1 Origin of Al Qaeda from CIA-backed Mujahedeen
Working in tight collaboration with its Pakistani counterpart (ISI), the CIA launched during the 1980s a comprehensive program to cultivate thousands of radical Muslims throughout Afghanistan, as a means to draw the USSR into a quagmire and suffer a strategic Cold War defeat in this vital Central Asia territory. One of the key assets for the CIA in this campaign was Osama bin Laden. The program went so far as to involve the creation and teaching of violence- and terror-infused curriculum to young children (who were
taught to do math with graphs showing units in tanks or guns, for example). Millions of these textbooks were still in use throughout the 1990s. A large segment of the Mujahedeen eventually were reorganized by bin Laden into al Qaeda, whose mission allegedly became the liberation of the Islamic world from
Western domination. These facts are compatible with the official conspiracy theory, though the long history between CIA, ISI, bin Laden and the Mujahedeen suggests that clandestine intelligence elements in the U.S. – official or private – may have had closer and more enduring ties to al Qaeda than generally believed.
See:
http://cooperativeresearch.org/time...lete_911_timeline&before_9/11=sovietAfghanWar
Nafeez Ahmed’s Terrorism and Statecraft: Al-Qaeda and Western Covert Operations After the Cold War, in Paul Zarembka,
editor, The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006, Research in Political Economy, Vol.23: 149-188.
“What are al-Qaeda’s origins?
Al-Qaeda grew out of the Services Office, a clearinghouse for the international Muslim brigade opposed to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the Services Office—run by bin Laden and the Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam—recruited, trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahadeen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. Bin Laden wanted these fighters to continue the "holy war" beyond Afghanistan. He formed al-Qaeda around 1988.
“ – source: http://www.cfr.org/publication/9126/
“Bin Laden wished to extend the conflict to nonmilitary operations in other parts of the world; Azzam, in contrast, wanted to remain focused on military campaigns. After Azzam was assassinated in 1989, the MAK split, with a significant number joining bin Laden's organization.
…
After some deliberation the Saudi Monarch refused bin Laden's offer and instead opted to allow United States and allied forces to deploy on his territory. Bin Laden considered this a treacherous deed. He believed that the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. After speaking publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops he was quickly forced into exile to Sudan and his Saudi citizenship was revoked.” – source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
Given this history, there is no reason to assume, as Firmage has done, that US intelligence services had ties to al-Qaeda after its split/formation from MAK at the start of the Gulf War. It can no more be said that the US is responsible for al-Qaeda’s actions after this point than it can be said that the US is responsible for the Soviet Unions actions after the end of World War II.
2 Angry Islamists want to kill Americans
Numerous professional texts have surveyed the long history of tension between Islamic populations and Western policies. There is more than ample evidence to support a radical Islamic motive to perpetrate 9/11-level – or greater – violence. Yet since “false flag” operations work best when general public fear preexists of whoever is to be falsely blamed, the existence of real and serious threats from radical Islamic elements remains compatible with
theories of U.S. complicity or causation on 9/11.
See:
Bassam Tibi’s The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder
John Esposito’s Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam
At this point Firmage appears to be attempting to poison the well. His point is on militant Islamic populations, yet he begins dropping buzzwords (“false flag”) without supporting evidence. We also see that Firmage applies the “sensible” rating to this point under the “Create a new reality” column. If Firmage’s implication of “Create a new reality” (hereafter CANR) is that the US government orchestrated events to get al-Qaeda, or other militant Islamists to carry out these actions then it assumes that the government could do so in such a way as to prevent the Islamists from uncovering the ulterior motives behind the attacks (an excuse to go to war); or he is implying that al-Qaeda was not involved and the government carried out the entire operation. I assert that, at the most liberal interpretation, Firmage can put the “plausible” rating to point 2 under CANR. Instead, he uses “Sensible”. I suggest that this is because of confirmational bias.
3 Previous terror attacks attributed to al Qaeda
Numerous terror attacks throughout the 1990s were attributed to al Qaeda. The conservative assessment here is to take the official explanations at face value and agree that al Qaeda demonstrated the intention and capability to attack U.S. interests, though it is useful to review the history of these events with an open mind.
See:
http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=warnings
Nafeez Ahmed’s Terrorism and Statecraft: Al-Qaeda and Western Covert Operations After the Cold War, in Paul Zarembka,
editor, The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006, Research in Political Economy, Vol.23: 149 – 188.
Again, Firmage places the “Sensible” rating for this point under the CANR column. If Firmage is using this to argue the potential effectiveness of a “false flag” operator that would blame al-Qaeda then he needs to be explicit on this point. To not be clear merely suggests further confirmational bias and a desire to show this CANR theory as being supported by all the points.
Journal of 9/11 Studies 22 August 2006/Volume 2
4 Historical relationship of Bush officials and clandestine operations
A common refrain heard from the left – less often from the right – in response to suspicions about the official 9/11 story goes something like: “The Bush administration has demonstrated such incompetence on so many fronts that it strains the imagination to think they could of have pulled off something so
elaborate, and kept it a secret.” This argument ignores three key facts.
I would argue that this is a strawman attack. Counter-arguments to conspiracy theory claims have said that for the government; or a subset of its departments; to plan, execute, and keep secret is difficult to believe without substantiating evidence. To claim that the counter-argument is saying that President Bush could not have done so is a drastic oversimplification of the point and sets up a strawman for attack.
First, while George W. Bush may be intellectually challenged across the board, and while neoconservatives may have a gravely naïve, overreaching geopolitical agenda,
Further poisoning of the well using personal attacks. President Bush’s intellect is not relevant to the discussion of a “Historical relationship of Bush officials and clandestine operations”. Additionally, Firmage speaks broadly of neoconservative “overreaching geopolitical agenda” without enumerating what these are, or their relevance to the point at hand. Also, describing these vague “geopolitical agenda” as “overreaching” and “gravely naïve” with showing why is disingenuous to the discussion.
Bush officials in key national security positions have superlative experience in managing clandestine operations, and have repeatedly demonstrated ruthless, systematic, detailed-oriented control over sensitive programs and information. The historical preoccupation of key officials across the Bush administration with clandestine operations – both legal and illegal – is well known to historians of the field.
Second, vastly larger programs have remained secret for decades. A few examples: the National Security Agency has a larger budget and more employees than the CIA. It was organized in 1949.
Error of fact:“When did NSA become part of the U.S. Intelligence Community?
President Truman and the National Security Council issued a revised version of the National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 9 on 24 October 1952, which resulted in the formation of NSA on 4 November 1952.“ – source: http://www.nsa.gov/about/about00018.cfm
“The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced to an organization originally established within the Department of Defense, under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), on May 20, 1949. The AFSA was to be responsible for directing the communications and electronic intelligence activities of the military intelligence units - the Army Security Agency, Naval Security Group and the Air Force Security Service. However, the agency had little power and lacked a centralized coordination mechanism. The creation of NSA resulted from a December 10, 1951, memo sent by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith to James B. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. The memo observed that "control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective" and recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities. The proposal was approved on December 13, 1951, and the study authorized on December 28, 1951. The report was completed by June 13, 1952. Generally known as the "Brownell Committee Report," after committee chairman Herbert Brownell, it surveyed the history of U.S. communications intelligence activities and suggested the need for a much greater degree of coordination and direction at the national level. As the change in the security agency's name indicated, the role of the NSA was extended beyond the armed forces.
The creation of the NSA was authorized in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June of 1952. The agency was formally established through a revision of National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 on October 24, 1952, and officially came into existence on November 4, 1952. President Truman's letter was itself classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation.” – source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
This entire
agency of the federal government remained completely hidden from the public until the 1980s, over three decades later. One of the programs run by NSA, believed to have started in the 1940s, was Project Shamrock, through which all major transatlantic telegraph cables were tapped with the cooperation of
AT&T and other communications carriers.
Error of fact: “Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. Operation Shamrock lasted well into the 1960s when computerized operations (HARVEST) made it possible to search for keywords rather than read through all communications.
Project SHAMROCK became so successful that in 1966 the NSA and CIA set up a front company in Lower Manhattan (where the offices of the telegraph companies were located) under the codename LPMEDLEY. At the height of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages a month were printed and analyzed by NSA agents. In May 1975 however, congressional critics began to investigate and expose the program. As a result, NSA director Lew Allen terminated it. The testimony of both the representatives from the cable companies and of director Allen at the hearings prompted Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken."
One result of these investigations was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which limited the powers of the NSA and put in place a process of warrants and judicial review.
“ – source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK
The telegraph companies provided copies of the data; the AFSA/NSA were not directly tapping in to the telegraph lines. It can be seen here that Firmage is attempting to set up an analogy for the installation of the tapping hardware and that of installing explosives in the towers. No such parallel exists however.
This vast program – involving people building, installing and
running equipment all over the world, and yet numerous others watching and translating conversations – was kept entirely secret until the 1990s.
It was not “kept entirely secret until the 1990s” as, by 1975, congressional critics began exposing the program.
Most American citizens have never heard of this program to this day. Serious students of the U.S. national security apparatus know how effective its systems can be in controlling information and people, and compartmenting information and tasks into a startlingly small number of hands.
Third, the official 9/11 story asks us to believe that only a couple of dozen poorly trained Islamic radicals deftly maneuvered through the world’s most powerful intelligence gathering and military machine. How much easier might it have been for a similar number of people to do so, employing many unknowing
others for secondary, compartmented tasks, if those handful with full knowledge of the plan also knew every aspect of the U.S. intelligence and military machine, and were in key positions governing its
activities and responses?
We may be loath to admit it, but our intelligence gathering has failed more often than it has succeeded, and not just the US. The fact that terrorist activities are carried out regularly around the world (Ireland, Israel, etc) shows that intelligence gathering is hardly a silver-bullet to stopping them.
The historical association between Bush officials, government and private intelligence networks and clandestine operations argues against the notion that incompetence allowed 9/11 to occur, and therefore
this fact must raise suspicion.
This is further spin. The operations/activities outlined in point 5 span six decades, and fourteen presidents (from both sides of the political spectrum).
See:
Joseph Trento’s Prelude to Terror: the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of
American Intelligence
James Risen’s State of War: The Secret History of the CIA And the Bush Administration
My old "Force XXI" hardware picture book is in a box somewhere. Can't remember if it was in the toy box, but then, Force XXI is also old news now that I think of it.
