http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.21A.pitt.watchtower.htm#
All
Along the Watchtower
By
William Rivers Pitt
t
r u t h o u t | Opinion
Thursday,
20 June, 2002
Stanley
Hilton, a San Francisco attorney and former aide to Senator Bob Dole,
filed a $7 billion lawsuit in U.S. District Court on June 3rd. The
class-action suit names ten defendants, among whom are George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Norman Mineta.
Hilton's
suit charges Bush and his administration with allowing the September 11th
attacks to take place so as to reap political benefits from the
catastrophe. Hilton alleges that Osama bin Laden is being used as a
scapegoat by an administration that ignored pressing warnings of the
attack and refused to round up suspected terrorists beforehand. Hilton
alleges the ultimate motivation behind these acts was achieved when the
Taliban were replaced by American military forces with a regime friendly
to America and its oil interests in the region.
Hilton's
plaintiffs in this case are the families of 14 victims of 9/11, numbering
400 people nationwide. These are the same families that rallied in
Washington recently to advocate for an independent investigation into the
attacks. The current 9/11 hearings are being conducted by Congress behind
closed doors, a situation these families find unacceptable.
Mr.
Hilton, by filing his lawsuit, has joined the ranks of an ever-increasing
body of Americans who subscribe to what they call the LIHOP Theory. LIHOP
stands for Let It Happen On Purpose. The LIHOP Theory puts forward the
accusation that Bush and his people allowed the September 11th attacks to
take place, despite the fact that they had been repeatedly warned of an
impending strike.
The
LIHOP Theory is straightforward: In the months before 9/11, American
intelligence agencies received ominous warnings from the intelligence
services of nations like Israel, Russia, Egypt and Germany. These warnings
were pointed - an attack involving hijacked aircraft and prominent
American landmarks was imminent, our security forces were told. Bush
himself was briefed of these warnings weeks before they happened. Instead
of responding vigorously to these warnings, the Bush administration and
its security apparatus did nothing.
LIHOP
is, of course, the purest breed of conspiracy theory, involving
high-ranking members of government from both parties, as well as the CIA,
FBI and NSA. Like all good conspiracy theories, LIHOP is surrounded by
disturbing facts and bits of evidence that are difficult to ignore.
The
warnings from all those foreign intelligence services, after all, are
quite real. Egypt, Germany, Russia and the Israelis were vociferous in
their concerns. The German intelligence service BND told US and Israeli
intelligence that Middle East terrorists were "planning to hijack
commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of
American and Israeli culture." The BND's information came through
Echelon, the American-controlled network of 120 satellites that monitors
all worldwide electronic communications.
Egypt
voiced similar warnings that same month regarding aircraft attacks.
Delivered just before the G-8 summit in Genoa, Egypt's alert carried such
weight that anti-aircraft batteries were placed around Columbus Airport in
Italy. The Russians warned the US that same summer of 25 pilots who had
been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself delivered the warning
"in the strongest possible terms" to the US government. The
Israeli intelligence service Mossad delivered a warning to both the FBI
and the CIA detailing "a major assault on the United States"
against "a large-scale target" that was "very
vulnerable."
The
Washington Post has reported that the NSA intercepted two messages on
September 10, 2001, warning that something was going to happen the next
day. "Tomorrow is zero hour," was one of the messages. The NSA's
charter is to intercept, translate and pass on to FBI and CIA operatives
important electronic signals from all across the globe. The Echelon
satellite network which provided the German BND with their 9/11
information last June is part of that system.
According
to the NSA, the September 10th data was not translated until September
12th, but it stands to reason that they were privy to the same electronic
data the other foreign services were using as the basis for their
warnings. One US intelligence source claims the data provided "no
actionable intelligence," a fair claim given the vagueness of the
messages and the volume of material NSA must deal with. Yet in combination
with the strident foreign intelligence warnings, the words intercepted by
our large electronic ears on September 10th add to the growing
questions.
Then,
there are the threads. A FEMA official told Dan Rather that the disaster
agency had been at the World Trade Center on September 10th. Why? Governor
Jeb Bush of Florida signed executive order #01-261 on September 7th,
putting his state's National Guard on heightened alert status, essentially
placing Florida under martial law for no demonstrable reason. Why?
Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial aircraft in
the weeks before 9/11, something he had commonly done since his entry into
the administration. Why?
At
the core of the LIHOP Theory lies motivation - what possible purpose could
be served by the Bush administration allowing a terrorist attack to take
place on American soil? It is flatly inconceivable to most Americans that
Bush and his people could demonstrate such callous disregard for American
lives, and accusations that they allowed an attack to happen reek of the
worst kind of poisonous partisan politics.
LIHOP
Theory, however, is not so easily dismissed. Two French intelligence
analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, have published an
extensively-researched book entitled "Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden
Truth." In it, they allege that the Bush administration put energy
policy before national security concerns. According to Brisard and Dasquie,
a foundering pipeline project aimed at exploiting natural gas reserves
along the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan was revived by the Bush
administration when it arrived in Washington in January of 2001.
The
pipeline project, which sought to bring oil and natural gas from
Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a warm water port, had been the
brainchild of American petroleum giant Unocal for much of the 1990s. After
the destruction of two American embassies in Africa in 1998 by Osama bin
Laden, the Clinton administration forbade any American companies from
doing business with the Taliban, which had been sheltering bin Laden in
Afghanistan. Unocal's pipeline project was frozen.
After
the Bush administration came to power, Brisard and Dasquie allege that
reinvigorating the pipeline project became a high-priority matter of
policy. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was dispatched to
Pakistan to discuss the pipeline with Taliban officials in August of 2001.
Rocca, a career officer with the CIA, had been deeply involved in Agency
activities within Afghanistan. According to documents Brisard and Dasquie
claim to hold, the main subject of their discussion was oil. A Pakistani
foreign minister was also present at the meeting, and witnessed the
exchange.
How
does this pipeline relate to September 11th? According to Brisard and
Dasquie, the main obstacle to the completion of the pipeline was the fact
that it had to pass through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The project
would receive no international support unless the Afghan government
somehow became legitimized. In bargaining for the pipeline, the Bush
administration demanded that the Taliban reinstate deposed King Mohammad
Zahir Shah as ruler of Afghanistan, and demanded that the Taliban hand
over Osama bin Laden for arrest. In return, the Taliban would reap untold
billions in profit from the pipeline. According to Brisard and Dasquie,
part of the Bush administration's bargaining tactics involved threats of
war if these conditions for the legitimization of Afghanistan were not
met.
The
BBC of London reported on September 18th, 2001 of the existence of war
plans on Bush's desk aimed at Afghanistan. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani
Foreign Secretary, stated that the war plans were slated for October of
2001. Conditions set by the Bush administration to avoid war involved the
Taliban's handing over of bin Laden and the acceptance of King Zahir Shah.
Naik went so far as to doubt that America would hold off on war even if
these conditions were met.
The
result, according to the French analysts, was total disaster. The Bush
administration fundamentally misunderstood the Taliban regime - to bring
back the King and hand bin Laden over to the West would have been
tantamount to suicide for the Taliban. Instead of acquiescing to the
hard-sell tactics of the Bush administration, the Taliban unleashed their
pet attack dog, Osama, upon America. They were going to lose everything,
and chose to attack first in the hope that all-out war would break out in
Central Asia and rally other Muslim nations to their cause.
Motive
suddenly becomes far more clear. The Bush administration very much wanted
the Unocal pipeline to go through, and put intense pressure on the Taliban
to see it happen. As this was happening, American intelligence services
were flooded with warnings of an impending attack upon American targets by
bin Laden and Al Qaida. The decision was made - let the attack come, and
in the ensuing outrage American forces can carve out the guts of the
Taliban government like a ripe gourd, replacing them with a 'legitimate'
regime more receptive to the pipeline plan.
Did
the Bush administration have an inkling of the massive death and
destruction that would come on September 11th? Those who espouse the LIHOP
Theory disagree on this point. Some believe that FEMAs presence at Ground
Zero on the day before the attack, coupled with specific language within
the international intelligence warnings pertaining to aircraft and
high-profile targets, are prima facie evidence of specific prior
knowledge. Others believe that the Bush administration only knew vaguely
that an attack would come, but not where or when. They did not foresee the
level of destruction, and were caught flat-footed when those planes
appeared along the New York skyline.
In
the end, LIHOP Theory can encompass either view. Whether they had specific
knowledge beforehand, or merely decided to let some attack happen
somewhere, the final results were the same. The Taliban were routed and
replaced by an interim government headed by a man named Harmid Karzai.
Karzai was recently elected President of Afghanistan in his own right,
legitimizing the Afghanistan government. Soon after this, Karzai announced
the impending construction of a pipeline that would exploit Turkmenistan's
natural gas reserves He named Unocal as the lead company for the project.
Before becoming President, Karzai was an advisor to Unocal.
For
LIHOP Theorists, the evidence is clear. The Bush administration got the
pipeline it wanted. Along the way, they used the horrors of 9/11 to place
themselves above reproach. In the patriotic fervor that resulted from the
attacks, both the press and the Democratic opposition were bracketed by
the administration-espoused idea that any questions or criticism were
tantamount to treason.
The
passage of the PATRIOT Anti-Terror Act has given the US government
sweeping abilities to snuff dissent by defining it as terrorism, thanks to
the loosely-defined wording of the bill. Bush enjoyed stratospheric
approval ratings that persist to this day, and American citizens were
given new enemies to hate. The Defense Department, and the weapons
contractors who cater to them, received billions from the federal budget
to do with as they pleased in order to address the objects of that
hate.
Even
the most hardened political observer must admit the dismal truth -
September 11th was the greatest thing ever to happen to the Bush
administration. Attorney Stanley Hilton has brought LIHOP Theory into the
federal court system with his class-action suit, and with the families of
9/11 victims he represents. It will be interesting to see what transpires
when these two facts collide in an American courtroom. Given the current
climate, it does not seem likely that much will come of it. After all,
these conspiracy theorists are just a bunch of nuts.
Right?
-------
William
Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, 'The Greatest
Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto Press.