My 9/11 (#2)

[Second of a series. Part 1 here.]

My connections to 9/11 are many.  In the 1980s and early 90s, I lived in the Jersey City neighborhood which was home to the al-Qaeda cell of Sheik Rahman, although I didn't know that at the time.  His Masjid al-Salaam occupied the second floor above a storefront in Journal Square two blocks from my home, next to the A&P where I sometimes bought my groceries.  I walked by that mosque every day to get to and from the PATH train via which I traveled to New York.  In my naivite, I used to look up through the windows at the ceiling fans of the "mosque of peace" and imagine pious worshipers below them meditating and praying.  The idea that they were planning mass murder was the farthest thing from my mind.

I later found out that the small grocery store on Sip Ave. -- the store where I bought pita bread and olives and where I discussed with the owner the difference between the regular feta and the triple cream -- was likely a focal point of that al-Qaeda cell.  I discovered that in increments.  First, during the news coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing when the man with whom I had discussed the finer points of feta cheese was pictured in the local news at the right hand of the white-bearded, white-robed and Rayban-wearing blind sheik, escorting him to some public event.  I more fully made this connection after 9/11 when local newspapers reported that the apartments in the building in which the grocery store was located had almost completely emptied out after 9/11, with dozens of residents mysteriously departing leaving behind furniture and positions.

I had noticed some odd things about that grocery for years -- things which I explained in ways familiar to a third generation Jersey City native.  To be specific, the grocery was located a half-block from the building where I lived and was visible from the front of my building.  I very frequently saw drivers pull up in front of the store, park illegally, and run inside for transactions which took seconds to complete.  My assumption, as a resident of that notoriously mobbed up community, was that the store was running a numbers racket, selling drugs, or both.  I've come to believe that it was instead a transit point for information about al-Qaeda activities, or the site of a hawala banking operation, or both.

There were other signs.  Rahman's gang that couldn't bomb straight got caught because they incredibly tried to collect the deposit they had put on the van they blew up with a homemade bomb in the WTC basement parking garage.  That act of criminal genius resulted in the gang, including it's leader, getting busted.  Immediately after Rahman's arrest, his followers organized a massive demonstration outside the Masjid al-Salaam, closing off my entire neighborhood to traffic, and filling it with angry, shouting faces.  I remember walking on my block that day, and coming face to face with a bearded man who looked at me with a rage I can scarcely describe other than to say that he had murder in his eyes.  How accurate that observation was would become clearer eight years later.

And there were other signs.  There was the summer day when, as I walked by the window of a ground floor apartment on my block, a breeze gently blew aside a curtain and revealed a poster showing a masked jihadi brandishing an assault rifle.  Around the corner, on Kennedy Boulevard, there was the store featuring racks bearing Arabic magazines with grossly anti-Semitic cover art.  There were also the warnings of my Egyptian and Lebanese friends in the neighborhood that there were dangerous people living among us.  I wrongly took their lack of more specific information to be evidence that their concerns were not well-founded.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  They knew more about that neighborhood than I did.

It hadn't always been so.  Jersey City had been very familiar territory.  It was the place of my birth and early years, the home of my grandparents.  Journal Square was the site of my earliest movies and restaurant meals, departure point of my trips to the New York of my early childhood back in the mid-60s.  It was where my dad and my grandfather had their offices.  I thought that I knew the place. In 1981, after college, I moved to the Journal Square neighborhood because it was familiar, very convenient to New York City, and cheap.  Since the time of my childhood, the skyline of Manhattan had been permanently changed (or so we thought) by the two huge towers which were visible even from the other side of Kennedy Boulevard, well over the crest of the hill on which Journal Square sits.  Those towers dominated the skyline of that neighborhood. The neighborhood's residents had changed too, from Italians and Irish, to Arabs and  South Asians.  For a very small group of those new residents, those twin towers came to represent something the rest of us living there couldn't begin to imagine: a target of their rage at the non-Muslim world.

For about a year in the mid-80s I worked in the then still somewhat gritty neighborhood which had just been renamed by the real estate industry as Tribeca. Before that, it had been known as Washington Market, and was the home to countless print shops and warehouses most of which looked like they had been built in the Civil war era.  My work hours generally ended at 9 PM, so the view of the illuminated and cloud shrouded towers as I walked to the PATH train station became my nightly beacon.  In that year, I became increasingly familiar with the towers and began to associate them with something good -- my trip home after a work day.

One of my coworkers at that time worshiped at the Tribeca sufi mosque and meditation center started by Lex Hixon.  I call it a mosque, but it would better be described as a meditation or even yoga center, at least to create the proper image of what the place looked like. It was a clean, simply but brightly decorated place with a bookstore/entrance area in front and a large room without furniture in the back.  A friendly young woman with a clipboard checked in members as they came for worship or meditation.  Later I would buy Lex's great book Heart of the Koran at his mosque's bookstore. That congregation morphed into the congregation that was slated to fill move into the Islamic cultural center planned for two blocks north of the World Trade Center.  (In case there is any doubt about this, let me make clear that, whereas that congregation was part of that neighborhood for more than a decade, its bigoted opponents were not.)

Later, I worked for more than a decade just a block away from the towers. I bought my morning papers and coffee there.  I frequently ate lunch, and shopped for books and clothing there.  I bought the guide books and maps that my wife and I used on our honeymoon in August 2001 at the Borders there.  The arcade level of the World Trade Center became a very familiar part of my daily and even my nightly landscape.  In the aftermath of 9/11, I had nightly dreams that I was in a ghostly version of that arcade, walking with ghosts among the empty stores in a state of mind I can only describe as silent terror.  I woke up from those terrible dreams wet with tears and sweat.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about my some of my experiences on 9/11. I think I only got to the point when the towers collapsed, at which point I was near Canal Street, escaping from disaster with two other evacuees: a coworker and friend who has a crippled hip and who can only walk half-step by half-step, and another coworker who had a child in the daycare center at the World Trade Center, and who had not yet located her child.  We were unable to travel to our homes because the subways to Brooklyn had stopped running.  On our journey walking north away from the smoke and toward subways we thought might be running, we saw some incredible things I'd like to share with you sometime soon.  I hope you won't be too bored by 9/11 by that time.

I'm writing these posts on the fly with little time to reflect.  I think that's better because over-thinking will just stop me from posting them.  Reader feedback would be appreciated.

Truther Conference Backs John Birch Society Anti-U.N. Conspiracy Theories

I wrote recently about a conference of 9/11 truthers scheduled to take place in New York over the next several days. (Read here.) This conference will feature several days of rallies, meetings, speeches and TV broadcasts timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the attacks.  It will also feature a demonstration at the World Trade Center site which, according to the conference webpage, may be planned to disrupt the reading of names of the victims by reading additional names they claim should, but are not, being honored.  Conspiracy fabulists such as Wayne Madsen, Cynthia McKinney, Paul Craig Roberts and Jason Bermas are scheduled to speak at conference events, as are former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, George Galloway, Mark Crispin Miller, Cindy Sheehan and Ray McGovern.

I've looked at the webpage set up by the conference sponsors, a group called "We Are Change", and was shocked to see the degree to which they promote anti-U.N. conspiracy theories which originated with the John Birch Society and other far-right groups of the cold war era.  The birchers and others on the far-right promoted a belief that the Rockefeller family, in concert with a global communist conspiracy, pushed the creation of the U.N. as part of a plan to create a "one world government" which they would lead.  Based on the list of participants in the conference, I assumed that "We Are Change" is essentially of the left, but I guess that I was wrong.   Here's an example of what can be found on the conference webpage, from a video promoting the group's 2009 9/11 conference in New York:

The speaker in that video, standing in front of the U.N., starts oddly by saying "as you see behind me, that building is sitting on land donated by the international globalist David Rockefeller."  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to see that, but, moving on, he gets into the really bad craziness.  The video claims that, after the failure of the League of Nations, "the elite" deliberately started World War II as part of a conspiracy to create an organization which, he says, was intended "to centralize power into a few hands".  Pointing ominously at the U.N. building, he goes on to claim that the United Nations is a sort of den of Satanists:

"They are highly into the New Age Movement.  There's a room in the back called the Meditation Room which has a black stone altar in it.  Very occultish (sic).  The people in here highly revere people such as Benjamin Creme, Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, who formerly founded (the) Lucifer Trust, which is now known as the Lucis Trust. We are here today to let the world know that we are not down with the New World Order.  We are not happy with One World Government, and we are here to say we don't want that at all." 

This strange speech is followed on the video by scenes of a crowd of angry demonstrators chanting outside the office of Larry Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center site, whom they implicate in the conspiracy.  There are shots of angry faces chanting "pull it, Larry, pull it," a reference to a truther belief that Silverstein not only ordered the destruction of his building via controlled demolition, but that he also revealed this inadvertently in a contemporaneous television interview.  This is followed by the chant "we are change, we are change..."

These demonstrators, whether they know it or not, are very much the children of the birchers, as are the tea partiers and Glenn Beck supporters.  These are all divergent streams of the paranoid style of American politics.


Looking down the conference webpage we have the following addition to the truther group's mission statement:

This event will also focus on many issues including corporate-controlled Media, the private banking cartel, the military industrial complex, Climate Change/Gate, Big Pharma and the unwelcomed (sic) influx of GMO foods.

Which of these things is not like the other?  Am I wrong to read in that otherwise standard-issue conspiracy theory litany that We Are Change are climate change deniers?  (They may be change, but they are apparently not climate change.)

There's a lot more at the webpage.  Check it out here: 2010 - Our Lives After 9/11.  I wonder whether all the participants in this conference understand what it is and who their associates in this movement really are.

David Horowitz' inadvertent conservative case for Cordoba House

David Horowitz' News Real Blog has published what have to be the two worst arguments I've heard in favor of the government intervening to prevent the construction of what is alternately called Cordoba House or "the ground zero mosque". The blogger, who for understandable reasons conceals his identity, calling himself "Joe Blough", argues that the First Amendment applies only to Congress, not to municipal or state governments or to the other branches of the federal government. Addressing the president, "Joe Blough" writes:

(C)ongress isn’t making any laws about the matter so that settles that. Thank you Mr. Assistant Professor in Chief. Unfortunately there is nothing in there preventing the president from insulting the intelligence of the public.

He's right about one thing, and lucky for him. If there were a law against insulting the intelligence of the public, "Joe Blough" and David Horowitz would be fugitives from justice. The question of whether the Bill of Rights applies to state and municipal governments is settled law, as the vast majority of constitutional thinkers including the entire Supreme Court would undoubtedly agree. The editors of News Real Blog seem to think otherwise, choosing to advocate in this instance an extremist States Rights position advocated by opponents of federal civil rights laws against discrimination on the basis of race or religion.  By this line of thinking, the states and municipalities would be free once again to mandate segregation and prevent oppressed groups from voting.  Can David Horowitz really be supporting this extremist argument?

Having summarily wiped the First and Fourteenth Amendments and a massive corpus of Supreme Court decisions from the books, Horowitz' blog goes on to take an extremely odd stand for a purportedly conservative blog. It argues that property rights should not apply because the municipal government already regulates some uses of private property. For some reason, the argument rests on the fact that the city regulates traffic and prohibits smoking in public accommodations such as offices, restaurants, train stations, etc .

Consider the non-smoking rules so dear to (New York City Mayor) Bloomberg’s heart. There are people, loud persistent people, in NYC that don’t like cigarette smoke. And based on that dislike — a mere dislike — property owners, leasors and leasees of all sorts around NYC must prevent their customers from smoking on their property or face the wrath of the city. Property rights in NYC are such that hanging a sign over your door that says “Smokers Only” will not defend you. You have no say in the matter, your rights are not recognized. And that is only one, blatantly obvious example.

NYC is very well practiced at limiting one person’s rights to accomodate the comforts of another.

Public property in NYC is handled with the same high handed flippancy, as if it belonged personally to New Yorkers’ alleged representatives. For example, traffic down Broadway is now slowed to a trickle, because some genius in the administration thought it would be nice to have little parks in the middle of Broadway rather than all those nasty smelly cars. The rights of the public that jointly own that avenue? Not even a consideration.

And here again, why make little parks in the middle of one of NYC’s busiest streets? Because little parks appeal to somebody’s feelings, whereas cars do not.

To be fair, some might argue, perhaps even with some justice, that that is just what local ordinances are for. To legislate matters that in an ideal sense, impinge on individual rights, for the sake of accomodating local sensibilities. But, were that correct, the Bloomberg administration would only stand more deeply damned.

Bloomberg and his functionaries could have found a dozen, perfectly plausible and normal ways to dictate that the mosque could not be built less than than some arbitrary distance from ground zero. They have all the tools they need.

The government of NYC and Mr. Bloomberg, can, will and do legislate and regulate on the basis of feeling. The only question is whose feelings. What we learn is that the feelings of most of the voting public, indeed the feelings of the families of the dead and survivors of the 9/11 attack, do not count. What matters are the feelings of Mr. Bloomberg and his leftist friends.

And believe me when I tell you, those are not feelings of love. Not for America. And not, gentle reader, for you.

The internal contradictions of purported conservatives arguing in favor of more government limitations on both the free exercise of religion and private property rights are so apparent as to scarcely merit counter-argument. The right ties itself in knots with such lines of thinking. Horowitz' blog inadvertently makes this clear by supporting what it itself comically refers to as "arbitrary" restrictions, an argument which should be laughed out of the court of public opinion, regardless of either the conservatism or anti-Islam bias of that opinion.

By publishing this post, David Horowitz has done a tremendous service to conservatives looking for reasons to support the Cordoba House project. Regardless of conservatives' emotional reaction to the project, Horowitz has made clear by the weakness of these arguments in favor of arbitrary government limitations on personal liberties that supporting Cordoba House is a great way for conservatives to stand up for their ideological principles.


read here: 9/11 Victory Mosque: Another Reason the “Rights” Talk is Bunk | NewsReal Blog

So wrong on so many levels

Embedded below is an advertisement made by the National Republican Trust PAC in opposition to Cordoba House, the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", which is planned to be built two blocks north of the World Trade Center site. The management of CBS and NBC have refused to broadcast it, with an NBC spokesman saying that the ad blurs responsibility for 9/11 in order to imply that Cordoba House's sponsors were culpable for the attacks. (Read here.) While that is true, it puts too fine a point on the reason the ad is wrong. The ad appears to hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11, say that all Muslims celebrated the attacks, and characterize Cordoba House as part of that celebration. That is not just wrong, it is intended to inspire hate and create a hostile atmosphere. Watch it and judge for yourself:

Scott Wheeler, who runs the National Republican Trust, claims that CBS and NBC rejected this advertisement due to liberal bias. Wheeler cites the fact that both networks have broadcast ads by the liberal group MoveOn.org as evidence of a double-standard, which it would be if the ad had been rejected because it represents a conservative viewpoint. But that is not why the ad was rejected, as Wheeler knows. As to whether the ad actually promotes conservatism is also debatable, although it does indicate that some conservatives will resort to hate speech to gain the support of the angry and fearful.

With respect to the ad's claim that "they" are mocking the 9/11 dead with this mosque, Wheeler claims that the word "they" referred only to those who are funding the Cordoba House project. The fact that this charge follows a statement that "(o)n 9/11 they declared war of us" renders Wheeler's defense hollow and meaningless. It is a deliberate deception designed to conceal two things: first, that the opposition to this project is based on bias against all Muslims, and, second, that Wheeler, like all of the Cordoba House opponents, have a dearth of evidence for, and an excess of accusations of, the bad intentions of the Cordoba House backers.

An earlier post on this blog cited a report that the Cordoba House project's leader, Imam Feisal Rauf, was on the board of the Perdana Global Peace Initiative (read here) to temper my earlier unqualified support for the project (read here).  Perdana, which is one of several anti-Israel groups set up by Malaysia's corrupt, authoritarian and anti-Semitic former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir, lists Rauf as a board member on their website. While it claims to be a pacifist group, Perdana absurdly singles out Israel for the vast majority of its

opprobrium, giving most of the world's governments, including those who should be targeted by a truly pacifist group, a free pass.  Speaking on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show this morning, Imam Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan (who heads the Organization for Muslim American Advancement) stated that Rauf is not on the board of the Perdana group, that he merely gave a presentation at a Perdana conference three years ago, and that the Perdana website is in error. She went on to say that both she and her husband denounce terrorism of any kind including terrorism by Hamas. While I am not thrilled to hear of any association between Imam Rauf and Tun Mahathir or Perdana, the link does not raise the sort of red flags being hysterically waved by Cordoba House opponents such as the New York Post and blogger Pamela Geller, who unreasonably impute terrorist connections. That being said, Rauf and Khan would do well to open a conversation with those who both support their group's right to worship freely and who oppose Mahathir Tun's cynical manipulation of anti-Israel sentiment.

In her interview, Daisy Khan also emphatically stated that the choice of the Cordoba House site on Park Place between Church Street and West Broadway had nothing to do with proximity to the World Trade Center site, a statement I find convincing. First, the neighborhood is a normal New York City neighborhood, not the shrine depicted by the project's opponents. Second, the congregation associated with the project have been in the neighborhood for over 25 years. Third, the site in question has been underutilized for decades, in spite of a real estate boom that has driven up property values and increased occupancy rates. Third, based on that real estate boom, the congregation was essentially faced with choosing between leaving the neighborhood where they were established (making access by the congregation more difficult or impossible), locating the center in a smaller or otherwise inappropriate building, or choosing this site. For the foregoing reasons, it seems much more likely that they chose this site because it was the best one available, not, as the Republican National Trust would have it, to dance on the graves of 9/11 victims.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio has made opposition to Cordoba House the keynote issue of his campaign, alleging that it raises unspecified "security issues" and groundlessly calling for criminal investigation of the project backers for ties to terrorists. (Read here.)  (Earlier this week, Lazio testified at a public hearing implausibly claiming that he opposed the project on historical preservation grounds, because it would alter a historical building.) The Republican National Trust, Rick Lazio and several other Republican and Tea Party candidates currently campaigning against Cordoba House need to stop making unreasonable, hateful accusations against the project, and begin answering a few questions with respect to their intentions, their methodology and their good faith. If they don't, we will be left believing that they are motivated by political opportunism, that they are willing to discriminate and spread hate against innocent people, and that they don't care sufficiently about the results of their actions. They need to temper their questions about the project with the knowledge that speech that encourages hate hurts everyone. By definition, political campaigns which take advantage of racial or religious fear corrode the public discourse and create additional divisions within the community. Those effects can't be measured. We depend on the good faith and responsibility of our leaders to temper their speech on this and similar subjects. They should be working to counter fear and hate, not encouraging more of it.

The bottom line: as far as I know, those behind Cordoba House just want a place for Muslims to worship and build a community center of the kind familiar to Jews and Christians. What's wrong with that?

A note on terminology: As someone who worked for one year in a building next door to the Cordoba House site, and for 12 years directly across the street from the site, and as someone who was present at both World Trade Center attacks (1993 and 2001), I have a lot of personal feelings and opinions relating to the neighborhood. Some of these find expression in the words I choose to use. I will not call the World Trade Center site "Ground Zero". The use of that term (originally coined to refer to the site of the direct impact of the Hiroshima atomic bomb) to refer to the World Trade Center site was an understandable product of journalists looking for words to describe the massive, smoking ruins of the towers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. Destruction like that had never before been seen in an American city, and conventional terminology failed to express either its dimensions or its emotional impact. Almost nine years later, the site is finally being redeveloped -- as it should have been years ago. It is no longer "Ground Zero" except for those who would freeze time and maintain the level of fear, anger and hurt that existed in the aftermath of the attack. That is not a place I choose to stay. It's no longer "Ground Zero", it's the World Trade Center site; and when the buildings are completed, it will be the World Trade Center. And it goes without saying that everyone should be welcome there regardless of their religion.

Alan Sabrosky: "Large majority of U.S. Jews are traitors" and Israel did 9/11 attacks. So who the heck is Alan Sabrosky?

Sometimes, when an expert makes a serious charge but has no evidence to back it up, it's still newsworthy by dint of the provenance of the charge.  The reputation of a source can play a big role in determining when to believe unverifiable charges, or at least report them with a grain of salt.

Alan Sabrosky bills himself as the former Director of Studies at the U.S. Army War College.  He has made quite a name for himself in recent months by first declaring himself a military expert with high-level connections in the U.S. military hierarchy, then by outrageously claiming that Israel was responsible for 9/11 and that the U.S. military knows this and is concealing it.  While he offers no evidence for this, he claims that he should be trusted because of his expertise.  The truth of the matter -- with respect to both his background and his claims -- is quite different, of course.  Sabrosky has deliberately inflated his role in the military and has used that ruse to promote a hateful, fact-free conspiracy theory.  In fact, while he did work as an administrator at the U.S. Army War College, he was not, as his job title seems to indicate, the director or dean of the college.  Far from it.  According to the Press Office of the Army War College, in the mid-1980s, Sabrosky served as a civilian administrator at a research department of the college, supervising the publication of papers written within that department.  His job title was "Director of Studies" because he supervised publishing studies done within a department of the college.  He was a mid-level civilian manager at a military college, without access to the sort of highly classified material of the sort he now fraudulently claims to have.  Moreover, since his employment at that school was about 25 years ago, his employment there would provide him with no special insights with respect to 9/11.  How on earth could someone who worked on the level of a college librarian in the 1980s be privy to top secret information revealing a vast hidden conspiracy?  And how on earth could he be the only person to know about it or think it worth revealing?


An expert, privy to the highest levels of the military elite?

Over the past few years, Alan Sabrosky has become a fixture of anti-Israel media.  In numerous, articles, interviews and blog postings, he literally does only two things: promotes conspiracy theories and compares Israel to Nazi Germany.  As I mentioned above, most recently, he has taken this campaign to a new level of absurdity by claiming not only that Israel was responsible for carrying out the 9/11 attacks, but that most of the leadership of the U.S. military knows this and is keeping it secret in a vast conspiracy of silence.   I don't know how many of thousands of officers Sabrosky includes in this conspiracy of silence, but, considering that not a single officer has broken it, it would certainly go down as the most successful such conspiracy in history if true.  Only because of Sabrosky's impressive sounding resume, these reckless and baseless charges have been reposted and repeated countless times, albeit in biased and unreliable places.

Sabrosky originally published this conspiracy theory in a column called "Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: 9/11 and Beyond" which he published on the Information Clearinghouse website in September (read here).  That column was reposted verbatim on a number of far-right, pro-Palestinian, 9/11 truth and conspiracy-oriented websites (read here), including, of course, the 9/11 Jewish-Mossad False-Flag Archive.   In March, Sabrosky published his follow-up on Information Clearinghouse, featuring the audio of the interview embedded above. That he called "The Dark Face of Jewish Nationalism: 9/11 - The US Military Knows Israel Did It" (read here).

Based solely on Sabrosky's word, this absurd conspiracy theory has spread far and wide.  Googling the terms sabrosky +9/11 +israel gets about 28,000 hits at the time I'm writing this, reflecting the fact that an ersatz Jewish-American military official's charge that Israel did 9/11 has really gone viral.  (Read here.)  Those Google results include Sabrosky's original column, those quoting or citing Sabrosky's claims, and links to interviews with him.  Among the latter is the Ron Paul Forums website, which posts the above-embedded video  here and here, and touts it here.   The Ron Paul Forums also linked to a posting supporting Sabrosky on the anti-Semitic website TheInformationUnderground.  (Read here.)  More recently, anti-Zionist conspiracy nut Alan Hart and 9/11 conspiracy nut Kevin Barrett gave Sabrosky their seal of approval in a radio interview in which Hart made his own extreme and false charges concerning 9/11, as I wrote here.  Both Hart and Barrett spoke solemnly of their deep respect for Sabrosky and his expertise on Israel and the U.S. military.


Wrapping themselves in the false-flag

A website purportedly devoted to vererens' issues, but which in fact is frequently devoted to promoting conspiracy theories, has been part of the mainstreaming of Sabrosky's views.  Veterans Today (read here) describes Sabrosky's charges as accurate, (falsely) says of him that

What makes him unique is that we have a Jew who can hardly be called “self-hating” or “anti-Semitic” or against Israel.

then quotes Sabrosky that

Zionism is a real witches’ brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism that places it way outside of a “mere” nationalist context...  and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis...

Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not.

The column quotes Sabrosky as saying that Zionists regard all non-Jews as "potential enemies".   That's the same column that claims Sabrosky can't be bigoted against Jews because he has some unspecified Jewish family members!

It turns out that Veterans Today isn't quite what it seems.  It's actually edited by another person with an amazingly impressive sounding resume and a penchant for promoting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.  (Quite a coincidence!)  That man is Gordon Duff, who writes of himself (read here) that he

is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.

I don't know for certain, but excuse me for thinking that Duff's resume sounds more than a bit fishy.


The conspiracy widens...

In a recent radio interview, Sabrosky further widened the dimensions of his conspiracy theory by declaring that "the large majority of U.S. Jews" are "traitors".  After introducing his subject by saying that it was the most important thing he could possibly talk about because loyalty to country is a paramount virtue, Sabrosky told his interviewer that

To my displeasure and my shame, because I have some Jewish relatives -- none of whom is Zionist -- a large majority of American Jews give their allegiance to a foreign country. They may have American citizenship, but their allegiance is to Israel. And as I said in the piece, this is a form of political bigamy that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy. And marital bigamy is -- you know -- I'm not married now, but when I was, loyalty to my spouse was absolute. It has to be there. I can look and say "Ah ha! There is Farah Fawcett." You know -- and I could admire someone out there, but I didn't give that person my allegiance. And there's a difference between admiring from a distance and giving allegiance to that thing, and it's the same with a country...

Some of my relatives are German, some are Irish. All of them have a measure of allegiance to those cultures, but it's not a political allegiance, it's a social allegiance. It's like - we're gonna stand up on St. Patty's Day or we're gonna stand up on Oktoberfest and we'll celebrate this, and we're proud of being German or Irish or whatever it happens to be. But none of us gives our allegiance to Ireland or Germany. Jews do.

I don't care if we're called anti-Semites or not. If we don't say "truth is truth -- their allegiance is to a foreign country -- they are traitors", then we're dishonest to ourselves...

I've had a bitter argument with one of my cousins who moved to Israel and kept his American citizenship. If someone loves another country enough to go there, more power to them. They go, and they're gone. But they keep the U.S. citizenship so they can continue to participate in our elections, stand in our offices. Look at Rahm Emanuel! I mean, he served in the Israeli armed forces, not the American armed forces! And he is easily the second most powerful person in the country. Easily. That's treason!"

[The audio of this is available at 4:20 of the below-embedded video.]

Opposition from truthers, support from anti-Zionists

Some in the 9/11 Truth movement have quite sensibly pointed out that Sabrosky's conspiracy theory is not only factually false and illogical,  but that's it's also bigoted.  (Read here.)  Amusingly, they deduce from this that Sabrosky must be an agent provocateur  working with a conspiracy to discredit the other, more sensible, conspiracy theorists.  They think that Sabrosky is a one-man false-flag operation!

But not everyone is as suspicious as the truthers.  For example, the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss not only cites Sabrosky as an expert on Israel, it actually published a column he authored at Philip Weiss' request!  In the column, which he wrote for Weiss in 2008 (read here), Sabrosky, after claiming some Jewish heritage by dint of having an unspecified Jewish family member and liking Jewish food, went on to call Benjamin Netanyahu a Nazi -- "Gauleiter in spirt" -- although he didn't bother to say why.  Considering the gravity of that charge, one would think it worthwhile to spell out the crimes that elicited it.  Then, citing those infamous drunken bigots in Max Blumenthal's "Feeling the Hate" video, Sabrosky went on to call Jewish Zionists "barabarians" and "evil", and to compare Zionism to Nazism.  In spite of Blumenthal's claim that his "Feeling the Hate" video wasn't meant to be taken as a reflection of all Zionists, Alan Sabrosky and Mondoweiss certainly saw it that way .  Mondoweiss' editors, while admitting in a column for Talking Points Memo (read here) that the interviews in the Blumenthal video were "cherry-picked", still somehow asserted that the video accurately showed that "Americans who are called to Israel ... don't especially believe in minority rights".  In this way, they illogically argue that cherry-picked facts can support an accurate conclusion.  That sort of logic appeals to those such as Sabrosky who generally operate in a fact-free environment.  They have in that video at least a bit of tangible evidence to support their biases.  Generally, Sabrosky doesn't have any.

Alan Sabrosky

Rep. Jason Chaffetz: 9/11 truther

from Think Progress (h/t AMERICAblog):

Last year, Fox News host and hate radio talker Glenn Beck launched a successful smear campaign again White House green jobs adviser Van Jones. One of Beck’s main accusations was the charge that Jones had once signed a “9/11 truther” petition asking for another investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Demanding that Jones resign, Beck called 9/11 truthers “truly disturbed people.” Recently, a truther organization called “We Are The Change” spoke to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) — a friend of Beck and a frequent guest on his show — about reopening an investigation into 9/11. Chaffetz agreed with the activist, and even noted that he had spoken to professor Steven Jones, leading 9/11 truther, who Chaffetz said had done “interesting work”:

Q: A reopening into the investigation of 9/11?

CHAFFETZ: Well there’s a lot we still need to learn. Of course we want to look into that issue, look at every aspect of it. [...] Who was the BYU professor? [...] Steve Jones, yeah I’ve met with him. He’s done some interesting work.

Q: Have you given much thought to the possibility it was a false flag terrorist attack on 9/11?

CHAFFETZ: Well I know there’s still a lot to learn about what happened and what didn’t happen, we should be vigilant and continue to investigate that, absolutely.

Q: Appreciate that. We at We Are The Change believe it was a false flag terrorist attack, that the buildings came down with internally placed demolition.

Steven Jones advocates the idea that the World Trade Center was demolished not by plane crashes and the resulting fires, but by super-thermite explosives which were painted onto beams holding up the twin towers. That fantasy masquerading as a theory has been demolished as impossible by scientists who have actually tested this "theory" and reviewed the data objectively.

Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog points out that Rep. Chaffetz' main claim to fame is leading the opposition to gay marriage in the House.

9/11 Truthers work to free convicted 9/11 conspirator

We already know that the 9/11 truth movement promotes a through the looking glass version of 9/11 featuring missiles, pilotless drone planes, controlled demolition, dancing Mossad agents and massive covert conspiracies involving financial and political leaders. They've arduously promoted their strange brew of fantasy, pseudo-science and political extremism for the past eight years. The indefatigable folks at Screw Loose Change have been reporting on the truthers and countering their madness -- and they do a great job at it. I stopped by their blog this morning and was shocked to learn that the truthers have stepped up their activism, which up to now has largely centered on pushing for investigations. Now the truthers are actually pushing to have freed from prison a 9/11 conspirator who was convicted for the attacks, and they are providing material assistance to his cause.

Screw Loose Change reports (here and here) that the truthers, led by David Ray Griffin, have set up a website and started a petition drive on behalf of Mounir El Motassadeq, who lived with Mohammed Atta and several other 9/11 perpetrators in Hamburg during the time when Atta was planning for 9/11. Motassadeq conspired with Atta and several of the other hijackers, visited al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan in 2000, and funneled money to Atta in Florida to help carry out the 9/11 attacks. The truthers have set up a website called "Free Mounir" (read here). To the truthers, this guy merits first-name-only status. That sort of unsubtle public relations technique to humanize this mass murderer is especially offensive.

The website, referring to three of the hijackers with whom "Mounir" carried out the 9/11 attacks, says

"In the light of the absence of hard evidence that Mounir's friends – Atta, Alshehhi, and Jarrah – actually planned and committed mass murder, Mounir El Motassadeq must be considered as having been wrongly punished."

It's bad enough for truthers to campaign for investigations with a veil of half-truths and absolute falsehoods. That campaign has already done tremendous damage by clouding the minds of those extremely credulous people who are vulnerable to such appeals, and by providing a means by which the cynical can manipulate those people. It is bad enough for truthers to portray the perpetrators as victims, even martyrs. It is something much more sinister, however, for Griffin and his truthers to intervene in the legal process and provide assistance to someone convicted for committing mass murder.

This outrageous campaign to free "Mounir" cries out for investigation. I would like to know if the campaign is raising funds on behalf of "Mounir" under tax exemptions which forbid using those funds in this manner. The truthers have a first amendment right to promote their mad views, but I question whether they can raise money as tax exempt charities and use that money to help free mass murderers.

Whether or not they raise money with tax exempt status, they need to inform their donors just what they're up to. It's one thing to con people into giving money to investigate phantom conspiracies, but it's quite another to then use that money to help free murderers.

David Ray Griffin

By the way, if you'd like a sense of the madness behind the truther movement, check out Griffin's debate with Chip Berlet here. Berlet confronts Griffin with a number of serious flaws in Griffin's facts and analysis -- flaws which Griffin summarily dismisses without counterargument. Since that debate, Griffin has continued to promote several of the falsehoods debunked for him by Berlet. Griffin's lack of concern with the actual truth of his statements about 9/11 is, well, screwy.

Saudis have turned bribery into an art

A successful bribe requires a willing recipient who is both unburdened by ethics and powerful enough to get done what you need done. In the two Bush administrations, the Saudis found just that. But one gets the sense that they now feel that the equation, hence their game plan, is changing. Their power has risen relative to that of the United States. Why else would they be raising our fuel costs at such a precipitous rate?

from The Guardian| Comment is free: House of cards
by Craig Unger

From 9/11 to BAE, the Saudis have turned the purchase of political power into a fine art

If Saudi Arabia continues to escape unscathed for its role in the alleged bribery of BAE Systems, it won't be the first time that the Saudis' enormous political power has tipped the scales of justice. Several years ago no less an authority than Prince Bandar, the Saudi national security adviser who reportedly received £1bn in the BAE scandal, blithely confided to an American television reporter that the House of Saud may have stolen tens of billions of dollars from the kingdom it ruled. "If you tell me that building this whole country ... we misused or got corrupted with fifty billion, I'll tell you, 'Yes' ... So what?" Bandar said. "We did not invent corruption."

The House of Saud has turned the purchase of political influence into a fine art. In the 70s, young Saudi billionaires such as Salem bin Laden, the half-brother of Osama, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, a banker, made their way to Texas and, directly and indirectly, entered a variety of business relationships with politicians on the way up. "[The Saudis] wanted to build up relationships with key people at the same time they had return on investments," said Nawaf Obaid, an oil analyst close to the House of Saud. Ultimately, these ties led to business deals with, among others, George W Bush, his father, and James Baker, the elder Bush's secretary of state.

Often the value of such strategic political alliances trumped the bottom line. That certainly was the case in the 80s, when Saudi money bailed out a troubled Texas oil company called Harken Energy. Because Harken was loaded with debt and had drilled one dry hole after another, it was a particularly unlikely investment for the oil-rich Saudis. But one of its investors and directors was a 42-year-old businessman named George Bush, whose father was then the vice-president of the United States.

The value of these ties could be seen most dramatically in the events that took place immediately after the attacks of 9/11. When it became clear that no fewer than 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Prince Bandar, then ambassador to the US, took to the airwaves and assured the world that the Saudis were America's staunchest allies. The Saudis flooded the market with oil, dropping the price from $28 a barrel to $22. And, on September 13 - at a time when private aviation was still locked down in the aftermath of 9/11 - a small private plane began picking up members of the Saudi royal family.

The 9/11 attacks constituted the worst crime in the history of the US. But ultimately at least 140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, were evacuated without having gone through a formal interrogation. In addition, the Saudi role in financing radical Islam somehow escaped being a central focus of the war on terror. As a result, it is safe to say that Britain does not have a monopoly on what the high court referred to as "the impotence of the law".

It is difficult to disagree with last week's ruling of the high court that a perversion of justice took place when the Serious Fraud Office bowed to Saudi threats to withhold information about potential terrorist attacks. But it is also important to acknowledge the political realities of today. Terrorist threats aside, in the past seven years the price of oil has increased by a factor of five to $110 a barrel - and the west must compete with an increasingly energy-dependent and ascendant China for fuel.

Moreover, because one of the disastrous consequences of the Iraq war has been the rise of Iran, the west is now in a position where it has to lean on the Saudis to win support for its policy of isolating Iran. As a result, the Saudis have a stronger hand than ever.

· Craig Unger is the author of House of Bush, House of Saud
craigunger.com

This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 15 2008 on p28 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:01 on April 15 2008.

"Peace group" to mark Pearl Harbor Day with "Pearl Harbor Truth" events, host anti-Elie Wiesel talk

It turns out that the Pacifica Forum, the University of Oregon "peace group" which just hosted a Holocuast denial, anti-Israel conference in honor of Kristallnacht (read here), is trying to one-up themselves in the marketing of bigotry as peace activism.

According to the Pacifica Forum schedule (read here) they are following up last weekend's conference featuring Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review, and this week's talk about Kristallnacht by Pacifica Forum leader Orval Etter, with a talk called "Elie Wiesel's HATE", which it describes as an "analysis of the doctrine of hate enunciated by the Nobel Peace Laureate".

After that the "peace group" will commemorate the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with a video presentation concerning "Pearl Harbor Truth" by "Gregory Douglas", a "9/11 truth" advocate, JFK conspiracy theorist, forger of historical documents, and promoter of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

"Gregory Douglas", apparently a pseudonym for someone who has called himself Norwood Burch, Peter Stahl, Brian Harring and countless other names, is associated with the Holocaust denial publication the Barnes Review, for whom he has written and produced audio tapes. "Douglas" has had such a checkered career in Holocaust denial that associates such as David Irving and Mark Weber now condemn him as a charlatan. (Their debunking of "Douglas" is so voluminous that it would take a month to read in its entirety. A taste of their views of Douglas' absurdly consistent career can be sampled -- from Irving here and here (index of 15 documents), and from Weber here and here. Amusingly, "Douglas" borrowed another pseudonym, "Karl Kolcheck", from an old TV series as the byline for a rebuttal of these charges (read here). That's more than enough to get a taste of the absurdity of a debate among professional promoters of falsehoods over what's true. They seem to take almost as much pleasure in promoting hatred of each other as in promoting hatred of Jews. WARNING -- THESE LINKS GO TO HOLOCAUST DENIAL WEBSITES.)

The Southern Poverty Law Center, whom I prefer over Irving, Weber and "Kolcheck" as a source, provides this description of "Douglas" in action promoting "9/11 truth" at the Barnes Review conference in Washington D.C. (read here):

And then there was one "Gregory Douglas," with his top-secret German document proving conclusively the Bush Administration and Israel knew about and likely orchestrated the attacks. "Israel is always involved in everything!" he said.
That certainly got the attention of the attendees. Except, as a sheepish Bill White noted on his "libertarian socialist" website later (White had initially hailed the document as revelatory), it turns out that Douglas is an accused forger.
Veteran European journalist Gitta Sereny has written that Douglas forged a document that he told her was proof that the Americans and British had helped two Nazi war criminals escape Europe in 1945. Douglas' later book on one of them, Gestapo boss Heinrich Muller, was, she wrote, "filth" that was as "fake" as the earlier document.

(A pdf of the Barnes Review's conference report listing Douglas' presentation on "9/11 truth" and advertising for sale both his audio tape on that subject, and his book of JFK conspiracy theories, is available here. Amazon offers Douglas' book, "REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy", for sale here.)

In case you think that "Douglas" is a harmless amusing nutter, read the following. The Barnes Review website contains a veiled threat to burn a synagogue signed with one of the pseudonyms used by "Douglas" (read here WARNING-- HOLOCAUST DENIAL SITE):

"In passing, I note that a Rabbi in Seattle demanded that the local airport remove Christmas trees from its building unless they put up Jewish religious symbols as well. ... One also hopes that his synagogue is fireproof. Brian Harring"

It's ironic in light of the accusations against him that "Gregory Douglas" is said to be the author (under one of his countless pseudonyms) of Fakes & Frauds of the Third Reich (pictured below).




The school of thought which "Douglas" is slated to represent at the Pacifica Forum is best summarized by the phrase "Pearl Harbor was an inside job". Proponents of this view frequently promote the myth that FDR knew of the attack before it happened but prevented appropriate defensive measures from being taken. His purported motive? To provide an excuse to enter the war against Nazi Germany at the behest of the Jewish lobby. I suspect that is the view "Gregory Douglas" espouses, although I have not seen his video. I presume that Pacifica Forum purchased it from Barnes Review or some similar group and I frankly do not feel comfortable supporting them with my cash.

There's more to come soon on the background of Professor Orval Etter's Pacifica Forum and how it has brought the extreme left and extreme right together to promote hatred of Israel and Jews. In the next installment: Etter's connection to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a respected national interfaith peace group; and Alison Weir's connection to Pacifica Forum. Also: what does the administration of University of Oregon know about Pacifica Forum and why do they allow it to use university facilities to promote hate groups?

The Hypocrisy and Naked Bigotry of Michael Scheuer

You will remember Michael Scheuer, the man who developed the "extraordinary rendition" program for the CIA and went on to become a critic of Israel, supporter of Ron Paul and world-renowned authority on hubris. This piece from Commentary reveals what may be the source of Michael Scheuer's anti-Israel bias (not really a shock). It also reveals a bit about both his hypocrisy about and his recklessness with classified information, which really is a shock, especially considering the following quote from an interview he did with Die Zeit in December 2005 (German here, English here):

Die Zeit: Did you not have doubts concerning the use of torture in these countries? [i.e. the countries prisoners were sent to by the CIA]

Michael Scheuer: No, my job was to protect American citizens by arresting members of Al-Qaida. The executive power of our government has to decide whether it considers this hypocritical or not. 90% of this operation was successful and only 10% could be considered as disastrous.

Die Zeit: Which part was the disaster?

Michael Scheuer: The fact that everything was made public. From now on the Europeans will diminish their assistance because they fear reading about it in the Washington Post. And then there is this troublemaker in the Senate, Senator John McCain, who virtually confessed, wrongly of course, that the CIA uses torture. And that is how the program will be destroyed.

In other words, Scheuer condemns Senator McCain for destroying the program by inadvertently embarrassing our allies. Set aside for the moment that Scheuer is dissembling by ignoring the fact that Senator McCain, like the rest of the sentient world, was forced to deal with several publicly revealed instances where the extraordinary rendition program sent innocent people to countries where they were tortured. Scheuer, perhaps motivated by vanity, is now deliberately embarrassing allies who deny knowledge about still secret aspects of the program.

While Schoenfeld may overstate the criminality of Scheuer's disclosure of classified material in that Scheuer only speaks in general terms about what "must have happened" with respect to the CIA renditions program in Denmark* (see footnote) as opposed to disclosing specific classified information, he understates Scheuer's hypocrisy and his destructiveness. Scheuer appears to want to damage U.S. interests, even as he continues to defend his program.

By the way, Schoenfeld prematurely confirms Michael Mukassey as Attorney General in this piece. I really don't know whether he'll be confirmed and I have doubts that, if he is, he'll pick the sort of political fight Schoenfeld would like to see. Frankly, after recent experiences, the next Attorney General would be wise to depoliticize that office as much as possible, especially with respect to issues relating to intelligence and national security. More germane to this question, as Scheuer is undoubtedly aware, the U.S. is not anxious to publicize Scheuer or give him a forum to do more damage.

For the record, let me say that the extraordinary rendition program should be fully investigated for legal and ethical violations. Since first hearing about it, I was struck both by its necessity and with its blatant illegality -- a very uncomfortable combination. I also thought that the word "extraordinary" was a euphemism for something that was soon to be, if not already, ordinary. "Extralegal deportation" would have been a more accurate term. If it was necessary, than it should have been rare and precise and I don't believe that it was rare or precise enough. While I assume that I disagree with Schoenfeld on that, his piece is a very interesting peak into mind of Michael Scheuer, a very vain man whose mask is starting to slip.

from Commentary: "Michael Scheuer Watch":

by Gabriel Schoenfeld

An entry here entitled Michael Scheuer: Innocent Until Proven Guilty seems to have rattled the former CIA official’s cage. He has posted three separate comments in reply.

Herewith some comments about his comments.

In his 2004 book, Imperial Hubris, Scheuer made a point of stressing how vital it was for CIA analysts like himself always to “check the checkables”—a phrase he used incessantly in that volume. In writing about Imperial Hubris in COMMENTARY, I noted then that he himself had a very hard time with the checkables, not least in the realm of spelling. L. Paul Bremer III was rendered in the book as Paul Bremmer, General Curtis LeMay as General Lemay, the foreign-policy analysts Edward Luttwak and Adam Garfinkle as Lutwack and Garfinckle, etc.

In his comments posted here on Connecting the Dots, Scheuer still has trouble with the same class of checkables. And, along with misspellings, he does some far more noteworthy things.

Thus, in one of his three replies, Scheuer suggests that I am disloyal to the United States: “only a small part of Mr. Scheonfeld [sic]…may be American.” He suggests that, along with me, Norman Podhoretz, Max Boot, James Woolsley [sic], someone simply identified as “Pipes” (Richard or Daniel?), and someone simply identified as “Horowitz,” have pushed the United States into wasting American “treasure” and getting our “soldier-children killed in fighting other peoples’ wars, especially other peoples’ religious wars.”

Presumably, in referring to “religious wars,” Scheuer has in mind, as so often in the past, Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. But my post had nothing to do with Israel. Nor were the names Podhoretz, Boot, Woolsey, Pipes, or Horowitz mentioned in it. The imputation that these individuals, including a former director of the CIA, are disloyal to the United States is naked bigotry (although I cannot of course defend “Horowitz” from Scheuer’s accusation, since I do not know who he is).

I was writing not about religious wars but about Scheuer’s disclosure of information to the Danish newspaper Politiken concerning the extraordinary rendition to Egypt in 1995 of a terrorist plotter by the name of Abu Talal. Scheuer does comment on that episode, but in a way completely irrelevant to my charges. He says:

The CIA’s rendition program—which I helped author, and then managed for almost four years—continues to be the U.S. government’s single most successful, perhaps only sucessful [sic] counterterrorism program, and Americans are very much safer with the likes of Abu Talal off the street.

But the issue is not whether extraordinary renditions were successful, or whether Americans are safer because of them. I will stipulate for the sake of argument that he is right about both those things.

I was raising a different issue, concerning the U.S. laws governing leaks, and I raised five questions about whether the Politiken story indicates that these laws may have been broken:

1. Is the story accurate?

2. Assuming it is accurate, was the information about the rendition of Abu Talal classified?

3. Assuming it was classified, and that Scheuer . . . was the primary source, did he have the CIA’s permission to talk about it?

4. Assuming he was the primary source and he did not have CIA permission, and that the two preceding questions are answered in the affirmative, was a crime committed here?

5. If the elements of a crime are in place, will be there an investigation? And is anyone at the CIA or the Department of Justice or in Congress paying attention?

It is notable that in his three responses, Scheuer does not address or answer even one of these five questions.

The CIA does things in secret for a number of very good reasons. One of them is to accomplish U.S. security objectives without creating political firestorms in friendly countries. But a firestorm has now been ignited in Denmark as a result of Scheuer’s leak.

All the opposition parties in the Danish parliament are demanding an investigation into whether the authorities cooperated with the CIA in the extradition. Amnesty International has joined the choir: “It should be clarified whether Denmark indirectly participated in the CIA’s prisoner program and therefore in the violation of human rights,” says Lars Norman Jorgensen, who heads the organization’s Danish branch.

Meanwhile, even as the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, is denying that he was ever informed that “any unlawful acts” had taken place on Danish territory, Michael Scheuer has been pouring more fuel on the fire. He has told Politiken that the Danish intelligence agency, the DSIS, must have known about the rendition program; he says, “I can’t imagine any situation where we would not have told Denmark this.”

In short, not only does Scheuer appear to be the source of a damaging leak, he appears to be intent on maximizing the damage.

Here are some more dots that I’m still trying to connect:

CIA officers have been indicted in Italy for taking part in extraordinary renditions there. Will Denmark now initiate a similar legal process?

How does Scheuer’s activity differ from the deliberate leaking of classified information by the renegade CIA agent Philip Agee, whose passport was revoked in 1979 and is now a fugitive living in Cuba?

What is the Justice Department doing about the disclosure? I predict that the incoming Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, will prove far more energetic in investigating and prosecuting leaks than was the feckless Alberto Gonzalez. I hope I’m right.

What does Scheuer have to say about any of this? I predict that, at this point, he will answer with either a telling silence or with even more telling and more irrelevant evasions.

*Note: Similarly, Scheuer spoke in 2005 about what the German government "must have known" with respect to the rendition from Morocco to Syria of German/Syrian citizen Mohammed Haydar Zammer, a member of the Hamburg cell which planned 9/11.

Tell 9/11 Truthers: Not much stock in "put' conspiracy

I've posted a few times about the wacky, sometimes racist, world of the so-called "9/11 truth" movement. You may ask "what about all the people who sold short on American Airlines stock (and other companies hurt by the attacks) just before 9/11? Isn't that proof that there was a conspiracy among those in a position to make those trades?" Taking the next step into conspiracy-fearing paranoia, the "9/11 truth" activists cite the lack of any arrests of or even suspects among those who sold short as proof of a massive, top-secret cover-up. Ironically, the conspiracy nuts may actually have been encouraged by the over-zealous initial response to 9/11 by the SEC, Justice Dept. and international regulatory agencies anxious to get their hands into one of the most important investigations in history.

Well, here's the problem with the logic underlying these allegations. The question that should be asked is not whether there was a spike in put orders for these stocks before 9/11, but whether any spikes were anomalous when compared with previous history. Well, within a few months of 9/11 that had been researched and the results published. Here's the news: nothing unusual in the "spike" in put orders. There were sound reasons to be selling short at that time, and the history of put orders for those stocks show much larger spikes in the past.

In other words, the put order market for these stocks was NOT more volatile than usual and the specific spike in question was caused by readily available, very public, information, not insider tips from terrorists or conspirators.

It was published back in 2002, people. Read it here, already, and stop annoying us with your paranoia:

Not much stock in "put" conspiracy: the attacks on New York City and Washington have led to a new urban legend—namely, that inside traders used "put" options on airline stocks to line terrorist pockets; Insight on the News, June 3, 2002 by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

There has been a great deal of talk about alleged insider trading of airline stocks by associates of Osama bin Laden prior to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Government investigators remain tight-lipped about a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of possible profiteering by terrorists with advance knowledge of the attacks despite data that show trading activity on at least two of the most obvious stocks don't support the premise.

In fact, based on financial information almost immediately available to investigators, even the most febrile conspiracy theorists would have to agree that this dog don't hunt. For instance, much of the speculation involves "put" options--a bet that a stock will go down--on American and United airlines, the two carriers whose planes hijackers seized for the attacks. Yes, there was a spike in puts on those airlines just days before, but the data show such spikes weren't anomalous.

On Sept. 6, 2001, the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this would have yielded speculators between $2 million and $4 million in profit--hardly what any analyst would call a killing in the options markets. Based on historical data for both airlines, the put options just prior to Sept. 11 neither were dramatic nor unprecedented.

For example, there were repeated spikes in put options on American Airlines during the year before Sept. 11, including June 19 with 2,951 puts, June 15 at 1,144 puts, April 16 at 1,019 and Jan. 8 at 1,315 puts. United Airlines puts were a little more during the prior year, including Aug. 8 at 1,678 puts, July 20 with 2,995, April 6 at 8,212 and March 13 at 8,072. Since such relatively small spikes in options occur frequently and in a random pattern, why would respected financial analysts and government investigators cry foul?

That is the mystery. Because the matter still is under investigation, none of the government investigating bodies--including the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and DOJ--are speaking to reporters about alleged insider trading. Even so, suspicion of insider trading to profit from the Sept. 11 attacks is not limited to U.S. regulators. Investigations were initiated in a number of places including Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain. As in the United States, all are treating these inquiries as if they were state secrets--which, given the known financial information about trading in the equities of the two airlines used in the attacks, seems curious.

Lynne Howard, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), tells INSIGHT that information about who made the trades was available immediately. "We would have been aware of any unusual activity right away. It would have been triggered by any unusual volume. There is an automated system called `blue sheeting,' or the CBOE Market Surveillance System, that everyone in the business knows about. It provides information on the trades--the name and even the Social Security number on an account--and these surveillance systems are set up specifically to look into insider trading. The system would look at the volume, and then a real person would take over and review it, going back in time and looking at other unusual activity."

Howard continues, "The system is so smart that even if there is a news event that triggers a market event it can go back in time, and even the parameters can be changed depending on what is being looked at. It's a very clever system and it is instantaneous. Even with the system, though, we have very experienced and savvy staff in our market-regulations area who are always looking for things that might be unusual. They're trained to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if it's offshore, it might take a little longer, but all offshore accounts have to go through U.S. member firms--members of the CBOE--and it is easily and quickly identifiable who made the trades. The member firm who made the trades has to have identifiable information about the client under the `Know Your Customer' regulations (see "Snoops and Spies" Feb. 22, 1999), and we share all information with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Given all of this, at a minimum the CBOE and government regulators who are conducting the secret investigations have known for some time who made the options puts on United and American airlines. The silence from the investigating camps could mean any of several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the airline stocks; others besides terrorists had foreknowledge; the puts were just lucky bets by credible investors; or, there is nothing whatsoever to support the insider-trading rumors.

Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a North Dakota-based private consulting company that publishes research on markets worldwide, has looked at the numbers and doesn't see a conspiracy. "I read a lot of stories about the illicit profits, but it didn't make sense to me because the amounts of money that reportedly were made didn't seem large enough for someone with foreknowledge about some drastic and catastrophic drop in stock prices. I heard that $22 million in profits was made on these put options--that's a trivial amount of money for big-time options traders. After all, it makes sense that if you had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 events you could have made hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars betting against these and other stocks that would have been affected. Sure, it makes a much more attractive story to write there's a huge conspiracy, but the numbers don't necessarily show this."

Historically, Hamilton continues, "airlines are a poor investment and have never made money for investors. There are lots of reasons to sell these stocks short that have nothing to do with Sept. 11. I haven't seen anything that raises any red flags on at least these two stocks when you consider the numbers. With United there were 2,075 put options, with each put option representing 100 shares of stock. So someone had control of 207,500 shares of United. The stock dropped from $31 to $18, so that's a $13 profit, or $2.7 million on the put options. If you were going to plan something as complex as taking down those towers, why wouldn't you have made a billion or $10 billion betting on oil or shorting the NASDAQ?"

Anyway, says Hamilton, "recall that the market was in bad shape in the summer and early fall, and you know there were a lot of people who believed that there would be a sell-off in the market long before Sept. 11. For instance, American Airlines was at $40 in May and fell to $29 on Sept. 10; United was at $37 in May and fell to $31 on Sept. 10. These stocks were falling anyway and it would have been a good time to short them. I like to think of this as an urban legend now. I think it is the World Trade Center urban legend."

According to Hamilton, "People have talked about 4,000 Israelis not going to work that day in the towers, which turned out to be ridiculous, and there are numerous other tales that haven't panned out. All of them seem to be false stories that are surrounding this pivotal event in our lives. But fortunately we have data in this case and, contrary to what has been reported, I just don't see any red herrings here."

While it seems curious that investigators are continuing to be so closed-mouthed about these airline-stock trades, it is clear that a much wider net has been cast, apparently looking for bigger corporate fish involved in dubious financial activity on the markets.

Just a month after the attacks the SEC sent out a list of 38 stocks to various securities firms around the world looking for information. The list includes stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and USAirways airlines, as well as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the American International Group, AIG, Cigna, CAN Financial, John Hancock, MetLife, General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns.

Investors in any of these companies could have ensured themselves of huge returns with foreknowledge of the attacks. But, if the historical data resemble those of United and American airlines, such suspicions deserve nothing more than a curt "So what?"

Underlying Statistical Data for United and American Airlines Here

Colorado cable channel considers Holocaust denial program

Following up on my earlier posts on this subject, which you can read here and here:

from the Glenwood Springs Post Independent:

GrassRoots TV board mulls film; Station's directors put off decision on whether it will air
by Charles Agar

Glenwood Springs, Colorado 10/12/2007 -- GrassRoots TV is facing some fundamental questions over a controversial film.

At a community forum Thursday, GrassRoots TV board members promised a decision in the coming weeks on whether the community-access station will air "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II," a film that questions events during the Holocaust.

Steve Campbell, a Glenwood Springs resident and founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked station officials recently to air the film that has been banned in Australia. Members of the Adelaide Institute, which produced the film, are under a judicial gag order there.

"After previewing it, the board of directors found it significantly controversial," board chairman Alan Feldman said.

But before deciding, the board wanted to hear from the community, Feldman said.

More than fifty area residents filled the conference room at the Red Brick Center for the Arts for an often-heated debate, but no board decision.


One voice at a time

Among some 30 speakers who stepped up to the mic Thursday was one Holocaust survivor and others who had lost family in camps during World War II.

Some denounced the film; others stumped for free speech.

"I think the issue here is hate speech and the damage of hate speech," said Harriet Zimmerman of Aspen.

She remembered holding the telegram listing the concentration camp where her husband's family had died.

"How can you deny that?" Zimmerman asked.

Rabbi David Ingber with the Aspen Jewish Grassroots Initiative called Thursday's open-mic meeting an "expression of the highest ideals" of U.S. democracy, but said the film is a "waste of time."

"To debate the historicity of the Holocaust is to give Hitler a posthumous victory," Ingber said.

"When you allow hate to be propagated it takes on a banality and a ubiquity," said Melanie Sturm, who lost family in the Holocaust.

And when hate and "denying the undeniable" becomes an everyday thing, it creates violence and a "coarseness in society that is deleterious to us all," Sturm said.

"If you've seen this film and you think it's crap, why would you put crap on the air?" said local attorney Jeff Wertz, who added that even the bulletin board at City Market has rules and suggested the film stay on the Internet.


Let the viewers decide

Just nine people had seen the controversial film, and about as many raised their hands when asked if they believed the station should show it.

Campbell, who asked GrassRoots to air the program, said "Judea Declares War on Germany" does not refute the mountain of evidence about World War II atrocities; instead, "revisionists" in the film are trying to show that there is other evidence that is "different than what we've all been shown and seen."

Feldman asked Campbell if, instead of airing the film, he would join a community forum about the issue on GrassRoots.

"I'm not a filmmaker," Campbell said, but said he would consider it.

When Campbell stepped away from the mic, someone shouted, "You think it's the Jews' fault?"

Harvie Branscomb, who handed out a five-page letter stating his position, said for him the film raised some questions.

Branscomb said local newspaper reports about the controversy have been lopsided, and terms like "hate" and "Holocaust" prejudice people to the issue.

"I'm scared of information totalitarianism," Branscomb said.

"I am afraid when I'm told I can't see something," said Sheila Markowitz of Glenwood Springs. "I would rather have this be seen and let people decide."


GrassRoots put to the test

"Our goal was to create a forum for the community," said Richie Cohen, a Grassroots board member who was part of the fledgling station in 1971.

GrassRoots has not been without controversy, Cohen said. The station was the first to show a bare breast on TV, for example.

But, Cohen said, "In all these years, I can't remember this much attention coming onto our station."

"I haven't been faced with this decision," said Feldman.

The board will discuss the issue with board members who couldn't make Thursday's meeting and come up with a decision "quick," Feldman said.

The board's ultimate decision will focus on GrassRoots policy, not the content of the film at the center of the current controversy, Feldman said. The ultimate goal is to put a policy in place that broadly addresses the issue.

"We don't want to have to hold a board meeting over every controversial film," Feldman said.

No specific date for a board decision was set.