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SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options
On September 19, 2001, CBS reported:
Sources
tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were
sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.An
extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines
stock price would fall.The trades are called "puts" and they
involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red
flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far
outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.Sources
say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS
News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly
even.After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price
did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that
translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or
persons who bet the stock would fall.***
At least one
Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the
SEC shortly after the attack.The same thing happened with
United Airlines on the Chicago Board Options Exchange four days before
the attack. An extremely unbalanced number of trades betting United's
stock price would fall — also transformed into huge profits when it did
after the hijackings."We can directly work backwards from a
trade on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The trader is
linked to a brokerage firm. The brokerage firm received the order to
buy that 'put' option from either someone within a brokerage firm
speculating, or from one of the customers," said Randall Dodd of the
Economic Strategy Institute.U.S. investigators want to know
whether Osama bin Laden was the ultimate "inside trader" — profiting
from a tragedy he's suspected of masterminding to finance his
operation. Authorities are also investigating possibly suspicious
trading in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.
On
September 29, 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed
out:
"Usually, if someone has a
windfall like that, you take the money and run," said the source, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whoever did this thought the exchange
would not be closed for four days.
"This smells real bad."
***
There
was an unusually large jump in purchases of put options on the stocks
of UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. in the three business days before the attack
on major options exchanges in the United States. On one day, UAL put
option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average.
In the month before the attacks, short sales jumped by 40 percent for
UAL and 20 percent for American.***
Spokesmen
for British securities regulators and the AXA Group also confirmed
yesterday that investigations are continuing.The source familiar
with the United trades identified Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the
American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the
investment bank used to purchase at least some of the options.***
Last
weekend, German central bank president Ernst Welteke said a study
pointed to "terrorism insider trading" in those stocks.
The
Chronicle illustrated the story with the following chart:
On October 19, 2001, the Chronicle wrote:
On
Oct. 2, Canadian securities officials confirmed that the SEC privately
had asked North American investment firms to review their records for
evidence of trading activity in the shares of 38 companies, suggesting
that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the
attacks.
***
FMR Corp.
spokeswoman Anne Crowley, said her firm -- which owns the giant
Fidelity family of mutual funds in Boston -- has already provided
"account and transaction" information to investigators, and had no
objection to the new procedures announced yesterday. Crowley declined
to describe the nature of the information previously shared with the
government.
So the effort to track down the source
of the puts was certainly quite substantial.
What were the
results and details of the investigation?
Apparently, we'll never
know.
Specifically,
David Callahan - executive editor of SmartCEO - submitted a Freedom of
Information Act request to the SEC regarding the pre-9/11 put options.
The
SEC responded:
This
letter is in response to your request seeking access to and copies of
the documentary evidence referred to in footnote 130 of Chapter 5 of the
September 11 (9/11) Commission Report.***
We have been
advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.
If
the SEC had responded by producing documents showing that the pre-9/11
put options had an innocent explanation (such as a hedge made by a
smaller airline), that would be understandable.
If the SEC had
responded by saying that the documents were classified as somehow
protecting proprietary financial information, I wouldn't like it, but I
would at least understand the argument.
But destroyed? Why? (See Afterword for
additional details.)
Not the First Time
This is not
the first destruction of documentary evidence related to 9/11.
I
wrote
in March:
As I
pointed out in 2007:
The 9/11 Commission Report was largely
based on a third-hand account
of what tortured detainees said, with two
of the three parties in the communication being government
employees.The official 9/11 Commission Report states:
Chapters
5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda
members. A number of these "detainees" have firsthand knowledge of the
9/11 plot. Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn
enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been
limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications
received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place.
We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no
control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest
would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so
that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify
ambiguities in the reporting.In other words, the 9/11
Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even
their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand.
The
Commission didn't really trust the interrogation testimony. For
example, one of the primary architects of the 9/11 Commission Report,
Ernest May, said in May
2005:We never had full confidence in the interrogation
reports as historical sources.As I noted
last May:
Newsweek is running an essay by [New York Times
investigative reporter] Philip Shenon saying [that the 9/11 Commission
Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the
statements of tortured detainees]:The commission
appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its
account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on
information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture,
or something not far from it.
The panel raised no
public protest over the CIA's interrogation methods, even though news
reports at the time suggested how brutal those methods were. In fact,
the commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of
interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.
That has troubling implications for the
credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is
typically discredited; research shows that people will say
anything under threat of intense physical pain.
And
yet it is a distinct possibility that Al Qaeda suspects who were the
exclusive source of information for long passages of the commission's
report may have been subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques,
or at least threatened with them, because of the 9/11
Commission....
Information from CIA interrogations of two
of the three—KSM and Abu Zubaydah—is cited throughout two key chapters
of the panel's report focusing on the planning and execution of the
attacks and on the history of Al Qaeda.
Footnotes
in the panel's report indicate when information was obtained from
detainees interrogated by the CIA. An analysis by NBC News found that
more than a quarter of the report's footnotes—441 of some
1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA's "enhanced"
interrogation program, including the trio who were waterboarded.
Commission members note that they repeatedly pressed the
Bush White House and CIA for direct access to the detainees, but the
administration refused. So the commission forwarded questions to the
CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel's behalf.
The commission's report gave no hint that harsh interrogation
methods were used in gathering information, stating that the panel had
"no control" over how the CIA did its job; the authors also said they
had attempted to corroborate the information "with documents and
statements of others."
But how could the commission
corroborate information known only to a handful of people in a shadowy
terrorist network, most of whom were either dead or still at large?
Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat
on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the
investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda
detainees who were physically coerced into talking ....
Kerrey said it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end
the remaining mysteries of September 11.Abu
Zubaida was well-known to the FBI as being literally crazy. The Washington
Post quotes "FBI officials, including agents who questioned
[alleged Al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaida] after his capture or reviewed
documents seized from his home" as concluding that he was:
[L]argely
a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped
as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as
waterboarding and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.For
example:
Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led
an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002
and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the
credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.
"I don't have
confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road,
everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh
measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't
believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."
***
"They
said, 'You've got to be kidding me,' " said Coleman, recalling accounts
from FBI employees who were there. " 'This guy's a Muslim. That's not
going to win his confidence. Are
you trying to get information out of him or just belittle him?'"
Coleman helped lead the bureau's efforts against Osama bin Laden for a
decade, ending in 2004.
Coleman goes on to
say:
Abu Zubaida ... was a "safehouse keeper" with
mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner
workings than he really did.***
Looking at other
evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered
years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he had severe mental problems that called
his credibility into question. "They
all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn
phone," Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. "You think
they're going to tell him anything?"ACLU, FireDogLake's
Marcy Wheeler and RawStory
broke the story yesterday that (quoting RawStory):
Senior Bush administration officials
sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a
document recently obtained by the ACLU.
The notification came in a letter dated January
6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU
described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former
vice president Dick Cheney.
In the message, the officials denied
the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees,
informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a
"line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.
"In
response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets,
the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation,"
the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should
not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into
the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's
ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of
Americans from future terrorist attacks."
***
"The
Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees
would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the
United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and
intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not
to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the
questioning of detainees."Destruction of
Evidence
The interrogators made videotapes of the
interrogations. The 9/11 Commission asked for all tapes, but the CIA
lied and said there weren't any.
The CIA then destroyed the
tapes.
Specifically, the New
York Times confirms that the government swore that it had turned over all of
the relevant material regarding the statements of the people being
interrogated:“The commission did formally request
material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission
was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our
request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of
the Sept. 11 commission ....
“No tapes were acknowledged or
turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript
prepared from recordings,” he said.But is the
destruction of the tapes -- and hiding from the 9/11 Commission the fact
that the tapes existed -- a big deal? Yes, actually. As the Times
goes on to state:
Daniel Marcus, a law professor at
American University who served as general
counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the
discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard
nothing about any tapes being destroyed.
If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very
big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to
withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding
investigations.Indeed, 9/11 Commission
co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:
Those
who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them —
obstructed our investigation.The CIA also is refusing to
release any transcripts from the interrogation sessions. As I wrote
a year ago:
What does the fact that the CIA
destroyed numerous videotapes of Guantanamo interrogations, but has 3,000
pages of transcripts from those tapes really mean?
Initially,
it means that CIA's claim that it destroyed the video tapes to protect
the interrogators' identity is false. Why? Well, the transcripts
contain the identity of the interrogator. And the CIA is refusing to
produce the transcripts.
Obviously, the CIA could have "blurred"
the face of the interrogator and shifted his voice (like you've seen on
investigative tv shows like 60 Minutes) to protect the interrogator's
identity. And since the CIA is not releasing the transcripts, it
similarly could have refused to release the videos.
The fact that
the CIA instead destroyed the
videos shows that it has something to hide.Trying
to Create a False Linkage?I have repeatedly pointed out that
the top interrogation experts say that torture
doesn't work.As I wrote
last May:
The fact that people were
tortured in order to justify the Iraq war by making a false linkage
between Iraq and 9/11 is gaining attention.
Many people are
starting to understand that top Bush administration officials not only
knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and
Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at
extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.
Indeed,
the Senate Armed Services Committee found that the
U.S. used torture techniques specifically aimed at extracting false confessions
(and see this).
And
as Paul Krugman wrote
in the New York Times:Let’s say this slowly: the
Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq,
even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to
make them confess to the nonexistent link.[A]ccording
to NBC
news:
- Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the
testimony of people who were tortured
- At least four of
the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report
have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop
being "tortured."
- One of the Commission's main
sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a
confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ
- The
9/11 Commission itself doubted
the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to
themselvesIn fact, the self-confessed "mastermind" of 9/11
also confessed to crimes which he
could not have committed. He later said that he gave the
interrogators a lot of false
information - telling them what he thought they wanted to hear - in an
attempt to stop the torture. We also know that he was heavily
tortured specifically
for the purpose of trying to obtain false information about 9/11 -
specifically, that Iraq had something to do with it.***
Remember, as discussed above, the torture
techniques used by the Bush administration to try to link Iraq and 9/11
were specifically geared
towards creating false confessions
(they were techniques created by the communists to be used in show
trials).
***
The
above-linked NBC news report quotes a couple of legal experts to this
effect:Michael Ratner, president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, says he is "shocked" that the Commission never
asked about extreme interrogation measures."If you’re sitting at
the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the
Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than
guess," said Ratner, whose center represents detainees at Guantanamo.
"Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical
document. If their
conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore
their conclusions are suspect."...Karen
Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York
University’s School of Law, put it this way: "[I]t should have relied on
sources not tainted. It calls into question how we were willing to use
these interrogations to construct the narrative."The
interrogations were "used" to "construct the narrative" which the 9/11
Commission decided to use.Remember (as explored in the book The
Commission by respected journalist Philip Shenon), that the
Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was an
administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and
maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually
true. He wrote
an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the
process, controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze,
then limited the scope of the Commission's inquiry so that the
overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).***
As
constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley stated:[The
9/11 Commission] was a commission that was really made for Washington -
a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran
interference for those parties - a commission that insisted at the
beginning it would not impose blame on individuals.Other
Obstructions of Justice[Other examples of obstructions of
justice include the following:]
- The chairs of both the 9/11
Commission and the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees into 9/11 said
that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by
intimidating witnesses
- The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to
the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such
false statements
- The tape of interviews of air
traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by
crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and
then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is
free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times
- Investigators for the Congressional Joint
Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even
rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry
sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then
hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official
stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the
White House. As the New York Times notes:
Senator
Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of
covering up evidence . . .* * *
The accusation stems from
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators
for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to
interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the
landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.In his
book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the
Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of
Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote
them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a
staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham
called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this
cover-up goes right to the White House."
We
don't need to even discuss conspiracy theories about what happened on
9/11 to be incredibly disturbed about what happened after: the government's obstructions
of justice.
Indeed, the 9/11 Commissioners themselves are disturbed:
- The
Commission's co-chairs said
that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our
investigation"
- 9/11
Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be
some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have
access . . . ."
- 9/11
Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false
statements we were getting"
- 9/11
Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised";
and "One of these days we will have to get the full story
because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House
wants to cover it up"
- The
Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led
the 9/11 staff's inquiry - said
"At some level of the government, at
some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about
what happened". He also said "I was shocked at how different the truth was
from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different
story from what had been told to us and the public for two years....
This is not spin. This is not true."
Afterword: Footnote 130 to chapter 5 of the
official 9/11 Commission Report states:
Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in
advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading
activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks. Some
unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an
innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options-
investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price-surged in the
parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines
on September 10-highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further
investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11.
A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to
al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a
trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American
on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in
American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options
trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9,
which recommended these trades. These examples typify the evidence
examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other
agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to
investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many
foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently
suspicious consistently proved innocuous. Joseph Cella interview (Sept.
16, 2003; May 7, 2004; May 10-11, 2004); FBI briefing (Aug. 15, 2003);
SEC memo, Division of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners,
"Pre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review," May 15, 2002; Ken Breen
interview (Apr. 23, 2004); Ed G. interview (Feb. 3, 2004).
Did the Commission have full access to information regarding put
options? Was the Commission misled, as it was on other issues? Was
evidence destroyed or fabricated? We will never know, as the underlying
documents have - according to the SEC - been destroyed.
»
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RUMSFELD SAYS 2.3 TRILLION MISSING FROM PENTAGON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTwCRuwJc34
This is from CBS News for the context-freaks.
DATELINE: September 10, 2001 (yeah, the day before)
I believe this may be the Trillions that were being referred to.
Strawman arguements! Come on now, the topic is 9/11, not WMD.
You know what, I can only tell you this story which may lend another perspective.
My son was a HS Junior. He needed a health physical to play sports. Well, he had gone to the Naval Academy's summer seminar and had a physical, but I learned he needed a new physical to do track that fall. Physical had to be dated after July, 2001.
OK, so I take him to get the physical and the internist thinks she hears something in his carotid, a bruit?
Take him to the nearby hospital. September 10th, 2001. We are there most of the day and end up grabbing dinner at a greek restaurant. It's in Westwood, NJ.
Well, I am locquacious so I start yakking with our waiter. I can't place where he is from. He is, what? What is he, Middle Eastern?Something. I don't know, Greek? No. Turkish? Couldn't figure it. "I really like your ring is that a wedding ring?" I asked him. It was unusual, on the same finger that you would see a wedding ring, but jeweled and heavy, not a thin gold band. "Yes, we wear it like this sometimes in my country." Hmmm, I nodded: "It's nice, it's very pretty. What...what country are you from?" His eyes narrowed and he said "What you think?" "I don't know, Israel?" I questioned with a shrug. "Palestine!" He said angrily and somewhat triumphantly. "Oh" I said, "well, I am sorry for your troubles there, it must be very hard." Then he vented even more angrily that his father in law had been in hospital and Israeli shells had shelled the hospital. "Why don't you just move your family here. Bring them here, where it is safe!" I suggested. Then, he smiled. "Soon, very soon. Much sooner than you can imagine. It will not be safe here. And you will see it all over the news. And your president and your politicians and armies. They will do nothing. They will not be able to do anything. And you will know what we suffer and what it is like to suffer. Soon come. It wil soon come!"
After this he moved to the corner and whispered and softly laughed conspiratorially with two waiters I judged to be Guatemalan or Peruvian; they chuckled with a scant hint of malice in unison with him and glanced at us, and I quickly asked for the bill; we paid and headed out into the pouring rain. Disturbed by the possibility of my son's blocked arteries and this fanatics outburst, I was eager to hurry home.
The next day was the bluest of blue days imaginable in the Hudson Valley. A perfect blue sky September day. A bird flew up over the river, and morning glories swayed on the arbor at the entrance to my garden.
After taking in the day, I got a call from my husband who ordered me to turn on the tv; he was calling from the Daily News building on 42nd street in Manhattan.
I did turn on that tv. But in the shock of it, I did not remember the Palestinian man's words until the next day.
This is true.
So you're point is, Palestinians get pissed when you assume that they are Israelis based on their appearance?
Waaaa! Look out! It's brown people! Waaaa!
Like I said, our enemies are manufactured.
LILI -- get a new story archetype...This is SOOO worn and tired.
It's just what happened. My son was a student at Don Bosco Prep, Ramsey, NJ. He was seen at Pascack Valley Hospital, Westwood, NJ. We ate dinner at "It's Greek to Me," restaurant.
AND when I called the restaurant to complain, they said they had other complaints, too.
I also called the local FBI which is in Goshen, NY.
This is SOOO worn and tired
I can only tell you what happened to me.
Furthermore, because of 9/11, I was able to drive in on 9/13 (which may have been a Friday, can't remember) to see a neurologist and radiologist with my son at Cornell Weill: an appt which would have taken much longer, but because of the circumstances, we got in. I will never forget crossing the GWB that day, and taking a long glance down the river.
And you think the snaps of where Burr/Hamilton dueled in Weehawken and other snaps in Jersey City Heights of people cheering were made up?
Doubting Thomas, you wouldn't believe unless you put your hand in the side of the wound.
By the way, the internist who diagnosed by son was wrong! She was so used to hearing old people's carotids, his healthy young blood flow sounded off to her! My son was 100% ok.
He is now a naval officer on his way to the Gulf on an Aegis Class destroyer.
I want him back home, and I want this endless war to end. I think that we have a Corpacracy which owes allegiance not to the average citizens to the US. I don't think it started out that way, but I think we have lost control of the beast.
I think this has happened because we have lost control of ourselves. We have forgotten the seven deadlies and the ten Commandments.
If we simply followed them. If Americans would simply return to a time when we knew our neighbors as "God Fearing," then our lust, our greed, our envy, and our sloth would be much, much more in check.
Morevoer, we would then have the moral authority to command our leaders to SERVE US.
I know, May, now you'll blast me about how religion ruined us. No, it did not. Worship of the self ruined us. Me, me, me ruined us.
yeah right..
I thought George Bush was stupid ?
You don't think the US, if interested in taking these kinds of risks, would not have used this risk capital on an event that would be more convincing and more geopolitically rewarding ?
Tell me, what was the big prize at the end if they could pull this off ?
Was the prize the authorization to go to war with Saddam Hussein ? Guess what ? Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
what was the big prize ?
Exactly, that's why Iraq ad campaign took ~2 years to get war approval. The mission seems to be accomplished.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Poll_41_of_Americans_believe_Saddam_0624.html
The goal is still to get busy with oil in Middle east with lot of oil as part of the broader plan:
Please also read about PNAC and who were/are their members and their influences.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Spitz man, your view is narrow however you are right insomuch as the lying Bush went out to the American people with the TV address to justify going into Iraq by making a false link with 9/11. Check out the TV clip, check out the body language, check out the eyes - baby Bush was as naked to many, as the day he was spawned.
Also, do not forget how well scaring the crap out of the US sheeple works ...
WMD. Now your incessant ranting below does need tempering as there is no way on this earth that the US could plant a few warheads in Iraq without at least a dozen intelligence agencies being in the know. Think about it before repeating it again and again.....
Sadam Hussein tried to kill George Bush Sr. The other prize was the Patriot Act. With the Patriot Act they erroded everyones right to privacy. It gave them the authourity to arrest People without Council or a Trial. It also allowed wire tapping, internet interception or spying, the right to search your car or home without a Warrant. Americans rights were taken away and the right of Government to do what they wanted was enacted. Just look at Airports today were you have to go thru virtual naked strip searches. You cannot go into a Courthouse without the contents of your purse being x rayed. How about all of the requests by the Government to Google, Yahoo for Search Inquirys without a Warrant. What about all of the phone record requests by the Government without a Warrant. All of this on Innocent Americans and in many cases without their knowledge.
AND you ask what was the prize? It appears that you do not value your freedom or your privacy. That was one of the very principals of the Constitution of the United States.
Remember give me freedom or give me death?
How many people have read the fucking Patriot act.
This is the stupidest explanation yet. Was there going to be riots in the streets if this legislation was passed without staging 9/11 ?
Yes, there would have been riots. No one gives up their freedom and privacy for nothing. That is why we are Americans because we used to value our freedom and privacy.
no there would not have been riots in the streets, most people don't even vote, never mind read random legislation that is going through.
There's still a few hours of daylight but I'm going to go out on a limb, and designate this comment as the funniest of the day. Bonus points for unintended humor.
You keep going Spitz and I'll never have to write another joke on my own again.
Prize is the Oil in Iraq.
because Saddam Hussein had so much to do with 9/11 eh ?
The Bush admin did such a wonderful job of tying Saddam Hussein to the attacks right ?
Saddam had fuck all to do with the 9/11 attacks
Will somebody find a crowbar and help Sptizer get his foot un-nailed from the floor?
He's running in circles and it makes him put words in people's mouths.
He seems frustrated. Can't someone help him?
Please don't take him seriously
Please don't take him seriously
Please see my comment below:
#415319 for the prize.
Forget all this war talk, that was simply ancillary item.
link no worky, just like your theory
Man I don't know why they did it!!!! Also, I am not claiming I knew who did it either! All I know is that three huge assed buildings fell into their own footprints because some missiles hit them. I am not not convinced baby Bush knew what was going on. It could have been anybody that did this! The House of Saud, the Mossad, the CIA...it could have been all of them! You should read Webster Griffin Tarpleys book. Do you know about how Angel was next? Baby Bush was most likely only told that something big would happen on the first day of the Egyptian new year.
Oh, and W. has a photographic memory, he is far from stupid. What you refer to is his dyslexia, thus why he wasn't the best public speaker.
That is the biggest flaw for the conspiracy movement. NO DEFINATIVE REASON OR SUPERLATIVE PRIZE FOR TAKING THE RISK OF STAGING THE ATTACK.
You distort the discussion in a very gross fashion.
One must identify a perpetrator before attempting to assign a motive. BUT WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING THAT.
The article and discussion is about the 9-11 commission and the many serious, well-documented PROBLEMS with that 'effort'.
It would be appreciated very much if you simply stayed on topic.
no 9/11 = no Iraq invasion, no afghanistan invasion, no invasion of wherever the hell else we'll go next, no oil contracts, no mid-east control, no $1T in mining reserves in afghanistan, lesser strategic postioning against other mid-east powers, etc. etc. etc. - there is definitely strong reasoning for making the attack, taxpayers are paying for it all anyways, the only question is if they felt it was worth it - given our government, a bunch of psychos deciding its in the best long-term interest of our country is not ludicrous regardless of your end-opinion.
Well, your life was getting boring anyway, hence the paper bag over your head.
oh hell, I'll take the bait - so there was no "reason" to create the CRISIS that was nine-eleven, an event that was repeatedly seared into the public's mind via repeated viewings of the "event", 24-7, for days? creating a collective "trauma" that allowed the stripping of decades of human rights, via such bullshit as "The Patriot Act", "Homeland Security", and many, no really MANY other government grabs at what "we" have permission to do - I seriously can't be bothered to link all the ridiculous acronyms for governmental control over the populace, but I do know that under the "war on terror", the power shifted upwards exponentially.
Iraq and what they've done to the humans who continue to live in a toxic waste dump, poisoned for how long with depleted uranium, among other WMD - that's a blind alley if you're looking for a "why" to nine-eleven - it's all about the power grabs, and who gets to write the "story" part of "his-story".
hence the destruction of EVIDENCE - because in a generation, who will be bothered to check what they're taught as "truth" in the books written by the "powers that be", eh?
This is the stupidest explanation yet. The Patriot act.
Was there going to be riots in the streets if this legislation was passed without staging 9/11 ?
Riots? Perhaps not, but GW Bush might have lost the election to Kerry in 2004 -- can't have that now can we?
OIL, can you understand?
and how many countries throughout history attack themselves first before going to war for resources ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqw1R2oA9KA
Germany - Reichstag fire
Germany - Gleiwitz incident
Russia - Shelling of Mainila
Russia - Apartment bombings
Japan - Mukden incident
USA - Operation Northwoods (on paper only, didn't execute it)
Italy - Piazza Fontana and other bombings.
Edward Norton in Fight Club beat himself up in his bosses office ;)
So much was gained
the slew of unconstitutional executive orders following 911
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/wbush.html
Building 7 destroyed which housed some pretty nasty documents
American people now live in fear and what were we told (Consume, buy, buy) fuelling the next bubble.
The FEAR now lets the gov put military on the streets Increasing the police state. Seen any guys with M-16s in the subways of NYC lately i have.
The war in Iraq basically goes unchallenged as we invade.
The Bush family who are Historic Weapon and Military suppliers are loving it.
Patriot act which has now been amended to include American citizens.
We now have 52 military bases in Iraq a perfect staging point for all of our future conquests in the Middle East. Which with Afghanistan gives us a nice setup when we go into Iran shortly.
And it even goes on and on and on from here, but you don't see any of that huh Spitzer. You run in very small circles.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11
Who was it that made the calculation that they needed to stage an attack on New York to get the Patriot act through ?
Would there have been riots in the streets if the Patriot act went through without staging the 9/11 attacks ? No.
Project for a New America. They needed a new "Pearl Harbour"
Iraq would not have been possible without 911. Forget the patriot act that was just icing(never let a crisis go to waste). The public and congress allowed the unconstitutional illegal war because of the FEAR from 911
what about UN security councel resolution 1441 ?
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 is a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on November 8, 2002, offering Iraq under Saddam Hussein "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous resolutions (Resolution 660, Resolution 661, Resolution 678, Resolution 686, Resolution 687, Resolution 688, Resolution 707, Resolution 715, Resolution 986, and Resolution 1284)
Im not saying Bush got UN approval, Im just saying that Bush got UN approval.
How could he disarm? what he didn't have.........
Additional information on same:
http://www.bigeye.com/
I worked in Building 7 and it helps to remember that the Mayor of NYC had that building as his emergency disaster HQ. As part of that complex, there was a HUGE tank of gasoline in the basement of that building which in and of itself would have been enough to light a candle that could be seen for 50 miles.
What ever happened to all of the Gold being stored in Building 7 that is MISSING?
Interestingly Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, who should have been immediately evacuated to that said building, did not go near it the whole day. Instead he was prancing around the streets pointing here and there shouting this and that (similar to how Rummie was outisde the pentigon moments after the missle hit). He should have been locked down in def com infinity. Building seven also housed information that Majors were naked short selling US government bonds on the SEC's floor, the CIA had a floor, the FBI had a floor; this was a very important building.
Barry Jennings said there were explosions and dead bodies in building 7 before not only building seven had fallen, but before WTC 1 and 2 had fallen.
Alex Jones: New 9/11 Developments - Barry Jennings Part 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ndVnpqLTY
Bill Clinton is responsible for 9/11. We had two islamic terrorist attacks during his tenure. The jihadist islamic racist pigs were so scared of his reactions to these attacks that they came to the USA and trained during his time in office.
Bill Clinton bears the same responsibility for 9/11 as Osama Bin Laden.
The 9/11 Commissions only purpose was to water down the failure of Bill ,Hillary, and the DNC to protect the American people. What document did Hubbel take and destroy and what did it say?
Only to a real goober could it be "interesting" that the mayor wasn't evacuated to a structurally unsound building that happened to be on fire and that was in close proximity to two buildings that had just collapsed.
What a fucking moron.
Check your timeline fool! Oh, you didn't include one.
Sorry. Resume your indignance.
More Bull Fucking Shit
9/11 CONSPIRACIES DEBUNKED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXxynEDpwrA
Please don't take him seriously
You too, go back to sleep. Here is a pacifyer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrzXLYA_e6E