The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 10 | Issue 12 | Number 3 | Article ID 3723 | Mar 12, 2012

1

Launching the U.S. Terror War: the CIA, 9/11, Afghanistan,and Central Asia　　米国テロ戦争の開始ーー中央情報局、9.11、アフガニスタン、中央アジア

Peter Dale Scott

Launching the U.S. Terror War: theCIA, 9/11, Afghanistan, and CentralAsia1 Spanish translation available(http://www.voltairenet.org/La-CIA-el-11-de-septiembre); Frencht r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://www.voltairenet.org/Le-lancement-de-la-guerre-de); Portugueset r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://umpovoarasca2.blogs.sapo.pt/1 4 8 6 7 0 . h t m l ) ; I t a l i a nt r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://onaocn-finanzaetica.blogspot.com/2012/09/la-cia-11-settembre-afghanistan-e-asia.html); Russiant r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://www.voltairenet.org/article176121.html); German translationa v a i l a b l e(http://www.larsschall.com/2013/12/1 3 / t e r r o r i s t e n - a u f - d e m -schachbrett/).

Peter Dale Scott

The engineering of a series of provocations tojustify military intervention is feasible andcould be accomplished with the resourcesavailable. - Report of May 1963 to Joint Chiefsof Staff1

Bush’s Terror War and the Fixing ofIntelligence

On September 11, 2001, within hours of themurderous 9/11 attacks, Bush, Rumsfeld, andCheney had committed America to what theylater called the “War on Terror.” It should moreproperly, I believe, be called the “Terror War,”one in which terror has been directedrepeatedly against civilians by all participants,both states and non-state actors. It should alsobe seen as part of a larger, indeed global,process in which terror has been used againstcivilians in interrelated campaigns by all majorpowers, including China in Xinjiang and Russiain Chechnya, as well as the United States.2

Terror war in its global context should perhapsbe seen as the latest stage of the age-longsecular spread of transurban civilization intoareas of mostly rural resistance -- areas whereconventional forms of warfare, for eithergeographic or cultural reasons, proveinconclusive.

Terror War was formally declared by GeorgeW. Bush on the evening of September 11, 2001,with his statement to the American nation that"we will make no distinction between theterrorists who committed these acts and thosewho harbor them."3 But the notion that Bush’sterror war was in pursuit of actual terroristslost credibility in 2003, when it was applied toSaddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country known tohave been targeted by terrorists but not tohave harbored them.4 It lost still morecredibility with the 2005 publication in Britainof the so-called Downing Street memo, in whichthe head of the British intelligence service MI6reported after a visit to Washington in 2002that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein,

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

2

through military action, justified by theconjunction of terrorism and WMD. But theintelligence and facts were being fixed aroundthe policy."5 False stories followed in duecourse linking Iraq to WMD, anthrax, and Nigeryellowcake (uranium).

This essay will demonstrate that before 9/11 asmall element inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unitand related agencies, the so-called Alec StationGroup, were also busy, “fixing” intelligence bysuppressing it, in a way which, accidentally ordeliberately, enabled the Terror War. They didso by withholding evidence from the FBI before9/11 about two of the eventual allegedhijackers on 9/11, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawafal-Hazmi, thus ensuring that the FBI could notsurveil the two men or their colleagues.

This failure to share was recognized in the 9/11Commission Report, but treated as an accidentthat might not have occurred “if moreresources had been applied.”6 This explanation,however, has since been refuted by 9/11Commission Chairman Tom Kean. Askedrecently by two filmmakers if the failure to dealappropriately with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmicould have been a simple mistake, Keanreplied:

Oh, it wasn’t careless oversight. Itwas purposeful. No question aboutthat .… The conclusion that wecame to was that in the DNA ofthese organizations was secrecy.And secrecy to the point of ya don’tshare it with anybody.7

In 2011 an important book by Kevin Fenton,Disconnecting the Dots, demonstratedconclusively that the withholding waspurposive, and sustained over a period ofeighteen months.8 This interference andmanipulation became particularly blatant andcontroversial in the days before 9/11; it led oneFBI agent, Steve Bongardt, to predict

accurately on August 29, less than two weeksbefore 9/11, that “someday someone will die.”9

As will be seen, the motives for this withholdingremain inscrutable. At one time I was satisfiedwith Lawrence Wright’s speculations that theCIA may have wanted to recruit the two Saudis;and that “The CIA may also have beenprotecting an overseas operation [possibly inconjunction with Saudi Arabia] and was afraidthat the F.B.I. would expose it.”10 The purposeof this essay is to suggest that the motives forthe withholding may have had to do with themuch larger neocon objective being imposed onAmerican foreign policy at this same time: theconsolidation of U.S. global hegemony by theestablishment of U.S. forward-based basesaround the oil fields of Central Asia.

In short, the withholding of evidence should beseen as part of the larger ominous pattern ofthe time, including the malperformance of theU.S. government (USG) in response to the 9/11attacks, and the murderous anthrax letterswhich helped secure the passage of the PatriotAct.

I am now persuaded by Fenton that LawrenceWright’s explanation, that the CIA wasprotecting a covert operation, may explain thebeginnings of the withholding in January 2000,but cannot explain its renewal in the days justbefore 9/11. Fenton analyzes a list of thirty-fivedifferent occasions where the two allegedhijackers were protected in this fashion, fromJanuary 2000 to about September 5, 2001, lessthan a week before the hijackings.11 We shallsee that in his analysis, the incidents fall intotwo main groups. The motive he attributes tothe earlier ones, was “to cover a CIA operationthat was already in progress.”12 However after“the system was blinking red” in the summer of2001, and the CIA expected an imminentattack, Fenton can see no other explanationthan that “the purpose of withholding theinformation had become to allow the attacks togo forward.”13

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

3

Fenton’s second sentence would imply that ahomicidal crime was committed by members ofthe Alec Station group, even if the crime wasone of manslaughter (unintended homicide)rather than deliberate and premeditatedmurder. One can imagine benign reasons forwithholding the information: for example, theCIA may have been tolerating the behavior ofthe two Saudis in order to track down theirassociates. In this case, we would be dealingwith no more than a miscalculation – albeit ahomicidal miscalculation.

The Terror War and the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz Project of Global Dominion

But in the course of this essay I shall dwell onthe activities of the head of the CIA’s Bin LadenUnit, Richard Blee, in Uzbekistan as well asAfghanistan. Uzbekistan was an area ofconcern not only to Blee and his superior CoferBlack; it was also in an area of major interest toRichard Cheney, whose corporation Halliburtonhad been active since 1997 or earlier indeveloping the petroleum reserves of CentralAsia. Cheney himself said in a speech to oilindustrialists in 1998, "I cannot think of a timewhen we have had a region emerge as suddenlyto become as strategically significant as the

Caspian.”14

I shall suggest that the purpose as well as theresult of protecting the two Saudis may havebeen to fulfill the objectives of Cheney,Rumsfeld, and the Project for the NewAmerican Century (PNAC) neocon group forestablishing “forward-based forces” in CentralAsia.15 We shall see that a phone call on 9/11from CIA Director Tenet to Stephen Cambone,a key PNAC figure in the Pentagon, apparentlytransmitted some of the privileged informationthat never reached the FBI.

This neocon agenda was partially to maintainAmerican and Israeli domination of the regionfor security purposes, and (as we shall see) tocreate the conditions for future unilateralpreemptive actions against unfriendly stateslike Iraq. In particular it was designed toestablish new secure bases in the Middle East,anticipating Donald Rumsfeld’s predictableannouncement in 2003 that the U.S. would pull“virtually all of its troops, except some trainingpersonnel,” out of Saudi Arabia.16 But it waspartly also to strengthen American influence inparticular over the newly liberated states ofCentral Asia, with their sizable unproven oiland gas reserves.

Fenton’s alarming conclusion about CIA actionsleading up to the 9/11 attacks makes moresense in the context of this agenda, and also inthe context of three other revealing anomaliesabout Bush’s Terror War. The first is theparadox that this supposed pursuit of al Qaedawas conducted in alliance with the two nations,Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, that were mostactively supporting al Qaeda in other parts ofthe world. In this essay we shall see U.S. andSaudi intelligence cooperating in such a way asto protect, rather than neutralize, Saudi agentsin al Qaeda.

The second anomaly is that although the CIAmay have been focused on crushing al Qaeda,Rumsfeld and Cheney were intent from theoutset on a much wider war. In September

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

4

2001 there was no intelligence on 9/11 linkingthe attacks to Iraq, yet Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld, supported by his deputy PaulWolfowitz, was already observing onSeptember 12 “that there were no decenttargets for bombing in Afghanistan and that weshould consider bombing Iraq, which, he said,had better targets.”17 Rumsfeld’s argument wassupported by a Defense Department paperprepared for the ensuing Camp David meetingsof September 15-16, which “proposed that ‘theimmediate priority targets for initial action’should be al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq.”18

Iraq had been a target for Rumsfeld andWolfowitz since at least 1998, when the twomen co-signed a PNAC letter to PresidentClinton, calling for “the removal of SaddamHussein’s regime from power.”19 But Iraq wasnot the only target in the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz agenda, which since at least 1992had been nothing less than global U.S.dominance, or what former U.S. ColonelAndrew Bacevich called “permanent Americanglobal hegemony.”20 It was a high priority forthe neocons. Even before Bush had beenelected by the Supreme Court in December2000, Cheney was at work securing key postsfor the 1998 letter’s cosigners (includingRichard Armitage, John Bolton, Richard Perle,along with other PNAC personnel like StephenCambone) in the White House, State, andDefense.

The terror war from its outset was designed asan instrument to implement this objective.National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice onSeptember 24 “raised the issue of statesponsorship of terrorism: ‘What is our strategywith respect to countries that support terrorismlike Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Sudan?’”21 Inhis memoir, General Wesley Clark reports thatthe question had evolved by November into aPentagon five-year plan:

As I went back through the

Pentagon in November 2001, oneof the senior military staff officershad time for a chat. Yes, we werestill on track for going againstIraq, he said. But there was more.This was being discussed as part ofa five-year campaign plan, he said,and there were a total of sevencountries, beginning with Iraq,then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran,Somalia and Sudan.22

At about this time, former CIA officer ReuelMarc Gerecht published an article in TheWeekly Standard about the need for a changeof regime in Iran and Syria.2 3 (Gerechtcontinues to warn in The Weekly Standardabout the menace of both nations today.)

In the Clinton era Gerecht, like Cheney andRumsfeld, had been part of the Project for theNew American Century, a hawkish groupcalling both for action against Iraq in particularand also more generally for an expandeddefense budget that would “increase defensespending significantly” in “the cause ofAmerican leadership.” The PNAC report ofSeptember 2000 – Rebuilding America’sDefenses had much to say about Gulf oil andthe importance of retaining and strengthening“forward-based forces in the region.”24

It is relevant that by the end of 2001, in thewake of 9/11 and the Terror War, the UnitedStates had already established new bases inUzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, andwas thus better positioned to influence thebehavior of the newly liberated governments inthe huge oil and gas region east of the Caspian.In the course of this essay we shall see that the2001 agreement to use the first and one of themost important of these bases, Karshi-Khanabad or K-2 in Uzbekistan, grew out of anearlier Pentagon arrangement, supplementedby a CIA liaison agreement negotiated in 1999by Richard Blee of the Alec Station Group, acentral figure in this essay. Most Americans are

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

5

unaware that on 9/11 U.S. Special Forces werealready at K-2 on an Uzbek training mission,and that by September 22, two weeks before aformal U.S.-Uzbek military agreement, “the CIAwas already flying its teams into the massiveKarshi-Khanabad, or K2, air base in southernUzbekistan, where U.S. army engineers wererepairing the runway.”25

Map showing US bases including Karshi-Khanabad

A third anomaly is that the Terror War led to adramatic increase in the resort to terror, andeven torture, by America itself, includingagainst its own citizens. In this context it isrelevant that Cheney and Rumsfeld, throughtheir participation in the Defense Department’ssuper-secret Doomsday Project, had also beenpart of Continuity of Government (COG)planning for undermining the U.S. Bill of Rightsby the warrantless surveillance and detentionof dissenters.26 These plans, dating back to thefear of Communists in the McCarthyite 1950s,have been the underpinnings for the elaborateplans in the Pentagon and elsewhere fordealing with antiwar protests against thePentagon’s plans for global domination.

As I have argued elsewhere, the U.S. is nowspending billions every year on HomelandSecurity in no small part because of the belief,articulated by Marine Colonel Oliver North,

that the Vietnam War was lost in the streets ofAmerica, and that this deterrent to U.S.military operations needed to be dealt with.27

Cheney and Rumsfeld, as part of the so-calledDoomsday Pro ject for Cont inui ty o fGovernment (COG) planning, had been part ofthis effort also.28 In short, 9/11 fulfilled agendaslong contemplated by a small group of officialsfor radical new policies both in Central Asiaand also inside America.

The homicidal crime suggested by Fenton’smeticulous research is one both difficult andpainful to contemplate. America is in a crisistoday because of the activities of the Banks TooBig to Fail, which, as has been pointed out,were also Banks Too Big to Jail – for to punishthem as criminals would endanger America’salready threatened financial structure.29 Thisessay, though detailed, is dealing withsomething analogous, what may have been aCrime Too Big to Punish.

9/11, as will be developed in this essay, hasother points in common with the John F.Kennedy assassination.

The Cover-Up of 9/11 and of the CIA’s Rolein Letting It Happen

After ten years it is important to reassess whatwe know and do not know about the events thatculminated in 9/11, particularly the actions ofthe CIA and the FBI and the denial of criticalinformation to the 9/11 Commission.

Today, we can confidently say:

1) the most important truths stillremain unknown, in large partbecause many o f the mos timportant documents are stilleither unreleased or heavilyredacted;2) the efforts at cover-up continue,if anything more aggressively thanbefore;

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

6

3) In addition to the cover-up,there has been what former 9/11Commission staffer John Farmerhas called either “unprecedentedadministrative incompetence ororganized mendacity” on the partof key figures in Washington.30

These figures include PresidentBush, Vice-President Cheney,NORAD General Richard Myers,and CIA Director George Tenet.They include also PresidentClinton’s National SecurityAdvisor, Samuel Berger, who priorto testifying on these matters, wentto the National Archives andremoved , and presumablyd e s t r o y e d , k e y r e l e v a n tdocumentation.31 In his book,Farmer has in effect endorsed bothof these alternatives.

President Bush awarding National Medal ofHonor to George Tenet, Dec. 14, 200

Farmer’s first alternative, of “unprecedentedadministrative incompetence,” is in effect the

explanation offered by the 9/11 CommissionReport, to deal with a) striking anomalies bothon 9/11 itself, and b) the preceding twentymonths during which important informationwas withheld from the FBI by key personnel inthe CIA’s Bin Laden Unit (the so-called AlecStation). But thanks to the groundbreaking newbook by Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots,we can no longer attribute the anomalous CIAbehavior to “systemic problems,” or what TonySummers rashly cal ls “bureaucrat icconfusion.” 3 2

Building on earlier important books by JamesBamford, Lawrence Wright, Peter Lance, andPhilip Shenon, Fenton demonstrates beyond ashadow of a doubt that there was a systematicCIA pattern of withholding importantinformation from the FBI, even when the FBIwould normally be entitled to it. Even morebrilliantly, he shows that the withholdingpattern has been systematically sustainedthrough four success i ve pos t -9 /11investigations: those of the CongressionalInquiry chaired by Senators Bob Graham andRichard Shelby (still partly withheld), the 9/11Commission, the Department of Justiceinspector general, and the CIA inspectorgeneral.

Most importantly of all, he shows that thenumerous withholdings, both pre- and post9/11, were the work of relatively few people.The withholding of information from the FBIwas principally the work of the so-called “AlecStation group” – a group within but notidentical with the CIA’s Osama Bin Laden Unitor “Alec Station,” consisting largely of CIApersonnel, though including a few FBI as well.Key figures in this group were CIA officer TomWilshire (discussed in the 9/11 CommissionReport as “John”), and his immediate superiorat Alec Station, Richard Blee.

The post-9/11 cover-up of Wilshire’s behaviorwas principally the work of one person,Barbara Grewe, who worked first on the Justice

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

7

Department Inspector General’s investigationof Wilshire’s behavior, then was transferred totwo successive positions with the 9/11Commission’s staff, where, under theleadership of Executive Director Philip Zelikow,she was able to transfer the focus ofinvestigative attention from the performance ofthe CIA to that of the FBI.33 Whether or notGrewe conducted the interviews of Wilshireand other relevant personnel, she “certainlydrew on them when drafting her sections of theCommission’s and Justice Department inspectorgeneral’s reports.”34

Grewe’s repositioning from post to post is asign of an intended cover-up at a higher level.So, as we shall see, is Wilshire’s transfer inMay 2001 from CIA’s Alec Station (the OsamaBin Laden Unit) to the FBI, where he began anew phase of interference with the normal flowof intelligence, obstructing the FBI from withinit.35

The pattern begins with intelligence obtainedfrom surveillance of an important al Qaedasummit meeting of January 2000 in Malaysia,perhaps the only such summit before 9/11. Themeeting drew instant and high-level USattention because of indirect links to a supportelement (a key telephone in Yemen used by alQ a e d a ) s u s p e c t e d o f a c t i n g a s acommunications center in the 1998 bombingsof US Embassies. As Fenton notes, “The CIArealized that the summit was so important thatinformation about it was briefed to CIA and FBIleaders [Louis Freeh and Dale Watson],National Security Adviser Samuel Berger andother top officials.”36

Yet inside Alec Station Tom Wilshire and hisCIA subordinate (known only as “Michelle”)37

blocked the effort of an FBI agent detailedthere (Doug Miller) to notify the FBI that one ofthe participants (Khalid al-Mihdhar) had a USvisa in his passport.38 Worse, Michelle then senta cable to other CIA stations falsely stating thatal-Mihdhar’s “travel documents, including a

multiple entry US visa, had been copied andpassed ‘to the FBI for further investigation.’”39

Alec Station also failed to watchlist theparticipants in the meeting, as was called forby CIA guidelines.40

This was just the beginning of a systematic,sometimes lying pattern, where NSA and CIAinformation about al-Mihdhar and his travelingc o m p a n i o n , N a w a f a l - H a z m i , w a ssystematically withheld from the FBI, liedabout, or manipulated or distorted in such away as to inhibit an FBI investigation of the twoSaudis and their associates. This is a majorcomponent of the 9/11 story; because thebehavior of these two would-be hijackers wasso unprofessional that, without this CIAprotection provided by the Alec Station Group,they would almost certainly have been detectedand detained or deported, long before theyprepared to board Flight 77 in Washington.41

Fenton concludes with a list of thirty-fivedifferent occasions where the two allegedhijackers were protected in this fashion, fromJanuary 2000 to about September 5, 2001, lessthan a week before the hijackings. In hisanalysis, the incidents fall into two maingroups. The motive he attributes to the earlierones, such as the blocking of Doug Miller’scable, was “to cover a CIA operation that wasalready in progress.”43 However after “thesystem was blinking red” in the summer of2001, and the CIA expected an imminentattack, Fenton can see no other plausibleexplanation than that “the purpose ofwithholding the information had become toallow the attacks to go forward.”44

Wilshire’s pattern of interference changedmarkedly after his move to the Bureau. When inCIA he had moved to block transmittal ofintelligence to the FBI. Now, in contrast, heinitiated FBI reviews of the same material, butin such a way that the reviews were conductedin too leisurely a fashion to bear fruit before9/11. Fenton suspects that Wilshire anticipated

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

8

a future review of his files; and was laying afalse trail of documentation to neutralize hisembarrassing earlier performance.45

I believe we must now accept Fenton’s findingof fact: “It is clear that this information was notwithheld through a series of bizarre accidents,but intentionally.”46 However, I suggest adifferent explanation as to what thoseintentions originally were, one which issuperficially much simpler, more benign, andalso more explicative of other parts, apparentlyunrelated, of the 9/11 mystery.

The Liaison Agreements with OtherIntelligence Agencies

Initially, I believe, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmimay have been protected because they hadbeen sent to America by the Saudi GIDintelligence service, which would explain whyafter their arrival they were apparentlybankrolled indirectly by the Saudi embassy inWashington. The facts are well summarized byPaul Church in Asia Times Online (February 11,2012):

[B]etween 1998 and 2002, up toUS$73,000 in cashier cheques wasfunneled by [Saudi AmbassadorPrince] Bandar's wife Haifa - whoonce described the elder Bushes aslike "my mother and father" - totwo Californian families known tohave bankrolled al-Midhar and al-Hazmi. … Princess Haifa sentregular monthly payments ofbetween $2,000 and $3,500 toMajeda Dweikat, wife of OsamaBasnan, believed by variousinvestigators to be a spy for theSaudi government. Many of thecheques were signed over to ManalBajadr, wife of Omar al-Bayoumi,himself suspected of covertlyworking for the kingdom. TheBasnans, the al-Bayoumis and the

two 9/11 hijackers once shared thesame apartment block in SanDiego. It was al-Bayoumi whogreeted the killers when they firstarrived in America, and providedthem, among other assistance,with an apartment and socialsecurity cards. He even helped themen enroll at flight schools inFlorida.”47

If the two Saudis were in fact sent by the GID,they would almost certainly have been admittedto the U.S. under the terms of the liaisonagreement between the GID and the CIA.48

Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of the GID,has sa id that he shared his a l Qaedainformation with the CIA, and that in 1997 theSaudis “established a joint intelligencecommittee with the United States to shareinformation on terrorism in general and on…alQaeda in particular.”49 The 9/11 CommissionReport adds that after a post-millenniumreview, the Counterterrorism Center (whichincluded Alec Station, the Bin Laden Unit)intended to proceed with its plan of half a yearearlier, “building up the capabilities of foreignsecurity services that provided intelligence vialiaison.”50

This was a Blee specialty. Steve Coll reportsthat Richard Blee and his superior Cofer Black,excited about the opportunities presented byliaison arrangements for expanding the scopeof CIA reach in critical regions, had flowntogether into Tashkent in 1999, and negotiateda new liaison agreement with Uzbekistan.51

According to Coll and the Washington Post, thisarrangement soon led, via Tashkent, to a CIAliaison inside Afghanistan with the NorthernAlliance.52 Thomas Ricks and Susan Glasserreported in the Washington Post that,beginning after the embassy bombings in Dares Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, “The UnitedStates and Uzbekistan have quietly conductedjoint covert operations aimed at countering

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

9

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime and itsterrorist allies …, according to officials fromboth nations."53

This involvement in Uzbekistan was part of awider regional pattern. Beginning in 1997, theU.S. had begun a series of annual militarymaneuvers with Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbekforces, as exercises for possible deployment ofcombat U.S. forces in the region.

CENTRAZBAT ’97, as it wasknown, was clearly a test ofAmerica’s ability to project powerinto the Caspian basin in the eventof a crisis. “There is no nation onthe face of the earth that wecannot get to,” said General JackSheehan…the highest-rankingofficer to attend the exercise. And,lest anyone doubted the nature ofour interests in the region, adeputy assistant secretary ofdefense accompanying Sheehan,Catherine Kelleher, cited “thepresence of enormous energyresources” as a justification forAmerican military involvement.The 1997 operation was the first inan annual series CENTRAZBATexercises designed to test thespeed with which Washingtoncould deploy U.S.-based forcesd i rec t l y to the reg ion andcommence combat operations.107

In other words, the Pentagon had been activein Uzbekistan for four years before the publicRumsfeld-Karimov agreement of October 2001.

Speaking as a former junior diplomat, let meobserve that a liaison arrangement wouldprobably have required special accessclearances for those privy to the arrangementand sharing the liaison information.54 Thiswould explain the exclusion of the FBI agentswho were not cleared for this information, aswell as the behavior of other non-cleared CIAagents who proceeded to col lect anddisseminate information about the two allegedhijackers. Alec Station needed both to protectthe double identity of the two Saudis, and tomake sure that they were not embarrassinglydetained by the FBI.

Almost certainly the CIA had relevant liaisonarrangements, not just with the Saudi GID andUzbekistan, but also with the Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, as well as theintelligence services of Egypt, and perhapsYemen and Morocco. In particular there isreason to think that Ali Mohamed, a doubleagent who was protected by the FBI from beingdetained in Canada, thus allowing him to helporganize the al Qaeda embassy bombings of1998, was permitted under such arrangementsto enter the US as an agent of foreignintelligence, probably Egyptian.55 Ali Mohamedfigures both in the content and as source of thePresident’s Daily Brief (PDB) of August 6, 2001,in which the CIA warned the president, “BinLadin Determined to Strike in US.”56 Accordingto Mohamed’s FBI handler, Jack Cloonan, “allthat information came from Ali,” while the PDB

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

10

itself attributes its key finding to what “anEgyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [---] service.”57 (Ali Mohamed was definitely EIJ,and this service was probably Egyptian.)

Ali Mohamed

But when Mohamed, like al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, was inappropriately admitted to the US,it was reportedly not by the CIA, but possiblyby “some other Federal agency.”58 This wasvery possibly a Pentagon agency, because from1987 to 1989, Ali Mohamed “was assigned tothe U.S. [Army] Special Operations Command[SOCOM] in Fort Bragg, the home of the GreenBerets and the Delta Force, the el i tecounterterrorism squad.”59 SOCOM, whichincludes JSOC (the Joint Special OperationsCommand), has its own intelligence division;60

and SOCOM is the command that first mountedthe Able Danger program in 1999 to track alQaeda operatives, and then, inexplicably, bothshut it down before 9/11 and destroyed itsdatabase.61 In addition SOCOM was working inUzbekistan with CIA operatives as a result ofthe liaison agreement negotiated by CoferBlack and Richard Blee of the CTC.

Cofer Black

For this and other reasons, I suggestreconceptualizing what Fenton calls theanomalous “Alec Station group” as an inter-agency liaison team (or teams) with specialaccess clearances, including Alec Stationpersonnel, collaborating personnel in the FBI,and poss ib ly SOCOM. (One o f thesecollaborators was FBI agent Dina Corsi, whoaccording to Fenton withheld vital informationfrom fellow agent Steve Bongardt even afterthe NSA had cleared it for him.)62

Background: the Safari Club and WilliamCasey

These arrangements can be traced in one formor another, at least back to the 1970s. Thensenior CIA officers and ex-officers (notablyRichard Helms), who were dissatisfied with theCIA cutbacks instituted under Jimmy Carter’sCIA director, Stansfield Turner, organized analternative network, the so-called Safari Club.Subordinated to intelligence chiefs fromFrance, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and(under the Shah) Iran, the Safari Club provideda home to CIA officers like Theodore Shackleyand Thomas Clines, who had been marginalizedor fired by CIA Director Turner. As Prince Turkilater explained, the purpose of the Safari Clubwas not just to exchange information, but toconduct covert operations that the CIA couldno longer carry out directly in the wake of theWatergate scandal and subsequent reforms.63

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

11

In the 1980s, CIA Director William Casey madekey decisions in the conduct of the Afghancovert war, not through his own CIAbureaucracy but with the Saudi intelligencechiefs, first Kamal Adham and then PrinceTurki. Among these decisions was the creationof a foreign legion to assist the Afghanmujahideen in their war against the Soviets – inother words, the creation of that supportnetwork which, since the end of that war, wehave known as al Qaeda.64 Casey worked outthe details with the two Saudi intelligencechiefs, and also with the head of the Bank ofCredit and Commerce International (BCCI), theSaudi-Pakistani bank in which Adham and Turkiwere both shareholders.

In so doing, Casey was in effect running asecond or back-channel CIA, building up thefuture al Qaeda in Pakistan with the Saudis,even though the official CIA hierarchyunderneath him in Langley rightly “thought thisunwise.”65 In American War Machine, I situatedthe Safari Club and BCCI in a succession of” second C IA” o r “a l t e rna t i ve C IA”arrangements dating back to the creation of theOffice of Policy Coordination (OPC) in 1948.Thus it is relevant that CIA Director GeorgeTenet, following Casey’s precedent, met withSaudi Ambassador Bandar around once amonth, and would not tell CIA officers handlingSaudi issues what he had discussed.66

Fenton himself invokes the example of theSafari Club in proposing the possibleexplanation that Blee and Wilshire used a“parallel network” to track al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi inside the United States. In his words,“Withholding the information about Almihdharand Alhazmi only makes sense if the CIA wasmonitoring the two men in the US itself, eitherofficially or off the books.”67 But a third optionwould be that the GID was monitoring theirmovements, a situation quite compatible withSaudi Prince Bandar’s claim that Saudi securityhad been “actively following the movements ofmost of the terrorists with precision.”68

Joseph and Susan Trento heard from a formerCIA officer, once based in Saudi Arabia, that“Both Hazmi and Mihdhar were Saudiagents.”69 If so, they were clearly doubleagents, acting (or posing) as terrorists at thesame time they were acting (or posing) asinformants. In espionage, double agents areprized and often valuable; but to rely on them(as the example of Ali Mohamed illustrates) canalso be dangerous.

This was particularly the case for the CIA withrespect to Saudi Arabia, whose GID supportedal Qaeda energetically in countries like Bosnia,in exchange for a pledge (negotiated by SaudiInterior Minister Naif bin Abdul Aziz withOsama bin Laden) that al Qaeda “would notinterfere with the politics of Saudi Arabia orany Arab country.”70 Pakistan’s ISI was evenmore actively engaged with al Qaeda, and someelements of ISI were probably closer to theideological goals of al Qaeda, than to Pakistan’snominally secular government.

But in all cases the handling of il legalinformants is not just dangerous andunpredictable, but corrupting. To act theirparts, the informants must break the law; andtheir handlers, knowing this, must protect themby failing to report them, and then, all toooften, intercede to prevent their arrest byothers. In this way, handlers, over and overagain, become complicit in the crimes of theirinformants.71

Even in the best of circumstances, decisionshave to be made whether to a l low aninformant’s crime to go forward, or to thwart itand risk terminating the usefulness of theinformant. In such moments, agencies are alltoo likely to make the choice that is not in thepublic interest.

A very relevant example is the first WorldTrade Center bombing of 1993 – relevantbecause Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the allegedmastermind of 9/11, was one of the 1993plotters as well. The FBI had an informant,

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

12

Emad Salem, among the 1993 plotters; andSalem later claimed, with supporting evidencefrom tapes of his FBI debriefings, that the FBIdeliberately chose not to shut down the plot.Here is Ralph Blumenthal’s careful account inthe New York Times of this precursor to themystery of 9/11:

Law-enforcement officials [i.e. theFBI] were told that terrorists wereb u i l d i n g a b o m b t h a t w a seventually used to blow up theWorld Trade Center, and theyplanned to thwart the plotters bysecretly substituting harmlesspowder for the explosives, aninformer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helpedthe plotters build the bomb andsupply the fake powder, but theplan was called off by an F.B.I.supervisor who had other ideasabout how the informer, Emad A.Salem, should be used, theinformer said.

The account, which is given in thetranscript of hundreds of hours oftape recordings Mr. Salem secretlymade of h is ta lks with law-enforcement agents, portrays theauthorities as in a far betterposition than previously known tofoil the Feb. 26 bombing of NewYork City's tallest towers. Theexplosion left six people dead,more than 1,000 injured anddamages in excess of half a billiondollars. Four men are now on trialin Manhattan Federal Court in thatattack.72

What makes the 1993 plot even more relevantis that Salem, according to many sources, wasan agent of the Egyptian intelligence service,

sent to America to spy on the actions of theEgyptian “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman.73

This raises the possibility that the F.B.I.supervisor who had “other ideas” about how touse Emad Salem, was a member of a liaisonteam, with special knowledge he could notshare with other FBI agents. It may have been,for example, that the Egyptian intelligenceservice declined to let Salem’s cover be blown.This suggestion is both speculative andproblematic, but it has the advantage ofoffering a relatively coherent explanation forotherwise baffling behavior.

This explanation does not at all rule out thepossibility that some officials had more sinistermotives for allowing the bombing to take placeand covering it up afterwards. Sheikh OmarAbdel Rahman was at this very time a keyfigure in a sensitive Saudi program, signed onto by U.S. off icials as well , to supplymujahideen warriors in Bosnia against Serbia(including some, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, whowere later accused of the 9/11 plot).74 It is clearfrom both investigative and prosecutorialbehavior that a number of different USagencies did not want to disturb Rahman’sactivities. Even after Rahman himself wasfinally indicted in the 1995 conspiracy case toblow up New York landmarks, the USGovernment continued to protect Ali Mohamed,a key figure in the conspiracy.

Worse, the performance of the FBI in allowingthe bombing to proceed was only one of aseries of interrelated bungled performancesand missed opportunities, climaxing with 9/11.The first was in connection with the murder inNew York of the Jewish extremist Meir Kahane.The FBI and NY police actually detained two ofthe murderers in that case and then releasedthem, allowing them to take part in the WTCbombing of 1993. A key trainer of the two menwas Ali Mohamed while still in U.S. SpecialForces, whose name was systematicallyprotected from disclosure by the prosecutingattorney, Patrick Fitzgerald. Then in 1994,

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

13

when Ali Mohamed was detained in Vancouverby the Canadian RCMP, the FBI intervened toarrange for his release. This freed Mohamed toproceed to Kenya, where he became the leadorganizer of the 1998 US Embassy bombing inNairobi.75

Ali Mohamed was finally detained by theAmericans in 1998, but still not imprisoned. Hewas apparently still a free man when he readilyconfessed to his FBI handler, Jack Cloonan,that he not only knew at least three of the 9/11alleged hijackers, but had helped instruct themin how to hijack airplanes.76 According to AliSoufan, in a book released in September 2011,Ali Mohamed was still awaiting sentencing in2011, twelve years after his guilty plea in May1999.77

We have to conclude that there is somethingprofoundly dysfunctional going on here, andhas been going on since before 9/11, indeedunder both political parties. The conditions ofsecrecy created by special clearances have notjust masked this dysfunctionality; they have, Iwould argue, helped create it. The history ofespionage demonstrates that secret power,when operating in the sphere of illegalactivities, becomes, time after time, antitheticalto public democratic power.78 The morerestricted the group of special planners withspecial clearances, the less likely are theirdecisions to conform with the dictates ofinternational and domestic law, still less withcommon morality and common sense.

Add to these conditions of unwholesomesecrecy the fundamentally unhealthy, indeedcorrupt, relationship of U.S. intelligenceagencies to those of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.This has been profoundly anti-democratic bothat home and in Asia. The US dependency onSaudi oil has in effect subsidized a wealth-generated spread of Islamic fundamentalismthroughout the world, while what the 99.9percent of ordinary Americans pay for oil andgas generates huge sums, which Saudis then

recycle into the financial institutions of the onetenth of one percent at the pinnacle of WallStreet.

In like manner, America’s fraught relationshipwith the ISI of Pakistan has resulted in adramatic increase in international herointrafficking by the two agencies’ Afghanclients.79 In short the bureaucratic dysfunctionwe are talking about in 9/11 is a symptom of alarger dysfunction in America’s relationshipwith Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan, and throughthem with the rest of the world.

Liaison Agreements and the Protection ofAl-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi

Even without the suggestive precedent of the1993 WTC bombing, it is legitimate to positthat liaison agreements may have inhibited theroundup of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Let us consider first Fenton’s finding offact: “It is clear that this information [about thetwo men] was not withheld through a series ofbizarre accidents, but intentionally.”80 Thisfinding I consider rock hard. But we cannot beso confident about his explanation: that “thepurpose of withholding the information hadbecome to allow the attacks to go forward.”81

I believe that in fact there are a number ofpossibilities about the intention, ranging fromthe relatively innocent (the inhibitions derivingfrom a liaison agreement) to the nefarious.Before considering these, let us deconstruct thenotion of “letting the attacks go forward.”Clearly, if the alleged hijackers were notdetained at the airport gates, people wouldprobably have been killed – but how many?Recall that in the Operation Northwoodsdocuments, which envisaged planning “falseflag” attacks to justify a U.S. militaryintervention in Cuba, the Joint Chiefs wrote“We could develop a Communist Cuban terrorcampaign” in which “We could sink a boatloadof Cubans.”82 Would the loss of four planeloadsof passengers have been a qualitatively

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

14

different tragedy?

Of course 9/11 became a much greater tragedywhen three of the planes hit the two Towersand the Pentagon. But it is possible that theliaison minders of the two Saudis did notimagine that their targets were capable of sucha feat. Recall that their flying lessons, even in aCessna, were such a fiasco that the lessonswere quickly terminated. Their instructor toldthem “that flying was simply not for them.”83

Let me suggest that there are three separableingredients to the 9/11 attacks: the hijackings,the str ikes on the bui ldings, and theastonishing collapse of the three WTCbuildings. It is at least possible that the AlecStation liaison team, as a group, contemplatedonly the first stage, without ever imagining thetwo stages that ensued.

A minimal, least malign initial explanation forthe withholding of information about two of thealleged hijackers would be the hypothesis Iproposed in the case of Emad Salem – therestricted access created by the specialclearance for a liaison agreement. But just as in1993, the secret power created behind the wallof restrictive clearances may have beenexploited for ulterior purposes. The dangeroussituation thus created – of potential would-be-hijackers being protected from detention at atime of expected attack – may have inspiredsome to exploit the resulting conditions ofsecrecy as an opportunity to plan an incident tojustify war. One important analogy with the1964 false Second Tonkin Gulf Incident thatwas used to justify attacking North Vietnam isthe same presence of a powerful faction – in2001 the PNAC clique inside government – thatwas bent on unilateral military action.84

One clue to this more sinister intention is thatthe pattern of withholdings detailed by Fentonis not restricted exclusively to the two Saudisand their CIA station handlers. There are a fewconcatenating withholdings by other agencies –above all the Able Danger info that was

destroyed at SOCOM and the withholding –apparently by NSA -- of an important relevantintercept, apparently about the allegedhijackers and Moussaoui.85

If the NSA was withholding information fromrelevant officials, it would recall the role of theNSA at the time of the second Tonkin GulfIncident in August 1964. Then the NSA, at acrucial moment, forwarded 15 pieces of SIGINT(signals intelligence) which indicated – falsely –that there had been a North Vietnamese attackon two US destroyers. At the same time NSAwithheld 107 pieces of SIGINT which indicated– correctly – that no North Vietnamese attackhad occurred.86 NSA’s behavior at that timewas mirrored at the CIA: both agencies wereaware of a powerful consensus inside theJohnson administration that had already agreedon provoking North Vietnam, in hopes ofcreating an opportunity for military response.87

We know from many accounts of the Bushadministration that there was also a powerfulpro-war consensus within it, centered onCheney, Rumsfeld, and the so-called cabal ofPNAC (the Project for the New AmericanCentury) that before Bush’s election had beenlobbying vigorously for military action againstIraq. We know also that Rumsfeld’s immediateresponse to 9/11 was to propose an attack onIraq, and that planning for such an attack wasindeed instituted on September 17.88 It is worthconsidering whether some of those protectingthe alleged hijackers from detention did notshare these warlike ambitions.89

Did Richard Blee Have an Ulterior Motivefor Withholding Information?

Fenton speculates that one of those seeking apretext for an escalated war against al Qaedamay have been Richard Blee. We saw that Blee,with Cofer Black, negotiated an intelligence-sharing liaison agreement with Uzbekistan. By2000 SOCOM had become involved, and “U.S.Special Forces began to work more overtly with

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

15

the Uzbek military on training missions.”90 Inthe course of t ime the Uzbek l ia isonagreement, as we saw, expanded into asubordinate liaison with the Northern Alliancein Afghanistan. Blee, meeting with Massoud inOctober 1999, agreed to lobby in Washingtonfor more active support for the NorthernAlliance.91

Panjshir valley, area of Northern Alliancedominance

After the USS Cole bombing in Aden in 2000,Blee was pushing to expand the Uzbek militarymission still further into a joint attack force inconjunction with the Northern Alliance forcesof Massoud. There was considerable objectionto this while Clinton was still president, partlyon the grounds that Massoud was fightingPakistani-backed Taliban forces with Russianand Iranian support, and partly because he wasknown to be supporting his forces by herointrafficking.92 But in the spring of 2001 ameeting of department deputies in the newBush administration revived the plans of Bleeand Black, (supported by Counterterrorismchief Richard Clarke) for large-scale covert aidto Massoud.93 On September 4, one weekbefore 9/11, the Bush Cabinet authorized thedrafting of a new presidential directive,NSPD-9, authorizing a covert action programalong these l ines in conjunction withMassoud. 9 4

In the new Bush administration Blee was nolonger a minority voice, and six weeks after9/11 he would be named the new CIA stationchief in Kabul.95 Fenton reports that in thiscapacity Blee became involved in the renditionof al Qaeda detainees, and suggests that themotive may have been to obtain, by torture, afalse confession (by Ibn Shaikh al-Libi) to Iraqiinvolvement with al Qaeda. This falseconfession then became part of the “fixing” ofevidence, and “formed a key part of Secretaryof State Colin Powell ’s embarrassingpresentation to the UN to support the invasionof Iraq.”96

Did SOCOM Have an Ulterior Motive forClosing Down Able Danger?

What ensued after 9/11 went far beyond Blee’sprogram for paramilitary CIA involvement withthe Northern Alliance. The CIA component inAfghanistan was soon dwarfed by the forces ofSOCOM: George Tenet reported that by late2001 the US force in Afghanistan consisted ofabout 500 fighters, including “110 CIA officers,316 Special Forces personnel, and scores ofJoint Special Operations Command raiderscreating havoc behind enemy lines.”97

In the Bush administration Stephen Cambone,who earlier had collaborated with Rumsfeldand Cheney in signing the PNAC’s statement,Rebuilding America’s Defenses, became one ofthe active promoters of using SOCOM specialforces to operate covertly against al Qaeda, notjust in Afghanistan, but “anywhere in theworld.”98

It is possible that anything Blee may have donein Alec Station to prepare the way for 9/11 wasonly one part of a larger inter-agencyoperation, in which an equivalent role wasplayed by SOCOM’s shutting down of the AbleDanger project. This might help explain ahandwritten notation around 10 PM on 9/11 byStephen Cambone, then one of Cheney’s PNACappointees under Rumsfeld in the Pentagon,

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

16

after a phone call with George Tenet:

AA 77 - 3 indiv[iduals] have beenfollowed since Millennium & Cole1 guy is assoc[iate] of Cole bomber2 entered US in early July( 2 o f 3 p u l l e d a s i d e &interrogated?) 9 9

The “guy” here is probably al-Mihdhar, and the“Cole bomber” probably Khallad [or Tawfiq] binAttash, a major al Qaeda figure connected notjust to the Cole bombing but also to the 1998embassy attacks. One wants to know why Tenetwas sharing with a hawk in the Pentagoninformation that has apparently never beenshared by anyone outside the CIA since. And isit a coincidence that Cambone, like Blee,oversaw a program – in this case staffed bySOCOM special operations personnel – usingtor ture to in terrogate deta inees inAfghanistan? 1 0 0

Just as Blee was reportedly a special protégé ofGeorge Tenet at CIA, so Cambone wasnotorious for his fierce loyalty to first DickCheney and later Donald Rumsfeld in thePentagon. It is not known whether he wasassociated with the Continuity of Government(COG) planning project where Rumsfeld andCheney, among others, prepared for thewarrantless surveillance and detentionmeasures that were (as I have arguedelsewhere) implemented beginning on themorning of 9/11 and continuing to today.101 Noris it known if he was associated in any way withCheney’s Counterterrorism Task Force in theSpring of 2001, which has been alleged to havebeen a source for the war games, includingrogue plane attacks, which added to thedisarray of the US response, on 9/11.102

Deep Events as a Repeated Pattern of U.S.Engagement in War

I want to conclude with a little historical

perspective on the dysfunction we have beenlooking at. In a sense 9/11 was unprecedented– the greatest mass murder ever committed inone day on U.S. soil. In another sense itrepresented an example of the kind ofsignature event with which we have becomeonly too fami l iar s ince the Kennedyassassination. I have called these events deepevents – events deeply rooted in illegal covertactivity in various branches of US intelligenceand with a predictable accompanying pattern ofofficial cover-ups backed up by amazing mediamalfunction and dishonest best-selling books.Some of these deep events, like the Kennedyassassination, Tonkin Gulf, and 9/11, should beconsidered structural deep events, because oftheir permanent impact on history.

It is striking that these structural deep events –the JFK assassination, Tonkin Gulf, and 9/11 –should all have been swiftly followed byAmerica’s engagement in ill-considered wars.The reverse is also true: all of America’ssignificant wars since Korea – Laos, Vietnam,Afghanistan (twice, once covertly and nowovertly), and Iraq – have all been preceded bystructural deep events. As I wrote in AmericanWar Machine, a J-5 Staff Report of 1963reported to the Joint Chiefs that “Theengineering of a series of provocations tojustify military intervention is feasible andcould be accomplished with the resourcesavailable.” Tonkin Gulf, 9/11, and even theKennedy assassination itself can all be seen asevents that were indeed “engineered,” alongthe guidelines set out in 1962 in the JointChiefs of Staff proposals for ProjectNorthwoods.

In two recent books I have been slowlypersuaded, against my own initial incredulity,to list more than a dozen significant parallelsbetween the Kennedy assassination and 9/11.Thanks to Kevin Fenton’s brilliant research, Ican list a further analogy. The CIA files on LeeHarvey Oswald, more or less dormant for twoyears, suddenly became hyperactive in the six

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

17

weeks before the Kennedy assassination.Fenton has demonstrated a similar burst ofactivity in FBI files on the two Saudis in theweeks before 9/11 – a burst initiated by TomWilshire, at a time suspiciously close to whenthe alleged hijackers settled on a final date fortheir attack. Then in both cases there were alsostrange delays, leaving the files open at thetime of the deep events.105

T h e I m p a c t o f 9 / 1 1 o n U . S . a n dInternational Law

Throughout this essay we have seen twodifferent and indeed antithetical levels of U.S.foreign policy at work. On the surface level ofpublic diplomacy we see a commitment tointernational law and the peaceful resolution ofdifferences. On a deeper level, represented bya long-time Saudi connection and covertarrangements to control international oil, wesee the toleration and indeed protection ofterrorists in fulfillment of both Saudi andAmerican secret goals. We should see theactions in 2000-2001 of the “Alec Stationgroup,” with respect to the two allegedhijackers al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, in thecontext of this long-time Saudi connection, aswell as of the secret consensus in 2001 – just asearlier in 1964 – that America’s oil and securityneeds (along with those of Israel) required anew American mobilization for war.

Horrendous as it was, the murder of over 2000civilians on 9/11 was not the only major crimeof that day. 9/11 also initiated a series of on-going onslaughts on both international anddomestic U.S. law. Law and freedom gotogether, and both had been significantlyenhanced by the founding documents of theUnited States in the 18th Century. The worldbenefited; written constitutions soon appearedon every continent; and the Young Europemovements, inspired by America’s example,began the long difficult process towards today’sEuropean Union.

Starting in 2001, both law and freedom have

been progressively eroded. Internationalcomity, which depends on each state not doingto others what they would not want done tothem, has been supplanted, at least for a while,by U.S. unilateral military engagement withoutconstraint, acting without fear of retribution.Drone killings in far corners of the world havenow become routine, causing more than anestimated 2000 Pakistani deaths, the vastmajority of them untargeted civilians, and over75 percent of them under President Obama.106

The preemptive war against Iraq, despite beingp r o v e n b o t h u n w a r r a n t e d a n dcounterproductive, has been followed by thepreemptive bombing of Libya, and the prospectof still further campaigns against Syria andIran.

Writing as a Canadian, let me say that I believein American exceptionalism, and that at onetime America was truly exceptional in itsunprecedented replacement of authoritarianwith limited constitutional government. TodayAmerica is still exceptional, but for itspercentage of citizens who are incarcerated,for its disparity in wealth and income betweenrich and poor (a ratio exceeded among largenations only by China), and for its wanton useof lethal power abroad.

Only the last of these trends began with 9/11.But 9/11 itself should be seen as a dialecticaloutcome of America’s imperial expansion andsimultaneous decay -- a process inevitablyafflicting those superstates that amass andretain more power than is necessary for theorderly management of their own affairs.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomatand English Professor at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oila n d W a r(https://www.google.com/search?q=Drugs+Oil+ a n d + W a r & h l = e n & c l i e n t = f i r e f o x -a & h s = 8 2 e & r l s = o r g . m o z i l l a : e n -US:official&prmd=imvnsb&source=lnms&tbm=shop&ei=NjhhT_jfIqfb0QHgydCvBw&sa=X&o

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

18

i=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=6&ved=0CBgQ_AUoBQ&biw=1286&bih=750), The Road to 9/11(https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Road+ t o + 9 / 1 1 & h l = e n & c l i e n t = f i r e f o x -a & h s = w N K & r l s = o r g . m o z i l l a : e n -US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=shop&ei=PThhT7KWPOj20gGB3oTTBw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=6&ved=0CBcQ_AUoBQ&biw=1286&bih=750), and The WarConspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics ofW a r(http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=The+War+Conspiracy:+JFK,+9/11&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=miz&rls=org.mozil la:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&biw=1286&bih=750&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=10528540826223734893&sa=X&ei=pTlhT97ZHa-00QGYwZieBw&ved=0CE8Q8wIwAA). His mostrecent book is American War Machine: DeepPolitics, the CIA Global Drug Connection andt h e R o a d t o A f g h a n i s t a n(http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=American+War+Machine:+Deep+Politics,+the+CIA+Global+Drug+Connection+and+the+Road+to+Afghanistan&hl=en&client=firefox-a & h s = F j z & r l s = o r g . m o z i l l a : e n -US:official&prmd=imvnsfd&biw=1286&bih=750&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=7660953 8 4 7 4 1 0 7 0 5 3 5 6 & s a = X & e i = 0 D l h T 7 r -OOf00gHnnoiyBw&ved=0CFEQ8wIwAA). Hiswebsite, which contains a wealth of hisw r i t i n g s , i s h e r ehttp://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html

Recommended citation: Peter Dale Scott,'Launching the U.S. Terror War: the CIA, 9/11,Afghanistan, and Central Asia,' The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 12, No 3, March19, 2012.

Notes:1 A shorter version of this paper was presentedat the International Hearings on 9/11 atToronto, September 11, 2011. It can be seen onl i n e a t h e r e(http://www.infowars.com/peter-dale-scott-at-the-911-toronto-hearings-91111/).

2 But perhaps no single act of terror committedin the last decade, whether by Qaddafi in Libyaor Assad in Syria, has surpassed or even comeclose to the U.S. devastation of the Iraqi city ofFallujah.

3 "Statement by the President in His Address tothe Nation,” September 11, 2001, here(http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.es.html).On September 20, 2001, Bush said in anaddress to a joint session of congress, "Our'war on terror' begins with al Qaeda, but it doesnot end there. It will not end until everyterrorist group of global reach has been found,stopped and defeated."

4 On this point see the National Commission onTerrorist Attacks upon the United States, The9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W.Norton, 2004), 66: “To date we have seen noevidence that … Iraq cooperated with al Qaedain developing or carrying out any attacksagainst the United States.”

5 Sunday Times (London), May 1, 2005; MarkDanner, The Secret Way to War: the DowningStreet Memo and the Iraq War's buried history(New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

6 9/11 Commission Report, 266-72 (272).

7 Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski, “Who IsRich Blee?” 911Truth.org, September 21, 2111,h e r e(http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20110921153919600); Rory O’Connor and RayNowosielski, “Insiders voice doubts about CIA’s9/11 story,” Salon, October 14, 2111, here(http://www.salon.com/writer/rory_oconnor_and_ray_nowosielski/). O’Connor and Nowosielskia d d c o r r o b o r a t i o n f r o m f o r m e rCounterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke. “Clarkesaid he assumed that ‘there was a high-leveldecision in the CIA ordering people not toshare that information.’ When asked who mighthave issued such an order, he replied, ‘I wouldthink it would have been made by the director,”

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

19

referring to Tenet — although he added thatTenet and others would never admit to thetruth today “even if you waterboarded them.’

8 Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots(Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2011).

9 9/11 Commission Report, 259, 271; LawrenceWright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and theRoad to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 352–54;Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010),203.

10 Lawrence Wright, “The Agent,” New Yorker,July 10 and 17, 2006, 68; cf. Wright, LoomingTower, 339-44; discussion in Peter Dale Scott,The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the DeepPolitics of War (Ipswich MA: Mary FerrellFoundation Press, 2008), 355, 388-89.

11 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 383-86.

12 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 48. Cf.Lawrence Wright, “The Agent,” New Yorker,July 10 and 17, 2006, 68; quoted approvingly inPeter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 399.

13 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 371, cf. 95.

14 Lutz Kleverman, “The new Great Game,”Guardian (London), October 19, 2003, here(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/oct/20/oil).

15 Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy,Forces and Resources For a New Century(http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf): A Report of theProject for the New American Century,S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 0 , h e r e(http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf), 17, 27.

16 “US Pulls out of Saudi Arabia,” BBC News,A p r i l 2 9 , 2 0 0 3 , h e r e(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm).

17 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies:inside America's war on terror (New York: FreePress, 2004), 31.

18 Bradley Graham, By His Own Rules: TheAmbitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures ofDonald Rumsfeld (New York: Public Affairs,2009), 290.

19 PNAC, Letter to President Clinton on Iraq,J a n u a r y 2 6 , 1 9 9 8 , h e r e(http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm).

2 0 Gary Dorr ien , Imper ia l Des igns :Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana(http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Designs-Neoc o n s e r v a t i s m - N e w -Americana/dp/0415949807/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) (New York: Routledge, 2004).Bacevich was speaking of a 1992 memo draftedby Wolfowitz for then Defense SecretaryCheney, calling for America to retain the powerto act unilaterally. See Lewis D. Solomon, PaulD. Wolfowitz: visionary intel lectual ,policymaker, and strategist (New York:Praeger, 2007), 52; Andrew Bacevich,American Empire: The Real i t ies andConsequences of U.S. Diplomacy (CambridgeMA: Harvard UP, 2002), 44.

21 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York:Simon & Schuster, 2002), 131. Much earlier, onthe afternoon of September 11, DOD officialStephen Cambone recorded notes from hisconversation with Rumsfeld : “Near term targetneed -- Go massive Sweep it all up thing relateda n d n o t ” ( h e r e(http://blog.outragedmoderates.org/2006/02/dod-staffers-notes-from-911-obtained.html)).

22 Wesley Clark, Winning Modern Wars (NewYork: PublicAffairs, 2003), 130.

23 Nicholas Lemann, “The Next World Order,”N e w Y o r k e r , A p r i l 1 , 2 0 0 2 , h e r e(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/04/01/020401fa_FACT1).

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

20

24 Rebuilding America's Defenses -- Strategy,Forces and Resources For a New Century(http://templatelab.com/rebuilding-americas-defenses/): A Report of the Project for the NewAmerican Century, September 2000, here(http://templatelab.com/rebuilding-americas-defenses/), 17, 27.

25 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into chaos: theUnited States and the failure of nation buildingin Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia(New York: Viking, 2008), 70, 69; citing AhmedRashid, “US Builds Alliances in Central Asia,”Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1, 2000:“The CIA and the Pentagon had been closelycollaborating with the Uzbek army and secretservices since 1997, providing training,equipment, and mentoring in the hope of usingUzbek Special Forces to snatch Osama binLaden from Afghanistan, a fact I discovered ona trip to Washington in 2000.”

26 Peter Dale Scott, “The Doomsday Project andDeep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and9/11,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus,N o v e m b e r 2 1 , 2 0 1 1 , h e r e(https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3650).

27 Scott, The Road to 9/11: wealth, empire, andthe future of America (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2007), 9.

28 Estimates of annual spending on HomelandSecurity range up to a trillion dollars. SeeStephan Salisbury, “Weaponizing the BodyPolitic,” TomDispatch.com, March 4, 2012,h e r e(http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175511/tomgram%3A_stephan_salisbury%2C_weaponizing_the_body_politic/#more).

29 Cf. Simon Johnson, “Too Big to Jail,” Slate,F e b r u a r y 2 4 , 2 0 1 2 , h e r e(http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2012/02/the_robo_signing_settlement_won_t_help_homeowners_and_it_doesn_t_hurt_the_banks_.html): “The main motivationbehind the administration’s indulgence of

serious criminality evidently is fear of theconsequences of taking tough action onindividual bankers. And maybe officials areright to be afraid, given the massive size of thebanks in question relative to the economy. Infact, those banks are bigger now than theywere before the crisis, and, as James Kwak andI documented at length in our book 13 Bankers,they are much larger than they were 20 yearsago.”

30 John Farmer, The Ground Truth: the untoldstory of America under attack on 9/11 (NewYork: Riverhead Books, 2009), 288; quoted inAnthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, TheEleventh Day: the full story of 9/11 and Osamabin Laden (New York: Ballantine, 2011), 147.

31 Summers , 383-84; cf. Farmer, Ground Truth,41. Although a Democrat, Berger wassubsequently protected by the Republican BushAdministration from having to testify toCongress about his behavior (a condition of hisplea bargain).

32 Summers, Eleventh Day, 334.

33 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 72-79. Grewesubsequently left government to work at theMitre Corp., a private firm doing CIA contractwork with the CIA and another private firm,Ptech. Questions about Ptech and Mitre Corp’swork on FAA-NORAD interoperability systemswere raised in 9/11 testimony presented someyears ago by Indira Singh; see Scott, Road to9/11, 175.

34 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 78. KirstenWilhelm of the National Archives toldFenton,(p. 78) that “It appears Barbara Greweconducted the interviews with ‘John’ [Wilshire]and Jane [Corsi],” another key figure. Wilhelmcould find no “memorandum for the record”(MFR) for the Wilshire interview, which Fentonunderstandably calls “about the most importantinterview the Commission conducted” (p. 79).Summers, also citing correspondence withKirsten Wilhelm, disagrees, saying that the

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

21

report of Wilshire’s interview exists, but “isredacted in its entirety” (Summers, EleventhDay, 381, cf. 552). This is an important point tobe focused on in future investigations.

35 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 225.

36 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 38; citing9/11 Commission Report, 181-82.

37 Michelle has since been identified on theInternet, but so far basically by only onesource.

38 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 42-45;summarizing Justice Department IG Report,239-42; cf. Wright, Looming Tower, 311-12.

3 9 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 50;summarizing Justice Department IG Report,242-43; cf. Wright, Looming Tower, 311.

40 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 45.

41 I do not know whether in fact they boardedthe plane. However I am now satisfied that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi acted as if they intendedto hijack, as evidenced by their al Qaedacontacts in Malaysia and elsewhere, theirattempts to learn to fly, etc.

42 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 383-86.

43 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 48. Cf.Lawrence Wright, “The Agent,” New Yorker,July 10 and 17, 2006, 68; quoted approvingly inPeter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 399.

44 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 371, cf. 95.

45 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 239-42,310-22. Fenton notes that Corsi worked at FBIHQ, which coordinated “liaisons with foreignservices” (Fenton, 313).

46 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 310.

47 The 9/11 Commission Report discounted theimportance of al-Bayoumi (217-18); but the

Report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into9/11 (173-77), even though very heavilyredacted at this point, supplied corroboratinginformation, including a report that Basnan hadonce hosted a party for the “Blind Sheikh”Omar Abdurrahman, involved in the first WorldTrade Center bombing of 1993.

48 At first I suspected, as have others, that thetwo men were Saudi double agents. Anotherpossibility is that they were sent as designatedtargets, to be surveilled by the Saudis and theAmericans separately or together. One of myfew disagreements with Fenton is when he callsal-Mihdhar “one of [the hijackers’] mostexper i enced opera t i ves” (Fen ton ,Disconnecting the Dots, 205). My ownimpress ion i s that he was e i ther aninexperienced and incompetent spy, or elsesomeone deliberately exposing himself todetection, in order to test American responses.

49 Summers, Eleventh Day, 396.

50 9/11 Commission Report, 184.

51 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: the secret history ofthe CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from theSoviet invasion to September 10, 2001 (NewYork: Penguin, 2004), 456-57.

52 Thomas E. Ricks and Susan B. Glasser,Washington Post, October 14, 2001, here(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55834-2001Oct13).

53 Ricks and Susan B. Glasser, Washington Post,October 14, 2001; cf.

54 In 1957, I myself, as a junior Canadiandiplomat, acquired a special access, higher-than-top-secret clearance to access intelligencef r o m N A T O , a r e l a t i v e l y o v e r t a n dstraightforward liaison.

55 For the Ali Mohamed story, see Scott, Roadto 9/11, especially 151-60.

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

22

56 Scott, Road to 9/11, 158; citing John Berger,“Unlocking 9/11: Paving the Road to 9/11”( h e r e(http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html)): ”Mohamed was one ofthe primary sources for the infamous Aug. 6,2001, presidential daily brief (PDB) entitled‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.’” ThePDB, often cited as an example of the CIA’sgood performance, is in my opinion moreprobably another example of the Bin LadenUnit salting the record in preparation forpost-9/11 scrutiny. The PDB, without namingAli Mohamed, refers to him no less than threetimes as a threat, despite the fact that at thetime he was under USG control awaitingsentence for his role in the 1998 embassy plots.The PDB, in other words, appears to have beena performance for the record, analogous toWilshire’s performance in the same month ofAugust at the FBI.

57 John Berger, Ali Mohamed, 20 (Cloonan);9/11 Commission Report, 261 (PDB).

58 James Risen, New York Times, October 31,1998; in Scott, Road to 9/11, 346-47.

59 Raleigh News and Observer, November 13,2001; in Scott, Road to 9/11, 347. I have addedthe word “Army.” The HQ for USSOCOM itselfis at Fort MacDill Air Force Vase in Florida.

60 Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, “‘TopSecret America’: A look at the military’s JointSpecial Operations Command,” WashingtonP o s t , S e p t e m b e r 2 , 2 0 1 1 , h e r e(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-secret-america-a-look-at-the-m i l i t a r y s - j o i n t - s p e c i a l - o p e r a t i o n s -command/2011/08/30/gIQAvYuAxJ_story.html).

61 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 168-69;Summers, Eleventh Day, 371, 550.

62 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 372.

63 Scott, American War Machine, 161; Scott,

Road to 9/11, 62-63.

64 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, oil,and fundamentalism in Central Asia (NewHaven CT: Yale UP, 2000), 129.

65 John Prados, Safe for Democracy, 489;discussion in Scott, American War Machine,12-13.

66 James Risen, State of War: the secret historyof the CIA and the Bush administration (NewYork: Free Press, 2006), 188-89.

67 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 104.

68 Summers, Eleventh Day, 397.

69 Joseph J. and Susan B. Trento, in Summers,Eleventh Day, 399. Since I presented this paperat a conference in Toronto on September 11,2011, “Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democratwho served on the … 9/11 Commission, [has]said in a sworn affidavit … that ‘significantquestions remain unanswered’ about the role ofSaudi institutions. ‘Evidence relating to theplausible involvement of possible Saudigovernment agents in the September 11thattacks has never been fully pursued,’ Mr.Kerrey said” (“Saudi Arabia May Be Tied to9/11, 2 Ex-Senators Say,” New York Times,F e b r u a r y 2 9 , 2 0 0 1 , h e r e(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/graham-and-kerrey -see -poss ib le - saud i -9 -11 -link.html?_r=3)).

70 Wright, Looming Tower, 161; in Summers,Eleventh Day, 216.

71 Such corruption is predictable and verywidespread. In the notorious cases of GregoryScarpa and Whitey Bulger, FBI agents in theNew York and Boston offices were accused ofgiving their mob informants information thatled to the murder of witnesses and otheropponents. Agents in the New York office of theold Federal Bureau of Narcotics became soimplicated in the trafficking of their informants

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

23

that the FBN had to be shut down andreorganized.

72 Ralph Blumenthal, “Tapes Depict Proposal toThwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,”New York Times, October 28, 1993, emphasisadded. The next day, the Times published amodest correction: “Transcripts of tapes madesecretly by an informant, Emad A. Salem, quotehim as saying he warned the Government that abomb was being built. But the transcripts donot make clear the extent to which the Federalauthorities knew that the target was the WorldTrade Center.

73 Scott, Road to 9/11, 145.

74 Peter Dale Scott, "Bosnia, Kosovo, and NowLibya: The Human Costs of Washington's On-G o i n g C o l l u s i o n w i t h T e r r o r i s t s , "(https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578) Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 29, 2011,here (https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578).Evan Kohlmann has described how a Zagreboffice in support of the Saudi-backed jihad inBosnia received “all orders and funding directlyfrom the main United States office of Al-Kifahon Atlantic Avenue controlled by Shaykh OmarAbdel Rahman” (Evan Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’sJihad in Europe, 39-41; citing Steve Coll andSteve LeVine, “Global Network ProvidesMoney, Haven,” Washington Post, August 3,1993).

75 Scott, Road to 9/11, 153, 347; citing “Canadafreed top al Qaeda operative,” {Toronto} Globeand Mai l , November 22 , 2001 , here(http://www.mail-archive.com/hydro@topica.com/msg00224.html).

76 Scott, Road to 9/11, 151-59.

77 Ali Soufan, The Black Banners, 94-95, 561.

78 The corruption appears to be inevitable insuperpowers – states which have accumulatedpower in excess of what is needed for their owndefense. The pattern is less discernible in less

powerful states like Canada.

79 "America's Afghanistan: The NationalSecurity and a Heroin-Ravaged State," Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, #20, 2009, May1 8 , 2 0 0 9 , h e r e(https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3145). Cf.“U.S. looks into Afghan air force drugallegations,” CNN, March 8, 2012, here(http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/08/world/asia/afgh a n i s t a n - a i r - d r u g s -investigation/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn): “The United States is investigatingallegations that some members of the Afghanair force have used their planes to transportdrugs, a U.S. military spokesman saidThursday. Investigators want to know whetherthe drug-running allegations, first reported inthe Wall Street Journal, are linked to theshooting deaths last year of eight U.S. AirForce officers at the airport in the Afghancapital, Kabul. ‘The allegations of improper useof AAF aircraft is being looked into,’ said Lt.Col. Tim Stauffer, referring to the allegationsthat Afghan air force equipment has been usedto illegally ferry drugs and arms.”

80 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 310.

81 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 371, cf. 95.

82 Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of ActionRelated to Cuba (Case II),” in Scott, AmericanWar Machine, 196.

83 Washington Post, September 30, 2001; inSummers, Eleventh Day, 293; cf. 9/11Commission Report, 221-22.

84 See Scott, American War Machine, 199-203.

85 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 360-61, 385.There was also apparent withholding ofinformation at a high level in the US JointForces Command (USJFCOM): “One officialwho a t tended the DO5 [a USJFCOMintelligence unit assigned to watch terrorismagainst the US] briefing was Vice Adm. Martin

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

24

J. Meyer, the deputy commander in chief(DCINC), USJFCOM ….. But despite the redflags raised during the briefing, Meyerreportedly told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, thecommander of the Continental United StatesNORAD Region (CONR), and other high-levelCONR staffers two weeks before the 9/11attacks that ‘their concern about Osama binLaden as a possible threat to America wasunfounded and that, to repeat, “If everyonewould just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be athreat from Osama bin Laden”'" (Jeffery Kayeand Jason Leopold, “EXCLUSIVE: NewDocuments Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, alQaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11Probe,” Truthout, June 13, 2011, here(http://www.truth-out.org/new-documents-claim-intelligence-bin-laden-al-qaeda-targets-withheld-congress-911-probe/1307986777)).

86 Scott, American War Machine, 201.

87 Scott, American War Machine, 200-02.

8 8 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 30-33;Summers, Eleventh Day, 175-76; JamesBamford, A Pretext for War, 287.

89 Mark Selden has described the pattern of“arousing nationalist passions as a result ofattacks out of the blue” as one which has“undergirded the American way of war since1898” (Mark Selden, “The AmericanArchipelago of Bases, Military Colonization andPacific Empire: Prelude to the PermanentWarfare State ,” forthcoming, 2012,International Journal of Okinawan Studies).

90 Thomas E. Ricks and Susan B. Glasser,Washington Post, October 14, 2001, here(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55834-2001Oct13). Significantly, the proposalfor a joint attack force with Massoud’sNorthern Alliance was also resisted byMassoud himself (Peter Tomsen, The Wars ofAfghanistan, 597-98, 796n25). The problem ofMassoud’s resistance to an American trooppresence vanished when he was assassinated

on September 9, 2011, two days before 9/11.

91 Coll, Ghost Wars, 467-69.

92 Coll, Ghost Wars, 513, 534-36, 553.

93 Coll, Ghost Wars, 558.

94 Coll, Ghost Wars, 573-74.

95 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 108.

96 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 110-14.

97 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: myyears at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins,2007), 255.

98 Jeremy Scahill, “Shhhhhh! JSOC is HiringInterrogators and Covert Operatives for'Special Access Programs,’” Nation, August 25,2 0 1 0 , h e r e(http://www.thenation.com/blog/154133/shhhhhh- jsoc-hir ing- interrogators -and-covert -operatives-special-access-programs).

99 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 127-30;Summers, Eleventh Day, 387-88.

100 Jason Vest, “Implausible Denial II,” Nation,M a y 3 1 , 2 0 0 4 , h e r e(http://www.thenation.com/article/implausible-denial-ii).

101 Peter Dale Scott, "Is the State of EmergencySuperseding our Constitution? Continuity ofGovernment Planning, War and AmericanSoc ie ty , " November 28 , 2010 , here(https://apjjf.org/admin/site_manage/details/http:/1/japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3448).

102 Scott, Road to 9/11, 216-18.

103 Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of ActionRelated to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 tothe Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 1, 1963, NARA# 2 0 2 - 1 0 0 0 2 - 1 0 0 1 8 , 2 1 , h e r e(http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=167&relPageId=21);

APJ | JF 10 | 12 | 3

25

discussion in Scott, American War Machine,193, 196.

104 Scott, American War Machine, 195-205;Northwoods document, Joint Chiefs of StaffCentral Files 1962-63, p. 178, NARA Record #202-10002-10104.

105 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 283-355;Scott, War Conspiracy, 341-96.

106 Jason Ditz, “Report: CIA Drones Killed Over2,000, Mostly Civilians in Pakistan Since 2006,”Ant iWar.com, January 2 , 2011, here(http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/02/report-cia-drones-killed-over-2000-mostly-civilians-in-pakistan-since-2006/). Cf. Karen DeYoung,“Secrecy defines Obama’s drone war,”

Washington Post, December 19, 2011, here(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/secrecy-defines-obamas-drone-war/2011/10/28/gIQAPKNR5O_story.html)(“hundreds of strikes over three years —resulting in an estimated 1,350 to 2,250 deathsin Pak).

107 Michael Klare, Blood and Oil (New York:Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt, 2004), 135-36;c i t ing R. Je f frey Smith, “U.S. LeadsPeacekeeping Drill in Kazakhstan,”WashingtonPost, September 15, 1997. CF. Kenley Butler,“U.S. Military Cooperation with the CentralAsian States,” September 17, 2001, here(http://cns.miis.edu/archive/wtc01/uscamil.htm).