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In our modern world, discomforting truths are
usually discarded in favour of fictions. One such
fiction is the idea that terrorists are
disenfranchised dissidents who independently
generate the wealth and resources necessary for
their heinous acts. Such is the contention of
Professor Mark Juergensmeyer. In his article,
"Understanding the New Terrorism", he
says that modern terrorism "appears pointless
since it does not lead directly to any strategic
goal" (p. 158).
Juergensmeyer arrives at this conclusion
because he restricts his examination to the
visible perpetrators, whose motives may be, in
fact, irrational. However, he does not examine the
patrons of terrorism. Given the exceptional
subtlety and discretion of terrorism's shadowy
sponsors, Professor Juergensmeyer may just be
oblivious to their existence. On the other hand,
he could simply be parroting his fellow
academicians in order to maintain the status quo.
Whatever the case may be, this contention seems
to be the overall view held by the orthodoxy of
academia. With such a view vigorously promulgated
by the arbiters of the dominant national paradigm,
few can recognise those shady individuals who
stand to profit from terrorist acts.
To understand terrorism, one must discard the
view that arbitrarily characterises it as "a
resort to violence or a threat of violence on the
part of a group seeking to accomplish a purpose
against the opposition of constituted
authority" (Adler, Mueller & Laufer, p.
309). Such an impotent notion is predicated upon
the hopelessly flawed accidentalist perspective of
history. It relegates terrorism, which is the
product of conscious effort and design, to the
realm of circumstantial spontaneity. In other
words, a contrived act suddenly becomes an
inexplicable social phenomenon.
In November 1989, Father Ignacio Martín-Baró,
a social psychologist, delivered a speech in
California on "The Psychological Consequences
of Political Terror". In his speech, Martín-Baró
gave a much more precise definition of terrorism,
one that is ignored only at great peril. Noam
Chomsky provides a synopsis of this speech (p.
386):
He [Martín-Baró] stressed several relevant
points. First, the most significant form of
terrorism, by a large measure, is state
terrorism--that is, "terrorizing the whole
population through systematic actions carried out
by the forces of the state". Second, such
terrorism is an essential part of a
"government-imposed sociopolitical
project" designed for the needs of the
privileged.
Disturbing though it may be, Martín-Baró's
definition is one validated by history. The
majority of terrorism throughout history has found
its sponsors in the hallowed halls of officialdom,
in the entity known as government. Terrorism is
surrogate warfare, a manufactured crisis designed
to induce social change. Its combatants
consciously or unconsciously wage the war on
behalf of higher powers with higher agendas.
Whether its adherents are aware of it or not,
terrorism always serves the ambitions of another.
In his article, "Fake Terror: The Road to
Dictatorship", Michael Rivero states that
"It's the oldest trick in the book, dating
back to Roman times: creating the enemies you
need" (p. 1). The strategy is quite simple:
individuals create a crisis so that they can then
introduce their desired solution.
Are there recent, modern examples of
state-sponsored terrorism? Unfortunately, the
answer to that question seems to be
"Yes".
Operation Northwoods The first example is in
1962. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and his fellow JCS members
wanted to remove Castro from Cuba. Exactly what
interests Lemnitzer and his fellow warhawks
represented are unclear. However, one thing is
apparent: these military men considered Castro an
impediment to be expunged by means of overt war.
According to James Bamford, former Washington
investigative producer for ABC, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff planned to engineer several terrorist
acts to instigate war (p. 82):
According to secret and long-hidden documents
obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of
Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be
the most corrupt plan ever created by the US
government. In the name of anticommunism, they
proposed launching a secret and bloody war of
terrorism against their own country in order to
trick the American public into supporting an
ill-conceived war they intended to launch against
Cuba.
Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan, which
had the written approval of the Chairman and every
member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for
innocent people to be shot on American streets;
for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be
sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent
terrorism to be launched in Washington, DC, Miami
and elsewhere.
People would be framed for bombings they did
not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony
evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro,
thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as
well as the public and international backing, they
needed to launch their war.
Northwoods even called for the military to turn
on itself (p. 84):
Among the actions recommended was "a
series of well-coordinated incidents to take place
in and around" the US Navy Base at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. This included dressing
"friendly" Cubans in Cuban military
uniforms and then have them "start riots near
the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to
be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be
blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged,
mortars fired at the base with damage to
installations".
Operation Northwoods would draw upon history as
well, using the 1898 explosion aboard the
battleship Maine in Havana harbour as inspiration
(p. 84):
"We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo
Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed;
"casualty lists in US newspapers would cause
a helpful wave of national indignation."
The attempt to create a Cuban terrorist threat
makes it clear that the US government has no
reservations about using state-sponsored terrorism
to achieve its ends.
American Imperialism and the Terrorist Threat
However, it is in the Oklahoma City bombing of
1995 that one sees the tangible enactment of
modern-day state-sponsored terrorism. Many
Americans have been taught that loners Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols, fuelled by
militia-inspired conspiracy theories and white
supremacist propaganda, perpetrated one of the
worst terrorist acts in American history all by
themselves.
What came out of the Oklahoma City bombing?
Former Czechoslovakian Communist Party Secretariat
member Jan Kozak's "pressure from above"
went to work and passed oppressive legislation:
the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
of 1996. This Act made no one safer and threw the
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution into the
wastebasket. The pincers clamped down a little bit
harder on the American people.
Presently, America finds itself in the midst of
a tumultuous conflict because of the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center. This begs the obvious
question: was this attack state-sponsored?
Remember the earlier contention that the majority
of terrorism is state-sponsored. Terrorists just
do not have the resources, the money or the
expertise without the aid of a government or
factions within a government. It is still too
early to know all of the facts and details
surrounding the events of September 11. However,
there is evidence suggesting that the attack was
no exception to the rule. The investigation of
government complicity begins with an examination
of the evidence for government foreknowledge.
Warnings were received at the highest levels of
government.
These and other eye-opening revelations have
many people asking why the US government did not
move to stop bin Laden and al-Qa'ida. This
question can be answered with a question: why move
against bin Laden and al-Qa'ida if they are your
assets?
The story of the dreaded al-Qa'ida terrorist
network begins with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President
Carter's National Security Advisor. In his 1997
book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geostrategic Objectives, Brzezinski provides
readers with the motivation for the creation of a
terrorist threat. He begins (p. xii):
The last decade of the twentieth century has
witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For
the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has
emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian
power relations but also as the world's paramount.
The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was
the final step in the rapid ascendance of a
Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as
the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power
...
Brzezinski celebrates the fact that America is
being transformed into a world empire. However, he
identifies a distinct threat to America's
ascendancy to the position of sole global power:
"The attitude of the American public toward
the external projection of American power has been
much more ambivalent" (p. 24). Apparently,
the citizenry's aversion towards imperialistic
policies, which Brzezinski euphemistically
interprets as ambivalence, is an obstacle to the
empire's expansion. After all, there are still
plenty of patriots who understand that
Brzezinski's expansionistic
"geostrategy" is irreconcilable with the
tenets of Americanism.
This sense of awareness has been a major
obstacle to the foreign policy elites that
Brzezinski represents. Thus far, enough patriots
know that none of the "Freedom
Documents" (i.e., the Constitution, Bill of
Rights, etc.) makes concessions for the arbitrary
extension of America's authority through brutish
military expeditions. As a sovereign nation
itself, America is supposed to honour the autonomy
of other countries and is not to initiate
militaristic campaigns unless she is threatened.
Yet, Brzezinski believes that adherence to such
principles could provoke worldwide social upheaval
(p. 30):
America's withdrawal from the world, or because
of the sudden emergence of a successful rival,
would produce massive international instability.
It would promote global anarchy.
Brzezinski continues further on in hyperbolic
fashion (p. 194):
Without sustained and directed American
involvement, before long the forces of global
disorder could come to dominate the world scene.
In other words, the promotion and practice of
representative government amongst other nations
would lead to doomsday itself. In such statements,
the former National Security Advisor reveals the
authoritarian features of his bizarre eschatology.
According to Brzezinski's Weltanschauung, those
who cherish individual liberties and the
sovereignty of their respective nations constitute
the "forces of global disorder"; these
forces must be defeated or they will invariably
cause the apocalypse--so public opinion must be
altered. (Brzezinski fails to mention that such a
doomsday will only mean the end for him and his
elitist comrades.) Brzezinski cites a very
interesting historical example (p. 25):
The public supported America's engagement in
World War II largely because of the shock effect
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Ah, an option presents itself! Mass consensus
could be facilitated through mass trauma. In fact,
the engineering of widespread compliance is an
essential constituent in the implementation of
Brzezinski's foreign policy. In an exemplary
moment of self-incrimination so endemic to elitist
tracts, Brzezinski pens a damning confession (p.
211):
Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly
multi-cultural society, it may find it more
difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy
issues, except in the circumstance of a truly
massive and widely perceived direct external
threat.
A readily exploitable menace, whether genuine
or promulgated, is the solution.
Brzezinski began the construction of his
"direct external threat" years before he
wrote The Grand Chessboard. In an interview with
the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, the
former national security adviser made a stunning
confession that will change the history books
forever (Blum, p. 1):
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert
Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows]
that American intelligence services began to aid
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before
the Soviet intervention. In this period you were
the national security adviser to President Carter.
You therefore played a role in this affair. Is
that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official
version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen
began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan, December 24,
1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now,
is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3,
1979, that President Carter signed the first
directive for secret aid to the opponents of the
pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I
wrote a note to the President in which I explained
to him that in my opinion this aid was going to
induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of
this covert action. But perhaps you yourself
desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the
Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased
the probability that they would.
Re-education and the Creation of the Taliban
Having encouraged the Soviets to invade
Afghanistan, Brzezinski now had a pretext for
radicalising and arming a population that would be
used at a future date as a "direct external
threat" to the United States.
Part of the radicalisation process included the
brainwashing of children under the guise of
education. The Washington Post's Joe Stephens and
David B. Ottaway report (pp. 1-2):
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United
States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan
schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent
images and militant Islamic teachings, part of
covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet
occupation.
The "Primers", which were filled with
talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns,
bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since
then as the Afghan school system's core
curriculum. Even the Taliban used the
American-produced books, though the radical
movement scratched out human faces in keeping with
its strict fundamentalist code.
Stephens and Ottaway identify the governmental
and educational organisations involved in
development of the textbooks (p. 4):
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of
Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in
the early 1980s under an AID [Agency for
International Development] grant to the University
of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan
Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the
university's education programs in Afghanistan
from 1984 to 1994.
Under this project, the images and talk of
violence were craftily intermingled with
legitimate education (p. 4): Children were taught
to count with illustrations showing tanks,
missiles and land mines, agency officials said.
They acknowledged that at the time it also suited
US interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
An examination of a textbook produced shocking
results (p. 5): An aid-worker in the region
reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43
pages containing violent images or passages.
The writers of the Washington Post story go on
to provide a specific example of the material that
is nothing less than appalling (pp. 5-6):
One page from the texts of that period shows a
resistance fighter with a bandolier and a
Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier's
head is missing.
Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran.
Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin [sic],
who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men
will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to
impose Islamic law on the government, the text
says.
This social engineering project successfully
transformed Muslim children into conscienceless
killing machines. Many would go on to join
al-Qa'ida, the terrorist network headed up by
Osama bin Laden.
An heir to a Saudi construction fortune, bin
Laden went to Afghanistan in 1979 to fight the
Soviets. Bin Laden eventually came to head the
Maktab al-Khidamar, also known as the MAK. It was
through this front organisation that money, arms
and fighters were supplied to the Afghan war.
However, according to MSNBC's Michael Moran, there
is more to the story (p. 2): What the CIA bio
conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified
form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by
Pakistan's state security services, the
Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the
CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert
war against Moscow's occupation.
Even after the war, bin Laden was on good terms
with the CIA (p. 3): Though he has come to
represent all that went wrong with the CIA's
reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan
war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the
agency as something of a dilettante--a rich Saudi
boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi
monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
Bin Laden would later receive three necessary
provisions from factions of government. These
essentials would allow him and al- Qa'ida to
conduct one of the worst terrorist attacks ever
conceived. These constituents were: (1) protection
courtesy of highly influential, well-placed
shepherds in government; (2) government funding;
and (3) government training. Without a beat,
individuals in positions of authority delivered.
Both Democrat and Republican administrations
protected bin Laden. Undaunted by Osama's attack
on the USS Cole and bombings of the embassies,
this non-partisan aegis consistently insulated the
terrorist and his network. President William
Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat, shielded bin Laden
and company from the hand of justice in Sudan.
Mansoor Ijaz revealed this fact in the December 5,
2001, Los Angeles Times (Ijaz, p. 1):
President Clinton and his national security
team ignored several opportunities to capture
Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates,
including one as late as last year ...
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels
between Sudan and the Clinton Administration. I
met with officials in both countries, including
Clinton, US National Security Advisor Samuel R.
"Sandy" Berger and Sudan's President and
intelligence chief.
President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted
terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered
the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and
detailed intelligence data about the global
networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad,
Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among
those in the networks were the two hijackers who
piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade
Center. The silence of the Clinton Administration
in responding to these offers was deafening.
Sudan offered Bill Clinton the ideal
opportunity to apprehend bin Laden and prevent
future terrorist attacks. Instead, the US
pressured Sudan to make bin Laden leave,
"despite their [the Sudanese] feeling that he
could be monitored better in Sudan than
elsewhere" (pp. 1-2). It was off to
Afghanistan for bin Laden and his merry, marauding
band of cut-throats and murderers (p. 2):
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with
him: Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the US to be
the chief planner of the September 11 attacks;
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to
Germany to obtain electronic equipment for
al-Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, bin Laden's personal
secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life
sentence in the US for his role in the 1998 US
Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul
Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of
carrying out the embassy attacks. Some of these
men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted
terrorists.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban protected bin Laden
and his al- Qa'ida network. There is an odd
symmetry revealed through this relationship. Both
bin Laden and the Taliban were little more than a
creation of the CIA. Selig Harrison, a South Asian
expert from the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, made this known at a
conference in London. The Times of India records
Harrison's revelations (p. 1):
LONDON -- The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the
"monster" that is today Afghanistan's
ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia
said here.
"I warned them that we were creating a
monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow
Wilson International Centre [sic] for Scholars
said at the conference here last week on
"Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing
the Challenges in Asia".
To the average American, the Taliban might have
been a rogue gallery of maniacs that comprised a
fanatical outlaw government and nothing more.
However, Harrison makes it clear that the Taliban
was a well-coordinated intelligence project (p.
2):
The Taliban are not just recruits from
"madrassas" (Muslim theological schools)
but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter-Services
Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the
Pakistani government).
A Covert Government Agenda The government had
all the means necessary to detect and prevent the
September 11 attacks. Researcher Russ Kick makes a
significant statement concerning this point (p.
1):
The US has the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National
Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
the National Reconnaissance Office, the Secret
Service, and a host of other intelligence and
security agencies. These agencies employ Echelon,
which monitors the majority of electronic
communication in the world; Carnivore, which
intercepts email; Tempest, a technology that can
read a computer monitor's display from over a
block away; Keyhole satellites that have a
resolution of four inches; and other spy
technologies, probably most of which we don't know
about.
In 2001, the US spent $30 billion on
intelligence gathering and an additional $12
billion on counterterrorism. With all these
resources, and more, we're supposed to believe
that the government didn't have the slightest
inkling that terrorists were planning to attack
the United States, much less hijack planes and
send them careening into major landmarks.
After reviewing the facts, one must consider a
more sinister possibility: that certain factions
in the United States government created the bin
Laden menace and actually desired the attacks.
Whether Moran realises it or not, his article,
"Bin Laden Comes Home to Roost", reveals
evidence that the Agency may have been equipping
bin Laden's network for purposes other than
fighting the Soviets (p. 4):
The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify
its "mission", had conclusive evidence
by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of
infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA,
as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged
under congressional questioning in 1992, had
decided to keep that evidence from President
Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued
to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and
technological capabilities in its annual
"Soviet Military Power" report right up
to 1990.
Now, a troubling question arises. Given the
impending collapse of the Soviet Union and the
inexorable demise of communism, bin Laden's
involvement in the crusade against the Soviets
seems inconsequential. More succinctly, it is
irrelevant. Yet, despite his axiomatic
obsolescence in the anti-communist campaign, bin
Laden continued to receive funds. Since such
financing did not represent an investment in the
ongoing war with the Soviets, there must have been
ulterior motives for maintaining bin Laden's
network.
What was the true agenda that motivated the CIA
to support what would later become an
international Frankenstein's monster? Former CIA
Associate Deputy Director of Operations Theodore
Shackley may have already answered this question
in his book, The Third Option (p. 17):
Senior intelligence officers like myself, who
had experience in paramilitary operations, have
always insisted that the United States should also
consider the third option: the use of guerrilla
warfare, counterinsurgency techniques and covert
action to achieve policy goals ... Political
warfare is very often the stitch in time that
eliminates bloodier and more costly alternatives.
It is possible that the September 11 attack
represents a tangible enactment of Shackley's
third option. Bin Laden's ties to the intelligence
community certainly reinforce such a contention.
Were al-Qa'ida and bin Laden considered part of a
third option to facilitate political and social
change in the United States?
Consider a conversation that took place between
former DEA agent Michael Levine and a CIA agent.
It suggests that the CIA is ready and willing to
use the third option in America. This discourse is
recorded in The Triangle of Death (Levine, p.
353):
"How can you be so good at what you do and
have so little understanding of what really pulls
your strings? Don't you realize that there are
factions in your government that want this to
happen--an emergency situation too hot for a
constitutional government to handle."
"To what end?" I asked.
"A suspension of the Constitution, of
course. The legislation is already in place. All
perfectly legal. Check it out yourself. It's
called FEMA. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
'Turn in your guns, you antigovernment
rabble-rousers. And who would be king,
Michael?"
"CIA," I said.
Terrorism in the United States is one of the
methods employed to generate the changes desired
by Levine's CIA friend. It has provided a pretext
for the introduction of draconian laws and
measures previously unthinkable. Representative
Henry Gonzalez recognised this fact when he made
the following comment (Cuddy, p. 164):
The truth of the matter is that you do have
those standby provisions, and the statutory
emergency plans are there whereby you could, in
the name of stopping terrorism, apprehend, invoke
the military, and arrest Americans and hold them
in detention camps.
Add to the list of "statutory emergency
plans" the Patriot Act, passed in response to
the September 11 attacks. According to Washington
Post staff writer Jim McGee (pp 1-2), this law:
... empowers the government to shift the
primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to
gathering domestic intelligence. In addition, the
Treasury Department has been charged with building
a financial intelligence-gathering system whose
data can be accessed by CIA.
Most significantly, the CIA will have the
authority for the first time to influence FBI
surveillance operations inside the United States
and to obtain evidence gathered by federal grand
juries and criminal wiretaps.
The Patriot Act is designed to transform
America into a surveillance society. Wiretapping
has been expanded to invade the privacy of a
larger portion of the populace. In the name of
fighting terrorism, the prying eyes of the
government can now watch those merely deemed
"suspicious". Furthermore, wiretaps are
no longer just a tool in criminal investigations.
Under the Act, they become a means of gathering
information on the citizenry. Unfortunately, the
surprises do not stop there. The Act also lifts
many of the constraints on the CIA's power. McGee
writes (p. 4):
The new law also gives the CIA unprecedented
access to the most powerful investigative weapon
in the federal law enforcement's arsenal: the
federal grand jury. The grand juries have nearly
unlimited power to gather evidence in secret,
including testimony, wiretap transcripts, phone
records, business records or medical records ...
The new law permits allow the FBI to give grand
jury information to the CIA without a court order,
as long as the information concerns foreign
intelligence or international terrorism. The
information can also be shared widely throughout
the national security establishment ...
All of the above points to a very frightening
conclusion: there are some factions of government
that consider terrorism to be a tool of social
engineering. The direction society is being
steered by this "tool" is even more
frightening.
Terrorism: A Tool of the Ruling Elite Terrorism
is being used to keep the rabble in line on behalf
of an elite that wishes to maintain and expand its
power. In The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright
Mills introduces these powerful individuals (pp.
3-4):
The power elite is composed of men whose
positions enable them to transcend the ordinary
environments of ordinary men and women; they are
in positions to make decisions having major
consequences. Whether they do or do not make such
decisions is less important than the fact that
they do occupy such pivotal positions: their
failure to act, their failure to make decisions,
is itself an act that is often of greater
consequence than the decisions they do make. For
they are in command of the major hierarchies and
organisations of modern society. They rule the big
corporations. They run the machinery of the state
and claim its prerogatives. They direct the
military establishment. They occupy the strategic
command posts of the social structure, in which
are now centered the effective means of the power
and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.
Talk of oligarchs might tend to conjure
pictures of mediaeval feudal lords. However, a
Federal Reserve study points out to elitism being
alive, well, and existing in the "Land of the
Free", the United States. In his Secrets of
the Temple, former Washington Post editor William
Greider quotes the study (p. 39):
... 54 percent of the total net financial
assets were held by the 2 percent of families with
the greatest amount of such assets and 86 percent
by the top 10 percent; 55 percent of the families
in the sample had zero or negative net worth ...
This concentration of wealth in so few hands
certainly suggests that there is a ruling class.
It is highly naive to believe that this elite does
not wield a great deal of influence over
civilisation. In her book, Beyond The Ruling
Class: Strategic Elites In Modern Society,
Professor Suzanne Keller states (p. 3):
The notion of a stratum elevated above the mass
of men may prompt approval, indifference, or
despair, but regardless of how men feel about it,
the fact remains that their lives, fortunes, and
fate are and have long been dependent on what a
small number of men in high places think and do.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency William Colby recognised the existence of a
network of bluebloods. When former Nebraska
Senator and Vietnam War hero John W. DeCamp was
looking into elites' involvement in child abuse,
drug running, gun running, and satanic
ritual-murder, Colby warned him of the hidden
aristocracy and their power (DeCamp, pp. ix-x):
"What you have to understand, John, is
that sometimes there are forces and events too
big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other
people or institutions, that you cannot do
anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong
they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere
you are or how much evidence you have. That is
simply one of the hard facts of life you have to
face. You have done your part. You have tried to
expose the evil and wrongdoing. It has hurt you
terribly. But it has not killed you up to this
point. I am telling you, get out of this before it
does.
"Sometimes things are just too big for us
to deal with, and we have to step aside and let
history take its course."
Probably the greatest source of
"insider" information comes from Oxford
professor (and mentor to former President Bill
Clinton) the late Carroll Quigley. After being
close to the pro-British, Anglophile faction of
the elite, Quigley wrote (p. 950):
There does exist, and has existed for a
generation, an international Anglophile network
which operates, to some extent, in the way the
radical Right believes the Communists act. In
fact, this network, which we may identify as the
Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating
with the Communists, or any other groups, and
frequently does so. I know of the operations of
this network because I have studied it for twenty
years and was permitted for two years, in the
early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret
records. I have no aversion to it and to many of
its aims and have, for much of my life, been close
to it and to many of its instruments.
I have objected, both in the past and recently,
to a few of its policies (notably to its belief
that England was an Atlantic rather than a
European Power and must be allied, or even
federated, with the United States and must remain
isolated from Europe), but in general my chief
difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain
unknown, and I believe its role in history is
significant enough to be known.
Quigley also informs us that the ruling class
has a very low opinion of the common people. He
voices this elitist sentiment when he refers to
the commoners as "the petty bourgeoisie ...
" (pp. 1243-1244).
So why is the great mass of human civilisation
unaware of the oligarchs' presence among them? In
The Architecture of Modern Political Power, Daniel
Pouzzner explains why (p. 16):
The establishment cloaks itself in cultural
camouflage, employing tactics for which it almost
seamlessly maintains plausible deniability.
Subtle, ubiquitous, often implicit propaganda
fosters a broad public acceptance and embrace of
the authority of the establishment, and of the
establishment's definitions of good and evil,
preventing the public from seriously contemplating
the reality that the establishment is itself quite
often evil by its own definition. The
establishment reiterates the mantra that the
President of the United States is "the leader
of the free world", but a free world has no
leader. The President of the United States is
simply the most obvious spearhead of the authority
of the establishment. He gathers strength at the
expense of the world's freedom.
Generally, an errant public attributes the
results of the establishment's meddlesome actions
to happenstance, or to motives viewed as
essentially innocuous or virtuous. The design is
irrefutably evident only in the pattern of
results, or by actually showing proof of meddling.
The public has been systemically conditioned to
ignore such patterns, and to condemn those who
draw attention to them (derisively calling them
"conspiracy theorists"). Thus,
controlling access to and dissemination of
information that constitutes proof of meddling
suffices in large part to protect the
establishment program from exposure. The
compartmentalization of the establishment's covert
apparatus assures that those exposures which do
transpire cause only limited damage.
Bush/Bin Laden Family Links Are there any ties
between the power elites and the current terrorist
network? The answer to that question lies with the
Bush dynasty. Neither Bush Senior nor Bush Junior
can be described as Presidents in the Lincoln
tradition. They do not come from lower class
backgrounds and modest upbringings. Webster
Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's in-depth
investigation of George Senior led them to propose
the following in their excellent book, George
Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (p. 9):
One of our basic theses is that George Bush
[Senior] is, and considers himself to be, an
oligarch.
In an article for the London Daily Mail, Peter
Allen points out a connection between George W.
Bush and Osama's brother, Salem bin Laden (pp.
1-2):
Incredibly, Salem went on to become a business
partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his
brother. In the 1970s, he and George W. Bush were
founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr
Bush's home state of Texas.
As he built his own business empire, Salem bin
Laden had an intriguing relationship with the
President-to-be. In 1978, he appointed James Bath,
a close friend of Mr Bush who served with him in
the Air National Guard, as his representative in
Houston, Texas. It was in that year that Mr Bath
invested $50,000 ... in Mr Bush's company,
Arbusto. It was never revealed whether he was
investing his own money or somebody else's. There
was even speculation that the money might have
been from Salem. In the same year, Mr Bath bought
Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of the Saudi
Arabian multimillionaire.
Three years ago, Mr Bush said the $50,000
investment in Arbusto was the only financial
dealing he had with Mr Bath.
The connection between the bin Ladens and the
Bush family does not end with Arbusto Energy.
On the BBC's Newsnight program, Greg Palast
stated (p. 5):
Young George also received fees as director of
a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a
little-known private company which has, in just a
few years of its founding, become one of America's
biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush
Senior, is also a paid adviser. And what became
embarrassing was the revelation that the bin
Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after
September 11.
These business connections may explain why the
Bush Administration frustrated the FBI's efforts
to investigate Abdullah and Omar bin Laden.
Investigations may have demonstrated that Osama
was not the "black sheep" of the family.
Instead, they may have shown that terrorism was
actually the bin Laden family business. This would
have associated the Bush family with terrorists,
something the current President could not allow to
happen.
For neo-conservatives, the portrait of the Bush
family as a criminal syndicate with ties to
questionable characters is reprehensible. However,
this contention can be based upon a major
precedent.
Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's
investigation into former President George Herbert
Walker Bush's background led to a startling
discovery: that "The President's family
fortune was largely a result of the Hitler
project" (p. 28).
The Bush dynasty's connections with the bin
Ladens suggest that the family's collusion with
enemies of the United States has never ceased.
A State-sponsored Sociopolitical Project
Re-examining Martín-Baró's previous contention,
that terrorism is part and parcel of a
"government-imposed sociopolitical
project", one is faced with some very
disturbing questions.
What will be the results of this
"government-imposed sociopolitical
project"? Where exactly is all of this
state-sponsored terrorism leading?
Quigley provides a fragmentary glimpse of the
outcome in Tragedy and Hope. The Oxford professor
reveals that a cognitive elite, arbitrarily dubbed
"experts", "will replace the
democratic voter in control of the political
system" (p. 866).
With representation for the masses removed from
the picture, what kind of life can the common man
expect to live? Quigley (p. 886) declares that
this will be a system where the individual's:
... freedom and choice will be controlled
within very narrow alternatives by the fact that
he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a
number, through his educational training, his
required military or other public service, his tax
contributions, his health and medical
requirements, and his final retirement and death
benefits.
There you have it. George Orwell's 1984, built
al-Qa'ida style!
References: Adler, Freda, Gerhard Mueller,
William Laufer, Criminology, McGraw Hill, New
York, 2001. Allen, Peter, "Bin Laden's family
link to Bush", 2001,
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/fa
... Bamford, James, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of
the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency,
Doubleday, 2001. Blum, Bill (translater),
"Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski",
January 15-21, 1998, LINK
. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Chessboard:
American Primacy and Geostrategic Objectives,
Basic Books, 1997. Chomsky, Noam, Deterring
Democracy, Hill & Wang, New York, 1992. Cuddy,
Dennis, Secret Records Revealed: The Men, The
Money, and The Methods Behind the New World Order,
Hearthstone Publishing, Oklahoma, 1999. DeCamp,
John W., The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse,
Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, AWT Inc.,
Nebraska, 1996. Greider, William, Secrets of the
Temple: How the Federal Reserves Runs the Country,
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1987.
Juergensmeyer, Mark, "Understanding the New
Terrorism", Current History, April 2000.
Ijaz, Mansoor, "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip
Away and Metastasize", December 5, 2001, LINK
. Keller, Suzanne, Beyond The Ruling Class:
Strategic Elites In Modern Society, Random House,
New York, 1963. Kick, Russ, "September 11,
2001: No Surprise", 2002,
http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/September11.htm.
Levine, Michael and Laura Kavanau, The Triangle of
Death, Delacorte Press, New York, 1996. McGee,
Jim, "An Intelligence Giant in the
Making", November 4, 2001, LINK
. Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite, Oxford
University Press, London/New York, 1956. Moran,
Michael, "Bin Laden comes home to
roost",
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1, 2001.
Palast, Gregory, "Has someone been sitting on
the FBI?" 2001, LINK
. Pouzzner, Daniel, The Architecture of Modern
Political Power: The New Feudalism, 2001,
http://www.mega.nu:8080. Quigley, Carroll, Tragedy
and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time,
MacMillan Company, New York, 1966. Rivero,
Michael, "Fake Terror: The Road to
Dictatorship", 2001,
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/index.html.
Shackley, Theodore, The Third Option: An Expert's
Provocative Report on an American View of
Counterinsurgency Operations, Dell Publishing, New
York, 1981. Stephens, Joe and David B. Ottaway,
"From the USA, the ABCs of jihad",
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/728439.asp,2002.
Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin,
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Executive
Intelligence Review, Washington, DC, 1992. The
Times of India, "CIA worked in tandem with
Pak to create Taliban", March 7, 2001, LINK
... About the Author: Paul D. Collins has
studied suppressed history and the shadowy
undercurrents of world political dynamics for
roughly eleven years. In 1999, he completed his
Associate of Arts and Science degree. He will soon
complete his Bachelor's degree, with a major in
Communications and a minor in Political Science.
Paul's book, The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The
Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to
September 11, is available online from
www.1stbooks.com/bookview/13401,
http://www.barnesandnoble.com, and also
http://www.amazon.com. It can be purchased as an
e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format
(ISBN 1-4033-6799-X).
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