Chaim Kupferberg
(Cont'd) Timothy McVeigh and the Marketing of Osama Bin Laden
Thu Mar 18 13:33:27 2004
64.140.158.149

Timothy McVeigh and the Marketing of Osama Bin Laden

By the summer of 1996, bin Laden himself may have sensed that the American public had been seeded with enough innuendo and suspicion to merit a bona fide declaration of war - and perhaps care enough to pay attention. On June 25, 1996, the Khobar Towers facility in Saudi Arabia was attacked, resulting in the deaths of 19 U.S. servicemen. Little more than two weeks later, on July 10, 1996, journalist Robert Fisk of the Independent managed to track down bin Laden at his tent headquarters somewhere in Afghanistan (after being booted out of his base in Sudan a few months earlier at U.S. insistence). There, Fisk recorded for posterity bin Laden's proclamation of "the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States." This was not Fisk's first encounter with bin Laden. His first encounter dates back to December 6, 1993, when Fisk had the distinction of being the first Western journalist ever to interview Osama bin Laden. At that time, bin Laden was ensconced in Sudan, apparently more obsessed with building a highway for the benefit of his impoverished Sudanese hosts than with launching an international jihad against the American occupiers of cherished Saudi soil. Perhaps overlooking the self-professed contributions of David Rockefeller's protege, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Fisk made a prophecy in his introductory bin Laden article:

"When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written, Mr. Bin Laden's own contribution to the mujahedin - and the indirect result of his training and assistance - may turn out to be a turning- point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism; even if, today, he tries to minimise his role."

The above statement, more than any other, perhaps reveals why Osama bin Laden was chosen as the most suitable candidate to head up the Official 9/11 Legend - for he was, by this time, more clearly known as the poster boy for the Afghani resistance which had ousted the Soviet occupiers. The 1993 version of bin Laden was certainly a far cry from the fire-breathing jihadist of 1996. "I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist," he modestly proclaimed to Fisk in that Ur-interview, describing the fellow Afghani comrades that he had brought with him to Sudan as fellow road-builders. "Was it not a little bit anti-climactic for them," Fisk inquired, "to fight the Russians and end up road-building in Sudan?" "They like this work and so do I," bin Laden replied. If bin Laden, by this time, had any grievances against America, it seemed to be relegated to the assignment of credit for kicking Russian ass: "Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help."

By Fisk's return visit, the "shy man" previously described by Fisk had apparently metamorphosed into a humorless fanatic, droning on about America and jihad - the kind of character one would expect in the months after April 1995. Though the American military had first set up base on hallowed Saudi territory as early as August 1990 (in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait), it took bin Laden a full six years to work up the nerve to publicly enunciate his fullest fury over the U.S. presence on the sacred Saudi ummah. And, now that he had crossed that rubicon in Fisk's presence, he apparently couldn't shut up - setting up exclusive interviews hither and thither with Peter Arnett, Peter Bergen, John Miller, Rahimullah Yusufszai, Abdel Bari Atwan, and Jamal Ismail, among others - spouting his venom in counterpoint to the ominous prophecies of media-favored "experts" now warning of an imminent worldwide campaign of terror.

Apparently emboldened by his July 1996 verbal declaration of war in Fisk's presence, bin Laden retreated to his tent in order to compose a more proper written declaration of war on America, formally unveiling it on August 23, 1996 - a rambling, mind-numbingly boring 12-page screed against the "Zionist-Crusader" alliance. By that point, the widely marketed public face of that alliance - Richard Perle for the "Zionists" and John Ashcroft for the Christian "Crusaders" - had yet to be assembled within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration (now strangely bereft of the "old-line" Rockefeller/ Baker folks).

With bin Laden's historic declaration of war, a new brand of terrorism was being marketed to the American public - a global terror network with no clear state sponsor, employing "sleeper" agents and coded "go" messages, seeking out suitcase nukes and sophisticated weaponized germs. Marketed by an insular clique of terrorism "experts," al-Qaida (Arabic for "the Base") seemed to employ the kind of covert techniques that one would normally read about from the standard operating manuals of the C.I.A. or MI6. While the best that the Syrians and Iranians could muster up for Hamas and Hezbollah were car bombs and Katyusha rockets, al-Qaida was putting the "traditional" terror outfits to shame - and all this on a purportedly "frozen" $300 million investment portfolio (Osama bin Laden's estimated net worth).

If al-Qaida had one notable failing, it was in its almost obsessive inclination to leave a noticeably untangled trail of its operatives' names and pseudonyms. In other words, we know where Mohammed Atta worked, slept, played, and banked because he was thoughtful enough to scatter his name like bird droppings in the midst of his travels. Even more thoughtfully, when he sent out a package to a "Mustafa Ahmad," it turned out - as the official legend now has it - that the intended recipient really was named Mustafa Ahmad. In the end, one could not ask for a more ideal organization than al-Qaida in building a clear-cut legend with all the dots connecting.

End of excerpt.

For the complete text of this article, please go to

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html

Chaim Kupferberg is a freelance researcher, writer and frequent CRG contributor. + Copyright Chaim Kupferberg 2003. The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to post the above mentioned article in its entirety, or any portions thereof, so long as the URL and source are indicated, a copyright note is displayed, and, where excerpts are posted, the excerpt(s) is (are) indicated as such, and a link is provided to the full body of the text at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html from which the excerpt(s) was taken. For publication of this article in print or other forms contact: editor@globalresearch.ca .
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In my article, "Truth, Lies, and The Legend 9/11," I argued that the Iraqi and white supremacist threads in this incident were deliberately woven in so as to furnish false leads and muddy the trail as to the identity of the real culprits.

I am providing a link to an excerpt concerning this episode, entitled "Timothy McVeigh and The Marketing of Osama Bin Laden" ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310C.html). If you would be so kind as to circulate the excerpt for the benefit of your readers, I believe they would gain some perspective on this recent flurry - and re-hash - of old OKC "counter-legends" in the mainstream media of late.

Sincerely,

Chaim