(This story published by the Norristown, PA, Times New Herald website has dropped off the Internet Archive. Sometimes these stories become accessible again, but in the meantime, I'm reposting here for posterity. -rep.)

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Sept. 11 riddles remain
By: KEITH PHUCAS, Times Herald Staff
08/29/2005

NORRISTOWN - Accusations that the 9/11 Commission ignored information about a defense intelligence operation "Able Danger" that targeted al-Qaida in 2000 has renewed criticism that the panel may have passed up other intriguing leads gathered in the months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A memorandum sent to the 9/11 Commission, and Senate and House intelligence committees in September 2004, suggests that young Israelis who canvassed dozens of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) offices in 2000 and 2001 trying to sell paintings to federal workers, may have been spying not only on the DEA, but also on Arab extremists in the United States - including the Sept. 11 hijackers who were living in Florida and New Jersey.

(James Bamford has done another great deed for the public by revealing the extent of the NSA's wiretapping on U.S. soil, and how the NSA sub-contracts the vast majority of its work to Israeli high-tech firms bristling with "former" Israeli military intelligence agents, and in the case of Verint, a company with serious corruption issues. It was Bamford who popularized the existence of Operation Northwoods in his 2001 book, Body of Secrets. In The Shadow Factory, he sheds light in the secret rooms of Verizon and AT&T, and shows the NSA to be a very poor custodian of the nation's security.)

Bamford Brings the Goods

On October 14, 2008, James Bamford talked about some of the shocking research in his new book on Democracy Now!, with Amy Goodman;

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Today marks the 41st anniversary of the USS Liberty incident. Although perceived by many as a purely hostile attack on the part of Israel, recent documentaries make a strong case that the Liberty incident was a failed False Flag attempt, with the intent of drawing the U.S. into an attack on Egypt during the 6 Day War, which would have led to a massive bloodbath, and possibly a larger confrontation with the USSR. Further, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson were fully aware of what was going on that day, yet the Liberty was still not given air cover.* Proceeding from the possibility that the Liberty incident was a conscious, tandem act of deception, I offer a brief survey of U.S./Israeli covert cooperation.

The Liberty

What happened to the USS Liberty should not be looked upon as an isolated incident. It was preceded in 1964 with the infamous Tonkin Gulf fabrication, which kicked off a major escalation in the Vietnam War. The Liberty incident was probably destined to be the capstone for Israel's covert war against Egypt, now in overt mode during the 6 Day War. Also, the Liberty incident was followed in 1968 by another incident involving North Korea and the USS Pueblo, another Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) ship, which also appears to have been a failed attempt at a provocation.(1) The intent: to provoke U.S. retaliaiton against North Korea, and get the North/South Korean standoff to heat up again.

The covert mission against the Liberty failed because the boat was not sunk, and the survivors were able to talk about what had happened to them. Had the U.S. launched an attack against Egypt, there would have been some serious problems explaining away the stories of the survivors, who knew they had been surveilled by Israeli aircraft.

In 2002, the BBC broadcast "Dead in the Water", a documentary by Christopher Mitchell which proposed the general theory that the Liberty incident was a False Flag failure to a broad (British) audience. Alex Jones came to the same conclusion in his 2006 film "Terrorstorm", based mostly on his own original interview work.

If you have not seen Christopher Mitchell's film, I strongly encourage you to watch it, most visitors to this site have probably already seen Terrorstorm. It's just over an hour long, and it's a fine way to honor the casualties of the Liberty on this anniversary;

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