Mother of three in court after five-year disappearance ends in Afghanistan amid conflicting claims
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Saeed Shah in Islamabad
The Guardian
August 6 2008
For five years, no one would say for certain whether Aafia Siddiqui, a mother of three with a PhD from an elite American university, was alive or dead. Her family did not know and authorities in Pakistan and the US were not saying.
Yesterday, as Siddiqui was produced before a magistrate in New York to face charges of attacking US army officers in Afghanistan last month, that central mystery was resolved.
The devout Pakistani-American Muslim, once named by the US as a top al-Qaida operative, is indeed alive and now in US custody. But almost nothing can be said for certain about her whereabouts since March 2003, when she was last seen getting into a taxi with her three children in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi.
Some campaigners believe Siddiqui was snatched by Pakistani intelligence agents, passed to the Americans, and held in solitary confinement at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan. There she acquired mythical status - prisoner 650 - whose wails haunted other inmates.
But the US, which has made multiple allegations against Siddiqui over the years depicting her as a courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaida, has denied holding her, raising the question: where has she been for five years?
Siddiqui's emergence three weeks ago in Afghanistan is riddled with confusion. The official complaint against Siddiqui says she was picked up outside the governor's compound in the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni on July 17 by police who became suspicious of her inability to speak either of Afghanistan's main languages, Pashtu or Darri. They searched her handbag, discovering documents detailing how to make dirty bombs and biological weapons and descriptions of New York landmarks, as well as sealed glass jars of "numerous chemical substances".
A day later, the complaint says, two US army officers and two FBI agents arrived in Ghazni with their interpreters for a meeting - not realising that Siddiqui was standing behind a yellow curtain in the same room.
Siddiqui is then alleged to have jumped out from behind the curtain and snatched up the assault rifle one of the officers had placed on the floor by his feet, pointing it at the Americans, and screaming threats in English. She is said to have fired at least two shots by the time an interpreter managed to wrestle the gun away from her.
According to the complaint, one officer heard her yell "Allahu Akbar" as she opened fire. One interpreter claimed she shouted: "Get the fuck out of here."
She was shot and hit at least once in the torso but, according to the complaint, continued to hit and kick the officers before losing consciousness.
Siddiqui's lawyer, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, told CNN the scenario was utterly implausible. "This is a very intelligent woman. What is she doing outside of the governor's residence?" Sharp said.
"The woman is a PhD. Is a woman like this really that stupid? There is an incongruity, and I have trouble accepting the government's claims."
Yesterday, Afghan police in Ghazni offered another competing version of her detention, telling Reuters that the US troops had demanded she be handed over. When Afghan police refused, they were disarmed. The Americans shot at Siddiqui, thinking she was a suicide bomber. A teenage boy who was with Siddiqui remained in Afghan police custody.
Before yesterday's court appearance in New York, Siddiqui was last seen heading for Karachi's railway station, where, along with her three children, then aged seven, five and six months old, she planned to catch a train to visit an uncle in Islamabad.
Her life before that was exemplary. She had studied in America, earning a degree from MIT before moving on to a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University. She was unhappily married, to a Pakistani.
Acquaintances over her years in Boston have described her commitment to Islam. She returned to Pakistan in 2002, where her marriage broke up and she was living with her family at the time of her disappearance. Siddiqui's relatives believe that she was abducted by Pakistani intelligence agents and later transferred to US custody. She first appeared on the radar of US intelligence services in 2001 because of a series of donations to a now-banned Islamist charity that also had Saudi connections. But she became of greater interest after the capture of the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, in March 2003, who named her under interrogation. The US argues that Muhammed would not have mentioned her unless she was connected to al-Qaida.
The BBC yesterday reported on its website that Siddiqui had married a nephew of Muhammed's called Ali Abd'al Aziz Ali following her divorce. Siddiqui's family denies the connection, but the BBC said it had confirmation from security sources and Muhammed's family.
US and Pakistani officials initially admitted that she was indeed in detention, and some reports said she was being held by the Americans outside Kabul.
But by 2004 John Ashcroft, then US attorney general, said she was among seven high-level al-Qaida suspects still at large.
In the meantime, concern for her grew after accounts emerged from prisoners at Bagram of a solitary woman inmate. Anger at her disappearance was further stoked last month when Yvonne Ridley, a British Muslim journalist, flew to Pakistan and held a press conference claiming that Siddiqui was Prisoner 650 at Bagram.
Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician, hosted the event, where Ridley, who also now does human rights work, said: "I call her the 'grey lady' because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her."
A group of Arab prisoners who escaped from Bagram in 2005 said they saw a woman being taken to the toilets at the base. After breaking out, Abu Yahya al-Libi told an Arabic news channel that there was a woman from Pakistan at Bagram who was referred to simply as prisoner 650, held in solitary confinement.
The American account of her capture was dismissed yesterday. "This is one of the greatest lies of the 21st century ... " said IA Rehman, director general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent organisation.
Siddiqui's sister, Fauzia, said she had been raped and tortured. "Her rape and torture is a crime beyond anything she was accused of," she said. "This is the real crime of terror here." She pleaded for the child who was with her sister when she was captured, according to the American authorities, to be immediately handed over to the family. It is unclear what has happened to the other two children.
"She has had no access to any lawyer ... presume her to be innocent before proven guilty, please. How can this punishment be fit for any crime?" said Fauzia Siddiqui.
Asim Qureshi, a London-based investigator for Cage Prisoners, a campaign group, said the US had in the past denied holding other prisoners, such as Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a Spaniard of Syrian descent also captured in Pakistan.
"They just release the information when it suits them ... everything we know about Bagram means that we know she [Siddiqui] would have suffered abuse."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/06/pakistan.afghanistan
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
COINTELPRO 2.0: Mukasey Loosens Guidelines on Domestic Spying
" ... The directive uses 9/11 as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens ... Under the new regulatory regime proposed by Mukasey, state and local police would be given free rein to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch criminal intelligence investigations based on the 'suspicion' ... Outsourced contractors from communications, defense and security corporations such as AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing ... Science Applications International Corporation [and] many more, have collaborated with Bush regime war criminals in fashioning a hypermodern, high-tech police state. ... "by Tom Burghardt
August 21, 2008
The waning months of the Bush administration can be characterized by an avalanche of changes to long-standing rules governing domestic intelligence operations.
The revisions proposed by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other top administration officials represent the greatest expansion of executive power since the Watergate era and should been viewed as an imminent threat to already-diminished civil liberties protections in the United States.
The slippery slope towards open police-state methods of governance may have begun with the 2001 passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, but recent events signal that a qualitative acceleration of repressive measures are currently underway. These changes are slated to go into effect with the new fiscal year beginning October 1, and are subject neither to congressional oversight nor judicial review.
Bush allies in Congress kicked off the summer with the shameful passage by the House and Senate of the FISA Amendments Act, an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that gutted Fourth Amendment protections. With broad consensus by both capitalist political parties, the FISA Act eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of state surveillance while granting virtual immunity to law-breaking telecoms.
Despite posturing by leading Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, the FISA legislation legalized the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and set the stage for further assaults on the right to privacy and dissent.
Further attacks were not long in coming.
In the last month alone, mainstream media have reported that the FBI illegally obtained the phone records of overseas journalists allegedly as part of a 2004 “terrorism investigation.”
Other reports documented how the Department of Homeland Security asserts the right to seize a traveler’s laptop and other electronic devices for an unspecified period of time and without probable cause. Still other reports revealed that the administration has expanded the power of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to issue “overarching policies and procedures” and to coordinate “priorities” with foreign intelligence services that target American citizens and legal residents.
And on Wednesday, The Washington Post exposed how the federal government has used “its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.” Ellen Nakashima writes,
The disclosure of the database is among a series of notices, officials say, to make DHS’s data gathering more transparent. Critics say the moves exemplify efforts by the Bush administration in its final months to cement an unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security and intelligence purposes. (”Citizens’ U.S. Border Crossings Tracked,” The Washington Post, August 20, 2008)
The Post also revealed that the information will be linked to a new database, the Non-Federal Entity Data System, “which is being set up to hold personal information about all drivers in a state’s database.” Posted at the Government Printing Office’s website, the notice states that the information may even be shared with federal contractors or consultants “to accomplish an agency function related to this system of records.”
But perhaps the most controversial move towards increasing the federal government’s surveillance powers were unveiled by the Justice Department in late July. According to the Washington Post, “a new domestic spying measure… would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.”
New rules for police intelligence-gathering would apply to any of the 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive some $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. These proposed changes, as with other administration measures, were quietly published July 31 in the Federal Register.
The McClatchy Washington Bureau reported August 13 that Mukasey confirmed plans to “loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations,” under cover of improving the Bureau’s “ability to detect terrorists.” Marisa Taylor wrote,
Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because “they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States.” However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so.
Mukasey said the new rules “remove unnecessary barriers” to cooperation between law enforcement agencies and “eliminate the artificial distinctions” in the way agents conduct surveillance in criminal and national security investigations. (”FBI to Get Freer Rein to Look for Terrorism Suspects,” McClatchy Washington Bureau, August 13, 2008)
While the Justice Department’s draft proposals have been selectively leaked to the media, and DoJ is expected to release its final version of the changes within a few weeks, even then the bulk of these modifications will remain classified on grounds of “national security.”
Under the new regulatory regime proposed by Mukasey, state and local police would be given free rein to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch criminal intelligence investigations based on the “suspicion” that a target is “engaged in terrorism.” The results of such investigations could be shared “with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases,” according to Post reporters Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson.
With probable cause tossed overboard, domestic intelligence as envisaged by the Bush Justice Department is little more than a fishing expedition intended to cast a wide driftnet over Americans’ constitutional rights, reducing guarantees of free speech and assembly to banal pieties mouthed by state propagandists.
These changes are intended to lock-in Bush regime surveillance programs such as warrantless internet and phone wiretapping, data mining, the scattershot issuance of top secret National Security Letters to seize financial and other personal records, as well as expanding a security index of individuals deemed “terrorist threats” by the corporatist state.
Simultaneous with the release of new DoJ domestic spying guidelines, the Bush administration’s “modernization” of Reagan-era Executive Order 12333, as the Washington Post delicately puts it, also calls for intensified sharing of intelligence information with local law enforcement agencies.
In addition to consolidating power within the ODNI, E.O. 12333 revisions direct the CIA “and other spy agencies,” in a clear violation of the Agency’s charter, to “provide specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel” to state and local authorities.
The latest moves to expand executive power follow close on the heels of other orders and rule changes issued by the Bush regime. As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky reported in June, the Orwellian National Security Presidential Directive 59/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24 (NSPD 59/HSPD 24), entitled “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security,” is directed against U.S. citizens. Chossudovsky wrote,
NSPD 59 goes far beyond the issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of “associated biographic” information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be “accomplished within the law.”
The directive uses 9/11 as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land.
It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens. (”Big Brother” Presidential Directive: “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security,” Global Research, June 11, 2008)
Indeed, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 creates the framework for expanding the definition of who is a “terrorist” to include other categories of individuals “who may pose a threat to national security.”
In addition to al Qaeda and other far-right Islamist terror groups, many of whom have served as a cat’s paw for Western intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the Balkans, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 has identified two new categories of individuals as potential threats: “Radical groups” and “disgruntled employees.”
In other words, domestic anarchist and socialist organizations as well as labor unions acting on behalf of their members’ rights, now officially fall under the panoptic lens of federal intelligence agencies and the private security contractors who staff the 16 separate agencies that comprise the U.S. “intelligence community.”
These moves represent nothing less than an attempt by the Bush administration to return to the days of COINTELPRO when the Bureau, acting in concert with state and local police “red squads” targeted the left for destruction.
“After 9/11, the gloves come off”
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. national security state has ramped-up its repressive machinery, targeting millions of Americans through broad surveillance programs across a multitude of state and private intelligence agencies.
While the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be the federal “tip of the spear” of current intelligence operations, they certainly are not alone when it comes to domestic spying.
Outsourced contractors from communications, defense and security corporations such as AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Verizon Communications, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), L-3 Communications, CACI International and many more, have collaborated with Bush regime war criminals in fashioning a hypermodern, high-tech police state.
That these corporations have staked-out “homeland security” as a niche market to expand their operations has been explored by Antifascist Calling in numerous articles. As I have previously reported, it is estimated that some 70% of the personnel employed by U.S. intelligence agencies are now private contractors holding top secret and above security clearances.
Unaccountable actors virtually beyond congressional scrutiny, outsourced intelligence agents first and foremost are employees answerable to corporate managers and boards of directors, not the American people or their representatives. Chiefly concerned with inflating profit margins by overselling the “terrorist threat,” the incestuous relationships amongst corporate grifters and a diminished “public sector” demonstrate the precarious state of democratic norms and institutions in the U.S.
New rules governing FBI counterintelligence investigations will allow the Bureau to run informants for the purpose of infiltrating organizations deemed “subversive” by federal snoops. Many of the worst abuses under COINTELPRO, the CIA’s Operation CHAOS and the U.S. Army’s deployment of Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) for illegal domestic operations during the 1960s, employed neofascists as infiltrators and as nascent death squads.
While the Bureau may have eschewed close collaboration with fascist gangs, will sophisticated, high-tech private security corporations now play a similar role in Bureau counterintelligence and domestic security operations?
If history is any judge, the answer inevitably will be “yes.”
Currently equipping the “intelligence community” with electronic specialists, network managers, software designers and analysts, will defense and security corporations bulk-up the Bureau and related agencies with “plausibly deniable” ex-military and intelligence assets for targeted infiltration and “disruption” of domestic antiwar and anticapitalist groups?
It can’t happen here? Why its happening already! As investigative journalist James Ridgeway revealed in April, a private security firm,
organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records–donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies. (”Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups,” Mother Jones, April 11, 2008)
The firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i) provided a range of services for corporate clients. According to Ridgeway, the private snoops engaged in “intelligence collection” for Allied Waste; conducted background checks and “performed due diligence” for the Carlyle Group; handled “crisis management” for the Gallo wine company and Pirelli; engaged in “information collection” for Wal-Mart. Also listed as BBI/S2i records as clients were Halliburton and Monsanto.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and whistleblower who is now the policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that once proposed changes are implemented, police may collect intelligence even when no underlying crime is suspected. This is nothing less than “preemptive policing” and a recipe for tightening the screws on dissent. The Post averred,
German, an FBI agent for 16 years, said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. In addition to the Maryland case [that targeted antiwar and death penalty opponents], he pointed to reports in the past six years that undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.
“If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information,” German said. “It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.” (Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson, “U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2008)
In a related report on Fusion Centers, that German coauthored with Jay Staley for the ACLU, they documented how so-called “counterterrorist” national collection agencies are “characterized by ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sector and military participation, and an apparent bent toward suspicionless information collection and data mining.”
As I reported earlier this month, citing research from German and Staley’s report, U.S. Marine Corps officers, enlisted personnel and an analyst with U.S. NORTHCOM, pilfered intelligence files and shared them with private defense contractors in hope of securing future employment.
Money talks, particularly in a political culture where the business of government is, after all, business!
With little oversight from a compliant Congress, and an “opposition” party in league with their “constituents”–multinational corporate grifters out to make a buck–the final nails are being hammered into the coffin of America’s former democratic Republic.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/cointelpro-20-mukasey-loosens-guidelines-on-domestic-spying/
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Final NIST Report on Collapse of Building Seven Released
9/11 building brought down by fire, not explosives, report says
By Eric Lipton
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15520920
Thursday, August 21, 2008
GAITHERSBURG, Maryland: Fires in the 47-story office tower at the edge of the World Trade Center site undermined floor beams and critical structural columns, federal investigators concluded Thursday, as they attempted to curb still-rampant speculation that explosives or fuel fires had been responsible for the collapse of the building on Sept. 11, 2001.
The long-delayed report by engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in suburban Washington is intended to solve one of the lingering questions about the 2001 attacks: Why did the building at 7 World Trade Center fall, if it was not hit by an airplane?
"Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail," said Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator. "Video and photographic evidence, combined with detailed computer simulations, show that neither explosives nor fuel oils played a role."
No one died when 7 World Trade Center fell, nearly seven hours after the center's twin towers collapsed. But the fall of the adjacent tower - once home to branch offices of the CIA, the Secret Service and the emergency operations center of the New York City mayor - is cited in hundreds of books and Internet sites as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower.
It is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire.
Mainstream engineers and government officials have rejected the speculation as ridiculous. But national polls have shown that perhaps as many as one in seven Americans believes that the destruction of the World Trade Center towers was an inside job.
The investigators determined that debris from the falling twin towers ignited fires on at least 10 floors at 7 World Trade Center, which was about 400 feet, or 120 meters, north of where the two tallest buildings in the city once stood. The blazes burned out of control for six hours. The city fire department, devastated by the collapse of the twin towers, abandoned its efforts to extinguish the fire and the sprinkler system was incapacitated.
The heat from these fires, the investigators said, caused the beams on the lower floors of the east side of the tower to expand, ultimately causing a girder on the 13th floor to disconnect from a critical interior column that supported the building's long floor spans. Once the 13th floor gave way, a cascade of floor failures led to the overall collapse of the tower.
Skeptics have questioned whether explosives were planted at 7 World Trade Center, as well as the twin towers and the Pentagon, as the Bush administration was seeking a justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. What started as a small number of such conspiracy theorists has ballooned into a movement of sorts, largely fed by Internet sites that promote the theories.
"Seven World Trade Center is one of the key points of evidence, one of the smoking guns," said Richard Gage, a California architect who is leader a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. "There have been much hotter, longer lasting and larger fires in skyscrapers that have not fallen down."
The engineers also examined whether diesel fuel tanks in the building - to power the mayor's emergency operations center and other government offices - might have been a fuel source that caused the collapse. The investigators determined, partly on the basis of computer models and videos of smoke coming from the tower, that the heat generated from any fuel-fed fires would not have been enough to cause the collapse.
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15520920
By Eric Lipton
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15520920
Thursday, August 21, 2008
GAITHERSBURG, Maryland: Fires in the 47-story office tower at the edge of the World Trade Center site undermined floor beams and critical structural columns, federal investigators concluded Thursday, as they attempted to curb still-rampant speculation that explosives or fuel fires had been responsible for the collapse of the building on Sept. 11, 2001.
The long-delayed report by engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in suburban Washington is intended to solve one of the lingering questions about the 2001 attacks: Why did the building at 7 World Trade Center fall, if it was not hit by an airplane?
"Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail," said Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator. "Video and photographic evidence, combined with detailed computer simulations, show that neither explosives nor fuel oils played a role."
No one died when 7 World Trade Center fell, nearly seven hours after the center's twin towers collapsed. But the fall of the adjacent tower - once home to branch offices of the CIA, the Secret Service and the emergency operations center of the New York City mayor - is cited in hundreds of books and Internet sites as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower.
It is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire.
Mainstream engineers and government officials have rejected the speculation as ridiculous. But national polls have shown that perhaps as many as one in seven Americans believes that the destruction of the World Trade Center towers was an inside job.
The investigators determined that debris from the falling twin towers ignited fires on at least 10 floors at 7 World Trade Center, which was about 400 feet, or 120 meters, north of where the two tallest buildings in the city once stood. The blazes burned out of control for six hours. The city fire department, devastated by the collapse of the twin towers, abandoned its efforts to extinguish the fire and the sprinkler system was incapacitated.
The heat from these fires, the investigators said, caused the beams on the lower floors of the east side of the tower to expand, ultimately causing a girder on the 13th floor to disconnect from a critical interior column that supported the building's long floor spans. Once the 13th floor gave way, a cascade of floor failures led to the overall collapse of the tower.
Skeptics have questioned whether explosives were planted at 7 World Trade Center, as well as the twin towers and the Pentagon, as the Bush administration was seeking a justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. What started as a small number of such conspiracy theorists has ballooned into a movement of sorts, largely fed by Internet sites that promote the theories.
"Seven World Trade Center is one of the key points of evidence, one of the smoking guns," said Richard Gage, a California architect who is leader a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. "There have been much hotter, longer lasting and larger fires in skyscrapers that have not fallen down."
The engineers also examined whether diesel fuel tanks in the building - to power the mayor's emergency operations center and other government offices - might have been a fuel source that caused the collapse. The investigators determined, partly on the basis of computer models and videos of smoke coming from the tower, that the heat generated from any fuel-fed fires would not have been enough to cause the collapse.
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15520920
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Definition of "Al Qaeda"
From "Wars and Rumors of War," by Lord Stirling, www.opednews.com, August 18, 2008:
" ... The United States, and various other nations, have been in a war in Afghanistan for going on seven years now, and we still have not been able to capture the 6'6" Arab who is so powerful that, while sitting on his backside in a cave in Afghanistan, he managed to get the USAF to stand down on 9/11; to change the laws of physics (so that jet fuel melts steel instead of burning at about half the necessary temperature), oh yeah, and is so loved that he raised a terror army of Arabs to follow an organization that in Arabic slang means 'little toilet.' ... "
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wars-and-Rumors-of-War-by-Lord-Stirling-080818-121.html
" ... The United States, and various other nations, have been in a war in Afghanistan for going on seven years now, and we still have not been able to capture the 6'6" Arab who is so powerful that, while sitting on his backside in a cave in Afghanistan, he managed to get the USAF to stand down on 9/11; to change the laws of physics (so that jet fuel melts steel instead of burning at about half the necessary temperature), oh yeah, and is so loved that he raised a terror army of Arabs to follow an organization that in Arabic slang means 'little toilet.' ... "
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wars-and-Rumors-of-War-by-Lord-Stirling-080818-121.html
Sunday, August 17, 2008
CANADA: Calls for Domestic Probe into 9/11
Drew Noftle thinks the 9/11 Commission’s 2004 report is a fraud, and that Canada should look at pulling out of Afghanistan.By Carlito Pablo
On August 29, Drew Noftle and about a dozen other Vancouver-based 9/11 truth seekers will set out east on board a private bus, holding rallies in different cities along the way to Montreal. There they will link up with other crusaders from across the country for a march to Ottawa that will culminate on the day the world marks the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.
As laid out in the 2004 report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission created by American congressional legislation, “19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan” carried out the deadliest terrorist strike ever on the U.S. mainland.
But according to Noftle, a founding member of the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Society, there has never been an official Canadian investigation into 9/11, which the 28-year-old English teacher noted is the principal reason why Canada is at war in Afghanistan.
“The main purpose of our group right now is we want to get a Canadian investigation into 9/11 in order to justify our war effort,” Noftle told the Georgia Straight. “If we don’t have a reason, we should pull out immediately.” ...
••••••••
Do you support a Canadian investigation into 9/11?
Lisa Barrett, Bowen Island councillor and antiwar activist:
“If we constantly say we want an investigation…I think we’ll get bogged down in the details of what happened in 9/11 when what happened in 9/11 is affecting us on a daily basis, and a much deeper and comprehensive analysis is required to find out what is this process of militarization and how is fear used to control the population. It’s far more important that we have a conversation about that. ... ”
STORY CONTINUES
Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican For Obama, Wants 9/11 Reinvestigated
campaignspot.nationalreview.com
Two news items that really ought to run together:
August 13, Providence Journal: Ex-Sen. Chafee joins Republicans for Obama
August 13, Gothamist: Actor Ed Asner, former Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski, and formerly famous hip hop group Arrested Development are leading a petition drive to get a referendum on New York City’s November ballot that would establish a new 9/11 investigation. If the group, called 911 Truth, can collect 30,000 signatures before September 4th, the City Council will be required to consider the measure, which calls for an investigative panel with subpoena authority.
Former Senator Mike Gravel (who would join the panel along with former senator Lincoln Chafee, Asner and 9/11 widow Lorie Van Auken) tells NY Mag that “the original commission didn’t get to the bottom of anything. We need to investigate from scratch.” Among the “Top 40” reasons the group gives to doubt the official story of 9/11, from their website:
• "Al-CIA-da?" The longstanding relationship between US intelligence networks and radical Islamists.
• Flight 93. Did the Shanksville crash occur at 10:06 (according to a seismic report) or 10:03 (according to the 9/11 Commission)? Does the Commission wish to hide what happened in the last three minutes of the flight, and if so, why?
• Pentagon Strike. How was it possible the Pentagon was hit 1 hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began? Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away. ...
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2I1ZjI5MmVjZGVjNDNhM2FlNTlhMWQ5NDhkYmNhODI=
Two news items that really ought to run together:
August 13, Providence Journal: Ex-Sen. Chafee joins Republicans for Obama
August 13, Gothamist: Actor Ed Asner, former Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski, and formerly famous hip hop group Arrested Development are leading a petition drive to get a referendum on New York City’s November ballot that would establish a new 9/11 investigation. If the group, called 911 Truth, can collect 30,000 signatures before September 4th, the City Council will be required to consider the measure, which calls for an investigative panel with subpoena authority.
Former Senator Mike Gravel (who would join the panel along with former senator Lincoln Chafee, Asner and 9/11 widow Lorie Van Auken) tells NY Mag that “the original commission didn’t get to the bottom of anything. We need to investigate from scratch.” Among the “Top 40” reasons the group gives to doubt the official story of 9/11, from their website:
• "Al-CIA-da?" The longstanding relationship between US intelligence networks and radical Islamists.
• Flight 93. Did the Shanksville crash occur at 10:06 (according to a seismic report) or 10:03 (according to the 9/11 Commission)? Does the Commission wish to hide what happened in the last three minutes of the flight, and if so, why?
• Pentagon Strike. How was it possible the Pentagon was hit 1 hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began? Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away. ...
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2I1ZjI5MmVjZGVjNDNhM2FlNTlhMWQ5NDhkYmNhODI=
Friday, August 15, 2008
Right-Wing Documentary Blames Clintons for "Suppressing" Apocryphal 9/11 Miniseries
Also see: "Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), Longleaf Partners, the Return of Kenneth Langone - and 'THE PATH TO 9/11'"
•••••••
'Blocking the Path to 9/11,' produced by John Ziegler and Citizens United, claims that further showing of ABC's controversial project has been quashed.
By Lynn Smith
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2008
In Hollywood docudramas, when the phrase "miscarriage of justice" is employed, it usually applies to the film's subject, not its creators.
But a new documentary called "Blocking the Path to 9/11," to be given a screening tonight, makes the case that former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have pressured television and studio executives into quashing the DVD release of ABC's 2006 miniseries “The Path to 9/11." The privately financed documentary argues that the Clintons, who decried the original miniseries as a right-wing hatchet job, are out to salvage their political influence and legacy at the expense of free expression.
The documentary, which will be shown to a sold-out audience at the Skirball Center, was produced by former KFI-AM talk show host John Ziegler and Citizens United, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political group that emphasizes the importance of strong families, limited government and free enterprise.
Even before its network broadcast, "The Path to 9/11" sparked fierce opposition from Democratic leaders, who called on Disney, which owns ABC, to cancel the program. While those attempts eventually failed, ABC conceded to last-minute edits to the $40-million, five-hour miniseries, which aired over two nights.
The miniseries, written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, offered a fictionalized account of the government's bureaucratic missteps that led to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. The series, which earned seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined audience of about 25 million viewers, was seen as being especially critical of the Clinton administration for bungling efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, said their camp pressed the network to edit the series but only to ensure historical accuracy. Even with the edits, the miniseries is still deeply flawed, he added.
"We felt it was too serious an issue to be put on television portrayed as fact what was in fact fiction," said Carson who was Bill Clinton's communications director at the time the miniseries aired. "We made clear that it would have been grossly irresponsible to air this movie in its original and ideologically driven form."
"Blocking the Path to 9/11" cost nearly $500,000 and is the seventh production of Citizens United, a 20-year-old nonprofit organization that has been making political films for the last four years to "offset the liberal bent of Hollywood," said David Bossie, the group's president.
Four other works are slated to premiere soon, including "Hype," an anti-Barack Obama film that will be shown in theaters near both the Democratic and Republican conventions.
Nowrasteh said he just wants "The Path to 9/11" to be shown -- on DVD or on air, but added, "I haven't gotten any indication this is ever going to be seen again."
In recent years, most popular television shows are typically released on DVD within months of their broadcast, but these decisions by networks are usually governed by the potential for profit.
Officials at ABC declined to comment about a DVD release of the original miniseries.
"They used to say money and profits dictated everything in Hollywood," said Nowrasteh, who has been working steadily on projects including an "on-again, off-again" pilot for Disney. " 'The Path to 9/11' had a huge viewership, yet it didn't mean a thing."
Nowrasteh has, however, dropped his membership in PEN, a worldwide organization of writers dedicated to fighting censorship. "You'd like to see an organization dedicated to the freedom of creative expression, right here in town, come forth," he said. "My film gets buried; they do nothing."
But PEN officials who discussed the issue internally don't see this as a censorship issue.
"From our standpoint, it had many hours of broadcast time, so it was exposed. It's not like it was stifled and no one heard it," said Adam Somers, executive director of PEN Center USA in Culver City. "In our opinion, it was a business decision by Disney. You have to assume if Disney thought they'd make money, they'd release it."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-path15-2008aug15,0,4263402.story
•••••••
'Blocking the Path to 9/11,' produced by John Ziegler and Citizens United, claims that further showing of ABC's controversial project has been quashed.
By Lynn Smith
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2008
In Hollywood docudramas, when the phrase "miscarriage of justice" is employed, it usually applies to the film's subject, not its creators.
But a new documentary called "Blocking the Path to 9/11," to be given a screening tonight, makes the case that former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have pressured television and studio executives into quashing the DVD release of ABC's 2006 miniseries “The Path to 9/11." The privately financed documentary argues that the Clintons, who decried the original miniseries as a right-wing hatchet job, are out to salvage their political influence and legacy at the expense of free expression.
The documentary, which will be shown to a sold-out audience at the Skirball Center, was produced by former KFI-AM talk show host John Ziegler and Citizens United, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political group that emphasizes the importance of strong families, limited government and free enterprise.
Even before its network broadcast, "The Path to 9/11" sparked fierce opposition from Democratic leaders, who called on Disney, which owns ABC, to cancel the program. While those attempts eventually failed, ABC conceded to last-minute edits to the $40-million, five-hour miniseries, which aired over two nights.
The miniseries, written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, offered a fictionalized account of the government's bureaucratic missteps that led to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. The series, which earned seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined audience of about 25 million viewers, was seen as being especially critical of the Clinton administration for bungling efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, said their camp pressed the network to edit the series but only to ensure historical accuracy. Even with the edits, the miniseries is still deeply flawed, he added.
"We felt it was too serious an issue to be put on television portrayed as fact what was in fact fiction," said Carson who was Bill Clinton's communications director at the time the miniseries aired. "We made clear that it would have been grossly irresponsible to air this movie in its original and ideologically driven form."
"Blocking the Path to 9/11" cost nearly $500,000 and is the seventh production of Citizens United, a 20-year-old nonprofit organization that has been making political films for the last four years to "offset the liberal bent of Hollywood," said David Bossie, the group's president.
Four other works are slated to premiere soon, including "Hype," an anti-Barack Obama film that will be shown in theaters near both the Democratic and Republican conventions.
Nowrasteh said he just wants "The Path to 9/11" to be shown -- on DVD or on air, but added, "I haven't gotten any indication this is ever going to be seen again."
In recent years, most popular television shows are typically released on DVD within months of their broadcast, but these decisions by networks are usually governed by the potential for profit.
Officials at ABC declined to comment about a DVD release of the original miniseries.
"They used to say money and profits dictated everything in Hollywood," said Nowrasteh, who has been working steadily on projects including an "on-again, off-again" pilot for Disney. " 'The Path to 9/11' had a huge viewership, yet it didn't mean a thing."
Nowrasteh has, however, dropped his membership in PEN, a worldwide organization of writers dedicated to fighting censorship. "You'd like to see an organization dedicated to the freedom of creative expression, right here in town, come forth," he said. "My film gets buried; they do nothing."
But PEN officials who discussed the issue internally don't see this as a censorship issue.
"From our standpoint, it had many hours of broadcast time, so it was exposed. It's not like it was stifled and no one heard it," said Adam Somers, executive director of PEN Center USA in Culver City. "In our opinion, it was a business decision by Disney. You have to assume if Disney thought they'd make money, they'd release it."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-path15-2008aug15,0,4263402.story
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
