Governments Sometimes Twists Science to Promote Policy Objectives

Anyone who paid any attention to the claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf oil spill or the Fukushima nuclear accident knows that the government often twists science to promote certain policy objectives, such as drumming up support for the invasion of Iraq or becoming a booster for nuclear power and big oil (and thus downplaying the damage from nuclear accidents and oil spills).

Bush and Clinton counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke alleges that the CIA improperly blocked information from being passed to the FBI which would have stopped 9/11. Many other top counter-terrorism experts question the “official” governmental version of 9/11 as well.

Yesterday, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds – along with producers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy – named two additional CIA officers who they allege blocked the information from being passed to the FBI. See this, this and this.

According to New Yorker and Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer, one of these CIA agents was also instrumental in U.S. torture and rendition, including the torturing of an innocent man.

It is certainly beyond dispute that 9/11 was foreseeable. And it is beyond dispute that the CIA could have stopped 9/11, but failed to do so.

But other intelligence agencies – like the NSA – were also listening into the hijackers’ phone calls, and an FBI informant rented a room to two hijackers. So it is not like the other agencies were helpless in light of CIA failures. NSA, FBI or other intelligence services could have stopped 9/11 as well. And various government teams tasked with tracking Al Qaeda were disbanded or stopped prior to 9/11. See this.

Posted September 10, 2011
by Washington's Blog

Polls Show Widespread Doubt About Official Explanations

The results of polls on peoples’ beliefs about 9/11 around the world might surprise you:

• In its January 2011 issue, the popular German magazine “Welt der Wunder” published the results of a poll conducted by the Emnid institute on 1005 respondents. The poll indicated that nearly 90% percent of Germans are convinced that the government of the United States is not telling the whole truth about the September 11 attacks

• A new poll conducted in England by ICM shows that more UK residents agree than disagree that the official account of what happened on 9/11 might turn out to be wrong in important respects. Only 8% strongly agree that they have been told the full story of the 9/11 attacks

• A new poll conducted in France by HEC Paris shows that 58% of French people doubt the official version of 9/11, and 49% believe the U.S. government might have intentionally allowed the attacks to happen

• A Zogby poll conducted in August 2007 found that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe Bush/Cheney regarding the 9/11 attacks, two-thirds (67%) of Americans say the 9/11 Commission should have investigated the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7

• A poll conducted by CNN-IBN in August 2007 found that only 2 out of 5 of those polled in India – the world’s second most populous country – believe that al-Qaeda is responsible for the 9/11 attacks

• Indeed, a poll taken by World Public Opinion, a collaborative project of research centers in various countries managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, College Park, polled 16,063 people in 17 nations outside of the United States during the summer of 2008. They found that majorities in only 9 of the 17 countries believe Al Qaeda carried out the attacks. The poll showed that in the world’s most populous country – China – only 32% believed that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/bush-and-clinton-counter-terrorism-tzar.html

Richard Clarke - the top Bush and Clinton counter-terrorism czar - alleges that there was a high-level decision in the CIA to suppress key information regarding two Al Qaeda hijackers inside the U.S:

Clarke theorizes that top CIA brass tried to recruit the hijackers and turn them to our side, but were unsuccessful. And - when they realized had failed - they covered up their tracks so that the FBI would not investigate their illegal CIA activities , “malfeasance and misfeasance”, on U.S. soil.

It's not just Clarke. Many high-level government counter-terrorism experts doubt the CIA's version of events.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/co-chair-of-911-inquiry-american.html

It's front page news today that:

Journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World paper tried to access the mobile phones of 9/11 victims, a former New York City police officer claimed on Monday.

It's also front page news today that the new Secretary of Defense - Leon Panetta - said that American soldiers are in Iraq because of 9/11, even though AFP notes:

That was one of the justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion, but the argument has since been widely dismissed.

(see this for details).

But a more important story - and one which might focus on a more appropriate country
country than Iraq - is that the co-chair of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry (Bob Graham) today alleged a cover up by the U.S. government of state assistance by Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers.

We've been told that 9/11 changed everything.

Is it true?

Let's look at the facts:

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill - who sat on the National Security Council - also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might "have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.''

• Cheney apparently even made Iraqi's oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: "Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq ... to secure control of its oil." (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11. Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:
  

  After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

  The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

  (4:30 into this video).

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long before 9/11

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11

• It was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn't work to produce accurate intelligence ... but is an effective way to terrorize people

• And - sadly - America played dirty games to justify and win wars before 9/11

9/11 didn't change anything. It was simply an excuse to implement existing plans.

Washington's Blog:

Fire Dog Lake's Jeff Kaye writes today:

The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions ...

Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski - who blew the whistle on the Bush administration's efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - wrote (page 26):

I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.

Former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:

Washington's Blog

A whistleblower using the alias "Iron Man" was the head of a special joint military-intelligence operation called DO5, a branch of the Joint Forces Intelligence Command, alleges that his team knew that the World Trade Centers and Pentagon were likely targets of Al Qaeda, and that he ran this information up the chain of command.

As Truth-out reports:

"I kept the original classifications on the slides, as historical documents, although the fact that al-Qa'ida was likely to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was clearly no longer classified" ...

Iron Man further elaborated on this point by stating that high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets.

In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/american-officials-admit-that-us.html

Preface: U.S. President James Madison said:

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

Everyone knows that " truth is the first casualty of war". And one of the most highly decorated American soldiers of all time said that "war is a racket".

FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials "were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power". Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security - Tom Ridge - admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

A former National Security Adviser told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". In terms of a possible "why", remember that psychologists and sociologists have demonstrated that fear of terrorism makes people stupid and easy to manipulate and control.

10 steps dictators perfected by learning from previous tyrants. Full length documentary. On how to ruin a free society.

Washington's Blog

I am a big fan of Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald - a former constitutional lawyer - regularly destroys the "official" narratives about war, torture, spying, anthrax and other topics. I have worked tirelessly and written hundreds of articles on these issues myself, and I regularly quote Glenn.

I have seen Greenwald time and again refute false claims, ad hominem attacks and illogical reasoning. I know that Glenn can ignore the straw men and red herrings, keep his "eyes on the prize" of truth, and get to the heart of the matter.

Given the way that Mr. Greenwald has shredded the anthrax investigation, I know that he is not afraid to speak truth to power and to courageously challenge false narratives being pushed by the government and the mainstream media.

Whistleblowers

Washington's Blog

People want to assume that when someone in power messes up - especially someone who appears incompetent - it was just a mistake.

For example, folks can't believe that an incompetent president could carry out scoundrelly deeds.

But as I wrote 5 years ago:

As noted social historian and author Michael Parenti writes:

"Generally, US foreign policy is remarkably consistent and cohesive, a deadly success, given the interests it represents. Those who see it as repeatedly befuddled are themselves revealing their own befuddlement.

Sometimes the policymakers themselves seize upon incompetence as a cover. [For example, when the Iran-Contra affair was discovered, President Reagan pleaded incompetence.] His admission of incompetence was eagerly embraced by various analysts and pundits who prefer to see their leaders as suffering from innocent ignorance rather than deliberate deception. Subsequent testimony by his subordinates, however, revealed that Reagan was not as dumb as he was pretending to be, and that he had played an active and deciding role in the entire Iran-contra affair.

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No less a political personage than Henry Kissinger repeatedly pretended to innocent ignorance and incompetence when confronted with the dirty role he and his cohorts played . . . ."

This strategy of "playing dumb" and acting incompetent has, in fact, long been employed by leaders on both the left and the right. Many liberals and old fashioned conservatives have been suckered by this dumb and dumber act.

Washington's Blog

Judges, prosecutors and journalists all know that collusion happens every day. As I noted last year:

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy. The heads of Enron were found guilty of conspiracy, as was the head of Adelphia. Numerous lower-level government officials have been found guilty of conspiracy. See this, this, this, this and this.

Time Magazine's financial columnist Justin Fox writes:

Some financial market conspiracies are real ...

Most good investigative reporters are conspiracy theorists, by the way.

Indeed, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven by the evidence.

As I pointed out in 2009:

Federal and all 50 state's codes include specific statutes addressing conspiracy, and providing the punishment for people who commit conspiracies.

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