FBI did not analyze anthrax from biodefense lab

By Dan Vergano and Steve Sternberg
USA TODAY

The FBI never examined anthrax samples from the 2001 contamination of a biodefense lab that was covered up by their lead suspect in the anthrax mailings — a decision that one of the FBI's leading anthrax experts calls "weird."

Researcher Bruce Ivins in 2002 confessed to cleaning up the office contamination without telling anyone during an Army investigation at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. Ivins became a suspect in 2005 in the mailings that killed five and sickened 17.

FBI investigators have not yet analyzed the genetic fingerprints of 25 anthrax samples supplied from the lab contamination investigation, says Vahid Majidi of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

"They're still in my lab," says Paul Keim, a microbiologist at Northern Arizona University. Keim called the FBI's decision not to examine the contamination samples "weird" given the intensity of investigators' focus on biodefense researchers, which included polygraphs of Army institute researchers.

Keim, until June, retained duplicates of the FBI's repository of 1,070 anthrax samples collected from researchers worldwide after the mailbox attacks. Genetic fingerprints of those repository samples eliminated suspects other than Ivins by 2007, says FBI lab director Chris Hassell.

The investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings has drawn harsh reviews from critics in recent Senate and House hearings, such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who questioned whether one person could have carried out the attacks. The Justice Department publicly named Ivins, 62, as their lead suspect in the attacks in August, days after his suicide.

Ivins' attorney, Paul Kemp, says his client was innocent and suggested many researchers had access to the anthrax identified by genetic fingerprints.

Before landing on the FBI's radar, Ivins emerged as the central figure in the separate investigation of anthrax contamination at Fort Detrick, where he confessed to cleaning up spilled anthrax in his office without telling superiors. "I had no desire to cry wolf," Ivins told an Army investigator at the time. The Army's investigation found samples of the type of anthrax used in the letter attacks on Ivins' desk and elsewhere in his office, according to a report May 9, 2002.

"Why didn't (the FBI) analyze it? One presumes this was pretty relevant evidence," says biodefense analyst Michael Stebbins of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., who was not part of the investigation. "It raises questions about systematic errors in the FBI investigation."

Majidi, an FBI scientist involved in the investigation, says the bureau viewed the 2002 contamination investigation as an Army matter. As a result, he says, the FBI never submitted samples from Ivins' office for the detailed genetic analysis that later tied a flask in his laboratory to the anthrax used in the attacks.

"I don't know" why the FBI never analyzed the 2002 anthrax in Ivins' office, says Debbie Weierman of the FBI's Washington Field Office. "Suspicion on him was immense, if you look at this in hindsight."

For Keim, the revelation in August that the FBI had shifted its focus to Ivins cast the omission in a new light. In 2002, he says, "I got the samples and thought, 'What a sloppy place.' But I'm starting to think Bruce was taking anthrax out of his lab and then covering his tracks."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-09-24-ivins-anthrax-investigation_N.htm

Joseph Rosetti - A Human Diagram of 9/11 Connections

Stamford Advocate
09/12/2008

... Joseph Rosetti, president of SafirRosetti [About SafirRosetti - "Founded in 2001, SafirRosetti is a leading security, investigative and intelligence firm. ... The company is led by former New York City Police Commissioner and New York City Fire Commissioner Howard Safir in 1999, towards the end of his tenure as Police Commissioner, Safir engineered lucrative no bid contacts for the NYPD's DNA analysis program with The Bode Technology Group Inc., a company with which he had financial ties?" ... "When Safir resigned as Police Comissioner in August 2000, he went to work for ChoicePoint Inc., which was the parent company of The Bode Technology Group. In March 2007, GlobalOptions Group, Inc. acquired The Bode Technology Group from ChoicePoint in a cash purchase for $12.5 million. Guess who is now an executive with Global Options Group who is in charge of overseeing the Bode organization? You guessed it... Giuliani's crony, Howard Safir!" Howard Safir was appointed 39th Police Commissioner of New York City by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on April 15, 1996.], has become a new member of the firm Norwalk-based Splinternet Holdings Inc.'s board of advisers.

Splinternet Holdings is an intelligent threat awareness technology firm that develops and markets sensor management, monitoring and messaging systems.

Rosetti previously was vice chairman of Kroll Associates (a subsidiary of AIG Insurance ["BEAR STEARNS, BUFFETT'S AIG & PRE-9/11 PUT OPTIONS: " ... Bear Stearns, which is now broke, was linked to [Warren Buffett's] American Insurance Group (AIG) and PRE 9/11 put options placed on the New York and Chicago financial exchanges 72 hours before the September 11th attacks. ... "
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?p=2424547]), responsible for corporate security and crisis management. From 1971 to 1987, he had worldwide responsibility for IBM security programs and was responsible for Department of Defense Security as it related to IBM ["Based on my reading of what Framework does, it maps all of the devices, files, programs, servers, etc. on a mainframe system - giving a 'Window on the World' so to speak. In order for this program to work from a PC from an external device, it means that the software must actually be IBM software that runs at system level authority, it would have to exploit a back door in IBM's communications controllers and/or operating system - otherwise you couldn't build an enterprise architecture map and the system security would prevent you from running it without the proper authorities. Since IBM was PTECH's business partner in this, there is no doubt in my mind that PTECH was actually just front-end interface. It was a company that was set up by design to be thrown to the wolves if the scam was exposed."] He has served as an IBM security director and was a vice chairman of the Secretary of State's Overseas Security Advisory Council.

Rosetti additionally served as the northeast director for the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice (in the 1970s, a CIA liaison and financial conduit to police departments across the country, disbanded in 1983). He also was a special agent, group supervisor and special assistant to the Assistant Commissioner for Compliance in the Intelligence Division, U.S. Treasury Department.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/norwalkadvocate/business/ci_10443813
•••••••
" ... Prior to joining the U.S. Government, Rosetti was Chief Accountant for Marriott. ... " (Marriott and Carlyle are interlocked: Stephen Norris - a co-founder Carlyle Group - is from Marriott, Inc. ["Mr. Norris was involved in the decision-making process in essentially every major Carlyle investment decision from its beginning as a $105 million fund. ... He was actively involved in recruiting all of Carlyle's current senior partners and played a major role in recruiting President George W. Bush to serve as a director of one of its portfolio companies and in enlisting former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci to be senior partners of Carlyle.] So is another Carlyle co-founder, Dan D’Aniello. Then there was J. W. Marriott himself - chairman of Marriott Corp." "The influence of Marriott on Carlyle was a pervasive force, and his former employees still utter his name with the highest respect." Fred Malek, currently presidential candidate John McCain's deputy financial manager, is a former Marriott VP and Carlyle director.)
http://www.zephyrcomm.com/about-bios.htm

See: "Farenheit 9/11"
•••••••
" ... Mr. Rosetti holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Pennsylvania Military College (Widener University) and a Master's Degree in Accounting from Southeastern University. He is a National Institute of Public Affairs Fellow from the University of Southern California. He has taught and lectured at numerous universities.

He was a Corporate Director of Kroll Associates Inc., Alpine Lace Inc., and GVI Security Solutions, Inc. (GVI is a division of GE.)

http://www.zephyrcomm.com/about-bios.htm

- Alex Constantine

Leahy: Others Involved in Anthrax Attacks

Senator Tells FBI Director He Is Convinced Army Scientist Bruce Ivins Not Sole Offender

Also see: "PROJECT ANTHRAX & THE COVER-UP"

By JASON RYAN
ABC News
Sept. 17, 2008

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy told FBI Director Robert Mueller during testimony before his committee that he did not believe Army scientist Bruce Ivins acted alone in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

"I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact," said the Vermont Democrat who received an anthrax-tainted letter. "I believe that there are others out there. I believe there are others who could be charged with murder."

Mueller had testified earlier that, after reviewing the case file, he was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Ivins was the sole actor in the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened others.

"We have looked at every lead and followed every lead to determine whether anybody else was involved, and we will continue to do so," Mueller told Leahy.

During the last two days of testimony, Mueller asserted that the FBI's case against Ivins was solid. Ivins committed suicide in July, and the FBI and Justice Department have released numerous documents relating to the case that suggest Ivins was the anthrax attacker.

A key part of the case rests on the scientific comparison of anthrax Ivins used and anthrax that was mailed. The FBI also has released information that shows Ivins spent numerous hours alone in one of the biohazard suites at Fort Detrick in the months and days before the anthrax mailings.

Mueller has said the FBI will work with the National Academy of Science to have an independent review on the case.

When Leahy asked whether anthrax was produced at other locations besides defense contractor Battelle Ohio and at the military's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Mueller confirmed that there were 15 labs in the United States and three overseas that had the ability to produce the Ames strain.

"It should be a concern of all Americans that biological weapons were used on the Congress and the American people," Leahy said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, also pushed for the FBI to release more information on the investigation, noting, "Given all the time and money sunk into this investigation, I believe the American people deserve more than just a press conference and a few briefings."

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5827600

Who's "Fringe?" - Less Than Half the World Believes Al Qaeda Was Behind 9/11 Attacks

Less Than Half the World Believes Al Qaeda Was Behind 9/11 Attacks
SahilOnline, India
16 September 2008:

A poll of 16,000 people in 17 countries reveals the damage done to the credibility of the United States by the Bush administration.

An international poll released this week by the Project on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that outside the United States, many are skeptical that al Qaeda was really responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sixteen thousand people in 17 countries -- allies and adversaries in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East -- were asked the open-ended question: "Who do you think was behind the 9/11 attacks?"

On average, fewer than half of all respondents said al Qaeda (although there was significant variation between countries and regions). Fifteen percent said the United States government itself was responsible for the attacks, 7 percent cited Israel, and fully 1 in 4 said they just didn't know.

Among our closest allies, very slim majorities believe al Qaeda was the culprit. According to the study, "Fifty-six percent of Britons and Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans cite al Qaeda. However, significant portions of Britons (26%), French (23%), and Italians (21%) say they do not know who was behind 9/11. Remarkably, 23 percent of Germans cite the U.S. government, as do 15 percent of Italians."

Whatever one thinks of "alternative" theories of who the perpetrators were that day, the results are an eye-opening indication of how profoundly the world's confidence in the United States government has eroded during the Bush era. The researchers found little difference among respondents according to levels of education, or to the amount of exposure to the news media they had. Rather, they found a clear correlation with people's attitudes toward the United States in general. "Those with a positive view of America's influence in the world are more likely to cite al Qaeda (on average 59%) than those with a negative view (40%)," wrote the authors. "Those with a positive view of the United States are also less likely to blame the U.S. government (7%) than those with a negative view (22%)."

Interestingly, Americans are also dubious, with more than a third of those polled by Scripps Howard News Service in 2006 saying it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them" because they "wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East." The poll didn't, however, distinguish between those who believed the government actively participated in the events of that day or merely had foreknowledge that the attacks were imminent. (Another poll that year, by CBS News and the New York Times, found that fewer than 1 in 5 Americans believed the government was being fully forthcoming about the attacks.)

In one sense, these findings should come as no surprise. America, like other countries, has been known to conduct "false-flag" operations before. And it has used falsehoods to justify going to war. In the now-infamous "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" -- the incident that would be used to justify America's involvement in that conflict -- a minor skirmish occurred between U.S. naval ships and two North Vietnamese coastal vessels. Two days later, the Johnson administration reported that there had been a second attack, which it claimed was evidence of "communist aggression" on the part of the North Vietnamese. But, as a National Security Agency report revealed in 2005 (PDF), the second incident -- the one that created a "pattern" of aggression -- was invented out of whole cloth. "It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night," reads the report.

In 1990, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Pentagon officials cited top-secret satellite images and said definitively that Saddam Hussein had amassed a huge army -- with 250,000 men and 1,500 tanks -- along the Saudi border in preparation for an invasion of that country. Jean Heller, a reporter with the St. Petersburg Times, purchased some Russian satellite images of the same piece of desert and found that in fact there was nothing there but sand. After the U.S.-led attack, a "senior (U.S. military) commander" told New York Newsday, "There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war."

Those incidents are in no way analogous to the attacks of 9/11. But in 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that the CIA might launch a series of terror attacks within the United States, blame Cuba, and use the ensuing panic to justify military action against the defiant island-nation. (The plan, called "Operation Northwoods," which became public in 1997, was reportedly killed off by John F. Kennedy himself -- it got that far up the food chain.)

Yet, whatever the historical context, there can be little doubt that the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy and well-documented dishonesty fuels the debate over who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. Earlier this year, an independent study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity documented 935 lies mouthed by senior administration officials to gin up support for the invasion of Iraq (one of which was Donald Rumsfeld repeating the long-disproved claim that Saddam had amassed a huge army on the Saudi border in 1990).

Just the fact that the administration blamed a group in Afghanistan for the attacks and then invaded a different country -- with some of the world's richest oil reserves -- would have been enough to create suspicion around the world. And no satisfactory explanation has ever been given for why the Bush administration didn't step up airline security in the face of repeated warnings -- some quite specific in terms of time and place -- from foreign governments and their intelligence agencies, warnings from allies like Israel's Mossad to "enemies" like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The credibility gap that has developed around the world's pre-eminent power is more than a matter of academic interest. Around the world, many of those who embraced us immediately after 9/11 and offered almost unconditional support for our policies now don't believe a word coming out of our officials' mouths, and that affects U.S. foreign policy, and the stability of the whole international system, in ways both obvious and subtle.

A good, obvious example is Pakistan, where most Americans believe we're allied with the government and a majority of the Pakistani people against a small group of Al Qaeda extremists who are undermining the U.S.-led battle against their terrorist brethren in Afghanistan (where we are allied with that government and most of that country's people). American politicians expend much hot air accusing the Pakistani government of "not doing enough to rein in extremists" in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

But as Princeton scholar Zia Mian wrote in July, "most damaging of all for the United States is that people in Pakistan overwhelmingly see the United States as the problem." Mian cited a poll (PDF) conducted in May by the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion, which found that "60 percent of Pakistanis believe the U.S. 'war on terror' seeks to weaken the Muslim world, and 15 percent think its goal is to 'ensure U.S. domination over Pakistan.'"

About a third had a positive view of al Qaeda, twice as many as the number that viewed the United States in a positive light. Mian touched on what is probably the key finding in the study -- and one that speaks to our officials' utter lack of credibility when they say that they're fighting "extremism" or "terrorists." The poll found that "44 percent of Pakistanis believe the United States is the greatest threat to their personal safety ... (while) the Pakistani Taliban, who ... by some estimates have up to 40,000 fighters, are seen as a threat by less than 10 percent. Al Qaeda barely registers as a threat, slightly surpassing Pakistan's own military and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)."

With almost half of the population saying the United States is the greatest threat to their own personal safety, any Pakistani government will be left between a rock and a hard place. In that part of the planet, the real-world consequence of our government's credibility gap is that the cooperation Washington seeks from Islamabad -- both internally and with neighboring Afghanistan -- can only result in destabilizing an already unstable political scene.

Around the world, the United States is at the nadir of its post-World War II influence. Among foreign governments and publics, in international institutions and commercial markets, our ideologies haven't had less power to sway people than they do today. We've never had less "soft power;" hard power doesn't come cheaply or without unintended consequences, and there's no guarantee that the Iron Fist can ever be put back into the Velvet Glove now that it's been exposed.

The fact that fewer than half of the world's citizens believe we were really attacked by al Qaeda seven years ago is merely a reflection of far deeper problems that our foreign policy makers are going to have to try to face in the coming years. That's Bush's foreign policy legacy.

All of which brings us to what historians will probably consider the great irony of the decline of the brief U.S.-led mono-polar order that existed between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the second Gulf War:

The neoconservative movement, which was so obsessed with the preservation of American power and the suppression of its rivals -- from its birth in the Nixon administration, through Reagan's "Dirty Wars" in Latin America and culminating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- ultimately oversaw the crash and burn of the World's Only Superpower's ability to influence world events.

http://www.sahilonline.org/english/news.php?catID=globalnews&nid=3362&viewed=0

Russian TV Teaches “9/11 Truth”

www.theotherrussia.org
September 16th, 2008

On Friday, Russian State television aired an Italian documentary that questioned the official version of what happened on September 11th, 2001. Boris Sokolov questions the channel’s motives, asking why it chose to screen a one-sided film to 30 million viewers during prime time. The film, titled, “Zero: an investigation into 9/11” was followed by a panel discussion with journalists, who accepted and built on its fundamental premise, that the terrorist attack was an inside job.

The screening follows a recent tradition of airing one-sided “documentaries” that voice conspiracy theories and put Russia at oThe Other Russia › Edit — WordPressdds with the West. Films recently broadcast on Russian state television have asserted that the West was responsible for democratic “color revolutions” in former Soviet countries and that the West was behind Russia’s war in Chechnya.

The article below first ran on the Grani.ru independent online newspaper.

An Open Order
Boris Sokolov
Grani.ru
9/15/08

“Zero: an investigation into 9/11,” a film by Italian journalist Giulietta Chiesa and his French colleague Thierry Meyssan, went practically unnoticed in the world. Its authors openly complained about this as they spoke on Channel One, hinting at machinations by America’s intelligence agencies. In Russia, on the other hand, the film was shown on TV on Friday evening, during prime-time – on the “Private Screening” program, which gave it an audience of many millions. In and of itself, this proves that the Cold War is in full swing, at least on Russian television. Mr. Chiesa laments that “the level of democracy in the world is very low. And with every year, it becomes lower and lower.” And that’s why the Italian departed for Russia in search of genuine democracy.

Chiesa and Meyssan’s basic thesis is that the September 11th terrorist attacks were organized by the Americans themselves, in order to justify limitations on democratic freedoms in America and the subsequent invasion of Iraq, and in order to stave off a crisis in the American economy. Almost all the participants in the discussion readily agreed with them. The debates only centered on who in particular among the Americans was behind the terrorist acts. Some insisted that it was the multi-national corporations and intelligence agencies, carrying out imperial designs, with the involvement of individuals within the administration, but not the highest ranks –not the President and not the Secretary of State. This resembled Soviet times, when all the problems in the world were blamed on American imperialists, presented as anonymous monopolies and equally anonymous senior officials in the CIA and the Pentagon. Presidents and Secretaries of State shouldn’t be directly offended, since negotiations have to be led with them. The second version consisted of the idea that President Bush was directly involved in the conspiracy behind September 11th. Well, I guess this shows the relative freedom of speech as compared with the communist era, and moreover, everyone knows that Bush is working his last months in the White House.

The film’s authors call on Dario Fo (presented in the credits as a Nobel laureate), as a leading expert of the explosions on September 11th. The overwhelming majority of Russian viewers will remain convinced that there is a distinguished scholar before them, who has knowledge about airplanes, explosions and fires. In actual fact, Dario Fo is an Italian playwright, who received a Nobel prize for literature in 1997 for “emulat[ing] the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.” He appears before us as a descendant of jesters as well.

From a professional point of view, the film is made extremely primitively. It is based almost exclusively on “talking heads,” and presents only those witnesses and experts who criticize the official version, that the terrorist attacks were organized by Al-Qaeda, led by [Osama] bin Laden (several of them look to be mentally unbalanced). Along those same lines are the endless, mesmerizing repetitions of captions with the author’s theses. Testimony and evidence from adherents of the official version is not mentioned in any way in the film. This is roughly like taking only the testimonies showing the innocence of the defendants during the Nuremberg trial, and ignoring all the materials in the extensive file documenting their guilt.

It is interesting that both the film’s authors and the participants of the discussion [that followed], having spoken out against American globalism and defended the dignity of the downtrodden peoples, demonstrate a barefaced contempt to these same peoples. The theme of the discussion sounded like this: “How could these 19 arabs do something like this? They couldn’t even learn to operate a plane!” True, the main question then remains unanswered – who was at the helm of the planes that crashed into the twin-towers. Could it be true that CIA agents turned from through-and-through WASPs into fanatic-suicide bombers? Here, to Chiesa and Meyssan’s assistance came Geidar Dzhemal, a homegrown Islamist-conspiracy theorist, who proposes that the planes were controlled from the ground by expert hackers, who changed the autopilot program on the killing-planes. No one bothered to refute this delusion.

The films authors, and the organizers of the discussion sought to convince viewers that two realities are competing on equal terms in the world: the official and alternative versions of the events of September 11th. Proponents of both versions, they say, have their own arguments, and even in the hard science field, experts at times have directly opposite opinions. Therefore, they say, the choice between them is a matter of faith. The discussion moderator, Alexander Gordon, tried at the start to play to objectivity and the cooperative search for truth, but by the end, confessed frankly that he had long ago come to a firm conclusion that the American establishment was behind the September 11th tragedy, just like the other terrorist acts on US territory.

Proponents of the official version were chosen essentially from obedient sparring-partners, whose arguments amounted to saying that Chiesa and Meyssan’s version could not be truth simply because this would be intolerable from a ethical point of view: after all, if would imply that the US leadership would kill their own citizens for political gains. But here, director Vladimir Khotinenko, political analyst Vitaly Tretyakov, and other adherents of the American conspiracy theory immediately took the floor, assuring the viewers that for the American authorities to kill even thousands, even millions, was as easy as batting an eye.

Mr. Tretyakov put forth the thesis that the answer to the question of who profited from the September 11th terrorist attacks clearly pointed to the American government. The majority of the audience backed him enthusiastically. But no one did clarify what exactly the American advantage was. Maybe it was the need to hold a significant contingent of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come? Or high oil prices, affecting the American economy in far from the best manner? If they really had some desire to figure out the reasons for the tragedy from the “who profited” principle, it would have been more logical to note that for Russia, the growth in energy prices which started after September 11th turned into a golden rain of petrodollars and the opportunity to demonstrate its solidarity with the US in the fight with international terrorism. Which for many years created the illusion of Russian-American partnership in the world. But we didn’t hear this kind of discussion.

Chiesa, Meyssan and their adherents propose the following circumstance as the main argument favoring their version of events. After September 11, 2001, there were no more terrorist attacks in the US. Which means that the American intelligence agencies were accessorial to the terrorist acts, while terrorists, Islamic or otherwise, do not have a real opportunity to perform such massive terrorist acts on American territory. But, following this absurd logic, one must come the following conclusions. Since there haven’t been any explosions of buildings in Moscow since September 1999, it means, that they were organized by the Russian intelligence agencies. Since after the “Nord-Ost” [theater siege] and Beslan [school takeover], there haven’t been any new seizures of hundreds of hostages, it means that those terrorist acts were also an inside job by the FSB.

At the end, the discussion smoothly turned to the present Russian-Georgian conflict. It was not in vain that President Medvedev recently said that for Russia, August 8th (the start of the war with Georgia) –was almost like September 11th for the US. Naturally, the assertions poured out, that the notion of Russian aggression against Georgia, spread through the Western world, was the results of the same kind of propaganda as the official version of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, the US, with Georgia’s help, in truth wants to engineer a new cold war, to solve its domestic and foreign problems. As result, the discussion closed with a hysterical call from one of the film’s authors, for Russia to defend the world from the American predators who are tearing the planet to pieces. A plea most insincere.

translation by theotherrussia.org

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/09/16/russian-tv-teaches-“911-truth”/

FRIENDLY FIRE - THE 1993 WTC BOMBING - ALLIED SIGNAL, EGYPTIAN INTELLIGENCE, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, NIDAL AYYAD, AND STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM

By Alex Constantine

Abdul Rahman Yasin and Nidal Ayyad were co-defendents in the 1993 bombing of the World Trace Center. When he met Ramzi Yousef - who has in common with 911 terrorist Mohammed Atta ties to Pakistan's ISI and, as we shall see, they all have a significant German connection - Ayyad was employed by Allied Signal, Inc. in New Jersey - an intelligence front.

The following excerpts relate the story of their involvement in the plot and necessary background indicating state sponsorship of terrorism:
•••••••
THE 1993 WTC BOMBERS & ALLIED SIGNAL

http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/investigative/2002/fancher-trials.asp

... A few days after arriving at JFK with Ajaj, Yousef made contact with Sheik Rahman's followers. He met up with two men who had trained at the rifle range on Long Island in 1989, Abouhalima and Salameh. [Ramzi] Yousef moved into a Jersey City apartment with Salameh.... Abdul Yasin, an American-born engineering student of Iraqi descent, and Nidal Ayyad, a Kuwaiti-born naturalized American citizen, who had studied chemical engineering and worked at ALLIED SIGNAL in Morristown, N.J. In addition to opening bank accounts with more than $16,000, the men began trying to order chemicals, with varying success. By early February, Yousef asked Eyad Ismoil, a childhood friend who lived in Dallas, to fly to New York to help, prosecutors claimed in the trial.
•••••••
THE COMPONENTS FOR THE BOMB CAME FROM ALLIED SIGNAL, INC.:

http://www.mipt.org/usvsalameh2cirapp081997.asp
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term, 1997
(Argued: December 18 & 19, 1997 Decided: August 04, 1998 )
Docket Nos. 94-1312, -1313, -1314, -1315
•••••••
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
MOHAMMED A. SALAMEH, NIDAL AYYAD, MAHMOUD ABOUHALIMA, also known as Mahmoud Abu Halima, AHMAD MOHAMMAD AJAJ, also known as Khurram Khan, Defendants-Appellants, RAMZI AHMED YOUSEF, BILAL ALKAISI, also known as Bilal Elqisi, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, also known as Aboud, Defendants.

... Once in New York, Yousef assembled a team of trusted criminal associates, including Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Abdul Rahman Yasin. Together, the conspirators implemented the bombing plot that Ajaj and Yousef had hatched overseas. Ayyad and Salameh opened a joint bank account into which they deposited funds to finance the bombing plot.

Some of that money was later used by Salameh to rent a storage shed in
Jersey City, New Jersey, where the conspirators stored chemicals for making
explosives. Yousef also drew on that account to pay for materials described
in Ajaj's manuals as ingredients for bomb making.

The first target of the conspirators' plot was the World Trade Center. Ayyad
used his position as an engineer at ALLIED SIGNAL, a large New Jersey
chemical company, to order the necessary chemical ingredients for bomb
making, and to order hydrogen tanks from ALG Welding Company that would enhance the bomb's destructive force. Abouhalima obtained "smokeless powder," which the conspirators used to make explosives. Smokeless powder, and all the other chemicals procured by the conspirators for the bomb, were stored in the shed rented by Salameh....
•••••••
ALLIED SIGNAL IS A CIA FRONT. CAST: EDWIN PAULEY (see A. CONSTANTINE, Adnan Khashoggi LINKED TO 911 Terrorists, part II) WAS IN BUSINESS WITH G.H.W. BUSH. SAM MOSHER IS SEEN TO BE IN CAHOOTS WITH EDWIN PAULEY.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0204/S00105.htm

What was so special about 1974?
Thursday, 18 April 2002, 10:44 am
Article: Linda Minor

The pilot who flew Ambassador Joseph Davies to Moscow was a Californian
named Robert W. Prescott, who founded the Flying Tiger Line in 1945.... In
November, 1944 Prescott had met with a group of Los Angeles businessmen in Acapulco, including one of [Edwin] Pauley's fellow UC Berkeley regents,
Samuel B. Mosher, who wanted to establish an air freight line along the U.S.
and Mexican west coast, to be called Aero-Azteca. The investors included
Signal Oil Company [predecessor of Allied Signal]. They agreed to form a
syndicate, with Mosher's group matching whatever Prescott could raise.

Prescott found 14 Navy surplus cargo aircraft from the War Assets Administration and collected cash from friends from the American Volunteer
Pilots unit (AVP) who had flown with him in China. This group of American
civilians who fought with Chiang Kai-Shek in China before the U.S. entered
the war (all of whom received the same commendation Cloud and Banner award given to Pug Winokur's father during his war service) had an important role in the setting up what William Casey would later call an "off-the-shelf" method of financing covert operations for the CIA and other black operations not disclosed to Congress.

The airline was initially called National Skyways Freight Corporation and
included General Claire Chennault and others. In 1946 Chennault invited the
men to go back to China to work for him at Civil Air Transport, which he was in the process of founding. By 1970 Nixon's attorney Herbert Kalmbach
claimed to be representing the Flying Tiger Line, which merged with Seaboard World Airlines in 1980 and into Federal Express in 1989. In the beginning the California airline transported mostly foodstuffs but in late 1946 was awarded its first military contract with Army Air Transport Command--two flights daily to Tokyo and to Honolulu for a total of 1.2 million miles per month. The flights were to leave from San Francisco Fairfield Air Base, but the company remained based at Lockheed in Burbank.

In Mosher's 1954 Who's Who listing his home address was given as 10401
Wilshire, located just west of the Los Angeles country club and one mile
east of the office building David Murdock constructed across the street from
the Occidental Petroleum Co. The close proximity is very intriguing, considering the fact that in 1966, the year George Bush left Zapata,
Mosher's Signal Oil sold its European refining and marketing arms to
Occidental, after Armand Hammer obtained a concession from Libya's King
Idris, who would later be replaced by Quaddafi. Mosher's office address in
1954 was given as 811 W. 7th in Los Angeles. This is just over five miles
from Pauley's Bandini office. AtlanticRichfield's 12-story office building
in Los Angeles was at the corner of 6th and Flower, a mere two blocks from
Mosher's location. In 1954 Mosher was also serving as vice president and
director for American Independent Oil Co. (whose president was Ralph K.
Davies), and as director of the Southwest Exploration Co. and the American
President Lines, as well as numerous oil and gas associations.
•••••••
FINANCING FOR THE 1993 BOMBING WAS WIRED FROM GERMANY...

Blast Suspects Got German Cash
By Sara Fritz and Robert L. Jackson
Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK - The men suspected of exploding a bomb underneath the World Trade Center received tens of thousands of dollars from a bank account in Germany, giving credence to the theory that it may have been the act of a
sophisticated international terrorist organization, authorities said Thursday.

Officials still have not determined the precise amount of money transferred
to the suspects or the identity of the benefactors. Furthermore, they said
they believed that the total amounted to less than $100,000 -- a relatively
small sum in comparison to the money a well-funded international terrorist
group could afford to spend. And they acknowledged they had no proof the
money was spent in connection with the bombing.

Nonetheless, as authorities followed the widening money trail, sources said
they were more inclined to suport the view publicly expressed by FBI
Assistant Director James Fox that the Feb. 26 bombing was "organized by a
large, well-know terrorist group."

Although the money received by the suspects was wired from a bank in
Germany, investigators said they suspect the funds actually originated
elsewhere -- possibly Iran or Iraq. In Egypt, according to a knowledgeable
source, followers of an Egyptian cleric whose New Jersey mosque has figured
in the bombing case are known to be funded with Iranian money funneled
through Sudan....

The money was wired to accounts at the National Westminister Bank branch in Jersey City, N.J., just a few blocks from the mosque where Omar's followers -- including at least two of the men arrested in the case -- worshipped.

The two principle suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal A. Ayyad, held a joint account at the Jersey City bank that received some of the money from
Germany. In addition, money from the same foreign source also was placed in individual accounts belonging to the men.

On Wednesday, investigators underestimated how much money the suspects had received from abroad because they were only aware of only the single joint account at the time.

Even though the suspects received tens of thousands of dollars, each individual deposit was less than $10,000, sources said. Under federal law,
American banks handling transactions of $10,000 or more must report them to the Treasury Department, often prompting money launderers and criminals to break large transfers into smaller amounts.

The transactions provide the first publicly available evidence that those
responsible for the bombing may not have been hapless amateurs, as they have sometimes been portrayed...

Ayyad, who was arrested Wednesday, holds a college degree in chemical
engineering and was employed as a research engineer at the AlliedSignal
Corp. in Morristown, N.J. Authorities said Salameh telephone Ayyad at least
four times at his office on the day before the bombing, apparently seeking
advice on how to mix the chemicals.
•••••••
http://www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/3.htm

RAMZI YOUSEF AND PAKISTAN'S INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, THE ISI ...

Yousef's terrorist motivations were not those of a militant Muslim
fundamentalist, according to Reeve, who describes him as an "evil genius."
He seems to have been a playboy, a sadist and someone with a mammoth ego (which proved to be his undoing, as he could have hidden out in the tribal areas of Pakistan undiscovered by the authorities.) Reeve alleges that individuals within Pakistan's ISI may have provided him with the documents that enabled him to enter the United States....
•••••••
"BLOWBACK"

"Terrorism" and Blowback

Part Three: "Terrorism," Blowback and US Foreign Policy during the Clinton Years

... Information gleaned from Salameh's pockets, his residence, and the
storage facility where the bomb had been prepared led to the arrests of
Ahmad Ajaj, Palestinian chemist Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abouhalima. (The
latter was extradited from Egypt where he had been viciously tortured
because of his connections with militants who were attacking Egyptian
installations.) Their trial began in September and on May 24, 1994 the four
were convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and sentenced to 240 years in prison and sent to the top-security US penitentiary in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania.

Missing from the courtroom were ABDUL YASIN who had fled to Iraq...
•••••••
FBI Let Suspected Terrorist Get Away
By JOSH MEYER and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- A suspected bomber on President Bush's new list of "most
wanted" terrorists was in the FBI's grasp eight years ago for allegedly
playing a role in the first attack on the World Trade Center, but he was
released and then allowed to leave the country, authorities acknowledged
Thursday.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, 41, is one of the 22 accused terrorists identified by
Bush on Wednesday as murderous extremists wanted by the U.S., whom
authorities will aggressively pursue to bring to justice.

The FBI questioned Yasin at length soon after the February 1993 bomb blast
at the trade center, which killed six people and injured 1,000. They asked
about his sharing of apartments in Jersey City, N.J., with others who were
later indicted and convicted in the bombing, and about how explosive
chemicals got on one apartment's walls and may have caused a burn mark found on his thigh.

FBI agents also questioned Yasin about his association with Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef, the man later convicted of masterminding the plot, according to law
enforcement authorities and Stephen Somerstein, Yasin's lawyer.

"He . . . went in quite voluntarily, spoke at length to the FBI and went
home," Somerstein said Thursday. "And the FBI appeared to be satisfied with
that. They let him walk out the door."

A week after the bombing, on March 5, 1993, Yasin flew to Amman, Jordan,
while other co-conspirators flew to Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Pakistan. He
was indicted that August for his role in the bombing.

Officials at the Justice Department and the FBI declined comment.
•••••••
CONGRESS WASN'T AND ISN'T ABOUT TO INVESTIGATE ...

Secrecy & Government Bulletin
July 1996

... Examining the FEC filings of key members of the Congressional intelligence committees, one finds them littered with donations from intelligence contractors or their representatives such as the Lockheed Martin Employees Political Action Committee (PAC), the Allied-Signal PAC and, delightfully, the TRW Good Government Fund.

"The amounts of money thrust at members of Congress by such contractors are limited (by law), typically involving no more than a few thousand dollars. It is doubtful that such paltry sums could actually buy votes. What they can buy, however, is access to the policy and budget process, in which industry is heavily represented. Not only are contractor CEOs regularly called upon to testify before the intelligence committees (unlike, dare one say, public interest groups), but contractor lobbyists have essentially unfettered access to lobby for secret programs without fear of contradiction or outside criticism. ... "

The FEC database did not reveal any donations to Congress from advocates of improved public accountability or intelligence budget declassification. ...

http://www.fas.org/sgp/bulletin/sec60.html
•••••••
Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war

Julian Borger in Washington, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd
Friday November 7, 2003
The Guardian

A MYSTERIOUS MEETING WITH RICHARD PERLE, EL HAGE AT THE MARLBOROUGH HOTEL IN BLOOMSBURY CONCERNING YOSIN ... THE CIA REFUSES AN OFFER FROM IRAQ TO TURN OVER A WTC BOMBER:

... According to the Knight-Ridder news agency, the Iraqis sought a direct
route to the Washington hawks in February. They found a Lebanese-American businessman, IMAD ED-HAGE, who boasted he had a direct line to the Pentagon.

Mr Hage told yesterday's New York Times that he was initially approached by
General Habbush's chief of foreign intelligence operations, who turned up in
Mr Hage's Beirut office and promptly collapsed, apparently from stress.

When Mr Obeidi recovered, he urged Mr Hage to tell his Washington contacts Iraq was ready to talk about anything, including oil concessions, the Middle East peace process, and banned weapons. The Iraqi official said the "Americans could send 2,000 FBI agents to look wherever they wanted",
according to Mr Hage.

A week later Mr Hage travelled to Baghdad and talked to Gen Habbush himself.

The general repeated the invitation to allow Americans to search for weapons and added an offer to hand over a suspected terrorist, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, who had been convicted in the US for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. The regime would hold elections within two years, and the intelligence chief even offered to fly to London to discuss the issue in person.

Mr Hage relayed these offers via an intermediary to the Pentagon, but there
was NO OFFICIAL RESPONSE. The Lebanese-American businessman persisted, and arranged a meeting with Mr Perle, a member of the Pentagon's advisory board.

It is understood that Mr Hage and Mr Perle met on March 7 in the lobby of
the Marlborough hotel in Bloomsbury. They then went to an office nearby
where over two hours Mr Hage outlined the Iraqi offer to Mr Perle...

A US intelligence source insisted that the decision not to negotiate came
from the White House ... Mr Perle was travelling in Europe yesterday and
unavailable for comment. However, he told the New York Times he had been
TOLD BY THE CIA not to pursue contacts with the Iraqis....
•••••••
IRAQ, IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE U.S. BEFORE THE INVASION, OFFERED ONCE AGAIN TO TURN YASIN OVER. THE OFFER WAS REBUFFED.

IRAQ CONTENDS THAT YASIN FLED TO THE NORTHERN PROVICE ... HOME OF THE CIA-BACKED KURDS, ARCH ENEMIES OF SADDAM HUSSEIN.

Sabri, in a 13-page letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to rebut US
Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council earlier this month, also said Baghdad is offering to hand over to Washington Abdul-Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who is on the FBI's most-wanted list. Sabri's letter, which was posted on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry's web site Thursday, denied any link between Iraq and Zarqawi or Ansar, saying both operated in NOTHERN IRAQI areas under the control of Kurdish groups allied to Washington and beyond Baghdad's reach.

Mexico, US Find no al-Qaida Links Since 9/11

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico says it has arrested 12 people on terrorism charges in the years since the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S., but an official said none were linked to Muslim extremist groups like al-Qaida nor were any planning to strike in the United States.

Officials from both nations say there hasn't been any sign of the southern U.S. border becoming an entry point for terrorists, as had been feared after the suicide jetliner hijackings that struck New York and Washington.

The Mexican government revealed the 12 arrests to The Associated Press this week in response to a public information request seeking details of any terrorism arrests in the last seven years. The request was made in February.

Many Americans feared Islamic terrorists from al-Qaida might try to slip into the United States by linking up with the criminal gangs and drug cartels that control large swaths of Mexico and smuggle drugs and migrants across the border.

Months after the 2001 attack, President Bush pushed Mexico to increase security. "We need to use our technology to make sure that we weed out those who we don't want in our country, the terrorists, the `coyotes,' the smugglers, those that prey on innocent life," he said.

Asked whether Mexico's 12 terrorism arrests were linked to plots against the United States, an official at the Mexican Attorney General's office said none "had anything to do with that."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to be quoted by name, said those detained had links to Basque militants in Spain or were involved in radical domestic activities in Mexico.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Friday the U.S. continually works with Mexico to ensure terrorists don't turn to Mexico and so far there is no evidence that has happened.

"There's no indication that there's been a direct al-Qaida presence in Mexico," he said. "But there certainly have been individuals that present security concerns."

He wouldn't elaborate, but one of the U.S. government's recent worries has been smuggling networks moving East African migrants through Latin America and into the U.S. Two such smugglers operating in Mexico and Belize were arrested last year.

In a speech Wednesday on international terrorism threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the biggest threat in Mexico is likely the powerful drug trade, in which gangs target both police and civilians and often behead their enemies.

"These enterprises may currently be criminal enterprises, but we cannot rule out the possibility in the future that they may take on a more political coloration," he said.

The U.S. has dramatically increased border security, adding fencing and border agents and monitoring more closely those who cross at border stations.

Mexico also has become much more vigilant of foreigners entering both legally and illegally. Many people from Muslim countries now have trouble getting visas to visit Mexico, and officials have arrested dozens of Christian Iraqis who fled violence in their homeland and tried to sneak into Southern California through Mexico.

Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the transnational threats project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said al-Qaida usually sends its members through Europe because, unlike Mexico, citizens of those countries can enter U.S. territory without a visa.

"We are more likely to see people come in through airplanes," he said.

He also doubts al-Qaida operatives would expose themselves to organized crime or smuggling groups in Mexico. "They'd be concerned that their cover or their effort would be exposed. It's unfamiliar territory for them," he said.
Pressed to discuss the 12 peopled arrested, the Mexican official would say only that five were Spaniards linked to the Basque separatist group ETA and that seven were Mexicans detained in domestic cases.

She said the purported ETA members were living in Mexico to help finance the group's operations in the Basque region of northern Spain and were not planning attacks.

The official said some of the seven Mexican suspects were tied to murky domestic militant groups that have planted crude bombs at banks, government offices and oil pipelines across Mexico in recent years.

None of those attacks caused human casualties but several of the pipeline attacks had a big financial impact by interrupting fuel supplies to major industries.