The Lie Won't Stand
by Michael Ruppert
Bush Administration Explanations for Pre-9-11 Warnings
Fail the Smell Test
Warnings Received From Heads of State, Allied Intelligence
Services
Specifically Warned of Suicide Attacks by Hijackers
Never
in the history of scandals involving the United States government has an attempt
to conceal criminal conduct by an administration been more transparently
dishonest or more easily exposed. On May 15 White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer -- while making the startling admission that President Bush received
CIA and FBI intelligence briefings in August indicating Osama bin Laden might be
planning hijackings -- told major news sources including CBS News, “All
appropriate action was taken based on the threat information we had,” Fleischer
said. “The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of
airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers.”
In
other statements Fleischer told the press, “The president was also provided
information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional
pre-9-11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an
airplane as a missile.” According to a May 16 story by the New York Times, “Mr.
Fleischer said the information given to the president in Texas [last August],
had prompted the administration to put law enforcement agencies on alert.”
Every
major position taken by an administration in full retreat and on the defensive
can be easily deconstructed and shown to be false.
For
more than seven months FTW has been documenting specific warnings received by
the U.S. government from both foreign intelligence services and, in one case,
from Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicating commercial airliners were
going to be used by terrorists to attack -- among other things -- the World
Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. In order for Fleischer’s statement to be
credible he would have to assert then that George W. Bush either ignored or was
not informed of a direct warning from a head of state and also from the German
intelligence service, the BND.
As reported in the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14, the BND warned both the CIA and Israel in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.” The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.
No
known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ report
indicates the information was received directly from BND
sources.
According
to a Sept. 14
report in the Internet newswire online.ie, German police, monitoring the
phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning U.S.
intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the World
Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the
U.S. government for the story but refused to discuss additional
details.
According
to a story in Izvestia on Sept.
12,
Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide
pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners
into important targets.
In an
MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Putin stated he had ordered
Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government “in the strongest possible
terms” of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the
attacks on Sept. 11. No credible information has emerged from any source
indicating that Putin omitted the above information when issuing the
warning.
Many other direct warnings were received by the U.S. government and have been documented in FTW’s 9-11 timeline located here.
These
stories give the immediate lie to Fleischer’s statements that Bush had no
inkling of airliners being used as weapons.
But
there is more.
In
1996 -- as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6, and by Agence France
Presse on Dec. 7 -- Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned
after arrests in the Philippines that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash
commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. Details of the plan, as reported by a
number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the
arrests. The plan was called “Operation Bojinka.” Details of the plot were
disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his
involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing.
FBI
MEMOS TRIGGER WHITE HOUSE BACKSTEPPING
In “traditional” hijackings the hijackers have no need or desire to learn how to fly.
As
reported by The New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post
(among others) the events leading to Fleischer’s statements were the recent
disclosure of FBI memoranda originated by field agents in Arizona and Minnesota
that warned of a possible hijack attempt by bin Laden’s followers. In both cases
the suspects were taking flight lessons.
According
to Newsweek and The New York Times, FBI agents in Phoenix submitted a
classified memorandum in July naming Osama bin Laden and tracking the activities
of possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects who had enrolled in local flight
schools. The memo, according to the Times, stated bin Laden’s followers “could
use the schools to train for terror operations.” The information in the Phoenix
memo was not shared with FBI field agents in Minnesota who had uncovered other
startling evidence.
Just
days before the attacks in early-September, FBI agents in Minnesota wrote notes
that subsequently became included in an internal FBI document warning that
accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui “might be planning on flying something into
the World Trade Center.” A story from the May 20 issue of Newsweek by Michael
Isikoff described how a local flight instructor had reported Moussaoui had
“showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer [and not land] large
airliners…The [FBI] agents were ‘in a frenzy, absolutely convinced he was
planning to so something with a plane.’”
A
multitude of sources have reported the FBI agents requested a warrant to search
Moussaoui’s personal computer but were denied by Attorney General John
Ashcroft’s Justice Department. After the 9-11 attacks the computer was seized
and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center
attacks.
This
apparent lack of support from within the administration is consistent with
reports released last fall by the BBC’s Gregg Palast showing that in January
2001 the Bush Administration had issued direct orders to the FBI to curtail
investigations of two of Osama bin Laden’s relatives, Omar and Abdullah bin
Laden. The two bin Ladens had been connected to possible terrorist activities
and were living in Falls Church, Va., near CIA
headquarters.
APPROPRIATE
WARNINGS?
Fleischer’s
statement that adequate warnings had been given to appropriate federal agencies
falls flat on its face. Two of the most “appropriate” agencies would have been
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force and Air
National Guard.
As
documented by researchers like Jared Israel at www.tenc.net it
has been standard FAA procedure for more than 25 years to scramble U.S. fighters
to intercept -- not shoot down -- any errant or non-responsive aircraft under
FAA control. This protocol is even more stringent in the case of a hijacking.
Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have stated publicly there were no
fighters available in some cases, and there was no heightened state of alert on
Sept. 11. For 50 minutes on 9-11, in direct contravention of established policy,
no fighters were scrambled to intercept two outstanding hijacked airliners even
though it was known attacks were in progress.
Given
the above information, it would have been an obvious move to have placed fighter
aircraft on a heightened state of alert in this time period. This
unresponsiveness stands in contrast to the fact that, in October 1999 at a time
when there was no heightened alert, the ill-fated Lear Jet occupied by golfer
Payne Stewart had an F-16 fighter and an A-10 attack aircraft flying beside it
within minutes of losing radio contact and veering off
course.
INSIDER
TRADING
FTW has spent months on this important story that proves foreknowledge of the attacks by people who also profited from them. This was a glaring warning signal, since such trades ran the risk of being detected by intelligence agencies that routinely monitor all market activity in real time.
The
insider trading involves the placement of large numbers of “put” options on
stocks of companies directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. They include
United Air Lines, American Air Lines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, AXA
Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance and Swiss Reinsurance. Put options are a
leveraged bet that a stock’s price will fall dramatically.
As CBS
news noted on Sept. 26, the peak of trading activity occurred just before the
attacks. There was a jump in United Air Lines put options 90 times (not 90
percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than
average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It
is uncontested that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying
before the attacks. No other airlines were affected.
A May 13 story by the Washington Times’ Insight Magazine attempted to explain the insider trading by stating higher numbers of put options had been placed on United and American stocks earlier in 2001. By relying only on the numbers of put options, Insight asserted that there was nothing unusual about the pre-9-11 trades.
However,
FTW has contacted several experienced traders and reviewed existing
documentation from financial experts, which indicate the alarm for insider
trading is to look for any “imbalance” between the level of put options (a bet
that a stock’s price will fall) and the level of call options (a bet that a
stock’s price will rise). It is a significant imbalance in puts vs. calls that
indicates criminal insider trading. The Insight piece did not address this
point.
Several
traders have stated that in a fairly flat market with high trading volumes, it
has been a routine procedure for experienced traders to place roughly equal
numbers of puts and calls on various stocks in order to generate a paper cash
flow. They were quick to point out that by September, the market had gone into
sharp decline and trading volumes were way down. Thus, lower numbers of put
options did not mean that everything was normal. They stressed it was the
imbalance in put-to-call ratios that signaled the insider trading. [Ed. Note:
FTW has undertaken a more detailed investigation of this trading activity and
hopes to have a more comprehensive report within 4-6
weeks].
Part of the problem in Insight’s research stems from the fact that since Sept. 11, there has been no transparency from either the government or the financial sector on how the trades worked or how the markets tracked them. Secrecy is everywhere. Telephone calls have not been returned, and the government refuses to divulge any information about probes it admits are still ongoing. But simplistic dismissals from sources quoted in the Insight story contradict not only other evidence, but statements made by financial experts and major news sources just after the attacks.
“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life…This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,” said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed Sept. 20 on Good Morning Texas.
“’I saw
put-call numbers higher than I’ve ever seen in 10 years of following the
markets, particularly the options markets,’ said John Kinnucan, principal of
Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle,” reported the
Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19.
To
quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, “Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before
the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock
options market.”
Assertions
that the reported number of puts involved were not abnormal also failed to
analyze highly intricate shell games that involve the movement of put options to
markets outside the U.S. or hidden in what traders refer to as “net positions.”
Serious financial experts have indicated the profits from insider trading could
have been in the billions. Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German
parliament responsible for oversight of Germany’s intelligence services,
estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan.
13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a
conservative estimate of $100 million.
A hasty conclusion reached by many is the insider trades were placed by bin Laden and his associates. Such a notion is flatly contradicted by the now absolute certainty that such insider trades would have -- and apparently did -- set off alarm bells. It makes little sense to argue bin Laden et al would have risked compromising at the last minute an operation planned in total secrecy for at least four years.
Also
lacking credibility is the argument that many of the trades were what some
brokers described as inconsequential amounts valued at $1 million or $2 million.
This does not address the possibility that U.S. intelligence officials decided
in a few cases to make a quick profit from attacks they knew were going to
succeed. As distasteful as it may seem, this explanation is far more credible
than an assumption that bin Laden made the trades himself and risked the
exposure of what the world has been led to believe was his life’s
“masterpiece.”
For more information on 9-11 insider trading please visit www.copvcia.com.
The explanations offered by the Bush Administration over the last 48 hours will not withstand even the slightest scrutiny if a major press organization asks any question about the warnings received from credible foreign government sources and heads of state. Other questions must inevitably follow that will implode an oil dictatorship whose sins and crimes are exposed and just waiting for someone to pick them up and run with them.
On Saturday night, Michael Ruppert was set to be interviewed on the Fox News Channel by Geraldo Rivera, only to have the appearance cancelled at the last minute. His replacement, an ex-CIA man.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc430.htmlTHE END
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