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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