THE WATCHMAN - A Bi-weekly Publication of Mem Research
Vol. I No. 1
October 28, 2001
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"Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." - Ps.
127:1
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CONTENTS
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Introduction
Headlines
Must-Read
Commentary
Features
Letters
THE WATCHMAN - A Bi-weekly Publication of Mem Research
Vol. I No. 1
October 28, 2001
-------------------------------------------------------------
"Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." - Ps.
127:1
-------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
-------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
Headlines
Must-Read
Commentary
Features
Letters
-------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
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This is the first issue of the Watchman, a bi-weekly newsletter. Many of you
are getting this issue without having requested it. I have, however, had
some kind of contact with each recipient in the past, with the exception of
members of the government and media. You may feel either lucky or annoyed
that you are receiving this newsletter. In the former case, please forward
this message to those that weren't as lucky and encourage them to subscribe.
In the latter case, please accept my apologies and reply to this message
with a subject line of "unsubscribe."
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HEADLINES
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October 26
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/26/gen.attack.on.terror/index.html
Anti-Terrorism Bill Signed by President Bush (CNN)
October 19
http://www.copvcia.com/stories/oct_2001/sams.html
Surface-to-Air Missiles Reportedly Smuggled into U.S. (From the Wilderness)
October 17
http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Ticker101701/ticker101701.html
Rigged Game - House considers inquiry regarding what the intelligence
community knew prior to the attacks, instead adopts proposal by
Representative J. Porter Goss, "former" CIA officer (Online Journal).
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MUST-READ
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"Narco-Dollars for Dummies" by Catherine Austin Fitts
http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars1.html
How dominant is the black market in the American economy? How much influence
does it have over U.S. politics? It's a simple matter of mathematics.
"Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?"
by James Hatfield
http://onlinejournal.com/Attack_on_America/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-0919
01.html
The Online Journal has reposted this article, originally published just days
before the author's apparent suicide on July 18th of this year. Hatfield,
you may recall, was the author of Bush biography "Fortunate Son," a book
which his original publisher recalled for burning. Draw what connections you
will between this article (which points out George W. Bush's business ties
to a member of the bin Laden family), the author's subsequent death, and the
terrible situation the United States finds itself in today. In calling Osama
bin Laden George Bush's "former business partner," Hatfield paints with a
pretty broad brush, but the article raises some interesting questions - made
even more intriguing by his death. Was he close enough to the mark to have
precipitated his murder?
McCoy, Alfred W. 1991. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global
Drug Trade. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books.
Read it AGAIN, particularly regarding the Afghan War.
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COMMENTARY
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SAUDI AND IRAQI CONNECTIONS IN SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS TO BE REVEALED?
With the majority of the September 11th hijackers now identified as Saudi
nationals, attention should be given to the possible role of the Saudi
Arabian government in the attacks and to their known financial support of
Islamic terrorism. "The cover of their complicity has been removed," said a
guest on CNBC Thursday night. But will American political and financial
entanglements in Saudi Arabia prevent an earnest investigation?
Osama bin Laden was, until the revocation of his citizenship in 1994, a
Saudi Arabian citizen. The stated purpose of his war on America is to drive
U.S. troops from that country, the land of Mohammed and Mecca. The
displeasure of many Muslims at the American presence in the Islamic Holy
Land is something that until recently the US government has studiously
ignored - even covered up. American occupation on its present scale began in
1991 during the Gulf War and has made America a target ever since. Perhaps
the government's silence regarding this fact is linked to its potential
embarrassment over the long decade during which US-led sanctions have
prevented Iraq from getting necessary medical supplies. Innocent Iraqis of
all ages have been dying due to the sanctions, and the evidence suggests
that Iraq has long been allied with bin Laden's mujaheddin and with other
Saudi extremists to have its vengeance.
On November 13, 1995 seven people were killed when a bomb exploded at the
U.S. training mission in Riyadh. This incident followed a threat faxed to
Iraqi-owned London paper earlier that year stating that "crusader forces"
and influential members of the Saudi royal family would be attacked if
foreign forces did not leave the country by June 28. The threat was repeated
on Iraqi state radio the following day. After the June deadline passed, the
same paper reported receiving a second fax from the "Islamic Change
Movement" declaring that the attacks would soon begin.
On June 25, 1996 nineteen American military personnel were among those
killed when another bombing took place in Dharan. The size of the Dharan
bomb indicated state sponsorship, with the two main suspects being Iraq and
Iran. In October of that year, American authorities leaked word that their
suspicions focused on Osama bin Laden, who had reportedly been in contact
with Iraqi intelligence. President Clinton vowed "to make sure those
responsible are brought to justice."
Breaking their long silence since the Riyadh bombing, the "Islamic Change
Movement" surfaced again on July 16, faxing a message to Al Hayat, a
London-based paper owned by Saudi Arabia's Prince Khalid. According to an
April 1997 article in The American Spectator (which I have already
paraphrased extensively):
"The message took credit for the Riyadh and Dharan bombings . . . and
concluded, 'The movement will give a decisive reply to the threats of the
stupid American president and everyone will be surprised by the size of the
response and the mujahedin's choice of the time and place. The invaders must
prepare to leave alive or dead. Their appointment is the morning. Is the
morning not near?'
"The next day was Iraq's national day. Saddam's speech that morning was the
most ferocious he had given since the Gulf War. . . Within hours, TWA Flight
800 exploded off the coast of Long Island. Never before had a plane, without
warning or indication of any malfunction whatsoever, dropped from the sky,
amid a fireball, no less . . . [without the cause having been] terrorism."
On August 15, 2000 the "TWA Eyewitness Alliance" ran a half-page ad in the
Washington Times declaring that "We Saw TWA Flight 800 Shot Down By
Missiles - And We Won't Be Silenced Any Longer" (this advertisement can be
viewed at http://members.home.net/memresearch/images/twa800.gif). What was
the government attempting to accomplish by ignoring evidence of terrorism?
To avoid public demand that US forces return home from Saudi Arabia? To keep
attention from being drawn to the sanctions against Iraq, which by then even
former Attorney General Ramsey Clark was publicly denouncing? To avoid
public curiosity about Osama bin Laden, a drug-smuggling monster created by
the CIA during the Afghan War? Or to avoid the very crisis in which we now
find ourselves?
The bombings of two U.S. embassies and the USS Cole have followed since that
time, with the U.S. government finally beginning to strike back and growing
ever more accusatory of Osama bin Laden - but still careful to avoid
discussion of the policies that seem to be precipitating these attacks: the
occupation of Saudi Arabia and sanctions against Iraq.
"ANTI-TERRORISM" BILL GOES ON FAST TRACK THROUGH HOUSE, SENATE, OVAL OFFICE
Despite the evacuation of the offices of the House of Representatives, the
House passed an 'Anti-Terrorism' bill on Wednesday by a vote of 357-66.
According to one of the dissenters, Robert Scott (D-VA), the bill aggravates
already-existing provisions for wiretapping without a warrant; the new bill
makes evidence thus gathered admissible in criminal prosecutions.
At 8 P.M. ET the same day, Fox News' Charles O'Reilly carried on an
argument with Scott, loudly and repeatedly insisting that constitutional
protections must be pushed aside because we are "at war."
The bill passed the Senate on Thursday by a vote of 98 to 1, with Senator
Russ Feingold as the lone dissenter. Called the "U.S.A. Patriot Act," it was
signed into law by President Bush on Friday the 26th. Attorney General
Ashcroft, who had requested the bill, gave early instruction to federal law
enforcement officials to take advantage of the new legislation the very hour
that it passed into law.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
The trail of evidence in the September 11th attacks leads to more suspects
than Osama bin Laden and his army of religious fanatics. At the Mad Cow
Press website (www.madcowprod.com) and in the electronic newsletter of the
same name, journalist Daniel Hopsicker reports the connections between the
South Florida mob and members of the Saudi royal family. Hopsicker also
reports that the suicide pilots were trained at U.S. military bases, likely
at the behest of the Saudi Arabian government. We already know that the bin
Laden family owns the contracting business favored by the Saudi royal family
and that one of the bin Ladens was a partner in George W. Bush's first
energy company. All three of these parties (the Bushes, bin Ladens, and the
House of Saud) figure heavily in the BCCI banking scandal of 1991 and the
U.S.' former war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. The same three parties,
as well as BCCI, have much to do with the drug trafficking that occurred in
Pakistan during the Afghan War. During that time, the U.S. was inundated
with South Asian heroin as a result of CIA support for the opium-growing
Mujahideen and the Pakistani military, which operated the heroin labs across
the border.
It was the Saudi royal family to which the Reagan administration turned to
keep the Nicaraguan contras together while the National Security Council and
CIA organized round-trip flights between Central America and the U.S., with
guns going south and cocaine coming back north. CIA and drug trafficking?
That brings us full circle to the South Florida mob, which has worked in
that business hand-in-hand with the Bushes and the CIA since before the days
of Castro's revolution in Cuba (See "Rogue Elephant" by this author at
http://members.home.net/memresearch/econ/rogue.htm ).
And now we come to Southern Air Transport. For those unfamiliar with the
CIA's drug-smuggling proprietary airline, a brief history is in order.
Southern Air Transport, based in Florida, flew cocaine into the US from
Central America during the Iran-Contra years. The flights were often manned
by former Air America pilots, Air America being the CIA-owned airline which
flew raw opium from the hills of Laos to refineries in Vientiane and Saigon
during the Vietnam conflict. Air America grew out of Civil Air Transport,
the airline which had performed the same service for Chiang Kai-Shek's
Nationalist Chinese forces in the 1940s and 1950s. Mike Ruppert
(http://www.copvcia.com/stories/oct_2001/heroin.html) reports that Southern
Air Transport and many similar enterprises were already in position in
Uzbekistan, Afghanistan's opium-producing neighbor, before the September 11
attacks. Vietnam and Iran-Contra conspirator Richard Secord is reported to
have traveled to Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent.
Mike also quotes the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 28, 2001) regarding another
Bush family tie to the Bin Ladens: "George H.W. Bush, the father of
President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia
through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." And we might
begin to wonder: is Osama bin Laden the "black sheep" of his family or is
that just a convenient story meant to cover an uglier reality? Family is
family, and the bin Laden family may be of two minds on this issue, just as
the House of Saud is sharply divided between those who value their close
relationship to the U.S. and those who cannot tolerate our presence.
At Mad Cow and also at Global Research
(http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html), we read that the mob and
the CIA have been doing business with the very terrorists that the Bush
administration is promising to eradicate.
Given the history of the above individuals and institutions, we must
consider the possibility that elements of the CIA, the Bush family, the
Florida mob, the House of Saud, and the Bin Laden family are playing both
sides of this conflict and playing us for fools. Do they and their bankers
stand to make several fortunes in heroin? Stay tuned.
99 CHANNELS AND NOTHING ON
It's the word on everyone's lips and the problem on everyone's mind. In
their October 29 issue, US News and World Report titled its coverage of the
phenomenon "Tools of Mass Distraction: An outbreak of terror that dances on
the head of a pin." As the average American sits down to watch the news in
the evening, he or she cannot avoid coverage of the Anthrax scare. Let us
click through the news channels on our local cable system together, hoping
to find something else.
Click. MSNBC. Do we find a discussion of the US sanctions against Iraq and
how many deaths are caused by Iraq's shortage of medical supplies? No. It's
the postmaster general telling America that he cannot guarantee the safety
of the mail.
Click. CNBC. Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary. Perhaps he will
tell us what stance the administration is taking with regard to Saudi
Arabia's sponsorship of Islamic terrorists? Nope. He's "clarifying" the
remarks made by the postmaster general.
Click. CNN. Coverage of the Northern Alliance's involvement in the heroin
trade? Nope. More anthrax coverage.
Click. Fox News. Some mention of the Florida recount showing that Al Gore
won the election after all? I didn't think so.
And so it goes on.
Now let us for a moment place ourselves in the shoes of the party
perpetrating the anthrax scare. Since we still don't know who is mailing
this material, let us first assume that we are an Islamic terrorist cell
bent on breaking America's will. If we were terrorists trying to achieve
some political aim, would we prepare envelopes containing a "non-weaponized"
form of anthrax - a non-contagious disease - and then mail them to
high-profile Americans, failing to make any demands or to even claim credit
for our deeds? Or would we instead do something that we are good at, like
placing car bombs in areas of high traffic? After all, killing as many
infidels as possible is supposed to be what this is all about. And bombs are
much cheaper than bio-weapons. Anyone can make a bomb, but to get access to
bio-weapons, you would have to be a government or something . . . Anthrax
doesn't sound like the rational choice for us to make, does it?
Let us then try another assumption. If we were a white-collar criminal cabal
trying to cover our complicity in the September 11th attacks and to distract
the public from a developing heroin-smuggling operation in Asia Minor, while
keeping real damage at a minimum, would we place car bombs in areas of high
traffic or would we mail envelopes containing a non-weaponized form of a
non-contagious disease to several high-profile Americans?
FIDDLING AS ROME BURNS? NOT QUITE, BUT . . .
On October 10th, Narco News published an article by Stan Goff ("The
So-Called Evidence Is A Farce," http://www.narconews.com/goff1.html) which
is a worthwhile read. I was, however, disappointed to find that Goff's
September 11th chronology of events is contradicted by all other accounts.
Goff went into some detail to argue that the government's response was
inordinately and suspiciously slow - which it was - stating that "Four
planes [were] hijacked and deviate[d] from their flight plans, all the while
on FAA radar. The planes [were] all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM
Eastern Daylight Time." This does not agree with the Reuters chronology, for
instance, which puts the hijacking of Flight 11 at 8:20 AM, nor with other
accounts which state that two of the doomed flights did not even take off
until at least 8:15. According to U.S. News and World Report, Flight 93 sat
on the tarmac at Newark International until 8:43. I am uneasy with the
rapidity with which Goff's assessment was repeated by some of the best
alternative news sources on the internet.
That notwithstanding, the question still looms as to why Flight 77 was not
intercepted before it struck the Pentagon - a full 45 minutes after
deviating from its scheduled flight path, an hour after the first crash, and
half an hour after the second airliner struck the World Trade Center. Does
America have no air defense for the center of its military activity, even
after previous threats had surfaced?
NBC's Bob Arnot (http://www.msnbc.com/news/627524_asp.htm) wrote on
September 12: ". . . If a plane deviates by 15 degrees, or two miles from
that course, the flight controllers will hit the panic button. They'll call
the plane, saying 'American 11, you're deviating from course.' It's
considered a real emergency, like a police car screeching down a highway at
100 miles an hour. When golfer Payne Stewart's incapacitated Learjet missed
a turn at a fix, heading north instead of west to Texas, F-16 interceptors
were quickly dispatched.
"F-16 interceptors can fly alongside a plane to see who's flying it. They
can also try to force it off course. Once it is apparent that it is not
following directions, it might be forced over the ocean or to a remote
airport - or even shot down. The intent with Stewart's plane was to shoot it
down if it was going to crash into a major populated area.
"Clearly, the Air Force had the capability and the training to intercept the
American and United flights that hit the World Trade Center," Arnot wrote,
but the Air Force did not have sufficient time. What, then of the Pentagon?
Is forty-five minutes to an hour not enough warning time to protect the core
building of the U.S. military? Something still defies explanation.
PASSENGER LIST PUZZLE
Earlier this month there was discussion of the September 11 passenger lists
published by the airlines; more to the point, there was puzzlement over why
the number of reported dead did not match the number of names on the lists
(http://globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR110A.html). There was speculation over
how the hijackers could have been missed by the head count at the beginning
of the flight and/or how they could have bypassed check-in. And if they did
not check in, how could they have been identified by the FBI and accounted
for among the dead?
The simplest explanation - though not yet supported by documentation or
testimony - is this:
1) All but one of the hijackers probably went through the normal check-in
procedure with a falsified photo ID. One used his real name.
2) Accepting for the moment that there were 19 hijackers, they and the
others missing from the published passenger lists could be accounted for in
the fact that the passenger lists in question were published by the airlines
in more or less the same form on the 13th of September as "partial"
passenger lists. (example:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1
8755-2001Sep12 ) Some passenger names would not have been released at that
point because next-of-kin had not been notified. Of course, the 19 hijackers
names would likely fall in that category because of the false identities
used to board the planes. Hence their absence from the lists.
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FEATURES
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I hope to make the book review a regular feature. I'll start with this
review, which is an expanded version of something I wrote this April. Six
months later, this still looks like the book of the year:
"Barry & 'The Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker
The few who managed to get the first copies in January 2001 know that "Barry
and the 'Boys'" seems likely to be the year's most explosive book . . . if
it gets read. Not only does Hopsicker conclusively link infamous drug
trafficker Barry Seal to Kennedy assassination figures Dave Ferrie and Lee
Harvey Oswald - not only does he publish a photo showing Seal with Watergate
criminal Frank Sturgis and Iran-Contra figure Felix Rodriguez in 1963 - but
he provides so many other nuggets that "Barry and the 'Boys'" is
indispensable to anyone seriously seeking to understand how the above
scandals and others like them have all been related. It's all there - from
OSS operations in wartime Burma to the political intrigue that still haunts
Bill Clinton's Arkansas.
If you had read the book earlier this year, there would be a ring of
familiarity to Hopsicker's latest article mentioning the Saudi royal family
and the Florida mob. In a chapter called "Alvin of Arabia," we read that
Alvin Malnik's son married the granddaughter of King Abdul Aziz. Malnik was
the attorney for mob financial guru Meyer Lansky, who competed with Santos
Trafficante for control of the Florida and Cuba drug traffic for many years.
Though it has more information than even the most avid researchers can
readily absorb, Hopsicker's style makes the book a good read for anyone
interested in the darker side of American politics. "Barry and the 'Boys'"
confirms beyond any doubt what many now suspect: that the history of
American power politics in the later 20th century is the history of the CIA
and drug trafficking. For those who must know which forces truly shape
American history and politics, "Barry and the 'Boys'" is required reading.
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LETTERS
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THE WATCHMAN is a bi-weekly publication of Mem Publishing/Mem Research
(c) 2001 Kent G. Heiner. This document may be distributed freely in its
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