Reflections on William Rivers Pitt's "Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts"

(Over the 10th and 11th of September, 2006, ABC will air a two-part "docudrama" called "The Path to 9/11". It is being celebrated by conservative outlets like FrontPageMag.com, because it apparently casts the Clinton administration in a negative light regarding Al Qaeda. William Rivers Pitt wrote a pretty good defense of the Clinton administration's terrorism policy, however, I felt it necessary to explore some of the alternative narratives that explain why it is that ABC would go out on a limb with this piece, so close to the 2006 mid-term election. This was cross-posted over at DemocraticUnderground.com and other message boards as well. - reprehensor.)

“The passage of time will, in all likelihood, finally expose the truth behind exactly what happened on September 11, and why. Until the moment of final revelation comes, however, we are all best served by a systematic analysis of the facts surrounding that dark day.”

– William Rivers Pitt, Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts

Mr. Pitt, I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, that’s exactly what so many of us have been screaming for—for 5 years now. A systematic analysis of the facts. (This September will see the release of the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth, across America, highlighting the consistently uphill battle of the Jersey Girls, and the careful research of Paul Thompson. This documentary will undoubtedly offer some satisfaction to independent 9/11 researchers, a kind of, “I told you so,” revelry. And, hopefully, a corrective to the lobotomized approach to 9/11 skepticism lopsidedly administered by media pundits of all political shades for 5, nasty, brutish years.)

You may ask, “Why is it so easy for a media giant like ABC to allow for a partisan cudgel to be so finely crafted within the folds of its cloak?”

Let’s also ask this musical question: “Why has the Democratic Party practically en masse allowed Neoconservatives to establish a stance from which to launch a campaign of this nature?”

To answer these questions in any substantive form will require a short walk down memory lane to examine the ideological roots of “international terrorism”.

The name Zbigniew Brzezinski is well known to those familiar with contemporary Western geopolitical thinking. He is infamous for making this statement;

“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

He was talking about President Carter’s endorsement of a plan to give covert aid to the Soviet regime’s opponents in Kabul. Mr. Pitt is familiar with this quote as he used it in a prior article that he reposted at DemocraticUnderground.

That, of course, is not the only quote Brzezinski is famous for. In a shocking pre-cursor to PNAC, we see Brzezinski framing the geopolitical reality of Central Asia within the confines of the resurrection of the Great Game of earlier times, (played out previously by Great Britain and Russia as they sought to control Central Asia), in his book “The Grand Chessboard” (1997);

“The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” (pp. 24–25)

“America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.” (pp. 35–36)

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211)

It’s difficult to say who influences who more, but it’s clear that Brzezinski and the Neocons share a common vision of control, hegemonic if necessary, of Eurasia and the natural resources therein.

It’s also clear that both Brzezinski and the Neocons saw no other way around the mobilization of America in this Imperial conquest, than by harnessing the desire for action and revenge following a calamitous event like a new Pearl Harbor, and by clearly identifying an external threat, a specific enemy that could be set up as a target and focused on with great fury.

Fortunately for the geo-cons, the framing of the “Islamic Terror Menace” had already begun;

In the summer of 1979, a group of powerful elites from various countries gathered at an international conference in Jerusalem to promote and exploit the idea of “international terrorism.” The forum, officially known as the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT), was organized by Benjamin Netanyahu – now a former Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Finance – on behalf of the Jonathan Institute. The Institute was established in honor of the memory of Netanyahu’s brother, Lt. Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, an Israeli officer killed by a stray bullet during an IDF raid in the Occupied Territories.

Over two decades ago, the JCIT established the ideological foundations for the “War on Terror.” The JCIT’s defining theme was that international terrorism constituted an organized political movement whose ultimate origin was in the Soviet Union. All terrorist groups were ultimately products of, and could be traced back to, this single source, which—according to the JCIT—provided financial, military, and logistical assistance to disparate terrorist movements around the globe. The mortal danger to Western security and democracy posed by the worldwide scope of this international terrorist movement required an appropriate worldwide anti-terrorism offensive, consisting of the mutual coordination of Western military intelligence services. The JCIT’s findings served as the basis of the worldwide publication of hundreds of newspaper, think-tank and academic accounts of Soviet involvement in orchestrating an international terrorist network.

But as Philip Paull documents extensively in his Masters thesis at San Francisco State University, the JCIT’s own literature and use of source documentation was profoundly flawed. It heavily cited, for instance, statistics purporting to demonstrate a drastic ten-fold increase in incidents of international terrorism between 1968-78—but as Paull shows, these figures were deliberately concocted and inflated, contradicting original CIA data illustrating a decline in terrorist incidents for the same period. It also routinely relied on techniques of blatant disinformation, misquoting and misrepresenting Western intelligence reports, as well as recycling governmentsponsored disinformation published in the mainstream media. Paull thus concludes that the 1979 JCIT was:

“… a successful propaganda operation… the entire notion of ‘international terrorism’ as promoted by the Jerusalem Conference rests on a faulty, dishonest, and ultimately corrupt information base…. The issue of international terrorism has little to do with fact, or with any objective legal definition of international terrorism. The issue, as promoted by the Jerusalem Conference and used by the Reagan administration, is an ideological and instrumental issue. It is the ideology, rather than the reality that dominates US foreign policy today.” – Nafeez Ahmed, “Subverting Terrorism”, in a speech to the Perdana Global Peace Forum, 2005.

So, at the same time that the Carter Administration had begun covert support to the Mujahadin, a parallel movement was afoot to frame “International Terrorism” as a uniquely Islamic phenomenon, wholly funded by the USSR.

Bad craziness.

Anyhow, once Carter got the ball rolling, we know that Reagan & Co. were only too happy to facilitate even more folly;

“In 1981, Casey of the CIA, Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence, and the ISI worked together to create a Foreign Legion of jihadi Muslims or so-called “Arab Afghans” (who in fact were never Afghans and not always Arabs) in Afghanistan. The foreigners were supported by the Services Center (Makhtab al-Khidmat, or MAK) of the Jordanian Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, in the offices of the World Muslim League and Muslim Brotherhood in Peshawar, Pakistan.

This project did not emanate from the Afghan resistance but was imposed on it. According to the Spanish author Robert Montoya, the idea originated in the elite “Safari Club” created by French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches in 1976, bringing together other intelligence chiefs such as Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman of ISI in Pakistan, and Kamal Adham of Saudi Arabia.” – Peter Dale Scott, “The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”, University of California Press, forthcoming.

The Mujahadin were developed, facilitated, and trained directly and indirectly by Western assets. Heck, somebody had to teach them how to shoot those shoulder-mounted SAMs, might as well be the CIA.

“Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.” – Robin Cook, The Guardian, July 8, 2005

Mr. Cook is dead now.

However, we can say that the genesis of Al Qaeda was not “Made in Islam”, even though the deployed agents in many respects were Arab, Afghan, Muslim, Sauds, brown, etc., etc., etc…

These ideas coalesced at the same time; a desire for an arm’s length guerrilla army to deploy against the USSR in Afghanistan, a desire for a readily perceivable external threat, and, once the Cold War ended, a desire to legitimize the truly gargantuan Pentagon budget, and the industrial base which butters its bread with the blood and guts of the Third World.

The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.”

To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called “Arab Afghan” warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these “Arab Afghans” have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin.

America’s sponsorship of drug-trafficking Muslim warriors, including those now in Al Qaeda, dates back to the Afghan War of 1979-89, sponsored in part by the CIA’s links to the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was part of CIA Director Casey’s strategy for launching covert operations over and above those approved and financed by a Democratic-controlled Congress.

The most conspicuous example of this alliance with drug-traffickers in the 1980s was the Contra support operation. Here again foreign money and drug profits filled the gap after Congress denied funds through the so-called Boland amendments; in this case government funds were used to lie about the Contras to the American people. This was followed by a massive cover-up, in which a dubious role was played by then-Congressman Lee Hamilton, later of the 9/11 Commission. – Peter Dale Scott, 9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions

I’ll bet Senator Kerry has some tales to tell about BCCI, huh? It doesn’t take much digging to find out that the BCCI spread money all over the place, covered all the bases, as it were.

The problem, Dear Brutus, is that the Cold War ended, but the covert use of the Mujahadin never did.

“As many as four of 19 suspected hijackers may have participated during the 1990s in the base’s flight training program for foreign military trainees, according to reports in The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine.” – The Pensacola News Journal, September 17, 2001

“The US may also have allowed al-Zawahiri residence. The House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee on immigration was told by an expert on terrorism in January 2000 that he was one of a number of Islamist activists who had been granted green card status by the US immigration service.” – The Guardian, September 24, 2001

“Sakra, the fifth most senior man in Osama bin Ladin’s al-Qaeda that has challenged the whole world from a base in the Afghan mountains, is in the hands of Turkish Justice. Sakra has been sought by the secret services since 2000. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogated him twice before. Following the interrogation CIA offered him employment. He also received a large sum of money by CIA.” – Al-Qaeda, a Secret Service Operation?

“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.” – CIA informant quoted by Richard Labévière in “Dollars for Terror” (prologue)

MI6 used Al Qaeda as well. In 1996, whistleblower David Shayler, ex-MI5 came forward and revealed that MI6 paid an Al Qaeda linked terrorist organization in Libya £100,000 to assassinate Col. Qaddafi. They failed, but they did manage to get a bunch of civilians killed and maimed by a poorly placed bomb, and got other civilians shot at by jumpy Libyan security guards.

Then there’s the whole Balkans deal. The KLA and practically every other militant muslim guerrilla force in the Balkans (up to the present) had, (or has), Al Qaeda personnel;

“The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received “substantial” military and financial support from bin Laden’s network, analysts say.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the United States, NATO began to worry about the presence in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had supported throughout the 1990s.” – National Post, 2003, archived at prisonplanet.com

This proud tradition of utilizing radical Islamists was passed like a baton from Carter to Reagan to Bush to Clinton to… Bush?

What else should we call P2OG?

Let’s also not forget that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were issued Visas from a virtual CIA visa mill in Jeddah.

So, why has ABC gone this route? Because it’s so bloody easy. I’ll wager that ALL of the information that will be used in the Clinton-bash-fest will be easily obtainable and verifiable in the Public Domain.

Why has the Democratic Party not clamored for an open, truly independent investigation of 9/11 and the relationship between Western intel and Al Qaeda?

As Frank Zappa once said, “When you’re up to your neck in shit—don’t make any waves.”

Now, would it be just as easy to make a movie that casts Republicans in just as crappy a light? Of course, my horse!

And herein lies the problem.

The coy facilitation of Islamist extremists continues… to this day, by elements within, and loosely affiliated with, Western intel on both sides of the Atlantic. This Machiavellian duplicity, this hideous realpolitik, is the flowering of demonic Neocon-Straussian philosophy and the manifestation of the cold-blooded prescriptions of George F. Kennan;

“We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. ”

The problem is not “Democratic” or “Republican” or “conservative” or “liberal”. I would have to agree with Gore Vidal when he says that America’s problems in the modern age really began with Truman’s signing of the National Security Act in 1947, which gave birth to the CIA and a nascent “Invisible Government”.

In this National Security State, a pure oligarchy looms, remote from the casual concerns of the hoi polloi and indifferent to the social desires framed and reframed endlessly to give a sense of legitimacy to Pantomime Presidential elections that are decided by machines.

The dark heart of the Military – Industrial – Thinktank – Media – Congressional – Complex beats in secret, with no oversight and trillion-dollar overdraught protection.

Ponder this, and ponder it again when next “they” hit us;

“It (Al Qaeda) has no existence as an independent concrete entity. It designates a highly developed category of Western covert operations designed to secure destabilization through the creation, multiplication, mobilization, and manipulation of disparate mujahideen groups. The evidence suggests that this was certainly the case on 9-11.” – Nafeez Ahmed in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001

Clinton's dire public

Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.

now im not a big Clinton fan or anything, but does anybody still think the media is liberal? give me a goddamn break........

Clinton Who?

Bill and Hillary are dead to my heart. They work for the same syndicate that the Bush's work for, you know, the rich naked guys at Bohemian Grove participating in the mock human sacrifice.

There I went, to the extreme, how could I believe something I saw on video, that's over the top, out of the mainstream.

I wouldn't try to defend

I wouldn't try to defend Clinton any more than I would Bush.
ANY person that gets chosen as President by the real powers controlling this country isn't worth defending.
The President during the Oklahoma bombing is not someone I respect. And his recent friendship with Bush's old man is just a perfect indication of what this guy represents.
I say criticize away - it's all part of the show. OOOOOhhhh..he softened the govt up to be attacked by its own creation. How can you get angry at a story like this and defend Clinton when you are a truther and KNOW that 9/11 was more than looking the other way when Al Queda attacked us?

by the way...that's a

by the way...that's a rhetorical question and not directed at anyone.

The Mossad blew up the US

The Mossad blew up the US embassies in Kenya, just as they blew up British targets in Egypt during the "lavon Affair". The CIA, no doubt, was in on the game. The attack was blamed on Ali Mohammed, whose instructor said that "everyone assumed" he was "CIA". Indeed.

Ali has since been dissapeared -- that's what you get for working with the crime syndicate.

Clinton responded by blowing up a factory in Sudan full of essential medicines, causing thousands of deaths (far more than 911, I might add).

I doubt Clinton had anything to do with the OK city bombing; the FBI and CIA are rogue organizations and do what they please. He may, however, have had a hand in the Waco slaughter.

The Pitt article is partisan trash.

Excellent historical lesson,

Excellent historical lesson, reprehensor -- and I'm glad you saw that W.R. Pitt piece so you could highlight that paragraph of his about a "systematic analysis" of the events of 9/11.

I can't help but see the irony though, because Pitt has NOT been systematically analyzing 9/11 for these 5 long years. Now he calls for it, but he still keeps his distance from actually committing to even LIHOP (unless I missed it -- I do know he had a couple of articles years ago that sorta left the door open -- but my memory is that they were VERY non-committal).

Just curious as to your take on Pitt's statement, reprehensor. I read thru his piece and thought to myself "well, that's a bit of progress I suppose."

No hope.

Jesus, Will Pitt is stupid,

Jesus, Will Pitt is stupid, naive, or just INCREDIBLY FULL OF.... wait for it.... DENIAL.

Actually, I glanced thru the comments and didn't really see (without reading every one carefully) a really good response -- lots of tidbits.

The most obvious absurdity was Pitt's "Steel melts at about 1,400 degress (sic). The fire within the buildings was reported to have reached somewhere around 2,000 degrees." He really hasn't been doing his homework AT ALL, and this proves that he hasn't done ANY "systematic analysis" in 5 years. Shameful.

I did notice that Will Pitt had this message further down:

I want to thank everyone in this thread for providing me with all this info. It is a lot to digest, and I appreciate the effort.

But, I seriously doubt he'll EVER digest it all (i.e. do the research) and if he DOES, I suspect he won't go public if he realizes that "nefarious shadow people" actually DID wire the buildings.... and therefore, it was an inside job. He'll probably just continue playing along with the good guy (Democrats) bad guy (Republicans) meme.

...

...

I second that

time to know the origin of our lifelong Big Brother enemy.

WRP should crawl back in his hole

William Rivers Pitt is a Democratic Party shill and left gatekeeper. He and his "TruthOut" (known to many as "LieOut") site have been serving the 9/11 cover-up for five years. Why should anyone take him seriously now? The staple reading material over at TO consists of recycled swill from the NYT and WashPo, which everyone knows are propaganda mouthpieces. If WRP wants to help the 9/11 truth movement, the best thing he could do now is crawl back in his hole and get out of the way.

Truthout went on with a

Truthout went on with a stupid obbsession with Karl Rove/Plamegate and SWORE up and down that an indictment was coming so their credibility has been shot up pretty bad anyway.

well put

I started reading TO back in the early days, before 2003 (when 9/11 truth hit me over the head) -- and, I guess I liked the fact that I was reading stuff I didn't see elsewhere (but, admittedly I wasn't looking very far back then). But, you're absolutely right about it all just being recycled news and opinion, especially WaPo and NYT like you said -- AS IF. I rarely go there now... and when I do, I rarely see anything that I haven't already heard about THAT MATTERS. Most everything on there is pro-Democratic party.

And, interestingly, the only 9/11 piece I've seen there (again, I don't visit often any more) was recently when they ran the story about the REPUBLICAN woman who's railing on about 9/11 truth. Did they post it to say "see, Republicans are crazy"? I can't reach any other conclusion because they don't cover ANY other 9/11 truth stories, including the Kevin Barrett controversy, etc. Zero, zilch, nada.

That was me above.... I wish

That was me above.... I wish this blog would remember my name, without requiring registration. *sigh*

Keith Olbermann made ABC his

Keith Olbermann made ABC his #1 worst person in the world last night for their shamelessly partisan spin on 9/11. Olbermann fucking rules.

Thanks reprehensor, very

Thanks reprehensor, very worthy read.

Thanks, Frank.

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