last Sunday morning, I found myself riding... up to the tan hills of Sonoma, rugged, sparse with oaks, past fruit farms turned into vineyards. ... Onto a dirt road, zigzagging up the hills of... Hale Ranch, a fulltime labor for its owner, Mrs. Denise Hale, who has been improving it since 1969. She is also faithful to another labor: her salon. Mrs. Hale is a hostess who takes entertaining seriously.
The guests fill a table, but no more... the guest we've all been waiting for: a refugee from Bohemian Grove.
Not for this crowd are stories of the hijinks at the Grove. The tales of bosky boozing and peeing under the pines are of no interest. The Grove's summer encampment gets the most informed and shrewdest of American political operatives and thinkers. People at this table want to know what was whispered under the murmuring trees about the world and the nation.
It's not easy news. The intelligence types see the war on terrorism as both long and misnamed. Figure twenty to thirty years of fighting.
Libertythink's Washington bureau reports that K Street bookstores were packed last Thursday. Packed with the most self-deluded power-leeches this country has to offer. They were buying up copies of the 9/11 Warren Commission report, to soothe their subconscious, to answer those nagging little questions, the ones they had adamantly claimed not to have had these past three years.
9/11 Citizens Watch held a press conference after the Warrencommisioners finished their song-and-dance routine in DC. C-SPAN still has the video up, and here's a bit of reportage on same from Agence France Presse July 23:
Critics were emphatic in debunking the report. Kyle Hence, co-founder of 9/11 Citizens Watch, criticised a "catalogue of compromises, flawed premises, conflicts of interest, unanswered questions, neglected areas of inquiry and ignored whistleblowers" in the report.
"The report being released today by this so-called independent commission cannot possibly be deemed definitive or authoritative as an account for the events of September 11th - not by any stretch of the imagination," Hence told a Washington press conference, adding that the group intended to issue its own analysis detailing its view of how the 9/11 attacks were carried out. [...]
CitizensWatch, a public group that has monitored the national 9/11 Commission and demanded transparency, accountability, and a thorough investigation, released a critique of the process used by the National Commission on Terrorist Acts Upon the United States ("9/11 Commission") just hours before the Commission’s release of its own final report.
"We have discovered conflicts of interest, contradictions in testimony and a conformity of witnesses presented at the 9/11 Commission's hearings," said co-founder John Judge, "as well as flawed premises that will likely lead to incorrect conclusions about the events surrounding September 11, 2001 and unsound recommendations for our future security."
The 9/11 Commission's report is the result of a flawed process, demonstrated by obstructions from the White House, conflicts of interest among members and staff, and a lack of sworn testimony from many of their sources. Researchers have analyzed transcripts from the hearings and discovered omissions of key topics that omit:
the historical context to the tragedy,
a coherent explanation of the failed NORAD/FAA responses,
any investigation into the source of the anthrax attacks, and
the release of non-classified evidence and documents to support conclusions.
9/11 Citizens Watch will be releasing a more detailed critique of the report itself by September 11. They will also be compiling an index for the Warrencommission's sloppy, unindexed report.
[b]Sibel Edmonds:[/b] I just did not come across anything that in any way would establish any specific accountability. That also explains the lack of kick and screaming and lack of that type of a response from the administration. And also I was not that surprised to see that many incidents in their timelines were not mentioned, although two days ago, "Chicago Tribune" had an article regarding the incident of a long term F.B.I. Asset who provided specific information in April, 2001, to the Bureau talking about major cities being targeted and airplanes being used, and the order being issued by Bin Laden. There's no mentioning of this. Although as you would see on this article, it has been already confirmed by the F.B.I. Authorities. So, I was not surprised, considering the fact that I attended these hearings, and I did not hear most questions being asked during the hearings, but I must say that I was still disappointed. [...] Amy Goodman: Based on what has happened to you since you’ve tried to get out information about the translated wiretaps that you had access to after 9/11, that were actually recorded before 9/11. What would you say is missing from this report?
SE: Well, they again here are protecting certain foreign relations and certain foreign business relations. There are no mentionings there of anything that had to do with the united emirates and involvement of certain underground and semi-legit organizations through united emirates and also obtaining visas through bribery to certain state department individuals. There was no mentioning of the cell in Chicago and the activities that it brought about, and that were directly, these activities related to the 9/11 attack. As far as the money laundering is concerned, and I'm saying ‘is’, because these semi-legit organizations have not been named, and are still in operation. Again, just under the name of protecting certain foreign relations, there were no mentionings of these incidents. So again, anything that the administration wanted to protect has remained protected as you would see in this report, because there are no mentionings.
LibertyForum is featuring excerpts from the report on some interesting 9/11 puzzles:
The commission recommends federal standards for identification documents, such as driver's licenses; greater information sharing among government agencies and the private sector; and greatly enhanced border and internal transport security.
In a suggestion that has set off alarm bells among civil liberties advocates, the report calls for the U.S. border security system to "be integrated into a larger network of screening points that includes our transportation system and access to vital facilities, such as nuclear reactors."
"That could be a recipe for a system of internal checkpoints that would treat people traveling within the United States in the same way it treats those crossing its borders," said Greg Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office.
And, finally, the milquetoast Libertarian Party -- like the whitewash commission -- raises no questions about the official story and merely scolds the commission for not pointing out that killing -- and helping Zionists kill -- arabs seems to stir up those turban-clad fellows something fierce.
Kerry carried a an 8-mm home movie camera with him to Vietnam so he could record his war exploits, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The clips will debut during the intro of Kerry at convention... [CONT] "Kerry carried a home movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing," charges a naval officer in the upcoming book UNFIT FOR COMMAND.
"Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns." [...] The BOSTON GLOBE reported in 1996 that the Kerry home movies "reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109." [...] NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson in his new book RECKLESS DISREGARD, details one of the claimed Kerry reenactments for film:
"On February 28, 1969, now in charge of PCF 94, Kerry came under fire from an enemy location on the shore. The crew's gunner returned fire, hitting and wounding the lone gunman. Kerry directed the boat to charge the enemy position. Beaching his boat, Kerry jumped off, chased the wounded insurgent behind a thatched hutch, and killed him. Kerry and his crew returned within days, armed with a Super 8 video camera he had purchased at the post exchange at Cam Ranh Bay, and reenacted the skirmish on film."...
This shouldn't be surprising. It's obvious Kerry went to Vietnam to get a line on his presidential resume'.
He talks often with his fellow members from the Skull and Bones club, a conversation that began in 1965, when many Bonesmen assumed Kerry would run for president, and continues as he plots that course. [...] He told friends at Yale that he wanted to run for president one day. He has been a candidate in the making for much of his life.
[Kerry] requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence.
Kerry's 'Nam footage is being spliced into a propaganda reel overseen by Steven "Bilder" Spielberg... Variety Jul 26:
Spielberg shapes Dems' Kerry biopic BOSTON - Steven Spielberg may not be in Boston, but he has had a hand behind the scenes on the John Kerry biopic material to be screened at the Democratic confab.
[...]Every year since 1954, the secretive Bilderberg Group (named after the hotel they first met in the Netherlands), comprising elite powerbrokers from Europe and North America, has met to discuss, and influence, the changing global, political, economic and social landscape. Dotted amongst the usual suspects of Rockefeller, Kissinger and Soros etc. we see the presence of renowned Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Spielberg attended the 1999 Bilderberg meeting held at Sintra, Portugal. What business does Spielberg, a chieftain of the 'entertainment' industry have secretly mingling with international bankers, military intelligence and world political leaders? [...]
President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.
The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.
"It’s a double-edged sword," says one aide. "We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally."
Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.
"Keep those motherfuckers away from me," he screamed at an aide backstage. "If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can." [...]
Capitol Hill Blue is a DC-based news site founded by veteran newspaperman Doug Thompson.
Pretty nifty shockwave video breaking down the Tenet-Ahmad-Atta connection. (Mahmoud Ahmad is the chief of the Pakistani secret service, ISI, who ordered $100,000wired to alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. It also hits on the NORAD timeline.
Five months before Sept. 11, a longtime informant for the FBI reported that Al Qaeda was planning a devastating terrorist assault in which the weapons were to be commercial airliners.
According to two sources familiar with that interview, the informant was short on details. In particular, nothing was said about the precise timing of the airborne attack, its location or its possible targets.
Law enforcement officials who have reviewed the April 2001 interview and at least one follow-up conversation insist that the informant's information, by itself, could not have led the bureau to the Sept. 11 plotters.
But the real significance of that information, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case, may lie in its source: a former member of the Iranian intelligence service now living in the U.S. and known to his FBI handlers as "the Asset."
"His `subsource' was somebody back home" in Iran, said the law enforcement official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. In the wake of Sept. 11, the official said, it appeared that "somebody in Iran had some knowledge of something" related to Sept. 11.
Talking to `the Asset'
Although the Asset has lived in the U.S. 25 years and speaks some English, the FBI has had trouble understanding him in the past. To guard against any misunderstanding, the two FBI agents assigned to interview him in April 2001 brought along an FBI translator fluent in his native language, Farsi.
The interview followed the standard FBI format. The agents posed their questions in English, which were then translated into Farsi. The Asset's replies were translated back into English as the agents took notes.
According to the law enforcement official, "there was talk about terrorists and planes," but no mention of when or where the attacks might take place.
It was the FBI agents' impression, the official said, that the target of the attacks could be "possibly here, but more probably overseas." The Asset also reported having heard a rumor that a plane would be hijacked to Afghanistan, the official said.
The FBI's translator, a former Iranian police colonel named Behrooz Sarshar, does not recall any mention of a hijacking to Afghanistan. But Sarshar, then a career FBI employee assigned to the translation section of the bureau's Washington field office, does remember the Asset saying the attacks might take place in the U.S. or Europe, and also that the terrorist-pilots were "under training."
After checking his notes from the interview, Sarshar said that, in addition to sources in Iran, the Asset had mentioned picking up information from Afghanistan and Hamburg.
Sarshar describes the Asset as part of an informal worldwide network of former Iranian intelligence officers who have remained in close touch after abandoning their homeland for Europe, Asia and the U.S., where many found work with Western police and intelligence services.
Whisperers around the Bohemian Grove say a gent working as a valet for Grove-sters at Lost Angels -- Kenneth Starr's camp -- is a porno movie veteran who's planning to use his earnings to start a sex toys company. Nothing untoward about that. In fact, the movie star and the legal Starr might compare the importance of oral sex...
Presumably that is in reference to 'Chad Savage,' though there could of course be other porn stars servicing Starr et alia.
Secretary of State Fox McKeithen reports he'll be jetting to San Francisco this coming weekend "to shake and jive" with Clarence "Frogman" Henry.
McKeithen said he's invited to perform during the annual summer encampment of the Bohemian Club, a more than 125-year-old exclusive men's club.
Past participants in the encampment have included the current and former President Bushes, the late President Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Malcom Forbes and lots of prominent CEOs and business leaders -- most with conservative bents.
Henry's famous for his "Ain't Got a Home" song. He and McKeithen have teamed up as "the fox and the frog" for a little different rendition of the song.
NAPLES - In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Rudi Dekkers was a man in the spotlight.
Dekkers owned one of the Florida flight schools that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, pilots of the planes that [allegedly] destroyed the World Trade Center. The talkative Dekkers gave so many interviews...
Dekkers portrayed himself as an upstanding businessman who had done everything by the book, only to see his own companies ruined by the attacks. He criticized the government for not doing a better job of screening foreign citizens entering the United States.
But now a complicated picture has emerged of Dekkers himself, a Dutch citizen who seems to have benefited from the same type of casual scrutiny of visa applicants that let the 9/11 hijackers live and train here.
After moving to Florida in 1992, Dekkers got a visa designed for investors with "substantial" capital, even though he had a bankrupt company in Holland. And for the past year, he has remained in the United States on a coveted H-1B visa that is supposed to be issued only to foreigners who have specialized skills and work exclusively for a U.S. employer.
Dekkers would not say who he is working for or what he is doing. It is not clear how he qualified for his current visa, since he also is running his own plane-leasing company, despite regulations that experts say bar H-1B visa holders from self-employment.
"I don't want to tell the whole world what I'm doing and not doing," he said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times. "There are certain things I promised other people not to talk about..."
Even before 9/11, Dekkers had a long history of troubled businesses, run-ins with the Federal Aviation Administration and numerous lawsuits, including one in which he paid $15,000 to a female employee who accused him of "severe" sexual harassment. It is the kind of checkered history, experts say, that should have raised questions both before and after the 9/11 attacks about Dekkers' fitness to run a school that trained pilots.
"You would think that everyone surrounding that should have been scrutinized," says Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies...
many who have had dealings with him describe him as pushy and arrogant, a man with recurrent financial problems who doesn't always play by the rules.
"I'm not saying he would sell his soul, but he is very aggressive," says Robert Larson, director of operations at the Naples Airport Authority.
Dekkers, 47, continues to drive expensive vehicles and live in a million-dollar waterfront home, even though a Naples lawyer had "to chase him around" to get him to pay a $359 judgment. [...] It was through the Naples airport that Dekkers met the multimillionaire who would become his benefactor and partner: Wallace J. Hilliard. A prominent Green Bay, Wis., executive - a local library is named for him - Hilliard co-founded an insurance company, American Medical Security, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. [...] In July 2000, two foreigners walked through the door: Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi...
The men were just weeks into their training when the chief flight instructor complained they had "bad attitudes and behavioral problems," and asked Dekkers if it would be "acceptable" to expel them. Dekkers said their conduct changed after warnings, and they were allowed to stay.
"They were able to continue their lessons without any further problems throughout the course," he told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2002.
That, however, is not exactly what the 9/11 Commission found. Its report, released last week, said the men left Huffman in September and enrolled at a flight school in Sarasota. An instructor there also complained the two were "aggressive, rude and sometimes even fought with him" to take controls during training flights. After they failed an exam, they said they were going home; instead they re-enrolled at Huffman Aviation.
The men were just weeks into their training when the chief flight instructor complained they had "bad attitudes and behavioral problems," and asked Dekkers if it would be "acceptable" to expel them. Dekkers said their conduct changed after warnings, and they were allowed to stay.
"They were able to continue their lessons without any further problems throughout the course," he told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2002.
That, however, is not exactly what the 9/11 Commission found. Its report, released last week, said the men left Huffman in September and enrolled at a flight school in Sarasota. An instructor there also complained the two were "aggressive, rude and sometimes even fought with him" to take controls during training flights. After they failed an exam, they said they were going home; instead they re-enrolled at Huffman Aviation. [...] This story also contains information from "Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida" by Daniel Hopsicker.
Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, is making the rounds here at U.S. bases in Kuwait. Some soldiers have received it already and are passing is around. The impact is devastating...
Moore's film is shocking and crushing soldiers, making them feel ashamed...
There are the young and impressionable soldiers, like those who joined the Army right out of high school. They aren't familiar w/ the college-type political debate environment, and they haven't been schooled in the full range of issues involved...
There are others who joined for reasons of money and other benefits, and never gave full thought to the issues. For them, seeing this film has jolted them grievously because they never even knew where some of these countries were that we have been serving in. Imagine the impact this film has on them. [...] Specialist Janecek, who is feeling depressed because a close family member is nearing the end of her life, just saw the film today. I saw him in the DFAC. He is devastated. "I feel shitty, ashamed, like this was all a lie." Not only is he looking at going straight to a funeral when he returns home, but now whatever pride he felt for serving here has been crushed by Moore's film. Specialist Everett earlier after seeing the film: "You'll be mad at shit for ever having come here."
And there are others. Mostly the comments are absolute shock at the close connections Moore makes between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. "Bush looks really really REALLY corrupt in this film. I just don't know what to think anymore," is a common comment to hear. Some of these soldiers are darn right ashamed tonight to be American soldiers, to have been apart of this whole mission in Iraq, and are angry over all that Moore has presented in his film. [...] From what I've heard from the soldiers, the things that have them most shocked and upset them are the connections Moore makes between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The impression is that Bush is part of a conspiracy that supported the September 11th terrorist attacks. They speak of how Moore makes a convincing case all the way from the 2000 election to now that Bush and Cheney are all about making money. That the September 11th attacks were merely calculated by them as to how they would earn them more money. [...] So many soldiers are being made to feel ashamed and "shitty" for having ever served in this whole mission...
President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rejected four plans to kill or capture Osama bin Laden...
According to the September 11 commission's 567-page report, released Thursday, Mr. Berger was told in June 1999 that U.S. intelligence agents were confident about bin Laden's presence in a terrorist training camp called Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan...
Richard Clarke, Mr. Berger's expert on counterterrorism, presented that plan to get bin Laden...
The first plan of action against bin Laden presented to Mr. Berger was a briefing by CIA Director George J. Tenet on May 1, 1998. Mr. Berger took no action, the report says, because he was "focused most" on legal questions.
"[Mr. Berger] worried that the hard evidence against bin Laden was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted," the report says.
Mr. Clarke asked Mr. Berger: "Should we pre-empt by attacking [bin Laden's] facilities?"
Mr. Berger decided against it...
Another opportunity to strike at bin Laden occurred on Dec. 4, 1999, according to the report, when Mr. Clarke suggested carrying out an attack on an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the last week of the year.
"In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion," the report states in a footnote, "Berger wrote, 'no.'" [...] The commission's report also notes a speech that Mr. Clinton gave to the Long Island Association on Feb. 15, 2002, in which — in the answer to a query from a member of the audience — he said that Sudan offered to turn over bin Laden to U.S. custody, but Mr. Clinton refused because "there was no indictment" in hand. [...]
Libertythink's Washington bureau reports that K Street bookstores were packed last Thursday. Packed with the most self-deluded power-leeches this country has to offer. They were buying up copies of the 9/11 Warren Commission report, to soothe their subconscious, to answer those nagging little questions, the ones they had adamantly claimed not to have had these past three years.
video up, and here's a bit of reportage on same from Agence France Presse July 23:
Drudge Report July 28 2004:
Capitol Hill Blue Jul 28, 2004:
Pretty nifty shockwave video breaking down the Tenet-Ahmad-Atta connection. (Mahmoud Ahmad is the chief of the Pakistani secret service, ISI, who ordered $100,000wired to alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. It also hits on the NORAD timeline.
Meanwhile, in the Baton Rouge Daily Advocate 07/25/04:
St. Petersburg Times July 25, 2004:
(July 26, 2004) The National Center for Public Policy Research has posted an e-mail received from a soldier, Spc. Joe Roche of the 1st Armored Division, about the impact 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is having on US soldiers stationed in Iraq. Excerpts:
WASHINGTON TIMES July 24, 2004:
CLOSER LOOK
SELECTED VIDEO ]
a critique of the process