CHAPTER XVII
Foreknowledge of 9/11
Simulations of a plane crashing into a building in a mock terrorist
attack were conducted in the year leading up to 9/11.
Conducted by the CIA and the Pentagon, pre-9/11 “scenarios” of
terror attacks were documented by official statements and press
reports.
Since 9/11, the Bush administration has conducted several
anti-terrorist exercises to prepare America in the case of a second
9/11 attack. (See Chapter XX.)
This chapter outlines two pre-9/11 simulations of a plane being used
by terrorists to crash into a building, which suggest that US
military and intelligence authorities had indeed contemplated the
possibility of “a 9/11 type attack”:
1. The Pentagon exercise,
conducted eleven months before 9/11 in October 2000,
consisted in establishing the scenario of a simulated
passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon.
2. The CIA exercise held at CIA’s Chantilly Virginia
Reconnaissance Office on the morning of September 11, 2001.
In the second part of this chapter, the
role of these anti-terror exercises in the disinformation campaign
is examined, focussing on the broader issue of foreknowledge of
9/11.
The Pentagon Scenario of an Actual
Terrorist Attack
In October 2000, a military exercise was conducted which consisted
in establishing the scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing
into the Pentagon. The exercise was coordinated by the Defense
Protective Services Police and the Pentagon’s Command Emergency
Response Team.
According to a detailed report by Dennis Ryan of Fort Myer Military
Community’s Pentagram, “the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the
crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency
response teams were exposed to on Oct. 24-26 [2000]”:
The fire and smoke from the downed
passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense
Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics,
nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. … Don Abbott, of
Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon
and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the
“plane crash” was a simulated one.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock
terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction
accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced
to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.
To conduct the exercise, emergency personnel hold radios that
are used to rush help to the proper places, while toy trucks
representing rescue equipment are pushed around the exercise
table.
Cards are then passed out to the various players designating the
number of casualties and where they should be sent in a given
scenario.
To conduct the exercise, a medic reports to Army nurse Maj.
Lorie Brown a list of 28 casualties so far. Brown then contacts
her superior on the radio, Col. James Geiling, a doctor in the
command room across the hall.
Geiling approves Brown’s request for helicopters to evacuate the
wounded. A policeman in the room recommends not moving bodies
and Abbott, playing the role of referee, nods his head in
agreement. …
An Army medic found the practice realistic.
“You get to see the people that we’ll be dealing with and to
think about the scenarios and what you would do,” Sgt. Kelly
Brown said. “It’s a real good scenario and one that could happen
easily.” …
Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the participants
that the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident and
that the whole emergency would run for seven to 20 days and
might involve as many as 17 agencies.
“The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest part,” Abbott
said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a disaster.
“Families wanting to come to the crash site for closure. … In
this particular crash there would have been 341 victims.”1
The report refutes the claims of the
Bush Administration that they could not have predicted the use of an
aeroplane in a terrorist attack. In the words of Condoleezza Rice at
her 16 May 2002 Press Conference:
I don’t think anybody could have
predicted that these people would take an aeroplane and slam it
into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into
the Pentagon, that they would try to use an aeroplane as a
missile, a hijacked aeroplane as a missile.
“The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise”
had been ordered by senior Pentagon officials and Sec Donald
Rumsfeld, whose office is on the third floor of the outer ring of
the Pentagon, stated “I didn’t know”. Below is an excerpt of
Rumsfeld’s testimony at the 9/11 Commission in March 2004 (in
response to Commissioner Ben-Veniste):
BEN-VENISTE: So it seems to me when
you make the statement, sir, that we didn’t know that planes
might be used as weapons in the summer of 2001, I just have to
take issue with that.
RUMSFELD: Well, I didn’t say we didn’t know. I said I didn’t
know. And if I just was handed a civil aviation circular that
people did know. And they sent it out on June 22nd, 2001.2
The objective of the exercise, in the
words of its Pentagon organizers, consisted in a “preparation for
any potential disasters. … ‘This is important so that we’re better
prepared,’ Brown said.‘This is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it
will never happen, but this way we’re prepared.’”3
Were they prepared ten months later on September 11, 2001, when the
actual disaster occurred? What was the purpose of conducting this
exercise?
The CIA’s “Pre-Planned Simulation” of a
Plane Crashing into a Building
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the CIA had been running “a
pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that
would be created if a plane were to strike a building”. The
simulation was held at the CIA Chantilly Virginia Reconnaissance
Office.
The Bush administration described the event as “a bizarre coin-cidence”.4
The simulation consisted in a “scheduled exercise” held on the
morning of September 11, 2001, where “a small corporate jet crashed
into one of the four towers at the agency’s headquarters building
after experiencing a mechanical failure.5
“Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees’ ability
to respond to a disaster”, said spokesman Art Haubold. … “It was
just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an
aircraft crashing into our facility. … As soon as the real world
events began, we canceled the exercise.”6
The news concerning the 9/11 Chantilly aircraft crashing simulation
was hushed up. It was not made public at the time. It was revealed
almost a year later, in the form of an innocuous announcement of a
Homeland Security Conference. The latter entitled “Homeland
Security: America’s Leadership Challenge” was held in Chicago on
September 6, 2002, barely a few days before the commemoration of the
tragic events of 9/11.
The promotional literature for the conference under the auspices of
the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute (NLESI) stated
what nobody in America knew about. On the morning of 9/11, the CIA
was conducting a pre-planned simulation of a plane striking a
building.
One of the key speakers at the National Law Enforcement and Security
Institute conference was CIA’s John Fulton, Chief of the Strategic
War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance Office, a
specialist in risk and threat response analysis, scenario gaming,
and strategic planning:
On the morning of September 11th
2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a
pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues
that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.
Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a
dramatic way that day. Information is the most powerful tool
available in the homeland security effort.
At the core of every initiative
currently underway to protect our country and its citizens is
the challenge of getting the right information to the right
people at the right time. How can so much information from
around the world be captured and processed in meaningful and
timely ways? Mr. Fulton shares his insights into the
intelligence community, and shares a vision of how today’s
information systems will be developed into even better
counter-terrorism tools of tomorrow.7
The Role of Foreknowledge in the
Disinformation Campaign
The Pentagon and CIA pre-9/11 “scenarios” of an actual terror attack
refute the statements of US officials including those of Donald
Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.
While the pre-9/11 scenarios cast serious doubt on the official 9/11
narrative as conveyed in the 9/11 Commission Report, they contribute
to sustaining the Al Qaeda legend. The conduct of these
anti-terrorist drills in anticipation of a terror attack are part of
a disinformation campaign. They convey the impression that the
threat of Islamic terrorists is real.
Attorney General John Ashcroft had apparently been warned in August
2001 by the FBI to avoid commercial airlines, but this information
was not made public.8
More generally, the holding of anti-terrorist drills both prior and
in the wake of 9/11 has contributed to creating within the military,
intelligence and law enforcement communities a broad consensus, that
Al Qaeda is an enemy of the Homeland and that the threat is real.
The Bush administration had numerous “intelligence warnings”. We
also know that senior Bush officials lied under oath to the 9/11
Commission, when they stated that they had no information or
forewarning of impending terrorist attacks.
But we also know from carefully documented research that:
-
There were stand-down orders on
9/11. The US Air force did not intervene.9
-
There was a cover-up of the WTC
and Pentagon investigations.
-
The WTC rubble was removed
before it could be examined.10
-
The plane debris at the Pentagon
are unaccounted for.11
-
There were reports of
significant financial gains made as a result of 9/11, from
insider trading in the days prior to 9/11.12
-
Mystery surrounds WTC Building
7, which collapsed or was “pulled” down in the afternoon of
September 11, 2001.13
The White House is being accused by its
critics of “criminal negligence”, for having casually disregarded
the intelligence presented to president Bush and his national
security team, and for not having acted to prevent the 9/11
terrorist attack.
The unfolding consensus among the critics is that “they knew but
failed to act”.
This line of reasoning is appealing to many 9/11 writers because it
clearly places the blame on the Bush administration.
Ye t in a bitter irony, the very process of revealing the lies of US
officials regarding foreknowledge and expressing public outrage, has
contributed to reinforcing the 9/11 cover-up.
The foreknowledge issue thus becomes part of the disinformation
campaign, which serves to present Al Qaeda as a threat to the
security of America, when in fact Al Qaeda is a creation of the US
intelligence apparatus.
The presumption is that these forewarnings and intelligence briefs
emanating from the intelligence establishment—not to mention the
“scenarios” of actual terror attacks conducted by the Pentagon and
the CIA—constitute a true and unbiased representation of the
terrorist threat.
Meanwhile, the history of Al Qaeda and
the CIA has been pushed to the background, not to mention its links
to Pakistan’s military intelligence. (See chapter IV.)
The central proposition that Islamic terrorists were responsible for
9/11 serves to justify everything else including the PATRIOT Acts,
the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the spiraling defense and homeland
security budgets, the detention of thousands of people of Muslim
faith on trumped up charges, the arrest and deportation to
Guantanamo of alleged “enemy combatants”, etc.
The focus on foreknowledge has served to usefully distract attention
from the US Government’s longstanding relationship to the terror
network since the Soviet-Afghan war, which inevitably raises the
broader issue of treason and war crimes.
The foreknowledge issue in a sense erases the historical record
because it denies the role of Al Qaeda as a US intelligence asset.
The anti-terror drills fit into the broader campaign of
disinformation. The Bush administration is accused of not acting
upon these terrorist warnings. In the words of Bush’s adviser on
counter-terrorism Richard Clarke:
We must try to achieve a level of
public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously
energetic and mutually respectful. … We all want to defeat the
jihadists. [This is the consensus.] To do that, we need to
encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America
about how that will best be done. And if there is another major
terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle
debate as we did for too long after 9/11.14
Bush and the White House intelligence
team are said to have ignored these warnings.
Richard Clarke, who was in charge of counter terrorism on the
National Security Council until February 2003,“apologized” to the
American people and the families of the victims.
Bear in mind that Richard Clarke was part of the intelligence team
which at the time was providing support to Al Qaeda in the Balkans.
(See Chapter III.) He was also part of the Bush team when the US
invaded Afghanistan, using 9/11 as a pretext for waging a “Just
War”.
This new anti-Bush consensus concerning the 9/11 attacks has
engulfed part of the 9/11 truth movement. The outright lies in sworn
testimony to the 9/11 Commission have been denounced in chorus; the
families of the victims have expressed their indignation.
The debate centers on whether the Administration is responsible for
an “intelligence failure” or whether it was the result of
“incompetence”. In both cases, the Al Qaeda legend remains
unscathed. Bin Laden is the culprit. Al Qaeda sponsored Arab
hijackers were responsible for 9/11.
Source of the Terrorist Warnings
Beneath the rhetoric, few people seem to have questioned the source
of the “warnings” emanating from the intelligence apparatus, which
is known to have supported Al Qaeda throughout the entire post Cold
War era.
Are the terrorist “warnings” emanating out of the CIA based on solid
intelligence. Do they constitute a true representation of the
terrorist threat or are they part of the process of disinformation
which seeks to uphold the figure of Osama bin Laden as an “Enemy of
the Homeland”?
Meanwhile, the issue of “cover-up and complicity” at the highest
levels of the Bush administration, which was raised in the immediate
wake of the 9/11 attacks is no longer an object of serious debate.
(See Chapters III, IV and X.) The role of Bush officials, their
documented links to the terror network, the business ties between
the Bushes and bin Laden families, the role of Pakistan’s Military
Intelligence (ISI), the fact that several Bush officials were the
architects of Al Qaeda during the Reagan administration, as revealed
by the Iran-Contra investigation: all of this, which is carefully
documented, is no longer considered relevant.
“The Saudis Did It”
What the media, as well as some of the key 9/11 investigators are
pushing is that “the Saudis did it”. The outside enemy Al Qaeda is
said to be supported by the Saudis.
This line of analysis, which characterizes the controversial
trillion dollar law suit by the families of the victims directed
against the financiers of 9/11, is in many regards contradictory.
While it highlights the role of the Saudi financial elites, it fails
to address the links between the Saudi financiers and their US
sponsors.
“The Saudis did it” is also part of the US foreign policy agenda, to
be eventually used to discredit the Saudi monarchy and destabilize
the Saudi financiers, who oversee 25 percent of the World’s oil
reserves, almost ten times those of the US. In fact, this process
has already begun with the Saudi privatization program, which seeks
to transfer Saudi wealth and assets into foreign (Anglo-American)
hands.
The Saudi financiers were never prime movers. In fact they were
proxies who played a subordinate role. They worked closely with US
intelligence and their American financial counterparts. They were
involved in the laundering of drug money working closely with the
CIA. The Wahabbi sects from Saudi Arabia were sent to Afghanistan to
set up the madrassas. The Saudis channeled covert financing to the
various Islamic insurgencies on behalf of the CIA. (See Chapter II).
“The Saudis did it” consensus essentially contributes to
whitewashing the Bush administration, while also providing a foreign
policy pretext to destabilize Saudi Arabia.
The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush’s
National Security Doctrine
Spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive
“defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda
constitute the two essential building blocks of the Pentagon’s
propaganda campaign, (See Chapter XIX.) No Al Qaeda, no war on
terrorism.
No “rogue states” which sponsor Al Qaeda, no pretext for waging war.
No justification for invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
No justification for sending in US Special Forces into numerous
countries around the World.
And no justification for developing tactical nuclear weapons to be
used in conventional war theaters against Islamic terrorists, who
according to official statements constitute a nuclear threat.
“The Bush Lied” Consensus upholds “The Big
Lie”
The 1993 WTC bombing is heralded as one of the earlier Al Qaeda
attacks on the Homeland.
The 1993 WTC bombing, the 1998 African US embassy bombings, the 2000
attack on USS Cole have become part of an evolving legend which
describes Al Qaeda as “an outside enemy” involved in numerous terror
attacks. In the words of National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice
in sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission:
The terrorist threat to our Nation
did not emerge on September 11th, 2001. Long before that day,
radical, freedom-hating terrorists declared war on America and
on the civilized world. The attack on the Marine barracks in
Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the
rise of Al Qaeda and the bombing of the World Trade Center in
1993, the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in
1995 and 1996, the East Africa embassy bombings of 1998, the
attack on the USS Cole in 2000, these and other atrocities were
part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation
and chaos and to murder innocent Americans.14
The legend of the “outside enemy” is
making its way into American history books. The underlying consensus
points to “intelligence failures”, possible negligence on the part
of US officials as well as the undercover role of the Saudis in
supporting the “outside enemy”.
It was incompetence and negligence but it was not treason. The wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq were “Just Wars”. They were carried out in
accordance with the National Security doctrine, which upholds Al
Qaeda as the outside enemy.
The 9/11 Commission Report had indeed revealed that Bush officials
had lied under oath regarding the pre-9/11 terrorist warnings,
emanating from US intelligence. Yet nobody had begged the key
question: What is the significance of these “warnings” emanating
from the intelligence apparatus, knowing that the CIA is the creator
of Al Qaeda and that Al Qaeda is an “intelligence asset”?
The CIA is the sponsor of Al Qaeda and at the same time controls the
warnings on impending terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda, not to mention
the conduct of anti-terrorist drills conducted both prior as well as
in the wake of 9/11. (On the post 9/11 anti-terrorist drills, see
Chapter XXI.)
In other words, were Bush administration officials lying—in sworn
testimony to the 9/11 Commission—on something which is true, or were
they lying on something which is an even bigger lie?
While the Bush administration may take the blame for lying, the “war
on terrorism” and its humanitarian mandate remain functionally
intact.
Notes
1. Dennis Ryan, “Contingency
planning, Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in
preparing for emergencies”, MDW NEWS 3 Nov 2000.
http://www.mdw.army.mil/
2. See complete transcript of Rumfeld’s testimony at the 9/11
Commission website archives at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/
3. Ryan, op. cit.
4. Quoted in Associated Press, 22 August 2002.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7. The National Law Enforcement and Security Institute website
is: http://www.nlsi.net/ See
also The Memory Hole at
http://www.thememory-hole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm
8. “The White House had (at least) 28 Advanced Intelligence
Warnings Prior to 9/11”, compiled by Eric Smith, Centre for
Research on Globalization, 11 February 2004,
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SMI402A.html
9. See George Szamuely, “Scrambled Messages on 9/11”, New York
Press, 14 December 2001. See also by the same author, “Nothing
Urgent”, New York Press, Vol. 15, No. 2, See also David Ray
Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the
Bush Administration and 9/11, Interlink Publishing, 2004.
Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, New Society Books,
Vancouver, 2004. Mark Elsis,“9/11 Stand Down”, Centre for
Research on Globalization, May 2003,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ELS305B.html, Eric
Hufschmid, Painful Questions, 2003.
10. See Bill Manning, “Selling Out the Investigation”, Fire
Engineering Magazine, January 2002.
11. There is a vast literature on this subject. See Thierry
Meyssan’s earlier text: “Who was behind the September eleventh
attacks?” transcript of a speech at the Zayed Center in Abu
Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), 8 April 2002, Centre for Research
on Globalization,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MEY204C.html, Thierry
Meyssan, Pentagate, Carnot USA Books, August 2002.
12. The issue of inside trade has been object of extensive
research. Michael Ruppert was among the first writers to focus
on this issue in the immediate wake of 9/11. See Michael Ruppert,
“Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading lead directly
into the CIA’s Highest Ranks”, From the Wilderness Publications,
9 October 2001. See also Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon,
New Society Books, Vancouver, 2004.
13. Several authors have written on this subject. See for
instance, Scott Loughrey, “WTC-7: The Improbable Collapse”,
Centre for Research on Globalization, 10 August 2003, at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/LOU308A.html, Jeremy
Baker,“The Demolition of WTC 7 Revisited”, Global Outlook, No.
7, Spring 2004.
14. See complete transcript of Condoleeza Rice’s testimony at
the 9/11 Commission website archives at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/. Also available at Federal
Documents Clearing House Archive, 8 April 2004.
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