are even stronger that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hayden, Mueller, and Comey were. (Comey, as the Deputy Attorney General in 2005, endorsed a memorandum that approved the use of 13 enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding and sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, which methods were used by the CIA when interrogating suspects. However, he famously objected to further torture-methods. He knew that all of the proposed torture-methods were illegal, and he endorsed only the ones he considered necessary in order to be able to extract from detainees ‘evidence’ that Saddam was involved in 9/11.)

Part Seven

As was documented in 2003 at “Investigate and Impeach Bush for Failing to Act on 911 Warnings – And then Lying About It”, the Bush Administration prevented FBI terrorism experts from investigating Saudi Arabian ties to al-Qaeda before 9/11, leading to the resignation of FBI Deputy Director John O’Neill in disgust only two weeks before 9/11. O’Neill allegedly asserted that, “The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia.” Bush on 6 August 2001 personally ignored a warning in a top-secret briefing memo headlined, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” That briefing even stated that there was a report “in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft. … FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.”

This memo was clearly warning of a likelihood in the present time that Al Qaeda would finally do that; yet Bush did nothing to prevent it. There clearly was virtual certainty that crashing an airliner into key U.S. building(s) was now imminent. The Administration received these dire warnings; only the American public did not. Then, despite repeated warnings from CIA Director George Tenet not to do so, President Bush actually ordered counterterrorism agencies to “stand down” from the existing highest level of alert, which had pertained before August. Bush’s reaction to the warnings was to reduce the level of threat-preparedness; not to raise it. This reduction in alertness also ignored urgent warnings from an FBI agent in Phoenix, from Jordanian intelligence, from Israeli intelligence, from Russian intelligence, and from Moroccan intelligence.

Also, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that he warned “the Americans” on 31 August that “something would happen.” Yet, still, President Bush held to the newly reduced alertness status. Right before the planes struck, the U.S. stock market was flooded with “put” orders to dump the whole range of stocks that ended up being directly crumpled by 9/11. Only the U.S. public was being kept in the dark.

Subsequently, both Rice and Bush lied to Congress saying that all of these warnings were purely of a “historical” nature and concerned nothing at all after 1998. However, this intelligence was, in fact, all fresh — that’s the reason why Clarke, Tenet, and others, were so alarmed, frantic even — and it was now pouring in, and rising to a crescendo, during the summer of 2001, right up until 9/11. And yet the President’s response to it was to have the agencies “stand down.”

This was especially stunning after Bob Woodward’s 2006 State of Denial, which reported that on 10 July 2001, as the New York Times confirmed on 2 October 2006, “Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat.” The reporters said: “A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda. … The account … came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall” the meeting. Also on 2 October 2006, McClatchy newspapers reported, “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target. … One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a ‘10 on a scale of 1 to 10.’” And yet, “Many officials [including Rice] have claimed they never received or don’t remember” it. Of course, when faced with irrefutable facts, which contradict what one is saying and what one has repeated numerous times, the standard response of a liar is to claim “they never received or don’t remember.”

A lot of the intelligence that the President had received prior to 9/11 became public afterwards; and good summaries of it appeared at CBS and at the Britannica site. It’s not merely about events that ‘concerned nothing at all after 1998’, but entailed enormous detail about the trendline and the intentions of Al Qaeda during the buildup toward 9/11.

On 26 February 2013, CBS headlined “The 1993 World Trade Center bombers: Where are they now?”, and reported that “By 1997, seven men had been convicted for the attack: [Kuwaiti Ramzi] Yousef, [Jordanian Eyad] Ismoil, Egyptian Mahmud Abouhalima, Palestinian Mohammad Salameh, Kuwaiti Nidal A. Ayyad, Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin and Palestinian Ahmad Ajaj. Only six of them, however [all but Yassin], had been caught.” In addition, there was their inspirerer, “Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind sheik” who also was caught, and “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who also was caught, and who is not only Yousef’s uncle, but also later claimed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks which ultimately brought the Twin Towers down. Mohammed gave Yousef advice, tips, and cash in the run up to the 1993 bombing.”

Furthermore, the Britannica article on “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” indicates that “Although he later claimed responsibility for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Mohammed first came to international attention for his participation in the so-called Bojinka Plot, a deadly and wildly ambitious plan concocted by Mohammed’s nephew, Ramzi Yousef.” That article continues:

One proposed aspect of the Bojinka Plot involved hijacking an aircraft and using it as a missile to attack the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mohammed took this plan to Osama bin Laden in 1996, with the suggestion that it be used to attack symbolic targets in the United States. It is believed that bin Laden approved the plan at some point in late 1998 or early 1999, and Mohammed began his formal affiliation with al-Qaeda. Mohammed, along with bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, began assembling the hijacker teams. In early December 1999 Mohammed held an instructional meeting with three al-Qaeda operatives who would carry out the September 11 attacks.

After those attacks, Mohammed’s cachet within al-Qaeda skyrocketed. He was involved in other plots against the United States, including the attempted “shoe-bombing” of an American Airlines jet by Richard Reid that was foiled by passengers on December 22, 2001. Mohammed also claimed to have beheaded The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, a claim that was later verified by independent sources. In early 2003 Mohammed was planning an attack on London’s Heathrow Airport, but the plot was disrupted by the United States and its allies. Soon after, on March 1, 2003, he was captured by U.S. and Pakistani officers in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

During his interrogation by the CIA, Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding more than 180 times. After spending several years in classified CIA “black site” prisons in central Europe, he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention camp in 2006.

With all of that background, how could George W. Bush not have known, in advance, that something like 9/11 was about to occur? Only if he was an idiot. And, although he tried to play that role, not much intelligence is required in order to recognize that his “aw, shucks” act was only an act. He was no genius, but he also was no one’s fool. He was, in fact, quite cunning, and very effective at what he was trying to do.

Other important details of the Bush Administration’s failings to prevent the 9/11 attack were made public by a joint congressional report (not the official 9/11 report but the far less Presidentially controlled congressional one) on 18 September 2002. Here are some of the highlights: In May 2001, the CIA learned that seven of bin Laden’s operatives were on their way to the U.S. via Canada and Britain and “were disappearing while others were preparing for martyrdom,” because they “were planning attacks in the United States.” Furthermore, a July 2001 briefing for senior government officials had stated: “Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL [Usama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.” President Bush ignored this stunning warning: he didn’t place the government on high alert, much less make preparations to strike immediately against bin Laden and Al Qaeda, both in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, so as to avert the planned attack.

Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, admitted, “We know now that our inability to detect and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks was an intelligence failure of unprecedented magnitude. [This was a lie; the failure was in the White House, not the CIA.] … Some people who couldn’t seem to utter the words ‘intelligence failure’ are now convinced of it.”

Since he was a Republican Senator, covering up for the Republican President, his comment shifted to the CIA — to the messenger which had brought to the Administration the bad news or warning of the “imminent” attack — the blame that actually belonged instead directly in the Oval Office, which did nothing to prevent that attack. Shelby’s conclusion blaming the intelligence services was reiterated by the final 9/11 Commission report, because President Bush appointed its members, and the Commission agreed in advance not to find blame with the President himself.

The intelligence services therefore took the fall for the President, just as they did when Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that President Bush alleged to have been the reason for invading Iraq turned out not to exist. However, on 14 September 2004 the New York Times headlined “Review at C.I.A. and Justice Brings No 9/11 Punishment,” and reported that all of the studies and reviews of these intelligence failures “have not resulted in any disciplinary actions” against any of the intelligence personnel either. The reason for this is that the President was, in fact, warned by the CIA. So, Bush made sure that no one would be blamed.

The voters considered this to be acceptable; there was no accountability and Bush was even re-elected. To the contrary of accountability, President Bush was viewed by the voters as overwhelmingly superior to any Democrat for protecting the U.S. against terrorism. This proven failure was greatly preferred by the public, against all alternative candidates. In the 2004 Presidential contest, the results, like in 2000, were so close that a ‘win’ turned out to be stealable. What should have been a clear win for the Democratic Party’s candidate, turned out to be instead just another nail-biter.

Confirming this cover-up for the President was www.truthout.org/docs_03/062603B.shtml, “Interview: 27-Year CIA Veteran” by Ray McGovern, 26 June 2003, in which McGovern said, “My analysis is that George Bush had no option but to keep George Tenet on as Director, because George Tenet had warned Bush repeatedly, for months and months before September 11, that something very bad was about to happen. … Bush was well briefed before he went off to Texas to chop wood for a month.” Subsequently, of course, Tenet retired from the CIA.

Part Eight

On 16 June 2003, Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post reported, under the headline, “Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror.” A national security aide to the President, Rand Beers, who was a man that had replaced the neo-fascist Oliver North in the Reagan White House, and that had then served under the senior Bush, and then under Clinton, and now the junior Bush, resigned from George W. Bush’s Administration, because “They’re making us less secure, not more secure. … As an insider, I saw the things that weren’t being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out.”

He committed himself to ousting George W. Bush from office. His wife commented, “This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There’s almost a religious kind of certainty. There’s no curiosity about opposing points of view. It’s very scary. There’s kind of a ghost agenda.” Bush shared the public’s religious values, so Americans felt confident with him protecting them. They had faith.

By the time of 8 July 2003, even the pro-Bush Wall Street Journal was leading off with, “White House Hurdles Delay 9/11 Investigation,” and reported that, “so far the probers have made little progress. The commission is embroiled in tense negotiations over the level of access it will have to White House documents and the federal personnel it wants to interview.”

Consequently, “the commission may not be able to complete an exhaustive investigation before its deadline next May” (which it did not). Republican Senator John McCain was quoted as saying, “Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the Sept. 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories.” Long Island Newsday headlined a month later, 7 August, “U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11,” saying that it wasn’t only Saudi royal involvement in 9/11 that the Bush Administration was hiding, but that “a deeper, darker problem is our own government’s refusal to fill in the blanks about itself,” regarding what the President knew, and when he knew it.

In December 2003, one of the ten members of the 9/11 Commission quietly quitted, after months of very publicly decrying Bush’s uncooperativeness. Max Cleland said he refused to be part of the White House’s “cover-up.” www.newsofinterest.tv/911.html posted “A Summary of Issues About the 9/11 Attacks”, and on one of its pages, titled “Military, Intelligence, and Government Officials Questioning 9/11,” are quoted Louis Freeh, Curt Weldon, Mark Dayton, Max Cleland, and others, all saying that the work of the 9/11 Commission was so compromised by the President, that the only thing which was really clear is that he must have had lots to hide, because he was certainly hiding things he had no right to be hiding from that commission.

Furthermore, the entire Administration was uncooperative. On 2 August 2006, Dan Eggen headlined in the Washington Post, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon,” and even the very highly partisan Republican Chairman of the Commission, Thomas Kean, was quoted, “We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us. … It was just so far from the truth.”

However, Louis Freeh was himself on the inside as a strong supporter of the Saudi royal family, the al-Sauds, who own that country. And Robert Mueller and James Comey were his key acolytes who assisted him to transfer the blame for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing away from Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda and instead onto Iran, which was completely innocent of the charge but became officially blamed for it, which started the U.S. Deep State’s standard accusation against Iran, that it (and not the Saud family) is ‘the top state sponsor of terrorism’ — a blatant and evil lie.

On 20 June 2018, the Washington Examiner bannered “OPINION Robert Mueller was the biggest obstacle for Sept. 11 families who wanted to sue Saudi Arabia” and opened: “A lawyer representing the families of 9/11 victims says Robert Mueller engaged in a cover-up of evidence that the Saudi government aided the attackers.”

That’s the “opinion” which had been expressed to the newspaper’s reporter, Ryan Gidursky. He wrote: “New York-based lawyer Jim Kreindler, representing the families of the Sept. 11 victims, said in an interview with me that Mueller and his successor, James Comey, engaged in a systematic cover-up of evidence that the Saudi government aided the terrorists who committed the Sept. 11 attacks.”

That report went on to say that:

Several people formerly associated with the investigation stated that Saudi Arabia was financially involved with the Sept. 11 attacks, including John Lehman, a Republican member of the 9/11 Commission, and former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time. Graham’s testimony during an appearance on “60 Minutes” was especially damning: “the hijackers received active support and guidance from rich Saudis, Saudi charities, and top members of the Saudi government.”

Stephen K. Moore, the retired FBI agent who led the Sept. 11 probe in Los Angeles, also confirmed in an affidavit back in December 2017 that the Saudis played a significant role.

Despite mounting evidence and testimony from key players in the investigation as well as former politicians, Kreindler told me that he ran into significant roadblocks from the FBI and former directors Mueller and Comey.

“We’ve really been stymied over the last 17 years from getting information from the FBI, State Department, and Department of Defense,” Kreindler said in an interview. “From day one, instead of focusing on the evidence, there was an effort to not look at the Saudis and [instead to] get their help in launching the Iraq War.”

Kreindler said that retired FBI agents had told him that they also believe Mueller lied in 2002 before the joint congressional inquiry that he was unaware of Saudi government involvement.

On 11 August 2017, The Hill headlined “Former Mueller deputy on Trump: ‘Government is going to kill this guy’”, and Joe Concha reported that his source

said Trump’s defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin has compelled federal employees “at Langley, Foggy Bottom, CIA and State” to try to take Trump down.

“Let me give you one bottom line as a former government official. Government is going to kill this guy,” Mudd, a staunch critic of Trump, said on “The Lead.”

“He defends Vladimir Putin. There are State Department and CIA officers coming home, and at Langley and Foggy Bottom, CIA and State, they’re saying, ‘This is how you defend us?’”

Those Government officials were outraged against the President. Though they worked under his Administration, they worked for the Deep State, against him — their nominal boss. Trump’s constant defenses of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud are acceptable to those retinues of America’s billionaires, but for Trump to say anything favorable regarding Putin is totally unacceptable to them. It’s like “Russia, enemy; Saudi Arabia, friend.” That’s the Deep State’s position. And any nation that is at all favorable toward Russia — such as Saddam’s Iraq, Qaddafi’s Libya, Assad’s Syria, and Khomeini’s Iran — is also no “ally” but instead only a target for the weaponry that’s manufactured by America’s top 100 ‘defense’ contractors. And that will mean more sales-volume for those firms.

Mueller protects the Sauds, who buy more U.S.-made weaponry than any other country except the U.S. Government itself. And he’s the ideal person to work against Russia. The billionaires who control Lockheed Martin (and other such companies) want their biggest foreign buyer protected, and want the main target of the weapons they sell to continue to be their target, because that nation is the target of their costliest weapons, the nuclear forces; and those billionaires define which nations the U.S. Government calls ‘allies’ (meaning markets for those manufacturers). So, ‘Saudi Arabia is an ally of America’.

Iran, Russia, and China don’t buy their products at all, but are instead their biggest and ultimate targets to invade and conquer, or else to overthrow via a coup and take over as the ultimate prizes to add to the U.S. empire; so, those countries are ‘America’s enemies’. This has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the American public, and everything to do with boosting the profits to the owners of those companies. Doing that is the bipartisan goal of today’s U.S. Government.

And, of course, as was pointed out and documented earlier in this series, James Comey became one of the three highest-paid executives at America’s largest weapons-manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, and then became General Counsel and Member of the Executive Committee at one of the three largest Hedge funds, which happened to be the second-biggest stockholder in Lockheed Martin.

And, as was also documented at the start of this series, Louis Freeh retired to become the chief personal attorney representing the Saud family in the United States — and that family are Lockheed Martin’s second-largest customer.

On Tuesday, 22 January 2019, at the time of the longest stalemate and shut-down of the U.S. Government ever, Reuters headlined “House approves bill warning against U.S. NATO pullout” and reported that:

In a warning to President Donald Trump not to try to withdraw the United States from the NATO military alliance, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved legislation aimed at preventing such a move.

The Democratic-led House approved the measure by a bipartisan 357-22 vote, with the only “no” votes coming from Republicans. It now goes to the Republican-majority Senate, where its future is unclear, although a similar measure has been introduced there.

At a news conference before the vote, Democratic lawmakers said they were alarmed by reports of the Republican president’s low regard for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a 70-year-old military alliance that joins the United States and Canada with allies in Europe.

The New York Times said last week that several times over the course of 2018, Trump privately told his advisers he wanted to withdraw from NATO.

NATO, of course, is the anti-Russia military alliance that had been started after World War II, against the communist Soviet Union, which nation and ideology ended in 1991 while that sales-organization for American-made weaponry against it continued. Though the Congress was extremely split on everything else, they were virtually 100% united against the U.S. President who is the first ever that wants to terminate this sales-promotion organization for U.S. weapons-firms.

The U.S. Deep State is even more united on that against Russia than on its support for the Saud family. And Robert Mueller has been a key person at both ends of that Deep State agenda: against Russia, and for the Sauds.

Now, if you really want to get to know Robert Mueller, here’s the low-down on him: https://caucus99percent.com/content/what-mueller-wont-find

He (like Obama) was born into the retinues of the Deep State, and he (like Obama) throughout his life has continued loyally to serve the Deep State — America’s billionaires and a few centi-millionaires, the individuals who own and control America’s international corporations. That’e the Deep State, and people such as Mueller and Comey and Freeh are important servants to it.

And that’s the reality about today’s international Deep State. It controls America’s foreign policies. It controls the empire.

The way the Deep State shows itself in domestic national (as opposed to international) U.S. policies is reported with remarkable honesty and effectiveness in Michael Moore’s 2018 documentary film, Fahrenheit 11/9 (which is not to be confused with his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11), the best film he has yet made.

An excellent example of how the Deep State misrepresents and criticizes that masterful documentary film was the review published in Britain’s Guardian, which was headlined “Fahrenheit 11/9 review: Michael Moore v Donald Trump = stalemate”.

That review was skillfully written so as to discourage the public from seeing this film and learning the reality, both about today’s America and about the film itself. The Guardian nowadays represents the interests of liberal billionaires who backed the Clintons, Obama, and Tony Blair, none of whom come across in this film as being anything other than political prostitutes of those billionaires. But the documentary is just as devastating about the the politicians representing the opposing side of the aristocracy, politicians such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump. It’s hardly the sort of movie that hero-worshippers on either side of today’s U.S. politics would want to see. But it’s a film that everyone around the world ought to see, because it is true, deeply true, about the aristocracy, and about the way they deal with the public, as objects to be used and callously disposed of (as is documented in that film).

And that side, the domestic side, is the side of the U.S. aristocracy’s operation Robert Mueller doesn’t much get involved with. He specializes mostly in carrying out the U.S. aristocracy’s international dirty-works. That’s what he’s mainly there for. This is why Mueller is going after Trump, because Trump isn’t sufficiently against Russia and sufficiently supportive of NATO.

Maybe Trump had thought that his rabid hostility toward Iran, and his deregulation of America’s companies, and his lowering of their taxes, would be enough to keep those hyenas away. But, clearly, that’s not the case. They want lots more from a U.S. president than Trump is delivering. And Mueller was the man they had hired to lead the pack to replace him with Mike Pence. But all that they ended up with was a shoddily ‘documented’ case that ‘Russia interfered in the 2016 election’. At least they increased American fools’ fear of ‘those scheming Russians’, who, unquestionably, interfere in foreign domestic politics far less than the U.S. Government itself does. Russia is the chief punching-bag for America’s billionaires. They got what they want: an ‘indictment’ of Russia.

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Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 3, 2019 12:41 AM

I believe that at present moment and with all the overwhelming evidence of the crimes against humanity commited by US and allies alike, arguing on who did what and how was it done is not only fruitless but counterproductive. It distracts attention from the fact that immediate change is needed (worldwide and personally) while concentrating on quasi-novelesque narratives that only serves division.
It weakens the personal resolution for change so needed now that mankind is confronting a decisive turnig point that will decide if we grow and become real humans or remain as the voracious, blind animals we have been until now.

systemicfraud
systemicfraud
Apr 2, 2019 6:06 PM

Mueller’s most glaring failure in regards to 9/11 had to do with the FBI’s investigation being named
PENTTBOM (for PENtagon Twin Towers BOMbing)–did the FBI conduct tests for explosives at WTC or at the Pentagon? If not, why not–and who made that decision?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTTBOM

As for Eric Zeusse (who wrote this article)–last March he wrote an article titled “9/11: Israel Didn’t Do It; The Plan Was Co-Led by U.S. & Saud Governments”–so we know exactly where he stands. Zeusse wrote that article right after the annual AIPAC convention in Wash, DC–I assume he wrote this article to help COVER UP for Israel.

https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/03/9-11-israel-didnt-do-it-the-plan-was-co-led-by-u-s-saud-governments.html

The Establishment is LOSING their battle in covering UP Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 plot–which is why AIPAC and the ADL are pressuring states and Congress to pass laws forbidding criticism of Israel. Reddit has “quarantined” the 911Truth subreddit (cannot even view the subbreddit unless you log in and then click to proceed after their Warning)–and many videos have disappeared over the years on youtube (sometimes they are allowed back up, but often lose their number of views). I’ve also seen a youtube channel “Johnny Gat”–he had made an excellent 60 minute video which was comprised of news clips critical of Israel (not one word of editorial by the user)–VANISH…can’t find it anywhere now–even on Johnny Gat’s own website.

The Lawyers’ Committee for 911 Inquiry along with Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth have worked together to put together two legal motions. One is to the US Attorney (Southern District-NYC) which asks the DA to present their evidence to a grand jury (motion was accepted–currently waiting on results). The second was to FOIA FBI files related to 9/11. As usual, the sycophants of the MSM (and even the alternative, independent media) have not paid any attention to these issues. Apparently, it is OK to watch 1000 episodes of CSI (or any other crime drama)–but if you ask real questions about the largest crime of the 21st Century on American soil–all you’ll hear are crickets from the MSM.

https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/

https://www.ae911truth.org/fbi

Mucho
Mucho
Apr 2, 2019 12:31 PM

Your refusal to expose the Israeli ZIonist connections to 9/11 do nothing but expose you as the Zionist stooge you so clearly are. It also makes a mockery of what this website is supposed to be. Now when I look at off-Guardian, all I see is controlled opposition, probably set up by the security services to keep checks on who and what is being said that they don’t like. GO TO HELL!

Mucho
Mucho
Apr 2, 2019 3:47 PM
Reply to  Mucho

Sorry but this subject, 9/11, the very thing which has been used to enslave us to the security services and the reason why the US and UK have murdered millions of innocent people for Israel, is not being covered properly by ANY media outlets, including this website. That is a fact and one which drives me crazy. Only by continuing this misrepresentation and omission of the facts do the evil pieces of dirt who have us all in the palm of their hand proceed unchecked and get away with the greatest crime ever committed. These people are far right wing lunatics with nuclear weapons at their disposal. Sad that so many are quite happy to turn the other way and let them get away with it. Only (often willful) ignorance enables that, and Eric Zeusse is promoting such ignorance on a site which purports to be about real news. It’s not, it’s just another load of steaming turd, being shovelled into the mainstream consciousness by people like Eric, who given his depth of knowledge of the subject, knows only too well that Israel was behind these attacks

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Apr 2, 2019 12:19 PM

The 9/11 Commission is a complete and utter fabrication including the Family Steering Committee, Bob McIlvaine, the Jersey Widows and all the rest of it and the criticism of it is a fabrication too. 9/11 is a complete lie from top to bottom with the only truth being the very obvious physical truth of the destruction of and to buildings. That is the only truth.

The best-kept secret of 9/11 and the key to keeping the truth of inside conspiracy hidden is the lie of death and injury. There was none. And it’s oh-so-easy to prove.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/3000-dead-and-6000-injured-a-lie.html

9/11 is a staged event (including death and injury) on a long continuum that started at least as far back as Pearl Harbour with the most recent as-we-speak event being Christchurch and so very, very many in between.

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Apr 2, 2019 10:23 AM

Eric, your Chapter Two reads rather more like a defence of the official Western 11/9 cospithirry than a further take-down of Mueller. You’re never going to break through into a true understanding of who did 11/9, and why, until your – very evident – excellent studiousness takes you into the realm of the actual physical facts about what happened on that day – as copiously documented by, for example, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Christopher Bollyn, to name just two of the many highly credible truth-seeking outfits currently offering their large accumulation of well-researched, and often peer-reviewed low-down about what really happened. (If only Russiagate had been as well-investigated…!)

Sure, the al-Saud gang were funding OBL/al Qa’eda (until OBL died, most probably in late ’01/early ’02, also well documented – for those who want to see), because of course the US deep state operatives need some – alleged – global bogeyman to keep their rackets running well. ‘Islamic terrorism’ was invented – and **created** – by them, for that purpose, after the USSR suddenly stopped being a suitable candidate, post 1991. The al-Sauds, dependent creatures of the US deep state as they are, did as they were told and operated as a handy cut-out between the deep state operators and their ‘Islamic terrorist’ proteges, with full encouragement and cooperation of the deep state operatives; and arse-covering for the al-Saud gang too, naturally, just as you document so convincingly here. But now that al Qa’eda is about past its sell-by date, and Russia has resurged spectacularly, they, along with the Chinese, are being refurbished as the new replacement bogies. Hence, amongst other things, the Russiagate/devilPutin rubbish.

I admire your dissident tenacity, and your impressive overview of so much key documentation. But really, Eric, you’re not going to get much nearer to the heart of what’s going on in US government/corporate global strategy until you get your head right about 11/9: that it was a false-flag operation, cooked up over a long period by criminals within the ruling ‘elite’ in the ziP (the zioentity-in-Palestine). See Bollyn’s long-sustained and impressive investigative work on this. This appalling mass-murdering scam (how like the ziPpers! Think of their laughing mass turkey-shoots of innocents in Gaza recently; or the ‘dancing Israelis’ in New Jersey on the morning of 11/9, celebrating as thousands of US citizens died in the controlled demolitions at WTC) – this vile scam was taken up willingly by cooperative criminals within the US ruling ‘elite’, some of whom you actually finger lightly and quite correctly here, Eric. Dubbya was part of this clique, pretty obviously. But only as a peripheral and well-disciplined mascot and useful parrot, not as a central, fully in-the-know player. He lacks the stature for that. His desperate expression whilst sitting helplessly – like an utter, terrified fool – in front of a class of primary-school children far away in Florida, whilst the main 11/9 actions were underway up north (under Cheney’s supervision in the PEOC and Rumsfeld’s in the Pentagon) makes that abundantly clear. Dubbya was a useful-idiot fall-guy and a potential patsy, at most. A more fruitful search for prime suspects within the US ‘elites’ can be done by concentrating on the zionists amongst them, particularly those who hold dual US-ziP citizenship – together with the obligatory rabid pro-zionist stances, naturally. But quite a few US ‘elite’ goys, such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, were involved too. Such operators always strike me as luke-warm expediency-zionists at best. But they saw the potential in the 11/9 scam for furthering their own global-dominance megalomania. Hence their willing participation.

I daresay Mueller understands most if not all of this. He’s clearly an insider, a crooked haut-bourgeois servitor of the US ‘elite’; a standard-issue deep-state racketeer par excellence. You document that reality convincingly, Eric.

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 2, 2019 12:18 PM

Great insight Eric.

I have become quite interested in 9/11 and working back from one event from Syria backwards. Once I’m satisfied of one false flag, act of treason I work back to the next. I think on 9/11 Rhisiart Gwilym makes some very good points

I have read alot of debate about the role of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the alleged terrorists, Bin Ladin, the planes, the third tower and engineers views, casualties, Pentagon impact, all the stuff which went on. What is becoming evident to me is that there has been a massive cover up and complicity with events by many within the US elites. I think I read some diplomat (was it an Italian?) who said the official version was false and this is an open secret in diplomatic circles throughout the world.

But I must admit to once reading everything, it is very difficult to join things up to develop an understanding to precisely what went on. It’s one of those events you can pick holes and inconsistencies in nearly everything but leaves you at a loss as to who actually did it, who was actively directing it, who was complicit, who turned a blind eye etc.

I’m sure I will continue to read some interesting facts and viewpoints about this on here and get more up to speed. Thanks again.

Mucho
Mucho
Apr 2, 2019 12:36 PM
Reply to  Loverat

Hi Loverat, glad to hear you are so interested in 9/11, it remains the most important subject we can look at to this day. I would like to point you towards a few documentaries which should answer some of your questions, and make it all a lot clearer for you. These are some of the best you will find anywhere on the subject.
9/11 and War By Deception by Ryan Dawson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK6VLFdWJ4I
The War On Terror Among Truth Seekers by Chris Bollyn – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuOsiMVlMBw&t=226s

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Apr 2, 2019 10:02 AM

“The Bushes shared an aristocratic outlook with their friends and business partners the Saudi royals.”

Correction: “The Bushes & Blair .. .”

& they still do !

Great reporting, Eric 🙂

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Apr 2, 2019 11:13 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Correction: EPIC reporting Eric,

luvin’ it 🙂

So, it seems to me that, is Trump not manipulating, playing Mueller & exposing his dubious conspiratorial natural character as ‘Liar’ and cover up mercenary for the ‘New Pearl Harbour’ brigade and the destruction of the targeted WTC 7 ! ?

Things can only get better, if we don’t lose sight of the Golan & Genie Energy & international deep state inc. Murdoch’s complicity in the cover up on the destruction of 9/11 and cover up of the controlled explosions & demolition of WTC 7, moreover ‘The Target’ for ‘The Lobby’ engaged in . . . phoney Wars on Terror, which ‘they’ funded with sovereign militaries &

W E L T A N S C H A U U N G S K R I E G >>>

to mask Israeli theft of resources and distract from APARTHEID !

FFS, even Business insider called the Genie Drilling Licenses “the Dodgiest in the history of oil & gas !”

Time to get the hell outta’ DODGE City, see ?

This is why we need to send all refugees of war in the Middle East, found on ships in the Med. directly under U.N. protection, to the Golan Heights of Avarice & Arrogance. The Lebanon cannot provide water enough for itself, with well over 20% population increase, the Golan has the Water & the U.N. are already present to assist in the redistribution of resources, readily available and legally SYRIAN !
Therefore, logic dictates,

ALL REFUGEES & MIGRANTS,

“… UNTIL we know what the hell is going on ! ” >>> less transport costs & less risk of terror spreading.
How could Trump disagree, having uttered precisely those words & that politic, invert the rhetoric as solution & policy and get Google to donate FREE Wi-Fi on the Golan, so that the CIA can monitor everybody with programmable Anti-Sem-Pandem Detectors, measured & calibrated in Corbyn’s approval rating, were he to open his distracted mind & mouth . . . 🙂

Would the real Jeremy Corbyn please stand up ?
Lol, No to the Iraq War & Phoney War on Terror, as led by Murdoch, the Genie of Golan ! ?

JEREMY: LEVESON 2 i’m fed up with repeating myself Corbyn, attack now or never sunshine >>>
Murdoch hates Corbyn.

Take your bundle Jeremy, you doozy Englishman, “UNTIL we know what the hell is going on ! ? ”

Corbyn can easily take a cue from Trump & Win the hearts and minds of the people, without Murdoch, in this present political climate, where all we see are poisoned RATS !

Phew, i feel better now, 🙂 thinking Bowie’s Knives of the long Knights,

Future Legend / Diamond Dogs

And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building
High on Poacher’s Hill
And red mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now . . .

the year of the Diamond Dogs

This ain’t rock n’ roll, this is Genocide !

in Gaza Today !

So, will the Real Slim Shady & Jeremy Corbyn, please stand up, please stand up and nail Tony BLiar’s ass to the wall, with the BUSHES, for all eternity, whilst yer’ at it ? ? ?

Wilmers31
Wilmers31
Apr 2, 2019 6:40 AM

Security is a euphemism for war preparation and we need to make every effort to thwart their war plans. Violence, of which war is a variation, is bad karma.

It does not look that good at the moment with billions spent on weaponry and space while more and more people become homeless – but there are positive signs. The chokehold of bringing everything under a US umbrella (TTIP/EU/NATO/TPP) did not succeed. Turkey may be able to wriggle out of NATO after not getting F-35s, Ukraine is not attractive without Sevastopol, Venezuela will not obey; the 3 central American countries who are no longer funded by the US will learn to grow up without Daddy. Britain will be very weak after Brexit. Some do not want to buy F-35s. It’s close to over. Mueller can go back to retirement.