What is the story behind the story, here?

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

PHILIP J. BERG, ESQ.
Attorney for Plaintiff
706 Ridge Pike
Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania 19444-1711
Telephone (610) 825-3134

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WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ, :
:
Plaintiff, : Civil Case No. 05 CV 5402 (DLC)
:
v. :
:
GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, :
et al., :
:
Defendants. :
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AFFIDAVIT OF WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ IN OPPOSITION TO MOTION BY DEFENDANTS UNITED STATES, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENGY TO DISMISS THE COMPLAINT

STATE OF NEW JERSEY }
} ss:
COUNTY OF HUDSON }

WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ, of full age, being first duly sworn according to law, says:
1. I am the plaintiff in this action, and have personal knowledge of the matters set forth below. I make this affidavit in opposition to the motion by certain of the defendants, namely the United States, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (collectively, the “Government”) to dismiss the complaint.
2. Counsel for the Government mocks my complaint as “fanciful” and “irrational,” and employs buzzwords intended to convey that nothing I say might be true: “conspiracy theories.” According to the Government, my allegations are so “implausible” and “devoid of merit” that they should be dismissed without any defendant having to answer, under oath, any of the allegations in my lengthy, heavily-footnoted complaint. I implore this Court not to let that happen, and I will show in this affidavit that the truly unbelievable “conspiracy theory” concerning the 9-11 attacks, in particular those at the World Trade Center in New York, is the one being peddled by the Government.
3. First, let me dispel the Government’s argument that my complaint should be dismissed as it is based on nothing more than mere “conspiracy theories.” I believe, to be sure, that the defendants did conspire to bring about, or knowingly to permit, the 9-11 attacks, but the Official Story is no less a conspiracy theory than my own — only, on the facts, it is by far a less plausible one. Within the past few weeks, James H. Feltzer, PhD., McNight University professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, has joined with other academicians who have cast doubt on the credibility of the Official Story concerning 9-11, calling for a renewed debate, and an independent investigation to get at the truth. Dr. Fetzer has published more than 100 articles and reviews as well as 20 books in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.
4. Addressing the issue of “conspiracy theories,” Dr. Feltzer states:
One fascinating aspect of 9/11 is that the official story involves collaboration between some nineteen persons in order to bring about illegal ends and thus obviously qualifies as a conspiracy theory. When critics of the government offer an alternative account that implicates key figures of the government in 9/11, that obviously qualifies as a “conspiracy theory,” too. But what matters now is that we are confronted by alternative accounts of what happened on 9/11, both of which qualify as "conspiracy theories". It is therefore no longer rational to dismiss one of them as a "conspiracy theory" in favor of the other. The question becomes, which of two “conspiracy theories” is more defensible?
5. On September 11, 2001, and for approximately twenty years prior to that date, I was employed by the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey (the “Port Authority”) in building maintenance at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan (“WTC”). Each of the Twin Towers, WTC1 (the North Tower) and WTC2 (the South Tower) was a steel-reinforced concrete skyscraper approximately 1,350 feet in height (not including the broadcast tower atop the North Tower). Each of the Twin Towers had 110 stories above ground, plus six basements and sub-basements each beneath ground level. These basements were designated B1 through B6 (B1 being immediately below ground level, and B6 being the deepest sub-basement). When built in the early 1970s, the Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world. Although the innovative design had a series of steel columns around the perimeter of each tower that bore part of the structural loads, each tower had, in addition, 48 steel columns in the core of the structure, said steel columns from bedrock to the top of each tower. The Towers were claimed to have been designed to withstand a direct strike by a Boeing 707.
6. My job responsibilities included the cleaning and maintenance of the three stairwells in the North Tower that provided the sole means of escape in the event of fire or similar catastrophe. These stairwells were designated A, B and C.
7. My typical workday routine was that I ordinarily arrived well before my 8:00 A.M. starting time, had breakfast with co-workers in the “Windows on the World” restaurant on the 106th floor of the North Tower, and then worked my way down one or another of the three staircases. However, luckily, I was late for work on the morning of September 11, 2001 (“9-11”). I entered the North Tower at about 8:30 A.M., approximately 17 minutes before the first plane hit the North Tower at about 8:46:40 A.M.
8. Upon entering the North Tower, I went to the maintenance office, which was located in basement level B1. There were fourteen people in the maintenance office at that time. One of them was Anthony Saltamachia, a supervisor for the American Maintenance Company.
9. Less than a minute before the plane struck the North Tower, as I later learned, between approximately the 93rd and the 98th floors, I heard a very loud, explosive sound. I was still in the maintenance office on B1 at the time. From my long familiarity with the sub-basements, I believed that the explosion came from below, from level B2 or B3. My thought was that an electrical generator on one of those levels must have exploded. Not only did I hear what I believe to have been a large explosion in a lower-level basement of the North Tower, but I felt the floor beneath my feet vibrating, I saw the concrete walls of the maintenance office crack, and everything started shaking.
10. Seconds later, there occurred a second, distinct, and large explosion which caused the maintenance office to shake for some seconds. This, I later learned, was an aircraft striking the north façade of WTC1 above the ninetieth floor.
11. Before those of us in the maintenance office could gather our wits to try to figure out just what had happened, and what we should do, I heard several additional, smaller, but nevertheless substantial-sounding explosions. I thought that these explosions (occurring after the planes’ impact far above) must have taken place above me, probably within the building, on the ground level, or at most a few stories above ground level. People who were with me in the maintenance office on B1, and others, started heading for the loading dock, as it quickly became evident that the explosions had ignited fires.
12. A co-worker whom I knew, Felipe David, came into the office at about the moment that those of us in the office were starting to leave. David told me he had been standing in front of a freight elevator on level B1, when flames burst out of the elevator shaft, causing burns over perhaps a third of his body. Flesh was hanging from David’s face, and from both arms. I believe Mr. David’s burns could only have occurred due to fire resulting either from the explosion heard seconds before the aircraft’s impact, or one or more of the explosions at or near ground level that followed soon after the plane’s impact. I do not believe that the time that elapsed from the aircraft hitting roughly 1150 feet above ground level could have sufficed for jet fuel from the aircraft to reach level B1 causing a fire sufficient to burn Mr. David as he was burned. I helped Mr. David to exit the building.
13. On reaching the outside of the building, I heard people screaming inside. Police directed me to leave the area, but I could not abandon people who needed help inside the building. I went back inside.
14. I heard a “swooshing” sound coming from the freight elevators on B2 and B3. Water, apparently from fire sprinklers on many floors above these levels, had gone into the elevator shaft. I saw two persons trapped below, who were in danger of drowning. Fortunately, I was able to find a ladder long enough and I put it into the shaft, and these people climbed to safety.
15. As luck would have it, there were only five (5) employees who had master keys that would unlock doors from the fire escapes (that is, the stairwells) to each floor in the 110-story building. I chanced to be the only one on the scene, and the only one of the five who had not had special emergency training. Firefighters from FDNY Unit Six arrived. In addition to protective clothing, each firefighter had heavy (I later was told about 70 pounds) of equipment. There was nothing for me to do but to lead the firefighters up the stairs, as I had the only key. We went up stairwell “B”. Firefighters were going up, as employees and others evacuating the buildings were headed down. These stairwells were narrow, and without windows.
16. The firefighters who were with me, straining under the weight of their heavy equipment, had to stop to rest when we reached the 27th floor. During this ascent, and prior to reaching the 27th floor, I heard still more explosions within the North Tower that I estimated must have occurred between approximately the 20th and the 30th floors. Debris was falling into the stairwell. Civilians, obviously, were afraid, but up to this point there were few signs of panic. To their great credit, the heroes of the FDNY continued to climb the stairs, and to aid everyone they could. From floor to floor, I unlocked doors that were locked, and people were able to exit from those floors via the stairwell.
17. As the firefighters and I continued to climb the stairs, things became smokier and more frightening. On the 33rd floor, I went into a maintenance office. I found a woman on that floor, conscious but laying in a fetal position, apparently frozen with fear and not knowing what to do. I spent a few moments on the 33rd floor. It impressed me as very strange that, immediately above, almost certainly on the 34th floor of the North Tower, there was much noise, as if workers were moving heavy equipment and furniture around on that floor. One reason this impressed me as highly peculiar was that the 34th floor was supposedly vacant. The floor was off-limits, supposedly due to ongoing construction on that floor, and elevators did not stop there. It was at about this moment that I began to feel afraid.
18. I accompanied the firefighters up the “B” stairwell as far as the 39th floor. At that point, the firefighters insisted that I go back down the stairs and exit the building. I had barely begun my descent when I heard what could only have been the second plane, hitting the South Tower. That, as we know, occurred at about 9:03 A.M.
19. As the stairwell was, obviously crowded with evacuees the descent went slowly. At last, I got down to the ground-level where the front doors had been, before they were blown out. The bottoms of the elevator doors, I observed, were blown partially open. My eyes were burning, I had a burn on my leg, I was choking from the smoke and was having trouble breathing. Someone yelled, “Don’t look back!” I did glance back, for an instant, and as I left the building I ran as hard as I could for the first cover I saw — a fire truck. I dived beneath it, as the North Tower collapsed (at 10:28 A.M.) and debris fell all around. So far as I know, I was the last person to exit the North Tower who survived.
20. Somehow, I must suppose from a burst of adrenaline, after I emerged a few moments later (when the collapse, which lasted but seconds, was complete) I got brief medical attention, and then started looking for survivors. Among so many terrible things, I remember seeing the blanketed bodies of “jumpers” who had leaped to gruesome deaths, rather than be burned alive. I was able to help save a number of lives. Many, many of my longtime co-workers and friends died in the attacks.
21. Since 9-11, I have had significant health problems that I am convinced are due to exposure to toxic substances on 9-11. My job of nineteen years came to an abrupt and unanticipated end. I was even homeless for a time. I have, however, worked with a number of survivors’ and victims’ advocacy groups, among other things working to get compensation for those, especially, who like myself, are of Latino heritage.
22. The “Official Story” of 9-11 has it that four teams of hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners, two of them being flown of course into the Twin Towers. As my fate was that 9-11, for better or for worse, was to become the most memorable day I can expect to spend on Earth, needless to say it has had and it continues to have a huge impact on me. I accomplished things I did not know, could not have known, were within my abilities to do. I saw the most terrible things that one can imagine. I lost dozens of friends. I lost my job. My health was seriously, and I expect permanently affected. As is commonplace in such situations, my experience has filled me with an insatiable need to know what happened, who caused these terrible events to take place, and why. I feel no “guilt” at having survived, but it is ordinary when one has survived such a disaster, and many friends and others that he knew did not, the survivor often will feel the need for answers.
23. Thus, in addition to my advocacy for victims and survivors, I have both read and studied a great deal about the events of 9-11, reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on. I have read government publications, the Report of the 9-11 Commission, FEMA documents, “mainstream” media accounts, blogs and internet sources, foreign press accounts, “you name it.” I am not an ideologue. I was not very much a political person before 9-11. I did not have strong feelings about any of the defendants. I am a Puerto Rican man who, in his 20s, had not succeeded in his first career as an entertainer, and who became a maintenance man at the World Trade Center. I had friends, but not a wife or children. I had an apartment in Jersey City, medical insurance, a steady job, and good health. My life was not without its disappointments, but overall I felt fortunate, and fortunate to be an American, and to work in New York City.
24. My attorney’s affirmation, the complaint itself (which I implore the Court to take the time to read from beginning to end) and many articles and even books have been written about the many difficulties, inconsistencies, and flat-out impossibilities of the “Official Story.”
25. To focus just on certain, limited aspects of the account, I’m sure no one, not even the Government, denies that it’s a hugely impressive feat that, allegedly, a mostly ragtag, young, and unsophisticated group of Muslim fanatics was able, with military precision, to hijack four airliners. And, within about an hour and a half (allegedly Flight 11 was commandeered not long after 8:14 A.M. and the Pentagon was struck, by most accounts, at about 9:38 A.M. or perhaps a few minutes later) these zealots supposedly managed, without the involvement of any government, or any nation’s secret service, to ram three of the four planes into landmark buildings, killing thousands.
26. I mention only in passing that the evidence that any Arabs at all were on board the planes is threadbare, none were known to be qualified to fly anything more than a single-engine flight school Cessna, and the feats attributed, especially, to Hani Hanjour at the controls of Flight 77 seem so far beyond his reported “lousy” skills as to be flatly incredible. A further fact that most dismiss as simply too jaw-dropping is that several of the alleged hijackers, or men bearing exactly the same names, are reported to have received training at U.S. military installations.
27. But leaving those and a multitude of further difficulties aside, I feel convinced of the following. If we assume that so much of the “Official Story” as claims that WTC1 and WTC2 collapsed due to structural failures caused by fires sparked by the respective aircraft collisions (and without the presence of any explosives placed in the buildings in advance, to carry out the demolition of each of the Towers) the outline of the Official Story, while certainly riddled with many unanswered questions, is not so preposterous as to be “irrational” or “fanciful” as the Government claims my allegations to be.
28. However, on the other hand, I propose that if one allows that, in addition to the feats attributed to the 19 hijackers, there were high explosives in place in each of the World Trade Center buildings (and including Building 7, which collapsed or, in the words of Larry Silverstein, was “pulled” at about 5:20 P.M. on 9-11) I submit the “Official Story” crumbles, much as the WTC did. If, as I believe, explosives were in place to tear out the 48 central core columns of each of the Twin Towers, and otherwise to carry out a planned demolition (with someone triggering some of the explosives shortly before the alleged suicide pilots flew planes into the buildings, as well as afterward, which is to say when our ten Arab hijackers presumably all were dead, that scenario excludes, I think beyond a reasonable doubt, the carrying out of the WTC attacks by mere amateurs.
29. In other words, if there were explosives, if the Towers came down by planned demolition, the attacks were not the work of amateurs, however crafty, however fanatical, however evil. Planned (or “assisted,” which is to say by explosives in the Towers) demolition means, to a virtual certainty, the WTC attacks were done by professionals — a government, some nation’s military, some country’s intelligence services, or its “black ops” personnel.
30. While major media have embargoed dissent from the basics of the “Official Story” of 9-11, there is a great deal of information that raises the most profound doubts first, concerning the actual events of 9-11, and second, the likelihood that the defendants in this action engineered, or at least knowingly abetted, the attacks in order to profit monetarily and politically. Obviously, in this affidavit, I cannot present comprehensive proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the defendants are the culpable parties. However, the Government has, without mention of anything in the complaint, dismissed its allegations as “fanciful” and “frivolous.” However, on my own knowledge, from the evidence of my own senses, I am certain that there were explosions in the North Tower before and after the plane struck high up on the tower. By a couple of very limited, illustrative examples, I will show that the Government’s dismissal of me as a delusional “conspiracy theorist” is unfounded, and indeed proof of the Government’s “terror” of confronting the facts, and having to produce documents and testify under oath, in a forum that — unlike the 9-11 Commission of compromised insiders, with conflicts of interest — it cannot stage manage.
31. Flight 175 Was Not the Boeing 767-200, Tail No. N612UA. Of the four aircraft that, according to the “Official Story,” were hijacked and crashed on 9-11, on the surface the account of Flight 175, claimed to have been hijacked after takeoff from Boston’s Logan Airport and crashed into the South Tower of the WTC at about 9:03 A.M. is the least mysterious and the most straightforward. Officially, Flight 175 left Boston at 7:58 A.M., bound for Los Angeles with 56 passengers, 2 pilots, and 7 flight attendants. The aircraft was a Boeing 767-200, identified as Tail No. N612UA. The 767-200 has the same wingspan (166’ 1”) as the 767-300, but it is about 21 feet shorter (the 767-200 is 159’2” long, versus 180’3” for the 767-300) and the fuselage is proportioned differently. The plane that reportedly took off as Flight 175 from Boston was one of the oldest 767s in service, built in 1983.
32. According to the “Official Story,” the crew of this aircraft last spoke to air traffic controllers about 8:40 A.M. It stated it had heard a suspicious transmission (thought to have come from Flight 11). Minutes later, Flight 175 supposedly turned southwest, without clearance from air traffic control. At 8:47 A.M., its identifying transponder code changed, and then changed again.
33. Major media reported on a press conference “in which air traffic controllers in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. made their first extensive public comments since the attacks. According to the FAA’s Michael McCormick, the air traffic manager for New York City, certainly there was nothing mysterious about the identity of this aircraft:
MICHAEL MCCORMICK (FAA): We tracked that aircraft as it turned southbound and then back northeast-bound, back toward Manhattan. I assumed at that point that the target of that aircraft was, in fact, the World Trade Center.
BOB ORR (CBS NEWS): Controllers tracked the hijacked jet for 11 agonizing and helpless minutes.
MICHAEL MCCORMICK: For those 11 minutes, I knew, we knew, what was going to happen, and that was difficult.
34. So, unlike (for example) Flight 77, which took a remarkably circuitous route to strike the Pentagon, and disappeared from radar for a time, Flight 175 (according to the “Official Story”) was under continuous observation by helpless air traffic controllers for the 11 minutes from the time that it changed course, heading northeast toward Manhattan, until it plunged into the South Tower. Uncountable millions, perhaps billions, of people the world over saw the plane strike the South Tower at an oblique angle, sparking an enormous fireball. The Received Scripture of the “Official Story,” the Commission Report, certainly gives the impression that there was no trace of doubt that this plane was Flight 175:
9:20 [A.M.]: UA headquarters aware that Flight 175 had crashed into WTC.
35. The Commission’s assertion, just quoted, is a lie. It is all the more damning that the Commission, in foisting off this (and myriad other) lies on the American public simply ignores, and doesn’t so much as deign to explain, the troubling discrepancies, including those reported by major media who are with few exceptions favorable, not to saw fawning, toward the government. The Commission Report to the contrary, United Airlines had major difficulties in concluding that its Flight 175 had crashed into the WTC. During the ABC Special News report on 9-11 that aired between 11:00 and 12:00 A.M., it was reported:
United is also saying now that they are concerned about a further flight that apparently is still missing, Flight 175. It is a Boeing 767. It was scheduled from Boston to Los Angeles. That flight apparently is still unaccounted for, according to officials from United.
36. Thus, whereas the revisionists of the Commission recorded for the world in 2004 that United knew by 9:20 A.M. that Flight 175 had crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 A.M., and the FAA’s McCormick told the media that he and others had watched the plane throughout the last minutes of its flight, in real life, on the actual day of 9-11, ABC was reporting after 11:00 A.M. that Flight 175 was still unaccounted for, and that United was the source of that information. There is more.
37. Not long before noon on 9-11, United Airlines did confirm that Flight 175 had crashed but — perhaps awaiting instructions from defendants concerning what the Official Story was going to be — at first United refused to say where!:
United Airlines Flight 175: A Boeing 767 crashes. The flight was bound from Boston to Los Angeles. It carried 56 passengers, two pilots and seven flight attendants. The airline would not say where that plane crashed.
38. Upon information and belief, it was NBC that first reported, just minutes before noon on 9-11, that Flight 175 had crashed. CNN followed shortly afterward, at 11:59 A.M. So how was it, then, that it took NBC and CNN until just a few minutes before noon to report the fate of Flight 175 — which the Commission tells us was known to United by 9:20 A.M. to have crashed into the WTC — and what could have motivated the concealment as to where Flight 175 crashed? Are these discrepancies not troubling?
39. Which aircraft (according to television reports on 9-11) was first supposed to have flown into the second (South) Tower at the WTC? According to ABC:
So we believe that the two aircraft have flown into the Trade Towers, both belonged to American Airlines, and they had both been hijacked and there were 90 passengers and crew on the first plane and 60 passengers and crew on the second plane.
40. Thus, at least 40 minutes after the Commission tells us United Airlines knew that Flight 175 had crashed into the WTC, ABC News was reporting that the second plane that hit the (South) Tower was Flight 77. Two hours plus after the second plane crashed at the WTC, ABC reported:
. . . And Flight 77, a Boeing 757 flying from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles with 58 passengers and four flight attendants and two pilots may —that — that — that aircraft is a little more uncertain. That is not a huge — it’s a big aircraft, a 757, but we have — we’re not certain whether that’s the one that went into the Pentagon or whether it’s one of the other aircraft that went into the Twin Trade Towers.
41. Precisely how was it, then, that United Airlines was “aware” by 9:20 A.M. that it was Flight 175 that hit the South Tower, but more than two hours later, ABC was reporting that they were uncertain whether American Flight 77 had hit the Pentagon, or the South Tower? Three hours after the second plane hit at the WTC, ABC reported:
We have the two at the trade towers in New York City, we’re not certain but we believe both of those are somehow connected to American Airlines but we’re not sure of that, absolutely sure.
42. Thus, three hours after “Flight 175” (we are now assured) crashed into the South Tower, having been observed by flight controllers on its awful trajectory for the last 11 minutes of its flight, ABC is still leaning toward the hypothesis that it was Flight 77 (i.e., a second American Airlines plane) that crashed at the WTC. I hope the Court is getting the picture: the Government’s handpicked coverup artists, the 9-11 Commission, have pronounced innumerable things as “facts” while failing to explain why inconsistent facts are not true. Four hours after the second strike at the WTC, confusion over the identity of the second plane reaches a climax:
LYNN SHERR (ABC): That — what — what you’re seeing is the north tower. Behind it there’s a second identical tower, as you know. That plane crashed right into it. All morning, we have been told by American Airlines, among others, that that flight, that airplane, was actually American Airlines Flight 77 going out of Dulles to Los Angeles. We were told 58 passengers, four flight attendants, two pilots on that plane. It was hijacked at 9:03 — I’m sorry, it was hijacked right after takeoff. Crashed into the tower at 9:03 A.M.
PETER JENNINGS (ABC): Let me stop you right there, Lynn, because I just — I have had different information so I’m going to rely on you here. You now believe the American Airlines Flight 77 that took off from Dulles on its way to Los Angeles, crashed into the Trade Towers, not into the Pentagon?
LYNN SHERR: We were told that originally. What I’m about to tell you is the FBI is now saying that that’s the one that went into the Pentagon. The FBI spokesperson is saying that the flight that went into World Trade Center tower number two, that’s south tower, was, in fact United Airlines 175, a Boeing 767 that left Boston for LAX, departed at 7:58 A.M. this morning: 56 passengers, two pilots, seven flight attendants. This is confusing. I apologize. We are getting two different answers to our questions.
43. More than an hour after NBC and CNN reported that it was Flight 175 that flew into the South Tower, as just seen ABC was still confused as to whether the South Tower was hit by American Flight 77, or by United Flight 175. ABC was not the only media outlet that was confused. I will cite just two additional examples:
We know for sure at least 92 people were aboard American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 676 — excuse me, 767, en route from Boston to Los Angeles, which crashed into the building. Another 64 were aboard the second flight that crashed into the building, American Airlines Flight 77. That’s a Boeing 757 that was en route from Dulles airport near Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles.
A second aircraft that crashed into the Trade Center is said also to have been an American Airlines aircraft with 60 passengers. It was apparently flying from Washington Dulles bound for Los Angeles before being hijacked.
44. All of this confusion must be observed against the backdrop of the untroubled certitude of McCormick. How, possibly, could the two planes have been confused? Whereas Flight 175 reportedly never vanished completely from radar, Flight 77 switched its transponder only at 8:56 A.M. Most reports placed Flight 77 still on a westward course, over the western part of West Virginia, at that time. No one has explained how anyone thought, on the morning of 9-11. that possibly Flight 77 had reversed course after 8:56 over West Virginia, and reached the South Tower in less than seven minutes.
45. This, again, is Flight 175 — supposedly the “least mysterious” of the four 9-11 flights. Several additional anomalies deserve mention. One is that a FOX reporter claimed to have seen “Flight 175” on its approach to the South Tower, and that it displayed a blue logo, and had no windows. Needless to say, this report quickly vanished, and was not so far as I am aware aired again after 9-11.
46. Another is that a female eyewitness, recorded on a New York City street by independent TV project “Camera Planet,” screamed that the “second plane” was “not an American airline.” Major media, too, ignored this.
47. Yet another is that whereas ostensibly Flight 175 was destroyed when it crashed into the South Tower on 9-11, and FAA records indicated that the aircraft was “N” number 612UA, Boeing 767-200 Serial No. 21873, manufactured in 1983 and its certificate issued 1/18/1984, that aircraft was deregistered (implying that it was still in existence long after 9-11) only on September 28, 2005.
48. That the South Tower plane was not Flight 175 and not N612UA is demonstrable also from measuring photographs of the plane, just before it struck the South Tower, as have appeared in major media outlets. The nose section of a 767-200 (so much of the plane as lies forward of where the forward part of the wings connect to the fuselage) is a bit shorter than the distance from the latter point to a line across the fuselage drawn from wingtip to wingtip. On the 767-300, with an overall length about 21’ longer than the 767-200, the nose section is slightly longer than the wing section. In addition, a 767-200 measures a lesser distance from the imaginary, wingtip-to-wig tip line to the tail of the plane, than does the lengthier 767-300. One study purporting to show that, by its proportions, “Flight 175” could not be a 767-200 (and, hence, was not N612UA). While there are difficulties (due, among other things, to the quality of available photo images of the South Tower aircraft) in arriving at an irrefutably exact measurement, the evidence is strong that the plane in question is not a 767-200. Its proportions definitely more closely resemble the 767-300. The Court is, of course, welcome to attempt its own measurements, and draw its own conclusions, however tentative. Again, at this juncture, we recognize the impossibility of proving our case by affidavits. Our goal, a more modest one, is to show that the Government is not being candid at all in alleging that my claims are “fanciful,” “frivolous” and so forth.
49. Operation Northwoods (1962): Dispelling the Myth That “The United States Government Would Never Do Such a Thing.” Apart from the immense power of the American Government, which no doubt will be brought to bear on this Court to make its life a living hell should it permit this case to proceed as far as discovery, as it disdains to address any details (bad ground for the Government!) perhaps the strongest argument it has, whether put forward expressly or impliedly, is this one: the United States Government is a democratic government that would never slaughter its own citizens, or allow thousands of Americans to be killed on American soil, to enrich its leaders, a political or economic elite, or to further an imperialistic or indeed any foreign policy agenda.
50. While we would all like to believe the foregoing, it is demonstrably untrue. In 1962, the Joint Chiefs proposed to President Kennedy a plan with haunting resemblances to 9-11. The scenarios presented including destroying civil aircraft and blaming it on the Castro government in Cuba, to win popular support for an invasion of Cuba. While President Kennedy rejected the proposal, the Operation Northwoods proposal was formulated at the highest levels of the United States military, and placed on the President’s desk. And, with all respect to the detractors of Fidel Castro, however distasteful his government, the impetus to win popular support to attack Afghanistan and Iraq was arguably a large multiple of the impetus to attack Cuba, among other things as those countries are the gateway to the control of perhaps $12 trillion worth of oil, and $3 trillion worth of natural gas. Certainly, the idea that any proposal to kill American civilians, for foreign policy reasons, would never be considered at high levels of the government cannot survive a review of the “Operation Northwoods” proposal.
51. The Trans-Afghan Gas Pipeline as One Motive for 9-11. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (an authority, I think, on the subject) remarked that, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” The French novelist, Honoré de Balzac, famously observed that “Behind every great fortune lies a crime.” The motives for the 9-11 attack were, I believe, highly complex, and I have set forth those that seemed likely to me in my Complaint. Here, by way, again, of dispelling the immediate attack by the Government — that my allegations are, in effect, those of a madman or a fool — I will summarize a series of events that gives a highly plausible reason to explain why American political and military leaders might betray 3000 of their compatriots to early graves, for money and for power.
52. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Bridas, an Argentine oil company, became the first company to exploit oil fields in Turkmenistan and to propose a pipeline through neighboring Afghanistan. This began in about 1991.
53. A powerful U.S.-backed consortium became a rival to Bridas, and sought to block Bridas’s plans for an oil pipeline, while formulating plans for its own.
54. Although Turkmenistan is richly endowed with both oil and natural gas, it has no deepwater port. Possible alternatives to a pipeline to the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan and Pakistan (northwest, via Russia; west, via Georgia to Turkey and on to Europe; south via Iran to Turkey; east, through China; or across the Caspian Sea and through Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean) all present geopolitical or cost disadvantages from the U.S. point of view.
55. By 1995, Bridas had, in addition to oil exploration leases in Turkmenistan, agreements with Turmeinstan and Pakistan granting Bridas construction rights for a pipeline into Afghanistan. Of course, there remained the necessity to reach an accord with Afghanistan, then ruled by the Taliban.
56. Bridas’s president, Carlos Bulgheroni, approached rival Unocal’s then-CEO, Roger Beach, as well as other countries, inviting them to join a consortium for the pipeline. Unocal, the U.S. government, and their affiliated American and British oil and construction companies, rebuffed Bridas’s approach.
57. Dominating the Middle East and former Soviet Central Asian Republics and their oil wealth, and gaining concessions to build transit routes to bring the oil to global markets, became a primary objective of U.S. military interventions throughout the Bush I and Clinton Administrations that preceded the Bush II Administration and 9-11. As of 1992, 11 western oil companies controlled more than 50 percent of all oil investments in the Caspian Basin, including Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Phillips and British Petroleum.
58. Operatives on behalf of U.S. oil and related interests in the Caspian Basin included such luminaries as Zbiegniew Brezezinski, a consultant to Amoco and former National Security Advisor to President Carter; Henry A. Kissinger, an advisor to Unocal; Gen. Alexander Haig, a lobbyist for Turkmenistan; and Halliburton’s own Richard B. Cheney. Three familiar names amongst Unocal’s envoys included Richard Oakley, earlier U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, who armed and trained the mujahadeen in Afghanistan and an Iran-Contra conspirator charged by Lawrence Walsh in connection with arms shipments to Iran; Richard Armitage, who is tied to Bush, Sr.’s Carlyle Group as well as, allegedly, terrorist and criminal networks both in the Middle East and Central Asia; and Hamid Karzai, who (we are to believe) by sheer chance wound up as chief of state in the Afghan government that resulted when the U.S., supposedly in response to 9-11, overthrew the Taliban by military force.
59. In 1997, Dr. Brezezinski — a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and associate of Kissinger, and whose interests are lucrative, and not merely scholarly — published a frankly imperialistic and war-mongering book entitled The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Announcing a “tectonic shift” in world affairs (America as sole superpower upon the demise of the USSR) Brezinski declared Eurasia to be America’s “chief geopolitical prize” and warned that it is “imperative” that “no Eurasian challenger” to America be permitted to emerge, as “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”
60. According to Brezezinski, although the Central Asian region and Caspian Sea basin are “known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea,” and “Turkmenistan . . . has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea,” the “momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures” on world oil supplies.
61. The United States, Brezezinski lamented, is — or rather, it was when he wrote his book in 1997 — “too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. . . . The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required . . . are uncongenial to democratic instincts.”
62. The “three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy,” Brezinski declared, are:
. . . to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.
63. The great enemy of the late President John F. Kennedy (and dear friend of the Bush Family) onetime CIA Director Allen Dulles, was fired by JFK over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and later had the satisfaction of being a member of the Warren Commission that pronounced Lee Oswald as the President’s lone assassin. Dulles, when asked about claimed inconsistencies in the Warren Commission’s report, if said to have dismissed such trivialities on the grounds that “The American people don’t read.”
64. According to Dr. Brezezinski, “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power” — which is to say, toward the imperialism and military interventionism proposed by him — has been “ambivalent.” He noted, one does not like to say in an almost hopeful tone, that “The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” The benefit to the defendants’ aspirations for imperial warfare to be derived from a “New Pearl Harbor” are only too obvious.
65. The Government further derides as “fanciful conspiracy theories” the complaint’s allegations that defendants intend to use rigged elections and totalitarian means — among other things, the de facto nullification of the Bill of Rights in the guise of counter-terrorism, widespread surveillance without judicial approval or probable cause to stifle dissent and collect information on dissidents, torture and, if need be, martial law, to achieve a thinly veiled or even naked fascist state. “Fanciful,” so much that the Government ought not be required to even plead to such allegations? Respectfully, counsel for the Government either has not been reading the papers, or the Government is trying to dispel these allegations, in the style of true fascists, by decree.
66. As for rigged elections, the Court is referred first, to the seminal work on the subject of high-tech election theft, Bev Harris’s Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century. While the corporate-owned media gave it little reportage, that hotbed of tinfoil-hat lunacy, the United States Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) published an exhaustive report in September 2005, entitled “Elections: Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to be Completed” (“GAO Report”).
67. The GAO Report’s somewhat reassuring title notwithstanding, if one reads the report in the context of Diebold’s then-president (and Bush contributor) Walden O’Dell promising to deliver Ohio for President Bush in the 2004 election, widespread accusations of vote-tampering and vote-suppression in Ohio in last year’s national election, and the incontrovertible fact that, had Ohio gone for John F. Kerry, he would today be President, it is profoundly disquieting.
68. Among other things, the GAO Report concludes that:
• Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” In other words, consistent with my complaint’s allegations that machines made by private corporations with close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush Administration are deliberately designed to be “hackable” without detection, the GAO Report concurs that machines, as were used in Ohio to count more than 800,000 votes in the 2004 election had “back doors” which made it possible for the count to be altered without detection!
• “It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.”
• “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.”
• Access to voting networks was readily compromised, because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (“DRE’s”) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine could give access to the entire network. Thus, according to the GAO, cooking the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election could have been accomplished with the cooperation of a small number of operatives, with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. Upon information and belief, in principle, with over 800,000 votes being cast on electronic machines just in Ohio, flipping the number needed to supply President Bush with his 118,775-vote margin could have been done by a single programmer.
• Again according to the GAO, access to the voting network was compromised by repeated use of identical user IDs, combined with easily-guessed passwords. As a result, even relatively inexpert “hackers” could have gained access to, and altered, the Ohio vote tallies.
• Locks protecting access to the system were easily picked, and keys were simple to copy, meaning that physical access to the system was not secure.
• One DRE model was shown to have been networked so crudely that a power failure on a single machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system used to count the votes for the presidency of the United States.
• GAO identified further problems with security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.
69. The foregoing findings must be read in tandem with reported irregularities in the actual 2004 election. Exit polls showed Senator Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained, eleventh-hour shift showed the election swinging to the President. Similar definitive shifts occurred also in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico. What are the odds? Have we not already departed the realm of “fanciful conspiracy theories”?
70. The Ohio election, of course, was overseen by the rabidly partisan and ambitious Kenneth Blackwell, who saw no conflict of interest in simultaneously being state chair for the Bush-Cheney ticket, and the public official charged with the fair conduct of the election.
71. A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former employee of ES&S — another of the three defendant Republican-connected voting machine companies — was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County, Ohio.
72. Election officials in Mahoning County, Ohio, ultimately conceded that at least 18 touch-screen machines visibly transferred votes from Senator Kerry to President Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry’s name saw Bush’s name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but many people supplied affidavits questioning this. Similar problems occurred also in Democratic-leaning Franklin County, Ohio, which includes Columbus and Ohio State University. Kerry’s victory margins in these two Democratic counties was remarkably low.
73. A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. This error appears to have been corrected.
74. In Gahanna Ward 1B, in which the polling place was a fundamentalist church, a so-called “electronic transfer glitch” gave President Bush nearly 4000 extra votes — even though only 638 people voted at that polling place.
75. In Franklin County, Ohio, dozens of voters swore that they saw their votes for Kerry fade away on the DRE, which provided no paper trail.
76. In Miami County, Ohio, at 1:43 A.M. on the morning following Election Day, with that county’s central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote as having been counted, 19,000 more votes appeared as if from nowhere — with the percentage favoring Bush matching that counted countywide before the extra 19,000 votes were found, a fantastically unlikely occurrence.
77. In Cleveland, implausibly large vote counts for minor third-party candidates were tabulated in traditionally Democratic African-American wards. Adjoining wards with similar demographic features showed virtually no votes for minor candidates, with Kerry trouncing Bush by a 9-to-1 margin.
78. Prior to a “recount” conducted by the partisan Blackwell, technicians from Triad Voting Machine Company showed up, unannounced, at the Hocking County Board of Elections, and removed the computer hard drive.
79. In response to official information requests, officials in Shelby and other counties admitted that they had discarded key records and equipment, before any recount could take place.
80. In a conference call with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, election attorneys Cliff Arnebeck, Bob Fitrakis and others, Senator Kerry claimed to have lost every single precinct in the State of New Mexico in which touch screen voting machines were used. The losses, apparently, bore no correlation to traditional party affiliation, or the ethnicity or income levels of voters in a given precinct: where touchscreens were used, Bush won and Kerry lost.
81. Conclusive proof? No — but it is undisputed that Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia (the three largest electronic voting equipment companies) are all owned by right-wing Republicans; that it is preponderantly Republican election officials who have advanced the expanding use of these companies’ machines in state after state; and that where “glitches” and “errors” have been detected, almost without exception these have favored Republicans, and disfavored Democrats. Recently, Republican officials in the State of North Carolina have tried to certify Diebold machines for future use in elections in that state, in open defiance of laws that source codes used in programming the machines must be disclosed (which disclosure Diebold has refused). This dispute is ongoing.
82. The Government scoffs that I accuse defendants of using the “War on Terror” as a war on the Bill of Rights. Yet, the allegedly leftist New York Times, after sitting on the story for a year (and, presumably, doing so in part in order to avoid disclosures that would injure President Bush’s prospects for re-election) recently revealed an utterly extralegal, indeed criminal program of spying on the private communications of United States citizens by Bush Administration officials circumventing even the minimal scrutiny of the so-called FISA courts.
83. Back in the 1970s — that is, before cell phones, and before widespread use of the internet and e-mail, with telecom companies compliantly providing secret “back doors” for unlimited snooping by the Government —Senator Frank Church of Idaho (who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence) investigated the National Security Agency and came away breathless:
"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," [Church] said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."
He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
84. It is through-the-looking-glass stuff that President Clinton was impeached for lying about sex, but today President Bush, having been caught in widespread activities that Senator Church associated with “total tyranny,” defiantly pronounces himself above the law, proclaims his intent to go on violating the Fourth Amendment and the FISA statute, 50 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq. as he pleases, and it may very well turn out that neither Congress nor the Courts will so much as try to stop him. This Court may decline to try to stop the Administration from shredding the Bill of Rights, but as best as I can I, a solitary citizen, will insist that I not be derided as delusional, because I point out that Emperor Bush is, on this issue, certainly, wearing not a stitch of clothes. And counsel for the Government, in mocking as a “fanciful . . . conspiracy theory” that the Bill of Rights is under harsh attack by the defendants, shames the office of the United States Attorney.
85. And what of torture? I submit that, in part at least, the brouhaha over torture is intended by Vice President Cheney and others of the defendants to exert a chilling effect on lawful, First Amendment activities by American citizens. “See,” the Government is telling us, with almost no subtlety at all, “we can imprison, take overseas, and torture anyone we want to. Senator McCain will not stop us; the press will downplay it and rationalize it, neither the Courts nor the Congress will make any but ineffectual, token objections. We can intercept your cell phone calls, read your e-mail — hell, your ISP that you pay every month helps us read your e-mail —and we have records of who gives money to Democrats, to liberal groups, who blogs against the war in Iraq, or against the President. And if, one day, we choose to, we can make you disappear, and no one will be able to stop us, or hold us to account.”
86. As for possible martial law, conventional media have reported for years that yes, such plans were on the books. Let me cut to the chase, and issue a challenge to the Government. In its reply papers, let the Government adduce affidavits from defendant Michael Chertoff, chief of Homeland Security; Vice President Richard B. Cheney; and Let them state, under oath, to this Court as follows:
Having made a diligent inquiry into the subject, and made direct inquiry of senior Administration officials who would, I believe, be informed on the matter, I state to the Court under the penalties of perjury, that to the best of my knowledge, information and belief, from 1980 to date, there have not been constructed, enlarged, equipped, or refurbished, anywhere on the territory of the United States, nor anywhere subject to the laws of the United States, concentration camps or detention centers envisaged for possible use in a martial law or similar emergency scenario, in which ordinary civil laws and Constitutional rights would be suspended, and United States citizens would be subjected to involuntary detention, without having been charged with, or convicted of, any crime.
87. In my complaint, I cite a number of “conventional” news outlets, Executive Orders which, at the stroke of a pen, could relegate Constitutional liberties to history, and former U.S. Rep. Henry Gonzales (D.-Tex.) who acknowledged that, yes, there are (and have been for years) contingency plans for martial law in the United States. And what of torture? Will the U.S. Attorney deny that systematic, widespread torture is not an important instrument of American foreign policy (and, if less openly acknowledged, a potent threat to keep domestic opponents of the neocon regime in line)? Are these allegations “fanciful conspiracy theories,” too? Let us mention just a few apparently sane persons who share in suffering form this delusion. In an article in the Los Angeles Times of December 14, 2005, Jimmy Carter, the 39th President, wrote:
Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.
Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.
88. I propose it is now established that, beginning shortly after 9-11, the Bush II Administration launched, and it continues to this day with complete impunity, a global program of abduction, “rendition” (the removal of detainees to “black sites,” where no law but Bush Administration dictates applies) and torture, which together with, we may surmise, some genuine “evildoers,” has swept up large numbers of innocent men, women, and even children. According to Newsweek:
An FBI agent warned superiors in a memo three years ago that U.S. officials who discussed plans to ship terror suspects to foreign nations that practice torture could be prosecuted for conspiring to violate U.S. law, according to a copy of the memo obtained by NEWSWEEK. The strongly worded memo, written by an FBI supervisor then assigned to Guantanamo, is the latest in a series of documents that have recently surfaced reflecting unease among some government lawyers and FBI agents over tactics being used in the war on terror. This memo appears to be the first that directly questions the legal premises of the Bush administration policy of "extraordinary rendition"—a secret program under which terror suspects are transferred to foreign countries that have been widely criticized for practicing torture.
89. Since 9-11, the CIA has set up, and the U.S. Government now maintains, a covert system of prisons around the world. This is not a “delusion” on my part; it was reported in the Washington Post:
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

90. The Government recently reiterated its policy, one perhaps without precedent, of openly refusing access to certain prisoners to ensure their treatment in accordance with international conventions:
The United States said Friday that it would continue to deny the International Committee of the Red Cross access to ''a very small, limited number'' of prisoners who are held in secret around the world, saying they are terrorists being kept incommunicado for reasons of national security[.]
91. Where does the buck stop for this criminal, immoral policy? According to the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, it goes at least as high as Vice President Richard B. Cheney:
Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture might be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.
"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."
At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."
Traveling in Latin America earlier this month, President Bush defended U.S. treatment of prisoners, saying flatly, "We do not torture."
92. While it has long denied it, the CIA has long taught torture to its operatives. After stalling for almost three years, in May 1997 the CIA declassified and released, pursuant to a FOIA request by the Baltimore Sun, the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -- 1983" used during the Reagan Administration in Central America. As described in the Sun:
Forms of coercion explained in the interrogation manual include: Inflicting pain or the threat of pain: "The threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain."
A later section states: "The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.
"For example, if he is required to maintain rigid positions such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods of time, the immediate source of pain is not the 'questioner' but the subject himself." " After a period of time the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength."
Inducing dread: The manual says a breakdown in the prisoner's will can be induced by strong fear, but cautions that if this dread is unduly prolonged, "the subject may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to arouse him."
It adds: "It is advisable to have a psychologist available whenever regression is induced."
Getting a confession: Once a confession is obtained, "the pressures are lifted enough so that the subject can provide information as accurately as possible." The subject should be told that "friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates."
Solitary confinement and other types of sensory deprivation: Depriving a subject of sensory stimulation induces stress and anxiety, the manual says. "The more complete the deprivation, the more rapidly and deeply the subject is affected."
It cites the results of experiments conducted on volunteers who allowed themselves to be suspended in water while wearing blackout masks. They were allowed to hear only their own breathing and faint sounds from the pipes. "The stress and anxiety become almost unbearable for most subjects," the manual says.
93. If the foregoing sounds eerily familiar, perhaps it is because it sounds much like what a “few bad apples” are known to have done at Abu Ghraib.
94. Of course, contemporary Bush-and-Cheney-approved U.S. torture goes far, far beyond the few “dumb rednecks on the night shift” at Abu Ghraib. As the Associated Press reported in October 2005:
At least 21 detainees who died while in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were the victims of homicide and usually died during or after interrogations, according to an analysis of Defense Department data.
The analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, released today, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterized 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or "blunt force injuries", as noted in the autopsy reports.
The 44 deaths represent a partial group of the total number of prisoners who have died in US custody overseas; more than 100 have died of natural and violent causes.
In one case, the report said, a detainee died after being smothered during interrogation by military intelligence officers in November 2003. In another case cited by the report, a prisoner died of asphyxiation and blunt force injuries after he was left standing, shackled to the top of a door frame, with a gag in his mouth.
95. While apologists would have it believed that torture is used only as a last resort, against hardened militants believed to have knowledge needed on an exigent basis to avert deadly “terror” attacks, of course this cannot be true. As it has become incontrovertible that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it must be that many Iraqis were tortured to obtain information they could not possibly have had. The account of one man “rendered” to Morocco for repeated torture illustrates both the depravity of what our government is doing in our names, and — chillingly — what the true motive is:
Benyam Mohammed traveled from London to Afghanistan in July 2001, but after September 11 he fled to Pakistan. He was arrested at Karachi airport on April 10 2002, and describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison in Morocco. These are extracts from his diary.
They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.
They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.
One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man," [one] eventually said.
They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.
Doctor No 1 carried a briefcase. "You're all right, aren't you? But I'm going to say a prayer for you." Doctor No 2 gave me an Alka-Seltzer for the pain. I told him about my penis. "I need to see it. How did this happen?" I told him. He looked like it was just another patient. "Put this cream on it two times a day. Morning and night." He gave me some kind of antibiotic.
I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: "What's the point of this? I've got nothing I can say to them. I've told them everything I possibly could."
"As far as I know, it's just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you'll have these scars and you'll never forget. So you'll always fear doing anything but what the US wants."
I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I'd agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They'd come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they'd tip some kind of liquid on me - the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.
96. So you'll always fear doing anything but what the US wants. This, I propose, is the supreme motive for torturing people all over the world, perhaps a handful of whom are really and truly terror masterminds, many of whom are guilty of nothing except, perhaps, doubtful subjection to whatever the U.S. — which is to say, the defendants in this action — might want.
97. Moreover, while many might rationalize the abuse of genuine, known terrorist killers as inescapable in fighting a dirty war against monstrous adversaries, it is admitted that most detainees arrested by the U.S. in Iraq are guilty of nothing:
Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year "had been arrested by mistake," according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year.
Yet the report described a wide range of prisoner mistreatment — including many new details of abusive techniques — that it said U.S. officials had failed to halt, despite repeated complaints from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
ICRC monitors saw some improvements by early this year, but the continued abuses "went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered as a practice tolerated" by coalition forces, the report concluded.
The Swiss-based ICRC, which made 29 visits to coalition-run prisons and camps between late March and November last year, said it repeatedly presented its reports of mistreatment to prison commanders, U.S. military officials in Iraq and members of the Bush administration in Washington.
The ICRC summary report, which was written in February, also said Red Cross officials had complained to senior military officials that families of Iraqi suspects usually were told so little that most arrests resulted "in the de facto 'disappearance' of the arrestee for weeks or even months."
The report also described previously undocumented forms of abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. In October, for example, an Iraqi prisoner was "hooded, handcuffed in the back, and made to lie face down" on what investigators believe was the engine hood of a vehicle while he was being transported. He was hospitalized for three months for extensive burns to his face, abdomen, foot and hand, the report added.
More than 100 "high-value detainees," apparently including former senior officials in Saddam Hussein's regime and in some cases their family members, were held for five months at the Baghdad airport "in strict solitary confinement" in small cells for 23 hours a day, the report said.
Such conditions "constituted a serious violation" of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, which set minimum standards for treatment of prisoners of war and civilian internees, the report said. U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted interrogations at the site, but Army units were in charge of custody operations, officials said Monday.
Portions of the ICRC report were published last week. The full 24-page report, which The Times obtained Monday, cites more than 250 allegations of mistreatment at prisons and temporary detention facilities run by U.S. and other occupation forces across Iraq.
The report also referred to, but provided no details of, "allegations of deaths as a result of harsh internment conditions, ill treatment, lack of medical attention, or the combination thereof."
* * *
Among the abusive techniques detailed in the report was forcing detainees to wear hoods for up to four consecutive days.
"Hooding was sometimes used in conjunction with beatings, thus increasing anxiety as to when blows would come," the report said. "The practice of hooding also allowed the interrogators to remain anonymous and thus to act with impunity."
In some cases, plastic handcuffs allegedly were so tight for so long that they caused long-term nerve damage. Men were punched, kicked and beaten with rifles and pistols; faces were pressed "into the ground with boots." Prisoners were threatened with reprisals against family members, execution or transfer to the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The report also provides new details about the now-notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the focus of the prisoner abuse scandal.
During a visit to the "isolation section" of Abu Ghraib prison in October, ICRC delegates witnessed prisoners "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness, allegedly for several consecutive days."
* * *
The ICRC report also describes torture and other brutal practices by Iraqi police working in Baghdad under the U.S.-led occupation.
It cites cases in which suspects held by Iraqi police allegedly were beaten with cables, kicked in the testicles, burned with cigarettes and forced to sign confessions.
In June, a group of men arrested by Iraqi police "allegedly had water poured on their legs and had electrical shocks administered to them with stripped tips of electrical wires," the report notes.
One man's mother was brought in, "and the policeman threatened to mistreat her." Another detainee "was threatened with having his wife brought in and raped."
"Many persons deprived of their liberty drew parallels between police practices under the occupation with those of the former regime," the report noted.
98. Against the objection, whether express or implied, that the torture of foreigners in a war zone should cause no worry to U.S. citizens, as the U.S. Government would never torture Americans (just as, supposedly, “Operation Northwoods” notwithstanding, we are to believe that suspecting government figures of the 9-11 mass murder is simply beyond belief) it should be noted that so-called “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh was almost certainly tortured, for days, to get him to confess.
99. The U.S. Attorney will argue, I feel certain, that this is none of my business — I have not, myself, been tortured (as yet) by any of the defendants, although I bear in my body the wounds, I believe, of the “New Pearl Harbor” engineered by them, as a pretext to launch their campaigns of torture. This issue — torture, generally, and the torture of innocents in particular — will be claimed to be outside of the competency of this court, a political issue. But a policy of torture — which is what the Government has, in effect, declared — in addition to being a terrible blot on our nation’s standing before the world, and a terrible wrong visited, mostly, on the innocent, has — and I believe it is intended by the Government to have — a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, free speech, political dissent, and opposition to criminal U.S. policies on the part of United States citizens. If the defendants, or more precisely their hirelings, will repeatedly and dispassionately make cuts in the genitals of people they know have nothing to yield to their plans for empire, is there reason to doubt they would do likewise to Your Honor, and to me?
100. And a big part of the intimidation factor involved in this is precisely the Government’s implicit argument here: who, they are asking, can stop us? This Court, perhaps, cannot, but just as Germany slid down the slope to launching a war that killed tens of millions of people, might it have made a difference if, somewhere, a court had said, no, this is not German justice, this is not our tradition, this is inhuman and wrong, and this court will oppose it? Counsel for the Government, condescending and, I am sorry to have to say, cynical, accuse me of “delusions” but let them, in their reply papers, refute what Mr. Berg and I have laid out — the facts alleged and corroborated, in large measure, by “mainstream” (pro-government, corporate-owned) media sources. They cannot, and they will not. They will merely say there is nothing that plaintiff, or this Court, you can do to stop them.
101. Or, perhaps, it will be argued that whereas torture has occurred, “the system works” because, as the insistence of onetime torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) henceforth torture will no longer be employed by American forces. To the contrary, according to Bernard Weiner:
Bush agreed to McCain's language because [Rove, Cheney, and Rumsfeld] already had neutered the impact of the amendment. They were able to carve out enough legalistic wiggle room to permit the continuation of torture, without much fear of political or judicial retribution.
For example, those who reasonably believe they are following lawful orders would be permitted to continue their "enhanced" interrogation methods. (It's the old "I was only following orders" ploy -- a defense used by Nazi war-criminals that was disallowed at the Nuremburg Tribunals.)
Note that the McCain amendment said nothing about the ongoing practice of "extraordinary renditions" to countries allied with the U.S. where tortures of high-level suspects are carried out for the Bush Administration.
Finally, McCain and others tied their ban-on-torture amendment to the well-respected Army Field Manual that carefully defines what constitutes acceptable (and successful) interrogation methods and what would go over the line into abuse and torture. Pulling the rug out from under McCain, Rumsfeld simply had the Army Field Manual rewritten to permit "harsh" interrogation methods -- and stamped the descriptions of what is now permissible with a "classified" label, to prohibit quoting from them. (An unnamed Pentagon official suggested that the alteration of the Field Manual was designed to be "a stick in McCain's eye.")
As in all things, he who controls the dictionary controls the world. Torture now means what the Bush Administration says it means, so there -- unless enough ruckus can be generated to get them to back off. (Assistant Defense Secretary Stephen Cambone still has to approve the final Field Manual language.)
In short, thanks to Bush & Friends, U.S. torture is alive and well, despite the reasonable words that appear on a no-torture amendment overwhelmingly ratified by Congress.
102. So much for the system working. Speaking to the limited issue of the recently-disclosed NSA spying on U.S. citizens (which I believe to be merely the tip of the iceberg of government and government-sponsored surveillance) the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialized:
The idea that all of this is being done to us in the name of national security doesn't wash; that is the language of a police state. Those are the unacceptable actions of a police state.
103. I propose that the whole of it — not just NSA (and other) surveillance, but many of the provisions of the Patriot Act, the “National Security Policy of the United States” (2002) which is a declaration of intent to make war on anyone that might threaten U.S. dominance, torture, the rigging of elections, plans for martial law, and the murder of 3000 souls on September 11, 2001, which has never been investigated by an independent prosecutorial agency is the business of an aspiring police state, and is intended to reduce the American people, as well as foreign peoples, to subjection, even to slavery. No one has stood trial for 9-11; no agency of government nor any international body stands in judgment on U.S. war crimes and violations of both international and domestic law.
104. Were there “checks and balances” that worked, affiant would not be here. Were anyone conducting proceedings to determine the real truth of 9-11, it would not be necessary for a private citizen, injured and deprived of his livelihood by the crime, to undertake such a one-sided struggle.

105. Regrettably, despite calls by a number of brave and distinguished public figures, there is on the horizon no plan to investigate 9-11, and while a few Democrats and fewer Republicans in Congress and elsewhere may decry abduction, rendition, torture, and so forth, were the President’s Congressional opponents to approach holding him accountable, what might restrain him from launching a new attack, say on Syria or Iran, or declaring a state of emergency and suspending the Constitution?

106. Am I an eccentric? I think not, but in all events, my fears of an impending American police state are shared by many, including at least two prominent, nationally-known Republicans: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R.-Tex.) and former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.) If I am to be denied redress by this Court, I ask that the Court tell me: where can I, where can any American citizen alarmed at current developments, find lawful redress, if the courts are closed, Congress supine, and the elections rigged or, at least, “riggable”? The Government is saying: no one can stop us. Someone, nevertheless, must try.

WHEREFORE, and for the additional reasons set forth in the accompanying Berg Affidavit and the accompanying brief, affiant prays that the Government’s motion be denied in its entirety; that the Government be directed to answer the complaint in the action, and that I be granted such other, further and different relief as may be just and proper.

_______________________________
WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ

Sworn to and subscribed
before me this _____ day
of January 2006.

______________________________
Notary Public

extracted with WordView via clipboard from:

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Thanks for your comments. I will explain my reasons in the future, but will tell you that the case was not dismissed, instead, I stop my involvement with Mr. Berg and ordered my removal from "his" lawsuit. I will have a new lawsuit with a team of highly recognized lawyers. Just working the details.
My reasons were more personals and lack of trust of the way things were going. I am very busy with all my outreach out there to get the truth out and expect the same from the people that uses my name to gain attention.

William Rodriguez
Last Survivor of the North Tower
President of the Hispanic Victims Group, Victims Support Group

William Rodriguez is a genuine hero and incredible human being. Thank you William, for the couragous work you have done and continue to do.