[MEDIA] The 'Farenheit 9/11' debunking thread

[Ought Six]

The purpose of this thread is to debunk specific claims and inferences made by Michael Moore in his new propaganda piece, Farenheit 9/11 and other claims Moore has made against Bush recently. Debunking information is currently spread out over many different threads, and buried among a lot of other miscelaneous comments. I wanted to bring all this material into one thread so it can be easily referenced by our members.

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<center>THREAD RULES</center>

• Clearly state what Moore's specific claim or inference is, then provide the counterargument and supporting material. Please try to be succinct and to stay on topic.
  
• Provide a good logical argument to back up your criticism of Moore's points. Just saying that it is BS is not a valid argument; say *why* it is BS. Back up your argument with facts, references and/or links wherever possible.
  
• Do not spam the thread with dozens of paragraphs of cut & paste. Posting whole articles is fine if all the material is directly relevant to your argument. If not, then excerpt out only the relevant part and post just that.
  
• If you just want to make some personal comment about Moore, there are several other threads here where you can do that. Please do not do it on this one. This thread is for factual debunking.
  
• Challenging any debunking info posted here with facts or logic is fair, but please do not post here just to make an ideological statement or to snipe at people. I will ask the moderators to remove any extraneous or off-topic posts and warn any members who do this.

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Claim: The war in Afghanistan was primarily undertaken to secure a route for an oil pipeline from former Soviet Turkic republics south to the Indian Ocean.
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Afghanistan: the pipeline war?


BBC News
Monday, 29 October, 2001

By BBC Eurasia Analyst Malcolm Haslett

Some attractively original theories have been going the rounds about the real reasons for the Afghan war.

It is obviously much more, some columnists and political theorists suggest, than a simple effort to stamp out terrorism.

Apart from the popular theory (in some parts of Europe as well as the Middle East) that this is a war on Islam, there is also the theory that it is a war motivated mainly - or even purely - by long-term economic and political goals.

The importance of Central Asian oil and gas has suddenly been noticed.

The valuable deposits of fossil fuels in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, previously discussed only by regional experts and international energy companies, are now being mulled over on the opinion pages of popular dailies.

Economic imperatives

The Afghan war, it has been discovered, has an economic side to it.

Some writers, indeed, have gone further, suggesting that economic considerations provide the main, or at the very least a major, motivation for US and western involvement in Afghanistan.

If one discounts the more extreme and emotional versions of this theory, the argument boils down to this:

• Afghanistan has been proposed by more than one western oil company (the US-based Unocal is often mentioned, but it is not the only one) as the best route by which to export the Central Asian republics' important output of oil and gas
  
• Given the increasing importance of finding and exploiting new sources of fossil fuel, governments like those of the US and the UK are enormously keen to gain influence in the Central Asian region in order to secure those supplies for the West
  
• In order to achieve that, and get those energy supplies moving out of Central Asia, they need to set up a pro-western government in Afghanistan.

Flawed theory

This line of argument falls down on a number of points.

It is undeniably true that the Central Asian republics do have very significant reserves of gas and oil, and that they have been having difficulty in getting them on to the world market on conditions favourable to them.

Until recently Russia had an almost total monopoly of export pipelines, and was demanding a high price, in economic and political terms, for their use.

But it simply is not true that Afghanistan is the main alternative to Russia.

On the contrary, very few western politicians or oil companies have taken Afghanistan seriously as a major export route - for the simple reason that few believe Afghanistan will ever achieve the stability needed to ensure a regular and uninterrupted flow of oil and gas.

There have been exceptions, of course, like Unocal and the Argentine company Bridas.

The main proponents of the Afghan pipeline idea, however, apart from the Taleban regime itself and its backers in Pakistan, was the government of the eccentric Turkmen President Saparmyrat Niyazov, known as "Turkmenbashi".

Caucasus route

The West, in contrast, and particularly the US, has put almost all its efforts into developing a major new route from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea.

This had the potential advantage (from a western point of view) of bypassing Russia and Iran, and breaking their monopoly of influence in the region - allowing the states of the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan and possibly Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) to develop a more balanced, independent foreign policy.

That, of course, worries many in Russia, and to a lesser degree in Iran.

They also now fear that the Central Asians' willingness to entertain US forces on their territory could substantially increase US influence in the region.

Such a scenario, however, is far from certain.

The western powers have caused considerable annoyance among the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia by harping on human rights abuses - particularly, incidentally, against Muslims - and the need for greater democratisation.

It seems highly unlikely, moreover, that the US-led "Coalition against Terrorism" has any illusions about how "pro-western" any potential new Afghan Government would be.

The main prerequisite for the survival of a new administration in Kabul, is that it win wide acceptance among the various ethnic and political groupings in Afghanistan itself.

No US stooges

And very few of those groups are exactly pro-western.

Western influence in Afghanistan would, at best, remain shaky.

In addition, if peace and stability were to return to Afghanistan, and a new pipeline to Central Asia was to be built, the principal beneficiaries would undoubtedly be the Afghans, as well as Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and the other Central Asians.

In brief, then, considerations of economic and political influence will undoubtedly play a part in western strategies in Afghanistan.

It would be strange if they did not. But the argument that these are the main motivations behind US actions, not the desire to stamp out international terrorism, will probably find support mainly among those who already have a fondness for conspiracy theories.

+++++

We all know that BBC News is the farthest thing from a neocon, Bush-loving conservative media outlet, yet even they can see that this conspiracy theory is total BS. The idea of an Afghan pipeline makes no sense, and it never did.

You can find more on this here:

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020412.html

And here is another bit confirming what I have already said:

+++++

Book: 'Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man'


NewsMax.com
Thursday, June 24, 2004

>*snip*<

"Moore claims President Bush invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban so he could get an oil pipeline built. You've probably heard others parrot this allegation. A master of propaganda knows that if you repeat a lie often enough, people start to believe it.

"In reality, Bush had supported Enron's plan to run pipes under the Caspian Sea and avoid Afghanistan. "Clinton was the one backing the rival Unocal plan to put them through Afghanistan," Hardy and Clarke observe."

>*/snip*<

+++++

Clinton only supported the pipeline idea early-on because the Taliban had not really taken full hold of Afghanistan at that time, and revealed its true nature. Once that became known, the dubious pipeline idea became completely untenable, which is why GW did not support the idea.

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Claim: The FBI was not allowed to interview bin Laden family members before they were flown out of the country.

Inference: The bin Ladens were 'friends of Bush', and were flown out of the country when all other flights were grounded as a personal favor from GW.
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Clarke claims responsibility for bin Ladens' flight


Contradicts 9-11 panel testimony about depature of Osama's relatives

WorldNetDaily.com
May 26, 2004

Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke says he is solely responsible for allowing members of Osama bin Laden's family to flee the United States immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again," Clarke told The Hill newspaper yesterday.

The Hill said a political controversy has been brewing over who approved the six controversial flights that carried 140 Saudi citizens.

At the time the members of the Saudi elite were allowed to leave, the Bush administration was preparing to detain Muslims in the U.S. as material witnesses to the attacks.

Democrat leaders, including Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, had been pressing members of the 9-11 Commission to find out, "Who authorized the flight and why?"

A Democrat who attended a May 6 closed-door meeting of the panel quoted a panel member, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., as saying: "We don’t know who authorized it. We've asked that question 50 times."

Most of the 26 passengers aboard a Sept. 20, 2001, fight were relatives of Osama bin Laden, whom intelligence officials blamed for the attacks almost immediately after they happened, The Hill said.

Clarke told the paper responsibility for the Saudis' departure "didn't get any higher than me."

"On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn't get any higher than me," he said. "I decided it in consultation with the FBI."

But this new account of the events seemed to contradict Clarke's sworn testimony before the Sept. 11 commission at the end of March, The Hill said.

"The request came to me, and I refused to approve it," Clarke testified. "I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the – at the time – No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved … the flight."

Panel member Tim Roemer said yesterday in response: "That's a little different than saying, 'I claim sole responsibility for it now.'"

Moreover, the FBI has denied approving the flight, according to the Capitol Hill paper.

FBI spokeswoman Donna Spiser said, "We haven't had anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights."

"We did know who was on the flights and interviewed anyone we thought we needed to," she said. "We didn’t interview 100 percent of the [passengers on the] flight. We didn't think anyone on the flight was of investigative interest."

The Hill said when Roemer asked Clarke during the commission's March hearing, "Who gave the final approval, then, to say, 'Yes, you’re clear to go, it's all right with the United States government,'" Clarke seemed to suggest it came from the White House.

"I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke testified. "I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. The two – since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff's office."

Clarke told the Washington newspaper yesterday the furor over the flights is a "tempest in a teapot," arguing that since the attacks the FBI has never said any of the passengers should not have left.

"It's very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation," Clarke said.

The 9-11 commission released a statement last month declaring the chartered flights were handled properly by the Bush administration, the Hill reported.
----------

The whole idea that GW had let the bin Laden family members go came from Clarke's orginal testimony, which he later denied. This direct self-contradiction not only discredits the original claim, it also totally discredits Clarke and any other claims he makes. And even in his original testimony, Clarke never said or even implied that GW okayed the release of the bin Laden family. So contrary to Moore's claim that Bush personally ordered the release of the bin Laden family members, this idea is wholly without foundation, whether you believe Clarke before or now. Apparently Bush was never even notified of the request before Clarke made his decision and okayed the flight. So this inference made in the film is false.

Also, it is clear from FBI testimony that they interviewed bin Laden family members they wished to and were fully aware who they were, and that they were leaving the country. So this claim made in the film is false.

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Inference: Moore implies that because the Bush family has a business relationship with the bin Laden family, and most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, somehow Bush was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
-----

Michael Moore: Propaganda Artist


by Amber Pawlik
Men's News Daily
June 26, 2004

>*snip*<

What follows next, after complaining that some from the bin Laden family rode on a plane and flew out of America without being stopped and questioned by the U.S. government, is a painfully forced attempt to connect President Bush to the bin Laden family. Not to bin Laden. To the bin Laden family. Bin Laden is considered a black sheep in his family, so this connection is really pointless – unless you are of the racist and tribal belief that because you are related to someone, you share their moral guilt. But, even so, Moore assures us that bin Laden is really tied to his family. His proof: a guy on film said that at bin Laden’s son’s wedding, a “few family members showed up.” Bin Laden’s father fathered 50 children alone. A few relatives showing up at – not bin Laden’s – but bin Laden’s son’s wedding is pathetic at best.

Moore then shows a piece of paper, Bush’s military records, which shows that Bush and a man named James Bath both failed to show up for a medical exam. The name was blacked out on the copy that the Bush administration released to the press. You see; their names were on the same paper, right next to each other even. Moore then explains the connection: Bush received money from Bath and Bath received money from the bin Laden family. Not from bin Laden. From the bin Laden family. Not that Bush received the money. But that a guy he knew did. And, remember, their names were on the same piece of paper! See the connection?

Moore also uses an utterly racist (along with the typical, “The Bush family gets money from the Saudis so therefore he must be loyal to him”) argument in trying to prove a Bush-terrorist link. Moore points out that 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis, and also that Bush visited with the Saudi royal family after 9-11. Therefore, you see, Bush is completely responsible for 9-11.

I don’t want to have to remind leftists about the problem of racism – it just feels like they should already know (well, ok, no it doesn’t) – but just because some of the terrorists on the flight were Saudis doesn’t mean all Saudis are terrorists. Maybe some Saudis are; maybe some aren’t; or maybe all of them are. But you still need proof. The only proof offered in the movie of why a Saudi is inherently guilty of terrorism is that 15 of the 19 hijackers were also Saudis. We’ve heard repeatedly from the left that we cannot blame all Muslims for 9-11, and 19 of the 19 hijackers were Muslim. So why does Michael Moore get the liberty to label all Saudis as terrorists, and smear George Bush for talking to a Saudi?

>*/snip*<

----------

That covers it pretty well.

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Claim: Moore says that Bush spent 42% of his first year 'on vacation'. The truth is that Bush spent 42% of his time in office prior to September 11th, 2001 away from the White House (that claim originated from The Washington Post). The false and baseless assumption is that when GW goes to Camp David for policy sessions, or to his Crawford, Texas ranch, he is just enjoying himself and doing no work for the nation whatsoever.

The truth is that much of the time spent at Camp David & Crawford were not vacation at all, but meetings with foreign leaders and policy planning sessions, but to Moore this is all 'vacation'.

'Bush calls world leaders from Camp David' -- CNN -- 3 Feb 01

'Bush, Blair discuss Iraq sanctions' {at Camp David} -- AP -- 23 Feb 01

'Bush To Receive Musharraf At Camp David' -- Pakistan New Service -- 7 Jun 01

'Bush, Japanese prime minister forge relationship at Camp David' -- CNN -- 30 Jun 01

'A White House On the Range; Bush Retreats to Ranch For 'Working Vacation' ' -- Washington Post -- 7 Aug 01

And some of the time spent away from the White House was spent on trips involving foreign policy, but to Moore this is also all 'vacation'.

'THE PRESIDENT IN EUROPE' -- PBS -- 24 Jul 01

'Bush rallies Kosovo troops' -- BBC News -- 24 Jul 01

Other days away from the White House were for domestic events, but to Moore, this is also all 'vaction'.

'President Visits Elementary School in Jacksonville - Urges Quick Passage of Education Plan' -- White House website -- 10 sep 01

'Presidents Bush, Fox Conclude State Visit {Toledo, Ohio} -- White House website -- 6 Sep 01

'President Discusses Economy at Teamsters Barbecue in Detroit, Michigan' -- White House website -- 3 Sep 01

'President Discusses Defense Priorities at American Legion' {San Antonio, Texas} -- White House website -- 29 Aug 01

'Remarks by the President to Families Gathered at the Target Retail Store, Kansas City, Missouri' -- White House website -- 21 Aug 01

'Remarks by the President to Workers at Harley Davidson Factory' {Menomonoee Falls, WI} -- White House website -- 21 Aug 01

'Remarks by the President to Students and Teachers in Back to School Event' {Albuquerque, NM} -- White House website -- 15 Aug 01

'Remarks by the President to YMCA Picnic' {Rocky Mountain National Park, CO} -- White House website -- 14 Aug 01

'Remarks by the President In Independence Day Celebration' {in Philidelphia} -- White House website -- 4 Jul 01

'Remarks by the President in Visit to White House Staffer' {staffer gave birth in Virignia hospital} -- White House website -- 3 Jul 01

That is only a couple months worth, from July through early September, but you get the idea. Moore claims all of these events as 'vacation' time. This 42% 'vacation' figure also includes weekend visits to Crawford, which GW does frequently. Do you consider your weekends 'vacation time'? Moore apparently does. And as you can see from the list above, when at his Crawford ranch he frequently travels to events in the southwest region to appear.

So again we see that the claim that Bush spent all this time 'on vacation' is false.

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Inference: From the idyllic pictures of Iraqi children playing in parks before we attacked, and the civilian casualties after we attacked, Moore clearly infers that Iraqi would have been better off if we just left them alone.

Do I even need to go into how ridiculous this claim is? We know what Saddam did.

Halabja chemical attack on Kurdish civilians -- 1988 & chemical attack on Shia civilians in southern marshlands -- 1993

Massacre of Shia civilians at Kerbala -- 1991

400,000 found in mass graves in Iraq so far

Comprehensive list of Saddam's atrocities

Just check out these links, and you will clearly see just how false Moore's implication really is.

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Please post your own refutations of Moore's claims. And if you see these already-refuted claims repeated on other threads here, you can simply link to this thread and point out that they are wrong.

 

[Dennis Olson]

This is gonna be a great thread...

 

['plain o joe']

How many days/weeks did you spend working on this?

 

[delta lady]

How many days/weeks did you spend working on this?
.......................................................................................
Since late Friday night, right ought 6 ? Part of this is a response to me from another thread. And he ignored my response the next day. Must have been too busy with this

Anyway...


Claim: The FBI was not allowed to interview bin Laden family members before they were flown out of the country.

Inference: The bin Ladens were 'friends of Bush', and were flown out of the country when all other flights were grounded as a personal favor from GW.

Who CARES who in the Bush administration ordered it done. I happened and it happened in JIG TIME. The fact that it was done while hundreds of thousands of Americans were stranded (my son included) is INSULTING to those stranded.

So tell us Ought 6.....why were they flown out?

oops...broke Thread rules....Me bad.

 

['plain o joe']

Well, as former financiers of the failed Arbusto Oil Co., I guess they had Pre-Paid Tickets



The bin Laden's Great Escape
The National Review

9-11-2

Bill Carter, the FBI spokesman, is adamant. "We were
given full access to the individuals on that plane," he
says, "and we were satisfied that we did not believe
any of those individuals had anything to do with the
9/11 plots."

The plane to which Carter refers was an aircraft
chartered by the Saudi government in the days after
the terrorist attacks. The individuals were two dozen
members of Osama bin Laden's extended family who
had been living in the United States. Saying they were
afraid that family members might suffer retribution in
the U.S., the Saudis asked for American assistance in
getting them out of the country. With the help of the
FBI, the Saudis and the bin Laden family chartered an
aircraft to pick up family members in Los Angeles,
Orlando, and Washington, D.C. The bin Laden plane
then flew the relatives to Boston, where - one week
after the attacks - the group left Logan Airport bound for Jeddah.

At the time, the massive 9/11 investigation was just
beginning. The government had begun detaining
hundreds of people who were held for days, weeks, or
months while U.S. agents performed extensive
background checks and interviews. In addition, the
government announced its intention to question
thousands of men from Muslim countries who might
simply have known something of interest to the
investigation. "The Department of Justice is waging a
deliberate campaign of arrest and detention to protect
American lives," Attorney General John Ashcroft said
on November 27.

But the bin Ladens did not have to worry about that.
While FBI agents looked into bin Laden family
members in the Boston area immediately after
September 11, it appears that the agents' first chance
to interview them - or other family members who lived
elsewhere in the country - came on the day they left
the U.S. Each family member was given the all-clear
on the basis of a single, day-of-departure interview -
conducted, in Bill Carter's words, "at the airport, as
they were about to leave."

Asked by National Review whether the FBI had
conducted a full and thorough investigation of all the
family members before allowing them to go, Carter
repeated his earlier statement: "The FBI had an
opportunity to interview the individuals on that plane,
and we were satisfied with the information they
provided." Asked again, he said the same thing.
"Unless you have evidence to stop them from leaving
the country, they have every right to do that," Carter
explained. "The bin Laden family is very large, and for
the most part are involved in legitimate enterprises.
The fact of the matter is that because of September
11, some of these individuals felt it would be better to
leave the country. They have every right to do that."

But some law-enforcement experts found the
abbreviated investigation puzzling. "That's highly
unusual, and they could not have done a thorough
and complete interview," said John L. Martin, the
former chief of internal security for the Justice
Department. "It was obvious at the time that the
Bureau did not have the kind of intelligence to know
who was behind [the September 11 attacks], how they
were financed, and what the U.S. connections might
have been." Also, Martin said, "It is an absolute rule of
law enforcement that the agent or officers conducting
the interviews control the interview, and that the
persons of interest, suspects, or prospective
defendants do not set the ground rules for the
interview."

In addition, it is a routine law-enforcement practice to
question - sometimes repeatedly and in great detail -
family members of suspects in murder cases.
Investigators do not usually presume that a relative
has no connection or knowledge of a crime; instead,
they usually conduct an investigation to make sure the
relatives can be eliminated as suspects or witnesses.
While that is going on, the instincts of law
enforcement are normally to freeze all potential
suspects and witnesses in place until the investigation
has reached some conclusions.

What raises even more questions about the FBI's
handling of the bin Ladens is that in the days
immediately after the attack, law-enforcement
agencies were nearly overwhelmed by the task of
unraveling the plot and uncovering al Qaeda's
complex worldwide financial network. Investigators
were still trying to retrace the hijackers' steps and
learn who might have assisted them along the way.
They were also facing the enormous job of trying to
uncover any other terrorist cells that might be in the
country. The FBI in particular was almost back on its
heels, suffering from (it was revealed later) a lack of
communication between its various offices about key
evidence in the case.

And the bin Ladens seemed an obvious choice for
intensive investigation. Most press accounts of the
family state flatly that the relatives are estranged from
Osama bin Laden and condemn his work. But bin
Laden has more than 50 siblings, and it is perhaps
overly optimistic to think that every single one of them
not only does not approve of his actions but also has
no knowledge of his support and financing. Besides,
there are several published reports that suggest
otherwise.

In October 2001, ABC News interviewed a sister-in-law
of Osama bin Laden, who was asked whether bin
Laden family members had given money to Osama. "I
don't know that," Carmen bin Laden answered, "but
my opinion is yes . . . I think they would say, okay, this
is - for Islam they would give. You know, for Islam they
would give." Carmen bin Laden is the estranged wife
of Osama bin Laden's brother Yeslam, who runs the
Saudi Investment Company in Switzerland. Family
friends have contradicted her account, but in March of
this year, French police searched Yeslam bin Laden's
villa in Cannes, reportedly looking for evidence of
terrorism-related money laundering involving the
Saudi Investment Company. Swiss police also
searched other properties connected to the firm.

In addition, investigators believe that another bin
Laden relative, Osama's brother-in-law Mohammed
Jamal Khalifa, is thought to be an important figure in
al Qaeda. Khalifa has been linked to Ramzi Yousef,
the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, as well as to the October 2000 bombing of
the USS Cole. Khalifa is also thought to have provided
crucial start-up money to Abu Sayyaf, the Philippine
terrorist group.

Then there are the bin Ladens' alleged ties to a
Bahamas-based bank that is suspected of laundering
money to terrorist groups. And, finally, there are
Osama bin Laden's communications with his
stepmother, Al-Khalifa bin Laden. He reportedly called
her days before September 11 to tell her that
"something big" would soon take place.

It may turn out that no one among the bin Ladens in
America knew anything about any of the people
involved or any of their businesses. It is true that the
family members had been the subject of some
scrutiny in the past. "That family had been looked at
very, very carefully in the two-year period leading up
to September 11," after the al Qaeda bombings of
American embassies in East Africa, said retired CIA
official Vince Cannistraro. But the fact that the
September 11 attacks occurred raises obvious
questions about how thorough the U.S.
law-enforcement and intelligence agencies'
investigation of bin Laden was. In light of that, how
much did the FBI know about the bin Laden family
when it allowed them to leave the country? And could
investigators have learned everything they needed to
know on the basis of the day-of-departure airport
interviews?

It's hard to reconstruct precisely how the departures
were arranged. The only public statement the Saudis
have made was in October 2001, when Prince Bandar,
the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., said on CNN, "His
Majesty said it's not fair for these innocent people to
be subjected to any harm. On the other hand, we
understood the high emotions. So with the
coordination with the FBI, we got them all out."
Otherwise, officials at the Saudi embassy in
Washington decline to comment.

When NR called an official at Logan Airport, he said,
"You have to talk to the State Department. They're the
ones who set it up." But a State Department source
said the department "played no role" in the matter.
"This is not something we would have brokered," the
source said. "Bandar does not need Foggy Bottom to
get a phone call returned by the White House." That
seemed a clear hint that the White House was
involved, but the White House declined immediate
comment, saying it would look into the matter.

However it happened, the bin Ladens are long gone.
Some have returned, at least for visits - they live in an
international set that divides its time among Jeddah,
London, Paris, and New York. Others have stayed
away. Now, a year after 9/11, should U.S law
enforcement ever need them, investigators will know
where they are - in Saudi Arabia, out of reach.

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york091102.asp

 

[Ought Six]

dl:

"How many days/weeks did you spend working on this?
Since late Friday night, right ought 6 ?"

"Must have been too busy with this."

You like to make a lot of wrong assumptions. Putting together this post took me about three hours today. I was beta testing last night.
----------

"Part of this is a response to me from another thread. And he ignored my response the next day. Must have been too busy with this."

You are referring to THIS THEAD. If you had actually read the thread, I responded to and debunked your claims, and did not fail to respond to your posts. If you wish to disagree, do it on the other thread.
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"Who CARES who in the Bush administration ordered it done."

Michael Moore cares, which is why he clearly inferred that GW was responsible. That is what his whole film is about.... GW being responsible for *everything*.
----------

"I happened and it happened in JIG TIME. The fact that it was done while hundreds of thousands of Americans were stranded (my son included) is INSULTING to those stranded."

I now understand what you keep whining about. You are personally angry about your son being grounded while the Saudis were allowed to fly. You see, you missed the fact that the topic here is Michael Moore's claims, not your personal pique and your son's problems in the airport. This thread is about Moore, not about you. Please try to stay on topic and leave your personal stuff for other threads.
----------

"So tell us Ought 6.....why were they flown out?"

You already asked and I already answered that question on the other thread, but let me expand on it here.

When cousin Osama perpetrated the 9/11 attack, his innocent family members that had years before disowned him were in exteme immedate danger because of the anger against Osama. Anyone named 'bin Laden' would obviously be in exteme peril on 9/12. The bin Ladens are peripherally related to the Saudi royal family, and if they were murdered by a mob of angry Americans, it would have created a huge international incident. Also, the bin Laden family had been helping us with intel on Osama, so we owed them.

You also failed to ask the other obvious question; why were all commercial aircraft grounded? But then, you know the answer. Because they did not want anther planeful of terrs destroying another building full of people. And they had no problem letting the Saudis fly out because they knew precisely who was on that plane, so it was not a threat. But you seem to see that as some kind of personal insult to the American people.
----------

"oops...broke Thread rules....Me bad."

With intent. If you cannot stay on topic and keep your personal stuff and your infantile attempts to prod me off of this thread, then you can take it up with the mods. I am sure they can explain it to you.

 

[Ought Six]

Claim: Moore implies that GW really lost the 2000 Presidential election, and the Supreme Court illegally handed him the Presidency.

I have said on this forum many times before that there were a couple dozen recounts done by liberal newspapers, liberal universities and independant public interest groups, and *every one of them* came to conclusion that GW won Florida fair and square, by any known method of counting votes. People do not remember it was Gore who demanded a recount *only* in three counties that were heavily in favor of Gore, to try and get himself more votes. The Supreme Court ruled that a statewide recount would be fair, but Gore's selective recount was bogus. But even with that selective recount and thousands of military mail-in ballots that heavily favored Bush being thrown out, Bush still won.

----------

Film offers limited view


BY THOMAS FRANK; WASHINGTON BUREAU
Newsday - Analysis
June 27, 2004

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON - At the start of "Fahrenheit 9/11," filmmaker Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, "under every scenario Gore won the election."

What Moore doesn't show is that a six-month study in 2001 by news organizations including The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN found just the opposite. Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place, Bush still would have won Florida and the election.

The inclusion of Toobin's minority view and exclusion of mainstream documentation typifies the shaky case Moore builds against President George W. Bush in his two-hour film.

>*snip*<

==================================================

Claim: Bush had shady dealings with the bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group that led him to be soft on terrorism and the Saudis.

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Except from the Newsday article linked to above:

The movie unearths nothing new. It is a cinematic lawsuit, not a verdict, that skews and omits events for its central charge: that Bush was soft on terrorism because his family is financially tied to wealthy Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden.

>*snip*<

Moore cites well-documented links centering around The Carlyle Group, a high-powered international investment firm. Bush himself had been an adviser to a Carlyle subsidiary before becoming Texas governor in 1995. His father became a Carlyle adviser after leaving office in 1993. The bin Ladens, a family of wealthy industrialists, were major Carlyle investors, though they and the elder Bush cut ties with Carlyle after Sept. 11.

Does that link the Bushes to terrorists? Not exactly. Osama bin Laden has been estranged from his family for a decade. Moore barely suggests otherwise, though he does try to link the incumbent president directly to the bin Ladens.

>*/snip*<

==================================================

Claim: Bush was cozy with the Taliban government.

----------

Except from the Newsday article linked to above:

>*snip*<

Moore also tries to paint Bush as sympathetic to the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan until its overthrow by U.S.-led forces shortly after Sept. 11. Moore shows a March 2001 visit to the United States by a Taliban envoy, saying the Bush administration "welcomed" the official, Sayed Hashemi, "to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban."

Yet Hashemi's reception at the State Department was hardly welcoming. The administration rejected his claim that the Taliban had complied with U.S. requests to isolate Osama bin Laden and affirmed its nonrecognition of the Taliban.

"We don't recognize any government in Afghanistan," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on the day of the visit.

>*/snip*<

==================================================

Claim: Moore tries to claim a conflict of interest with Bush supposedly getting bin Laden family money through his friendship with a fellow Texas National Guard member, James Bath.

----------

Except from the Newsday article linked to above:

>*snip*<

Relying on a book by former New York Observer editor Craig Unger, Moore cites the case of James R. Bath, a friend of Bush's from the Texas Air National Guard. Bath had managed the Texas investments for the Saudi BinLaden Group, run by Osama's older brother Salem, and invested money in Bush's oil company, Arbusto Energy.

Moore implies the bin Ladens wanted to curry favor with Bush while his father was CIA director. But Unger's reporting - omitted by Moore - says that Bath denies putting bin Laden money in Arbusto. A link remains unproven.

>*/snip*<

==================================================

We are watching all the BS claims in Moore's movie disintigrate before our eyes.

 

[Ought Six]

Found another one....

Claim: Moore says that GW was 'stunned' and failed to act for seven minutes after being told that the second WTC tower had been hit (at which point it was clear the first hit was no accident).

Here is an account from an eyewitness to that event:

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A moment in time


By Greg Pierce
The Washington Times - Inside Politics section
June 25, 2004

Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticizes President Bush for listening to Sarasota, Fla., second-graders read a story for nearly seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack September 11.

But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Mr. Bush handled himself properly.

"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Miss Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in an article published yesterday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"

Mr. Bush told the federal 9/11 commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."

Mr. Moore says Mr. Bush failed to take charge.

----------

Moore's interpretation is based purely on the most negative possible assumptions, which he falsely presents as a factual account of events. Clearly some witnesses saw it entirely differently.

 

['plain o joe']

He could have said....

"Excuse me, I have to go to the boys room"

especially after the 2nd hit

 

[Ought Six]

poj:

"He could have said.... "Excuse me, I have to go to the boys room" especially after the 2nd hit"

If he had said that and then gone running out of the building with his Secret Service entourage, you would be slamming him for that now instead. The truth is that no matter what GW does, you will slam him for it, because you are a proven rabid GW-hater. He can do no right in your eyes.

And BTW, the article you dug up & posted on the bin Laden family flying out is nearly two years old. It was written long before the testimony in front of the 9/11 Commision explained the circumstances around the flight being authorized, and is thus outdated info. It also in no way, shape or form contradicts what I posted on that subject.

 

[bigwavedave]

7. Thread Owners (those that START a thread) have certain "rights". These include:
- The right to request that their thread be moved, locked or deleted
- They may notify the staff that unwelcome thread drift is occurring. Upon review, and if it appears a valid complaint, the posts contributing to the thread drift may be edited or removed.
- Threads pulled egregiously off topic may be locked or edited at the Thread Owner's or Staff's discretion.

oh yeah, and "Do not spam the thread with dozens of paragraphs of cut & paste." OK, i'll try and remember that job belongs to ought six!.

 

[data junkie]

Claim: Bush had shady dealings with the bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group that led him to be soft on terrorism and the Saudis.

By the same logic, Michael Moore has shady dealings with the Carlyle group, as Moore's film is backed by Disney, and EuroDisney was invested in by the Carlyle Group as well as by the Saudi royal family ($5 mill), so Moore is in bed with Carlyle and the Saudis.

soure: rusty humphries broadcast: http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/Humphries.shtml

 

[Ought Six]

This is the most detailed analysis on the bin Laden family being allowed to fly out of the country shortly after 9/11 that I have yet found.

==================================================

Flight of Fancy


Snopes.com
Last updated: 31 March 2004

Claim: Secret flights whisked bin Laden family members out of the U.S. over the objection of the FBI two days after the September 11 attacks, while a general ban on air travel was still in effect, and before the FBI had any opportunity to question them.

Status: Multiple — see below

• In the two days immediately following the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, the U.S. government allowed bin Laden family members to fly within the country during a general ban on air travel: True.
  
• During that same period the U.S. government allowed bin Laden family members to fly out of the U.S.: Undetermined.
  
• The flights carrying bin Laden family members out of the U.S took place over the objections of the FBI: False.
  
• The FBI was denied any opportunity to question departing bin Laden family members: False.

Origins: I owe Michael Moore an apology. In a January 2002 interview with Al D'Amato and Alan Colmes of the FOX Network, Michael Moore said:

Why did this country allow the bin Laden family, two days after — two days after September 11 — to fly around America and pick up all the bin Laden relatives, about 24 of them, and take them to Europe? Not a single one of them was interrogated by the FBI.

That set me off on a tirade, and it shouldn't have. Part of Mr. Moore's statement has since been proved to be correct — during the ban on air travel, some Saudis (including members of the bin Laden family) were transported by air to assembly points in the U.S. in preparation for their leaving the country. In an earlier version of this article, I ranted and raved about his avowing bin Laden flights had taken place while no one was allowed to fly. Yet some did, at least within the U.S.

I shouldn't have yelled at him. He was right about that.

Actually, I shouldn't have yelled at him even if he'd been dead wrong about everything. There's no good excuse for my having gotten vitriolic about Michael Moore as I attempted to address the substance of what he said. I regret having done that because it's just flat-out the wrong thing to do under any circumstance. Michael, if you're out there, please know that I am sorry for having said hurtful things. The world is full enough already with pain and miserableness for me to want to add to it or to want to direct any of it your way.

Now let's look at what's known to have happened regarding those bin Laden flights. Because this is a complicated story and a number of assertions have been made about various aspects of it, our site's normal writing style of a status line followed by a single true or false rating just doesn't cut it, hence the unusual format for this article (which you might have already noticed from the unusual multi-pronged "Status" line above).

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, the Federal Aviation Administration immediately ordered all flights in the United States grounded, and that ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or were repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.)

The claim that bin Laden family members (and other Saudis) were allowed to secretly fly out of the U.S. and back to Saudi Arabia while a government-imposed ban on air travel was in effect is a complex one with many different components:

• Were bin Laden family members allowed to fly within the U.S. during a general ban on air travel?
  
• Were bin Laden family members allowed to fly out of the U.S. during a general ban on air travel?
  
• Were these flights "secret"?
  
• Did these flights take place over the objections of the FBI?
  
• Was the FBI denied the opportunity to question bin Laden family members?
  
• Did the departing bin Laden family members have any meaningful information to impart about Osama bin Laden?

To sort out this issue, we'll examine the key points:

Why did bin Laden family members want to leave the U.S.?

Why bin Laden family members (and other Saudis) wanted to leave the U.S. in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks should be obvious: most of the hijackers who perpetrated the attacks were Saudis, as was the mastermind of the plot, Osama bin Laden. Many Saudis temporarily residing in the U.S. (not just bin Laden family members) feared they might become victims of anti-Arab, anti-Saudi, and anti-bin Laden reprisals at the hands of angry Americans:

Many [young members of the bin Laden clan] were terrified, fearing they could be "lynched," after hearing news reports of sporadic violence against Muslims and Arab-Americans.3

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

The Saudi government is worried about an anti-Arab backlash against its citizens. Those concerns are heightened because many of the 19 hijackers used either Saudi passports or affiliations with the Saudi national airline, Saudi Arabian Airlines, to gain entry to the United States and access to the flight schools.

The Saudi government, one of the staunchest Arab allies of the United States, stopped sending its citizens to the United States for medical treatment after last week's attack. One diplomat said a Saudi citizen with the same name as one of the hijackers called him in tears from his hospital bed yesterday, saying he feared for his life.

"It's terribly sad," the diplomat said.

The Saudi diplomat said his government had advised Saudi citizens, including some 3,000 students attending universities and medical schools around the United States, to be vigilant against possible retaliatory violence.

A 20-year-old Saudi man who is studying at Boston University was stabbed early Sunday morning outside a Back Bay nightclub, Club Nicole, at the Back Bay Hilton.4

Those fears were not unfounded, as the stabbing incident involving a Saudi student in Boston demonstrated:

The Boston police hate crimes unit is probing the stabbing of a Saudi Arabian man who was attacked Sunday morning by a group of men as he left a Back Bay nightclub, where people had taken up a collection to benefit disaster relief work in New York.

The 20-year-old Boston University student remained in a Boston hospital after suffering two knife wounds in his arm and a third puncture to his back that missed his kidney by four inches, according to police and a relative.

"I'm honestly shocked," said the victim's brother, a recent MIT graduate, who asked that his name not be printed. "My parents were worried about this, obviously, after the tragedy in this country. I reassured them that Boston was a safe city. But I have lost my faith."

Boston police said the Community Disorders Unit is probing the attack, searching for leads to identify the four or five suspects who attacked the man and a friend as the two waited for others who had gone to fetch a car.

The victim's brother said one of the assailants allegedly yelled, "You Arab (expletive)" during the assault on Belvidere Street after the victim and his friends had left Club Nicole in the Back Bay Hilton.5

Were bin Laden family members told to leave the U.S.?

Whether Saudis were told to leave the U.S. by the FBI, whether they were urged to leave by the Saudi government, or whether they left of their own accord remains murky, as reports and statements from government officials were contradictory:

A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington denied claims that the bin Ladens had been told by the FBI and the Saudi government to return. He said: "There was no official warning from the government that they should go but maybe they thought it would be better if they went home." 1

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

A Saudi diplomat told The Boston Globe that the relatives of bin Laden had been advised by both the Saudi government and the FBI to return to Saudi Arabia at least temporarily for their own safety. [He] said that while his government and the FBI had advised the bin Ladens to return home for their safety, they had not recommended that other Saudis return home.4

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

In addition, many US-based relatives of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist who is accused of masterminding the hijackings, returned to Saudi Arabia on chartered jets. A Saudi diplomat said his government and the FBI advised the bin Ladens to leave for their own safety.2

Which Saudis left the U.S.?

A good deal of the confusion over this issue stems from the fact that several different groups of Saudis left the U.S. in the wake of the September 11 attacks, not all at the same time. Among the Saudis temporarily staying the U.S. at the time were a number of Saudi government officials and royal family members (and their families), dozens of bin Laden family members, and thousands of young Saudi students enrolled in American high schools, colleges, and universities. The priority seemed to have been getting the first two groups out of the country quickly while students who wished to return home were flown back to Saudi Arabia somewhat later, at the Saudi government's expense. Reports at the time indicated that Saudi officials felt students who were not bin Laden relatives were not in immediate danger and therefore did not encourage the students to leave the U.S., but they nonetheless offered to fly the students home at government expense anyway. Anywhere from "a few" to 300 students reportedly took the Saudi government up on its offer before it was rescinded because "too many people were abusing it":

The Saudi government is assisting in travel plans for any Saudi students in the United States who want to return home out of fears of a violent backlash against Muslims, a Saudi embassy official said.

While the official, who did not want to be identified because of security reasons, said that the embassy is not encouraging students to leave the country, he said that the Saudi government will pick up the travel tab and put their scholarships on hold until they feel it's safe to return to America.

"This is the same thing we did for students during the Gulf War," said the official, who added that the Saudi government cannot yet guarantee the universities will hold the students' spots. "We've gotten just a few takers, mostly in the first few days (after the attacks)."5

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

According to the Saudi embassy, about 300 Saudis living in the United States took up their government's offer to fly home if they feared reprisals in the wake of the hijackings. But that repatriation program has been shelved, according to a Saudi diplomat, because at least some of those who volunteered to fly home did so for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. The diplomat said Saudi officials learned that some who flew home were students who were in danger of flunking out. "Too many people were abusing it, so we suspended the program," said the diplomat.2

When did bin Laden family members leave the U.S.?

This component is another great source of confusion, and the crux of the overall issue. Reports indicate that some prominent Saudis were ferried around the U.S. via automobile and airplane in the days immediately after the September 11 attacks, even though the ban on general air travel was still in effect:

The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened.3

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

Two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon [three Saudis out of Florida] recall a 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly. In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister, and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Tampa detectives guarding the men were ordered to stay in Tampa by Police Chief Bennie Holder, so [private investigator Dan Grossi] was offered the job of escorting the trio to Lexington, Ky., where the prince's relatives were buying race horses.

But the Lear was not headed back to Fort Lauderdale, Grossi said the pilot told him. It was bound for New Orleans to pick up someone who needed a ride to New York.7

But the key point is that the Saudis mentioned in these accounts were not flown out of the country — they were assembled at locations from which they could be conveniently flown out of the country once regular airline travel resumed.

The terrorist attacks occurred on the morning of Tuesday, September 11. Air travel was immediately shut down for the next few days; limited flight operations (mostly commercial carriers completing interrupted flights from September 11 or repositioning empty aircraft) resumed on Thursday, September 13, and regular air travel (as well as private flights) began operating on Friday, September 14:

Boston's Logan International Airport reopened Saturday [Sept. 15], leaving Reagan National Airport at Washington the only major U.S. airport still closed to travel.

Federal officials also reopened the skies to most private planes for the first time since grounding them in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Limited air travel resumed over the country Thursday [Sept. 13] and was lurching toward normalcy Friday [Sept. 14] and Saturday [Sept. 15]. The first flight from Logan airport left just before 7 a.m. Saturday for Chicago.7

No news account had a flight of Saudis leaving the U.S. until after the resumption of normal air traffic. The earliest date posited for a flight bearing bin Laden family members leaving the U.S. was September 14, a date by which the resumption of air travel had already begun:

[Two] planes, one jumbo jet carrying 100 family members, and the other 40, were eventually allowed to leave when airports reopened and passports were checked.

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.7

The bolded text in the preceding and following articles describes flights that did not depart the U.S. until after airports had reopened. Other accounts indicate that flights of bin Laden family members didn't leave the U.S. until several days later:

The Vanity Fair article depicts an elaborate but hurried evacuation carried out within a week of the hijackings in which private planes picked up Saudis from 10 cities.9

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

They left on Tuesday 18 September — a week after the terror attacks on New York and Washington — in a privately chartered aircraft, its seats rearranged to give the handful of passengers more room. They left from Logan airport, Boston, the airport from which two of the hijacked planes had taken off seven days earlier.1

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

It is unclear how many relatives of Mr bin Laden have returned in recent days to Saudi Arabia, most probably to the city of Jedda where the family is based. Some reports said just five members left on 18 September, flying in a Boeing 727 that had been reconfigured and contained only 30 seats, all in first class.

Boston-area relatives of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist who stands accused of masterminding last week's suicide hijackings, flew back to Saudi Arabia in the last two days [Sept. 18 and 19] because of concerns for their safety, according to the Saudi government. It was unclear how many members of bin Laden's family flew home over the last two days, but aviation sources said a flight that left Logan on Tuesday night [Sept. 18] contained only five passengers, all of whom were said to be members of bin Laden's family. A second flight, paid for by the Saudi government, was scheduled to depart Logan last night [Sept. 19], after making stops in other cities, including Los Angeles and Orlando.4

However, records obtained from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seem to indicate that one flight carrying approximately 46 Saudi citizens may have left the U.S. from New York as early as September 13, before the general ban on air travel was lifted. The records do not identify who these passengers may have been — bin Laden relatives, royal family members, or other Saudi nationals. (The "Class of Admission" column in the document lists the departing passengers as a mixture of foreign government officials and their employees and temporary visitors to the U.S. for either business or pleasure.)

Whether these accounts are all describing the same flights or different flights (and hence the several-day difference in departure dates) is difficult to determine, but in many cases it appears that the issue of Saudis flying within the U.S. has been confused with the issue of their leaving the U.S.

Who paid for the flights?

None of the news accounts cited on this topic reported that the U.S. government paid for flights which returned bin Laden family members to Saudi Arabia. All accounts stated the flights were chartered and operated at the Saudi government's expense, or that bin Laden family members paid their own way home:

Dozens of Saudi citizens were flown back to Saudi Arabia at their government's expense, while the bin Ladens are believed to have paid their own way. A Saudi government spokesman said the plane used by the bin Ladens was privately chartered by the family. Sources familiar with that plane said it was a Boeing 727 that had been reconfigured so that it had only about 30 first-class seats.4

Did flights of bin Laden family members leave the U.S. "secretly"?

"Secret" is something of an subjective term, because everything is known to some people and unknown to others. Obviously neither the U.S. nor the Saudi government was going to announce that planes full of bin Laden family members fearful for their lives were about to leave the country (or put the matter up for a vote), since publicizing the event would have defeated its purpose by providing potential attackers with valuable information on their whereabouts. The flights were conducted in a hush-hush manner, and the U.S. government didn't (and still hasn't) officially acknowledged their existence, yet the secret was not of the "to be kept for all time" ilk in that these flights were reported upon in major newspapers (both in the U.S. and in other countries) within days of their occurrence.

Their departure was effected quietly, but once the Saudis were gone the "secret" no longer needed to be guarded all that scrupulously.

Did flights take bin Laden family members out of the U.S. over the objections of the FBI?

It's hard to make the case that flights of Saudis departed from the U.S. over the objections of the FBI when, according to former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, the FBI itself gave the go-ahead:

"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country," he told Vanity Fair magazine.

Mr Clarke said he checked with FBI officials, who gave the go ahead. "So I said, 'Fine, let it happen'."6

And, as noted, the FBI was directly involved in the process of collecting bin Laden family members and ferrying them to departure points from which they could leave the country:

The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas.3

Was the FBI denied the chance to question departing bin Laden family members?

Again, it's hard to make the case that the FBI was denied any opportunity to question bin Laden family members given that they were directly involved in the process of rounding them up and gave the go-ahead for the flights to leave. Moreover, news accounts indicate that the FBI was not only "all over" the departing flights (grounding some of them temporarily), but had the opportunity to question passengers, and in at least some cases actually did:

All of those who took up the Saudi government's offer to fly home were reportedly questioned by the FBI before being allowed to board the flights. A source at Logan said that the FBI was "all over these planes" prior to takeoff.4

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

[P]rivate planes carrying the kingdom's deputy defense minister and the governor of Mecca, both members of the royal family, were grounded and initially caught up in the F.B.I. dragnet.3

Did bin Laden family members have any important information to impart to the FBI?

The term "bin Laden family member" is rather misleading, as it is often mistakenly assumed to indicate a person with close ties to Osama bin Laden. By most accounts, Osama bin Laden was one of more than fifty children fathered by the same man; the bin Laden family is huge, with hundreds (if not thousands) of members spread all over the globe. Many, many of these family members are only tangentially related to Osama bin Laden and never had much (if any) contact with Osama himself. Moreover, his family disowned him after he fled Saudi Arabia in 1991 and was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 for smuggling weapons from Yemen. According to another news account about Saudis leaving the U.S. in the wake of the September 11 attacks:

Most of Mr. bin Laden's relatives were attending high school and college. They are among the 4,000 Saudi students in the United States. King Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy here saying there were "bin Laden children all over America" and ordered, "Take measures to protect the innocents," the ambassador said.3

The fact that "most of Mr. bin Laden's relatives were attending high school and college" in 2001 means that most of them were somewhere between 4 and 12 years old when Osama bin Laden fled Saudi Arabia. Students who were mere children when Osama bin Laden left Saudi Arabia, and who had spent at least some of their intervening years living in the U.S., were not likely sources for information regarding his current whereabouts and operations:

"We did everything that needed to be done," said John Iannarelli, a bureau spokesman. "There's nothing to indicate that any of these people had any information that could have assisted us."9

Did the FBI in fact question the Saudis before they left?

As noted above, the FBI had opportunity to question the departing Saudis, and contemporaneous news accounts indicate that at least some of them were indeed questioned. More recent articles offer conflicting statements from current and former FBI personnel:

Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counter-terrorism, said that, while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interrogations."3

<center>----------------------------------------------------------</center>

While F.B.I. officials would not discuss details of the case, they said that in the days immediately after Sept. 11 bureau agents interviewed the adult relatives of Mr. bin Laden, members of one of Saudi Arabia's richest families, before the White House cleared them to leave the country. Mr. bin Laden is said to be estranged from his family, and many of his relatives have renounced his campaign against the United States.

"We did everything that needed to be done," said John Iannarelli, a bureau spokesman. "There's nothing to indicate that any of these people had any information that could have assisted us, and no one was accorded any additional courtesies that wouldn't have been accorded anyone else."9

Note that the former statement doesn't say that bin Laden relatives weren't questioned; it says they weren't subjected to "serious interrogations." What level of questioning Mr. Watson would have considered a "serious interrogation" is difficult to determine (and one always has to be wary that former government officials often have axes to grind and frame their statements in such a way as to make their former employers look bad).

This page should be read for what it is: an analysis of some of the commonly-circulated claims about a complex issue (many of which are factually correct or misleading), not a denial of the larger arc of the story. Clearly bin Laden family members were allowed to leave the U.S. shortly after the September 11 attacks, and this was effected with the approval and assistance of the American government. Yet not all the Saudis flew out during the ban, nor was the FBI denied access to them while they were here or prevented from knowing who was going to be on those flights. In preparation for the exodus, a number of Saudis were ferried to central locations where those outbound jets would eventually leave from, which means they were allowed to violate the ban on air travel within the U.S. Was it right that fear for their safety and/or favors owed abroad should have prompted their being treated as special circumstance exceptions to the ban? That question lies outside the scope of this page, but rest assured it will be hotly debated around many a dinner table.
-----

Barbara "including mine" Mikkelson

-----

Sources:
6. Andrews, Bill. "Bin Laden Family's US Exit 'Approved'."
Edinburgh Evening News. 3 September 2003.

1. Buncombe, Andrew. "Fears of Reprisal Force Bin Laden Family to Flee Homes in US."
The [London] Independent. 26 September 2001 (p. 3).

4. Cullen, Kevin. "Bin Laden Kin Flown Back to Saudi Arabia."
The Boston Globe. 20 September 2001 (p. A29).

2. Cullen, Kevin. "Saudi Diplomat: IDs Were Stolen."
The Boston Globe. 29 September 2001 (p. A6).

5. Hayward, Ed. "Hub Attack on Arab Student Investigated As Hate Crime."
The Boston Herald. 18 September 2001 (p. 28).

Kurz, Hank. "Organ Network Gets Clearance for Charter Flights."
The Associated Press. 13 September 2001.

9. Lichtblau, Eric. "White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says."
The New York Times. 4 September 2003.

7. Steele, Kathy. "Phantom Flight from Florida."
Tampa Tribune. 5 October 2001 (p. 1)

3. Tyler, Patrick E. "Fearing Harm, Bin Laden Kin Fled from U.S."
The New York Times. 30 September 2001 (p. A1).

Associated Press. "FAA Allows Cross-Country Flight of Antivenin to Miami Victim."
13 September 2001.

8. CBSNews.com. "Returning to the Air."
15 September 2001.

 

[Dennis Olson]

This is a good thread. So far, nothing terribly off-topic on the part of those in FAVOR of the film. 06 has done a fine job posting relevant "debunking" information of Moore and his work. Now might be a good time to actually start *discussing* the relative merits of that material. Thanks 06, for being so thorough in gathering this information. It's pretty plain to see that Moore is a blatant liar. Again, had he made his films as ENTERTAINMENT, I would have NO ISSUE with him (except the fact that I disagree with his position). But since he's marketed the film as a "documentary" (gag!) I have a HUGE issue with that.

Jane Fonda has nothing on Moore IMO....

 

[someone]

well you have convinced me .06 there are definatley propgandist on both side of the kensyian boat.



what you haven't proved is that bush is not a arogant ass hell bent on 21st century corporate imperialism.

 

[Ought Six]

Inference: Moore shows Bush golfing, talking about terrorism, then saying "watch this drive". This scene is cut in with other material to give the impression that GW does not care about al Qaeda, even after the 9/11 attacks.

----------

FNC Reveals How Moore Distorted Scene with Bush at Golf Course


The Media Research Center - CyberAlert
Thursday July 1, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 116)

The TV ads for Michael Moore’s “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11 feature a mocking clip of President Bush on a golf course. Bush declares, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorists killers,” and then Moore jumps to Bush adding, as he prepares to swing at a golf ball, “now watch this drive.”

Tuesday night on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how “the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists.” But Wilson disclosed that “a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber.”

Indeed, Wilson played another part of what Bush said in the remarks to reporters made on August 4, 2002: “For the sake of the Israelis who are under attack, we must stop the terror.”

MRC analyst Megan McCormack noticed Wilson’s correction of Moore in a piece in which Wilson outlined how Moore’s movie better matches the definition of “propaganda” than “documentary.”

“The American Heritage Dictionary,” Wilson relayed, “defines a documentary film as one that presents facts quote, 'objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter.’”

After documenting Moore’s distortion of Bush’s golf course comments, Wilson moved on to how “in his film, Moore claims that special flights carrying Saudi nationals were allowed to fly within the U.S. at a time when commercial aircraft were grounded due to the 9/11 attacks. Not true. The Saudi flights did not occur until after commercial flight restrictions were lifted on September 14th. Newsweek’s top investigative reporter Michael Isikoff took Moore to task on that and other incorrect claims in a recent column, and says of the movie:”

Michael Isikoff: “It’s one window into some of the facts, but it’s certainly not a complete window into all the facts.”

Wilson: “Even some news organizations providing clips to Moore for the film argue Fahrenheit 9/11 is not balanced. Bill Wheatley, a Vice President of NBC News, told the LA Times quote, '...the work of filmmakers is much more likely to be pointed in a particular direction...filmmakers tend to avoid balance and pursue a point of view.’ So if the word documentary really doesn’t fit Michael Moore’s film, how about this description? 'Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.’ That’s how the dictionary defines the word propaganda. In Washington, Brian Wilson, Fox News.”

Last Friday night, June 25, the NBC Nightly News ran a fact check on Moore’s movie, the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth observed, and found it wanting. NBC’s Lisa Myers didn’t note how the golf course comments were suggested to be about al-Qaeda when they were really about Palestinian terrorists, but she did call it a “cheap shot.”

She began her story with a clip of an ad for the movie: “A true story that will make your temperature rise."

Myers asked: "But how true is it? The film's sometimes embarrassing video of Bush administration officials is authentic [clip of Ashcroft singing], though some argue certain shots amount to cheap shots."

George W. Bush from movie, on golf course: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive."

Myers: "The powerful story of Lyla Lipscomb, whose son was killed in Iraq, is also undeniable. But on other key points, critics say this so-called documentary is either wrong or deliberately misleading. The war in Iraq: To drive home the point that the children of the powerful aren't dying in Iraq, Moore ambushes politicians on Capitol Hill."

Moore in movie: "Congressman, I'm Michael Moore. How are you doing?"

Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN): "Good evening."

Moore: "Good, good. I'm trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the Army and go over to Iraq."

Myers: "But Moore left out what Congressman Mark Kennedy went on to say."

Kennedy, in interview with NBC: "My nephew had just gotten called up into service and was told he's heading to Afghanistan. He didn't like that answer, so he didn't include it."

Myers: "Bush and the Saudis: The film traces ties between the Bush family and the bin Laden and Saudi royal families, then suggests the Bushes, quote, 'might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you.'"

Roger Cressey, terrorism expert: "The Bush family's relationship with the bin Ladens and the Saudis had nothing to do with our decisions on the war on terrorism. To say so is simply unfair."

Myers: "Finally, Saudi flights after 9/11: The film suggests that plane loads of Saudis, including the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the U.S. after 9/11 without proper vetting. However, the 9/11 Commission says, 'Nobody was allowed to depart who the FBI wanted to interview.' One character in this film suggests that President Bush is even worse than Osama bin Laden, one of the excesses and distortions that may undermine the credibility of Michael Moore's message. Lisa Myers, NBC News, Washington."

But liberals and much of the media still love it.

==================================================

A bunch of people swore that Moore's film was totally factual. Where did you all go ???

 

[Ought Six]

Here is an *outstanding* article by David Koppel, entitled The Fifty-Nine Deceits In 'Fahrenheit 9/11':

http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm

This article does precisely what I have been doing on this thread. It debunks Moore's "documentary" factually and in detail, as well as events surrounding the movie. It is too long to post here, but well worth the read.

 

['plain o joe']

See the movie, buy a ticket, buy a spiderman and go in the wrong theater, sneak in, bribe an usher (keeps the money local) but see it.

or you can take the opinions above and call it a day...

 

[Con-tractor]

Inference: Moore shows Bush golfing, talking about terrorism, then saying "watch this drive". This scene is cut in with other material to give the impression that GW does not care about al Qaeda, even after the 9/11 attacks.

----------

FNC Reveals How Moore Distorted Scene with Bush at Golf Course


The Media Research Center - CyberAlert
Thursday July 1, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 116)

The TV ads for Michael Moore’s “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11 feature a mocking clip of President Bush on a golf course. Bush declares, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorists killers,” and then Moore jumps to Bush adding, as he prepares to swing at a golf ball, “now watch this drive.”

Tuesday night on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how “the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists.” But Wilson disclosed that “a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber.”

Indeed, Wilson played another part of what Bush said in the remarks to reporters made on August 4, 2002: “For the sake of the Israelis who are under attack, we must stop the terror.”

MRC analyst Megan McCormack noticed Wilson’s correction of Moore in a piece in which Wilson outlined how Moore’s movie better matches the definition of “propaganda” than “documentary.”

“The American Heritage Dictionary,” Wilson relayed, “defines a documentary film as one that presents facts quote, 'objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter.’”

After documenting Moore’s distortion of Bush’s golf course comments, Wilson moved on to how “in his film, Moore claims that special flights carrying Saudi nationals were allowed to fly within the U.S. at a time when commercial aircraft were grounded due to the 9/11 attacks. Not true. The Saudi flights did not occur until after commercial flight restrictions were lifted on September 14th. Newsweek’s top investigative reporter Michael Isikoff took Moore to task on that and other incorrect claims in a recent column, and says of the movie:” Last Friday night, June 25, the NBC Nightly News ran a fact check on Moore’s movie, the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth observed, and found it wanting. NBC’s Lisa Myers didn’t note how the golf course comments were suggested to be about al-Qaeda when they were really about Palestinian terrorists, but she did call it a “cheap shot.”

She began her story with a clip of an ad for the movie: “A true story that will make your temperature rise."

Myers asked: "But how true is it? The film's sometimes embarrassing video of Bush administration officials is authentic [clip of Ashcroft singing], though some argue certain shots amount to cheap shots."

George W. Bush from movie, on golf course: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive."

Myers: "The powerful story of Lyla Lipscomb, whose son was killed in Iraq, is also undeniable. But on other key points, critics say this so-called documentary is either wrong or deliberately misleading. The war in Iraq: To drive home the point that the children of the powerful aren't dying in Iraq, Moore ambushes politicians on Capitol Hill."

Moore in movie: "Congressman, I'm Michael Moore. How are you doing?"

Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN): "Good evening."

Moore: "Good, good. I'm trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the Army and go over to Iraq."

Myers: "But Moore left out what Congressman Mark Kennedy went on to say."

Kennedy, in interview with NBC: "My nephew had just gotten called up into service and was told he's heading to Afghanistan. He didn't like that answer, so he didn't include it."

Myers: "Bush and the Saudis: The film traces ties between the Bush family and the bin Laden and Saudi royal families, then suggests the Bushes, quote, 'might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you.'"

Roger Cressey, terrorism expert: "The Bush family's relationship with the bin Ladens and the Saudis had nothing to do with our decisions on the war on terrorism. To say so is simply unfair."

Myers: "Finally, Saudi flights after 9/11: The film suggests that plane loads of Saudis, including the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the U.S. after 9/11 without proper vetting. However, the 9/11 Commission says, 'Nobody was allowed to depart who the FBI wanted to interview.' One character in this film suggests that President Bush is even worse than Osama bin Laden, one of the excesses and distortions that may undermine the credibility of Michael Moore's message. Lisa Myers, NBC News, Washington."

But liberals and much of the media still love it.

==================================================

A bunch of people swore that Moore's film was totally factual. Where did you all go ???

WOOHOO what a surprise, esp since he did the same thing with Heston and the NRA.

I am with Dennis I swear if he gets nominated for best documentary I will puke

 

[buff]

i've seen it...

Buffdawg... first one on this thread with a first hand opinion. Good show !

i find it kinda funny that those that hope, wish, follow and believe what moores points are, can only respond with...

oh yeah, and "Do not spam the thread with dozens of paragraphs of cut & paste." OK, i'll try and remember that job belongs to ought six!.

or...

what you haven't proved is that bush is not a arogant ass hell bent on 21st century corporate imperialism.

give me a break...it amazes me that those on the left believe any of this drivel...

great job ought six

or

Buffdawg... first one on this thread with a first hand opinion. Good show !

 

['plain o joe']

Buffdawg... first one on this thread with a first hand opinion. Good show !

 

[Matty]

POJ writes "Buffdawg... first one on this thread with a first hand opinion. Good show !"...second one on this thread with first hand opinion. I just got finished seeing a bootlegged copy. I was mildly impressed with a few of the charges and innuendos made against President Bush but honestly I had seen almost all of this stuff debunked already and the stuff I hadn't seen debunked yet is debunked on this thread(nice job Ought ). I thought Lila Lipscomb was quite compelling but I thought it was pretty cheap of MM to follow her around like that while she was obviously overwrought. I can see how anybody who already hates Bush will love this movie there's more than enough to keep them happy for months...I don't think anything would change thier minds anyways. I do think anybody who see's this and is not very well informed will come out of there very pissed off at Bush et al I think that is a disservice to those people but I'm fairly sure that was MM's intent to begin with.Oh and I agree with all who have said that this is hardly a documentary.It's definately more like one long opinion piece.

-Matty

 

['plain o joe']

.06..since you like heaps of Cut & Paste, here's one from a former LAPD narcotics officer....

"Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta
'Splainin To Do"

A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT
WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS
WHAT WERE THEY DOING?

by Michael C. Ruppert

[© COPYRIGHT 2001, All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness
Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. May be copied and distributed for non-profit
purposes only.]

[Expanded and Revised Sept. 4, 2002 - Evidence of Bush Administration Foreknowledge and
complicity is now overwhelming. Since our last revision July 11, 2002, 16 New Items! (noted in
RED)]



Nov. 2, 2001, 12:00 PST -- On Oct. 31 the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While
in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden
met with a top CIA official -- presumably the chief of station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's
private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted
fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and last year's attack on the USS Cole. Bin
Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill
Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14, 2001 he was allowed to leave Dubai on
a private jet, and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down.

In 1985 Oliver North -- the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn't appear to have
a hand in the current war -- sent the Navy and commandos after terrorists on the cruise ship
Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography "Under Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas
North wrote, "I used to wonder: how many dead Americans will it take before we do
something?" One could look at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have
killed before Sept. 11 and ask the same question.

It gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events both before and
after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, which have been blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA
foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of
the U.S. government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events that have taken
place since Sept. 11 are based upon an agenda that has little to do with the attacks.

[June 19, 2002] -- As the revelations of Bush Administration foreknowledge have progressed
from silence, to trickle, to cascade, the question has now changed from forcing the evidence
into the open into one of forcing both the media and the people to avoid denying this information
in the hopes that their desire for a sense of "normalcy" can be fulfilled. As many of us have
known for years, normalcy went out the window forever when the first plane hit the tower. And
what has been revealed will not be resolved with an expensive fact-finding commission, a few
firing, or even an impeachment proceeding. What is needed in America -- and in the global
economic system -- is an overhaul, not a tune up.

1. 1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco,
Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure
equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to
future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices
to Russia to use Russian pipelines, the major oil companies have no way to recoup their
investments. [Source: "The Price of Oil" by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 -
The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]

2. January 1995 - Philippine police investigating a possible attack on the Pope uncover plans
for Operation Bojinka, connected to World Trade Center (WTC) bomber Ramsi Youssef. Parts
of the plan call for crashing hijacked airliners into civilian targets. Details of the plan are
disclosed in Youssef's 1997 trial for the 1993 WTC bombing. [Source: Agence France-Presse,
Dec. 7, 2001]

3. Dec. 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters
of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the
negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC,
Dec. 4, 1997]

4. Feb. 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca -- later to become a special
ambassador to Afghanistan -- testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly
government is in place in Afghanistan, the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will
not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee:
http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm]

5. August 1998 - After the U.S. cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in
retaliation for the African embassy bombings, Unocal officially withdraws from participation in
the CentGas trans-Afghani gas pipeline project. [Various sources, Unocal]

6. 1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was
harboring an Al Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists
is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times Jan. 21,
2001; "See No Evil" by Robert Baer (release date February 2002)]

7. April 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at
Dabhol, India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only
remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by
Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan.
[Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]

8. July 4, 1999 - President Clinton signs Executive Order 13129, which freezes Taliban assets
in the U.S. and prohibits trade between the Afghan fundamentalist regime and U.S. entities.
[Source: Federal Register, Vol. 64, No. 129, July 7, 1999]

9. 1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of
the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there
he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street
Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No. 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy"
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/carlyle.html]

10. March 2000 - An FBI agent, reportedly angry over a glitch in Carnivore that has somehow
mixed innocent non-targeted emails with those belonging to Al Qaeda, destroys all of the FBI's
Denver-based intercepts of bin Laden's colleagues in a terrorist investigation. [Source: The
Washington Post, May 29, 2002]

11. 2000 (est.) - The FBI refuses to disclose the date of an internal memo stating that a
Middle Eastern nation had been trying to purchase a flight simulator. [Source: Los Angeles
Times, May 30, 2002]

12. August 2000 -- Suspected Al Qaeda operatives wiretapped by Italian police made
apparent references to plans for major attacks involving airports, airplanes and the United
States according to transcripts obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The Times suggests that
the information might not have been passed to U.S. authorities (hard to believe), but it did
report that Italian authorities would not comment on the report. The Times also noted that
"Italian and U.S. anti-terrorism experts cooperate closely." [Source: The Los Angeles Times,
May 29, 2002]

13. Oct. 24-26, 2000 - Pentagon officials carry out a "detailed" emergency drill based upon the
crashing of a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon. [Source: The Mirror, May 24, 2002]

14. January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back
off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives
(Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This
followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden
family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]

15. Jan. 30, 2001 - Sept. 11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah was questioned in the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). A number of UAE, Middle Eastern, European, and U.S. sources were cited in this CNN
report, which said the CIA requested Jarrah be interrogated because he had been in
Afghanistan and was suspected to have ties to terrorists. An unnamed CIA spokesman said the
other sources' claims that the agency knew anything about Jarrah before Sept. 11 were "flatly
untrue." Jarrah's Jan. 30 detainment at the airport in Dubai, UAE came six months after he took
flying lessons in the U.S. Jarrah was released because "U.S. officials were satisfied," said the
report. [Source: CNN, Aug. 1, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/01/cia.hijacker/index.html]

16. Feb. 13, 2001 - UPI terrorism correspondent Richard Sale -- while covering a trial of bin
Laden's Al Qaeda followers -- reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's
encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February,
it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for
years.

17. May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime,
purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop
in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001]

18. May 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and
former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour, while CIA Director George Tenet makes
a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has
long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections. It would be reasonable to assume that while
in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his
Pakistani counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source: The Indian SAPRA
news agency, May 22, 2001]

19. June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern
terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important
symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14,
2001; See
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/f_a_zeitung_story.html]

20. June 8, 2001 - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) publishes a story headlined,
"Central Asia: Charges Link Russian Military to Drug Trade." According to the article, figures for
1999 published in a report by the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) revealed that
80 percent of the heroin consumed in Western Europe originated in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The UNDCP report also revealed half of the drugs in that 80 percent traveled through Central
Asia. A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published in March 2000 said
Russian soldiers headquartered in Tajikistan were suspected of helping drug traffickers by
providing them with transportation facilities. This was confirmed by a Russian intelligence officer
who told the Moscow News weekly, "You can come to an arrangement [with custom officials]
so that the search of military transport planes remains purely formal. The same goes for train
convoys carrying military cargo [to Russia from Tajikistan]." [Source:
www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/06/08062001111711.asp]

21. July 2001 - FBI agents in Arizona write a memorandum warning about suspicious activities
involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Phoenix. The
memorandum specifically mentions Osama bin Laden and warns of connections to terrorist
activities. [Source: The New York Times, May 14, 2002]

22. summer 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as
revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by the Washington Post and the New York
Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]

23. summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent
David Leigh reported that "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited
Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that U.S. Rangers were
also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek
special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."

24. summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief Gen. Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire
transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the
suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and
confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad's direction is
Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001.]

25. summer 2001 - The online newswire online.ie reports on Sept. 14 that an Iranian man
phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the WTC in the week of Sept.
9. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any
further information. [Source:
http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=1512332.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/online_ie_story.html ]

26. summer 2001 - Jordanian intelligence, the GID, makes a communications intercept
deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relay it to Washington, probably through the CIA
station in Amman. To make doubly sure the message got through it was passed through an
Arab intermediary to a German intelligence agent. The message: A major attack was planned
inside the U.S., and aircraft would be used. The code name of the operation was "The Big
Wedding." "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush
Administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such
warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier
confirmations." This case was authenticated by ABC reporter John K. Cooley. [Source:
International Herald Tribune (IHT), May 21, 2002]

27. summer 2001 (est.) - The National Security Agency intercepts telephone conversations
between bin Laden aide Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta and does not share
the information with any other agencies. [Source: Jonathan Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers,
June 6, 2002]

28. June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate'
U.S. and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that
the fighting will be done by U.S. and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
[Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001]

29. summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been
specifically training for missions involving hijacked airliners. This is reported in the Russian press
and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer. (Note: The story currently on
the Izvestia web site has been edited to delete a key paragraph.) [Source: Izvestia, Sept. 12,
2001,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/izvestia_story_pic.html]

30. July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatment for kidney disease at the American
hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official, who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15.
[Source: Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001]
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/Le Figaro_osama_dubai.html

31. July 15, 2001 - Members of the G8, meeting in Genoa, Italy, discuss the Taliban,
pipelines, and the handing over of Osama bin Laden. According to Pakistani representative
Ambassador Naiz Naik, the U.S. delegation, led by former Clinton Ambassador to Pakistan Tom
Simmons warned of a "military option" if the Taliban did not change position. [Source:
Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, "Bin Laden: La Verite Interdite," pp76-7. Thanks
to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

32. July 2001 - Immediately after the G8 Summit three American officials -- Tom Simmons
(former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former assistant secretary of state for
South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia) -- meet
with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning
military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin
Laden - La Verite Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings.
British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The
Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001; the BBC, Sept. 18, 2001; The Inter Press Service, Nov. 16, 2001;
Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, Feb. 21, 2002]

33. July 2001 - The G8 summit at Genoa, Italy is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, and local
airspace is closed off after Italian and Egyptian officials (including President Hosni Mubarak)
warn American intelligence that airliners stuffed with explosives might be used to attack
President Bush. U.S. officials state that the warnings were "unsubstantiated." (But I wonder if
they would have taken away the anti-aircraft artillery?) [Source: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27,
2001]

34. July 26, 2001 - CBS News reports that John Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial
airlines due a threat assessment. Ashcroft told the press that he didn't know anything about
what had caused it.

35. Aug. 2, 2001 - U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Christine Rocca (a former CIA officer),
meets in Islamabad with a Taliban ambassador and demands the extradition of bin Laden. This
was the last known meeting on the subject. [Source: Brisard and Dasquie, p 79. Thanks to
Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

36. August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French
intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI
learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession
of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, Sept. 13, 2001]

37. Aug. 11 or 12, 2001 ‚ U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S.
fraud charges and claiming to be an officer with U.S. naval intelligence, writes details of the
pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope, which he gives to Canadian authorities.
[Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]

38. August 2001 - As reported in the IHT both a French magazine (name not given) and a
Moroccan newspaper simultaneously report that a Moroccan agent named Hassan Dabou had
penetrated Al Qaeda to the point of getting close to bin Laden, who was "very disappointed"
that the 1993 bombing had not toppled the WTC. Dabou was called to the U.S. after reporting
this, which curtailed his ability to stay in touch with the organization and gather additional
intelligence that might have prevented the attacks. Though not proved beyond a doubt, these
stories have been met with a wall of silence. [The IHT, May 21, 2002]

39. August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the
U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and
government buildings. [Source: MSNBC interview with Putin, Sept. 15, 2001]

40. August 2001 - President Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford,
Texas ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners.
[CBS News; CNN, May 15, 2002]

41. late-August 2001 - Prince Turki, the pro-U.S. head of Saudi intelligence (also known to be
close to bin Laden), is replaced by his more neutral half-brother, Prince Nawwaf who is an ally
of Crown Prince Abdullah. [Source: Saudi Arabian Information Resource, Aug. 31, 2001;
http://www.saudinf.com/ - Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

42. August/September 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in
the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.

43. August/September 2001 - According to a detailed 13-page memo written by Minneapolis
FBI legal officer Colleen Rowley, FBI headquarters ignores urgent, direct warnings from French
intelligence services about pending attacks. In addition, a single Supervisory Special Agent
(SSA) in Washington expends extra effort to thwart the field office's investigation of Zacarias
Moussaoui, in one case rewriting Rowley's affidavit for a search warrant to search Moussaoui's
laptop. Rowley's memo uses terms like "deliberately sabotage," "block," "integrity," "omitted,"
"downplayed," "glossed over," "mis-characterize," "improper political reasons, "deliberately
thwarting," "deliberately further undercut," "suppressed," and "not completely honest." These
are not terms describing negligent acts but rather, deliberate acts. FBI field agents desperately
attempt to get action, but to no avail. One agent speculates that bin Laden might be planning to
crash airliners into the WTC, while Rowley ironically noted that the SSA who had committed
these deliberate actions had actually been promoted after Sept. 11. [Source: Associated
Press, May 21, 2002]

44. Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MSNBC reports on Sept. 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio
talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week
prior to 9-11.

45. early-September 2001 - An FBI internal document, based upon field notes from Minnesota
field agents discloses that the agents had been investigating and had questioned the "20th
hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui. The field notes speculate that Moussaoui, who had been taking
flight lessons, might crash an airliner into the WTC. Interestingly, the field agents' requests to
obtain a search warrant for his personal computer were denied. French intelligence confirms to
the FBI that Moussaoui has ties to terrorist groups and may have traveled to Afghanistan. The
agents also had no knowledge of the Phoenix memo (See Item #18). One news story states
that agents were in "a frenzy," absolutely convinced that he was "going to do something with a
plane." [Source: Newsweek, May 20, 2002 issue, story by Michael Isikoff].


Part One

 

['plain o joe']

Part Two


46. Sept. 1-10 2001 - In an exercise, called Operation "Swift Sword" and planned for four
years, 23,000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9-11 attacks caused a
hiccup in the deployment, the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same
time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani
coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in
Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the
WTC. [Sources: The Guardian; CNN; Fox; The Observer; International Law Professor Francis
Boyle, the University of Illinois.]

47. Sept. 4-5, 2001 - A freshman at Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School who had recently
emigrated from Pakistan reportedly predicts the destruction of the World Trade Center a week
prior to the 9-11 attacks, according to the JournalNews newspaper in White Plains, N.Y. Citing
"three police sources and a city official familiar with the investigation" as well as confirmation
from the FBI that the bureau had received this information, the paper reported that in the midst
of a heated class discussion the student pointed to the World Trade Center from a third story
window and said, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week."
New York City Board of Education spokeswoman Catie Marshall confirmed for the
JournalNews "that school officials reported the matter to police within minutes of the Sept. 11
attack" and students told the paper that "FBI agents and NYPD detectives descended on the
school on Sept. 13 to interrogate the student [who made the prediction] and others in his class,"
which was "an English class for Arab-American students." [Source: The JournalNews, Oct. 11,
2001, http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/101101/11warumors.html]

48. Sept. 5, 2001 - "Five hundred websites -- many of them with an Arab or Muslim connection
-- crash when an anti-terrorism taskforce raids InfoCom Corp. in Texas," reported Britain's the
Guardian on Sept. 10, 2001. A taskforce of approximately 80 federal agents and officials from
the FBI, Secret Service, INS, Customs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, IRS, and Commerce
Department occupied InfoCom's office building in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas for
four days, "copying every hard disc they could find." InfoCom hosts many websites for Middle
Eastern clients and is located across the street from the Holy Land Foundation, a charitable
organization which has been alleged to have connections with terrorist groups. InfoCom's vice
president of marketing, Ghassan Elashi, is also the chairman of the Holy Land Foundation.
[Source: The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2001,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,549590,00.html]

49. Sept. 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order
(01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and
emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of
terrorism. [Source: State of Florida website listing of Governor's executive orders]

50. Sept. 6-7, 2001 - Put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) totaling 4,744 are
purchased on United Air Lines stock, as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the
stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the
United puts are purchased through Deutschebank/A.B. Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the
current executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya
International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), http://www.ict.org.il/, Sept. 21, 2001
(Note:The ICT article on possible terrorist insider trading appeared eight days *after* the 9/11
attacks.); The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept.
29, 2001]

51. Sept. 10, 2001 - Put options totaling 4,516 are purchased on American Airlines as
compared to 748 call options. [Source: Herzliyya Institute - above]

52. Sept. 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced
by United and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600 percent above
normal. This at a time when Reuters (Sept. 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks
may be poised to take off."

53. Sept. 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch,
Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25 percent of American Airlines, and Munich
Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the Sept. 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above;
FTW, Oct. 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html]

54. 2001-2002 - It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and many other
intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs
reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of
just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported as recently as June 2001 to be in Osama bin
Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by Fox, both the FBI and the Justice
Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least summer
2002. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks.
[Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; Fox, Oct. 16, 2001;
FTW, Oct. 26, 2001, -
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_19_01_magic_carpet.html
FTW, Vol. IV, No. 6, Sept. 18, 2001 -
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/sept1801.html;
FTW, Vol. III, No. 7, Sept. 30, 2000 -
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html]

55. Sept. 9, 2001 - President George W. Bush is presented with detailed war plans to
overthrow Al Qaeda, according to U.S. and foreign sources speaking to NBC News. [Source:
MSNBC, May 16, 2002. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

56. Sept. 10, 2001 - This item has been removed solely at the request of the party previously
named in this entry. Recent court proceedings – which occurred after the news story we had
cited - have indicated that there was no connection between the story listed here, the person
named therein and the attacks of 9-11-01. At the request of the previously named party, FTW
has replaced the $1,000 reward with a $1,000 donation to The Childrens Defense Fund on
behalf of the named party and the issue is now amicably resolved without any hard feelings
between that party and FTW.

57. Sept. 10, 2001 - According to Newsweek, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly
cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. [Source:
Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2001]

58. Sept. 10, 2001 - The Houston Chronicle reports the FBI was notified of a fifth grader from
a Dallas suburb who told his teacher, "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the
United States, and the United States will lose." The Chronicle was unclear on specifically when
Garland, Texas school district officials told the FBI about the incident, but it was some time
between Sept. 13, 2001 and the story's publication date of Sept. 19, 2001. [Source: Houston
Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2001 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1055222]

59. Sept. 10, 2001 - San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown receives a call from what he described
as "his security people at the airport" eight hours before the terrorist attacks "advising him that
Americans should be cautious about their air travel," as reported by the San Francisco
Chronicle. Brown was scheduled to fly to New York from San Francisco International Airport.
He told the Chronicle the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to
make any alarming statement." [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2001,
http://www.sfgate.com/today/0912_chron_mnreport.shtml]

60. Sept. 11, 2001 - The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the federal agency that runs
many of the nation's spy satellites, schedules an exercise involving a plane crashing into one of
the agency's buildings. "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001," according to a website advertising
a homeland security conference in Chicago run by the National Law Enforcement and Security
Institute, CIA official John Fulton and his team "were running a pre-planned simulation to explore
the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little
did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way." Fulton is the head of the
NRO's strategic gaming division. [Source: National Law Enforcement and Security Institute,
http://www.nlsi.net,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020821/ap_wo_en_ge/us_sept_11_plane_exercise_1]

61. Sept. 11, 2001 - After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon occur,
National Public Radio's congressional correspondent David Welna reports, "I spoke with
congressman Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services
Committee, who said that just recently the director of the CIA warned that there could be an
attack -- an imminent attack - on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely
unexpected." [Source: http://www.thememoryhole.org/updates.htm]

62. Sept. 11, 2001 - United Air Lines flight 23, scheduled to fly from New York City to Los
Angeles was delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off
immediately. This happened apparently after the first plane had hit the WTC. The passengers
were thrown off the flight. [Source: The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2002]

63. Sept. 11, 2001 - Gen. Mahmud of the ISI (see #16), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting
Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source:
MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]

64. Sept. 11, 2001 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant
messaging companies with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack
on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits. Law enforcement authorities have
gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo research and development offices in
Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv that is the same location as
the Institute for Counter Terrorism, which eight days later reports details of insider trading on
9-11. [Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, Sept. 28, 2001; MSNBC Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams,
Sept. 27, 2001; Ha'aretz, Sept. 26, 2001]

65. Sept. 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within
the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off
course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force
planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National
Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known
that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred. [Source: CNN; ABC; MSNBC; Los Angeles
Times; The New York Times; www.tenc.net]

66. Sept. 11-12, 2001 - Nearly a month before the first reported outbreak, White House
officials start taking the powerful antibiotic Cipro to treat anthrax. By the end of the year it will
be known that the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks against Sens. Leahy and Daschle
was produced by CIA programs coordinated through Fort Detrick, the Batelle Memorial Institute
and the Dugway Proving Ground. [Source: NBC; CNN; www.tetrahedron.org,
www.judicialwatch.org]

67. Sept. 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after years of
unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001]

68. Sept. 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto
and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently
states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and
has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior
Court records]

69. Sept. 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned,
effective immediately, as head of the Alex Brown (A.B.) unit of Deutschebank.

70. Sept. 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on
American and United airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading
on the New York Stock Exchange after the attacks, which gave the Securities and Exchange
Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.

71. Oct. 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador
Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned
Unocal gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to Pakistan is now back on
the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."

72. Oct. 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from
the U.S. Attorneys office in New York, which has had a highly successful track record in
prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times,
Oct. 11, 2001]

73. mid-October 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a
precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak and vulnerable
to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government
spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for
corporations.

74. Oct. 29, 2001 - The Bush Administration drafts "an executive order that would usher in a
new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a
former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public," wrote the
Washington Post. The order also required members of the public to prove "at least a
demonstrated, specific need'" for a president's papers to be released. Critics contend this
would overturn the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which releases documents after 12 years.
The White House maintained that a Supreme Court decision in 1977 allows presidents various
privileges for their records. [Source: Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001,
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001Oct31?language=printer]

75. Nov. 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium
Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is
underway all over the country.

76. Nov. 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open
the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the
victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant as much opium as possible."

77. Dec. 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the U.S.
government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The
former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the
Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, Dec. 4,
2001]

78. Dec. 25, 2001 - Newly appointed Afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being
a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde]

79. Jan. 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalmy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan.
Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997
supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, Jan. 9, 2002]

80. Jan. 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking
reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened
the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian
Science Monitor, Jan. 4, 2002]

81. Jan. 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for Mike Vreeland
call the Pentagon's switchboard operator, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a naval
lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his
office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; Toronto Superior Court records]

82. Jan. 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron
investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He
fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting federal grand juries investigating bribery
and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP Amoco, which have massive oil interests in
Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002; FTW,
"The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I," April 4, 2002,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_elephant.html]

83. Jan. 23, 2002 - Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Pakistan. Pearl is
reported dead on Feb. 21. Lead suspect Ahmad Umar Sheik, former colleague of Gen. Ahmad,
is arrested on Feb. 12 and named as the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder. Legal
sources close to the Pakistani government tell FTW that Pearl was investigating the ISI.
[Source: CNN.com]

84. Feb. 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader Gen. Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce
their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity," including the proposed Central Asian
pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghan government workers.
[Source: The Irish Times, Feb. 9, 2002]

85. Feb. 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in
Afghanistan in the late-spring 2002 will reach a world record 4,500 metric tons.

86. mid-April, 2002 - World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, at the opening of the World Bank's
offices in Kabul, states he has held talks about financing the Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline. He
confirms $100 million in new grants for the interim Afghani government. Wolfensohn also states
that a number of companies have already expressed interest in the project. [Source:
Alexander's Gas and oil Connections, citing an Agence France-Presse story]

87. May 13, 2002 - The BBC reports that Afghanistan is about to close a deal for construction
of the $2 billion gas pipeline to run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The story states,
"work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck" at a summit
scheduled for the end of the month. Unocal will build the pipeline. [Source: BBC, May 13, 2002]

88. May 2002 - A number of sources report progress on both oil and gas pipelines. Regional
sources state that Unocal will re-emerge as a pipeline contender after withdrawing from the
CentGas pipeline project in 1998. Unocal denies plans to revive the gas pipeline but curiously
neglects to mention whether or not it has any interest in the oil pipeline, which local sources say
is moving ahead. [Source: The Dawn Group of Newspapers, May 7, May 17, May 22, 2002]

89. May 30, 2002 - Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President
Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf meet in Islamabad to sign a memorandum of
understanding on the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project. The three leaders will meet for
more talks on the project in October. The Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistani gas pipeline accord has
been published and can be viewed at the following website:
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nts22622.htm. [Source: NewsBase, June 5, 2002]

90. May 16, 2002 - White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer states unequivocally that while
President Bush had been warned of possible hijackings, "The president did not -- not -- receive
information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." [Source: CBS News,
May 15, 2002]

91. May 19, 2002 - Former FBI Agent Tyrone Powers, now a professor at Anne Arundel
Community College states on radio station KISS 98.7 that he has credible evidence suggesting
that the Bush Administration did in fact allow the Sept. 11 attacks to further a hidden agenda.
[Source: http://www.indymedia.org - May 20, 2002]

92. May 31, 2002 - FBI Agent Robert Wright delivers a tearful press conference at the National
Press Club describing his lawsuit against the FBI for deliberately curtailing investigations that
might have prevented the 9-11 attacks. He uses words like "prevented," "thwarted,"
"obstructed," "threatened," "intimidated," and "retaliation" to describe the actions of his
superiors in blocking his attempts to shut off money flows to Al Qaeda and other terrorist
groups. These are not words of negligence. They are words describing deliberate and
malicious actions. [Source: C-SPAN website]

93. June 4, 2002 - Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Butler, who had called President Bush a joke and
accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen, is suspended from his post at the
Defense Language School in Monterey, Calif. and could face a court martial. [Source:
Associated Press, June 4, 2002]

94. June 14, 2002 - Common Dreams website publishes an account from a former member of
the 1/118th Infantry Battalion of the South Carolina National Guard: "My unit reported for drill in
July 2001 and we were suddenly and unexpectedly informed that all activities planned for the
next two months would be suspended in order to prepare for a mobilization exercise to be held
on Sept. 14, 2001. We worked diligently for two weekends and even came in on an
unscheduled day in August to prepare for the exercise. By the end of August all we needed was
a phone call, which we were to expect, and we could hop into a fully prepared convoy with our
bags and equipment packed." [Source: Common Dreams,
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0614-02.htm]

95. June 17, 2002 - Reuters reports that Butler's case has been resolved without the
necessity of a court martial. (I guess so. There's enough material here to prove him right. --
MCR) [Reuters, June 17, 2002]

96. July 2, 2002 - Motions from Zacarias Moussaoui are unsealed in federal court, indicating
that Moussaoui wants to testify before both a grand jury and Congress about the Sept. 11
attacks. Moussaoui claims to have information showing that the U.S. government wanted the
attacks to happen. [Source: The Washington Post, July 3, 2002]

97. July 3, 2002 - The first-ever shipment of Russian oil, 200,000 metric tons, arrives in
Houston. [Source: The Moscow Times, July 6, 2002].

98. July 6, 2002 - Afghan Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir is assassinated by Afghan
warlords. The New York Times reports that Qadir may have been assassinated by opium
warlords upset by Qadir's efforts to reduce the rampant opium farming and processing that has
taken place since the U.S. occupation. Qadir had been overseeing a Western-backed
eradication program, according to the Times. However, the opium warlords of the region are
same ones sponsored, protected, and in some cases released from prison by the CIA and who
have been protected by President Bush's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. It is reported that
the raw opium is being refined near U.S. bases at Kandahar. [Sources: The New York Times,
July 8, 2002; Far Eastern Economic Review, April 18, 2002]

99. July 26, 2002 - White House security prevented the legal watch-group Judicial Watch from
serving Vice President Cheney with a lawsuit filed on behalf of Halliburton shareholders. Before
becoming vice president Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, which has filed for bankruptcy.
[Source: Cybercast News Service, cnsnews.com]

100. Aug. 2, 2002 - The FBI asked members of the House and Senate intelligence committees
to take lie-detector tests as investigators try to determine who leaked information to CNN about
communications in Arabic that made vague references to an impending attack on the United
States. The communications were intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10 but
weren't translated until Sept. 12. [Source: Associated Press story published in the Boston
Globe, Aug. 2, 2002, http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.03A.fbi.lie.det.p.htm]

101. Aug. 5, 2002 - The Associated Press reported Russia's major role over the last five
years in the trafficking of Afghan heroin into Europe. [Source: Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 5,
2002, www.sfnewmexican.com]

102. Aug. 16, 2002 - A Knight Ridder story discloses that members of Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's staff have created a special planning unit for an invasion of Iraq. The unit is
composed primarily of civilians and was spearheaded by conservative members of Rumsfeld's
staff, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The story was headlined, "White
House Methodically Preparing for Iraq Campaign." [Source: Knight Ridder Newspapers,
www.truthout.org/docs 02/08.17B.wh.prep.irq.p.htm]

103. Aug. 28, 2002 - The Globe and Mail of Canada reports Afghanistan will become the
world's top producer of opium this year, surpassing Southeast Asia. [Source: the Globe and
Mail, Aug. 28, 2002]

Now, let's go back to the Oct. 31 story by Le Figaro -- the one that has Osama bin Laden
meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai in July 2001.

The story says, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from
many family members [There goes the story that he's a black sheep! --MCR] and Saudi
Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was
seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room.

"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi
millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15, the
day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta.

"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information
was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the
world, including its own territory.

"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence
officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian activists [connected
to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their
inquiry. When asked the question, What do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans
responded with incomprehensible silence.

"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between
the CIA and its 'Islamic friends' over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem,
consistent with 'a certain American policy.'"

Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin Laden had
been there as reported, stories printed on Nov. 1 contained quotes from hospital staff that
these reports were untrue. On Nov. 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly
denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.

Who do you believe?

WATCH THIS PAGE FOR CONTINUING ADDITIONS TO THIS TIMELINE


http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html

 

[delta lady]

Ought 6 wrote ...... Here is an *outstanding* article by David Koppel, entitled The Fifty-Nine Deceits In 'Fahrenheit 9/11':
....

this is 'your guy' .... on record...

http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel110100.shtml
11/01/00 11:20 a.m.
Why I’m Voting for Nader
The real libertarian in the race.

By Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute
snip...

'm a life-long registered Democrat; most of my political friends are Republicans; and in my heart I'm a Libertarian. So why am I going to vote for Green party candidate Ralph Nader? Because a vote for Nader, strangely enough, offers the most practical opportunity to actually reduce the power of the government, especially the federal government.


snip...

 

[lifestuff]

GW HE knew ! POWER POWER POWER

Most just will never face the FACT that Government is corrupt.
There history speaks for it self. Wake up and face the evil.
Chenny,Rummy,Bushy and Daddy and Granddady and all the
POWER LOVEN greedy filthy lucres....


When There LIPS move there is No Truth, but only self empowering Glory !

 

[Ought Six]

Slamming Koppel is not an answer to the facts he presents in his article....

dl:

So I guess that if I like one of Koppel's articles, I must then subscribe to everything he says? It that your 'logic' here ??? Or is your logic that since he thought both of the big two-party candidates in the 2000 election sucked, then he must be crazy.... Wait a minute, is that not precisely what *you* believe ???

BTW, how long did it take you to dig up that four-year-old Koppel piece on the 2000 election? How about you actually refute some of the facts posted here debunking the movie? I know that staying on-topic is so very difficult for you, but you can do it if you give it a little effort.

Just for the record, Koppel's claim to fame is that he is a liberal who started researching gun control at the University of Florida to prove how effective it was. To his great credit and to the horror of his liberal compadres, Koppel had the honesty and integrity to set aside his liberal dogma and publicly state that the facts prove that gun control is totally worthless as a method of controlling crime. Of course, liberal academia has gone to great lengths to try to discredit and destroy Koppel for this heresy. In spite of that, Koppel has stood firm.

So there is no surprise or mystery that he is a liberal. It does not change the fact that he is an honest, intellegent, educated man who is willing to stand up for what he believes to be the truth, whatever the cost to him for doing so may be. So if you want to take issue with his article, then show us precisely where it is wrong.... if you can. I will not be holding my breath waiting for you to do that.

 

[bigwavedave]

Blind, Or A Coward?
June 30, 2004

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/blind_or_a_coward.php

One of the first things I did when I got back from vacation was to go see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s a brilliant piece of propaganda, entertaining and funny, and it skewers the president deliciously. But am I the only one to notice that in one critically important way, it entirely misses the boat and gets nearly everything wrong? Maybe this has been said before—I’ve hardly read all of the criticism of Moore—but if so, I haven’t seen it. Moore totally avoids the question of Israel.

Not only that, but the opening polemic of the movie ties President Bush and company mightily to Saudi Arabia. In one sequence, what seems like several dozen images flash by showing Bush and his advisers shaking hands and chumming it up with leading members of the Saudi royal family. Moore says outright that while Bush is paid $400,000 by U.S. taxpayers in salary, Saudi Arabia has supported Bush and his family with more than $1 billion in business-related subsidies. (That amount, it seems to me, is ridiculously inflated and must be nonsense.) The stated implication is that Bush is more loyal to the Saudis than he is to America.

Huh? Here are some questions for Moore: If Bush is so “in the pocket” of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon’s strongest backer? Why, when he had Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah down at the Texas ranch a few years ago, did he flip off the Saudi’s peace plan? And most important, why did he invade Iraq—since Saudi Arabia was strongly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Why did he launch his Iraqi adventure over Saudi objections, with many of his advisers chortling that Saudi Arabia would be “next”? Why did he stock his administration with militant neocon crusaders who see Saudi Arabia as the main enemy? Why, Michael?

I have to conclude the Michael Moore is either blind, or a coward. Blind, if he can’t see Bush’s craven ties to Israel, driven by the neocons and the Christian Zionists and Bible-thumping fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, who consider Israel Jesus’ next stop and see Saudi Arabia as Satanic. Or cowardly, because he knows it and decided not to mention it. Is that because attacking Israel is too hard? Moore’s photo-montage of Saudi princes borders on the racist, showing Bush & Co. clinging to grinning, Semitic-looking Arabs in flowing white robes one after another. Would we stand for a similar, racist-leaning montage of Bush palling around with grinning, Semitic-looking Jews in skullcaps? 'Course not. More important, Moore completely misses the political boat. Perhaps that’s because he relies so heavily on Craig Unger and his book, House of Bush, House of Saud , which makes the same “error.”

And more for Moore. Yes, Bush 41 and his advisers—the Carlyle Group-linked James Baker, et al.—were (and are) connected to Saudi Arabia. Did Moore notice that Baker, along with Brent Scowcroft, and other former advisers to Bush 41 (including Colin Powell) were against the Iraq adventure? And that there were reports that Bush 41 himself thought it was a stupid idea? I can’t believe that Moore can be so stupid. So I can only conclude that he produced this movie the way he did on purpose. Then I read that he didn’t bother inviting Ralph Nader to the Washington, D.C., premiere of the film, and (according to The Washington Post ), Nader called Moore “fat.” Well. Moore is fatheaded.

 

[Ought Six]

Dave! You contributed! Thank you.

=============================================================

BTW, poj posted the very same large volume of material on another thread in the Unexplained forum, and I responded there. Here is a link:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=105741

 

[Ought Six]

With Bush on 9/11


The New York Times - Letters To The Editor
July 9, 2004

To the Editor:

Re "Moore's Public Service," by Paul Krugman (column, July 2 -- http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30911FF3A5C0C718CDDAE0894DC404482):

I am not sure where Paul Krugman and Michael Moore were on 9/11, but I was with President Bush for almost two hours.

As commander of the 8th Air Force, I was present when President Bush stopped to deliver a message to the American people at Barksdale Air Force Base.

Throughout my career, I have seen the best and the worst of people under extreme pressure. President Bush arrived at Barksdale deeply saddened and obviously concerned, but he was a man on a mission, courageous and decisive. He was totally in command.

I have kept relatively quiet about my experiences with the president on 9/11, but I cannot sit back and allow Hollywood and the media to rewrite history. I was there, and I consider myself a good judge of leadership. We were fortunate that President Bush was our commander in chief on 9/11.


THOMAS J. KECK

Tucson, July 5, 2004
-----

The writer is a retired Air Force lieutenant general.

 

[Markus Archus]

BTTT. (I was looking for it, and thought I might not be the only one.)

 

[bigwavedave]

yes, Markus, you have arrived. now what? say something!

 

[Markus Archus]

Dave, I don't have much to add. In this case, I'm willing to let my liberal friends speak for me. The two best pieces I've personally read on this subject are this one by Christopher Hitchens -

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723

and the one referenced above by Dave Kopel. Hitchens is a longtime liberal who, following the death of Ronald Reagan, referred to the late president as a "lizard." Kopel, as noted above, is a Nader supporter. Neither can be accused of being knee-jerk Bush apologists.

We've heard from liberals, libertarians, conservative opponents of the war in Iraq, the anti-Israel crowd, all of whom have problems with the Bush presidency, but all seem to agree that Moore's "documentary" is blatant propaganda, full of distortions and outright lies. The only ones promoting it are those that Sean Hannity likes to refer to as "Kerry Kool-Aid drinkers."