Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’

A Plus B Equals Your Worst Nightmare

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

by Tom Baugh

Warning: This is probably the most disturbing article I have written. If you have been upset by simple statements from me such as “the upcoming election (whichever) won’t matter” or “The Constitution is about power, not freedom”, then this one won’t help your stress level much. If this describes you, turn back now.

Think you know about radiological dirty bombs? You know, the usual: easily-detected, a suicide mission for the operator, etc. All of these are comforting things that we are told to believe (usually by some perky blonde after talking about what star is in jail for what). Think again. I’ve sat on the idea in this article for over two years now since stumbling across hints of it while researching Starving the Monkeys. Recently I’ve come across confirmations from multiple sources that, yes, the idea is relatively widespread. It is a well-kept secret, but only from you. Rest uneasy, the bad guys already know about this idea.

As the twenty-eight foot rental truck emerged from the east side of the Holland Tunnel, the driver flipped the switch flopping around on the seat behind him. This signal traveled along the pair of twisted wires leading to a small, neat hole drilled from the cab through to the spacious cargo area behind him. But, instead of an explosion, this signal triggered the operation of a handful of electric motors and a heater in the apparatus behind him. Tied to the electrical power system of the truck’s engine, this equipment hardly caused any effect on the vehicle’s power as it climbed the grade from under the Hudson River toward Manhattan. By the time the driver reached Canal Street, the weapon had already started its slow operation.

So far, not bad, right? A simple truck bomb with some kind of delay thingy? Hardly. Now, what you are about to read is possible, but requires the resources of a small nation, or very large company. Fortunately, simply publishing this makes the latter less likely. The former is up to us, and how willing we are to let the bad actors among us continue to wage economic war around the world. On a practical level, this may read like a recipe, but several details have been changed to protect your innocence. No one who doesn’t already know how to do this isn’t going to put one of these together in a storage unit somewhere after reading this article, not even if they follow some of the rabbit trails I mention.

Had anyone bothered to inspect the vehicle, they would have found most of the cargo area occupied by pairs of large, inverted, conical bins arranged throughout the length of the truck. These bins, appropriately enough, struck their designer as resembling miniature missile silos. One bin of each pair contained a liquid substance, the other a granular solid. Piping above the liquid bins had delivered a freshly prepared load of the active ingredient (we’ll call it “A”) from a garage specially equipped for the manufacture and purification of this substance out in New Jersey less than an hour before. Soon, the area immediately around that foreclosed garage would be declared uninhabitable, but no one would notice this in the media frenzy which would soon embroil the island fortress from which economic terrorism is waged on the world’s economies.

I’m not going to tell you what substance A is. Think of this as my contribution to non-proliferation. Unfortunately, most of the actual bad guys (not the ones we are fighting) already know how to do this. And there isn’t just one simple choice for substance A. No, there’s lots of options. And there’s gobs (technical term) of raw material, or feedstock for this stuff, just lying around. You can even see big piles of the feedstock from space in certain states.

The second substance (we’ll call it “B”), a dirty-tan granular material the appearance and consistency of cheap brown sugar, was indefinitely inert, and so required no special handling or precautions. This material had been prepared first, and had sat in a grain silo in Eastern Pennsylvania for two years waiting for its mate.

I’m not going to tell you what this one is, either, but again, the actual bad guys already know. I’ve also changed a few technical details to further cloud things. But, it wouldn’t take a motivated someone of the right background more than a couple of months of intense study to figure out the details. Science is like that: a powerful weapon in the hands of those who know. This is why Johnny lags children from all the other countries in the world in math and science. Our own crop of domestic bad guys fear a smart Johnny more than they fear made-up bad guys abroad.

And no, for those readers of “Starving the Monkeys”, these substances aren’t one of those black holes of knowledge I mention about halfway through that book. Those are even more, uh, interesting than what we’re talking about here.

Once the switch had been engaged, several events happened simultaneously. First, valves opened allowing metered amounts of the liquid to splash onto an augured quantity of the solid leaving its bins like so much chicken feed. This wet mixture passed through an additional auger section where it was mixed thoroughly, and then entered a screw press similar to that used for making wood fuel pellets. Instead of pellets, though, a thick wet spaghetti emerged from the dies then passed over a screened roller which blew hot air over it. Mostly dry now, the brittle extrusion rattled apart, with clumps of the now intimately mixed materials falling through a specially prepared chute, along with the waste hot air stream, just behind the rear axle of the vehicle. No one watching the truck pass by would even notice the tan material falling from the cargo area. The few who might would simply dismiss it as dried mud falling from the axle and wheel wells.

Not all bad things go boom or have the sniffles. Yep, keep seizing those bottles of water before people get on airplanes. And stealing almost full cans of toiletries from passengers.

Once mixed, the material did nothing at all. At least not to the naked eye.

Much like the weapons of economic mass terror launched by financial wizards in New York and elsewhere. Simple plundering profit at first, until the devastating effects are felt by the innocent months and years later.

But at the atomic level, something very interesting was happening. The material began to come alive. First, at totally random intervals, the nuclei of substance A began to emit high-energy alpha particles. Alpha particles are merely helium nuclei stripped of their electrons. This simple material is harmless, except at the energies the substance began to vomit them. At those energies, these lighter-than-air particles are deadly if ingested. This is what killed Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, high-energy alpha particles streaming from the well-known Polonium-210 poison he had ingested. Polonium-210 is also well-known as an initiator material in primitive atomic bomb designs, a radioactive power source for space vehicles, and a subject of study for weapons labs worldwide, including the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where a couple of oopsies killed a half-dozen or so scientists by accident a few decades back before they learned how to handle this deadly poison.

This isn’t to imply that Mossad assassinated Livinenko with Polonium-210, or that they have in the past assassinated even our own government officials who opposed Israel. If they wanted to do that, simple guns and bullets suffice. Along with a willing media to help propagandize the outcome. Based where, I wonder?

But this liquid, consisting of a solution of substance A compounded in a simple, yet uncommon, salt, doesn’t contain Polonium-210. That isotope would be far too expensive, too detectable, and much too fast-acting for the dried mud which had by now been scattered along the southern half of Broadway as the truck neared the raging bull. No, this material released the deadly yet secretive alphas much more slowly than Polonium-210, and is unfathomably cheaper (and abundant worldwide). But these alphas alone aren’t a problem unless swallowed or inhaled. No, despite their high energies, they can’t even escape an aluminum can, or a small air gap. The driver of the vehicle is perfectly safe, as is the equipment inside the cargo area. No suicide missions here.

Alphas, unlike x-rayish gammas, also can’t be detected from outside the truck, or at a distance in the open, in other words. And did I mention there were big piles of the feedstock for this stuff in lots of places? Besides that, you can buy Polonium-210, or a convenient substitute, if you know where to look and aren’t easily alarmed. But again, the actual bad guys already know this. And probably laughed at the private little joke in what I just said.

An alpha-emitter, even one as deadly as Polonium-210, has to be ingested or in intimate contact with some other material before that target material could be affected. Intimately mixed with the granules by first wetting and then being augured through a die, that is exactly what happened. Now our alphas come slamming into the nuclei of substance B, spalling neutrons off of them like splinters from a sheet of plywood hit with a twelve-gauge shotgun. There isn’t a one-to-one conversion, of course, since almost all of the alphas miss their targets; our shotgun marksman is blindfolded and standing in the mostly empty space at the subatomic level. Plus, the target nuclei wear electron Kevlar which turns glancing blows into complete misses. Never fear, though, the few hits that do barrel straight in are enough. Shortly after the machinery began to operate, neutrons begin pouring out of the dried mud by the millions, but even this is still undetectable at street level, for even a tiny BB still contains trillions upon trillions of iron nuclei.

A good-sized plutonium bomb wipes out a city by burning through less than a kilogram of its own mass. Its neutron yield is stupendously higher, but there’s a lot more nuclei in the tons of material we’re talking about here. Imagine a really big plutonium bomb on the slow cycle.

Give them time, though, because proper selection of substance A allowed the driver of the truck to complete his circuit through every street on Manhattan Island south of Central Park with plenty of time to escape before real damage began. Plenty of time, meaning weeks, or months. A few days or weeks after the attack the symptoms were detectable, if anyone knew what to look for. By then, the apparatus had been removed from the truck, the cargo area pressure-washed to remove any spilled traces, and then returned to the dealer. No tell-tale axles here. No, by the time anyone realized an attack had happened, the perps had simply vanished, along with any leads that might have been gathered. A trick of math allowed investigators to track the mud back approximately to the attack date, but even that was off by a couple of days. An alert traffic pattern analysis might have revealed a truck that covered each street on southern Manhattan Island, but that could apply to hundreds, or thousands, of delivery trucks among the uncountable numbers that visit there each day. Besides, this attack could have been carried out by twenty trucks just as easily as one. No, this attack was as silent and as mysterious as a whisper in the wind.

Planes crashing into buildings, or truck bombs pretending to blow up federal buildings look great on TV, but sometimes the best ways to kill lots of people is like an investment gone bad, silent but deadly. What I’m describing here is nothing compared to the mass starvation that will ultimately kill up to a billion people once New York and pals are done raping the world’s economies while recruiting billions more to the ways of Marxism and radical Islam in desperate response. Rush Limbaugh and gang like to talk about unintended consequences of liberal policies, while ignoring those of their paymasters.

Each of these granules of mud, discharging their supply of neutrons over time like a time-release medication, became detectable only after enough atoms of substance A had decayed to allow the gammas of its daughter- and granddaughter-products to uniquely identify the mother substance. A few weeks after the attack one street-level gamma radiation sensor triggered, then hours later a few more, until by the end of the second day of triggering the entire southern half of the island was ablaze with warning signals. As if this wasn’t bad enough, had the designers of the mud weapon bothered, they could have easily salted substance B with substance C. This third material, when exposed to the neutrons streaming out of the dried mud, converts into another isotope which can be used to irradiate food, removing all traces of living organisms. Or for that matter, remove all trace of living organisms such as people when exposed directly.

Oh, there’s lots of options. Kind-of like designer death. Or think of it as a portfolio of highly-leveraged subprime bonds for your organs. Pick one. It doesn’t matter which.

No, the designers left that little detail alone, opting for more juicy targets for their neutrons, like the legs of the millions of people who walk those streets each day, which also happen to contain critical moderating substances needed to slow those neutrons down into the more deadly so-called thermal variety. Neutron by thermal neutron, day after day, trillions of nuclei of all sorts are converted into dangerous irradiators such as substance C. Why bother to reduce the dose that the truck can carry when all of those people carry sufficient quantities of good-enough in the minerals in their bones? Beyond people being converted into their own walking death chambers, the minerals in the streets, walls and windows also became activated by this constant wash of thermal neutrons. By the time the activity had increased enough to trigger all those alarms, the damage was increasing at rates too fast to stop. And who was going to go into those streets to clean all this up? Hardly anyone cared to volunteer. Not that they could get past the mad rush of those millions who, too late, decided to leave, clogging the bridges and tunnels in their escape.

And of course, that would be the whole point of any dirty bomb, which is to cause mass panic and stampede the masses into killing themselves and each other. The actual radiological damage would be very small, although it would be undeniably deadly to many. Plus, unlike a “normal” atomic bomb or dirty bomb, the thermal neutron radiation can convert exposed people into walking dirty bombs themselves. These people, we can call them “fallouts”, will be able to sicken others exposed to them, but without the ability to further convert those others (unlike zombies). Would you take one in? I didn’t think so.

But what about countermeasures? Surely there must be something that can detect these substances. Hardly. One approach would be the backscatter scanners coming soon to an airport or government building (or highway, in its mobile form) near you. Ironically, these purportedly protect you from dirty bombs by irradiating you today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and so on). But then again, these are defeated, or confused, by simply packing the sides, bottom and top of the cargo area with cases of innocuous “low-Z” substances. Like sugar. Or flour. Or drugs, assuming the right payoffs have been made. Again, all the actual bad guys already know these things.

Hmmm. For that matter, someone wishing to sell a nifty scanner technology, or cleanup robot, might do this just in the interest of demand creation. Huh. Instant bad guy, just add potentially lucrative government contracts.

As I said before, this mud weapon, unlike the aptly-named Manhattan Project, doesn’t take the resources of a superpower, but is well within the reach of a reasonably wealthy individual or company. Which makes it super-easy for even a modestly (or newly) poor nation. Such as one that had its currency manipulated by the same people who trapped you in your upside-down mortgaged home. Payback can be a biatch.

Ignorance isn’t the answer either (my regular readers know that I am firmly convinced that nuclear energy is the only way out, or back up, for civilization at this point). The only real defense to this mud weapon, though, is to stop the unholy trinity of the Wall Street banking interests, their revolving-door pals at the Federal Reserve, and their bootlicks in DC from waging economic warfare (and warfare warfare) around the world. Eventually someone who has had their currency destabilized and their economy drained by this evil force (masquerading as capitalism in your name) will have had enough, and won’t have kept their children deliberately ignorant of science and math as we delight in doing to our own.

But how can we stop this evil trinity of economic mayhem? Only by dismantling the levers of central government power guaranteed by the Constitution, a power which protects them (secession, anyone?) from you. Oops, that central power ensures that you won’t. Or can’t. So keep your head in the sand and imagine that the upcoming election (2010 as this was written, but take your pick) will make a difference, when so many before haven’t. Ultimately, your vote, or your rifle, don’t make one bit of difference. Never have, never will, because the rules are designed to keep you weak and them strong. Get ready for the rocket sled ride to the bottom of civilization as more and more economic wheels fall off. From there, we can rebuild without making this mistake again. Arguing over who should have their hands on the levers of centralized power totally ignores the point that those levers shouldn’t exist (to be eventually abused) in the first place.

But few of the people around the world who must live with the day-to-day fallout of the unholy financial trinity care about trifling details such as our elections. They only see the results. No matter who gets their hands on those levers of power, bad things tend to happen. And have for decades.

On the other hand, one of our “friends” might do this to us, maybe so we’ll fight on their behalf. Who knows? We certainly have a history of fighting over less.

I told you at the start of this article that this would be disturbing. I also obscured or changed important details to satisfy demands for self-censorship in this land of the free and Constitutional rights (LOL). Nonetheless, all the important bad guys know about this stuff already, as do thousands of experts in our own government, industry and academia. Many of those, if questioned about this article, will be dismissive and say something to the effect of “sure, it sounds scary, but knowing what I know about the science, I’m not concerned.” Almost like it was from a script. Watch their eyes while they are saying this, you can see the fear inside.

The only reason that you didn’t already know about this is that you are kept intentionally ignorant. Slaves can’t be trusted with any more knowledge than is absolutely necessary to be productive. You did know that from history, didn’t you? I’m guessing you didn’t, unless you were homeschooled.

But, if this mud weapon is common knowledge among the really bad guys worldwide, why hasn’t this happened yet? Perhaps they haven’t gotten sufficiently weary of the financial raping yet. I just hope that, when enough has become enough, the actual bad guys realize that there is a big difference (is there?) between the financial wizards in New York (and their lackeys in DC and the Fed), and the rest of us.

Tom Baugh is the author of Starving the Monkeys, Fight Back Smarter. He is also a former Marine, patented inventor, entrepreneur and professional irritant.

Amid Media Blackout: Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber

Friday, February 12th, 2010

by Alex Lautier, ICH

A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.

This is despite—or perhaps more accurately, because of—the fact that this information exposes the official government story of the near-disaster to be a lie. President Obama, who has joined with top US intelligence, FBI and Homeland Security officials to insist that Abdulmutallab was inadvertently allowed to board the plane carrying explosives because of a failure to “connect the dots,” has from the start been deceiving the American people.

The official line strained credulity from the outset, given reports of multiple advance warnings that the Nigerian student was linked to terrorists in Yemen who were planning attacks on the US.

As was widely reported within hours of the failed bombing attempt, Abdulmutallab’s father—a former Nigerian government minister and prominent banker—went to the US embassy in Abuja in November to warn that his son was involved with radical Islamists in Yemen and had broken off contact with his family. The family said they had given US officials extensive information about their son in the expectation that they would “find and return him home.”

In his prepared statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security on January 27, State Department Under-Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy said: “In the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on the day following his father’s November 19 visit to the Embassy, we sent a cable to the Washington intelligence and law enforcement community through proper channels (the Visas Viper system) that ‘Information at post suggests [Farouk] may be involved in Yemeni-based extremists.’”

Kennedy confirmed that all US intelligence agencies received warnings that Abdulmutallab was training with terrorists in Yemen. He noted that the initial diplomatic cable from Abuja misspelled Abdulmutallab’s name. However, Kennedy continued, “At the same time, the Consular Section entered Abdulmutallab into the Consular Lookout and Support System database known as CLASS… The CLASS entry resulted in a lookout using the correct spelling that was shared automatically with the primary lookout system used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and accessible to other agencies.”

Under questioning by the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, Kennedy explained why the State Department might not revoke the US visa of a suspected terrorist: “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’”

He added: “And one of the members [of the intelligence community]—and we’d be glad to give you that out of [open session]—in private—said, ‘Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.’”

Under questioning by Rep. Dan Lungren, Kennedy confirmed that Abdulmutallab’s case was one in which US intelligence officials had interceded to block a visa revocation.

In prepared remarks at the same hearing, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter stated: “Within the intelligence community we had strategic intelligence that Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP—the terrorist group in Yemen with which Abdulmutallab was in contact] had the intention of taking action against the United States prior to the failed attack on December 25th, but we did not direct more resources against AQAP, nor insist that watch-listing criteria be adjusted prior to the event.” He added that US intelligence analysts “did not push [Abdulmutallab] onto the terrorist watch-list.”

This inaction came despite the fact that US intelligence agencies were well aware of the threat posed by AQAP. According to Leiter: “The Intelligence Community highlighted the growing threat to US and Western interests in the region posed by AQAP, whose precursor elements attacked our embassy in [the Yemeni capital] Sana’a [in September 2008]. Our analysis focused on AQAP’s plans to strike US targets in Yemen, but it also noted—increasingly in the fall of 2009—the possibility of targeting the United States.”

Amazingly, the US government did not declare AQAP a terrorist group until January 19, 2010, even though it was referred to by that name in 2009. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley stated that declaring AQAP a terrorist group would “prohibit provision of material support and arms to AQAP and also include immigration-related restrictions that will help stem the flow of finances to AQAP.” Thus, for nearly a month after the attempted bombing, US officials were not required to implement a range of measures against AQAP, including “an asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo,” according to Crowley.

At the January 27 hearing, Leiter said that there had been “multiple” points of failure in the US government’s response to warnings of the impending attack. However, all three government officials testifying—Kennedy, Leiter and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Jane Lute—said no disciplinary action would be taken.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who was invited to the hearing and was in Washington at the time, refused to attend. She did not notify committee members beforehand. Napolitano was widely criticized for claiming on December 27 that the “system worked” prior to, during and after the attempted bombing.

Official testimony now records that US intelligence agencies deliberately let Abdulmutallab board Flight 253, putting the lives of hundreds of passengers at risk, in the course of an as yet undisclosed intelligence operation. Whether US agencies were unaware of Abdulmutallab’s plans, or consciously decided to allow an attack to proceed, remains unclear.

In this context, it should be noted that the reason for US inaction given at the hearing—that US intelligence did not want to alert Al Qaeda that it was watching Abdulmutallab—does not hold water. As congressmen noted during the hearing, US Customs and Border Protection had prepared to interrogate Abdulmutallab upon arrival in Detroit, as he was on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database. This would be counterproductive if US agencies were mounting a concerted effort to hide their interest in Abdulmutallab.

There are a number of possible explanations for the decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board Northwest Flight 253. One possibility is that it was bound up with efforts by elements within the US intelligence apparatus to politically destabilize the Obama administration.

To seriously investigate the possible motivations behind the government’s actions, the question must be asked: What would have been the consequences of a successful attack? Hysterical media coverage would have provided fodder for the most right-wing factions in the ruling class to demand war against Yemen or other Muslim countries. At home, there would have been calls for a mass dragnet like that after the September 11 attacks, and immense political pressure for a new battery of police-state laws.

Even having failed, the attack was used as a pretext for expanding US military operations in Yemen, adding further security restrictions at airports, and expanding the “no-fly” passenger list and other databases by agencies unaccountable to the American people.

The testimony at the January 27 hearing also blows apart the line promulgated by the establishment media, which universally echoed the administration’s hackneyed phrase to explain the Flight 253 incident—a “failure to connect the dots” on the part of US intelligence agencies. This, of course, is the same phrase used in the official cover-up of the 9/11 attacks.

Thus, in a January 2 editorial entitled “Why Didn’t They See It?” the New York Times wrote: “No doubt sorting through heaps of information and determining what is urgent or even worthy of follow-up is daunting. Still, it is incredible, and frightening, that the government cannot do at least as good a job at swiftly updating and correlating information as Google.”

The Times itself, in a subsequent article published January 18, reported the results of its own investigation, based on interviews with senior White House and intelligence officials. The newspaper revealed more “missed clues,” including the fact that intelligence authorities learned in early November from a communications intercept of Al Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named “Umar Farouk” had volunteered for a coming operation. Despite such evidence of an official cover-up, the Times maintained the line that the near-disaster was the result of mistakes, omissions and an inability to “connect the dots.”

It is now possible to answer the New York Times editorial of January 2: They did “see it,” and the Times’ incredulous and cynical attempt to explain the Flight 253 attack as the result of mere incompetence was part of a campaign of disinformation. This is a campaign in which, by its silence on the January 27 hearing, the Times continues to participate.

The Congressional hearing vindicates the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site, which exposed the highly dubious character of the official story, pointed to the possibility of US government involvement, and demanded that officials involved in handling Abdulmutallab’s case be named and investigated.

In a December 31 column (“The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy?”) the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “The general outlines of the Northwest bombing attempt and the 9/11 attacks are startlingly similar. One might even say that what is involved is a modus operandi. In both cases, those alleged to have carried out the actions had been the subject of US intelligence investigations and surveillance and had been allowed to enter the country and board flights under conditions that would normally have set off multiple security alarms.

“Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely ‘innocent’ mistakes—and not something far more sinister?”

In the January 18 New York Times article cited above, the newspaper also noted that Obama personally met on December 22 with CIA, FBI, and DHS officials because Obama was “worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday.” In another meeting the same day, the Times reported, Obama’s homeland security advisor John Brennan held talks on Yemen, “where a stream of disturbing intelligence had suggested that Qaeda operatives were preparing for some action, perhaps a strike on an American target on Christmas day.”

Nevertheless, Obama gave a December 28 internet and radio address in which he falsely described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist.”

He also declared: “A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable… We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us.”

Over a month after Obama made these claims, it is clear that US intelligence agencies were deeply involved and the White House is overseeing a massive cover-up.

Hat Tip: Dprogram

The Terror-Industrial Complex

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

by Chris Hedges, truthdig

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.

Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.

“Justice was not served,” Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, told me. “The U.S. government made a decision to label this woman a terrorist, but instead of putting her on trial for the alleged terrorist activity she was put on trial for something else. They tried to convict her of that something else, not with evidence, but because she was a terrorist. She was selectively prosecuted for something that would allow them to only tell their side of the story.”

The government built its entire case instead around disputed events in the 300-square-foot room of the Ghazni police station. It insisted that on July 18, 2008, the diminutive Siddiqui, who had been arrested by local Afghan police the day before, seized an M4 assault rifle that was left unattended and fired at American military and FBI agents. None of the Americans were injured. Siddiqui, however, was gravely wounded, shot twice in the stomach.

No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003. No one seems to be able to explain why a disoriented Pakistani woman and her son, an American citizen, neither of whom spoke Dari, were discovered by local residents wandering in a public square in Ghazni, where an eyewitness told Harpers Magazine the distraught Siddiqui “was attacking everyone who got close to her.” Had Siddiqui, after years of imprisonment and torture, perhaps been at the U.S. detention center in Bagram and then dumped with one of her three children in Ghazi? And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?

Her arrest in Ghazi saw, according to the official complaint, a U.S. Army captain and a warrant officer, two FBI agents and two military interpreters arrive to question Siddiqui at the police headquarters. The Americans and their interpreters were shown to a meeting room that was partitioned by a yellow curtain. “None of the United States personnel were aware,” the complaint states, “that Siddiqui was being held, unsecured, behind the curtain.” The group sat down to talk and “the Warrant Officer placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor to his right next to the curtain, near his right foot.” Siddiqui allegedly reached from behind the curtain and pulled the three-foot rifle to her side. She unlatched the safety. She pulled the curtain “slightly back” and pointed the gun directly at the head of the captain. One of the interpreters saw her. He lunged for the gun. Siddiqui shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!” and fired twice. She hit no one. As the interpreter wrestled her to the ground, the warrant officer drew his sidearm and fired “approximately two rounds” into Siddiqui’s abdomen. She collapsed, still struggling, and then fell unconscious.

But in an article written by Petra Bartosiewicz in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine, authorities in Afghanistan described a series of events at odds with the official version. The governor of Ghazni province, Usman Usmani, told a local reporter who was hired by Bartosiewicz that the U.S. team had “demanded to take over custody” of Siddiqui. The governor refused. He could not release Siddiqui, he explained, until officials from the counterterrorism department in Kabul arrived to investigate. He proposed a compromise: The U.S. team could interview Siddiqui, but she would remain at the station. In a Reuters interview, however, a “senior Ghazni police officer” suggested that the compromise did not hold. The U.S. team arrived at the police station, he said, and demanded custody of Siddiqui. The Afghan officers refused, and the U.S. team proceeded to disarm them. Then, for reasons unexplained, Siddiqui herself somehow entered the scene. The U.S. team, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”

Read the rest at this link.

Secret CIA-Mossad meeting, preparation for new war?

Friday, February 5th, 2010

from PressTV

A secret meeting between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Leon Panetta and Israeli officials has reportedly centered on Iran’s nuclear program.

In a secret flying visit to Israel on Thursday, the head of the CIA reportedly discussed Iran’s nuclear issue in a sit-down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mossad Chief Meir Dagan.

The trip, which was originally scheduled to take place in May, follows a recent wave of developments in the Middle East that strongly imply preparations for a possible new military conflict in the region.

Israel has allegedly increased the scope of its undercover operations in the region, particularly against Lebanon, Iran, Syria and the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas.

The extent of this could be seen in recent remarks by Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Peled, in which the former army general explicitly said that another confrontation with Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah was almost inevitable.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri responded to the claims on Thursday, saying that Israel’s threats against Hezbollah are perceived as threats against Lebanon.

“We consider the Israeli threats on Lebanon to be a threat to the Lebanese government as a whole, rather than to one particular person,” said Hariri during a joint news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Hamas officials say they have concrete evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, staged the recent assassination of a senior Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai on January 20.

Their claims have been somewhat supported by Dubai Police Chief Dhahi Khalfan.

“It could be Mossad,” AFP quoted police Chief Dhahi Khalfan as saying on Sunday.

To add to the controversy, sources in Turkey’s ruling party told Russia’s Mignews on Saturday that Israeli spy agents ran an advanced electronic monitoring station from the Ankara military headquarters to keep tabs on communication networks in Iran and Syria.

According to the sources who were speaking on condition of anonymity, the Signals Intelligence station was solely managed by Israeli intelligence personnel and had become off-limits for members of the Turkish government.

For years Israeli politicians have masterminded a wave of undercover operations and terror plots in numerous countries, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Switzerland, and the US.

However, much of Israel’s espionage operations have lately been focused on the Tehran government, largely because of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, which Tel Aviv has been seeking to portray as a mortal threat.

Tel Aviv, which is reported to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear warheads itself, accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and routinely threatens to reduce the country’s enrichment sites to rubble.

This is while Iran, unlike Israel, is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has opened its enrichment facilities to UN inspection.

On Saturday, US presidential aid James Jones rejected prospects of an Israeli attack against Iran.

Although US officials normally deny having any plans to stage new war in the region, there have recently been strong hints to the contrary.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Washington will further increase its military presence in the Persian Gulf — allegedly to soup up its defense against possible Iranian missile attacks.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has approved the deployment of new combat equipments, including advanced missile systems and special warships, to the region.

Potential False Flag Attack To Be Blamed On Muslims Foiled

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Navy vet caught with grenade launcher, maps of military base and Arab headdress

by Paul Joseph Watson

A possible false flag terror attack to be blamed on Muslims has been foiled after a Navy vet was busted with a grenade launcher, assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, as well as Arab headdress, in New Jersey yesterday. Initial media reports speculated that the man was planning a terrorist attack on a U.S. military base in the area.

“Lloyd Woodson, 43, whose last known address was Reston, Va., today faces multiple offenses, including second-degree unlawful weapons possession and fourth-degree possession of prohibited weapons, Somerset County Prosecutor Wayne Forrest said,” reports the New Jersey Star Ledger.

“Branchburg police confronted Woodson at 3:55 a.m. at the Quick Chek convenience store on Route 28 after receiving a call reporting a suspicious person. Branchburg Patrolman Steven Cronce noticed a large bulge beneath the green, military-style jacket that Woodson was wearing, which was later determined to be the assault rifle with a defaced serial number, Forrest said.”

After searching his hotel room, police found a grenade launcher, hundreds .50-caliber and .308-caliber rounds, a police scanner, as well as “Middle Eastern red and white traditional headdress”.

“The man may have had plans to attack a U.S. military base,” reported Fox New Jersey, adding that the amount of weapons he had led police to suspect he was a terrorist.

The FBI were remarkably swift in distancing the man from any link with terrorists, despite the fact that his deadly arsenal was accompanied by maps of a military facility.

“The FBI said a man charged with multiple weapons offenses after a cache of weapons and maps of a military facility were found in his New Jersey motel room has no known terrorism link,” reported the Associated Press this morning.

Imagine if a Muslim had been busted with grenade launchers, assault rifles, and maps of military facilities. Authorities and the media would instantly claim he was part of an Al-Qaeda conspiracy and launch all kinds of fearmongering about the inevitability of getting hit again by terrorists unless we give up our rights – just as they did in the aftermath of the failed underwear bombing incident.

Within days, the ghost of Osama Bin Laden would once again be manufactured to claim involvement and members of the military-industrial complex would be pimping their latest hi-tech tools of enslavement.

However, because this was probably a false flag operation gone awry, it will be buried and you’ll never hear anything of it again.

This is not the first time that military personnel have been apparently caught in the preparation of a terrorist attack to be blamed on Arabs as part of a false flag.

As we reported in September 2005, two individuals wearing Arab clothes, wigs and headdress shooting at police in Basra were later discovered to be British SAS soldiers. According to the Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili, one policeman was shot dead and another was injured during an attack that was patently a set up to be blamed on insurgents.

Early media reports about the incident also stated that the men were carrying explosives, but this detail vanished from subsequent coverage.

The soldiers were arrested and taken to a nearby jail where they were confronted and interrogated by an Iraqi judge.

The initial demand from the puppet authorities that the soldiers be released was rejected by the Basra government. At that point tanks were sent in to “rescue” the SAS men amidst chaos that resulted in around 150 prisoners escaping from the jail.

The only outlet to ask any serious questions was Australian TV news which according to one viewer gave, “credibility to the conspiracy theorists who have long claimed many terrorist acts in Iraq are, in fact, being initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces.”

Hat Tip: National Expositor


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